The Riddle of the Universe at the close of the nineteenth century

by Ernst Haeckel

V.—PROGRESS OF ANTHROPOLOGY

In a certain sense, the true science of man, rational anthropology, takes precedence of every other science. The saying of the ancient sage, “Man, know thyself,” and that other famous maxim, “Man is the measure of all things,” have been accepted and applied from all time. And yet this science—taking it in its widest sense—has languished longer than all other sciences in the fetters of tradition and superstition. We saw in the first section how slowly and how late the science of the human organism was developed. One of its chief branches—embryology—was not firmly established until 1828 (by Baer), and another, of equal importance—the cellular theory—until 1838 (by Schwann). And it was even later still when the answer was given to the “question of all questions,” the great riddle of the origin of man. Although Lamarck had pointed out the only path to a correct solution of it in 1809, and had affirmed the descent of man from the ape, it fell to Darwin to establish the affirmation securely fifty years afterwards, and to Huxley to collect the most important proofs of it in 1863, in his Place of Man in Nature. I have myself made the first attempt, in my Anthropogeny (1874), to present in their historical connection the entire series of ancestors through which our race has been slowly evolved from the animal kingdom in the course of many millions of years.

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[CONCLUSION]

The number of world-riddles has been continually diminishing in the course of the nineteenth century through the aforesaid progress of a true knowledge of nature. Only one comprehensive riddle of the universe now remains—the problem of substance. What is the real character of this mighty world-wonder that the realistic scientist calls Nature or the Universe, the idealist philosopher calls Substance or the Cosmos, the pious believer calls Creator or God? Can we affirm to-day that the marvellous progress of modern cosmology has solved this “problem of substance,” or at least that it has brought us nearer to the solution?

The answer to this final question naturally varies considerably according to the stand-point of the philosophic inquirer and his empirical acquaintance with the real world. We grant at once that the innermost character of nature is just as little understood by us as it was by Anaximander and Empedocles twenty-four hundred years ago, by Spinoza and Newton two hundred years ago, and by Kant and Goethe one hundred years ago. We must even grant that this essence of substance becomes more mysterious and enigmatic the deeper we penetrate into the knowledge of its attributes, matter and energy, and the more thoroughly we study its countless phenomenal forms and their evolution. We do not know the “thing in itself” that lies behind these knowable phenomena. But why trouble about this enigmatic “thing in itself” when we have no means of investigating it, when we do not even clearly know whether it exists or not? Let us, then, leave the fruitless brooding over this ideal phantom to the “pure metaphysician,” and let us instead, as “real physicists,” rejoice in the immense progress which has been actually made by our monistic philosophy of nature.

Towering above all the achievements and discoveries of the century we have the great, comprehensive “law of substance,” the fundamental law of the constancy of matter and force. The fact that substance is everywhere subject to eternal movement and transformation gives it the character also of the universal law of evolution. As this supreme law has been firmly established, and all others are subordinate to it, we arrive at a conviction of the universal unity of nature and the eternal validity of its laws. From the gloomy problem of substance we have evolved the clear law of substance. The monism of the cosmos which we establish thereon proclaims the absolute dominion of “the great eternal iron laws” throughout the universe. It thus shatters, at the same time, the three central dogmas of the dualistic philosophy—the personality of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will.

Many of us certainly view with sharp regret, or even with a profound sorrow, the death of the gods that were so much to our parents and ancestors. We must console ourselves in the words of the poet:

“The times are changed, old systems fall,
And new life o’er their ruins dawns.”

The older view of idealistic dualism is breaking up with all its mystic and anthropistic dogmas; but upon the vast field of ruins rises, majestic and brilliant, the new sun of our realistic monism, which reveals to us the wonderful temple of nature in all its beauty. In the sincere cult of “the true, the good, and the beautiful,” which is the heart of our new monistic religion, we find ample compensation for the anthropistic ideals of “God, freedom, and immortality” which we have lost.

Throughout this discussion of the riddles of the universe I have clearly defined my consistent monistic position and its opposition to the still prevalent dualistic theory. In this I am supported by the agreement of nearly all modern scientists who have the courage to accept a rounded philosophical system. I must not, however, take leave of my readers without pointing out in a conciliatory way that this strenuous opposition may be toned down to a certain degree on clear and logical reflection—may, indeed, even be converted into a friendly harmony. In a thoroughly logical mind, applying the highest principles with equal force in the entire field of the cosmos—in both organic and inorganic nature—the antithetical positions of theism and pantheism, vitalism and mechanism, approach until they touch each other. Unfortunately, consecutive thought is a rare phenomenon in nature. The great majority of philosophers are content to grasp with the right hand the pure knowledge that is built on experience, but they will not part with the mystic faith based on revelation, to which they cling with the left. The best type of this contradictory dualism is the conflict of pure and practical reason in the critical philosophy of the most famous of modern thinkers, Immanuel Kant.

On the other hand, the number is always small of the thinkers who will boldly reject dualism and embrace pure monism. That is equally true of consistent idealists and theists, and of logical realists and pantheists. However, the reconciliation of these apparent antitheses, and, consequently, the advance towards the solution of the fundamental riddle of the universe, is brought nearer to us every year in the ever-increasing growth of our knowledge of nature. We may, therefore, express a hope that the approaching twentieth century will complete the task of resolving the antitheses, and, by the construction of a system of pure monism, spread far and wide the long-desired unity of world-conception. Germany’s greatest thinker and poet, whose one hundred and fiftieth anniversary will soon be upon us—Wolfgang Goethe—gave this “philosophy of unity” a perfect poetic expression, at the very beginning of the century, in his immortal poems, Faust, Prometheus, and God and the World:

“By eternal laws
Of iron ruled,
Must all fulfil
The cycle of
Their destiny.”