physiological and linguistic grounds, are undoubtedly equally original, the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian, are only at home in the old world; while America, on the other hand, is peopled by a mixed or climatically modified Mongolian race, which must have come over from Asia. On the surface of the earth which immediately preceded the present surface apes were reached here and there, but not men. From this standpoint of our consideration, which shows us matter as the direct visibility of the will which manifests itself in all things, nay, indeed, for the merely physical investigation which follows the guidance of time and causality, lets it pass as the origin of things, we are easily led to the question whether even in philosophy we could not just as well start from the objective as from the subjective side, and accordingly set up as the fundamental truth the proposition: “There is in general nothing but matter and its indwelling forces.” But, with regard to these “indwelling forces” here so easily used, we must remember that their assumption leads every explanation back to a completely incomprehensible miracle, and then leaves it beside it, or rather leaves it to begin from it. For every definite, inexplicable force of nature which lies at the foundation of the most different kinds of effects of an unorganised body, not less than the vital force which manifests itself in every organised body, is such an incomprehensible miracle, as I have fully explained in chap. 17, and have also shown that physics can never be set upon the throne of metaphysics, just because it leaves quite untouched the assumption referred to and also many others; whereby from the beginning it renounces all claim to give an ultimate explanation of things. I must further remind the reader here of the proof of the insufficiency of materialism, which is given towards the end of the first chapter, because, as was said there, it is the philosophy of the subject which forgets itself in its calculation. But all these truths rest upon the fact that everything _objective_, everything external, since it is always only something apprehended, something known, remains also always indirect and secondary, therefore absolutely never can become the ultimate ground of explanation of things or the starting‐point of philosophy. Philosophy necessarily requires what is absolutely immediate for its starting‐point. But clearly only that which is given in _self‐consciousness_ fulfils this condition, that which is within, the _subjective_. And hence it is so eminent a merit of Descartes that he first made philosophy start from self‐consciousness. Since then, upon this path, the genuine philosophers, especially Locke, Berkeley, and Kant, have gone even further, each in his own manner, and in consequence of their investigations I was led to recognise and make use, not of one, but of two completely different data of immediate knowledge in self‐consciousness, the idea and the will, by