Rudolf Otto

6. With this fifth line of thought a sixth is associated and intertwined. The problem of development is closely bound up with that of “heredity.” A developing organism follows the parental type. The acorn in its growth follows the type of the parent oak, repeating all its morphological and physiological characters down to the most intimate detail. And the animal organism adds to this also the whole psychical equipment, the instincts, the capacities of will and consciousness which distinguish its parents. The problems of the fifth and sixth order are closely inter-related, the sixth problem being in reality the same as the fifth, only in greater complexity.

A step towards the mechanical solution of this problem was indicated in the “preformation theory” advanced by Leibnitz, and elaborated by Bonnet. According to this theory the developing organism is enclosed in the minutest possible form within the egg, and is thus included in the parental organism, in miniature indeed, but quite complete. Thus the problem of the “development of form” or of “heredity” [pg 212] was, so to speak, ruled out of court; all that was assumed was continuous growth and self-unfolding.

Opposed to this theory was one of later growth, the theory of epigenesis, which maintained that the organism developed without preformation from the still undifferentiated and homogeneous substance of the egg. The supporters of the first theory considered themselves much more scientific and exact than those of the second. And not without reason. For the theory of epigenesis obviously required mysterious formative principles, and equally mysterious powers of recollection and recapitulation, which impelled the undifferentiated ovum substance into the final form, precisely like that of its ancestors. Nor need the preformationists have greatly feared the reproach, that the parental organism must have been included within the grand-parental, and so on backwards to the first parents in Paradise. For this “Chinese box” encapsulement theory only requires that we should grant the idea of the infinitely little, and that idea is already an integral part of our thinking.

Modern biologists ridicule the preformation hypothesis as altogether too artificial. And undoubtedly it founders on the facts of embryology, which disclose nothing to suggest the unfolding of a pre-existent miniature model, but show us how the egg-cell divides into two, into four, and so on, with continued multiplication followed by varied arrangements and rearrangements of cells—in short, all the complex changes which [pg 213] constitute development. But a preformation in some sense or other there must be;—some peculiar material predisposition of the germ, which, as such, supplies the directing principle for the development, and the sufficient reason for the repetition of the parental form. This is of such obvious importance from the mechanical point of view that the speculations of to-day tend to move along the old preformationist lines. To these modern preformationists are opposed the modern upholders of epigenesis or gradual differentiation, who attempt to elaborate a mechanical theory of development. And with the contrast between these two schools there is necessarily associated the discussion as to the inheritance or non-inheritance of acquired characters.

Darwin's contribution to the problem of the sixth order was his rather vague theory of “Pangenesis.” The living organism, according to him, forms in its various organs, parts, and cells exceedingly minute particles of living matter (gemmules), which, “in some way or other,” bear within them the special characteristics of the part in which they are produced. These may wander through the organism and meet in the germ-plasm, and then, when a child-organism is produced, they “swarm,” so to speak, in it again “in some way or other,” and in some fashion control the development. This gemmule-theory was too obviously a quid pro quo to hold its ground for long. Various theories were elaborated, and the world of the invisibly minute was flooded with speculations.

[pg 214]

The most subtle of these, on the side of consistent Darwinism, is that of Weismann, a pronounced preformation theory which has been increasingly refined and elaborated in the course of years of reflection. According to Weismann, the individual parts and characteristics of the organism are represented in the germ-plasm, not in finished form, but as “determinants” in a definite system which is itself the directing principle in the building up of the bodily system, and with definite characteristics, which determine the peculiarities of the individual organs and parts, down to scales, hairs, skin-spots, and birth-marks. As the germ-cells have the power of growth, and can increase endlessly by dividing and re-dividing, and as each process of division takes place in such a way that each half (each product of division) maintains the previous system, there arise innumerable germ-cells corresponding to one another, from which, therefore, corresponding bodies must arise (inheritance). It is not in reality the newly developed bodies which give rise to new germ-cells and transfer to them something of their own characters; the germ-cells of the child-organism develop from that of the parent (“immortality” of the germ-cells). Therefore there can be no inheritance of acquired characters, and no modifications of type through external causes; and all variations which appear in a series of generations are due solely to internal variations in the germ-cells, whether brought about by the complication of their system through the fusion of the male and [pg 215] female germ-cells, or through differences in the growth of the individual determinants themselves. The numerous subsidiary theses interwoven in Weismann's theory are entirely coherent, and have been thought out to their conclusions with praiseworthy determination.67 To the theory as a whole, because of its fundamental conception of preformation, and to its subsidiary hypotheses, piece by piece, there has been energetic opposition on the part of the upholders of the modern mechanical theory of epigenesis. This opposition is most concretely and comprehensively expressed in Haacke's “Gestaltung und Vererbung.” The infinitely complex intricacy of Weismann's minute microcosm within the germ-cell, indeed within every id in it, is justly described as a mere duplication, a repetition in the infinitely little of the essential difficulties to be explained. The complicated processes of developing in the growing and inheriting organism cannot be explained, they say, in terms of processes of the equally complex and likewise developing germ-plasm. The complex, if it is to be explained at all, must be explained by the simple—in this case by the functions of a homogeneous uniform plasm.

At an earlier date Haeckel had made an attempt in this direction in his theory of the “perigenesis of the plastidules.” Peculiar states of oscillation and rhythm in the molecules of the germ-substance, handed on to it from the parent organism and transferable to all the [pg 216] assimilated matter of the offspring, represent, according to this theory, the principle which impels development to follow a particular course corresponding to the type of the parents. This was a physical way of interpreting the matter. Other investigators have given a chemical expression to their theoretical schemes for explaining heredity.

Haacke declares both these to be unsatisfactory, and replaces them by morphological formative principles. It is the structure of the otherwise homogeneous living matter that explains morphogenesis and inheritance. Minute “gemmÆ,” homogeneous fundamental particles of living substance, not to be compared to or confused with Darwin's “gemmules,” are aggregated in “Gemmaria,” whose configuration, stability, symmetrical or asymmetrical structure, and so on, are determined by the relative positions of the gemmÆ to each other, and these in their turn control the organism and give it a corresponding symmetrical or asymmetrical, a firmly or loosely aggregated structure. The completed organism then forms a system in organic equilibrium, which is constantly exposed to variations and influences due to external causes (St. Hilaire), and to use and disuse of organs (Lamarck). These influences affect the structure of the gemmaria, and as the germ-cells consist of gemmaria, like those of the rest of the organism, the possibility of the transmission of acquired new characters is self-evident. The importance of correlated growth and orthogenesis is explained on a similar [pg 217] basis, and the Darwinian conceptions of the independent variation of individual parts, of the exclusive dominance of utility, of the influence of the struggle for existence in regard to individual selection, and of the omnipotence of natural selection, are energetically denied.

Oscar Hertwig,68 de Vries, Driesch69 and others attempt to reconcile the preformationist and the epigenetic standpoints, and “to extract what is good and usable out of both.” Hertwig and Driesch, however, can only be mentioned with reservations in this connection.

We cannot better sum up the whole tendency of the construction of mechanical theories on these last lines than in the words of Schwann: “There is within the organism no fundamental force working according to a definite idea; it arises in obedience to the blind laws of necessity.”

So much for the different lines followed by the mechanical theories of to-day. An idea of their general tenor can be gained from a series of much quoted general treatises, of which we must mention at least the “classics.” In Wagner's “HandwÖrterbuch der Physiologie,” 1842, Vol. I., Lotze wrote a long introductory article to the whole work, on “Life and Vital [pg 218] Force.” It was the challenge of the newer views to the previously vitalistic standpoint, and at the same time it was based on Lotze's general principles and interspersed with philosophical criticism of the concepts of force, cause, effect, law, &c.70 A similar train of ideas to Lotze's is followed to-day by O. Hertwig, especially in his “Mechanismus und Biologie.”71 Lighter and more elegant was the polemic against vital force, and the outline of a mechanical theory which Du Bois-Reymond prefaced to his great work, “Untersuchungen Über die tierische ElectricitÄt” (1849). It did not go nearly so deep as Lotze's essay, but perhaps for that very reason its phrases and epigrams soon became common property. We may recall how he speaks of vital force as a “general servant for everybody,” of the iron atom which remains the same whether it be in the meteorite in cosmic space, in the wheel of the railway carriage, or in the blood of the thinker, and of analytic mechanics which may be applied even to the problem of personal freedom.

The most comprehensive and detailed elaboration of the mechanical theory of life is to be found in Herbert Spencer's “Principles of Biology.”72 Friedrich Albert Lange's “History of Materialism” is a brilliant plea for mechanical theories,73 which he afterwards surpassed and [pg 219] neutralised by his Kantian Criticism. Verworn, too, in his “Physiology”74 gives a clear example of the way in which the mechanical theory in its most consistent form is sublimed, apparently in the idealism of Kant and Fichte, but in reality in its opposite—the Berkeleyan psychology. A similar outcome is in various ways indicated in the modern trend of things.

[pg 220]

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In attempting to define our attitude to the mechanical theory of life, we have first of all to make sure that we have a right to take up a definite position at all. We should have less right, or perhaps none, if this theory of life were really of a purely “biological” nature, built up entirely from the expert knowledge and data which the biologist alone possesses. But the principles, assumptions, supplementary ideas and modes of expression along all the six lines we have discussed, the style and method according to which the hypothesis is constructed, the multitude of separate presuppositions with which it works, and indeed everything that helps to build up and knit the biological details into a scientific hypothesis, are the materials of rational synthesis in general, and as such are subject to general as well as to biological criticism. What is there, for instance, in Weismann's ingenious biophor-theory that can be called specifically biological, and not borrowed from other parts of the scientific system?

One advantage, indeed, the biologist always has in this matter, apart from his special knowledge; that is, [pg 221] the technical instinct, the power of scenting out, so to speak, and immediately feeling the importance of the facts pertaining to his own discipline. It is this that gives every specialist the advantage over the layman in dealing with the data of his own subject. This power of instinctively appraising facts, which develops in the course of all special work, can, for instance in hypotheses in the domain of history, transform small details, which to the layman seem trivial, into weighty arguments. Similarly it may be that the success of the mechanical interpretation in regard to isolated processes may make its validity for many other allied processes certain, even though there is no precise proof of this. But we cannot regard this as a final demonstration of the applicability of the mechanical theory, since the same technical instinct in other experts leads them to reject the whole hypothesis.

But here we are met with something surprising. May it not be that while we are impelled on general grounds to contend against the mechanical interpretation of vital phenomena, we are not so impelled on religious grounds? May it not be that the instinct of the religious consciousness is misleading when it impels us—as probably every one will be able to certify from his own experience—to rebel against this mechanisation of life, the mechanical solution of its mysteries? Lotze, the energetic antagonist of “vital force,” the founder of the mechanical theory of vital processes, was himself a theist, and was so far from recognising any contradiction [pg 222] between the mechanical point of view and the Christian belief in God, that he included the former without ceremony in his theistic philosophical speculations. His view has become that of many theologians, and is often expressed in a definition of the boundaries between theology and natural science. According to the idea which was formulated by Lotze, and developed by others along his lines, the matter is quite simple. The interest which religion has in the processes of nature is at once and exclusively to be found in teleology. Are there purposes, plans, and ideas which govern and give meaning to the whole? The interest of natural science is purely in recognising inviolable causality; every phenomenon must have its compelling and sufficient reason in the system of causes preceding it. All that is and happens is absolutely determined by its causes, and nothing, no causÆ finales for instance, can co-operate with these causes in determining the result. But, as Lotze says, and as we have repeatedly pointed out, causal explanation does not exclude a consideration from the point of view of purpose, and the mechanical interpretation does not do so either. For this is nothing more than the causal explanation itself, only carried to complete consistency and definiteness. Purposes and ideas are not efficient causes but results. Where, for instance, there is a controlled purposive occurrence, the “purpose” nowhere appears as a factor co-operating with the series of causes, for these follow according to strict law, and the “purpose” reveals itself at the close [pg 223] of the series, as the result of a closed causal nexus, complete in itself, always provided that the initial links in the chain have been accurately estimated. The same is true of the processes of life. They are the ultimate result, strictly necessary and sufficiently accounted for in terms of mechanical sequence, of a long chain of causes whose initial links imply a definite constitution which could not be further reduced. Whether this ultimate result is merely a result or whether it is also a “purpose” is a question which, as we have seen twice already, it is wholly beyond the power of the causal mode of interpretation to answer. Given that an infinite intelligence in the world wished to realise purposes without instituting them as directly accomplished, but by letting them express themselves through a gradual “becoming,” the method would be exactly what is shown in the mechanical theory of life, that is, the primitive data and starting-points would have inherent in them a peculiar constitution and a rigidly inexorable orderliness of causal sequence. And Lotze emphasises that it would also be worthier of God to achieve the greatest by means of the simplest, and to work out the realisation of His eternal purposes according to the strict inevitableness of mechanism, than to attain His ends through the complicated means, the adventitious aids, and all the irregularities implied in the incommensurable activities of a “vital force.” (“God needs no minor gods.”)

To Lotze himself these original data and starting [pg 224] points are the primitive forms of life, which, according to his view, are directly “given,” and cannot be referred back to anything else (except to “creation”). But it is obvious that his view can be enlarged and extended so as to refer the derivation of the whole animate world to the original raw materials of the cosmos (energy, matter, or whatsoever they may be), and to the orderly process by which these materials were combined in various configurations to form the chemical elements, the chemical compounds, living proteids, the first cell, and the whole series of higher forms. If this nexus has taken place, it is nothing else than the transformation of the “potential” into the “actual” through strict causality. And if this actuality proves itself to have claims, because of its own intrinsic worth, to be considered as intelligent “purpose,” the whole system of means, including the starting-point, can be recognised as the means to an end, and the original wisdom and the intelligence which ordained the purpose is only glorified the more through the great simplicity, the rational comprehensibility, and the inexorable necessity of the system, which excludes all chance, and therewith all possibility of error.

This extension of Lotze's reconciliation of the mechanical causal with the teleological point of view is impressive and, as far as it goes, also quite convincing. It will never be given up, even if the point of view should change somewhat. And we have already seen that it is quite sufficient as long as we are dealing [pg 225] only with the question of teleology. But we must ask whether religion will be satisfied with “teleology” alone, or whether this is even the first requirement that it makes in regard to natural phenomena. We have already asked the question and attempted to clear the ground for an answer. Let us try to make it more definite.

Many people will have a certain uneasiness in regard to the Lotzian ideas; they will be unable to rid themselves of a feeling that this way of looking at things is only a pis aller for the religious point of view, and that the fundamental requirements of religious feeling receive very inadequate satisfaction on this method. The world of life which has arisen thus is altogether too rational and transparent. It is calculable and mathematical. It satisfies well enough the need for teleology, and with that the need for a supreme, universally powerful and free intelligence; but it gives neither support nor nourishment to the essential element in religious feeling, through which alone faith becomes in the strict sense religious. Religion, even Christian religion, is, so to speak, a stratified structure, a graduated pyramid, expressing itself, at its second (and undoubtedly higher) level, in our recognition of purpose, the rationality of the world, our own spiritual and personal being and worth, but implying at its basis an inward sense of the mysterious, a joy in that which is incommensurable and unspeakable, which fills us with awe and devotion. And religion at the second [pg 226] stage must not sweep away the essence of the stage below, but must include it, at the same time informing it with new significance. Whoever does not possess his religion in this way will agree with, and will be quite satisfied with the Lotzian standpoint. But to any one who has experience of the most characteristic element in religion, it will be obvious that there must be a vague but deep-rooted antipathy between religion and the mathematical-mechanical conception of things. Evidence of the truth of this is to be found in the instinctive perceptions and valuations which mark even the naÏve expressions of the religious consciousness.75 For it is in full sympathy with a world which is riddled with what is inconceivable and incommensurable, in full sympathy with every evidence of the existence of such an element in the world of nature and mind, and therefore with every proof that the merely mechanical theory has its limits, that it does not suffice, and that its very insufficiency is a proof that the world is and remains in its depths mysterious. Now we have already said that the true sphere for such feeling is not the outer court [pg 227] of nature, but within the realm of the emotional life and of history, and, on the other hand, that even if the attempt to trace life back to the simpler forces of nature were successful, we should still be confronted with the riddle of the sphinx. But any one who would say frankly what he felt would at once be obliged to admit that the religious sense is very strongly stirred by the mystery of vital phenomena, and that in losing this he would lose a domain very dear to him. These sympathies and antipathies are in themselves sufficient to give an interest to the question of the insufficiency of the mechanical view of things.

For it is by no means the case that the mechanical theory, with its premisses and principles, is the interpretation that best fits the facts, and that most naturally arises out of a calm consideration of the animate world. It is an artificial scheme, and astonishing energy has been expended on the attempt to fit it to the actual world, that it may make this orderly and translucent. It certainly yields this service so far, but not without often becoming a kind of strait-jacket, and revealing itself as an artificiality. In so far as the special problems of biology are concerned, we shall afterwards follow our previous method of taking our orientation from those specialists in the subject who, in reaction from the one-sidedness of the mechanical doctrine, have founded the “neo-vitalism” of to-day. Here we are only concerned with the generalities and presuppositions of the theory.