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

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.

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.

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.