Footnotes
This has been urged often enough even by scientific investigators. In such cases they have frequently been reproached for dragging miracles into nature when they call a halt in face of the “underivable” and the “mysterious.” This is a complete misunderstanding. With miracles and with the supernatural in the historical sense of these words, this mode of regarding nature has nothing whatever to do. It would be much more reasonable to maintain the converse: that there exists between supernatural ideas and the belief in the absolute explicability and rationalisation of nature a peculiar mutual relation and attraction. For, if we think out the relation clearly, we must see that all real and consistent belief in miracles demands as its most effective background the clearest possible explicability of nature. It pictures to itself two natures, so to speak: nature and supernature, and the latter of these interpolates itself into the former in the form of sudden and occasional interruptions; that is to say, as miracles. The purpose of miracles is to be recognised as such, as events absolutely different from the ordinary course of happening. And they are most likely thus to be recognised when nature itself is translucent and mathematical. Thus we find that supernaturalism quite readily accepts, and even insists upon a rationalistic explanation of nature. But this is quite incorrect. Nature is not so thoroughly rationalised and calculable as such a point of view would have us believe.
The really religious element in belief in miracles is that it, too, in its own way, is seeking after mystery, dependence and providence. It fails because it naïvely seeks for these in isolated and exceptional acts, which have no analogy to other phenomena. It regards these as arbitrary acts, and does so because it overlooks or underestimates the fact that they have to be reckoned with throughout the whole of nature.
If we wish to, we can even read the “biogenetic law” in Dante. See “Purgatory,” p. 26, where the embryo attains successively to the plant, animal and human stages:
“Anima fatta la virtute attiva,
Qual d'una pianta....
Come fungo marino ...
Ma come d'animal divenga fante.”
This is, of course, nothing else than Aristotle's theory of evolution, done into terzarima, and corrected by St. Thomas.
For the latest application of these views, even in relation to the “biogenetic fundamental law,” see the finely finished “Morpho-genetic Studies” of T. Garbowski (Jena, 1903): “The greater part of what is usually referred to the so-called fundamental biogenetic law depends on illusion, since all things undeveloped or imperfect must bear a greater or less resemblance one to another.”
The variation-increment of the selection theory ought to be a differential. But in many cases it is not so. As for instance in symmetrical correlated variation, &c. In the struggle for existence it is usually not advantages of organisation which are decisive, but the chance advantages of situation, though these have no “selective” influence. The case of the tapeworm is illustrative.
His work, “Die organischen Regulationen, Vorbereitungen zu einer Theorie des Lebens,” 1901, is a systematic survey of illustrations of the “autonomy” of vital processes. In his “Analytischen Theorie der organischen Entwicklung,” Leipzig, 1894, his special biological (“ontogenetic”) views are still in process of development. But even here his sharp rejection of Darwinism is complete (see VI., Par. 3, on “the absurd assumption of a contingent character of morphogenesis”). It is not for nothing that the book is dedicated to Wigand and C. F. von Baer. He says that in regard to development we must “picture to ourselves external agents acting as stimuli and achieving transformations which have the character, not analysable as to its causes, of being adapted to their end, that is, capable of life.” Incomplete, but very instructive too, are his discussions on the causal and the teleological outlook, the necessity for both, and the impossibility of eliminating the latter from the study of nature. In a series of subsequent works, Driesch has defined and strengthened this position, finally reaching the declaration: “Darwin belongs to history, just like that other curiosity of our century, the Hegelian philosophy. Both are variations on the theme, ‘How to lead a whole generation by the nose!’ ” (“Biolog. Zentralbl.” 1896, p. 16). We are concerned with Driesch more particularly in Chapter IX.
To Aristotle the “Soul” (ψυχὴ ϕυτική Psyche, phytike) was in the first place a purely biological principle. But by means of his elastic formula of Potentiality and Actuality he was able to make the transition to the psychological with apparent ease. The biological is to him in “potentiality” what sensation, impulse, imagination are in “realisation.” But the biological and the psychological are not related to one another as stages. Growth, form, development, &c., cannot be carried over through any “actualisatio” into sensation, consciousness and the like.
An essentially different question is, whether the biological may not be not indeed derivable from the psychological—that would be the same mistake—but dependent on, and conditioned by it, just as we regard the voluntary moving and directing of the body as dependent on it. An imaginative interpretation of the world will always take this course.
These ideas are not fully worked out, and they are disguised in poetic form—for instance, when even the play of flames is compared to vital processes. But if they be stripped of their poetic garb, they lead to the same conclusions to which one is always led when one approaches the problem unprejudiced by naturalistic or anthropomorphic preconceptions of the relation of the infinite to the finite, or the divine to the natural. If we exclude the materialistic or semi-materialistic position which regards teleological phenomena, vital processes, and even states of sensation and consciousness as the function of a “substance” or of matter, we can quite well speak of them as general “cosmo-organic” functions of universal being, meaning that they occur of necessity wherever the proper conditions exist. According to the doctrine of potentiality and actuality, this is to say that all possible stages of the higher and highest phenomena are semper et ubique potentially present in universal being, and that they become actual wherever the physical processes are far enough advanced to afford the necessary conditions.
Preyer's ideas have been revived of late, especially in the romantic form, as, for instance, in Willy Pastor's “Lebensgeschichte der Erde” (“Leben und Wissen,” Vol. I., Leipzig, 1903). And in certain circles, characterised by a simultaneous veneration for and combination of modern natural science—Haeckel, Romanticism, Novalis and other antitheses—Fechner appears to have come to life again. The type of this group is W. Bölsche. Naturally enough, Pastor has turned his attention also to the recent views of Schroen in regard to crystallisation. The fact, omne crystallum e crystallo, like the corresponding fact, omne vivum e vivo, was long a barrier against mechanistic derivation. But Schroen draws a parallel between crystallisation and organic processes, so that the alleged clearness and obviousness of the inorganic can no longer be carried over—in the old fashion—into the realm of life, but, conversely, the mystery of life must be extended downwards, and continued into the inorganic.
Cf. Cohn, “Beiträge zur Biologie der Pflanzen,” vii. 407, See especially the concluding chapter, “Einiges über Functionen der einzelnen Zellorgane.” From Zoology we may cite E. Teichmann's investigation, “Ueber die Beziehung zwischen Astrosphären und Furchen.” “Experimentelle Untersuchungen am Seeigelei” (“Archiv. f. Entw. Mech.” xvi. 2, 1903). This paper contains no references to “psychical phenomena,” “power,” or “will,” and we cannot but approve of this in technical research. But it is pointed out that the mechanistic interpretation of the detailed processes of development has definite limitations, and we are referred to “fundamental characters of living matter which we must take for granted.”
This is even more decidedly the case in Tad. Garbowski's beautiful “Morphogenetische Studien, als Beitrag zur Methodologie zoologischer Forschung.” These belong to the line of thought followed by Driesch and Wolff, who are both frequently and approvingly quoted, and they afford an excellent instance of that mood of dissatisfaction with and protest against the “dogmas” of descent, selection and phylogeny, which is observable in many quarters among the younger generation of investigators. Garbowski vigorously combats Haeckel's theories of development, especially “the fundamental biogenetic law, and the Gastræa theory.” He criticises “mechanistic” interpretations of the development of the embryo, which “treat the living being morphologically, as if the matter were one of vesicles, cylinders and plates, and not of vital units”: and he does not look with favour on “artificial amoebæ,” which can move, creep, and do everything except live. The ideal of biology is of course always a science with laws and equations, but the key to these will not be found in mechanics. Garbowski's studies may be highly recommended as giving a sharp and vivid impression of the modern anti-mechanistic tendencies observable even in technical research.
Schneider has expounded his physiological and morphological view in his “Comparative Histology.” In “Vitalismus” (“Elementare Lebensfunctionen,” Vienna, 1903) he sums up his vitalistic views. It is a comprehensive work which goes deeper than others of its class into the detailed description and analysis of the intimate phenomena of life. Indeed it almost amounts to an independent biology. But the most essential vital problems, the development of form, regeneration, and inheritance, to which Driesch gives the fullest consideration, are all too briefly treated. In Chapters XI. and XII. the question of vitalism expands into a far-reaching discussion of the general outlook upon nature. We need not here concern ourselves with his more general views. Schneider must be regarded as a representative of the most modern tendency of “Psychism,” which, stimulated by Mach, Avenarius, and the school of “immanence-philosophy,” finds expression among the younger physiologists and biologists, from Schneider to Driesch, Verworn, Albrecht, and others. To overthrow “materialism” and “realism,” they utilise, with impetuous delight, the ancient self-evident idea that what is given to us is sensation. They confuse and identify such opposites as Kant and Berkeley, and their own position with that of “solipsism.” This outlook is still vague and vacillating, and it may perhaps compel epistemology to return on its old path from the sophists to Plato, from Hume to Kant. In Schneider's case, however, the thin stream of this new sensualism is intermingled with so many intuitions and perceptions of the deeper nature of knowledge that one is now curious to know how this strange mixture of semi-materialism, idealism, solipsism, and a priorism is to make the transition from its present extremely labile phase to a condition of stable equilibrium. One fears lest sooner or later a reaction against the contortions of this empiricism and psychism should lead to a modern rehabilitation of mysticism or occultism. (Cf. p. 295 ff.)
In an essay on “Vitalism” in the “Preuss. Jahrbuch,” Aug. 1903, p. 276, Schneider has supplemented his previous work.