The permanent significance of Romanticism lies here: That it discredited once for all the notion that there is only one road to reality—that of logic. It is not only philosophy, but religion and art that remove the veil which hides the supra-sensible world from us. And to close our eyes to the facts of religious experience, or to attempt to discredit them by the application of irrelevant terms such as "superstition," is not only to display ourselves as philistines, but also to forsake the highest traditions of science—veneration for experience, and the realms of fact.
MECHANISM AND LIFE
Recapitulatory.—We have already observed the mechanical theory, in the hands of Descartes, expanding itself to cover organisms and the phenomena of life, and in La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine, reducing even human beings to the status of automata. These theories were, however, known to be insecurely based upon somewhat hasty generalisations, for, in point of fact, the science of biology was as yet in its infancy; the data for a complete vindication of the mechanical position were as yet wanting.
Advance of Biology.—Biological science, however, during the first half of the nineteenth century made considerable advances, and research continually kept bringing to light facts which seemed to substantiate the brilliant, if premature, hypothesis of Descartes. It will not be necessary for us to do more than take hasty note of certain important developments.
It was in 1828 that the German chemist Whöler (1800-1882) for the first time in biological history prepared an organic compound (urea) from inorganic materials—an achievement universally recognised to be of the utmost significance. As a distinguished historian of the science of chemistry puts it:
"This discovery destroyed the difference which was then considered to exist between organic and inorganic bodies, viz. that the former could only be formed under the influence of vegetable or animal vital forces, whereas the latter could be artificially produced."[32]
Ten years later another German, Schleider (1804-1881) propounded the cellular theory of the structure and growth of plants, a theory which was soon extended to animal organisms by Schwann (1810-1882). The publication of this famous theory was described by a contemporary as "a burst of daylight"; it indeed illuminated what had hitherto been buried in mystery and mythology—the structure and method of growth of plants and animals. It seemed to render superfluous any form of the old conception of a "vital force" to explain the phenomena of growth, if it could now be assumed that the cells automatically absorbed outside material, increased in number by the division of individuals, and built up the organism by continual repetition of this process.