This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. FECHNER'S famous essay, Das Biichlein vom Leben nach dem Tode, which in this present shape1 hopes to be made welcome to the English-reading public, came out originally in 1835. But in the age of romanticism, strange to say, it seems to have met with little more favor than in the ensuing period of materialism, when Buchner and Moleschott proclaimed a creed attainable without much mental effort. A second edition, therefore, slightly altered,2 was not undertaken till 1866. A third edition, in 1887, bore witness, on the one hand, that the new generation had begun to appreciate the booklet, and on the other hand, that its author, with his mind constantly fixed on the highest problems of moral and natural philosophy, still upheld the views set forth in one of his earliest publications. A fourth and a fifth reprint came out, after his death, in 1900 and 1903. It was a long and laborious life, though outwardly uneventful, which closed on November 18th, 1887. Gustav Theodor Fechner was born, on April 19th, 1801, at GrossSarchen, a small village in the Oberlausitz, which at present belongs to the Prussian province of Silesia, whereas in the beginning of the last century it was under the Elector of Saxony. Hence it was at the ancient Saxon university, in Leipzig, that Fechner went through his course of studies, and where in 1834 he was appointed professor of physics. His sphere of activity was not confined to the delivering of public lectures. He wrote, and translated from the French, science textbooks, and conducted several magazines of a scientific character. The observations preparatory to his publications on galvanism and electro-magnetism proved injurious to his eyesight, so that for some time he was obliged to give up...