Bernhard Riemann Quotes

From the standpoint of exact natural science, of the explanation of nature from causes, the assumption of an earth-soul is... an hypothesis for the explanation of Being and of the historical development of the organic world.

There is within the limits of our experience no reason to seek the causes of these adaptations in a greater whole. All organisms are designed only for life upon the earth. The state of the earth's crust accordingly contains all (external) reasons of its arrangement. ...They are peculiar (individual). According to all that experience teaches we must assume that they are not repeated on other heavenly bodies.

The adaptation observed in men, animals and plants... one part of this adaptation is explained from a thought-process in the interior of these bodies... another part, however, the adaptation of the organism, by a thought-process in a greater whole.

Zend-Avesta, a truly life giving word creating new life in knowledge as in faith! ...As Fechner in his Nanna sought to show that plants have souls, so the point of departure of his contemplations in the Zend-Avesta is the doctrine that the stars have souls. The method he employs is not that of the abstraction of general laws by induction and the application and testing of these in the explanation of nature, it is analogy. He compares the earth with our own organism, which we know to be endowed with a soul. He searches out not merely in a one-sided way the similarities, but does equal justice to the dissimilarities, too, and so arrives at the conclusion that all the former show the earth to be a being with a soul, and that all the latter indicate that it is a being with a soul far higher than our own.

It is absurd to assume that upon the rigid earth-crust the organic originated from the inorganic. In order to explain the nascence of the lowest organisms on the earth-crust, one must assume an already existing organising principle or a thought-process, under conditions that would render organic combinations impossible. We must accordingly assume that these conditions are valid only for the life-process in the actual state of the earth's surface, and only so far as we can explain them may we estimate the possibility of life-processes under other conditions.

There remains only the assumption that the ponderable masses within the rigid earth-crust are supporters of the soul-life of the earth.

The substratum of mental activity must be sought only in ponderable matter.

An immediate consequence of these principles of explanation is that the souls of organic beings, i.e., the compacts of mind-masses, arisen during life, continue to exist after death. (Their isolated persistence is not sufficient). But in order to explain the orderly development of organic nature in which the earlier collected experiences obviously serve as basis for the later creations, it is necessary to assume that these mind-masses enter into a greater compact of mind-masses, the Earth-Soul, and that these serve a higher soul-life according to the same laws as the mind-masses engendered in our nerve-processes observe in their service of our own soul-life.

We now apply these laws of mental processes, to which the explanation of our own inner consciousness leads, to explain the order and adaptation observed on the earth, i.e., to explain Being and historical development.

Every mind-mass strives to produce a like formed mind-mass and accordingly strives to produce that form of motion of the matter by which it was formed.

The simplest and most common manifestation of the activity of older mind-masses is Reproduction, which consists in the striving of the active mind-mass to engender one similar to itself.

If... part of the related mind-masses hang together among themselves, then these are not only immediately excited but also mediately and consequently in proportion more powerfully than the rest.

Every entering mind-mass excites all related mind-masses and this excitation is the more powerful the more insignificant the diversity of their inner states (quality).

Mind-masses, once formed, are imperishable, their combinations are indissoluble; only the relative strength of these combinations is altered by the incoming of new mind masses.

The soul is a compact of mind-masses combined in a most intimate and manifold manner. It grows constantly by accession of mind-masses, and upon these depend its development.