This study of European natural philosophy begins with the classical conceptions of Mind, Soul, Nature and the Unconscious and analyses the revival of these notions in the natural philosophy of the Renaissance and the Seventeenth century. The concept of the Unconscious acquired a major importance in the systems of the German vitalist biologists and the Idealistic philosophers of the Nineteenth century. Jacob shows how these various thinkers, as well as the German Romantic philosophers, and especially Schubert, Carus, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, not only revived the ancient doctrines of the Soul in their metaphysical schemes but also anticipated the psychological theories of Jung, who, as a psychologist and philosopher, serves as the culminating point of the work. In the Appendix, the author points to the natural philosophical bases of the discussions of racial differences that emerged in the Nineteenth century alongside the investigations into the spiritual capacities of mankind. Alexander Jacob obtained his Ph.D. in the History of Ideas from Pennsylvania State University and is the author of Nobilitas: A Study of Aristocratic Philosophy from Ancient Greece to the Early Twentieth Century, and Atman: A Reconstruction of the Solar Cosmology of the Indo-Europeans.
His major editions of German conservative political thinkers include Edgar Julius Jung:'s The Rule of the Inferiour, the anthology Europa: German Conservative Foreign Policy 1870-1940, and Houston Stewart Chamberlain's Political Ideals.