Chapter 4

The school of the twentieth century, flourishing anew on this firm ground, shall have to unfold to the rising youth not only the wonderful truths of the evolution of the cosmos, but also the inexhaustible treasures of beauty lying everywhere hidden therein. Whether we marvel at the majesty of the lofty mountains or the magic world of the sea, whether with the telescope we explore the infinitely great wonders of the starry heaven, or with the microscope the yet more surprising wonders of a life infinitely small, everywhere does Divine Nature open up to us an inexhaustible fountain of aesthetic enjoyment. Blind and insensible have the great majority of mankind hitherto wandered through this glorious wonderland of a world; a sickly and unnatural theology has made it repulsive as a "vale of tears." But now, at last, it is given to the mightily advancing human mind to have its eyes opened; it is given to it to show that a true knowledge of nature affords full satisfaction and inexhaustible nourishment not only for its searching understanding, but also for its yearning spirit.

Monistic investigation of nature as knowledge of the true, monistic ethic as training for the good, monistic aesthetic as pursuit of the beautiful--these are the three great departments of our monism: by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow the knee in adoration; in the unforced combination and mutual supplementing of these we gain the pure idea of God.[20] To this "triune" Divine Ideal shall the coming twentieth century build its altars.

Ten years ago I was present at the celebration of the third centenary of the university of Würzburg, which forty years ago I had entered as a medical student. The festal address on that occasion was delivered in the university church by the then rector, the distinguished chemist, Johannes Wislicenus. His concluding words were: "God, the Spirit of Goodness and of Truth, grant it." I now add, "and the Spirit of Beauty." It is in this sense that I also, on this commemorative occasion, dedicate to you my best wishes. May the investigation of nature's secrets flourish and prosper in this corner of our Thüringian land also, and may the fruits of knowledge, ripening here in Altenburg, contribute no less to the culture of the spirit and to the advancement of true religion, than those which three hundred and seventy years ago the great reformer, Martin Luther, brought to the light of day in another corner of Thüringen, on the Wartburg at Eisenach.

Between Wartburg and Altenburg, on the northern border of Thüringen, lies 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).]