Naturalism and Religion

by Rudolf Otto

In order to explain the developing organism Weismann assumes that each of its organs or parts, or “independent regions,” is represented in the germ-plasm by a determinant, upon the fate of which the development of the future determinate depends. It is thought of as a very minute corpuscle of living matter. Thus there are determinants of hairs and scales, pieces of skin, pits, marks, &c. But every determined organ, or part, or “independent region,” is itself in its turn an “organism,” is indeed a system of an infinite number of interrelated component parts, and each of these again is another, down to the individual cells. And each cell is an “organism” in itself, and so on into infinity. Is all this represented in the determinants? And how?

Further, the individual determinate, for instance of a piece of skin, is not something isolated, but passes over without definite boundary into others. Therefore the determinants also cannot be isolated, but must be systems within systems, dependent upon and merging into [pg 150] one another. How, at the building up of the organism, do the determinants find their direction and their localisation? And, especially, how do they set to work to build up their organ? Here the whole riddle of the theory of epigenesis, which Weismann wished to do away with as a mystery, is repeated a thousand times and made more difficult. In order to explain puzzling processes on a large scale, others have been constructed, which on close investigation prove to be just the same mysterious and unexplained processes, only made infinitely smaller.

Moreover, even if the whole of “Weismannism,” including germinal selection, could be accepted, and if it were as sufficient as it is insufficient, what we advanced at the end of Chapter III. as a standpoint of general validity in relation to teleology and theology would still hold good. Even an entirely naïve, anthropomorphic, “supernatural” theology is ready to see, in the natural course of things, in the “causæ secundariæ,” the realisation of Divine purpose, teleology, and does not fail to recognise that the Divine purpose may fulfil itself not only in an extraordinary manner, through “miracles” and “unconditioned” events, but also in ordinary ways, “through means” and the universal causal nexus. Thus it is quite consistent even with a theology of this kind to regard the whole system of causes and effects, which, according to the Darwin-Weismann doctrine, have gradually brought forth the whole diversity of the world of life, with man at its head, in a purely causal [pg 151] way without teleological intervention, as an immense system of means marvellous in its intricacy, in the inevitable necessity of its inter-relations, and in the exactness of its work, the ultimate result of which must have come about, but perhaps at the same time was intended to come about. Whether I regard this ultimate result as the mere consequence of blind happenings, or as an intended purpose, does not depend, as we have seen, upon the knowledge gained by natural science, but depends above all on whether this ultimate result seems to me of sufficient value to be thought of as the purpose of a world-governing intelligence, and thus depends upon my personal attitude to human nature, reason, mind, and the spiritual, religious, and moral life. If I venture to attribute worth, and absolute worth, to these things, nothing, not even the fact of the “struggle for existence” in its thousand forms, in its gradually transforming effects, in the almost endless nexus of its causes and results, germinal selection included, can take away my right (and eventually my duty) to regard the ultimate result as an end, and the nexus of causes as a system of means. To enable me to do this, it is only requisite that internal necessity should govern the system, and that the result should not be a chance one, so that it might even have been suppressed, have failed, or have turned out quite differently. Necessity and predetermination are characteristic of the relation between means and purpose. But this requisite is precisely that which natural science [pg 152] does afford us,—namely, the proof that all phenomena are strictly governed by law, and are absolutely predetermined by their antecedents. At this point the religious and the scientific consideration coincide exactly. The hairs of our head, and the hairs in the fur of a polar bear, which is varying towards white, and is therefore selected in the struggle for existence,[36] even the fluctuating variations of a determinant in the germ, are “numbered” according to both conceptions. Every variation that cropped up, every factor that “selected” the fit, and eliminated the unfit, was strictly predestined, and must of necessity have appeared as, and when, and where it did appear.[37]

The whole nexus of conditions and results, the inclined plane of evolution and the power of Being to move up it, has its sufficient reason in the nature and original state of the cosmos, in the constitution of its “matter,” its “energy,” its laws, its sequences and the grouping of its phenomena. Only from beginnings so constituted could our present world have come to be as it is, and [pg 153] that necessarily. Only because the primary possibility and fitness for life—vegetable, animal and human—was in it from the beginning, could all these have come to be. This primary possibility did not “come into being,” it was à priori immanent in it. Whence came this? There is no logical, comprehensible, or any other necessity why there should be a world at all, or why it should be such that life and evolution must become part of it. Where then lies the reason why it is, rather than is not, and why it is as it is?

To this must be added what Weismann himself readily admits and expressly emphasises. The whole theory treats, and must treat plant, animal, and man as only ingenious machines, mere systems of physical processes. This is the ideal aimed at—to interpret all the phenomena of life, growth, and reproduction thus. Even instincts and mental endowments are so interpreted, since there must be corresponding morphological variations of the fine structure of the nervous organ, and instinctive actions are then “explained” as the functions of these. But how “mechanical happening” comes to have this marvellous inwardness, which we call sensation, feeling, perception, thought and will, which is neither mechanical nor derivable from anything mechanical; and, further, how physical and psychical can condition one another without doing violence to the law of the conservation of the sum of energy, is an absolute riddle. But this whole psychical world exists, with graduated stages perhaps as close to each other as [pg 154] in the physical world, but even less capable than these of being explained as having arisen out of their antecedent lower stages. And this psychical world, which is, indeed, related to and dependent upon the corporeal life, as also conversely, has its own quite peculiar laws: thought does not follow natural laws, but those of logic, which is entirely indifferent to exciting stimuli, for instance of the brain, which conform to natural laws. But this world, its riddles and mysteries, its great content and its history, beyond the reach of mechanical theories, is so absolutely the main thing (especially in regard to the question of the possibility of religion), that the question of bodily structure and evolution becomes beside it a mere accessory problem, and even the last is only a relatively unimportant roundabout way of coming at the gist of the business. How completely the evolution of the higher mental faculties transcends such narrow and meagre formulæ as the struggle for existence and the like, Weismann himself indicates in connection with man's musical sense, and its relation to the “musical” instinct in animals. The same and much more might be alleged in regard to the whole world of mind, of the æsthetic, ethical and religious, of the kingdom of thought, of science, and of poetry.

Natural Selection.

We have for the moment provisionally admitted the theory of natural selection, in order to see [pg 155] whether it could be included in a religious interpretation of things. But in reality such an admission is not to be thought of, in face of what is at present so apparent—the breaking down of this hypothesis, which has been upheld with so much persistence. We shall have to occupy ourselves with this later on. In the meantime a few more remarks must be added to what has been already said.

It might be said, paradoxically, that the worst fate that could befall this hypothesis would be to be proved, for then it would be most certainly refuted. What we mean is this: If it is really “utility” that rules the world and things, there can be no certainty and objectivity of knowledge, no guarantee of truth. The “struggle for existence” is not concerned with selecting beings who see the world as it is. It selects only the interpretation and conception of the environment that is most serviceable for the existence and maintenance of the species. But there is nothing to guarantee that the “true” knowledge will also be the most useful. It might quite well be that an entirely subjective and in itself wholly false interpretation would be the most serviceable. And if, by some extraordinary chance, the selected interpretation should be also the true one, there would be no means of establishing the fact. And what is true of this interpretation is true also of all theories that are derived from it, for example of the theory of selection itself.

Furthermore, a great part, perhaps the greatest part [pg 156] of the confidence placed in the theory of selection is due to an involuntary, but entirely fallacious habit of crediting it with the probabilities in favour of the doctrine of descent. The main arguments in favour of evolution and descent are very often, though unwittingly, adduced in support of Darwinism in particular. This is a great mistake. Take, for instance, the evidence of the “palæontological” record. It affords hundreds of proofs of evolution, but not a single proof of selection. Its “intermediate” and “connecting links” do possibly prove the affiliation of species and the validity of genealogical trees. But precisely the “intermediate links” which selection requires—the myriads of forms of life which were not successfully adapted, the unfit competitors in the struggle for existence which must have accompanied the favourably adapted variants from step to step, from generation to generation—these are altogether awanting.