The determinate, and, as I believe, logical, form of the conception of
the world, the principles of which I have advocated for thirty years,
and whose most important aspects have been briefly outlined in the
preceding paragraphs, may also be designated _cosmism_, to the extent
that it proceeds from the fundamental idea that _cosmogeny_ or the
“world-process,” as world-_development_, is, within certain limits,
(within the limits namely of a reduction to the basic notions: matter
and its two inseparable fundamental qualities motion and feeling,) a
_knowable_ natural process. Cosmism is opposed, thus, to _agnosticism_.
* * * * *
One highly important principle of my monism seems to me to be, that
I regard _all_ matter as _ensouled_, that is to say as endowed with
_feeling_ (pleasure and pain) and with _motion_, or, better, with the
power of motion. As elementary (atomistic) attraction and repulsion
these powers are asserted in every simplest chemical process, and
on them is based also every other phenomenon, consequently also the
highest-developed soul-activity of man. For the comprehension of this
_graduated_ psychical development of matter perhaps my three stages will
be useful: III _A._ (Panpsychism), III _B._ (Biopsychism), III _C._
(Zoopsychism). So too consciousness, as the highest psychical action and
the one most difficult to be explained, is in my views imply a higher
stage of brain-activity, based upon the association, the abstraction,
and centralisation of groups of ideas. Perhaps I have expressed myself
poorly in these expositions, as I am little accustomed to dealing with
philosophical axioms abstractly, and am too exclusively engaged in the
concrete activity of my own special department. I cherish the hope,
however, of being able within two or three years to devote more of my
time to purely philosophical labors; when my work with the Challenger
material, which has now absorbed twelve years of unremitting toil, is
ended, my special zoological activity will have been completed; and I
shall then find the opportunity of contributing more frequently to your
highly valued magazines _The Monist_ and _The Open Court_.