CHAPTER I.
THE CRISIS IN NATURAL SCIENCE.
During the past twenty years a revolution has been working in physical science. Within the last ten it has come to the surface, and is now rapidly spreading into all departments of mental activity.
Although its centre is to be found in the doctrine of the “Correlation of Forces,” it would be a narrow view that counted only the expounders of this doctrine, numerous as they are; the spirit of this movement inspires a heterogeneous multitude—Carpenter, Grove, Mayer, Faraday, Thompson, Tyndall and Helmholtz; Herbert Spencer, Stuart Mill, Buckle, Draper, Lewes, Lecky, Max Müller, Marsh, Liebig, Darwin and Agassiz; these names, selected at random, are suggested on account of the extensive circulation of their books. Every day the press announces some new name in this field of research.
What is the character of the old which is displaced, and of the new which gets established?
By way of preliminary, it must be remarked that there are observable in modern times three general phases of culture, more or less historic.
The first phase is thoroughly dogmatic: it accepts as of like validity metaphysical abstractions, and empirical observations. It has not arrived at such a degree of clearness as to perceive contradictions between form and content. For the most part, it is characterized by a reverence for external authority. With the revival of learning commences the protest of spirit against this phase. Descartes and Lord Bacon begin the contest, and are followed by the many—Locke, Newton, Leibnitz, Clark, and the rest. All are animated with the spirit of that time—to come to the matter in hand without so much mediation. Thought wishes to rid itself of its fetters; religious sentiment, to get rid of forms. This reaction against the former stage, which has been called by Hegel the metaphysical, finds a kind of climax in the intellectual movement just preceding the French revolution. Thought no longer is contented to say “Cogito, ergo sum,” abstractly, but applies the doctrine in all directions, “I think; in that deed, I am.” “I am a man only in so far as I think. In so far as I think, I am an essence. What I get from others is not mine. What I can comprehend, or dissolve in my reason, that is mine.” It looks around and spies institutions—“clothes of spirit,” as Herr Teufelsdroeck calls them. “What are you doing here, you sniveling priest?” says Voltaire: “you are imposing delusions upon society for your own aggrandizement. I had no part or lot in making the church; cogito, ergo sum; I will only have over me what I put there!”
“I see that all these complications of society are artificial,” adds Rousseau; “man has made them; they are not good, and let us tear them down and make anew.” These utterances echo all over France and Europe. “The state is merely a machine by which the few exploiter the many”—“off with crowns!” Thereupon they snatch off the crown of poor Louis, and his head follows with it. “Reason” is enthroned and dethroned. Thirty years of war satiates at length this negative second period, and the third phase begins. Its characteristic is to be constructive, not to accept the heritage of the past with passivity, nor wantonly to destroy, but to realize itself in the world of objectivity—the world of laws and institutions.
The first appearance of the second phase of consciousness is characterized by the grossest inconsistencies. It says in general, (see D’Holbach’s “Système de la Nature”): “The immediate, only, is true; what we know by our senses, alone has reality; all is matter and force.” But in this utterance it is unconscious that matter and force are purely general concepts, and not objects of immediate consciousness. What we see and feel is not matter or force in general, but only some special form. The self-refutation of this phase may be exhibited as follows:
I. “What is known is known through the senses: it is matter and force.”
II. But by the senses, the particular only is perceived, and this can never be matter, but merely a form. The general is a mediated result, and not an object of the senses.