It is in a faith in a Beyond, and in the immortality of our true being, that what lies finely distributed through all religion sums itself up and comes to full blossoming: the certainty that world and existence are insufficient, and the strong desire to break through into the true being, of which at the best we have here only a foretaste and intuition. The doctrine of immortality stands by itself as a matter of great solemnity and deep rapture. If it is to be talked about, both speaker and hearers ought to be in an exalted mood. It is the conviction which, of all religious convictions, [pg 357] can be least striven for consciously; it must well forth from devotional personal experience of the spirit and its dignity, and thus can maintain itself without, and indeed against much reasoning. To educate and cultivate it in us requires a discipline of meditation, of concentration, and of spiritual self-culture from within outwards. If we understood better what it meant to “live in the spirit,” to develop the receptivity, fineness, and depth of our inner life, to listen to and cultivate what belongs to the spirit, to inform it with the worth and content of religion and morality, and to integrate it in the unity and completeness of a true personality, we should attain to the certainty that personal spirit is the fundamental value and meaning of all the confused play of evolution, and is to be estimated on quite a different scale from all other being which is driven hither and thither in the stream of Becoming and Passing away, having no meaning or value because of which it must endure. And it would be well also if we understood better how to listen with keener senses to our intuitions, to the direct self-consciousness of the spirit in regard to itself, which sleeps in every mind, but which few remark and fewer still interpret. Here, where the gaze of self-examination reaches its horizon, and can only guess at what lies beyond, but can no longer interpret it, lie the true motives and reasons for our conviction of immortality. An apologetic cannot do more than clear away obstacles, nor need it do much more than has hitherto been done. It reminds us, as we have [pg 358] already seen, that the world which we know and study, and which includes ourselves, does not show its true nature to us; hidden depths lie behind appearances. And it gathers together and sums up all the great reasons for the independence and underivability of the spiritual as contrasted with the corporeal. The spiritual has revealed itself to us as a reality in itself, which cannot be explained in terms of the corporeal, and which has dominion over it. Its beginning and its end are wholly unfathomable. There is no practical meaning in discussing its “origin” or its “passing away,” as we do with regard to the corporeal. Under certain corporeal conditions it is there, it simply appears. But it does not arise out of them. And as it is not nothing, but an actual and effective reality, it can neither have come out of nothing nor disappear into nothing again. It appears out of the absolutely transcendental, associates itself with corporeal processes, determines these and is determined by them, and in its own time passes back from this world of appearance to the transcendental again. It is like a great unknown sea, that pours its waters into the configuration of the shore and withdraws them again. But neither the flowing in nor the ebbing again is of nothing or in nothing. Whether and how it retains the content, form, and structure that it assumes in other spheres of animate and conscious nature, when it retires into the transcendental again; or whether it dissolves and breaks up into the universal we do not know; nor do we attribute everlastingness [pg 359] to those individual forms of consciousness which we call animal souls. But of the self-conscious, personal spirit religion knows that it is everlasting. It knows this from its own sources. In its insight into the underivability and autonomy of the spiritual it finds warrant and freedom to maintain this knowledge as something apart from or even in contrast to the general outlook on the world.
[pg 360]
The world and nature are marvellous in their being, but they are not “divine”! The formula “natura sive deus” is a monstrous misuse of the word “deus,” if we are to use the words in the sense which history has given to them. God is the Absolute Being, perfect, wholly independent, resting in Himself, and necessary; nature is entirely contingent and dependent, and at every point of it we are impelled to ask “Why?” God is the immeasurable fulness of Being, nature is indeed diverse in the manifoldness of her productions, but she is nevertheless limited, and her possibilities are restricted within narrow limits. God is the unrestrained, and everlasting omnipotence itself, and the perfect wisdom; nature is indeed mighty enough in the attainment of her ends, but how often is she obstructed, how often does she fail to reach them, and how seldom does she do so perfectly and without mistakes? She shows wisdom, indeed, cunning in her products, subtlety and daintiness, taste and beauty, all these often in an overwhelming degree, yet just as often she brings forth what [pg 361] is meaningless, contradictory and mutually hurtful, traverses her own lines, and bewilders us by the brutality, the thoughtlessness, and purposelessness, the crookedness, incompleteness, and distortedness of her operations. And what is true of the world of external nature is true in a far greater degree of the world of history. Nature is not a god, but a demigod, says Aristotle. And on this, Pantheism with its creed, “natura sive deus,” makes shipwreck. The words of this credo are either a mere tautology, and “deus” is misused as a new name for nature; or they are false. It is not possible to transfer to nature and the world all the great ideas and feelings which the religious mind cherishes under the name of “God.”
On the other hand, nature is really, as Aristotle said, da????a, that is, strange, mysterious, and marvellous, indicating God, and pointing, all naturalism and superficial consideration notwithstanding, as we have seen, to something outside of and beyond itself. Religion demands no more than this. It does not insist upon finding a solution for all the riddles of theoretical world-lore. It is not distressed because the course of nature often seems to our eyes confused, and to our judgment contradictory and unintelligible at a hundred places and in a hundred respects. On the contrary, that this is the case is to religion in another aspect a strong stimulus and corroboration. “The world is an odd fellow; may God soon make an end of it,” said Luther, and thus gave a crude but truly religious [pg 362] parallel to the words of Aristotle, ? ??? f?s?? da????a ???? ?? ?e?a, (Aristot. “De Divin. in Somn.,” c. ii.). It is part of the very essence of religion, as we have seen, to read in the pages of nature, insufficiency, illusion, and perplexities, and to be made thereby impatient and desirous of penetrating to the true nature of things. Religion does not claim to be directly deducible out of a consideration of nature; it demands only the right and freedom to interpret the world in its own way. And for this it is sufficient that this world affords those hints and suggestions for its convictions that we have seen it does afford. To form clear ideas in regard to the actual relations of the infinite to the finite, and of God to the world, and of what religion calls creation, preservation, and eternal providence, self-revelation in the world and in history, is hardly the task of religion at all, but rather pertains to our general speculative instinct, which can only satisfy itself with the help of imagination. Attempts of this kind have often been made. They are by no means valueless, for even if no real knowledge can be gained by this method, we may perhaps get an analogue of it which will help us to understand existence and phenomena, and to define our position, as well as to give at least provisional answers to many pressing questions (such, for instance, as the problem of theodicy).
If we study the world unprejudiced by the naturalistic interpretation, or having shaken ourselves free from it, we are most powerfully impressed by one fundamental [pg 363] phenomenon in all existence: it is the fact of evolution. It challenges attention and interpretation, and analogies quickly reveal themselves which give something of the same trend to all such interpretations. From stage to stage existence advances onwards, from the world of large masses subject only to the laws of mechanics, to the delicately complex play of the forces of development in growth and other vital processes. The nature of the forces is revealed in ever higher expression, and at the same time in ever more closely connected series of stages. Even between the inorganic and the organic there is an intermediate stage—crystal formation—which is no longer entirely of the one, yet not of the other. And in the organic world evolution reveals itself most clearly of all; from the crudest and simplest it presses onwards to the most delicate and complex. In the corporeal as in the psychical, in the whole as in each of its parts, there are ever higher stages, sometimes far apart, sometimes close together. However we picture to ourselves the way in which evolution accomplishes itself in time, we can scarcely describe it without using such expressions as “nature advances upwards step by step,”“it presses and strives upwards and unfolds itself stage by stage.”
And it is with us as it was with Plato; we inform the world with a soul, with a desire and endeavour which continually expresses itself in higher and higher forms. And it is with us also as with Fichte; we speak of the will which, unconscious of itself, pours itself forth in [pg 364] unconscious and lifeless nature, and then on this foundation strives forward, expressing its activity in ever higher developments, breaking forth in life, sensation, and desire, and finally coming to itself in conscious existence and will. The whole world seems to us a being which wills to become, presses restlessly forward, and passes from the potential to the actual, realising itself. And the height of its self-realisation is conscious, willing life.
This outlook is lofty and significant, it supplies a guiding clue by which the facts of life and nature can be arranged. The religious outlook, too, when it wishes to indulge in speculation, can make use of this guiding thread. It will then say: God established the world as “a will to existence, to consciousness, to spirit.” He established it, not as complete, but as becoming. He does not build it as a house, but plants it, like a flower, in the seed, that it may grow, that it may struggle upwards stage by stage to fuller existence, aspiring with toil and endeavour towards the height where, in the image of the Creator, as a free and reasonable spirit capable of personality, it may realise the aim of its being. Thus the world is of God, that is, its rudiments came from God, and it is to God, in the purpose of likeness to God. And it is imbued with the breath of Godhead which moves in it and impels it onwards, with the logos of the everlasting Zeus of whom Cleanthes sings, with the spirit of Jehovah whom Isaiah and the Psalmist praise, and [pg 365] whom the poet of the Creation figuratively paints; the divine breath is in everything that lives, from grass to flower, from animal to man. But it is implanted as becoming. And in regard to this, religion can say of the whole world what it says of man. For man, too, is not given as a finished product, either as regards the genus or the individual, but as a rudiment, with his destiny to work out, in historical becoming, by realising what is inherent in him. We call this freedom. And an adumbration of such freedom, which is the aim of self-realisation, would help us to penetrate deeply into the nature of things. Many riddles and apparent contradictions could be fitted in with this view of things: the unity of the world, and yet the gradations; the relationship of all living creatures, the unity of all psychical life, and yet the uniqueness of the rational spirit; causal concatenation, yet guidance by means of the highest ideas and purposes; the tentativeness, illogicalness, and ineffectiveness of nature, unconsciously pressing forward along uncertain paths, yet the directness and purposefulness of the main lines of evolution in general. This God-awakened will to be lies at the roots of the mysteries of development in all living creatures, of the unconscious purposiveness of instinctive action, of the gradually ascending development of psychical life and its organ. Operating in crystals and plants purely as a formative impulse and “entelechy,” it awakes in the bodies of animals more and more as “soul.” Then it awakes fully in man, and in him, in [pg 366] an entirely new phase of real free development, it builds itself up to spirit. It resembles a stream whose waves flow casually and transiently in animal consciousness, and are soon withdrawn again, to break forth anew at another place, in the personal spirit, where they attain to permanent indissoluble form, since they have now at last attained to self-realisation, and fulfilled the purpose of all cosmic existence, the reflecting of the eternal personality in the creature. But it is only in human history that what was prepared for in natural evolution is completed.
The riddle of theodicy thus becomes easier, for what surrounds us in nature and history has not come direct from the hand of eternal wisdom, but is in the first place the product of the developing, striving world, which only gradually and after many mistakes and failures works out what is inherent in it as eternal idea and aim. We see and blame its mistakes, for instance in our own human structure. We see the deficiencies in the historical course of things. But when we find fault we do not see that evolution and self-realisation and freedom are more worthy of praise than ready-made existence incapable of independent action.
This principle of development, wherever it is regarded as “world-soul” or as “will” or as the “unconscious,” is frequently, through pantheism and the doctrine of immanence, made equivalent with the object of religion, with God. This is an impossible undertaking. We cannot worship what only reaches its full development [pg 367] in ourselves. But that we can worship, and that it is only in the feeling of complete dependence that the full depth of what is developing within us to conscious life reveals itself, proves better than anything else that God is above all “World-will.” It was more than allegory when Plato in TimÆus set the “eternal father and creator of the world” above all soul and psyche. And it was religion that broke through when Fichte in his little book, “Anweisung zum seeligen Leben,” set being before becoming, and God above the creatures struggling towards self-realisation. Religion knows in advance that this is so. And calm reflection confirms it. All that we have already learnt of the dependence, conditionedness, and contingent nature of the world is equally true of a world “evolving itself” out of its potentiality, of a will to existence, and of an unconscious realising itself. No flower can grow and develop without being first implicit in the seed. Nothing can attain to “actuality,” to realisation, that was not potentially implied in the beginning. But who originated the seed of the world-flower? Who enclosed within it the “tendencies,” the “rudiments” which realise themselves in evolution? Invariably “the actual is before the potential” and Being before Becoming. A world could only become if it were called to become by an everlasting Being. God planting the world-flower that it might radiate forth in its blossoms His own image and likeness, is an allegory which may well symbolise for religion the relation between God and the [pg 368] world. And thus it is possible to draw the outline of a religious outlook on the world, into which the results of world-lore could well be fitted. This frame was constructed by Plato on the basis of a religious study of things, and after Plato it was first definitely outlined in Fichte's too much forgotten but unforgettable books “Bestimmung des Menschen” and “Anweisung zum seeligen Leben,” and it is thus a new creation of the great German idealism and its mighty faith. And it is not easy to see why it should be abandoned, why we should give it up in favour of an irreligious, semi-naturalistic outlook on the world.
One thing, however, must be kept constantly in mind: even such an interpretation of the world as this is poetry, not knowledge. There is a poetry of the will to live, of the unconscious, which is struggling towards existence, but there is no philosophy. There are only analogies and hints of what goes on at the foundations of the world. In particular, the unconscious creative impulse in all living organisms, this “will” towards form, its relationship with instinct and the relationship of instinct to conscious psyche, afford us a step-ladder of illustrations, and an illustration of the step-ladder of the “will towards existence,” which invite us to overstep the bounds of our knowledge, and indulge in our imagination. We can say nothing of pre-conscious consciousness and will, we can at best only make guesses about them. We cannot think definitely of a general world-will, which wills and [pg 369] aspires in individual beings; we cannot picture to ourselves the emergence of the individual “souls” of animals and man from a universal psyche. Imagination plays a larger part here than clear thinking. And for our present purpose it must be clearly borne in mind that religion does not require any speculative construction of theories of the world. But “you shall know that it is your imagination which creates the world for you.”108 And if a speculative construction be desired, it will always be most easily attained along these lines, and will in this way come nearest to our modern knowledge of nature. We must remember, too, that the objections which may be urged against this form of speculation are equally applicable against any other. For the origin of the individual psyche, the graduated series of its forms, the development of one after the other, and of that of the child from that of its parents, are riddles which cannot be solved by any speculative thinking. Monadology, theories of the pre-existence of the soul, creationism, or the current traducianism—which to-day, with its partly or wholly materialistic basis, is just as naÏve as the older—all reveal equal darkness. But the speculation we have hinted at, if it gives no explanation, at least supplies a framework for many questions which attract us, and do so even from the point of view of religion: for instance the collective, diffuse, and almost divisible nature of consciousness in the lower stages, its increasing and ever more strict centralisation, the natural [pg 370] relationship of the psychical in man to the psychical in general, and yet its incommensurability and superiority to all the world.
But let us once more turn from all the poetical and imaginative illustrations of the relation of God to the world, which can at best be only provisional, and only applicable at certain points, to the more general aspect of the problem. Religion itself consists in this: believing and experiencing that in time the Eternal, in the finite the Infinite, in the world God is working, revealing Himself, and that in Him lies the reason and cause of all being. For this it has names like creation, providence, self-revelation of God in the world, and it lives by the mysteries which are indicated under these names. The mysteries themselves it recognises in vague or naÏve forms of conception long before it attempts any definite formulation. If dogmatics begin with the latter, some form or other of the stiff and wooden doctrines of concursus, of influxus ordinarius and extraordinarius usually develops with many other subtleties, which are nothing more than attempts to formulate the divine influence in finite terms, and to think of it as a force along with other forces. Two series of causes are usually distinguished; the system of causes and effects within the world, according to which everything natural takes place, the “causÆ secundariÆ”; and in addition to these the divine causality co-operating and influencing the others, ordering them with gentle and delicate pressure, and guiding them towards their true [pg 371] end, and which may also reveal itself as “extraordinaria” in miracles and signs. This double operation is regarded as giving rise to all phenomena, and in it consists guidance, dispensation, providence, and natural revelation.
This kind of conception is extremely primitive, and is unfavourable to religion itself, for in it mystery is done away with and arranged according to rubric, and everything has become quite “simple.” Moreover, this doctrine has a necessary tendency to turn into the dreaded “Deism.” According to the deistic view, God made the world in the beginning, and set the system of natural causes in motion, in such a way that no farther assistance was given, and everything went on of itself. This theory is incredibly profane, and strikes God out of the world, and nature, and history at a single stroke, substituting for Him the course of a well-arranged system of clockwork. But the former theory is a very unsatisfactory and doubtful makeshift as compared with that of deism, for it is impossible to see why, if God arranged these causÆ secundariÆ, He should have made them so weak and ineffective that they need all these ingenious concursus, influxus, determinationes, gubernationes, and the like. Both theories are crude fabrications of the dogmatists, and they have nothing left in them of the piety they were intended to protect, nor do they become any better in this respect, however many attempts are made to define them. Religion possesses, without the aid of any stilted and artificial theories, all the things [pg 372] we have named above, and especially and most directly the last of them, namely, the experience of the revelation and communication of the Divine in the great developments and movements of spiritual and religious history. And it finds its corroboration and justification and freedom not by way of dogmatics but of criticism. It is impossible to distinguish artificially two sets of causes, and to give to the world what is alleged to be of the world, and to God what is alleged to be of God. But it is permissible to point to the insufficiency of our causal study in general, and to the limits of our knowledge. Even when we have established it as a fact that all phenomena are linked together in a chain of causes we are still far from having discovered how things actually come to pass. Every qualitative effect and change is entirely hidden from us as far as the cause of its coming about and its real and inner nature are concerned. Every effect which in kind or quantity goes beyond its cause (and we cannot make anything of the domain of living forms, of the psychical and of history without these), shows us that we are still only at the surface. Indeed, even mechanical action, often alleged to be entirely intelligible, such as the transference or transformation of energy, is, as we have seen, a complete riddle. In addition, all causality runs its course in time, and therefore partakes of all the defects and limitations of our views of time. And finally we are guided by the Kantian antinomy regarding the conditions of what is [pg 373]“given.” It destroys the charm of the “purely causal” point of view by showing that this in itself cannot be made complete and is therefore contradictory. Moreover, in the phenomena of life, and in the fact that consciousness and will control our corporeal processes, and yet can hardly be thought of as a cause “co-operating” with other causes, we found an analogy, if a weak and obscure one, of the relation that a divine teleology and governing of the world may bear to mundane phenomena. Thus mystery remains in all its strength and is not replaced by the surrogate of a too simple and shallow dogmatic theory. In confessing mystery and resting content with it we are justified by reflection on the nature and antinomy of our knowledge.
All this is true also of what religion means by creation. In the feeling of complete humility, in its experience of absolute dependence and conditionedness, the creature becomes conscious of itself as a creature, and experiences with full clearness what it means to be a “creature” and “created.” The dogmatic theory is here again only a surrogate of mystery. And again critical self-reflection proves a better guide than any theory of creation, which is quite in its place as a means of expression in religious discourse and poetry, but is quite insufficient as true knowledge. That we must but cannot think of this world either as beginning or as not-beginning is the analogue in knowledge of what religion experiences in mystery; and that this contingent and [pg 374] conditioned world is founded in everlasting, necessary, true Being, is the analogue of what religion possesses and knows through devout feeling, more directly and clearly than by any thinking, of the relations of God to the world.
This has been urged often enough even by scientific investigators. In such cases they have frequently been reproached for dragging miracles into nature when they call a halt in face of the “underivable” and the “mysterious.” This is a complete misunderstanding. With miracles and with the supernatural in the historical sense of these words, this mode of regarding nature has nothing whatever to do. It would be much more reasonable to maintain the converse: that there exists between supernatural ideas and the belief in the absolute explicability and rationalisation of nature a peculiar mutual relation and attraction. For, if we think out the relation clearly, we must see that all real and consistent belief in miracles demands as its most effective background the clearest possible explicability of nature. It pictures to itself two natures, so to speak: nature and supernature, and the latter of these interpolates itself into the former in the form of sudden and occasional interruptions; that is to say, as miracles. The purpose of miracles is to be recognised as such, as events absolutely different from the ordinary course of happening. And they are most likely thus to be recognised when nature itself is translucent and mathematical. Thus we find that supernaturalism quite readily accepts, and even insists upon a rationalistic explanation of nature. But this is quite incorrect. Nature is not so thoroughly rationalised and calculable as such a point of view would have us believe.
The really religious element in belief in miracles is that it, too, in its own way, is seeking after mystery, dependence and providence. It fails because it naÏvely seeks for these in isolated and exceptional acts, which have no analogy to other phenomena. It regards these as arbitrary acts, and does so because it overlooks or underestimates the fact that they have to be reckoned with throughout the whole of nature.
Not even after the scholastic manner of regarding eternity as a “nunc stans,” a stationary now, an everlasting present. “Present” is a moment in our own time, and an “everlasting” present is nonsense.
Some of these subsidiary factors are difficult to harmonise with the main principle of selection; they endanger it or it endangers them, as we shall see when we consider the controversies within the Darwinian camp.
It is somewhat confusing that even Weismann in his most recent work professes to give “Lectures on the Theory of Descent,” and in reality only assumes it, concerning himself with the Darwinian theory in the strict sense. The English translation is more correctly entitled “The Evolution Theory.”
A defence of this very confident Darwinian point of view, for the benefit of non-scientific readers, will be found in the recent “GemeinverstÄndlichen darwinistischen VortrÄgen und Abhandlungen,” by Plate, Simroth, Schmidt, and others. See also Ziegler's “Ueber den derzcitigen Stand der Descendenzlehre in der Zoologie.”
“Verh. Berlin anthropolog. Gesellschaft iv.” (1872), p. 132. It does, however, appear strange to the lay mind that it should have been only the pathological subjects of prehistoric times that had their remains preserved for our modern study.
First edition, Leipzig, 1887. A second edition and an English translation have since been published. See especially the discussion of the origin and history of species in the second volume.
If we wish to, we can even read the “biogenetic law” in Dante. See “Purgatory,” p. 26, where the embryo attains successively to the plant, animal and human stages:
“Anima fatta la virtute attiva, Qual d'una pianta....
Come fungo marino ...
Ma come d'animal divenga fante.”
This is, of course, nothing else than Aristotle's theory of evolution, done into terzarima, and corrected by St. Thomas.
For the latest application of these views, even in relation to the “biogenetic fundamental law,” see the finely finished “Morpho-genetic Studies” of T. Garbowski (Jena, 1903): “The greater part of what is usually referred to the so-called fundamental biogenetic law depends on illusion, since all things undeveloped or imperfect must bear a greater or less resemblance one to another.”
Finally and comprehensively in the two volumes we have already mentioned, “VortrÄge Über die Deszendenztheorie,” Jena, 1902 (Eng. trans., London, 1904). “Natural selection depends essentially upon the cumulative augmentation of the most minute useful variations in the direction of their utility; only the useful is developed and increased, and great effects are brought about slowly through the summing up of many very minute steps.... But the philosophical significance of natural selection lies in the fact that it shows us how to explain the origin of useful, well-adapted structures purely by mechanical factors, and without having to fall back upon a directive principle.”
If it were not white it would be observed by the seals, which would thus avoid being devoured by it. See Weismann, I., p. 70. (English edition, p. 65.)
It is almost comical when Weismann, the champion of the purely naturalistic outlook, occasionally forgets his rÔle altogether, and puts in a word for “chance,” or attempts to soften absolute predetermination. For if even a single wolf should destroy a stag “by chance,” or if a single “id” should “chance” to grow in a manner slightly different from that laid down for it by the compelling force of preceding and accompanying circumstances, the whole Darwinian edifice would be labour lost.
“Die Darwinsehe Theorie. GemeinverstÄndliche Vorlesungen Über die Naturphilosophie der Gegenwart gehalten vor Studierenden aller FakultÄten,” Leipzig, 1903. This book is the continuation of the author's “Deszendenztheorie.”
Fleischmann's book compares favourably with those of other naturalists, in that he does not contrast “Moses” and natural science, as is customary, but has a deeper knowledge of the modern view of Genesis I. than is usually found among naturalists, whether of the “positive” or “negative” standpoint.
See C.C. Coe, “Nature versus Natural Selection,” London, 1895. Perhaps the most comprehensive, many-sided, critical analysis of the theory of natural selection. See also Herbert Spencer, “The Inadequacy of Natural Selection,” 1893.
Leipzig, 1888, 1897, 1901. In part translated as “Organic Evolution.” We are here mainly concerned with Vols. I. and III. Later on we shall have to discuss Vol. II.
See Wettstein, “Neolamarckism,” Jena, 1902. See also Demoor, Massart, Vandervelde, “L'Evolution rÉgressive en Biologie et Sociologie,” Paris, 1897. BibliothÈque scientific internationale, vol. lxxxv. This work is on the Lamarckian basis. It is original in applying Lamarckian principles to a theory of society.
It remains open to question whether Eimer's explanation is sufficient in all cases, even those of the exaggeratedly deceptive copies of leaves or bark, or the colour of the environment. It is certainly not the sorry explanation in terms of “Variation and Selection,” but that of a spontaneous imitation of the surroundings, that forces itself irresistibly upon us in this connection.
See Reinke, “Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie,” 1901, especially pp. 463 onwards on “Phylogenetisches Bildungspotential.” von Wettstein (On direct adaptation), “Neolamarkismus,” Jena, 1902. Cf.“Wissensch-BeitrÄge zum 15 Jahresberichte (1902) der Philos. Gesellschaft an der UniversitÄt zu Wien: VortrÄge und Besprechungen Über die Krisis der Darwinismus.” M. Kassowitz, “Allgemeine Biologie,” I. and II., 1899. O. Hertwig, “Entwicklung der Biologie im 19. Jahrhundert.” Wiesner, “Elemente der wissenschaftlichen Botanik.” (cf. especially III. “Biologie der Pflanzen”), and on p. 288 the summary of propositions which are very similar to those formulated later by Korschinsky. (“Auf Grund des den Organismen innewohnenden Vervollkommnungstriebes.”)
See the particularly beautiful and suggestive experiments of Haberlandt: “Experimentelle Hervorrufung eines neuen Organs.” In “Festschrift fÜr Schwendener,” Berlin Borntraeger, 1899.
The variation-increment of the selection theory ought to be a differential. But in many cases it is not so. As for instance in symmetrical correlated variation, &c. In the struggle for existence it is usually not advantages of organisation which are decisive, but the chance advantages of situation, though these have no “selective” influence. The case of the tapeworm is illustrative.
His work, “Die organischen Regulationen, Vorbereitungen zu einer Theorie des Lebens,” 1901, is a systematic survey of illustrations of the “autonomy” of vital processes. In his “Analytischen Theorie der organischen Entwicklung,” Leipzig, 1894, his special biological (“ontogenetic”) views are still in process of development. But even here his sharp rejection of Darwinism is complete (see VI., Par. 3, on “the absurd assumption of a contingent character of morphogenesis”). It is not for nothing that the book is dedicated to Wigand and C. F. von Baer. He says that in regard to development we must “picture to ourselves external agents acting as stimuli and achieving transformations which have the character, not analysable as to its causes, of being adapted to their end, that is, capable of life.” Incomplete, but very instructive too, are his discussions on the causal and the teleological outlook, the necessity for both, and the impossibility of eliminating the latter from the study of nature. In a series of subsequent works, Driesch has defined and strengthened this position, finally reaching the declaration: “Darwin belongs to history, just like that other curiosity of our century, the Hegelian philosophy. Both are variations on the theme, ‘How to lead a whole generation by the nose!’ ” (“Biolog. Zentralbl.” 1896, p. 16). We are concerned with Driesch more particularly in Chapter IX.
See § 70 and subsequent sections. Take, for instance, the sentences:—“Every production of material things and of their forms must be interpreted as possible in terms of purely mechanical laws,” and the contrast: “Some products of material nature cannot be interpreted as possible in terms of purely mechanical laws.”
To Aristotle the “Soul” (???? ??t??? Psyche, phytike) was in the first place a purely biological principle. But by means of his elastic formula of Potentiality and Actuality he was able to make the transition to the psychological with apparent ease. The biological is to him in “potentiality” what sensation, impulse, imagination are in “realisation.” But the biological and the psychological are not related to one another as stages. Growth, form, development, &c., cannot be carried over through any “actualisatio” into sensation, consciousness and the like.
An essentially different question is, whether the biological may not be not indeed derivable from the psychological—that would be the same mistake—but dependent on, and conditioned by it, just as we regard the voluntary moving and directing of the body as dependent on it. An imaginative interpretation of the world will always take this course.
Of course all this still gives us no ground for drawing conclusions as to the correctness of the mechanistic theory, but only affords a reason for its power of persistence. Indeed, the very fact that, in investigating the problem of life, instinct directs us towards mechanical interpretations, should give added weight to the other fact, that among the ranks of naturalists themselves there constantly arise doubts and criticisms of the adequacy of this mode of interpretation, and that many of them go over more or less completely to the vitalistic point of view.
Max Verworn, “Die Biogenhypothese,” Jena, 1903. Cf. criticisms by Czapek in the “Botanische Zeitung,” No. 2, 1903, and by Loeb in the “Biologisches Zentralblatt,” 1902.
A short, very attractive description of these mechanical methods, and one which appeals particularly to us laymen because of its excellent illustrations, is Dreyer's “Ziele und Wege biologischer Forschung” (Jena, 1892), especially the first part, “Die FlÜssigkeitsmechanik als eine Grundlage der organischen Form- und GerÜst-Bildung.” The astonishing and fascinating forms of Radiolarian frameworks and “skeletons” (the artistic appreciation of which was made possible to a wider public by Haeckel's “Kunstformen der Natur”) are here made the subject of mechanical explanations, which are certainly in a high degree plausible.
“Preformation oder Epigenesis?” Outlines of a theory of the development of organisms. Jena, 1894. (Part I. of “Zeit- und Streit-fragen der Biologie.”) Translated by P. Chalmers Mitchell, “The Biological Problem of To-day.”
As a remarkable instance and corroboration of this, we may refer to the ever-recurring, instinctive antipathy of deeply religious temperaments, from Augustine to Luther and Schleiermacher, to the Aristotelian mood and its conception of the world, and their sympathy with Plato's (mostly and especially in their “Platonised” expressions). The clear-cut, luminous, conception of the world which expresses everything in terms of commensurable concepts is thoroughly Aristotelian. But it would be difficult to find a place in it for the peculiar element which lies at the root of all true devotional feeling, and which makes faith something more than the highest “reverence, love and trust.”
Cf.“Ueber die Aufgabe der Naturwissenschaft,” Jena, 1876. “Naturwissenschaftliche Tatsachen und Probleme.”“Physiologie und Entwicklungslehre,” 1886, in the collection of the “Allgemeiner Vereins fÜr Deutsche Literatur.” Also in the same collection, “Aus Natur- und Menschen-leben.”
These ideas are not fully worked out, and they are disguised in poetic form—for instance, when even the play of flames is compared to vital processes. But if they be stripped of their poetic garb, they lead to the same conclusions to which one is always led when one approaches the problem unprejudiced by naturalistic or anthropomorphic preconceptions of the relation of the infinite to the finite, or the divine to the natural. If we exclude the materialistic or semi-materialistic position which regards teleological phenomena, vital processes, and even states of sensation and consciousness as the function of a “substance” or of matter, we can quite well speak of them as general “cosmo-organic” functions of universal being, meaning that they occur of necessity wherever the proper conditions exist. According to the doctrine of potentiality and actuality, this is to say that all possible stages of the higher and highest phenomena are semper et ubique potentially present in universal being, and that they become actual wherever the physical processes are far enough advanced to afford the necessary conditions.
Preyer's ideas have been revived of late, especially in the romantic form, as, for instance, in Willy Pastor's “Lebensgeschichte der Erde” (“Leben und Wissen,” Vol. I., Leipzig, 1903). And in certain circles, characterised by a simultaneous veneration for and combination of modern natural science—Haeckel, Romanticism, Novalis and other antitheses—Fechner appears to have come to life again. The type of this group is W. BÖlsche. Naturally enough, Pastor has turned his attention also to the recent views of Schroen in regard to crystallisation. The fact, omne crystallum e crystallo, like the corresponding fact, omne vivum e vivo, was long a barrier against mechanistic derivation. But Schroen draws a parallel between crystallisation and organic processes, so that the alleged clearness and obviousness of the inorganic can no longer be carried over—in the old fashion—into the realm of life, but, conversely, the mystery of life must be extended downwards, and continued into the inorganic.
Worthy of note and much cited is a somewhat indefinite essay on “Neovitalism,” by the Wurzburg pathologist, E. von Rindfleisch (in “Deutsche Medizinische Wochensehrift,” 1895, No. 38).
Already given in detail in his “Lehrbuch der phys. und pathol. Chemie” (Second Edition, 1889), in the first chapter, “Vitalism and Mechanism.” In the meantime a fifth revised and enlarged edition of Bunge's book has appeared as a “Lehrbuch der Physiologie des Menschen” (Leipzig, 1901), The relevant early essays appear here again under the title “Idealism and Mechanism.” The arguments are the same. It is often supposed that it is merely a question of time, and that in the long run we must succeed in finding proofs that the whole process of life is only a complex process of movement; but the history of physiology shows that the contrary is the case. All the processes which can be explained mechanically are those which are not vital phenomena at all. It is in activity that the riddle of life lies. The solution of this riddle is looked for, more decidedly than before but still somewhat vaguely, in the “idealism” of self-consciousness and its implications, “Physiologus nemo nisi psychologus.” These views have been also stated in a separate lecture: G. Bunge, “Vitalismus und Mechanismus,” (Leipzig, 1886).
Cf. especially Verworn's example of the manufacture of sulphuric acid. See what we have previously said on the “second line” of mechanistic theory, along which Neumeister's thought mainly moves. See especially p. 198. As regards the “fifth line,” the problem of the development of form in its present phase, there is an instructive short essay by Fr. Merkel (Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften GÖttingen. GeschÄftl. Mitt. 1897, Heft 2)—“Welche KrÄfte wirken gestaltend auf den KÖrper der Menschen und Tiere?” This essay avoids, obviously intentionally, the shibboleths of controversy. The mechanical point of view and the play with mechanical analogies and models are abruptly dismissed. “If things, which were in themselves susceptible of mechanical explanations, occur in the absence of the mechanical antecedent conditions, then we must seek for other forces to enable us to understand them.” And quite calmly a return is made to the old, simple conception of a “regulative” and a “formative force,” inherent as a capacity sui generis within the “energids,” the really living parts of the cell. The cell-energid carries within it the “pattern” of the organisation, and the partial or perfect “capacity” (“Fertigkeit”) for producing and reproducing the whole organism. But these two forces “make use of” the physico-chemical forces as tools to work out details. So to describe the state of the case is not of course a solution of the problem; it is only a figurative formulation of it. But that, at the present day, we can and must return to doing this if we are to describe things simply and as they actually occur, is precisely what is most instructive in the matter.
Before Wigand's larger works there had appeared F. Delpino: “Applicazione della Teoria Darwinia ai Fiori ed agli Insetti Visitatori dei Fiori” (Bull. della Societa Entomologica Ital., Florence 1870). He says: “Un principio intrinsico, reagente, finchÈ dura la vita, contro le influenze estrinseche ossia contro gli agenti chimici e fisici.”
Cf. Cohn, “BeitrÄge zur Biologie der Pflanzen,” vii. 407, See especially the concluding chapter, “Einiges Über Functionen der einzelnen Zellorgane.” From Zoology we may cite E. Teichmann's investigation, “Ueber die Beziehung zwischen AstrosphÄren und Furchen.”“Experimentelle Untersuchungen am Seeigelei” (“Archiv. f. Entw. Mech.” xvi. 2, 1903). This paper contains no references to “psychical phenomena,”“power,” or “will,” and we cannot but approve of this in technical research. But it is pointed out that the mechanistic interpretation of the detailed processes of development has definite limitations, and we are referred to “fundamental characters of living matter which we must take for granted.”
This is even more decidedly the case in Tad. Garbowski's beautiful “Morphogenetische Studien, als Beitrag zur Methodologie zoologischer Forschung.” These belong to the line of thought followed by Driesch and Wolff, who are both frequently and approvingly quoted, and they afford an excellent instance of that mood of dissatisfaction with and protest against the “dogmas” of descent, selection and phylogeny, which is observable in many quarters among the younger generation of investigators. Garbowski vigorously combats Haeckel's theories of development, especially “the fundamental biogenetic law, and the GastrÆa theory.” He criticises “mechanistic” interpretations of the development of the embryo, which “treat the living being morphologically, as if the matter were one of vesicles, cylinders and plates, and not of vital units”: and he does not look with favour on “artificial amoebÆ,” which can move, creep, and do everything except live. The ideal of biology is of course always a science with laws and equations, but the key to these will not be found in mechanics. Garbowski's studies may be highly recommended as giving a sharp and vivid impression of the modern anti-mechanistic tendencies observable even in technical research.
Cf.“Entwicklung der Biologie in 19. Jahrhundert” (“Naturforscher Versammlung,” 1900), and “Zeit- und Streit-fragen der Biologie,” 1894-7, especially Part II., “Mechanik und Zoologie.”
“Die Organismen und ihr Ursprung,” published in “Nord und SÜd,” xviii., p. 201 seq.—“Die Welt als Tat,” Berlin 1899, since then in second edition.—“Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie,” 1901.—And “Der Ursprung des Lebens auf der Erde,” in the “TÜrmer-Jahrbuch,” 1903.
Of all the bad Greek zoology has produced, “Ontogenesis” is probably the worst. The Becoming of the Being! The word is used in contrast to Phylogenesis, the becoming of the race or of the species, and it denotes the development of the individual.
Cf. p. 130. Excellent observations on “purpose.” If two or more chains of causes meet, we call it “chance;” if they do so constantly and in a typical manner, we call it “purpose.”
“Die Lokalisation (= spatial determination) morphogenetischer VorgÄnge, ein Beweis vitalistischen Geschehens,” 1899 (in “Archiv. f. Entw.-Mechanik,” viii., 1, and separately published), and “Die organischen Regulationen: Vorbereitungen zu einer Theorie des Lebens,” Leipzig, 1901. Also “Die ‘Seele’ als elementarer Natur-factor,” (studies on the movements of organisms), Leipzig, 1903. He gives a general review of his own evolution in the “SÜddeutsche Monatshefte,” January 1904, under the title “Die SelbstÄndigkeit der Biologie und ihre Probleme.”
In the “Biol. Zentralbl.,” June 1903, p. 427, Driesch is criticised by Moszkowski, who rejects Driesch's teleological standpoint. But even this criticism shows us how far the untenability of the mechanistic position has been recognised. It is based upon a somewhat vague dynamism, which admits that the physico-chemical and all other mechanical interpretations have been destructively criticised by Driesch, and recognises entelechy (“?? ?a?t? t? t???? ????”). An entelechy without t????!
Cf. Tad. Garbowski, “Morphogenetische Studien,” p. 167. The illustration here employed of the arc and the “explanation of form by form” would be a good criticism of many of Albrecht's statements.
Schneider has expounded his physiological and morphological view in his “Comparative Histology.” In “Vitalismus” (“Elementare Lebensfunctionen,” Vienna, 1903) he sums up his vitalistic views. It is a comprehensive work which goes deeper than others of its class into the detailed description and analysis of the intimate phenomena of life. Indeed it almost amounts to an independent biology. But the most essential vital problems, the development of form, regeneration, and inheritance, to which Driesch gives the fullest consideration, are all too briefly treated. In Chapters XI. and XII. the question of vitalism expands into a far-reaching discussion of the general outlook upon nature. We need not here concern ourselves with his more general views. Schneider must be regarded as a representative of the most modern tendency of “Psychism,” which, stimulated by Mach, Avenarius, and the school of “immanence-philosophy,” finds expression among the younger physiologists and biologists, from Schneider to Driesch, Verworn, Albrecht, and others. To overthrow “materialism” and “realism,” they utilise, with impetuous delight, the ancient self-evident idea that what is given to us is sensation. They confuse and identify such opposites as Kant and Berkeley, and their own position with that of “solipsism.” This outlook is still vague and vacillating, and it may perhaps compel epistemology to return on its old path from the sophists to Plato, from Hume to Kant. In Schneider's case, however, the thin stream of this new sensualism is intermingled with so many intuitions and perceptions of the deeper nature of knowledge that one is now curious to know how this strange mixture of semi-materialism, idealism, solipsism, and a priorism is to make the transition from its present extremely labile phase to a condition of stable equilibrium. One fears lest sooner or later a reaction against the contortions of this empiricism and psychism should lead to a modern rehabilitation of mysticism or occultism. (Cf. p. 295 ff.)
In an essay on “Vitalism” in the “Preuss. Jahrbuch,” Aug. 1903, p. 276, Schneider has supplemented his previous work.
If the protest of natural science against these means no more than that they should be excluded as inaccessible to scientific understanding, from the domain of its investigation, but not from reality, it is perhaps fully justified in its methods.
Though somewhat inconsequent, since at any rate the enthusiasm for truth could not result from a naturalistic, but only from some kind of idealistic basis.
