1 (return)
[ Scientific Articles of Faith. In Professor Schlesinger's address (delivered on 9th October at Altenburg) on this subject he rightly called attention to the limits of knowledge of nature (in Kant's sense of the terms) imposed upon us by the imperfection of our perceptive organs. The gaps which the empirical investigation of nature must thus leave in science, can, however, be filled up by hypotheses, by conjectures of more or less probability. These we cannot indeed for the time establish on a secure basis; and yet we may make use of them in the way of explaining phenomena, in so far as they are not inconsistent with a rational knowledge of nature. Such rational hypotheses are scientific articles of faith, and therefore very different from ecclesiastical articles of faith or religious dogmas, which are either pure fictions (resting on no empirical evidence), or simply irrational (contradicting the law of causality). As instances of rational hypotheses of first-rate importance may be mentioned our belief in the oneness of matter (the building up of the elements from primary atoms), our belief in equivocal generation, our belief in the essential unity of all natural phenomena, as maintained by monism (on which compare my General Morphology, vol. i. pp. 105, 164, etc., also my Natural History of Creation, 8th ed., 1889, pp. 21, 360, 795). As the simpler occurrences of inorganic nature and the more complicated phenomena of organic life are alike reducible to the same natural forces, and as, further, these in their turn have their common foundation in a simple primal principle pervading infinite space, we can regard this last (the cosmic ether) as all-comprehending divinity, and upon this found the thesis: "Belief in God is reconcilable with science." In this pantheistic view, and also in his criticism of a one-sided materialism, I entirely agree with Professor Schlesinger, though unable to concur with him in some of his biological, and especially of his anthropological, conclusions (cf. his article on "Facts and Deductions derived from the Action of Universal Space" Mittheilungen aus dem Osterlande, Bd. v., Altenburg, 1892).]

2 (return)
[ Unity of Nature. I consider the fundamental unity of inorganic and organic nature, as well as their genetic relation, to be an essential axiom of monism. I particularly emphasise this "article of faith" here, as there are still scientists of repute who contest it. Not only is the old mystical "vital power" brought back upon the stage again from time to time, but even the "miraculous" origin of organic life out of "dead" inorganic nature is often brought up still against the doctrines of evolution, as an insoluble riddle—as one of Du Bois-Reymond's "seven riddles of the world" (see his Discourse on Leibnitz, 1880). The solution of this "transcendent" riddle of the world, and of the allied question of archigony (equivocal generation, in a strictly defined meaning of the term), can only be reached by a critical analysis and unprejudiced comparison of matter, form, and energy in inorganic and organic nature. This I have already done (1866) in the second book of my General Morphology (vol. i. pp. 109-238): "General Researches as to the Nature and First Beginning of Organisms, their Relation to things Inorganic, and their Division into Plants and Animals."]

A short rÉsumÉ of this is contained in Lecture XV. of my Natural History of Creation (8th ed., pp. 340-370). The most serious difficulties which formerly beset the monistic view there given may now be held to have been taken out of the way by recent discoveries concerning the nature of protoplasm, the discovery of the Monera, the more accurate study of the closely-related single-celled Protista, their comparison with the ancestral cell (or fertilised egg-cell), and also by the chemical carbon-theory. (See my "Studies on Monera and other Protista," in the Jenaische Zeitschrift fÜr Naturwissenschaft, vols. iv. and v., 1868-1870; also Carl Naegeli, Mechanisch-physiologische BegrÜndung der Abstammungslehre, 1884.)]

3 (return)
[ Religion in the Lower Animals. We cannot fail to recognise in the more highly developed of our domestic animals (especially in dogs, horses, and elephants) some first beginnings of those higher brain-functions which we designate as reason and consciousness, religion and morality; they differ only in degree, not in kind, from the corresponding mental activities of the lowest human races. If, like the dogs, the apes, and especially the anthropoids, had been for thousands of years domesticated and brought up in close relation with civilised man, the similarity of their mental activities to those of man would undoubtedly have been much more striking than it is. The apparently deep gulf which separates man from these most highly-developed mammals "is mainly founded on the fact that in man several conspicuous attributes are united, which in the other animals occur only separately, viz. (1) The higher degree of differentiation of the larynx (speech), (2) brain (mind), and (3) extremities; and (4) the upright posture. It is merely the happy combination of these important animal organs and functions at a higher stage of evolution that raises the majority of mankind so far above all lower animals" (General Morphology, 1866, vol. ii. p. 430).]

4 (return)
[ Inheritance of Acquired Characters. As the controversy on this important question is still unsettled, special attention may here be called to the valuable data for arriving at a decision which are afforded precisely by the development of instincts among the higher animals, and of speech and reason in man. "The inheritance of characters acquired during the life of the individual, is an indispensable axiom of the monistic doctrine of evolution." "Those who, with Weismann and Galton, deny this, entirely exclude thereby the possibility of any formative influence of the outer world upon organic form" (Anthropogenie, 4th ed., pp. xxiii., 836; see, further, the works there referred to of Eimer, Weismann, Ray-Lankester, etc.; also Ludwig Wilser's Die Vererbung der geistigen Eigenschaften, Heidelberg, 1892).]

5 (return)
[ Theosophical System of Nature. Of all the modern attempts of dualistic philosophy to establish the knowledge of nature on a theological basis (that of Christian monotheism), the Essay on Classification of Louis Agassiz is by far the most important,—in strictness, indeed, is the only one worthy of mention. (On this see my Natural History of Creation, Lect. III., also "Aims and Methods of the Modern Embryology," 1875, Jena Zeitschr. fÜr Naturw., Bd. x., Supplement.)]

6 (return)
[ Darwin and Copernicus. This is the title of an address delivered by Du Bois-Reymond on 25th January 1883, in the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and afterwards published in his Collected Addresses (vol. ii. 1887). As the author himself mentions in a note (p. 500) that this gave rise, "most unmeritedly," to great excitement, and called down upon him the violent attacks of the clerical press, I may be allowed to point out here that it contained nothing new, I myself, fifteen years previously, in my lectures on "The Origin and Genealogy of the Human Race," having carried out in detail the comparison between Darwin and Copernicus, and the service rendered by these two heroes in putting an end to the anthropocentric and geocentric views of the world. (See the Third Series in Virchow and Holtzendorff's Collection of Popular Scientific Lectures, Nos. 53 and 54, 1868, 4th ed., 1881.) When Du Bois-Reymond says, "For me, Darwin is the Copernicus of the organic world," I am the more pleased to find that he agrees (partly in identical words) with my way of thinking, as he himself, quite unnecessarily, takes up an attitude of opposition towards me. The same is the case with regard to the explanation of innate ideas by Darwinism, which he has attempted in his address (1870) on "Leibnitzian Ideas in Modern Science" (vol. i. of the Collected Addresses). Here also he is most agreeably at one with me in what, four years before, I had elaborated in my General Morphology (vol. ii. p. 446), and in my Natural History of Creation (1868). "The laws of heredity and adaptation explain to us how it is that À priori ideas have been developed out of what was originally À posteriori knowledge," etc. I cannot fail to be highly flattered in being able in these last days to greet the renowned orator of the Berlin Academy as a friend and patron of the Natural History of Creation, which he had previously designated a bad romance. But his winged words are not on that account to be forgotten, that "the genealogical trees of phylogeny are about as much worth as, in the eyes of the historical critic, are those of the Homeric heroes" (Darwin versus Galiani, 1876).]

7 (return)
[ The Law of the Conservation of Substance. Strictly taken, this belongs also to "scientific articles of faith," and could stand as the first article of our "monistic religion." Physicists of the present day, it is true, generally (and correctly) regard their "law of the conservation of energy" as the immovable foundation of all their science (Robert Mayer, Helmholtz), just as in like manner chemists so regard their fundamental law of the "conservation of matter" (Lavoisier). Sceptical philosophers could, however, raise certain objections to either of these fundamental laws with as much success as against their combination into the single superior law of the "conservation of substance." As a matter of fact, dualistic philosophy still attempts to raise such objections, often under the guise of cautious criticism. The sceptical (in part also purely dogmatic) objections have a semblance of justification only in so far as they relate to the fundamental problem of substance, the primary question as to the connection between matter and energy. While freely recognising the presence of this real "boundary of natural knowledge," we can yet, within this boundary, apply quite universally the "mechanical law of causality." The complicated "phenomena of mind," as they are called (more especially consciousness), fall under the "law of the conservation of substance" just as strictly as do the simpler mechanical processes of nature dealt with in inorganic physics and chemistry. Compare note 16.]

8 (return)
[ Kant and Monism. As recent German philosophy has in a large measure returned to Kant, and in some cases even deified as "infallible" the great KÖnigsberg philosopher, it may be well here to point out once more that his system of critical philosophy is a mixture of monistic and dualistic ingredients. His critical principles of the theory of knowledge will always remain of fundamental importance: his proof that we are unable to know the essential and profoundest essence of substance, the "thing in itself" (or "the combination of matter and energy"); that our knowledge remains subjective in its nature; that it is conditioned by the organisation of our brain and sensory organs, and can therefore only deal with the phenomena which our experience of the outer world affords us. But within these "limits of human knowledge" a positive monistic knowledge of nature is still possible, in contrast to all dualistic and metaphysical fantasies. One such great fact of monistic knowledge was the mechanical cosmogony of Kant and Laplace, the "Essay on the Constitution and Mechanical Origin of the Universe, according to the Principles of Newton" (1755). In the whole field of our knowledge of inorganic nature, Kant held firmly to the monistic point of view, allowing mechanism alone as the real explanation of the phenomena. In the science of organic nature also, on the other hand, he held monism to be valid indeed, yet insufficient; here he considered it necessary to call in the aid of final as well as of efficient causes. (Cf. the fifth lecture of my Natural History of Creation on "The Evolution-Theory of Kant and Lamarck"; also Albrecht Rau's Kant und die Naturforschung: Eine PrÜfung der Resultate des idealistischen Kritikismus durch den realistischen Kosmos, vol. ii., 1886.) Once thus on the downgrade of dualistic teleology, Kant afterwards arrived at his untenable metaphysical views of "God, Freedom, and Immortality." It is probable that Kant would have escaped these errors if he had had a thorough anatomical and physiological training. The natural sciences were, indeed, at that time truly in their infancy. I am firmly convinced that Kant's system of critical philosophy would have turned out quite otherwise from what it was, and purely monistic, if he had had at his disposal the then unsuspected treasures of empirical natural knowledge which we now possess.]

9 (return)
[ The Ether. In a thoughtful lecture on the relations between light and electricity at the sixty-second Congress of German naturalists and physicians in Heidelberg in 1889, Heinrich Hertz explains the scope of his brilliant discovery: "Thus the domain of electricity extends over the whole of nature. It comes nearer to ourselves; we learn that we actually possess an electric organ, the eye. Here we are brought face to face with the question as to unmediated actio in distans. Is there such a thing? Not far off from this, in another direction, lies the question of the nature of electricity. And immediately connected therewith arises the momentous and primary question as to the nature of the ether, of the properties of the medium that fills all space, its structure, its rest or motion, its infinitude or finitude. It becomes every day more manifest that this question rises above all others, that a knowledge of what the ether is would reveal to us not only the nature of the old 'imponderables,' but also of the old 'matter' itself and its most essential properties, weight and inertia. Modern physics is not far from the question whether everything that exists is not created from the ether." This question is already being answered in the affirmative by some monistic physicists, as, for example, by J. G. Vogt in his most suggestive work on The Nature of Electricity and Magnetism, on The Basis of the Conception of a Single Substance (Leipsic, 1891). He regards the atoms of mass (the primal atoms of the kinetic theory of matter) as individualised centres of concentration of the continuous substance that uninterruptedly fills all space; the mobile elastic part of this substance between the atoms, and universally distributed, is—the ether. Georg Helm in Dresden, on the basis of mathematico-physical experiments, had already at an earlier date arrived at the same conclusions; in his treatise on "Influences at a Distance mediated by the Ether" (Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 1881, Bd. xiv.), he shows that it requires only the postulate of one particular kind of matter, the ether, to explain influence at a distance and radiation; that is, as regards these phenomena, all the qualities ascribable to matter, except that of motion, are of no account; in other words, that in thinking of the ether we simply require to think of it as "the mobile."]

10 (return)
[ Atoms and Elements. The evidences, numerous and important, for the composite nature of our empirical elements, have lately been compendiously discussed by Gustav Wendt in his treatise, Die Entwicklung der Elemente: Entwurf zu einer biologischen Grundlage fur Chemie und Physik[I] (Berlin, 1891); compare also Wilhelm Freyer's Die organischen Elemente und ihre Stellung im System[II] (Wiesbaden, 1891), Victor Meyer's Chemische Probleme der Gegenwart[III] (Heidelberg, 1890), and W. Crookes's Genesis of the Elements. For the different views as to the nature of the atom, see Philip Spiller on "The Doctrines of Atoms" in Die Urkraft des Weltalls nach ihrem Wesen und Wirken auf allen Naturgebieten[IV] (Berlin, 1886), (1. The philosophy of nature; 2. The doctrine of the ether; 3. The ethical side of the science of nature). For the constitution of the elements out of atoms, see A. Turner, Die Kraft und Masse im Raume[V] (Leipsic, 3rd ed., 1886), (1. On the nature of matter and its relationships; 2. Atomic combinations; 3. The nature of the molecules and their combinations. Theory of crystallisation).

Note I "The Development of the Elements: an Essay towards a Biological Basis for Chemistry and Physics."

Note II "The Organic Elements and their Place in the System."

Note III "Chemical Problems of the Day."

Note IV "The Primary Force of the Universe, its Nature and Action."

Note V "Force and Matter in Space."]

11 (return)
[ World-Substance. The relation of the two fundamental constituents of the cosmos, ether and mass, may perhaps be made apparent, in accordance with one out of many hypotheses, by the following, partly provisional, scheme.]

12 (return)
[ General doctrine of Evolution. The fundamental importance of the modern doctrine of evolution, and of the monistic philosophy based upon it, is clearly evidenced by the steady increase of its copious literature. I have cited the most important treatises on this subject in the new (eighth) edition of my Natural History of Creation (1889). Compare, specially, Carus Sterne (Ernst Krause), Werden und Vergehen: Eine Entwicklungsgeschichte des Naturganzen in gemeinverstÄndlicher Fassung[VI] (3rd ed., Berlin, 1886); Hugo Spitzer, BeitrÄge zur Descendenztheorie und zur Methodologie der Naturwissenschaft (Graz, 1886);[VII] Albrecht Ran, Ludwig Feuerbach's Philosophie der Naturforschung und die philosophische Kritik der Gegenwart (Leipsic, 1882);[VIII] Hermann Wolff, Kosmos: Die Weltentwicklung nach monitisch-psychologischen Principien auf Grundlage der exacten Naturforschung (Leipsic, 1890).[IX]

Note VI "Growth and Decay: a Popular History of the Development of the Cosmos."

Note VII "Contributions towards a Theory of Descent, and towards a Methodology of the Sciences of Nature."

Note VIII "Ludwig Feuerbach's Philosophy of Science, and the Philosophical Criticism of the Present Time."

Note IX "Cosmos: The Development of the Cosmos according to Monistic Principles on the Basis of Exact Science."]

13 (return)
[ History of Descent. The idea and the task of phylogeny, or the history of descent, I first defined in 1866, in the sixth book of my General Morphology (vol. ii. pp. 301-422), and the substance of this, as well as an account of its relation to ontogeny or history of development, is set forth in a popular form in Part II. of my Natural History of Creation (8th ed., Berlin, 1889). A special application of both these divisions of the history of evolution to man, is attempted in my Anthropogenie (4th ed.), revised and enlarged, 1891: Part I. History of development. Part II. History of descent.]

14 (return)
[ Opponents of the Doctrine of Descent. Since the death of Louis Agassiz (1873), Rudolf Virchow is regarded as the sole noteworthy opponent of Darwinism and the theory of descent; he never misses an opportunity (as recently in Moscow) of opposing it as "unproved hypothesis." See as to this my pamphlet, Freedom in Science and in Teaching, a reply to Virchow's address at Munich on "Freedom of Science in the Modern State" (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr., 1892).]

15 (return)
[ Cellular Psychology. See on this my paper on "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," in the Deutsche Rundschau (July 1878), reprinted in Part 1, of Collected Popular Lectures; also "The Cell-soul and Cellular Psychology" in my discourse on Freedom in Science and Teaching (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr., 1892, p. 46); Natural History of Creation (8th ed., pp. 444, 777); and Descent of Man (4th ed., pp. 128, 147). See also, Max Verworn, Psycho-physiologische Protisten-Studien (Jena, 1889), and Paul Carus, The Soul of Man: An Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psychology (Chicago, 1891). Among recent attempts to reform psychology on the basis of evolutionary doctrine in a monistic sense, special mention must be made of Georg Heinrich Schneider's Der thierische Wille: Systematische Darstellung und ErklÄrung der thierischen Triebe und deren Entstehung, Entwickelung und Verbreitung im Thierreiche als Grundlage zu einer vergleichenden Willenslehre[X] (Leipsic, 1880). Compare also his supplementary work, entitled Der menschliche Wille vom Standpunkte der neuen Entwickelungstheorie[XI] (1882); also the Psychology of Herbert Spencer and the new edition of Wilhelm Wundt's Menschen-und Thierseele[XII] (Leipsic, 1892).

Note X "Will in the Lower Animals: a Systematic Exposition and Explanation of Animal Instincts, and their Origin, Development, and Difference in the Animal Kingdom, as Basis of a Comparative Doctrine of Volition."

Note XI "The Human Will from the Standpoint of the Modern Theory of Evolution."

Note XII "Soul in Man and Brute."

16 (return)
[ Consciousness. The antiquated view of Du Bois-Reymond (1872)—that human consciousness is an unsoluble "world-riddle," a transcendent phenomenon in essential antithesis to all other natural phenomena—continues to be upheld in numerous writings. It is chiefly on this that the dualistic view of the world founds its assertion, that man is an altogether peculiar being, and that his personal soul is immortal; and this is the reason why the "Leipsic ignorabimus-speech" of Du Bois-Reymond has for twenty years been prized as a defence by all representatives of the mythological view of the world, and extolled as a refutation of "monistic dogma." The closing word of the discourse, "ignorabimus," was translated as a present, and this "ignoramus" taken to mean that "we know nothing at all"; or, even worse, that "we can never come to clearness about anything, and any further talk about the matter is idle." The famous "ignorabimus" address remains certainly an important rhetorical work of art; it is a "beautiful sermon," characterised by its highly-finished form and its surprising variety of philosophico-scientific pictures. It is well known, however, that the majority (and especially women) judge a "beautiful sermon" not according to the value of the thoughts embodied in it, but according to its excellence as an aesthetical entertainment. While Du Bois treats his audience at great length to disquisitions on the wondrous performances of the genius of Laplace, he afterwards glides over, the most important part of his subject in eleven short lines, and makes not the slightest further attempt to solve the main question he has to deal with—as to whether the world is really "doubly incomprehensible." For my own part, on the contrary, I have already repeatedly sought to show that the two limits to our knowledge of nature are one and the same; the fact of consciousness and the relation of consciousness to the brain are to us not less, but neither are they more, puzzling, than the fact of seeing and hearing, than the fact of gravitation, than the connection between matter and energy. Compare my discourse on Freedom in Science and Teaching (1878), pp. 78, 82, etc.]

17 (return)
[ Immortality. Perhaps in no ecclesiastical article of faith is the gross materialistic conception of Christian dogma so evident as in the cherished doctrine of personal immortality, and that of "the resurrection of the body," associated with it. As to this, Savage, in his excellent work on Religion in the Light of the Darwinian Doctrine, has well remarked: "One of the standing accusations of the Church against science is that it is materialistic. On this I would like to point out, in passing, that the whole Church-conception concerning a future life has always been, and still is, the purest materialism. It is represented that the material body is to rise again, and inhabit a material heaven." Compare also Ludwig Buchner, Das zunkÜnftige Leben und die moderne Wissenschaft (Leipsic, 1889); Lester Ward, "Causes of Belief in Immortality" (The Forum, vol. VIII., September 1889); and Paul Carus, The Soul of Man: an Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psychology (Chicago, 1891). Carus aptly points out the analogy between the ancient and the modern ideas with respect to light, and with respect to the soul. Just as formerly the luminous flame was explained by means of a special fiery matter (phlogiston), so the thinking soul was explained by the hypothesis of a peculiar gaseous soul-substance. We now know that the light of the flame is a sum of electric vibrations of the ether, and the soul a sum of plasma-movements in the ganglion-cells. As compared with this scientific conception, the doctrine of immortality of scholastic psychology has about the same value as the materialistic conceptions of the Red Indian about a future life in Schiller's "Nadowessian Death-Song."]

18 (return)
[ Monistic Ethic. All Ethic, the theoretical as well as the practical doctrine of morals, as a "science of law" (Normwissenschaft), stands in immediate connection with the view that is taken of the world (Weltanschauung), and consequently with religion. This position I regard as exceedingly important, and have recently upheld in a paper on "Ethik und Weltanschauung," in opposition to the "Society for Ethical Culture" lately founded in Berlin, which would teach and promote ethics without reference to any view of the world or to religion. (Compare the new weekly journal, Die Zukunft, edited by Maximilian Harden, Berlin, 1892, Nos. V.-VII.). Just as I take the monistic to be the only rational basis for all science, I claim the same also for ethics. On this subject compare especially the ethical writings of Herbert Spencer and those of B. von Carneri—Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus (1871); Entwickelung und GlÜckseligkeit (1886); and more particularly, the latest of all, Der moderne Mensch (Bonn, 1891); further, Wilhelm Streeker, Welt und Menschheit (Leipsic, 1892); Harald HÖffding, Die Grundlage der humanen Ethik (Bonn, 1880); and the recent large work of Wilhelm Wundt, Ethik, eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen und Gesetze des sittlichen Lebens (Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 1892).]

19 (return)
[ Homotheism. Under the term homotheism (or anthropomorphism) we include all the various forms of religious belief which ascribe to a personal God purely human characteristics. However variously these anthropomorphic ideas may have shaped themselves in dualistic and pluralistic religions, all in common retain the unworthy conception that God (Theos) and man (homo) are organised similarly and according to the same type (homotype). In the region of poetry such personifications are both pleasing and legitimate. In the region of science they are quite inadmissible; they are doubly objectionable now that we know that only in late Tertiary times was man developed from pithecoid mammals. Every religious dogma which represents God as a "spirit" in human form, degrades Him to a "gaseous vertebrate" (General Morphology, 1866; Chap, xxx., God in Nature). The expression "homotheism" is ambiguous and etymologically objectionable, but more practical than the cumbersome word "Anthropotheism."]

20 (return)
[ Monistic Religion. Amongst the many attempts which have been made in the course of the last twenty years to reform religion in a monistic direction on the basis of advanced knowledge of nature, by far the most important is the epoch-making work of David Friedrich Strauss, entitled The Old Faith and the New: A Confession (11th ed., Bonn, 1881: Collected Writings, 1878). Compare M. J. Savage, Religion in the Light of the Darwinian Doctrine; John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science; Carl Friedrich Retzer, Die naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung und ihre Ideale, ein Ersatz fuer das religiÖse Dogma (Leipsic, 1890); E. Koch, Natur und Menschengeist im Lichte der Entwickelungslehre (Berlin, 1891). For the phylogeny of religion see the interesting work of U. Van Ende, Histoire Naturelle de la Croyance (Paris, 1887).]

21 (return)
[ Freedom in Teaching. The jubilee of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft des Osterlandes" was celebrated in Altenburg on October 9, 1892, contemporaneously with the commencement of the brilliant celebration of the golden wedding of the Grand Duke and Duchess in Weimar. As exceptional as the celebration are the characteristics which distinguish this august couple. The Grand Duke Carl Alexander has, during a prosperous reign of forty years, constantly shown himself an illustrious patron of science and art; as Rector Magnificentissimus of our ThÜringian university of Jena, he has always afforded his protection to its most sacred palladium—the right of the free investigation and teaching of truth. The Grand Duchess Sophie, the heiress and guardian of the Goethe archives, has in Weimar prepared a fitting home for that precious legacy of our most brilliant literary period, and has anew made accessible to the German nation the ideal treasures of thought of her greatest intellectual hero. The history of culture will never forget the service which the princely couple have thereby rendered to the human mind in its higher development, and at the same time to true religion.]