character of these presuppositions. Nothing is affirmed by them, and nothing denied; only it is said: We know at present nothing.
And how if in following this method consistently we finally arrive at that consciousness or soul, of which at the beginning of our investigations we were obliged to say that we know nothing? Why, then it must be so, then both would have become for us an “immediately certain,” upon which we could take our stand in other investigations. But the justification of this method will be in no degree impaired by this ultimate result.
In the first instance then we must confine ourselves to those changes of state in the nervous central organs upon which everything is based, the changes and series of changes in system C. It is from the nature and the states of the central organ alone that the one simple principle must ultimately proceed to which we may refer all the most complicated manifestations of our being, as well as our most simple movements. And to these changes in system C are added by the individual those statements (E-values) which describe the counterpart of that essential co-ordination of which the central term is the individual himself who makes the statement.[1]
Simply to identify the doctrine with Materialism and Realism, or to regard it as a variety of these and say that Avenarius holds a “Psychology without a soul” in the same way as Fr. Alb. Lange, would be to mistake the very key-stone of his theory, that generality to which, from his purely positional standpoint, he attains by his method of pure description.
To bring this generality well into the foreground I will here notice the attitude of the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung to the book of books, the Bible. For the doctrine of Avenarius, if it is general, must cover even the views expressed in the Bible. Avenarius has explained himself on this point in the Kr. d. r. Erf., vol. ii., p. 486, note 153.
He says there: “If we allow in general the unity of the plan of creation, then the pre-eminence of my uniform point of view should also be allowed, even from the standpoint of the biblical history of creation. If God made man first from a part of the environment (the dust of the ground) and then breathed into him the ‘breath of life,’ then the internal arrangement of the parts of the system C thus formed was determined and created before the work of art itself was set
- ↑ See Avenarius, Der menschliche Weltbegriff, p. 128.
