Weimar, the classical City of the Muses, and, close by it, our national
university of Jena. I regard it as a good omen that precisely at this
moment a rare celebration should have called together in Weimar the most
illustrious patrons of the university of Jena, the defenders of free
research and free teaching.[21] In the hope that the defence and
promotion of these may still be continued, I conclude my monistic
Confession of Faith with the words: "May God, the Spirit of the Good, the
Beautiful, and the True, be with us."
NOTES]
[Footnote 1: _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).]
[Footnote 2: _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.)]
[Footnote 3: _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).]
[Footnote 4: _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).]
[Footnote 5: _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_.)]
[Footnote 6: _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).]
[Footnote 7: _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.]
[Footnote 8: _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.]
[Footnote 9: _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."]
[Footnote 10: _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."]
[Footnote 11: _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.]
World (=Substance=Cosmos).]
(Nature as knowable by Man.)]
Ether (="spirit") (mobile Mass (="body") (inert or
or active substance). passive substance).
Property of Vibration. Property of Inertia.]
Chief Functions: Electricity, Chief Functions: Gravity,
Magnetism, Light, Heat. Inertia, Chemical Affinity.
Structure: dynamical; Structure: atomic, discontinuous,
continuous, elastic substance, inelastic substance,
not composed of atoms (?) composed of atoms (?)]
Theosophical: "God the Theosophical: "Created
Creator" (always in motion). world" (passively formed).]
"Influence of space." "Products of space condensation."]
[Footnote 12: _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."]
[Footnote 13: _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.]
[Footnote 14: _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).]
[Footnote 15: _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."