PHILOSOPHY OF MIND general corresponds to the human will in general, so the individual bodily structure corresponds to the individually modified will, the character of the individual, and therefore it is throughout and in all its parts characteristic and full of expression (WWI 108) Schopenhauer here anticipates a famous remark of Wittgenstein’s, ‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul’ (PI ii 178) The body is intimately involved in knowledge as well as in desire; my own body is the starting point of my perception of the world, and my knowledge of other perceptible objects depends on their effects on my body But even when we rise above knowledge of ideas to knowledge of Ideas, the body still has a role, as Schopenhauer rather surprisingly tells us ‘Man is at once impetuous and blind striving of will (whose pole or focus lies in the genitals) and eternal, free, serene subject of pure knowledge (whose pole is the brain)’ (WWI 203) Is there any part of a human being that survives the death of the body, or does total extinction await us? On the one hand Schopenhauer says, ‘Before us there is indeed only nothingness’; on the other hand, he can say, ‘if, per impossibile, a single being, even the most insignificant, were entirely annihilated, the whole world would inevitably be destroyed with it’ (WWI 129) The latter claim is derived from the metaphysical principle that the will which is the inner reality of every individual is itself single and indivisible Interpreters have sought to reconcile the two pronouncements by suggesting that at death the human person is absorbed into the single will: it continues, therefore, to exist, but it loses all individuality Experimental vs Philosophical Psychology As the nineteenth century progressed, psychologists endeavoured to launch a new science of the mind, which would study mental phenomena by empirical and experimental methods In Europe the first psychological laboratory was set up in 1879 at the University of Leipzig by Wilhelm Wundt, a professor of physiology, specializing in the nervous system, who five years earlier had published an influential text entitled ‘Principles of Physiological Psychology’ William James, who had gone to Germany to study in this field, anticipated Wundt by setting up a psychology laboratory in Harvard, and in 1878 the first ever doctorate in psychology was awarded 198