DuBois-Reymond--who, in his lecture at Leipzig, p.r.o.nounced the origin of _sensation_ and of _consciousness_ a problem of natural science, never to be solved--is also of the opinion that the explanation of _life_ from mere mechanism of atoms is very probable, and only a question of time. It is well known that the experimental {135} attempts at originating the organic through chemistry are at present pursued with an eagerness that can have its stimulus only in the hope of success.
It is clear that the main point of the question does not lie in organic matter or in organic form, but in organic _motion_, for even the specific of the organic _form_ originates only first through _organic motion of life_. If, therefore, life is to be explained from mechanical causes, it must also be shown that the merely mechanical motion of inorganic matter produces that motion which we know as organic motion, and _how_ it produces it. The idea of "increase and complication of the inorganic, merely mechanical motion," with which Hackel throws a bridge from the living to the lifeless or from the organic to the inorganic, does not yet give us that proof; it seems rather to be one of those pompous phrases with which people hide their ignorance and make the uncritical mult.i.tude believe that the explanation is found: a manipulation against which, among others, Wigand, in his great work, repeatedly protests, as also does the Duke of Argyll in his lecture on "Anthropomorphism in Theology," having especially in his mind the deductions of Spencer. For we may review the whole known series of mechanical motions and their mechanical causes, and imagine their mechanical increase and their mechanical complication the largest possible; and still the life-motion of the organic will never result therefrom. If such a keen psychical and physiological investigator and thinker, and such an authority in the realm of the motions of atoms and molecules, as Gustav Theodor Fechner--"Einige Ideen zur Schopfungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen" ("Some Ideas about the History of the {136} Creation and Development of Organisms"), Leipzig, 1873, p. 1, f.--can find the whole lasting and effectual difference between the organic and inorganic in nothing else than in the way and manner of _motion_--namely, that the motion of the _organic_ molecules is different from that of the _inorganic_ molecules--and when he traces this difference with mathematical exactness, then an a.s.sertion which simply denies that difference, without attempting to show the ident.i.ty of the two motions, to say nothing of proving this ident.i.ty, is nothing more than a clear evidence that the mechanical theory has not yet succeeded in explaining the origin of life, and that those scientists who so haughtily look down upon the abuse of "_vital power_," to the efficacy of which their antagonists began to resort when their knowledge came to an end, make exactly the same abuse with their "_mechanism_." That organic motion, even the organic motion of molecules, _once present_, comes into dependence on the well known laws of mechanism, we naturally will not deny; any more than that the human body, when serving the will of the mind, follows in its motions the laws of physiology and mechanism.
Preyer seems to make a mistake similar to that of those who efface sensation and motion, when, in an essay on the hypothesis of the origin of life, in the "Deutsche Rundschau," Vol. I, 7, he even effaces the difference between life and sensation, and simply identifies life and motion. "Self-motion, called life, and inorganic movement of bodies by agencies outside of themselves, are but quant.i.tatively, intensively, or gradually different forms of motion; not in their innermost being different.... Our will changes many kinds of motion into heat, makes {137} cold metal to be red-hot simply by hammering.... Likewise inversely, as the law of the conservation of force must require, a part of the eternal heat of the metal can be now and forever transposed into the living motion of our soul." This whole manner of investigation and proof is one of those numerous unconscious logical fallacies which, introduced by Hegel, have gradually attained a certain t.i.tle by possession. From the observation of a process, they abstract a characteristic, as general as possible,--as, for instance, from the observation of life the characteristic of motion; then they find that the process has the characteristic in common with still other processes--as, for instance, the self-motion of the living has the general characteristic of motion in common with the objective motion of the lifeless; and then they persuade themselves that the process which they try to explain is really explained by having found a quality of this process as comprehensive as possible. And in order to hide the falsity of the conclusion, they also give to the general idea, which they have found to be a characteristic of that process, the same name which the special process has,--as, for instance, they call motion life, no matter whether it is a motion of itself or a being moved, no matter whether it is performed from within or in consequence of an impulse from without; and then they say: "Behold, life is explained; life is nothing but motion." But it can be readily seen that life is also motion, and has therefore this characteristic in common with everything which is moved; but that the specific of that motion called life--namely, self-motion in consequence of an impulse renewing itself from within, and, as Fechner shows, {138} self-motion in a rotatory direction of the molecules, precisely the same thing which in distinction from other motions we call life,--is not explained, but simply ignored.
There is still another bold hypothesis which we have to mention--namely, _that the organic germs were once thrown from other spheres upon the earth by aerolites_. Years ago this idea was declared by Helmholtz to be scientifically conceivable; then it was formally a.s.serted and brought into general notice by Sir William Thompson, in his opening address before the annual a.s.sembly of the British a.s.sociation at Edinburgh, in 1871, but rejected as formally and materially unscientific by Zollner, in the preface to his work, "Nature of Comets," and again defended by Helmholtz in his preface to the second volume of a translation of Thompson and Tait"s Theoretical Physics. However, this hypothesis also only defers the solution of the question, and, supposing its scientific possibility, leads either to the remoter question, how life did originate in those other spheres, or to the metaphysical a.s.sertion of the eternity of life and of the eternal continuity of the living in the world, and shows therewith very clearly the impossibility of its explanation.
This inexplicability would still exist, if what is quite improbable should happen, namely, that the experimental attempts at _artificially producing organic life_ should be successful, and if thus the question as to the _generatio aequivoca_, which during the past decades so much alarmed the minds of scientists and theologians, should be experimentally solved and answered in the affirmative. For in view of the hopes of a possible explanation of life, which is expected to be the reward for the success of {139} these attempts, Zollner is fully right in saying: "That the scientists to-day set such an extremely high value on the inductive proof of the _generatio aequivoca_, is the most significant symptom of how little they have made themselves acquainted with the first principles of the theory of knowledge. For, suppose they should really succeed in observing the origin of organic germs under conditions entirely free from objection to any imaginable communication with the atmosphere, what could they answer to the a.s.sertion that the organic germs, in reference to their extension, are of the order of ether-atoms, and, with these, press through the intervals of the material molecules which form the sides of our apparatus?"
How little life is explained, at least according to the present state of our knowledge, also follows from the _insufficiency of all attempts_ at _defining it_. The latest and most thorough attempt at such a definition of life, with which we are familiar, is that made by Herbert Spencer in his "First Principles", -- 25, and in his "Principles of Biology," Vol. I, Part I, Chap. 4 and 5. Having made thorough investigations, he arrives at the general formula: "Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations." To this definition we will not make the objection that it is nothing but a logical abstraction from the common quality of all processes and phenomena of life; for it certainly lies in the nature of a definition that it can be nothing else but that. Nevertheless, we will state that such a definition of life not only does not lead us any nearer to the comprehension of its processes, and especially of the richness and the organization of its forms and functions, but that it {140} clearly shows us how little the origin of life is explained. For this very definition necessarily and obviously leads us to the questions: Whence do those internal relations originate, whence their adjustment to external relations, and whence the continuity of this adjustment? The answer to these questions this definition still owes us.
Therefore, not only self-consciousness and freedom, not only sensation and consciousness, but also life and the organic, remain a phenomenon which--at least, according to the present state of our knowledge and reasoning--enters into the realm of the world of phenomena as _something new_ that can not be explained from the foregoing, although it presupposes the foregoing as the _condition_, not the cause, of its appearance; and no matter whether we have to think of the modality of its origin as a sudden or as a gradual one.
-- 4. _The Elements of the World, the Theory of Atoms, and the Mechanical View of the World._
The investigating and thinking mind, when it attempts to explain the appearances and forms of that which exists, finds itself led further and further back, until it finally arrives at the last elements of the world and of matter. Whether we take the problem of life as solved or unsolved, the living has matter and its subordination to the efficiency of all its chemical and mechanical powers in common with the lifeless; and the organic, in its first beginnings, stands extraordinarily near to, and is grown on the ground of, the inorganic,--if not according to the category of cause and effect, still according to that of condition and consequence, of basis and structure. Therefore we stand at last before the {141} question of the final elements of matter, which, indeed, const.i.tutes organic as well as inorganic bodies.
The answer to this question is attempted by the theory of atoms: the doctrine which teaches that the whole material world is composed of simple particles which are no farther divisible, and from whose juxtaposition the chemical elements--and, in respect to their other forms of existence and combination, the whole world of bodies, with all their forms, states, and changes,--are composed.
This theory has not only the practical value that the physical (and especially the chemical) sciences can make and use their formulas most easily under the supposition of such simple primitive elements; but it also has the great theoretical merit that it has broken down the old barriers between _matter_ and _force_, and has thus promoted considerably our method of regarding the world of material substances. Toward this result, scientists and philosophers--and, among the latter, the thinkers and investigators of both views of the world, the theistic and the pantheistic, the ideal and the materialistic,--have worked with equal merit, and have equally enjoyed its fruits, with perhaps the single exception of so pure a materialist as Ludwig Buchner, who, it seems, does not like to give up his old doctrine of force _and_ matter as the two inseparable, equivalent, and equally eternal elements of the universe. That matter itself, even when looked upon from a purely physical standpoint, has an incorporeal principle; that the whole world of bodies, as such, has but a phenomenal character; that not force _and_ matter are the two empirico-physical principles of the world, but that matter itself must be a product of elementary {142} force active in the atoms; these doctrines have now be pretty nearly common property of natural science and philosophy.
Investigators who like Wilhelm Wundt, rise from natural science to philosophy, or such as take their starting-point from philosophy--whether they be theists, like Lotze, I. H. Fichte, Ulrici, or occupy the ground of a pessimistic pantheism, as does Eduard von Hartmann,--all share this view and its fruits.
But in spite of all these preferences for the theory of atoms, we should not forget that it still has but hypothetical value--that it is but an idea of limits, which indicates, where the scientifically perceptible ceases, and that every attempt at moving this limit still farther on must either fail and lead into unsolvable contradictions, or, if successful, only leads to new difficulties and unsolved problems.
Already within that realm in which the theory of atoms is a supplemental hypothesis directly indispensable at present--_i.e._, within their application in physical sciences--we meet suppositions which raise great doubts and difficulties. Such a scientific difficulty occurs when the atomism of the natural philosophers supposes a double complexity of atoms, material atoms and atoms of ether: complexities which both penetrate one another, and are supposed to follow partly totally different, partly the same, elementary laws of force. Material atoms are subordinate to the law of gravitation, while atoms of ether are not; and yet both act legitimately upon one another,--as, for instance, when heat pa.s.ses into motion and motion into heat, which certainly presupposes a law of power acting in common for both. Another difficulty lies in the atomism of the chemists; and still another {143} in the divergency of the aims at which the physical theory of atoms on the one hand and the chemical theory of atoms on the other seem to point. Chemistry is inclined to explain the difference of its numerous elements from the original difference of the atoms; and yet it is not at all certain that the elements of chemistry themselves are not composed of still more simple and less numerous primary elements. Many indications seem to point to such primary elements which are more simple in number and quality, and investigators even mention an element--hydrogen--in the direction of which we have to look for the way that will lead us to those primitive elements of matter. The divergency of aims, finally, consists in the fact that physical atomism prevailingly points to a conformity of the atoms of bodies; chemical atomism, on the contrary,--at least, according to its present state,--points to a dissimilarity among these.
The hypothetical and problematical nature of the theory of atoms strikes us still more clearly when we try to a.n.a.lyze it philosophically. First, we meet that antinomy which we always find where we try to pa.s.s beyond the limits of our empirical knowledge by means of conception. For, if the atoms still occupy s.p.a.ce, we can not understand why they should not be further divisible, and if they do not occupy s.p.a.ce, we can not understand how any sum of that which does not occupy s.p.a.ce, can finally succeed in filling s.p.a.ce. It is true, this very antinomy has led to the overcoming of that dualism of force and matter which so long enchained science, and the overcoming of which we greet as a progress of our theoretical knowledge of nature. We no {144} longer look upon the atoms as material elements, but as centres of force. The antinomy has the further merit that, in the realm of the knowledge of nature, it brings to our consciousness the great advantage of a concrete perception and reasoning over purely logical abstractions.
For Ulrici, in his "G.o.d and Nature," is right in calling our attention to the fact that we must think about the atoms, not in an _abstractly_ logical and an _abstractly_ mathematical way, but concretely; that we have to consider them, not as mere quant.i.ties, but as qualities; and that we can then easily arrive at the perception of something which occupies s.p.a.ce, and which therefore, according to abstract conclusions of logic and mathematics, could still be thought of as divisible _in abstracto_, but which, even as a consequence of its _quality_, of its concrete natural form, is no longer divisible in reality. Nevertheless, in spite of all these remarkable attempts at overcoming the difficulties of the theory of atoms, that antinomy returns as often as we undertake to make that clearly perceptible which we have at last gained a partial conception of; and thus shows us, from this side also, that even with the theory of atoms we have arrived at the limit where not only our observation, but also the preciseness and certainty of our conceptions, ceases.
By the atomic theory, we do not gain anything for the ultimate explanation of the world and its contents, not even if its present hypothetical value should be changed into a complete demonstration. For the whole theory but removes the question as to the origin of things from their sensible appearance to the elements of that appearance, and leaves us standing just as helpless before the elements as before the appearances. For {145} whence does the whole richness of the appearances in the world come? If the atoms are all alike, and their laws of force the simplest we can imagine, then their grouping into all the developments and formations of which we observe such an infinite and regularly arranged abundance, is not less unexplained than if we had not gone back to the theory of atoms at all. But if the atoms and their laws of force are different, the difficulty is not simplified, but doubled. For, first, the theory then owes us an answer to the questions wherein the difference of the atoms consists and whence it comes; and, second, the question we have to consider in supposing a uniformity of the atoms, is not disposed of or answered--the question, namely, as to the causes which bring these different atoms together to form precisely those complexities of atoms which we observe as the world of phenomena.
This insufficiency of the theory of atoms in explaining the world and its contents, is another proof to us that, however great the practical value of this theory may be for the operations of physics and chemistry, its theoretical value consists essentially in the fact that it formulates more accurately the perception of the limits of our exact knowledge. Even the idea of Lotze, that the atoms (in themselves different) are not really the final elements of matter, but consist of still more simple but likewise different elements, seems to us more a decoration than an extension of the limits at which our perception has arrived; we stand before a double door, but find both doors locked. We agree with DuBois-Reymond, when he declares, in his before-mentioned lecture, the impossibility of perceiving the last elements of the {146} world, matter and force, to be the other limit of our knowledge of nature which, together with the impossibility of the explanation of the origin of sensation and consciousness, remains forever fixed.
Likewise, the peculiar modification which G. Th. Fechner gives to the theory of the last elements of the world, cannot escape the charge of leaving the problem of the world scientifically just as unsolved as before.
Fechner not only finds, as we have already mentioned, the difference between the organic and the inorganic in the difference of the mutual motions, but he also finds that the character of organic motions is exactly the same as that which the bodies of the universe have among themselves in their motions. Thus he distinguishes the _cosmorganic_ motion, which is performed in the whole of the universe, and the _molecular-organic_ motion, which we observe in the single organisms of the earth; he makes G.o.d the personal, self-conscious soul of this cosmical organism; and, in using the law of the tendency to stability, with which he completes the Darwinian selection theory, a.s.serts that the organic in the whole of the universe, as well as in the narrow sphere of single bodies on the earth, is the first thing from which the inorganic was separated and became gradually fixed.
Thus, in his opinion, the problem which up to the present has occupied investigators,--namely, how did the organic originate from the inorganic?--would have to be reversed to, how did the inorganic originate from the organic?
Preyer would also reach a similar result with his above-mentioned theory of the ident.i.ty of life and motion. For according to this theory, the living would {147} be as old and common as motion, and the organic but the dregs of life.
We may, therefore, say that, without regard to the fact that neither pantheism nor theism will ever harmonize with Fechner"s solution of this contrast which gives to G.o.d exactly the same position in the world as the soul has in the body, natural science will certainly treat with great reserve a cosmo-metaphysical system which so fully upsets all results of exact investigations into the history of origin and development, and has no other proof for itself than the ident.i.ty, or at least the similarity, of the abstract formula according to which the molecular motions of organisms and the cosmical motions are performed. Although we thus have to deny to the proof of this ident.i.ty or similarity the weight which Fechner gives to it, nevertheless it has still no small merit, since it throws new and clearer light upon the old thought, always attractive and yet so difficult to present,--of a macrocosmus and a microcosmus, which has been often enough treated with so much natural mysticism.
Thus, in our inquiry into the development of things, we have successively arrived at four points, each of which urged us to make the confession that here something new came into existence, which can not be explained from the preceding conditions of its being; these four points were: the origin of self-consciousness, the origin of sensation and consciousness, the origin of life, and finally the elements of the universe. Arrived at the last problem, we see the confession of our ignorance increased to the still more comprehensive confession that we are really not able _fully_ to explain anything in the world. We are able to perceive a uniformity of law in the states and {148} changes of things, and to abstract therefrom common laws of nature; we can observe single objects, and perceive their states and changes in their connection with one another and in their dependence on those laws. But we are not able to explain scientifically either the origin of these laws or the last physical causes of the qualities of things, which follow these laws.
We should reach the same result if we had not started from the objective world of the existing, as we were induced to do by our subject, but from theoretical investigations. Here also we should immediately find ourselves in a world of relations between subject and object, of a regularly arranged abundance of subjective and objective qualities, states and processes, of which the objective only come to our knowledge through the medium of the subjective, and of regularly arranged laws to which both the subjective and the objective are commonly subordinate. But why just these and no other qualities of the subject and of objects exist, why just these and no other laws reign, why just this and no other relation takes place between the perceiving subject and the perceived object, would remain unanswered as before.
Amidst a generation which is so fond of reveling in the thought of an extension of all the limits of our knowledge, and is inclined to proclaim as true that which it wishes and hopes, investigators are not wholly wanting who very decidedly express their consciousness of these limits of our knowledge, and at the same time combine it with the most logical scientific reasoning and investigation. Even when in detail they reach these limits from the most varying points of view, and draw {149} them in different directions, they all agree in confirming the principle that it is one of the first and most indispensable conditions of successful investigation always to be conscious of the limits of its perception.
Voices which remind mankind of these limits, are perhaps less popular, for man prefers to be reminded of the advances rather than of the limitations of his knowledge; but they are on that account the more worthy of our grat.i.tude, for they keep us on the solid ground of the attainable from which alone sure progress in knowledge is possible. Among such philosophers we name Ulrici, and especially Lotze; among scientists, in the first place, two pioneers in their departments--namely, in the department of the mechanism of heat, Robert von Mayer--compare his "Bemerkungen uber das mechanische Aequivalent der Warme" ("Remarks on the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat"), and "Ueber nothwendige Consequenzen und Inconsequenzen der Warmemechanik" ("Necessary Consequences and Inconsequences of the Mechanism of Heat"), Stuttgart, Cotta;--and in the realm of the development of organisms, K. E. von Baer--compare his "Reden und kleinere Aufsatze"
("Addresses and Essays"), 2 vols., St. Petersburg, 1864 and 1876. In this connection we have already mentioned the name of DuBois-Reymond. Otto Kostlin published two remarkable dissertations in this direction--"Ueber die Grenzen der Naturwissenschaft" ("Limits of Natural Science"), Tubingen, Fues, 2d ed., 1874, and "Ueber naturliche Entwicklung" ("Natural Development"), ib., 1875. In the latter he especially cautions against hastily confounding the laws of development of planets, development of the organic kingdom, and development {150} of the individual organisms.
Recently, Wigand, in the second volume of his work already frequently mentioned, attempts, with an extreme energy which does too little justice to the representation and investigation of the still unsolved problems, to formulate the limits of the knowable.
A contrary extreme, and of its kind a still more one-sided corrective of this too great stability, we have in those investigators who, by reason of the great progress which has been made in the realm of the theoretical knowledge of nature, allow themselves to be drawn on to the hope of still explaining all states and processes in the world--the spiritual and the ethic processes as well as the physical--from the pure mechanism of atoms; and who see in that which thus far has been mechanically explained, the only and the infallible way of explaining all that is still obscure. They call this view the _mechanical view of the world_; and, as "monism," put it in opposition to the "vitalistic, teleological, and dualistic view of the world." In order to obtain a correct view of this standpoint, we quote from Hackel"s "Natural History of Creation", Vol. I, page 23, the following pa.s.sage: "By the theory of descent we are for the first time enabled to conceive of the unity of nature in such a manner that a mechanico-causal explanation of even the most intricate organic phenomena, for example, the origin and structure of the organs of sense, is no more difficult (in a general way) than is the mechanical explanation of any physical process; as, for example, earthquakes, the courses of the wind, or the currents of the ocean. We thus arrive at the extremely important conviction that _all natural bodies_ which are known to us are _equally {151} animated_, that the distinction which has been made between animate and inanimate bodies does _not_ exist. When a stone is thrown into the air, and falls to earth according to definite laws, or when in a solution of salt a crystal is formed, the phenomenon is neither more nor less a mechanical manifestation of life than the growth and flowering of plants, than the propagation of animals or the activity of their senses, than the perception or the formation of thought in man." Here crystallization, organic life, sensation, and formation of thought, are expressly put in one line of mechanism with the falling of a stone.
In the following section we will have occasion to discuss this view as a _view of the world_; but we believe that the presentation of this idea, and the exclusive vindication of it as a complete view of the world, needs just here, where we still stand on the ground of the philosophy of natural perception, some critical sifting.
In the realm of material nature, _mechanical_ explanation and general explanation is directly identical; _i.e._, a process of nature remains obscure so long and so far as its mechanism is not yet perceived, and in the same degree as its mechanism is perceived, the process also is explained. The uniformity of law in the occurrence of events according to the causal principle in the realm of material nature, can be approached by us in no other form than in that of mechanism, provided we understand by mechanism an activity according to law and which can be mathematically estimated as to size and number. So far, therefore, every scientific investigator in the knowledge of material nature takes his place on the standpoint of a mechanical view of the world. {152}
But here we have gone to the full extent to which we are justified in taking a mechanical view of the world, and have fixed its limits in its own proper realm--the realm of the scientific perception of the material world; even if we do not join with Wigand in resigning scientific inquiry in that direction, and express the expectation that these limits are not fixed and not to be designated in advance, but will be moved farther and farther, and that not only in regard to the knowledge of the quant.i.ty of phenomena (which even Wigand, as a scientific investigator, naturally admits), but also in regard to their quality. In our researches. .h.i.therto we have often met such limits. We have found that in the realm of the material world such important phenomena and processes as life are at present not yet fully explained. By the mechanical view of the world, we have been led back to the last elements and to the most elementary forces of matter, but have been convinced that we are no longer able to find them with scientific certainty, and that consequently not a single quality of material existence is really explained and traced back to its last material causes, to say nothing of the transcendental causes which are entirely inaccessible to our exact scientific knowledge.
Now there is another realm of existence, just as large as and, according to its value, still larger than, that of the material world, which, not on account of its scientific inaccessibility, but in conformity with its own peculiar nature, entirely withdraws itself from the mechanical view. It is the realm of _psychical life_; and, still more decidedly and more evidently, the _realm of mind_. As far as our observations go, the law of {153} causality reigns here also, and here also nothing takes place without a cause. But as here the _realm_ in which the causal law reigns is no longer material nature, so even the _form_ in which it is active is no longer that of mechanism. For we certainly cannot understand mechanical effect to be anything else than an effect of something material upon something material, whose uniformity of law can be exactly estimated mathematically as to size and number. Now if the application of mechanism to the psychical and spiritual realm does not express anything except the certainly quite insidious idea that here also causality reigns, it is nothing else but the subst.i.tution of another idea for the word mechanism--an idea which it never had in the entire use of language up to this time, and by the subst.i.tution of which the proof for a mechanism of the mind is not given, but surrept.i.tiously obtained in a manner similar to the before-mentioned attempt of Preyer, surrept.i.tiously to obtain the proof for the origin of life.
But if the mechanical explanation of the functions of the mind really means that they also consist in an effect of the material upon something material, and that this effect can be mathematically estimated as to size and number, it is an a.s.sertion which has first to be proven, but which cannot be proven and cannot be allowed even as an hypothesis, as a problem for investigation, because it contradicts our whole experience. And it contradicts not only the conclusions drawn from most natural appearances, which, as is well known, are deceitful and even tell us that the sun goes around the earth, but it contradicts the philosophical a.n.a.lysis just as much and even still more directly and decidedly than {154} the direct impression--as became clear to us at the lowest point of contact between the material and the psychical, viz., at sensation, when we showed the impossibility of scientifically explaining the origin of sensation.
It is easy to see what facts made it altogether possible to produce such a materialistic psychology and to give it at the first superficial view a certain appearance of truth; but it will not be difficult to detect its want of truth. According to our whole experience, the human mind is bound to the body; its proper activity, its whole communication with the material and immaterial world outside of it, even its whole mutual intercourse with the minds of fellow-beings, is performed by means of bodily functions which, as such, are subordinate to mechanism. Therefore "physiological psychology" certainly belongs to the most interesting of the branches of science which at present enjoy special care, and works in this realm, like those of Wundt, are worthy of the greatest attention. Now if these points of contact once exist between the material and the psychical and spiritual processes, so that material functions causally influence psychical and spiritual ones, and psychical and spiritual functions similarly influence material ones, there must also exist between the laws of material processes and those of psychical and spiritual functions a relation which makes possible such a mutual effect, and we must be able to abstract from it the existence of a common higher law of which on the one side the material laws, and on the other the psychical and spiritual, are but partial laws.
Precisely here lie the indications which appear to favor materialism in psychology. But it is only an appearance. For, from the acknowledgment {155} and scientific investigation of a reciprocal action, to an identification of the two factors which act upon one another, is still an infinite step. If science is not even able to identify material motion and sensation, still less can it identify material motion and the spiritual and ethic activities. When this is done, it is done only in consequence of the same confounding of condition and cause which we had to expose on the occasion of the a.s.sertion of the possibility of explaining the origin of life or of sensation, and of consciousness or of self-consciousness. But we here also willingly admit that the realm in which causality reigns in the form of mechanism, aims at being the support, foundation, and instrument of another realm where causality still reigns, but mechanism ceases. How far investigation may still proceed in the direction of those interesting points and lines where both realms touch one another in causal reciprocal action, we do not know. We are hardly able to indicate the direction in which the investigation must proceed, and this direction seems to be a.s.signed to it by the idea of _Auslosung_.[8] The idea of _Auslosung_, which plays such an {156} important _role_ in physics, seems to be still fruitful for the knowledge of psycho-physical life: bodily functions _losen aus_ spiritual ones, spiritual functions bodily ones. But so much the more clearly does this theory show the limits of mechanism: mechanism reigns in the world of bodies from the _Auslosungen_ and to the _Auslosungen_, with which the mind induces the body to activity, and the body the mind; beyond these limits causality still reigns, but no longer mechanism.
Now if thus the mechanical view of the world has within its own most proper realm--the realm of material phenomena--its limits, even if they are capable of being moved farther; and if it is without any scientific acceptance in the realm of soul and mind: its usurpations reach the highest possible degree when it pretends to {157} explain the last causes of things. For from its very nature it follows that it is only able to explain the reciprocal action of material things among themselves, when these things in their finalities, or the causes of their qualities and conditions, are already present, and the laws which they follow are already active. As to the origin of those qualities or their causes, and of these laws, this view leaves us entirely in the dark.
* * * * * {158}
CHAPTER II.
METAPHYSICAL CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE DARWINIAN THEORIES.
-- 1. _Elimination of the Idea of Design in the World.--Monism._
From this mechanical view of the world, quite a peculiar conclusion has been recently drawn--not by Darwin, who does not give any opinion at all about the mechanical view of the world, as such, or about its extension and influence, nor, indeed, by Darwinians, not even by all followers of a mechanical view of the world, but only by a part of them; namely, by those who have in a high degree attracted to themselves the attention of reading people. This conclusion is nothing less than the _elimination of the idea of design in nature_. This phenomenon demands our attention. Heretofore, the proof of plan, design, and end in nature, at large and in detail, was looked upon as the most beautiful blossom and fruit of a thoughtful contemplation of nature; it was the great and beautiful common property, in the enjoyment of which the direct, the scientific, and the religious contemplation of nature peacefully partic.i.p.ated. Now this view is to be given up forever, in consequence of nothing else than Darwin"s selection theory. With an energy--we may say with a pa.s.sionateness and confidence of victory--such as we were accustomed to see only in the most advanced advocates of materialism, Ludwig {159} Buchner, D. F. Strauss, Hackel, Oskar Schmidt, Helmholtz, the editor of the "Ausland" and some of his a.s.sociates, and our often-mentioned "Anonymus,"--in a common attack, a.s.sail every idea of a _conformity to an end_ in nature, every idea of a goal toward which the development at large and individually strives; in a word, the whole category of _teleology_.[9]
In order to be just in our judgment, we shall have to let the advocates of this view speak for themselves;--the advocates of _Dysteleology_, as Hackel, who is so extremely productive in forming new exotic words, calls it; or of _Aposkopiology_, as Ebrard, in his "Apologetik" ("Apologetics"), correcting the etymology, {160} somewhat pedantically calls it; or of _Teleophoby_, as it is called by K. E. von Baer, in humorous irony.
The anonymous author of the book called "The Unconscious from the Standpoint of Physiology and Descent Theory", a.s.serts that, while the descent theory but puts the teleological principle in question by withdrawing the ground for a positive proof--an a.s.sertion which we certainly have to reject most decidedly (compare Part II, Book II, Chap. I, -- 2--- 6)--the selection theory directly rejects it. Natural selection, he says, solves the seemingly unsolvable problem of explaining the conformity to the end in view, as result, without taking it as an aiding principle.
And Helmholtz says: "Darwin"s theory shows how conformity to the end in the formation of organisms can also originate without any intermingling of an intelligence by the blind administration of a law of nature."
Hackel really revels in these ideas. He says (Nat. Hist. of Creat., Vol. I, p. 19): "These optimistic views [of the much-talked-of purposiveness of nature or of the much-talked-of beneficence of the Creator] have, unfortunately, as little real foundation as the favorite phrase, "the moral order of the universe," which is ill.u.s.trated in an ironical way by the history of all nations.... If we contemplate the common life and the mutual relations between plants and animals (man included), we shall find everywhere, and at all times, the very opposite of that kindly and peaceful social life which the goodness of the Creator ought to have prepared for his creatures--we shall rather find everywhere a pitiless, most embittered _Struggle of All against All_. Nowhere in nature, no matter where we turn our eyes, does that {161} idyllic peace, celebrated by the poets, exist; we find everywhere a struggle and a striving to annihilate neighbors and compet.i.tors. Pa.s.sion and selfishness--conscious or unconscious--is everywhere the motive force of life.... Man in this respect certainly forms no exception to the rest of the animal world." And on page 33: "In the usual dualistic or teleological (vital) conception of the universe, organic nature is regarded as the purposely executed production of a Creator working according to a definite plan. Its adherents see in every individual species of animal and plant an "embodied creative thought," the material expression of a _definite first cause_ (causa finalis), acting for a set purpose. They must necessarily a.s.sume supernatural (not mechanical) processes of the origin of organisms.... On the other hand, the theory of development carried out by Darwin, must, if carried out logically, lead to the monistic or mechanical (causal) conception of the universe. In opposition to the dualistic or teleological conception of nature, our theory considers organic as well as inorganic bodies to be the necessary products of natural forces. It does not see in every individual species of animal and plant the embodied thought of a personal Creator, but the expression for the time being of a mechanical process of development of matter, the expression of a necessarily active cause, that is, of a mechanical cause (causa efficiens). Where teleological Dualism seeks the arbitrary thoughts of a capricious Creator in miracles of creation, causal Monism finds in the process of development the necessary effects of eternal immutable laws of nature." Hackel"s "Anthropogeny" also is replete with attacks upon a teleological {162} view of nature, which leave nothing wanting in distinctness and coa.r.s.eness. On page 111, Vol. I, we read: "The rudimentary organs clearly prove that the mechanical, or monistic conception of the nature of organisms is alone correct, and that the prevailing teleological, or dualistic method of accounting for them is entirely false. The very ancient fable of the all-wise plan according to which "the Creator"s hand has ordained all things with wisdom and understanding," the empty phrase about the purposive "plan of structure" of organisms is in this way completely disproved. Stronger arguments can hardly be furnished against the customary teleology, or Doctrine of Design, than the fact that all more highly developed organisms possess such rudimentary organs." (Compare also Vol. II, p. 439: "The rudimentary organs are among the most overwhelming proofs against the prevailing teleological ideas of creation.") According to his opinion (Vol. I. p. 245), comparative anatomy may no longer look for a "pre-arranged plan of construction by the Creator." Besides, he calls it an anthropocentric error to look upon man as a preconceived aim of creation and a true final purpose of terrestrial life; and on page 17, of Vol. II, he supports this judgment by comparing the relative shortness of the existence of mankind with the length of the preceding geological periods: "Since the awakening of the human consciousness, human vanity and human arrogance have delighted in regarding Man as the real main-purpose and end of all earthly life, and as the centre of terrestrial Nature, for whose use and service all the activities of the rest of creation were from the first defined or predestined by a "wise providence." How utterly baseless these {163} presumptuous anthropocentric conceptions are, nothing could evince more strikingly than a comparison of the duration of the Anthropozoic or Quaternary Epoch with that of the preceding Epochs." And on page 234, Vol. II: "Hence it is that, in accordance with the received teleological view, it has been customary to admire the so-called "wisdom of the Creator" and the "purposive contrivances of His Creation" especially in this matter. But on more mature consideration it will be observed that the Creator, according to this conception, does after all but play the part of an ingenious mechanic or of a skillful watchmaker; just, indeed, as all these cherished teleological conceptions of the Creator and His Creation are based on childish anthropomorphism.... But it is exactly on this point that the history of evolution proves most clearly that this received conception is radically false. The history of evolution convinces us that the highly purposive and admirably const.i.tuted sense organs, like all other organs, have developed _without premeditated aim_."
Strauss, in his "The Old Faith and the New," gives to this idea its philosophic and universalistic finish. In -- 67--- 70, he eliminates not only the idea of design in individual cases, but also the idea of a design in the world as a whole; allows us to speak of design in the world only in a subjective sense, so far as we understand it to be what we think we perceive as the common final aim of the concert of the powers, active in the world; and finds, when in such a sense it is spoken of as design in the world, that the universe reaches its end in every instance. Only the parts develop themselves, driven by the mechanical laws of causality, and after having lived {164} their period of life, sink back again into the universe, in order to make place for new developments and to prepare them in their turn.
For the view of the world which the antagonists of teleology construct out of this "mechanical" and "causal" view, they, as we have repeatedly seen, have invented the name "_monism_." In contrast to all dualism in reasoning about the relation of body and soul, G.o.d and universe, time and eternity, and especially in contrast to the dualism with which the theistic view of the world is said to be loaded, monism claims that what was formerly divided into G.o.d and universe, force and matter, matter and spirit, body and soul, is but one; and it thus exhibits a reconciliation, a higher unity, of materialism and idealism, of pantheism and atheism, which unity in the scientific and the practical ethic realm has no antagonist to fight more energetically, and none which it is better able to fight successfully, than _dualism_, which the monistic view of the world, by a queer mistake as to the theistic position of G.o.d in nature, especially considers the whole theistic view of the world.
The scientific antagonists of teleology show such a scientific intolerance against their own a.s.sociates, that one of the latest exhibitors of Darwinism, Oskar Schmidt, in his "Theory of Descent and Darwinism," bluntly cla.s.ses one of the greatest and most deserving investigators in the realm of comparative anatomy and palaeontology, Richard Owen, of London, with the ""Halves" who, fearing the conclusions, with one word come to terms with the scientific conscience." And why?--because Owen still sees ends in nature, and by his inclination to the acceptance of a descent, does not allow himself to {165} be prevented from giving adhesion to a teleological view of the world. And this invention of monism is proclaimed to the world in such a full consciousness of its great importance in the history of culture, that Hackel closes his "Nat. Hist. of Creat." with the following words: "Future centuries will celebrate our age, which was occupied with laying the foundations of the Doctrine of Descent, as the new era in which began a period of human development, rich in blessings,--a period which was characterized by the victory of free inquiry over the despotism of authority, and by the powerful enn.o.bling influence of the Monistic Philosophy." At the end of the lecture, next to the last, in the same Vol.
II, page 332, he pays the following compliment to the antagonists of monism: "The recognition of the theory of development and the Monistic Philosophy based upon it, forms the best criterion for the degree of man"s mental development." In his "Generic Morphology," and in the first edition of his "Nat. Hist. of Creat.," he, in a geological scala, which closes with the human period, even divides the whole past, present, and future history of mankind into two halves: first part, dualistic period of culture; second part, monistic period of culture. Still, we will not omit to mention, with credit, that this antic.i.p.atory historiography has discreetly disappeared from the geological scala of the following editions of his "Natural History of Creation."
As to the further scientific consequences to which this anti-teleological monism leads, the advocates of it are in tolerable accord; although they are subject to the most incomprehensible illusions regarding the practical consequences of it, as we have seen in the above-quoted {166} concluding words of Hackel"s "Natural History of Creation." As to the scientific consequences, they express themselves plainly enough: the belief in a living Creator and Lord of the world no longer find any place; everything, even all the rich treasures of human life and history, become a result of blindly acting forces; the history of the world, ethics, and all spiritual sciences, are in the progress of perception dissolved into physiology, and physiology into chemistry, physics and mechanism. In his "Natural History of Creation," Vol. I, page 170, Hackel frankly calls the whole history of the world a physico-chemical process.
Whoever refers to a view of another person, is in duty bound to enter into that view, if possible objectively, even if he does not agree with it. The author of this book tries to comply with this obligation in all his representations, but must confess that in regard to the just described view of the world, he does not succeed in making it conceivable to himself in a manner to be justified even from a relatively scientific standpoint; a want for which, it is true, we have beforehand the explanatory cause in the quotation from Hackel"s "Natural History of Creation," Vol. II, p. 332, given above.
Perhaps it appears relatively conceivable, when it is a.s.serted that the observation of an order, a connection, a development, a plan, in the world, leads to the perception of such a quality of the laws, primitive elements, and forces of the world, that something like it _had to_ result from them; but that it does not lead to the acknowledgment of a personal author of the world. We call such a view relatively conceivable, not because we agree with it--for we find a logic which, in {167} contemplating the universe, starts from an intelligent author of the world, infinitely less surrounded by difficulties than one contrary to it--but because the acknowledgment or denial of a living G.o.d is in the last instance not the result of any scientific investigation or logical chain of reasoning, but the moral act of the morally and religiously inclined individual, and because, if the individual has once refused the strongest factor of faith in G.o.d,--namely, his self-testimony in the conscience,--it is no longer impossible for the individual to ignore his other testimonies as such, or to declare them deficient. Now we certainly can say that we see order and many results in the world, which are conformable to the object in view, and in consequence of this observation must admit that no imaginable quality of primitive beginnings, elements, and forces of the world had caused this result, but that this result must have already been in the plan. But there certainly are imaginable, _in abstracto_, infinitely many possibilities of other elements and primitive beginnings of the world,--perhaps of some whose result would have been but an eternal chaos, or of others whose result would have been but an eternal rigidness, or of still others whose result would also have been a certain order and variety of phenomena and processes, but less beautiful than that of the really existing world. Thus, then, this world now exists as a _special chance_ of infinitely many chances; and who knows whether, in the course of thousands of millions of terrestrial years in the struggle for existence, it did not obtain its existence among infinitely many possibilities of worlds through a natural world-selection, and thus, by the result of its existence, fully legitimate its conformity to {168} the end in view? With this deduction, we do not make, as it may seem, an awkward attempt at rendering the whole standpoint ridiculous by a wild phantasy; but we quote it from a celebrated and otherwise very meritorious book, namely the "Geschichte des Materialismus"
("History of Materialism"), by the too early deceased Friedrich Albert Lange. The reader will find it, in the second part, page 275, simply a little shorter and, as it seems to us, less clear, but as the only "correct teleology" which Lange professes. This whole view, like all world-theories and cosmogonies of pantheism, naturalism, or atheism, and even like the latest of Eduard von Hartmann, is to us but a proof that the rejection of the reality of a living Creator and Lord of the world requires of its advocates mysteries and mysticisms of atheism compared to which the greatest difficulties of the Christian view of the world are but the merest trifles.