The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality

by Rudolf Schmid

But in spite of all these preferences for the theory of atoms, we should not forget that it still has but hypothetical value—that it is but an idea of limits, which indicates, where the scientifically perceptible ceases, and that every attempt at moving this limit still farther on must either fail and lead into unsolvable contradictions, or, if successful, only leads to new difficulties and unsolved problems.

Already within that realm in which the theory of atoms is a supplemental hypothesis directly indispensable at present—i.e., within their application in physical sciences—we meet suppositions which raise great doubts and difficulties. Such a scientific difficulty occurs when the atomism of the natural philosophers supposes a double complexity of atoms, material atoms and atoms of ether: complexities which both penetrate one another, and are supposed to follow partly totally different, partly the same, elementary laws of force. Material atoms are subordinate to the law of gravitation, while atoms of ether are not; and yet both act legitimately upon one another,—as, for instance, when heat passes into motion and motion into heat, which certainly presupposes a law of power acting in common for both. Another difficulty lies in the atomism of the chemists; and still another

in the divergency of the aims at which the physical theory of atoms on the one hand and the chemical theory of atoms on the other seem to point. Chemistry is inclined to explain the difference of its numerous elements from the original difference of the atoms; and yet it is not at all certain that the elements of chemistry themselves are not composed of still more simple and less numerous primary elements. Many indications seem to point to such primary elements which are more simple in number and quality, and investigators even mention an element—hydrogen—in the direction of which we have to look for the way that will lead us to those primitive elements of matter. The divergency of aims, finally, consists in the fact that physical atomism prevailingly points to a conformity of the atoms of bodies; chemical atomism, on the contrary,—at least, according to its present state,—points to a dissimilarity among these.

The hypothetical and problematical nature of the theory of atoms strikes us still more clearly when we try to analyze it philosophically. First, we meet that antinomy which we always find where we try to pass beyond the limits of our empirical knowledge by means of conception. For, if the atoms still occupy space, we can not understand why they should not be further divisible, and if they do not occupy space, we can not understand how any sum of that which does not occupy space, can finally succeed in filling space. It is true, this very antinomy has led to the overcoming of that dualism of force and matter which so long enchained science, and the overcoming of which we greet as a progress of our theoretical knowledge of nature. We no

longer look upon the atoms as material elements, but as centres of force. The antinomy has the further merit that, in the realm of the knowledge of nature, it brings to our consciousness the great advantage of a concrete perception and reasoning over purely logical abstractions. For Ulrici, in his "God and Nature," is right in calling our attention to the fact that we must think about the atoms, not in an abstractly logical and an abstractly mathematical way, but concretely; that we have to consider them, not as mere quantities, but as qualities; and that we can then easily arrive at the perception of something which occupies space, and which therefore, according to abstract conclusions of logic and mathematics, could still be thought of as divisible in abstracto, but which, even as a consequence of its quality, of its concrete natural form, is no longer divisible in reality. Nevertheless, in spite of all these remarkable attempts at overcoming the difficulties of the theory of atoms, that antinomy returns as often as we undertake to make that clearly perceptible which we have at last gained a partial conception of; and thus shows us, from this side also, that even with the theory of atoms we have arrived at the limit where not only our observation, but also the preciseness and certainty of our conceptions, ceases.

By the atomic theory, we do not gain anything for the ultimate explanation of the world and its contents, not even if its present hypothetical value should be changed into a complete demonstration. For the whole theory but removes the question as to the origin of things from their sensible appearance to the elements of that appearance, and leaves us standing just as helpless before the elements as before the appearances. For

whence does the whole richness of the appearances in the world come? If the atoms are all alike, and their laws of force the simplest we can imagine, then their grouping into all the developments and formations of which we observe such an infinite and regularly arranged abundance, is not less unexplained than if we had not gone back to the theory of atoms at all. But if the atoms and their laws of force are different, the difficulty is not simplified, but doubled. For, first, the theory then owes us an answer to the questions wherein the difference of the atoms consists and whence it comes; and, second, the question we have to consider in supposing a uniformity of the atoms, is not disposed of or answered—the question, namely, as to the causes which bring these different atoms together to form precisely those complexities of atoms which we observe as the world of phenomena.

This insufficiency of the theory of atoms in explaining the world and its contents, is another proof to us that, however great the practical value of this theory may be for the operations of physics and chemistry, its theoretical value consists essentially in the fact that it formulates more accurately the perception of the limits of our exact knowledge. Even the idea of Lotze, that the atoms (in themselves different) are not really the final elements of matter, but consist of still more simple but likewise different elements, seems to us more a decoration than an extension of the limits at which our perception has arrived; we stand before a double door, but find both doors locked. We agree with DuBois-Reymond, when he declares, in his before-mentioned lecture, the impossibility of perceiving the last elements of the

world, matter and force, to be the other limit of our knowledge of nature which, together with the impossibility of the explanation of the origin of sensation and consciousness, remains forever fixed.

Likewise, the peculiar modification which G. Th. Fechner gives to the theory of the last elements of the world, cannot escape the charge of leaving the problem of the world scientifically just as unsolved as before. Fechner not only finds, as we have already mentioned, the difference between the organic and the inorganic in the difference of the mutual motions, but he also finds that the character of organic motions is exactly the same as that which the bodies of the universe have among themselves in their motions. Thus he distinguishes the cosmorganic motion, which is performed in the whole of the universe, and the molecular-organic motion, which we observe in the single organisms of the earth; he makes God the personal, self-conscious soul of this cosmical organism; and, in using the law of the tendency to stability, with which he completes the Darwinian selection theory, asserts that the organic in the whole of the universe, as well as in the narrow sphere of single bodies on the earth, is the first thing from which the inorganic was separated and became gradually fixed. Thus, in his opinion, the problem which up to the present has occupied investigators,—namely, how did the organic originate from the inorganic?—would have to be reversed to, how did the inorganic originate from the organic?