to know them, not by external intuition but by self-perception and self-consciousness. That which has not the properties of the material can not be the form of activity of something which is material. Activity of consciousness and cerebral function always come to be known through different sources of experience. The encroachment of materialism consists in the fact that it effaces this essential distinction.

Materialism has never observed that, even if all its assertions are admitted to be just, it yet overlooks something which gives rise to a new and for it a terrible problem—namely, the circumstance that movement in space is known to us only as an object of our consciousness. For the theory of knowledge such notions as consciousness, idea, and intuition lie deeper than such notions as matter and movement. For this reason an absolute and decided materialism was possible only in ancient times, before the awakening of more deeply penetrating philosophical reflection. Democritus is the only consistent materialist. None of the modern materialistic writers can speak with the calm and the certainty with which Lucretius in his majestic verses sets forth the doctrine of Democritus. Modern materialists for the most part confess that, even if we can reduce everything to matter, yet we can not know what matter is in itself. Thus La Mettrie, Holbach, Cabanis, not to speak of the wild and rambling inconsistencies of the most recent writers (Büchner, Moleschott).

But the objection here urged against materialism is not its desire that conscious life shall accept as the only reality something which is given only as an object of consciousness, and can be represented only through the activity of consciousness; but rather that the facts impel us to the result that materialism offends against the conceptions derived from experience itself.