There are two Latin proverbs which are both good rules for
controversialists who seek for the truth on different roads. The one
reads: _In verbis simus faciles dummodo conveniamus in re_, the other
reads: _In verbis simus difficiles ut conveniamus in re_. A difference
of terms often prevents two thinkers from noticing that they actually
agree. Therefore let us be lenient in terms and never lose sight of their
meaning and purport. On the other hand terms are not indifferent, and
the selection of terms should not be regarded as arbitrary. In order to
arrive at a solid and permanent agreement, permanent because it is based
upon objectively demonstrable truth, we have to be scrupulously careful
with our terminology; and we must not allow the arbitrary employment of
terms where they are inappropriate. An inappropriate usage of terms will
lead us astray and involve us in confusion and error.
Says Professor Haeckel:
“The divergences which exhibit themselves in our respective
unitary conceptions of the world are in part only apparent
and in part occasioned by the divergent significances of our
fundamental ideas.”
This seems to me very true and, indeed, I have very good evidence that it
is true. Professor Haeckel writes in his letter to me:
“I have marked in _red_ those passages of your kind review of
my ‘Anthropogeny’ in which I agree with you and in _blue_ those
in which I differ.”
Now I find all those passages where I should have anticipated an
objection on Professor Haeckel’s part marked red, while a blue mark
appears where in my opinion there is only a difference of terminology. It
is the following sentence on page 441:
“Psychic life is absent so far as we can see in the primordial
world-substance as it appears in the form of a nebula; it is
absent still in the primordial state of planets. It appears
with the subjective states of awareness that rise into
existence in organised life. The subjectivity of unorganised
matter is, in comparison with man’s subjectivity, to be
considered as a blank; i. e., if there is in it a state of
awareness, which we have reasons to doubt, it is apparently
without meaning; it does not symbolise external objects;
it is no mind; it is, as it were, blind. Yet the aim of
evolution being the development of psychical life, shows that
the subjectivity of unorganised matter is spiritual in its
innermost nature.”
This difference is probably a difference of terminology only, for I
insist most strongly on the doctrine that all nature is alive. However, I
make a difference between “life” and “soul.” Nature is alive throughout,
but it is not ensouled; the action of chemical elements and of the
falling stone are no psychical actions.[83]
Another blue stroke appears at the following passage:
“We grant willingly that mechanical explanations will serve
for all motions that take place in the world; even the motions
of the brain take place in strict obedience to the laws of
molar and molecular mechanics. But a mechanical explanation
is not applicable to that which is not motion. If it were
applicable it would not be desirable, for it would be of no
avail. Mechanical explanations are to be limited to mechanical
phenomena. Feeling however is not a mechanical phenomenon,
and an idea, being a special and a very complex kind of a
feeling, or rather and more accurately expressed, being the
special meaning of a very complex feeling, is not a mechanical
phenomenon either.”
The subsequent sentences are again approved by Professor Haeckel; they
are marked red:
“It is true that when a feeling takes place and when an
idea is thought in the brain of an organised being, that a
certain nervous action takes place. The nervous action is
a motion and this motion represents a definite amount of
energy. There is no theoretical difficulty, although there are
almost insurmountable practical difficulties, in measuring
the definite amount of potential energy that is changed into
kinetic energy when a man thinks. Yet the brain-motion is not
the idea and by a mechanical explanation of the brain-motion
we have not even touched the problem of what the nature of the
idea is, why ideas originate and how they act.”
We do not understand how Professor Haeckel can object to the view that
ideas and feelings are no motions. We fully grant that the nervous
action that takes place when an idea is thought is a motion, and that,
considered as a brain-action, it is mechanically explainable. But by
feeling we understand not the brain-action but a state of awareness, and
states of awareness are not objective phenomena, they are subjective
phenomena; whereby we do not at all deny that there are no feelings which
must not in their objective existence at the same time be supposed to be
brain-motions.
Feelings are not motions but ideas are still less motions. Ideas are
the meanings which certain feelings that are representative of certain
sets of experiences have acquired. Is the meaning of a word a motion?
Can the significance of words be mechanically explained? The meaning of
ideas, the significance of words, the representativeness of feelings are
phenomena which have nothing to do with motions but constitute a domain
of their own.
Professor Haeckel in our opinion can mean only that there are no feelings
in themselves, but all our feelings are at the same time brain-motions,
and as such they are mechanical phenomena. We have to add, however, that
an explanation of the mechanism of brain-action does not as yet explain
the significance of mental operations.
Professor Haeckel insists so strongly upon his view of monism as being
mechanicalism that this seems to mark a difference in our conceptions
which might be of consequence.
I was very glad to notice the long strokes of red along the passages
which contain my proposition that “the evolution of organised life is a
natural process having a definite aim”; further, along the paragraphs
concerning the world-order as being moral in so far as the world-order is
the basis of morality, and also those which represent God as being that
power of the world-order obedience to which is called morality.
Professor Haeckel’s agreement with these passages indicates that those
expressions of his to which we should take exception, and which he
employs again in his article of the present number, might not be regarded
as divergences.
Professor Haeckel’s definition of God appears to us insufficient, and
also his definition of immortality.
God is not only the sum-total of matter and force, God is also that
quality of the world which the naturalist describes in natural laws.
God is the life of the world, he is that feature of existence which
makes mind and knowledge possible. In addition he is that which men
call progress, the ideal of the future that lives in our souls and the
principle of evolution in nature.
There is a deeper truth too in the doctrine of immortality. There is a
conservation of matter and energy, but there is also a preservation of
soul. Says Professor Haeckel, “the human soul is a very highly developed
vertebral soul.” If that is so, the soul of our fossil ancestors
continues to live in us. This soul has been altered, it is true, but the
alterations are not so much a loss as a gain. The alterations consist in
the additional growth of new powers and represent a higher development.
All that which was worth preserving has been preserved.
And as it has been in the past, so we can confidently expect that it
will be in the future. All that is worth preserving of our souls will be
preserved in the ages to come. Our souls will live and develop to higher
possibilities. They will be transmitted from generation to generation,
advancing on the unlimited path of evolutionary progress.