The fundamental biogenetic law, as interpreted by Haeckel is a complete
contradiction of the very nature of the theory of Natural Selection.
Like every purely scientific mode of envisaging things, the latter
comes in on an unaccented beat, so to speak. It starts out with a given
difference of potentiality, with respect to which one does nothing
but observe the symptoms furnished by the process of compensation;
refraining, however, from every interpretation of how these differences
could ever have arisen. In the interpretation of the evolutionist, on
the other hand, the facts upon which the fundamental biogenetic law
is based of necessity point in the direction of a first beginning;
they converge upon the idea of the “setting in of life.” Hence they
constrain to a scientific form of faith, which necessitates acrimonious
warfare against the church-form of the same, if one cannot agree that
the primordial cell, existing all complete, and the “In the beginning
God created the heaven and the earth,” may be regarded simply as
different attempts at the definition of one and the same occurrence.
It is the feud betwixt dog and wolf. In the dusk they might pass for
mates, were it not that each is busy trying to take a bite out of the
other’s throat. But, like all atheists from the most ancient times,
modern monism, too, forgets that to challenge the _bon dieu_ to single
combat is, as politicians would say, to “recognize him in principle,”
and that at bottom this duel can be nothing but a _modus vivendi_ for
both parties.
Darwin’s original position entirely obviates such a strait as this. It
is, as all science should be, strictly a-moral. With disconcerting--or
if one likes, refreshing--coolness, the biological pieces are set up on
the cosmic chess-board, and a game begun. The first move of the opening
is already made, and now move after move follows of simple necessity.
Where, for example, Darwin speaks of the cuckoo’s instinct, he makes no
attempt to account for the same by itself. He rather begins, “Now let
us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the
habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in
another bird’s nest ...” and so on;[26] which simply means: the game is
already in full swing, and so one move follows from the other.
Darwin might be called the grand master of the art of biological
chess. Nothing was further from his mind--originally at least--than
turning the game to earnest; from the fact that a biological game is
in progress, to seek to deduce an answer to the question as to _how_
such a thing could ever have come about. That would only mean spoiling
the whole game. And as a matter of fact, by none has it been more
completely spoiled for him than by his own followers. To them it is
that Bunge’s words are directed: “The Darwinians teach that everything
is cleared up, that only the riddle of heredity yet remains to be
solved. But it is precisely this riddle of heredity which makes up
the riddle the Darwinians imagine they have explained. What, then, is
inherited? In the case of man there is inherited the capacity to evolve
a man out of a cell. For as long as one remains unable to solve this
riddle--the riddle of ontogeny--one remains still less able to solve
the riddle of phylogeny.”[27]
Darwin himself so chose his position that at all times he could look
his God in the face. The unalleviated insipidity of his position is
precisely the proof of the exact scientific form in which he--the
first to do so--laid hold of the biological problem. But in this mode
of laying hold of it, the fundamental biogenetic law with its various
perspectives has no place whatever.
But neither do the rudimentary formations admit of being read by the
Darwinian formula. They must have arisen through persistent disuse. In
the mechanistic world-view, however, an arising through disuse is a
sheer contradiction. Every disuse implies the presence of an arbitrary
impulsion. In the strictly mechanistic apprehension of things, the
whole universe in each of its impulsions is to be apprehended as the
relapse of some other impulsion, that is, as process of compensation;
and every deficiency of activity in this never-resting process of
compensation, practically as well as theoretically, would be a
miracle. As in the mechanical cosmogony of the physicist, so also in
the Darwinian cosmogony, the single active impulsion in the whole
mechanism remains the diversity given with the various forms of life;
and as above the physical, so also here the biological event becomes
simply the compensation of these countless single diversities. Hence
every theory of disuse is synonymous with the introduction of a
foreign, non-mechanical impulsion.
The Darwinian formula lays hold of the phenomena of life only in a
certain medial tract. Somewhat as a scale of temperature-measurement
lays hold of the phenomena of heat only in a certain medial tract, and
above and below that tract is of no service, so the theory of natural
selection is of no service as regards the fundamental biogenetic law on
the one hand, and the rudimentary formations on the other.
The third and weightiest consideration, however, is this, that the
fact of the formation of hybrids lies neither above nor below the
scale, but altogether outside of it; following our metaphor, to apply
the Darwinian idea to them would mean to seek somehow to apply the
heat-scale to electric or magnetic phenomena. So soon as the evolution
theory attempts to bring the fact of the formation of hybrids within
its sphere of operation, it annihilates the possibility of its own
existence. Natural selection is only possible in self-copulation.
A self-copulation to the point of sterility is a contradiction in
itself; hence Darwin himself is here obliged to have recourse to
unknown impulsions. “The general sterility of crossed species may
safely be looked at, not as a special acquirement or endowment,
but as incidental on changes of an unknown nature in their sexual
elements.”[28] Again, “The extinction of species has been involved in
the most gratuitous mystery.... We need not wonder at extinction; if
we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in imagining for a
moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the
existence of each species depends.”[29] This, however, means nothing
but putting the question, “Who says we have a right to inquire into
everything?” And that, again, means nothing but to be a good Christian.
That, of course, is not the slightest disparagement to the teaching, so
long as one takes it for what it really is--a standard of measurement
for the facts, a formula by means of which one may more easily express
them. It would be passing sentence of death upon it, as also upon the
law of the conservation of energy, if, apprehending it in childish
wise, one interpreted it as a genuine world-conception, as a law that
should not merely supply a _reading_ of the facts, but account for
these facts themselves.
When modern biology inclines to set aside the Darwinian teaching in
favour of the more novel theories of mutation, it is acting like that
countryman who bought himself a pair of spectacles, expecting them not
only to make print clear to his eyes but also teach him how to read,
and who then made complaint that the glasses did not do their duty.
The theory of natural selection, as well as every other theory, may
be likened to reading-glasses. It reveals the facts in such a way as
to lighten the labour for weakly eyes, but it does not teach one to
understand the facts themselves. And as with glasses, so with theories;
one has to change them, on an average, every five years.
But let us return to our subject proper.
Here also the Buddha supplies a single concept in the place of two
miracles. That to which science gives the name of rudimentary organs
are here not the results of continuous disuse--once more I ask, how
in a purely mechanical apprehension of things disuse can ever set
in at all--but, precisely the same as the facts of the fundamental
biogenetic law, they are witnesses to a beginningless journey up and
down throughout the entire domain of living creatures. In the place of
the double miracle--a threatened absolute beginning in the facts of
the fundamental biogenetic law, and a threatened absolute end in the
fact of rudimentary organs--one single concept! And the formation of
hybrids is here robbed of all its danger. Beings are neither heirs of
their progenitors nor bequeathers to their posterity; they are heirs of
themselves.
In such a mode of apprehending life, that which we basely and vulgarly
call co-ition acquires a meaning of its own. Again there is that
delicate irony that comes only of commanding height of position.
The intercourse of the sexes is only the _attempt_ at co-ition, at
coming together. In plain truth, both man and woman are nothing but
the surrogates of nature, which makes use of them in order to render
possible the real co-ition, the conflux of Kamma and its material.
Hence, species and sub-species count for nothing. Such a “something” as
species is nowhere to be found in actuality. It is nothing but a way
of apprehending the phenomena of life.
It may be rejoined, “But as a matter of fact beings are so constituted
as to admit of their being grouped together into species. This is
so in the scientific apprehension of things, where the new being is
exclusively derived from the material of the parents, in accordance
with nature. But in the Buddhistic apprehension of things, there is no
reason whatever why two living beings, so far as form is concerned,
should be like one another at all.”
To this, reply may be made, Two living beings exactly alike as to form
are not to be found. Groupings, of no matter what kind, are always
matters of accommodation; which means that they are only made possible
by the neglecting of trifling divergencies. The fool in _King Lear_,
informing us why the Pleiades has seven stars, says, “Because there are
not eight of them.” There are not eight of them, however, not because
an eighth is not there, but just because we leave out the remainder, do
not count them in. So also is it with species. Of course, I am never
in any doubt as to what it is that I name man, dog, cow, and so forth,
for these concepts have first been settled by myself. But as that which
I comprehend with my horizon changes content at every step I take, so
also do the concepts man, dog, and so forth. Everything is comprehended
in an uninterrupted self-accommodation, self-attunement, each after
other, that only runs its course with sufficient sluggishness,
provisionally to render possible and justify the groupings of natural
science in order to better understanding. To ask why precisely
there are the forms that there are, is to ask why in general there
is anything given at all. It simply is so! The question would have
some meaning were stationary forms here present from eternity and to
eternity. But all these forms are nothing but a perpetual forming
itself into itself from beginninglessness down to the present moment.
To say that there is a world, a reality at all, is to say that there
_must_ be resemblances. Otherwise a self-attunement of energy and
material were utterly impossible. The resemblances, and therewith in
the second place the possibility of classific syntheses are real and
conceptual _preliminary condition_ of all actuality--yea, actuality
itself.
Another objection which every thinking man must make is one that out of
prudence is raised by the theory of descent itself. It is this: “How
can the theory of a gradual unbroken ascent in the evolutional series
be reconciled with the simultaneous existence of the lowest alongside
of the highest forms?” Here the theory of descent is unable even to
make an attempt at a satisfactory explanation. Darwin himself on this
point says, “Such objections as the above would be fatal to my view,
if it included advance in organization as a necessary contingent.”[30]
This declaration throws a flood of clearest light upon Darwin’s whole
attitude towards the theory of evolution, and at the same time upon the
arbitrariness with which he has been interpreted by his followers.
Now let us consider the other side. The Buddha-thought, regarded from
the physiological position, is based upon the insight that every
living being is a singly determined existence. The question is, Are
there facts in nature which would contradict this one and single
determination?
I confine myself to the most promising instance, that of the amœba
multiplying themselves by fission. This fact, interpreted according to
science, would mean that here energy divides itself, exists alongside
itself, since Weismann says that at the moment of partition neither
of the two cells, if “endowed with self-consciousness,” could say
which was mother and which daughter. “I have no doubt that each half
would look upon the other as the daughter, and itself as the original
individual,” he says in his _Dauer des Lebens_.
Were there any real necessity to compel such an interpretation,
then the single determination of energies would be riddled through
and through. But there is no compelling necessity, nay, nor even
possibility, of interpreting what happens after such a fashion. One
is equally entitled to say that in the sundered sections a new energy
lays hold. That this daughter-section continues its movements without a
break is no proof of the orthodox conception of what takes place. The
human sperm-cell, after its expulsion from the old organism, also for
a longer time retains its own particular movements. It works itself
towards the ovum against the vibratory movements of the epithelium;
thus, so to speak, against the stream.
Incidentally it may be remarked that this fact alone, interpreted
according to physiology, would give rise to a difficulty that must
render insoluble the entire problem of fecundation. For this movement
of the sperm-cell renders necessary the question, “When precisely does
the actual moment of fecundation occur? Is it at the first signs of
conception? or at the moment when the sperm-cell penetrates the sheath
of the ovum? or at the moment of their first mutual contact? or has
not fecundation already virtually set in with this endeavour of the
sperm-cell to get to the ovum-cell?” One might then inquire, after the
fashion of jurists: “At what moment precisely is the deed born? Is it
when I carry it out? or when I get ready to carry it out? or when I
form the resolve to carry it out?” Such are the difficulties that arise
when one seizes the problem of procreation in a purely materialistic
way. And one is bound to seize it in a purely materialistic way if one
would seize it scientifically.
A single fact which contradicts the unique determination of a living
being is not to be found, and never can be found. For this, it would
be necessary that energy itself should be accessible, seizable by
sense; and that is a contradiction in itself. One energy only is
accessible--my consciousness. And this is _the_ uniquely determined.
So much for the attitude of the Buddha-thought to the biological
problem. To procure acceptance for such views, a broad high-way would
first need to be driven through the jungle of scientific opinions.
Science divides consciousness and life, making the former merely
an accident of the latter, and seeking and seeing it only in the
line of matter. The processes of fission in unicellular organisms
call up visions of an “eternal life.” Thereupon men halt and say
with full conviction--and justification also, “The continuity of
consciousness is apparently interrupted; the continuity of life is
never interrupted”;[31] or else, “It is no cell-complex that dies,
but a concept”;[32] in saying which, so far as the form of the words
goes, they entirely agree with the Buddha, and yet in meaning stand so
desperately far from him that every hope of an understanding between
them is out of the question.
This inward divergence reveals itself here and there in the _sequelæ_:
All the facts connected with the doctrine of generation and the
history of evolution, which in the scientific mode of envisaging them
become insoluble problems, with the Buddha are all resolved in _one_
thought--that of individual beginninglessness represented by the line
of Kamma, and so become _the evangel of a new world-conception_.
X