THE DEVELOPMENT OF LIFE
This leads me to the second main thesis or central scientific doctrine
of Professor Haeckel's treatise, the biological one; and it is this
which I shall now proceed to illustrate by further quotations, viz., the
connection as he conceives it between life and matter.
His view is that life has arisen from inorganic matter without
antecedent life. The experimental facts of biogenesis he discards in
favour of a hypothetical and at present undiscovered kind of spontaneous
generation. He assumes that the chemico-physical properties of carbon
confer so peculiar a power on its albuminoid compounds that they develop
into living protoplasm. He says that he formulated this view
thirty-three years ago, and that no better monistic theory has arisen to
replace it, while to reject some form of spontaneous generation is to
admit a miracle:—
"The hypothesis of spontaneous generation, and the allied
carbon-theory (viz., that 'carbon ... may be considered the
chemical basis of life,' p. 2) are of great importance in
deciding the long-standing conflict between the _teleological_
(dualistic) and the _mechanical_ (monistic) interpretation of
phenomena" (p. 91).
But it can hardly be maintained that a "hypothesis" is able to "decide"
any dispute. (See, however, Chapter VI.)
An unscientific reader could hardly imagine that the apparently detailed
account given in the next sentence of the automatic origin of life, as
it may have arisen on other planes, and as it must have arisen on this,
is of the nature of hypothesis:—
"First simple monera are formed by spontaneous generation, and
from these arise unicellular protists.... From these
unicellular protists arise, in the further course of evolution,
first social cell-communities, and subsequently tissue-forming
plants and animals" (p. 131).
In this hypothesis of automatic origin by the agency of matter and
energy alone, he could probably find many biologists to agree with him
speculatively; but he goes further than some of them, for he does not
limit the automatic or material development to animal and vegetable life
alone: he throws automatic consciousness in, too:—
"The 'cellular theory' ... has given us the first true
interpretation of the physical, chemical, and even the
psychological, processes of life" (p. 1).
"Consciousness, thought, and speculation are functions of the
ganglionic cells of the cortex of the brain" (p. 6).
"The peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is not, as du
Bois-Reymond and the dualistic school would have us believe, a
completely 'transcendental' problem: it is, as I showed
thirty-three years ago, a _physiological_ problem, and as such,
must be reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry" (p.
65).
Holding such a view concerning consciousness, in the teeth of the
general philosophic opinion of to-day, it is natural to find that of
orthodox psychology and psychologists he is contemptuous:—
"Most of our so-called 'psychologists' have little or no
knowledge of these indispensable foundations of
anthropology—anatomy, histology, ontogeny, and physiology....
Hence it is that most of the psychological literature of the day
is so much waste-paper" (p. 34).
"What we call the soul is, in my opinion, a natural phenomenon;
I therefore consider psychology to be a branch of natural
science—a section of physiology. Consequently, I must
emphatically assert from the commencement that we have no
different methods of research for that science than for any of
the others" (p. 32).
In this difficult Science of Psychology he evidently feels himself quite
at home. He assumes easily and gratuitously that there is a material
substance at the root of all mental processes whatever—called by
Clifford 'mind-stuff,' (see, however, Chapter IV. below,)—and he then
proceeds to lay down the law concerning ancient difficulties as
follows:—
"We shall give to this material basis of all psychic activity,
without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of
'psychoplasm.'
"The psychic processes are subject to the supreme, all-ruling
law of substance; not even in this province is there a single
exception to this highest cosmological law.
"The dogma of 'free-will,' another essential element of the
dualistic psychology, is similarly irreconcilable with the
universal law of substance" (p. 32).
"The freedom of the will is not an object for critical
scientific inquiry at all, for it is a pure dogma, based on an
illusion, and has no real existence" (p. 6).
Nevertheless, he realises that its apparent existence has to be
accounted for somehow, and accordingly he adopts the view that has
several times occurred to thinkers, viz., that the nucleus of all the
faculties enjoyed by a complete organism must be attributed in germ or
nucleus to the cells and even to the atoms out of which the organism is
built up.
His speculation as to the formation of a conscious organism, and to the
real meaning of its apparent sense of right and wrong and its apparent
control over its own acts, runs as follows, the will being reduced to
attraction and repulsion between the atoms:—
"Vogt's pyknotic theory of substance is that minute parts of
the universal substance, the centres of condensation, which
might be called _pyknatoms_, correspond in general to the
ultimate separate atoms of the kinetic theory; they differ,
however, very considerably in that they are credited with
sensation and inclination (or will-movement of the simplest
form), _with souls_, in a certain sense,—in harmony with the
old theory of Empedocles of the 'loves and hatreds of the
elements.'
"Moreover, these 'atoms with souls' do not float in empty space,
but in the continuous, extremely attenuated, intermediate
substance, which represents the uncondensed portion of the
primitive matter" (p. 77).
"'Attraction' and 'repulsion' seem to be the sources of
_will_—that momentous element of the soul which determines the
character of the individual" (p. 45).
"The positive ponderable matter, the element with the feeling of
like or desire, is continually striving to complete the process of
condensation, and thus collecting an enormous amount of _potential_
energy; the negative imponderable matter, on the other hand, offers
a perpetual and equal resistance to the further increase of its
strain and of the feeling of dislike connected therewith, and thus
gathers the utmost amount of _actual_ energy.
"I think that this pyknotic theory of substance will prove more
acceptable to every biologist who is convinced of the unity of
nature than the kinetic theory which prevails in physics to-day"
(p. 78).
In other words, he appeals to a presumed sentiment of biologists
against the knowledge of the physicist in his own sphere—a strange
attitude for a man of science. After this it is less surprising to find
him ignoring the elementary axiom that "action and reaction are equal
and opposite," _i.e._ that internal forces can have no motive power on
a body as a whole, and making the grotesque assertion that matter is
moved, not by external forces, but by internal likes and desires:—
"I must lay down the following theses, which are involved in Vogt's
pyknotic theory, as indispensable for a truly monistic view of
substance, and one that covers the whole field of organic and
inorganic nature:—
"1. The two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and
ether, are not dead and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are
endowed with sensation and will (though, naturally, of the lowest
grade); they experience an inclination for condensation, a dislike
of strain; they strive after the one and struggle against the
other" (p. 78).
My desire is to criticise politely, and hence I refrain from
characterising this sentence as a physicist should.
"Every shade of inclination, from complete indifference to the
fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical relation of the
various elements towards each other" (p. 79).
"On those phenomena we base our conviction that even the _atom_ is
not without a rudimentary form of sensation and will, or, as it is
better expressed, of feeling (_æsthesis_) and inclination
(_tropesis_)—that is, a universal 'soul' of the simplest
character" (p. 80).
"I gave the outlines of _cellular_ psychology in 1866 in my paper
on 'Cell-souls and Soul-cells'" (p. 63).
Thus, then, in order to explain life and mind and consciousness by
means of matter, all that is done is to assume that matter possesses
these unexplained attributes.
What the full meaning of that may be, and whether there be any
philosophic justification for any such idea, is a matter on which I
will not now express an opinion; but, at any rate, as it stands, it is
not science, and its formulation gives no sort of conception of what
life and will and consciousness really are.
Even if it were true, it contains nothing whatever in the nature of
explanation: it recognises the inexplicable, and relegates it to the
atoms, where it seems to hope that further quest may cease. Instead of
tackling the difficulty where it actually occurs; instead of
associating life, will, and consciousness with the organisms in which
they are actually in experience found, these ideas are foisted into the
atoms of matter; and then the properties which have been conferred on
the atoms are denied in all essential reality to the fully developed
organisms which those atoms help to compose!
I show later on (Chapters V. and X.) that there is no necessary
justification for assuming that a phenomenon exhibited by an aggregate
of particles must be possessed by the ingredients of which it is
composed; on the contrary, wholly new properties may make their
appearance simply by aggregation; though I admit that such a
proposition is by no means obvious, and that it may be a legitimate
subject for controversy. But into that question our author does not
enter; and even when he has conferred on the atoms these astounding
properties, he abstains from what would seem a natural development: for
his doctrine is that our power is actually less than that of the
atoms,—that instead of utilising the attractions and repulsions, or
"likes and dislikes," of our constituent particles, and directing them
by the aggregate of conscious will-power to some preconceived end, we
ourselves, on the contrary, are dominated and controlled by _them_; so
that freedom of the will is an illusion.
Freedom being thus disposed of, Immortality presents no difficulty; a
soul is the operation of a group of cells, and so the existence of man
clearly begins and ends with that of his terrestrial body:—
"The most important moment in the life of every man, as in that of
all other complex animals, is the moment in which he begins his
individual existence [coalescence of sperm cell and ovum] ... the
existence of the personality, the independent individual,
commences. This ontogenetic fact is supremely important, for the
most far-reaching conclusions may be drawn from it. In the first
place, we have a clear perception that man, like all the other
complex animals, inherits all his personal characteristics, bodily
and mental, from his parents; and further, we come to the momentous
conclusion that the new personality which arises thus can lay no
claim to 'immortality'" (p. 22).
Others beside Haeckel have held this kind of view at one time or
another; but, unlike him, most of them have recanted and seen the error
of their ways. He is, indeed, aware that several of his great German
contemporaries have been through this phase of thought and come out on
the other side, notably the physiologist-philosopher Wundt, and he
refers to them fairly and instructively thus:—
"What seems to me of special importance and value in Wundt's work
is that he 'extends the law of the persistence of force for the
first time to the psychic world.'
"Thirty years afterwards, in a second edition, Wundt emancipated
himself from the fundamental errors of the first, and says that he
'learned many years ago to consider the work a sin of his youth';
it 'weighed on him as a kind of crime, from which he longed to free
himself as soon as possible.' In the first, psychology is treated
as a _physical_ science, on the same laws as the whole of
physiology, of which it is only a part; thirty years afterwards he
finds psychology to be a _spiritual_ science, with principles and
objects entirely different from those of physical science.
"I myself," says Haeckel, "naturally consider the 'youthful sin' of
the young physiologist Wundt to be a correct knowledge of nature,
and energetically defend it against the antagonistic view of the
old philosopher Wundt. This entire change of philosophical
principles, which we find in Wundt, as we found it in Kant,
Virchow, du Bois-Reymond, Carl Ernst Baer, and others, is very
interesting" (p. 36).
So it is: very interesting!
Professor Haeckel is so imbued with biological science that he loses
his sense of proportion; and his enthusiasm for the work of Darwin
leads him to attribute to it an exaggerated scope, and enables him to
eliminate the third of the Kantian trilogy:—
"Darwin's theory of the natural origin of species at once gave us
the solution of the mystic 'problem of creation,' the great
'question of all questions'—the problem of the true character and
origin of man himself" (p. 28) [_cf._ p. 19 above].
It is a great deal more than that patient observer and deep thinker
Charles Darwin ever claimed, nor have his wiser disciples claimed it
for him. It is familiar that he explained how variations once arisen
would be clinched, if favourable in the struggle, by the action of
heredity and survival; but the source or origin of the variations
themselves he did not explain.
Do they arise by guidance or by chance? Is natural selection akin to
the verified and practical processes of artificial selection? or is it
wholly alien to them and influenced by chance alone? The latter view
can hardly be considered a complete explanation, though it is verbally
the one adopted by Professor Haeckel, and it is of interest to see what
he means by chance:—
"Since impartial study of the evolution of the world teaches us
that there is no definite aim and no special purpose to be traced
in it, there seems to be no alternative but to leave everything to
'blind chance.'
"One group of philosophers affirms, in accordance with its
teleological conception, that the whole cosmos is an orderly
system, in which every phenomenon has its aim and purpose; there is
no such thing as chance. The other group, holding a mechanical
theory, expresses itself thus: The development of the universe is a
monistic mechanical process, in which we discover no aim or purpose
whatever; what we call design in the organic world is a special
result of biological agencies; neither in the evolution of the
heavenly bodies nor in that of the crust of our earth do we find
any trace of a controlling purpose—all is the result of chance.
Each party is right—according to its definition of chance. The
general law of causality, taken in conjunction with the law of
substance, teaches us that every phenomenon has a mechanical cause;
in this sense there is no such thing as chance. Yet it is not only
lawful, but necessary, to retain the term for the purpose of
expressing the simultaneous occurrence of two phenomena, which are
not causally related to each other, but of which each has its own
mechanical cause, independent of that of the other.
"Everybody knows that chance, in this monistic sense, plays an
important part in the life of man and in the universe at large.
That, however, does not prevent us from recognising in each
'chance' event, as we do in the evolution of the entire cosmos, the
universal sovereignty of nature's supreme law, _the law of
substance_" (p. 97).
_Illegitimate Negations._
With regard to the possibility of Revelation, or information derived
from super-human sources, naturally he ridicules the idea; but in
connection with the mode of origin and development of life on this
planet he makes the following sensible and noteworthy admission:—
"It is very probable that these processes have gone on likewise on
other planets, and that other planets have produced other types of
the higher plants and animals, which are unknown on our earth;
perhaps from some higher animal stem, which is superior to the
vertebrate in formation, higher beings have arisen who far
transcend us earthly men in intelligence."
Exactly; it is quite probable. It is, in fact, improbable that man is
the highest type of existence. But if Professor Haeckel is ready to
grant that probability or even possibility, why does he so strenuously
exclude the idea of revelation, _i.e._, the acquiring of imparted
information from higher sources? Savages can certainly have
"revelation" from civilised men. Why, then, should it be inconceivable
that human beings should receive information from beings in the
universe higher than themselves? It may or may not be the case that
they do; but there is no scientific ground for dogmatism on the
subject, nor any reason for asserting the inconceivability of such a
thing.
Professor Haeckel would no doubt reply to some of the above criticism
that he is not only a man of science, but also a philosopher, that he
is looking ahead, beyond ascertained fact, and that it is his
philosophic views which are in question rather than his scientific
statements. To some extent it is both, as has been seen; but if even
the above be widely known—if it be generally understood that the most
controversial portions of his work are mainly speculative and
hypothetical, it can be left to its proper purpose of doing good rather
than harm. It can only do harm by misleading, it can do considerable
good by criticising and stimulating and informing; and it is an
interesting fact that a man so well acquainted with biology as
Professor Haeckel is should have been so strongly impressed with the
truth of some aspect of the philosophic system known as Monism. Many
men of science have likewise been impressed with the probability, or
possibility, of some such ultimate unification.
The problem to be solved—and an old-world problem indeed it is—is the
range, and especially the nature, of the connection between mind and
matter; or, let us say, between the material universe on the one hand,
and the vital, the mental, the conscious and spiritual universe or
universes, on the other.
It would be extremely surprising if any attempt yet made had already
been thoroughly successful, though the attack on the idealistic side
appears to many of us physicists to be by far the most hopeful line of
advance. An excessively wide knowledge of existence would seem to be
demanded for the success of any such most ambitious attempt; but,
though none of us may hope to achieve it, many may strive to make some
contribution towards the great end; and those who think they have such
a contribution to make, or such a revelation entrusted to them, are
bound to express it to the best of their ability, and leave it to their
contemporaries and successors to assimilate such portions of it as are
true, and to develop it further. From this point of view Professor
Haeckel is no doubt amply justified in his writings; but,
unfortunately, it appears to me that although he has been borne forward
on the advancing wave of monistic philosophy, he has, in its
specification, attempted such precision of materialistic detail, and
subjected it to so narrow and limited a view of the totality of
experience, that the progress of thought has left him, as well as his
great English exemplar, Herbert Spencer, somewhat high and dry, belated
and stranded by the tide of opinion which has now begun to flow in
another direction. He is, as it were, a surviving voice from the middle
of the nineteenth century; he represents, in clear and eloquent
fashion, opinions which then were prevalent among many leaders of
thought—opinions which they themselves in many cases, and their
successors still more, lived to outgrow; so that by this time Professor
Haeckel's voice is as the voice of one crying in the wilderness, not as
the pioneer or vanguard of an advancing army, but as the despairing
shout of a standard-bearer, still bold and unflinching, but abandoned
by the retreating ranks of his comrades as they march to new orders in
a fresh and more idealistic direction.