 One of the most important differences between Fechner’s panpsychism and Schelling’s and Hegel’s idealism is that, for Schelling and Hegel, the ideal does not necessarily imply the presence of consciousness. What makes a creature living is its purposive activity, which need not imply that its activity is directed by consciousness. These differences with the idealist tradition eventually became public in Fechner’s sharp criticism of Eduard von Hartmann’s Die Philosophie des Unbewussten, which put forward a strong case for the presence of subconscious life throughout nature (see Fechner 1879:  22).[9] 