Naturalism And Religion

By

Dr. Rudolf Otto

Professor of Theology in the University of Göttingen

Translated by

J. Arthur Thomson

Professor of Natural History in the University of Aberdeen

and

Margaret R. Thomson

Edited with an Introduction by

The Rev. W. D. Morrison, LL.D.

Williams & Norgate Ltd.

38 Great Ormond Street, London, W.C.1

1907

Contents

[pg v]

Preface.

It is a remarkable and in some respects a disquieting fact that whilst rival ecclesiastical parties are engaged in a furious and embittered debate as to the precise shade of religious instruction to be given in public elementary schools, the thinking classes in modern Europe are becoming more and more stirred by the really vital question whether there is room in the educated mind for a religious conception of the world at all. The slow silent uninterrupted advance of research of all kinds into nature, life, and history, has imperceptibly but irrevocably, revolutionised our traditional outlook upon the world, and one of the supreme questions before the contemporary mind is the probable issue of the great struggle now taking place between the religious and the non-religious conception of human life and destiny. When we look at the development of this great fundamental conflict we feel that disputes between rival ecclesiastical systems are of trifling moment; the real task at the present time before every form of religion is the task of vindicating itself before a hostile view of life and things.

It is the consciousness of this fact which has led to the translation and publication in English of Professor Otto's volume. Professor Otto is well known on the [pg vi] Continent as a thinker who possesses the rare merit of combining a high philosophic discipline with an accurate and comprehensive knowledge of the science of organic nature. It is this combination of aptitudes which has attracted so much attention to his work on Naturalism and Religion, and which gives it a value peculiar to itself. At a time when so much loose and incoherent thinking exists about fundamental problems, and when so many irrelevant claims are made, sometimes on behalf of religion and sometimes on behalf of hypotheses said to be resting upon science, it is a real satisfaction to meet with such a competent guide as Dr. Otto. Although his book is written for the general reader, it is in reality a solid scientific contribution to the great debate at present in progress between two different conceptions of the ultimate nature and meaning of things. As such it is to be hoped that it will receive the favourable consideration which it deserves at the hands of the English-speaking world.

W.D.M.

Chapter I. The Religious Interpretation Of The World.

The title of this book, contrasting as it does the naturalistic and the religious interpretation of the world, indicates that the intention of the following pages is, in the first place, to define the relation, or rather the antithesis, between the two; and, secondly, to endeavour to reconcile the contradictions, and to vindicate against the counter-claims of naturalism, the validity and freedom of the religious outlook. In doing this it is assumed that there is some sort of relation between the two conceptions, and that there is a possibility of harmonising them.

Will this be admitted? Is it not possible that the two views are incommensurable, and would it not be most desirable for both sides if this were so, for if there is no logical antithesis then there can be no real antagonism? And is not this actually the case? Surely we have now left far behind us the primitive expressions of the religious outlook which were concerned with the creation of the world in six days, the making of Eve out of Adam's rib, the story of Paradise and the angelic and demoniacal forces, and the accessory miracles [pg 002] and accompanying signs by means of which the Divine control of the world was supposed to manifest itself. We have surely learnt by this time to distinguish between the simple mythical or legendary forms of expression in the religious archives, and their spiritual value and ethical content. We can give to natural science and to religious feeling what is due to each, and thus have done for ever with tedious apologetic discussion.

It were well indeed if we had really attained to this! But the relations, and therefore the possibilities of conflict between religion and world-science, are by no means so easily disposed of. No actually existing form of religion is so entirely made up of “feeling,” “subjectivity,” or “mood,” that it can dispense with all assumptions or convictions regarding the nature and import of the world. In fact, every form, on closer examination, reveals a more or less fixed framework of convictions, theoretical assumptions, and presuppositions in regard to man, the world, and existence: that is to say, a theory, however simple, of the universe. And this theory must be harmonised with the conceptions of things as they are presented to us in general world-lore, in natural and historical science, in particular sciences, in theories of knowledge, and perhaps in metaphysics; it must measure itself by and with these, and draw from them support and corroboration, and possibly also submit to contradiction and correction.

There is no form of religion, not even the most rarefied [pg 003] (which makes least claim because it has least content), that does not include in itself some minute Credo, some faith, implying attachment to a set of doctrines and conclusions however few. And it is always necessary to show that these conclusions are worthy of adherence, and that they are not at variance with conclusions and truths in regard to nature and the world drawn from other sources. And if we consider, not the efflorescences and artificial products of religion, but religion itself, it is certain that there is, and always must be, around it a borderland and fringe of religious world-theory, with which it is not indeed identical, but without which it is inconceivable; that is, a series of definite and characteristic convictions relating to the world and its existence, its meaning, its “whence” and “whither”; to man and his intelligence, his place and function in the world, his peculiar dignity, and his destiny; to time and space, to infinity and eternity, and to the depth and mystery of Being in general.

These convictions and their fundamental implications can be defined quite clearly, both singly and as a whole, and later we shall attempt so to define them. And it is of the greatest importance to religion that these presuppositions and postulates should have their legitimacy and validity vindicated. For they are at once the fundamental and the minimal postulates which religion must make in its outlook on the world, which it must make if it is to exist at all. And they are so constituted that, even when they are released from their [pg 004] primitive and naïve form and association, and permitted speculative development and freedom, they must, nevertheless, just because they contain a theory of the world, be brought into comparison, contact, or relation of some kind, whether hostile or friendly, with other world-conceptions of different origin. This relation will be hostile or friendly according to the form these other conceptions have taken. It is impossible to imagine any religious view of the world whose network of conceptions can have meshes so wide, or constituents so elastic and easily adjustable, that it will allow every theoretical conception of nature and the world to pass through it without violence or friction, offering to none either let or hindrance.

It has indeed often been affirmed that religion may, without anxiety about itself, leave scientific knowledge of the world to go its own way. The secret reservation in this position is always the belief that scientific knowledge will never in any case reach the real depth and meaning of things. Perhaps this is true. But the assumption itself would remain, and would have to be justified. And if religion had no other interest in general world-theory, it would still have this pre-eminent one, that, by defining the limitations of scientific theory, and showing that they can never be transcended, it thus indicates for itself a position beyond them in which it can dwell securely. In reality religion has never ceased to turn its never-resting, often anxious gaze towards the progress, the changes, the secure results [pg 005] and tentative theories in the domain of general world-science, and again and again it has been forced to come to a new adjustment with them.

One great centre of interest, though by no means the only or even the chief one, lies in the special field of world-lore and theoretical interpretation comprised in the natural sciences. And in the following pages we shall make this our special interest, and shall endeavour to inquire whether our modern natural science consists with the “minimal requirements” of the religious point of view, with which we shall make closer acquaintance later; or whether it is at all capable of being brought into friendly relations with that point of view.

Such a study need not necessarily be “apologetic,” that is to say, defensive, but may be simply an examination. For in truth the real results of investigation are not now and never were “aggressive,” but are in themselves neutral towards not only religious but all idealistic conceptions, and leave it, so to speak, to the higher methods of study to decide how the material supplied is to be taken up into their different departments, and brought under their particular points of view. Our undertaking only becomes defensive and critical because, not from caprice or godlessness, but, as we shall see, from an inherent necessity, the natural sciences, in association with other convictions and aims, tend readily to unite into a distinctive and independent system of world-interpretation, which, if it were valid and sufficient, would drive the religious view [pg 006] into difficulties, or make it impossible. This independent system is Naturalism, and against its attacks the religious conception of the world has to stand on the defensive.

What is Distinctive in the Religious Outlook.

At the very beginning and throughout we must keep the following points clearly before us, otherwise all our endeavours will only lead us astray, and be directed towards an altogether false issue.

Firstly, everything depends and must depend upon vindicating the validity and freedom of the religious view of the world as contrasted with world-science in general; but we must not attempt to derive it directly from the latter. If religion is to live, it must be able to demonstrate—and it can be demonstrated—that its convictions in regard to the world and human existence are not contradicted from any other quarter, that they are possible and may be believed to be true. It can, perhaps, also be shown that a calm and unprejudiced study of nature, both physical and metaphysical reflection on things, will supplement the interpretations of religion, and will lend confirmation and corroboration to many of the articles of faith already assured to it. But it would be quite erroneous to maintain that we must be able to read the religious conception of the world out of nature, and that it must be, in the first instance, derivable from nature, or that we can, not to say [pg 007] must, regard natural knowledge as the source and basis of the religious interpretation of the world. An apologetic based on such an idea as this would greatly overestimate its own strength, and not only venture too high a stake, but would damage the cause of religion and alter the whole position of the question. This mistake has often been made. The old practice of finding “evidences of the existence of God” had exactly this tendency. It was seriously believed that one could thereby do more than vindicate for religious conviction a right of way in the system of knowledge. It was seriously believed that knowledge of God could be gained from and read out of nature, the world, and earthly existence, and thus that the propositions of the religious view of the world could not only gain freedom and security, but could be fundamentally proved, and even directly inferred from Nature in the first instance. The strength of these evidences was greatly overestimated, and Nature was too much studied with reference to her harmony, her marvellous wealth and purposeful wisdom, her significant arrangements and endless adaptations; and too little attention was paid to the multitudinous enigmas, to the many instances of what seems unmeaning and purposeless, confused and dark. People were far too ready to reason from finite things to infinite causes, and the validity or logical necessity of the inferences drawn was far too rarely scrutinised. And, above all, the main point was overlooked. For even if these “evidences” had succeeded [pg 008] better, if they had been as sufficient as they were insufficient, it is certain that religion and the religious conception of the world could never have arisen from them, but were in existence long before any such considerations had been taken into account.

Long before these were studied, religion had arisen from quite other sources. These sources lie deep in the human spirit, and have had a long history. To trace them back in detail is a special task belonging to the domain of religious psychology, history, and philosophy, and we cannot attempt it here, but must take it for granted. Having arisen from these sources, religion has long lived a life of its own, forming its own convictions in regard to the world and existence, possessing these as its faith and truth, basing their credibility, and gaining for them the adherence of its followers, on quite other grounds than those used in “proving the existence of God.” Ideas and conclusions which have not arisen in this way can hardly be said to be religious, though they may resemble religious ideas. But having thus arisen, the religious view comes into contact with knowledge in general, and then a need for justification, or even a state of antagonism, may arise. It may then be asked whether convictions and ideas which, so far, have come solely from within, and have been affirmed and recognised as truths only by heart and conscience, can possibly be adhered to in the face of the insight afforded by an investigation and scientific knowledge of nature.

Let us take an example, and at once the highest that can be found. The religious recognition of the sway of an eternal Providence cannot possibly be directly derived from, or proved by, any consideration of nature and history. If we had not had it already, no apologetic and no evidences of the existence of God would have given it to us. The task of an apologetic which knows its limitations and its true aims can only be to inquire whether there is scope and freedom left for these religious ideas alongside of our natural knowledge of the world; to show that the latter, because of its proper limitations, has no power to make a pronouncement in regard to the highest meaning of the world; and to point to certain indications in nature and history that justify us in interpreting the whole in terms of purpose and ultimate import. This is the case with all the conceptions and conclusions of the religious view of the world. No single one of them can be really proved from a study of nature, because they are much too deep to be reached by ordinary reasoning, and much too peculiar in their character and content to be discovered by any scientific consideration of nature or interpretation of the world. It is, however, at the same time obvious that all apologetic must follow religion, and can never precede it. Religion can only be awakened, never coerced. Once awakened, it can reflect on its validity and freedom; but it alone can really understand both. And apart from religion, or without its presence, all apologetic endeavours are gratuitous, and [pg 010] are, moreover, expressly forbidden by its own highest authorities (Matt. xxiii. 15).

The second point is even more important. Religion does not hold its theory of the world and its interpretations of the nature and meaning of things in the same way as poetry does its fine-spun, airy dreams, whose chief value lies in the fact that they call up moods and arouse a play of feeling, and which may be grave or gay, elegiac or idyllic, charming or sublime, but may be true or false indifferently.

For there is this outstanding difference between religion and all “moods”—all poetic or fanciful views of nature—that it lives by the certainty of its ideas, suffers if they be uncertain, and dies if they be shown to be untenable, however charming or consoling, sublime or simple they may be. Its theories of the world are not poems; they are convictions, and these require to be first of all not pleasing but true. (Hence it is that criticism may arise out of religion itself, since religion seeks for its own sake to find secure foundations.) And in this respect the religious conception of the world is quite in line with world-theory in general. Both desire to express reality. They do not wish to lay gaily-coloured wreaths and garlands about reality that they may enjoy it, plunged in their respective moods; they desire to understand it and give an account of it.

But there is at once apparent a characteristic difference between the propositions and conclusions of the religious view and those of the secular, a difference not [pg 011] so much of content, which goes without saying, but in the whole form, manner and method, and tone. As Schleiermacher put it: “You can never say that it advances with the sure tread” of which science in general is capable, and by which it is recognisable. The web of religious certainty is much more finely and delicately woven, and more susceptible of injury than the more robust one of ordinary knowledge. Moreover, where religious certainty has attained its highest point in a believing mind, and is greater rather than less than the certainty of what is apprehended by the senses or experienced day by day, this characteristic difference is most easily discerned. The believer is probably much more confident about “the care of his Heavenly Father,” or “the life eternal,” than he is about this life with its varying and insignificant experiences and content. For he knows about the life beyond in quite a different way. The truths of the religious outlook cannot be put on the same level as those of ordinary and everyday life. And when the mind passes from one to the other it does so with the consciousness that the difference is in kind. The knowledge of God and eternity, and the real value, transcending space and time, of our own inner being, cannot even in form be mixed up with the trivial truths of the normal human understanding or the conclusions of science. In fact, the truths of religion exhibit, in quite a special way, the character of all ideal truths, which are not really true for every day at all, but are altogether bound up with exalted states of feeling. This [pg 012] is expressed in the old phrase, “Deus non scitur sed creditur” [God is not known but believed in]. For the Sorbonne was quite right and protected one of the essential interests of religion, when it rejected as heresy the contrary position, that it was possible to “know” God. Thus, in the way in which I “know” that I am sitting at this writing-table, or that it rained yesterday, or that the sum of the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles, I can know nothing of God. But I can know of Him something in the way in which I know that to tell the truth is right, that to keep faith is duty, propositions which are certain and which state something real and valid, but which I could not have arrived at without conscious consent, and a certain exaltation of spirit on my own part. This, and especially the second part of it, holds true in an increased degree of all religious conceptions. They weave themselves together out of the most inward and subtle experiences, out of impressions which are coarsened in the very act of expressing them. Their import and value must be judged entirely by the standards of conscience and feeling, by their own self-sufficiency and validity. The best part of them lies in the intensity and vitality of their experience, and in the spontaneous acceptance and recognition which they receive. They cannot be apprehended by the prosaic, secular mind; whatever is thus apprehended is at most an indifferent analogue of religious experience, if it is not self-deception. [pg 013] It is only in exaltation, in quiet enthusiasm, that religious feelings can come to life and become pervasive, and religious truth can only become a possession available for everyday use in proportion as it is possible to make this non-secular and exalted state of mind permanent, and to maintain enthusiasm as the enduring mood of life and conduct. And as this is capable of all degrees of intensity from overpowering outbursts and isolated raptures to a gentle but permanent tension and elevation of spirit, so also is the certainty and actuality of our knowledge, whether of the sway of the divine power, or of our own higher nature and destiny, or of any religious truth whatever. This is what is meant by St. Paul's “Praying without ceasing” and his “Being in the Spirit” as a permanent mood; and herein lies the justification of the statement of enthusiasm that truth is only found in moments of ecstasy. In fact, religion and religious interpretations are nothing if not “enthusiasms,” that is to say, expressions of the art of sustaining a permanent exaltation of spirit. And any one who is not capable of this inward exaltation, or is too little capable of it, is badly qualified for either religion or religious outlook. The “enthusiasts” will undoubtedly make a better figure in the “kingdom of God,” as well as find an easier entrance therein, than the prosaic matter-of-fact people.

This is really the source of much that is vexatious in all apologetic efforts, and indeed in all theorising about religion, as soon as we attempt to get beyond the [pg 014] periphery into the heart of the matter. For in order to understand the subject at all a certain amount of “enthusiasm” is necessary, and in most cases the disputants fail to reach common ground because this enthusiasm is lacking in one or both. If they both have it, in that case also dialectics are out of the question.

Finally, it must be remarked that, as Luther puts it, “Faith always goes against appearances.” The religious conception of the world not only never grows directly out of a scientific and general study of things, but it can never be brought into absolute congruence with it. There are endless tracts and domains of the world, in nature and history, which we cannot bring under the religious consideration at all, because they admit of no interpretation from the higher or more general points of view; they lie before us as everlasting unrelated mysteries, uncomprehended as to their import and purpose. Moreover, the religious theory of the world can never tell us, or wish to tell us, what the world is as a whole, or what is the meaning of its being. It is enough for us that it throws light on our own being, and reveals to us our place and destiny, and the meaning of our existence. It is enough if, in this respect, reality adapts itself to the interpretations of religion, admits of their truth and allows them scope, and corroborates them in important ways and instances. It actually does this, and it can be demonstrated that it does. And in demonstrating this the task of an apologetic that knows its own limitations alone consists. [pg 015] It must be aware that it will succeed even in this, only if it is supported by a courageous will to believe and joy in believing, that many gaps and a thousand riddles will remain, that the ultimate and highest condition of the search after a world-interpretation is personal decision and personal choice, which finally depends upon “what manner of man one is.” Faith has always meant going against appearances. It has gone against them not from obstinacy or incorrigible lack of understanding, but because it has had strong reasons, impossible to set aside, for regarding appearances literally as appearances. It has suffered from the apparent, often even to the point of extinction, and has again drawn from it and from its opposition its highest strength. That they overmastered appearances made of the heroes of faith the greatest of all heroes. And thus religion lives by the very riddles which have frequently caused its death, and they are a part of its inheritance and constitution. To work continually towards their solution is a task which it will never give up. Until success has been achieved, it is of importance to show, that what comes into conflict with faith in these riddles at the present day is not something new and previously unheard of. In cases where faith has died because of them we almost invariably find the opinion that religion might have been possible in earlier and more naïve times, but that it is no longer possible to us, with our deeper insight into the dark mystery of nature and destiny. This is foolishness. When faith dies thus, it dies of one of its infantile [pg 016] diseases. For from the tragedies of Job and of Jeremiah to the Tower of Siloam and the horror of the Mont-Pelée eruption there runs a direct lineage of the same perennial riddle. Well-developed religion has never existed without this—at once its shadow and its touchstone.

Chapter II. Naturalism.

Naturalism is not of to-day or of yesterday, but is very ancient,—as old, indeed, as philosophy,—as old as human thought and doubt. Indeed, we may say that it almost invariably played its part whenever man began to reflect on the whence and the how of the actual world around him. In the philosophical systems of Leucippus and Democritus and Epicurus it lies fully developed before us. It persisted as a latent and silently dreaded antagonist, even in times when “orthodox” anti-naturalistic and super-naturalistic systems were the officially prevailing ones, and were to all appearance generally adhered to. So in the more modern systems of materialism and positivism, in the Système de la nature and in the theory of l'homme machine, in the materialistic reactions from the idealistic nature-speculations of Schelling and Hegel, in the discussions of materialism in the past century, in the naturalistic writings of Moleschott, Czolbe, Vogt, Büchner, and Haeckel, and in the still dominant naturalistic tendency and mood which acquired new form and deep-rooted individuality through Darwinism,—in all these we find naturalism, not indeed originating [pg 018] as something new, but simply blossoming afresh with increased strength. The antiquity of Naturalism is no reproach, and no reason for regarding it as a matter long since settled; it rather indicates that Naturalism is not a chance phenomenon, but an inevitable growth. The favourite method of treating it as though it were the outcome of modern scepticism, malice, or obduracy, is just as absurd as if the “naturalists” were to treat the convictions of their opponents as the result of incredible narrow-mindedness, priestly deception, senility, or calcification of the brain-cells. And as naturalism is of ancient origin so also do its different historical phases and forms resemble each other in their methods, aims, and arguments, as well as in the moods, sympathies, and antipathies which accompany them. Even in its most highly developed form we can see that it did not spring originally from a completed and unified principle, but was primarily criticism of and opposition to other views.

What is Distinctive in the Naturalistic Outlook.

At first tentative, but becoming ever more distinctly conscious of its real motive, Naturalism has always arisen in opposition to what we may call “supernatural” propositions, whether these be the naïve mythological explanations of world-phenomena found in primitive religions, or the supernatural popular metaphysics which usually accompanies the higher forms. It is actuated at the same time by one of the [pg 019] most admirable impulses in human nature,—the impulse to explain and understand,—and to explain, if possible, through simple, familiar, and ordinary causes. The sane human understanding sees all about it the domain of everyday and familiar phenomena. It is quite at home in this domain; everything seems to it well-known, clear, transparent, and easily understood; it finds in it intelligible causes and certain laws which govern phenomena, as well as a constant association of cause and effect. Here everything can be individually controlled and examined, and everything “happens naturally.” Things govern themselves. Nothing unexpected, nothing that has not its obvious causes, nothing mysterious or miraculous happens here. Sharply contrasted with this stands the region of the apparently inexplicable, the supernatural, with all its influences and operations, and results. To the religious interpretation in its naïve, pious, or superstitious forms of expression, this region of the supernatural seems to encroach broadly and deeply on the domain of the everyday world. But with the awakening of criticism and reflection, and the deepening of investigation into things, it retreats farther and farther, it surrenders piece after piece to the other realm of thought, and this arises doubt and suspicion. With these there soon awakens a profound conviction that a similar mode of causal connection binds all things together, a glimmering of the uniformity and necessity embracing, comprehending, and ultimately explaining all things. And these [pg 020] presentiments, in themselves at first quite childishly and almost mythologically conceived, may still be, even when they first arise, and while they are still only vaguely formulated, anticipations of later more definite scientific conceptions. Such a beginning of naturalistic consciousness may remain quite naïve and go no farther than a silent but persistent protest. It makes free use of such familiar expressions as “everything comes about of itself”; “everything happens by natural means”; “it is all ‘nature’ or ‘evolution.’ ” But from the primitive naturalistic outlook there may arise reconstructions of nature and cosmic speculations on a large scale, expanding into naturalistic systems of the most manifold kinds, beginning with those of the Ionic philosophers and coming down to those of the most recent times. Their watchwords remain the same, though in an altered dialect: “nature and natural phenomena,” the denial of “dualism,” the upholding of the one principle “monism,” the all-sufficiency of nature, and the absence of any intervening influences from without or beyond nature. Rapidly and of necessity this last item becomes transformed into a “denial of teleology”: nature knows neither will nor purpose, it has only to do with conditions and results. With these it deals and through them it works. Even in the most elementary naturalistic idea, that “everything happens of itself,” there lurks that aversion to purpose which characterises all naturalistic systems.

A naturalism which has arisen and grown in this [pg 021] manner has in itself nothing to do with concrete and exact knowledge of nature. It may comprise a large number of ideas which are sharply opposed to “science,” and which may be in themselves mythological, or poetical, or even mystical. For what “nature” itself really is fundamentally, how it moves, unfolds, or impels, how things actually happen “naturally,” this naturalism has never attempted to think out. Indeed, naturalism of this type, though it opposes “dualism,” does not by any means usually intend to set itself against religion. On the contrary, in its later developments, it may take it up into itself in the form of an apotheosis and a worship of nature. Almost invariably naturalism which begins thus develops, not into atheism, but into pantheism. It is true that all is nature and happens naturally. But nature itself, as Thales said, is “full of gods,” instinct with divine life. It is the all-living which, unwearied and inexhaustible, brings forth form after form and pours out its fulness. It is Giordano Bruno's “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” in endless beauty and overpowering magnificence, and it is Goethe's “Great Goddess,” herself the object of the utmost admiration, reverence, and devotion. This mood may readily pass over into a kind of worship of God and belief in Him, “God” being regarded as the soul and mind, the “Logos” of Heraclitus and the Stoics, the inner meaning and reason of this all-living nature. And thus naturalism in its last stages may sometimes be quite devout, and may assure us that it is compelled [pg 022] to deny only the transcendental and not the immanent God, the Divine being enthroned above the world, but not the living God dwelling within it. And ever anew Goethe's verse is quoted:

What God would outwardly alone control,

And on His finger whirl the mighty Whole?

He loves the inner world to move, to view

Nature in Him, Himself in nature too,

So that what in Him works, and is, and lives,

The measure of His strength, His spirit gives.

The True Naturalism.

But naturalism becomes fundamentally different when it ceases to remain at the level of naïve or fancifully conceived ideas of “nature” and “natural occurrences,” when, instead of poetry or religious sentiments, it incorporates something else, namely, exact natural science and the idea of a mathematical-mechanical calculability in the whole system of nature. “Nature” and “happening naturally”, as used by the naïve intelligence, are half animistic ideas and modes of expression, which import into nature, or leave in it, life and soul, impulse, and a kind of will. And that speculative form of naturalism which tends to become religious develops this fault to its utmost. But a “nature” like this is not at all a possible subject for natural science and exact methods, not a subject for experiment, calculation, and fixed laws, for precise interpretation, or for interpretation on simple rational [pg 023] principles. Instead of the naïve, poetical, and half mystical conceptions of nature we must have a really scientific one, so that, so to speak, the supernatural may be eliminated from nature, and the apparently irrational rationalised; that is, so that all its phenomena may be traced back to simple, unequivocal, and easily understood processes, the actual why and how of all things perceived, and thus, it may be, understood; so that, in short, everything may be seen to come about “by natural means.”

There is obviously one domain and order of processes in nature which exactly fulfils those requirements, and is really in the fullest sense “natural,” that is, quite easily understood, quite rational, quite amenable to computation and measurement, quite rigidly subordinate to laws which can be formulated. These are the processes of physics and chemistry, and in a still higher degree those of movement in general, the processes of mechanics in short. And to bring into this domain and subordinate to its laws everything that occurs in nature, all becoming, and passing away, and changing, all development, growth, nutrition, reproduction, the origin of the individual and of the species, of animals and of man, of the living and the not living, even of sensation and perception, impulse, desire and instinct, will and thought—this alone would really be to show that things “happen naturally,” that is, to explain everything in terms of natural causes. And the conviction that this can be done is the only true naturalism.

Naturalism of this type is fundamentally different in mood and character from the naïve and poetic form, and is, indeed, in sharp contrast to it. It is working against the very motives which are most vital to the latter—namely, reverence for and deification of nature. Where the two types of naturalism really understand themselves nothing but sharp antagonism can exist between them. Those on the one side must condemn this unfeeling and irreverent, cold and mathematical dissection and analysis of the “Great Goddess” as a sacrilege and outrage. And those on the other side must utterly reject as romantic the view which is summed up in the confession: “Ist nicht Kern der Natur Menschen im Herzen?” [Is not the secret of nature in the human heart?]

Goethe's Attitude to Naturalism.

The most instructive example we can take is Goethe: his veneration for nature on the one hand, and on the other his pronounced opposition to the naturalism both of the materialists and of the mathematicians. Modern naturalists are fond of seeking repose and mental refreshment in Goethe's conception of the world, under the impression that it fits in best and most closely with their own views. That they do this says much for their mood and taste, but not quite so much for their powers of discrimination or for their consistency. It is even more thoughtless than when the empiricists [pg 025] and sensationalists acclaim as their hero, Spinoza, the strict, pure rationalist, the despiser of empiricism and of knowledge acquired through the senses. For to Goethe nature is far from being a piece of mechanism which can be calculated on and summed up in mathematical formulæ, an everlasting “perpetuum mobile,” a magnificent all-powerful machine. In fact, all this and especially the word “machine” expresses exactly what Goethe's conception was most directly opposed to. To him nature is truly the “Goddess,” the great Diana of the Ephesians, the everlasting Beauty, the artist of genius, ceaselessly inventing and creating, in floods of Life, in Action's storm—an infinite ocean, a restless weaving, a glowing Life. Embracing within herself the highest and the humblest, she is in all things, throughout all change and transformation, the same, shadowing forth the most perfect in the simplest, and in the highest only unfolding what she had already shown in the lowliest. Therefore Goethe hated all divisions and rubrics, all the contrasts and boundaries which learned analysis attempts to introduce into nature. Passionately he seized on Herder's idea of evolution, and it was towards establishing it that all his endeavours, botanical, zoological, morphological and osteological, were directed. He discovered in the human skull the premaxillary bone which occurs in the upper jaw of all mammals, and this “keystone to man” gave him, as he himself said, “such joy that all his bowels moved.” He interpreted the skull as developed [pg 026] from three modified vertebræ. He sketched a hypothesis of the primitive plant, and the theory that all the organs of the plant are modifications and developments of the leaf. He was a friend of Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire, who defended “l'unité de composition organique” in the forms of nature, and evolution by gradual stages, and he was the vehement opponent of Cuvier, who attempted to pick the world to pieces according to strictly defined architectural plans and rigid classes. And what the inner impulse to all this was he has summed up in the motto to his “Morphology” from the verse in Job:

Lo, he goeth by me, and I see him not;

He is transformed, but I perceive him not.

He further declares it in the introductory verse to his Osteology:

Joyfully some years ago,

Zealously my spirit sought

To explore it all, and know

How all nature lived and wrought:

And 'tis ever One in all,

Though in many ways made known;

Small in great, and great in small,

Each in manner of its own.

Ever shifting, yet fast holding;

Near and far, and far and near;

So, with moulding and remoulding,—

To my wonder I am here.

In all this there is absolutely nothing of the characteristic mood and spirit of “exact” naturalism, with its mechanical and mathematical categories. It matters little that Goethe, when he thought of evolution, never [pg 027] had present to his mind the idea of Descent which is characteristic of “Darwinism,” but rather development in the lofty sense in which it is worked out in the nature-philosophy of Schelling and of Hegel. The chief point is, that to him nature was the all-living and ever-living, whose creating and governing cannot be reduced to prosaic numbers or mathematical formulæ, but are to be apprehended as a whole by the perceptions of genius rather than worked out by calculation or in detail. Any other way of regarding nature Goethe early and decisively rejected. And he has embodied his strong protest against it in his “Dichtung und Wahrheit”:

“How hollow and empty it seemed to us in this melancholy, atheistical twilight.... Matter, we learnt, has moved from all eternity, and by means of this movement to right and left and in all directions, it has been able, unaided, to call forth all the infinite phenomena of existence.”

The book—the “Système de la Nature”—“seemed to us so grey, so Cimmerian, so deathlike that it was with difficulty we could endure its presence.”

And in a work with remarkable title and contents, “Die Farbenlehre,” Goethe has summed up his antagonism to the “Mathematicians,” and to their chief, Newton, the discoverer and founder of the new mathematical-mechanical view of nature. Yet the mode of looking at things which is here combated with so much labour, wit, and, in part, injustice, is precisely that of [pg 028] those who, to this day, swear by the name of Goethe with so much enthusiasm and so little intelligence

The two Kinds of Naturalism.

But let us return to the two kinds of naturalism we have already described. Much as they differ from one another in reality, they are very readily confused and mixed up with one another. And the chief peculiarity of what masquerades as naturalism among our educated or half-educated classes to-day lies in the fact that it is a mingling of the two kinds. Unwittingly, people combine the moods of the one with the reasons and methods of the other; and having done so they appear to themselves particularly consistent and harmonious in their thought, and are happy that they have been able thus to satisfy at once the needs of the intellect and those of the heart.

On the one hand they stretch the mathematical-mechanical view as far as possible from below upwards, and even attempt to explain the activities of life and consciousness as the results of complex reflex mechanisms. And on the other hand they bring down will soul and instincts into the lowest stages of existence, and become quite animistic. They wish to be nothing if not “exact,” and yet they reckon Goethe and Bruno among the greatest apostles of their faith, and set their verses and sayings as a credo and motto over their own opinions. In this way there arises a “world [pg 029] conception” so indiarubber-like and Protean that it is as difficult as it is unsatisfactory to attempt to come to an understanding with it. If we attempt to get hold of it by the fringe of poetry and idealism it has assumed, it promptly retires into its “exact” half. And if we try to limit ourselves to this, in order to find a basis for discussion, it spreads out before us all the splendours of a great nature pantheism, including even the ideas of the good, the true, and the beautiful. One thing only it neglects, and that is, to show where its two very different halves meet, and what inner bond unites them. Thus if we are to discuss it at all, we must first of all pick out and arrange all the foreign and mutually contradictory constituents it has incorporated, then deal with Pantheism and Animism, and with the problem of the possibility of “the true, the good, the beautiful” on the naturalistic-empiric basis, and finally there would remain a readily-grasped residue of naturalism of the second form, to come to some understanding with which is both necessary and instructive.

In the following pages we shall confine ourselves entirely to this type, and we shall not laboriously disentangle it from the bewildering medley of ideas foreign to it, or attempt to make it consistent; we shall neglect these, and have regard solely to its clear fundamental principles and aims. Thus regarded, its horizons are perfectly well-defined. It is startling in its absolute poverty of ideal content, warmth, and charm, but impressive and grand in the perseverance [pg 030] and tenacity with which it adheres to one main point of view throughout. In reality, it is aggressive to nothing, but cold and indifferent to everything, and for this very reason is more dangerous than all the excited protests and verdicts of the enthusiastic type of naturalism, which it is impossible to attack, because of its lack of definite principles, and which, in the pathetic stress it lays on worshipping nature, lives only by what it has previously borrowed from the religious conceptions of the world.

Aim and Method of Naturalism.

The aim and method of the strict type of naturalism may be easily defined. In its details it will become more distinct as we proceed with our analysis. Taking it as a whole, we may say that it is an endeavour on a large scale after consistent simplification and gradual reduction to lower and lower terms. Since it aims at explaining and understanding everything according to the axiom principia non temere esse multiplicanda [principles are not to be heedlessly multiplied], explaining, that is, with the fewest, simplest, and most obvious principles possible, it is incumbent upon it to attempt to refer all phenomena to a single, uniform mode of occurrence, which admits of nothing outside of or beyond itself, and which regulates itself according to its own system of fundamentally similar causal sequences. It is further incumbent upon it to trace back this universal [pg 031] mode of occurrence to the simplest and clearest form possible, and its uniformities to the fewest and most intelligible laws, that is, ultimately, to laws which can be determined by calculation and summed up in formulæ. This tracing back is equivalent to an elimination of all incommensurable causes, of all “final causes,” that is, of ultimate causes and “purposes” which, in an unaccountable manner, work into the network of proximate causes and control them, and by thus interrupting their connectedness, make it difficult to come to a clear understanding of the “Why?” of things. And this elimination is again a “reduction to simpler terms,” for it replaces the “teleological” consideration of purposes, by a purely scientific consideration of causes, which inquires only into the actual conditions antecedent to certain sequences.

But Being and Becoming include two great realms: that of “Nature” and that of “Mind,” i.e. consciousness and the processes of consciousness. And two apparently fundamentally different branches of knowledge relate to these: the natural sciences, and the mental sciences. If a unified and “natural” explanation is really possible, the beginning and end of all this “reducing to simpler terms” must be to bridge over the gulf between these; but this, in the sense of naturalism, necessarily means that the mental sciences must in some way be reduced to terms of natural science, and that the phenomena, processes, sequences, and laws of consciousness must likewise be made “commensurable” with and [pg 032] be linked on to the apparently simpler and clearer knowledge of “Nature,” and, if possible, be subordinated to its phenomena and laws, if not indeed derived from them. As it is impossible to regard consciousness itself as corporeal, or as a process of movement, naturalism must at least attempt to show that the phenomena of consciousness are attendant and consequent on corporeal phenomena, and that, though they themselves never become corporeal, they are strictly regulated by the laws of the corporeal and physical, and can be calculated upon and studied in the same way.

But even the domain of the natural itself, as we know it, is by no means simple and capable of a unified interpretation. Nature, especially in the realm of organic life, the animal and plant world, appears to be filled with marvels of purposefulness, with riddles of development and differentiation, in short with all the mysteries of life. Here most of all it is necessary to “reduce” the “teleological view” to terms of the purely causal, and to prove that all the results, even the evolution of the forms of life, up to their highest expressions and in the minutest details of their marvellous adaptations, came “of themselves,” that is to say, are quite intelligible as the results of clearly traceable causes. It is necessary to reduce the physiological and developmental, and all the other processes of life, to terms of physical and chemical processes, and thus to reduce the living to the not living, and to derive the organic from the forces and substances of inanimate nature.

The process of reduction does not stop even here. For physical and chemical processes are only really understood when they can be resolved into the simplest processes of movement in general, when all qualitative changes can be traced hack to purely quantitative phenomena, when, finally, in the mechanics of the great masses, as well as of the infinitely small atoms, everything becomes capable of expression in mathematical terms.

But naturalism of this kind is by no means pure natural science; it consciously and deliberately oversteps in speculation the bounds of what is strictly scientific. In this respect it bears some resemblance to the nature-philosophy associated with what we called the first type of naturalism. But its very poverty enables it to have a strictly defined programme. It knows exactly what it wants, and thus it is possible to argue with it. The religious conception of the world must come to an understanding with it, for it is quite obvious that the more indifferent this naturalism is to everything outside of itself, and the less aggressive it pretends to be, the more does the picture of the world which it attempts to draw exert a cramping influence on religion. Where the two come into contact we shall endeavour to make clear in the following pages.

Chapter III. Fundamental Principles.

The fundamental convictions of naturalism, its general tendencies, and the points of view which determine its outlook, are primarily related to that order of facts which forms the subject of the natural sciences, to “Nature.” It is only secondarily that it attempts to penetrate with the methods of the natural sciences into the region of the conscious, of the mind, into the domain that underlies the mental sciences, including history and the æsthetic, political, and religious sciences, and to show that, in this region as in the other, natural law and the same principles of interpretation obtain, that here, too, the “materialistic conception of history holds true, and that there is no autonomy of mind.”

The interests of religion here go hand in hand with those of the mental sciences, in so far as these claim to be distinct and independent. For the question is altogether one of the reality, pre-eminence, and independence of the spiritual as opposed to the “natural.” Occasionally it has been thought that the whole problem of the relations between religion and naturalism was concentrated on this point, and the study of nature has [pg 035] been left to naturalism as if it were indifferent or even hopeless, thus leaving a free field for theories of all kinds, the materialistic included. It is only in regard to the Darwinian theory of evolution and the mechanical theory of the origin and nature of life, and particularly in regard to the relatively unimportant question of “spontaneous generation” that a livelier interest is usually awakened. But these isolated theories are only a part of the “reduction,” which is characteristic of naturalism, and they can only be rightly estimated and understood in connection with it. We shall turn our attention to them only after we have carefully considered what is fundamental and essential. But the idea that religion may calmly neglect the study of nature as long as naturalism leaves breathing-room for the freedom and independence of mind is quite erroneous. If religion is true, nature must be of God, and it must bear tokens which allow us to interpret it as of God. And such signs are to be found. What we shall have to say in regard to them may be summed up in the following propositions:—

1. Even the world, which has been brought under the reign of scientific laws, is a mystery; it has been formulated, but not explained.

2. The world governed by law is still dependent, conditioned, and “contingent.”

3. The conception of Nature as obedient to law is not excluded but rather demanded by belief in God.

4, 5. We cannot comprehend the true nature and [pg 036] depth of things, and the world which we do comprehend is not the true Reality of things; it is only its appearance. In feeling and intuition this appearance points beyond itself to the true nature of things.

6. Ideas and purposes, and with them Providence and the control of things, can neither be established by the natural sciences nor disputed by them.

7. The causal interpretation demanded by natural science fits in with an explanation according to purpose, and the latter presupposes the former.

How the Religious and the Naturalistic Outlooks Conflict.

Religion comes into contact with naturalism and demands to be reconciled with it, not merely at its periphery, but at its very core, namely, with its characteristic ideal of a mathematical-mechanical interpretation of the whole world. This ideal seems to be most nearly, if not indeed completely, attained in reference to the inter-relations of the great masses, in the realm of astronomy, with the calculable, inviolable, and entirely comprehensible conditions which govern the purely mechanical correlations of the heavenly bodies. To bring the same clearness and intelligibility, the same inevitableness and calculability into the world in general, and into the whole realm of nature down to the mysterious law determining the development of the daintiest insect's wing, and the stirrings of the grey matter in the [pg 037] cortex of the brain which reveal themselves to us as sensation, desire, and thought, this has always been the aim and secret faith of the naturalistic mode of thought. It is thus aiming at a Cosmos of all Being and Becoming, which can be explained from itself, and comprehended in itself alone, supported by its own complete and all-sufficing causality and uniformity, resting in itself, shut up within itself, complete in itself—a God sufficient unto himself and resting in himself.

We do not need to probe very deeply to find out how strongly religion resists this attempt, and we easily discover what is the disturbing element which awakens hostile feeling. It is of three kinds, and depends on three characteristic aims and requirements of religion, which are closely associated with one another, yet distinct from one another, though it is not always easy to represent them in their true proportions and relative values. The first of these interests seems to be “teleology,” the search after guiding ideas and purposes, after plan and directive control in the whole machinery, that sets itself in sharp opposition to a mere inquiry into proximate causes. Little or nothing is gained by knowing how everything came about or must have come about; all interest lies in the fact that everything has come about in such a way that it reveals intention, wisdom, providence, and eternal meaning, realising itself in details and in the whole. This has always been rightly regarded as the true concern and interest of every religious conception of the world. But it has [pg 038] been sometimes forgotten that this is by no means the only, or even the primary interest that religion has in world-lore. We call it its highest and ultimate interest, but we find, on careful study, that two others are associated with and precede it.

For before all belief in Providence and in the divine meaning of the world, indeed before faith at all, religion is primarily feeling—a deep, humble consciousness of the entire dependence and conditionality of our existence, and of all things. The belief we have spoken of is, in relation to this feeling, merely a form—as yet not in itself religious. It is not only the question “Have the world and existence a meaning, and are phenomena governed by ideas and purposes?” that brings religion and its antagonists into contact; there is a prior and deeper question. Is there scope for this true inwardness of all religion, the power to comprehend itself and all the world in humility in the light of that which is not of the world, but is above world and existence? But this is seriously affected by that doctrine which attempts to regard the Cosmos as self-governing and self-sufficing, needing nothing, and failing in nothing. It is this and not Darwinism or the descent from a Simian stock that primarily troubles the religious spirit. It is more specially sensitive to the strange and antagonistic tendency of naturalism shown even in that marvellous and terrifying mathematical-mechanical system of the great heavenly bodies, in this clock of the universe which, in obedience to clear and [pg 039] inviolable laws, carries on its soundless play from everlasting to everlasting, needing no pendulum and no pedestal, without any stoppage and without room for dependence on anything outside of itself, apparently entirely godless, but absolutely reason and God enough for itself. It shrinks in terror from the thought that the same autonomy and self-regulation may be brought down from the stage of immensity into the play of everyday life and events.

But we must penetrate still deeper. Schleiermacher has directed our attention anew to the fact that the most profound element in religion is that deep-lying consciousness of all creatures, “I that am dust and ashes,” that humble feeling of the absolute dependence of every being in the world on One that is above all the world. But religion does not fully express itself even in this; there is yet another note that sounds still deeper and is the keynote of the triad. “Let a man examine himself.” Is it not the case that we ourselves, in as far as the delight in knowledge and the enthusiasm for solving riddles have taken hold of us, rejoice in every new piece of elucidation and interpretation that science succeeds in making, that we are in the fullest sympathy with the impulse to understand everything and bring reason and clearness into it, and that we give hearty adherence to the leading ideas which guide the investigations of natural science? Yet on the other hand, in as far as we are religious, do we not sometimes feel a sudden inward recoil from this almost profane eagerness [pg 040] to penetrate into the mystery of things, this desire to have everything intelligible, clear, rational and transparent? This feeling which stirs in us has always existed in all religious minds and will only die with them. And we need not hesitate to say so plainly. For this is the most real characteristic of religion; it seeks depth in things, reaches out towards what is concealed, uncomprehended, and mysterious. It is more than humility; it is piety. And piety is experience of mystery.

It is at this point that religion comes most violently into antagonism with the meaning and mood of naturalism. Here they first conflict in earnest. And it is here above all that scientific investigation and its materialistic complement seem to take away freedom and truth, air and light from religion. For science is seeking especially this: Deeper penetration into and illumination of the world. It presses with macroscope and microscope into its most outlying regions and most hidden corners, into its abysses and fastnesses. It explains away the old idea of two worlds, one on this side and one on that, and rejects heavenly things with the notice “No Room” of which D. Fr. Strauss speaks. It aims at discovering the mathematical world-formulæ, if not indeed one great general formula which embraces, defines unequivocally, and rationalises all the processes of and in infinity, from the movements of Sirius to those of the cilia of the infusorian in the drop of water, and which not only crowds “heaven” out of the world, [pg 041] but strips away from things the fringe of the mysterious and incommensurable which seemed to surround them.

Mystery : Dependence : Purpose.

There is then a threefold religious interest, and there are three corresponding points of contact between the religious and the naturalistic interpretations of the world, where, as it appears, they are necessarily antagonistic to one another. Arranging them in their proper order we find, first, the interest, never to be relinquished, of experiencing and acknowledging the world and existence to be a mystery, and regarding all that is known and manifested in things merely as the thin crust which separates us from the uncomprehended and inexpressible. Secondly, there is the desire on the part of religion to bring ourselves and all creatures into the “feeling of absolute dependence,” and, as the belief in creation does, to subordinate ourselves and them to the Eternal Power that is not of the world, but is above the world. Finally, there is the interest in a teleological interpretation of the world as opposed to the purely causal interpretation of natural science; that is to say, an interpretation of the world according to eternal God-willed purposes, governing ideas, a plan and aim. In all three respects, it is important to religion that it should be able to maintain its validity and freedom as contrasted with naturalism.

But while religion must inquire of itself into the [pg 042] reality of things, with special regard to its own needs, there are two possibilities which may serve to make peace between it and natural science. It may, for instance, be possible that the mathematical-mechanical interpretation of things, even if it be sufficient within its own domain, does not take away from nature the characters which religion seeks and requires in it, namely, purpose, dependence and mystery. Or it may be that nature itself does not correspond at all to this ideal of mathematical explicability, that this ideal may be well enough as a guide for investigation, but that it is not a fundamental clue really applying to nature as a whole and in its essence. It may be that nature as a whole cannot be scientifically summed up without straining the mechanical categories. And this suggests another possibility, namely, that the naturalistic method of interpretation cannot be applied throughout the whole territory of nature, that it embraces certain aspects but not others, and, finally, that it is distinctly interrupted and held in abeyance at particular points by the incommensurable which breaks forth spontaneously out of the depths of phenomena, revealing a depth which is not to be explained away.

All these possibilities occur. And though they need not necessarily be regarded as the key to our order of discussion, in what follows we shall often meet them singly or together.

The Mystery of Existence Remains Unexplained.

1. Let us begin with the problem of the mystery of all existence, and see whether it remains unaffected, or whether it disappears in face of naturalistic interpretation, with its discovery and formulation of law and order, with its methods of measuring and computing. More primary even than faith and heartfelt trust in everlasting wisdom and purposeful Providence there is piety; there is devout sense of awe before the marvellous and mysterious, before the depth and the hidden nature of all things and all being, before unspeakable mysteries over which we hover, and abysmal depths over which we are borne. In a world which had not these, and could not be first felt in this way, religion could not live at all. It could not sail on its too shallow waters, or breathe its too thin air. It is indeed a fact that what alone we can fitly speak of and love as religion—the sense of mystery and the gentle shuddering of piety before the depth of phenomena and their everlasting divine abysses,—has its true place and kingdom in the world of mind and history, with its experiences, riddles, and depths. But mystery is to be found in the world of nature as well. It is only to a very superficial study that it could appear as though nature were, or ever could become, plain and obvious, as if the veil of Isis which shrouds its depths from all investigation could ever be torn away. From this point of view it would make no [pg 044] difference even though the attempt to range the whole realm of nature under the sway of inviolable laws were to be immediately successful. This is expressed in the first of our main propositions (p. [35]).

In order to realise this it is necessary to reflect for a little on the relation of “explanation” and “description” to one another, and on what is meant by “establishing laws” and “understanding” in general. The aim of all investigation is to understand the world. To understand it obviously means something more than merely to know it. It is not enough for us to know things, that is, to know what, how many, and what different kinds of things there are. On the contrary, we want to understand them, to know how they came to be as they are, and why they are precisely as they are. The first step towards this understanding is merely to know, that is, we must rightly apprehend and disentangle the things and processes of the world, grouping them, and describing them adequately and exhaustively.

But what I have merely described I have not yet understood; I am only preparing to try to understand it. It stands before me enveloped in all its mystery, and I must now begin to attempt to solve it, for describing is not explaining; it is only challenging explanation. The next step is to discover and formulate the laws. For when man sifts out things and processes and follows them out into their changes and stages he discovers the iron regularity of sequences, the strictly defined lines and paths, the inviolable order and connection [pg 045] in things and occurrences, and he formulates these into laws, ascribing to them the idea of necessity which he finds in himself. In so doing he makes distinct progress, for he can now go beyond what is actually seen, he can draw inferences with certainty as to effects and work back to causes. And thus order, breadth of view, and uniformity are brought into his acquaintance with facts, and his science begins. For science does not merely mean acquaintance with phenomena in their contingent or isolated occurrence, manifold and varied as that may be; it is the discovery and establishment of the laws and general modes of occurrence. Without this we might collect curiosities, but we should not have science. And to discover this network of uniformities throughout all phenomena, in the movements of the heavenly bodies and in the living substance of the cell alike, is the primary aim of all investigation. We are still far away from this goal, and it is more than questionable whether we shall ever reach it.

But if the goal should ever be reached, if, in other words, we should ever be able to say with certainty what must result if occurrences a and b are given, or what a and b must have been when c occurs, would explanation then have taken the place of description? Or would understanding have replaced mystery? Obviously not at all. It has indeed often been supposed that this would be the case. People have imagined they have understood, when they have seen that [pg 046] “that is always so, and that it always happens in this particular way.” But this is a naïve idea. The region of the described has merely become larger, and the riddle has become more complex. For now we have before us not only the things themselves, but the more marvellous laws which “govern” them. But laws are not forces or impelling causes. They do not cause anything to happen, and they do not explain anything. And as in the case of things so in that of laws, we want to know how they are, whence they come, and why they are as they are and not quite different. The fact that we have described them simply excites still more strongly the desire to explain them. To explain is to be able to answer the question “Why?”

Natural science is very well aware of this. It calls its previous descriptions “merely historical,” and it desires to supplement these with ætiology, causal explanation, a deeper interpretation, that in its turn will make laws superfluous, because it will penetrate so deeply into the nature of things that it will see precisely why these, and not other laws of variation, of development, of becoming, hold sway. This is just the meaning of the “reductions” of which we have already spoken. For instance, in regard to crystal formation, “explanation” will have replaced description only when, instead of demonstrating the forms and laws according to which a particular crystal always and necessarily arises out of a particular solution, we are able to show why, from a particular mixture and because [pg 047] of certain co-operating molecular forces, and of other more primary, more remote, but also intelligible conditions, these forms and processes of crystallisation should always and of necessity occur. If this explanation were possible, the “law” would also be explained, and would therefore become superfluous. From this and similar examples we can learn at what point “explanation” begins to replace description, namely, when processes resolve themselves into simpler processes from the concurrence of which they arise. This is exactly what natural science desires to bring about, and what naturalism hopes ultimately to succeed in, thereby solving the riddle of existence.

But this kind of reduction to simpler terms only becomes “explanation” when these simpler terms are themselves clear and intelligible and not merely simple; that is to say, when we can immediately see why the simpler process occurs, and by what means it is brought about, when the question as to the “why” is no longer necessary, because, on becoming aware of the process, we immediately and directly perceive that it is a matter of course, indisputable, and requiring no proof. If this is not the case, the reduction to simpler terms has been misleading. We have only replaced one unintelligibility by another, one description by another, and so simply pushed back the whole problem. Naturalism supposes that by this gradual pushing back the task will at least become more and more simple, until at last a point is reached where the riddle will solve [pg 048] itself, because description becomes equivalent to explanation. This final stage is supposed to be found in the forces of attraction and repulsion, with which the smallest similar particles of matter are equipped. Out of the endlessly varied correlations of these there arise all higher forms of energy and all the combinations which make up more complex phenomena.

But in reality this does not help us at all. For now we are definitely brought face to face with the quite unanswerable question, How, from all this homogeneity and unity of the ultimate particles and forces, can we account for the beginnings of the diversity which is so marked a characteristic of this world? Whence came the causes of the syntheses to higher unities, the reasons for the combination into higher resultants of energy?

But even apart from that, it is quite obvious that we have not yet reached the ultimate point. For can “attraction,” influence at a distance, vis a fronte, be considered as a fact which is in itself clear? Is it not rather the most puzzling fundamental riddle we can be called upon to explain? Assuredly. And therefore the attempt is made to penetrate still deeper to the ultimate point, the last possible reduction to simpler terms, by referring all actual “forces” and reducing all movement, and therewith all “action,” to terms of attraction and repulsion, which are free from anything mysterious, whose mode of working can be unambiguously and plainly set forth in the law of the parallelogram of forces. Law? Set forth? Therefore still [pg 049] only description? Certainly only description, not explanation in the least. Even assuming that it is true, instead of a mere Utopia, that all the secrets and riddles of nature can be traced back to matter moved by attraction and repulsion according to the simplest laws of these, they would still only be summed up into a great general riddle, which is only the more colossal because it is able to embrace all others within itself. For attraction and repulsion, the transference of motion, and the combination of motion according to the law of the parallelogram of forces—all this is merely description of processes whose inner causes we do not understand, which appear simple, and are so, but are nevertheless not self-evident or to be taken as a matter of course; they are not in themselves intelligible, but form an absolute “world-riddle.” From the very root of things there gazes at us the same Sphinx which we had apparently driven from the foreground.

But furthermore, this reduction to simpler terms is an impossible and never-ending task. There is fresh confusion at every step. In reducing to simpler terms, it is often forgotten that the principle of combination is not inherent in the more simple, and cannot be “reduced.” Or else there is an ignoring of the fact that a transition has been made, not from resultants to components, but to quite a different kind of phenomena. Innumerable as are the possible reductions to simpler terms, and mistaken as it would be to remain prematurely at the level of description, it cannot be denied [pg 050] that the fundamental facts of the world are pure facts which must simply be accepted where they occur, indisputable, inexplicable, impenetrable, the “whence” and the “how” of their existence quite uncomprehended. And this is especially true of every new and peculiar expression of what we call energy and energies. Gravitation cannot be reduced to terms of attraction and repulsion, nor action at a distance to action at close quarters; it might, indeed, be shown that repulsion in its turn presupposes attraction before it can become possible; the “energies” of ponderable matter cannot be reduced to the “ether” and its processes of motion, nor the complex play of the chemical affinities to the attraction of masses in general or to gravity. And thus the series ascends throughout the spheres of nature up to the mysterious directive energies in the crystal, and to the underivable phenomena of movement in the living substance, perhaps even to the functions of will-power. All these can be discovered, but not really understood. They can be described, but not explained. And we are absolutely ignorant as to why they should have emerged from the depth of nature, what that depth really is, or what still remains hidden in her mysterious lap. Neither what nature reveals to us nor what it conceals from us is in any true sense “comprehended,” and we flatter ourselves that we understand her secrets when we have only become accustomed to them. If we try to break the power of this accustomedness and to [pg 051] consider the actual relations of things there dawns in us a feeling already awakened by direct impressions and experience; the feeling of the mysterious and enigmatical, of the abyssmal depths beneath, and of what lies far above our comprehension, alike in regard to our own existence and every other. The world is at no point self-explanatory, but at all points marvellous. Its laws are only formulated riddles.

Evolution and New Beginnings.

All this throws an important light upon two subjects which are relevant in this connection, but which cannot here be exhaustively dealt with,—evolution and new beginnings. Let us consider, for instance, the marvellous range and diversity of the characteristic chemical properties and interrelations of substances. Each one of them, contrasted with the preceding lower forms and stages of “energy,” contrasted with mere attraction, repulsion, gravitation, is something absolutely new, a new interpolation (of course not in regard to time but to grade), a phenomenon which cannot be “explained” by what has gone before. It simply occurs, and we find it in its own time and place. We may call this new emergence “evolution,” and we may use this term in connection with every new stage higher than those preceding it. But it is not evolution in a crude and quantitative sense, according to which the “more highly evolved” is nothing more than an [pg 052] addition and combination of what was already there; it is evolution in the old sense of the word, according to which the more developed is a higher analogue of the less developed, but is in its own way as independent, as much a new beginning as each of the antecedent stages, and therefore in the strict sense neither derivable from them nor reducible to them.

It must be noted that in this sense evolution and new beginnings are already present at a very early stage in nature and are part of its essence. We must bear this in mind if we are rightly to understand the subtler processes in nature which we find emerging at a higher level. It is illusory to suppose that it is a “natural” assumption to “derive” the living from lower processes in nature. The non-living and the inorganic are also underivable as to their individual stages, and the leap from the inorganic to the organic is simply much greater than that from attraction in general to chemical affinity. As a matter of fact, the first occurrence—undoubtedly controlled and conditioned by internal necessity—of crystallisation, or of life, or of sensation has just the same marvellousness as everything individual and everything new in any ascending series in nature. In short, every new beginning has the same marvel.

Perhaps this consideration goes still deeper, throwing light upon or suggesting the proper basis for a study of the domain of mind and of history. It is immediately obvious that there, at any rate, we enter into a [pg 053] region of phenomena which cannot be derived from anything antecedent, or reduced to anything lower. It must be one of the chief tasks of naturalism to explain away these facts, and to maintain the sway of “evolution,” not in our sense but in its own, that is “to explain” everything new and individual from that which precedes it. But the assertion that this can be done is here doubly false. For, in the first place, it cannot be proved that methods of study which are relatively valid for natural phenomena are applicable also to those of the mind. And in the second place we must admit that even in nature—apart from mind—we have to do with new beginnings which are underivable from their antecedents.

All being is inscrutable mystery as a whole, and from its very foundations upwards through each successively higher stage of its evolution, in an increasing degree, until it reaches a climax in the incomprehensibility of individuality. It is a mystery that does not force itself into nature as supernatural or miraculous, but is fundamentally implicit in it, a mystery that in its unfolding assuredly follows the strictest law, the most inviolable rules, whether in the chemical affinities a higher grade of energies reveals itself, or whether—unquestionably also in obedience to everlasting law—the physical and chemical conditions admit of the occurrence of life, or whether in his own time and place a genius arises.[1]

The Dependence of the Order of Nature.

(2 and 3). The “dependence” of all things is the second requirement of religion, without which it is altogether inconceivable. We avoid the words “creation” and “being created,” because they involve anthropomorphic and altogether insufficient modes of representation. But throughout we have in mind, as suggested by Schleiermacher's [pg 055] expression already quoted, what all religion means when it declares nature and the world to be creatures. The inalienable content of this idea is that deep and assured feeling that our nature and all nature does not rest in its own strength and self-sufficiency, that there must be more secure reasons for nature which are absolutely outside of it, and that it is dependent upon, and conditioned through and through by something above itself, independent, and unconditioned. “I believe that God has created me together with all creatures.” (Luther.)

This faith seemed easier in earlier times, when men's eyes were not yet opened to see the deep-lying connectedness of all phenomena, the inexorableness of causal sequences, when it was believed that, in the apparently numerous interruptions of the causal sequences, the frailty and dependence of this world and its need for heavenly aid could be directly observed, when, therefore, it was not difficult to believe that the world was “nothing” and perishable, that it had been called forth out of nothing, and that in its transient nature it carried for ever the traces of this origin. But to-day it is not so easy to believe in this dependence, for nature seems to show itself, in its inviolable laws and unbroken sequences, as entirely sufficient unto itself, so that for every phenomenon a sufficient cause is to be found within nature, that is, in the sum of the antecedent states and conditions which, according to inevitable laws, must result in and produce what follows.

We have already noted that this is most obviously discernible in the world of the great masses, the heavenly bodies which pursue their courses from everlasting to everlasting, mutually conditioning themselves and betraying no need for or dependence upon anything outside of themselves. Everything, even the smallest movement, is here determined strictly by the dependence of each upon all and of all upon each. There is no variation, no change of position for which an entirely satisfactory cause cannot be found in the system as a whole, which works like an immense machine. Nothing indicates dependence upon anything external. And as it is to-day so it was yesterday, and a million years ago, and innumerable millions of years ago. It seems quite gratuitous to suppose that something which does not occur to-day was necessary at an earlier period, and that everything has not been from all eternity just as it is now.

We saw that naturalism is attempting to extend this character of independence and self-sufficiency from the astronomical world to the world as a whole. Shall we attempt, then, to oppose it in this ambition, but surrender the realm of the heavenly bodies as already conquered? By no means. For religion cannot exclude the solar system from the dependence of all being upon God. And this very example is the most conspicuous one, the one in regard to which the whole problem can be most definitely formulated.

Astronomy teaches us that all cosmic processes are [pg 057] governed by a marvellous far-reaching uniformity of law, which unites in strictest harmony the nearest and the most remote. Has this fact any bearing upon the problem of the dependence of the world? No. It surely cannot be that a world without order could be brought under the religious point of view more readily than one governed by law! Let us suppose for a moment that we had to do with a world without strict nexus and definite order of sequence, without law and without order, full of capricious phenomena, unregulated associations, an inconstant play of causes. Such a world would be to us unintelligible, strange, absurd. But it would not necessarily be more “dependent,” more “conditioned” than any other. Had I no other reasons for looking beyond the world, and for regarding it as dependent on something outside of itself, the absence of law and order would assuredly furnish me with none. For, assuming that it is possible at all to conceive of a world and its contents as independent, and as containing its own sufficient cause within itself, it would be quite as easily thought of as a confused lawless play of chances as a well-ordered Cosmos. Perhaps more easily; for it goes without saying that such a conglomeration of promiscuous chances could not possibly be thought of as a world of God. Order and strict obedience to law, far from being excluded, are required by faith in God, are indeed a direct and inevitable preliminary to thinking of the world as dependent upon God. Thus we may state the paradox, that only a [pg 058] Cosmos which, by its strict obedience to law, gives us the impression of being sufficient unto itself, can be conceived of as actually dependent upon God, as His creation. If any man desires to stop short at the consideration of the apparent self-sufficiency of the Cosmos and its obedience to law, and refuses to recognise any reasons outside of the world for this, we should hardly be able, according to our own proposition, to require him to go farther. For we maintained that God could not be read out of nature, that the idea of God could never have been gained in the first instance from a study of nature and the world. The problem always before us is rather, whether, having gained the idea from other sources, we can include the world within it. Our present question is whether the world, as it is, and just because it is as it is, can be conceived of as dependent upon God. And this question can only be answered in the affirmative, and in the sense of Schiller's oft-quoted lines:

The great Creator

We see not—He conceals himself within

His own eternal laws. The sceptic sees

Their operation, but beholds not Him,

“Wherefore a God!” he cries, “the world itself

Suffices for itself!” and Christian prayer

Ne'er praised him more, than does this blasphemy.

God's world could not possibly be a conglomeration of chances; it must be orderly, and the fact that it is so proves its dependence.

But while we thus hold fast to our canon, we shall [pg 059] find that the assertion of the world's dependence receives indirect corroboration even in regard to the astronomical realm, from certain signs which it exhibits, from certain suggestions which are implied in it. We must not wholly overlook two facts which, to say the least, are difficult to fit in with the idea of the independence and self-sufficiency of the world; these are, on the one hand, the difficulties involved in the idea of an eternal machine, and on the other the difficult fact of “entropy.” We have already compared the world to a mighty clock, or a machine which, as a whole, represents what can never be found in one of its parts, a perpetuum mobile. Let us however leave aside the idea of a perpetuum mobile, and dwell rather on the comparison with a machine. It seems obvious that in order to be a machine there must be a closed solidarity in the system. But how could a machine have come into existence and become functional if it is driven by wheels, which are driven by wheels, which are again driven by wheels ... and so on unceasingly? It would not be a machine. The idea falls to pieces in our hands. Yet our world is supposed to be just such an infinitely continuous “system.” How does it begin to depend upon and be sufficient unto itself? But further. It is a clock, we are told, which ever winds itself up anew, which, without fatigue and in ceaseless repetition, adjusts the universal cycles of becoming, and disappearing, and becoming again. It seems a corroboration of the old Heraclitian and Stoic conception, that the eternal primitive fire brings forth [pg 060] all things out of itself, and takes them back into itself to bring them forth anew. Even to-day the conception is probably general that, out of the original states of the world-matter, circling fiery nebulæ form themselves and throw off their rings, that the breaking up of these rings gives rise to planets which circle in solar systems for many æons through space, till, finally, their energy lessened by friction with the ether, they plunge into their suns again, that the increased heat restores the original state and the whole play begins anew.

All this was well enough in the days of naïvely vitalistic ideas of the world as having a life and soul. But not in these days of mechanics, the strict calculation of the amount of energy used, and the mechanical theory of heat. The world-clock cannot wind itself up. It, too, owes its activity to the transformation of potential energy into kinetic energy. And, since movement and work take place within it, there is in the clock as a whole just as in every one of its parts, a mighty process of relaxation of an originally tense spring, there is dissipation and transformation of the stored potential energy into work and ultimately into heat. And with every revolution of the earth and its moon the world is moving slowly but inexorably towards a final stage of complete relaxation of her powers of tension, a state in which all energy will be transformed into heat, in which there will be no different states but only the most uniform distribution, in which also all [pg 061] life and all movement will cease and the world-clock itself will come to a standstill.

How does this fit in with the idea of independence and self-sufficiency? How could the world-clock ever wind itself up again to the original state of tension which was simply there as if shot from a pistol “in the beginning”? Where is the everlasting impressive uniformity and constancy of the world? How does it happen that the world-clock has not long ago come to a standstill? For even if the original sum of potential energy is postulated as infinite, the eternity that lies behind us is also infinite. And so one infinity swallows another. And innumerable questions of a similar kind are continually presenting themselves.

The “Contingency” of the World.

But we need not dwell in the meantime on these and the many other difficulties and riddles presented by our cosmological hypothesis. However these may be solved, a general consideration will remain—namely, that whether the world is governed by law or not, whether it is sufficient unto itself or not, there is a world full of the most diverse phenomena, and there are laws. Whence then have both these come? Is it a matter of course, is it quite obvious that they should exist at all, and that they should be exactly as they are? We do not here appeal without further ceremony to the saying “everything must have a cause, therefore the world also.” It [pg 062] is not absolutely correct. For instance, if the world were so constituted that it would be impossible for it not to exist, that the necessity for its existence and the inconceivability of its non-existence were at once explicit and obvious, then there would be no sense in inquiring after a cause. In regard to a “necessary” thing, if there were any such, we cannot ask, “Why, and from what cause does this exist?” If it was necessary, that implies that to think of it as not existing would be ridiculous, and logically or metaphysically impossible. Unfortunately there are no “necessary” things, so that we cannot illustrate the case by examples. But there are at least necessary truths as distinguished from contingent truths. And thus some light may be brought into the matter for the inexpert. For instance, a necessary truth is contained in the sentence, “Everything is equal to itself,” or, “The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.” We cannot even conceive of the contrary. Therefore these axioms have no reasons, and can neither be deduced nor proved. Every question as to their reasons is quite meaningless. As examples of a “contingent” truth we may take “It rains to-day,” or “The earth revolves round the sun.” For neither one nor the other of these is necessarily so. It is so as a matter of fact, but under other circumstances it might have been otherwise. The contrary can be conceived of and represented, and has in itself an equal degree of possibility. Therefore such a fact requires to [pg 063] be and is capable of being reasoned out. I can and must ask, “How does it happen that it rains to-day? What are the reasons for it?” But as we must seek for sufficient reasons for “contingent” truths, that is, for those of which the contrary was equally possible, so assuredly we must seek for sufficient causes for “contingent” phenomena and events, those which can be thought of as not existing, or as existing in a different form. For these we must find causes and actual reasons. Otherwise they have no foundation. The element of “contingency” must be done away with; they must be shown to result from sufficient causes. That is to say nothing less than that they must be traced back to some necessity. For it is one of the curious fundamental convictions of our reason, and one in which all scientific investigation has its ultimate roots, that what is “contingent” is only apparently so, and in reality is in some way or other based on necessity. Therefore reason seeks causes for everything.

The search for causes involves showing that a thing was necessary. And this must obviously apply to the world as a whole. If it were quite obvious that the world and its existence as it is were necessary, that is, that it would be contrary to reason to think of the world, and its phenomena, and their obedience to law as non-existent, or as different from what they are, all inquiry would be at an end. This would be the ultimate necessity in which all the apparent contingency of isolated phenomena and existences was firmly based. [pg 064] But this is far from being the case. That anything exists, and that the world exists, is for us absolutely the greatest “contingency” of all, and in regard to it we can and must continually ask, “Why does anything exist at all, and why should it not rather be non-existent?” Indeed, all our quest for sufficient causes here reaches its climax. In more detail: that these celestial systems and bodies, the ether, attraction and gravitation should exist, and that everything should be governed by definite laws, all literally “as if shot from a pistol,” there must undoubtedly be some sufficient reason, certain as it is that we shall never discover it. It is true, as some one has said, that we live not only in a very fortuitous world, but in an incredibly improbable one. And this is not affected by the fact that the world is completely governed by law. Law only confirms it. The fact that all details may be clearly and mathematically calculated in no way prevents them from being fundamentally contingent. For they are only so calculable on the basis of the given fundamental characters of the world. And that is precisely the problem: “Why do these characters exist and not quite different ones, and why should any exist at all?”

If any one should say: “Well, we must just content ourselves with recognising the essentially ‘contingent’ nature of existence, for we shall never be able to get beyond that,” he would be right in regard to the second statement. To get beyond that and to see what it is—eternal [pg 065] and in itself necessary—that lies at the basis of this world of “contingency” is indeed impossible. But he would be wrong as to the first part of the assertion. For no one will “content himself.” For that all chance is only apparently chance, and is ultimately based in necessity, is a deeply-rooted and fundamental conviction of our reason, one which directs all scientific investigation, and which cannot be ignored. It demands ceaselessly something necessary as the permanent basis of contingent existence. And this fact is and remains the truth involved in the “cosmological proofs of the existence of God” of former days. It was certainly erroneous to suppose that “God” could be proved. For it is a long way from that “idea of necessity” to religious experience of God. And it was erroneous, too, to suppose that anything could be really “proved.” What is necessary can never really be proved from what is contingent. But the recognition of the contingent nature of the world is a stimulus that stirs up within our reason the idea of the necessary, and it is a fact that reason finds rest only in this idea.

The Real World.

(4.) What was stated separately in our first and second propositions, and has hitherto been discussed, now unites and culminates in the fourth. For if we note the vital expressions of religion wherever it occurs, we find above all one thing as its most characteristic sign, [pg 066] indeed as its very essence, in all places and all times, often only as a scarce uttered wish or longing, but often breaking forth with impetuous might. This one thing is the impulse and desire to get beyond time and space, and beyond the oppressive narrowness and crampingness of the world surrounding us, the desire to see into the depth and “other side” of things and of existence. For it is the very essence of religion to distinguish this world from, and contrast it as insufficient with the real world which is sufficient, to regard this world which we see and know and possess as only an image, as only transiently real, in contrast with the real world of true being which is believed in. Religion has clothed this essential feature in a hundred mythologies and eschatologies, and one has always given place to another, the more sublimed to the more robust. But the fundamental feature itself cannot disappear.

In apologetics and dogmatics the interest in this matter is often concentrated more or less exclusively upon the question of “immortality.” Wrongly so, however, for this quest after the real world is not a final chapter in religion, it is religion itself. And in the religious sense the question of immortality is only justifiable and significant when it is a part of the general religious conviction that this world is not the truly essential world, and that the true nature of things, and of our own being, is deeper than we can comprehend, and lies beyond this side of things, beyond [pg 067] time and space. To the religious mind it cannot be of great importance whether existence is to be continued for a little at least beyond this life. In what way would such a wish be religious? But the inward conviction that “all that is transitory is only a parable,” that all here is only a veil and a curtain, and the desire to get beyond semblance to truth, beyond insufficiency to sufficiency, concentrate themselves especially in the assertion of the eternity of our true being.

It is with this characteristic of religion that the spirit and method of naturalism contrast so sharply. Naturalism points out with special satisfaction that this depth of things, this home of the soul is nowhere discoverable. The great discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton have done away with the possibility of that. No empyrean, no corner of the world remains available. Even the attempted flight to sun, moon, or stars does not help. It is true that the newly discovered world is without end, but, beyond a doubt, in its outermost and innermost depths it is a world of space and time. Even in the stellar abysses “everything is just the same as with us.”

All this is doubtless correct, and it is very wholesome for religion. For it prompts religion no longer to seek its treasure, the true nature of things, and its everlasting home in time and space, as the mythologies and eschatologies have sought them repeatedly. It throws religion back on the fundamental insight and on the convictions which it had attained long before [pg 068] philosophy and criticism of knowledge had arrived at similar views: namely, that time and space, and this world of time and space, do not comprise the whole of existence, nor existence as it really is, but are only a manifestation of it to our finite and limited knowledge. Before the days of modern astronomy, and without its help, religion knew that God was not confined to “heaven,” or anywhere in space, and that time as it is for us was not for Him. Even in the terms “eternity” and “infinity” it shows an anticipatory knowledge of a being and reality above time and space. These ideas were not gained from a contemplation of nature, but before it and from independent sources.

But though it is by no means the task of apologetics to build up these ideas directly from a study of things, it is of no little importance to inquire whether religion possesses in these convictions only postulates of faith, for which it must laboriously and forcibly make a place in the face of knowledge, or whether a thorough and self-critical knowledge does not rather confirm them, and show us, within the world of knowledge itself, unmistakable signs that it cannot be the true, full reality, but points to something beyond itself.

To study this question thoroughly would involve setting forth a special theory of knowledge and existence. This cannot be attempted here. But Kant's great doctrine of the “Antinomy of Reason” has for all time broken up for us the narrowness of the naturalistic way of thinking. Every one who has felt cramped by [pg 069] the narrow limits in which reality was confined by a purely mundane outlook must have experienced the liberating influence of the Kantian Antinomy if he has thought over it carefully. The thick curtain which separates being from appearance seems to be torn away, or at any rate to reveal itself as a curtain. Kant shows that, if we were to take this world as it lies before us for the true reality, we should land in inextricable contradictions. These contradictions show that the true world itself cannot coincide with our thought and comprehension, for in being itself there can be no contradictions. Otherwise it would not exist. The ancient problems of philosophy, from the time of the Eleatic school onwards, find here their adequate formulation. Kant's disciple, Fries, has carried the matter further, and has attempted to develop what for Kant still remained a sort of embarrassment of reason to more precise pronouncements as to the relation of true being to its manifestation,

The Antimony of Our Conception of Time.

A few examples may serve to make the point clear. The first of the antinomies is also the most impressive. It brings before us the insufficiency of our conceptions of time, and shows the impossibility of transferring, from the world as it appears to us, to real Being any mode of conceiving time which we possess. The difficulty is, whether we are to think of our world as having had a beginning or not. The naïve outlook [pg 070] will at once assume without further ado a beginning of all things. Everything must have had a beginning, though that may have been a very long time ago. But on more careful reflection it is found impossible to imagine this, and then the assumption that things had no beginning is made with as little scruple. Let us suppose that the beginning of things was six thousand, or, what is quite as easy, six thousand billion years ago. We are at once led to ask what there was the year before or many years before, and what there was before that again, and so on until we face the infinite and beginningless. Thus we find that we have never really thought of a beginning of things, and never could think of it, but that our thinking always carries us into the infinite. Time, at any rate, we have thought of as infinite. We may then amuse ourselves by trying to conceive of endless time as empty, but we shall hardly be able to give any reason for arriving at that idea. If time goes back to infinity, it seems difficult to see why it should not always have been filled, instead of only being so filled from some arbitrary point. And in any case the very fact of the existence of time makes the problem of beginning or not beginning insoluble. For such reasons Aristotle asserted that the world had no beginning, and rejected the contrary idea as childish.

But the idea of no beginning is also childish or rather impossible, and in reality inconceivable. For if it be assumed that the world and time have never had [pg 071] a beginning, there stretches back from the time at which I now find myself a past eternity. It must have passed completely as a whole, for otherwise this particular point in time could never have been arrived at. So that I must think of an infinity which nevertheless comes to an end. I cannot do this. It would be like wooden iron.

The matter sounds simple but is nevertheless difficult in its consequences. It confronts us at once with the fact, confirmed by the theory of knowledge, that time as we know it is an absolutely necessary and fundamental form of our conceptions and knowledge, but is likewise the veil over what is concealed, and cannot be carried over in the same form into the true nature of things. As the limits and contradictions in the time-conception reveal themselves to us, there wakes in us the idea which we accept as the analogue of time in true being, an idea of existence under the form of “eternity,” which, since we are tied down to temporal concepts, cannot be expressed or even thought of with any content.[2]

The Antimony of the Conditioned and the Unconditioned.

The antinomy of the conditioned and the unconditioned leads us along similar lines. Every individual finite thing or event is dependent on its causes and [pg 072] conditions, which precede it or co-exist in inter-relation with it. It is conditioned, and is only possible through its conditions. But that implies that it can only occur or be granted when all its conditions are first given in complete synthesis. If any one of them failed, it would not have come about. But every one of its conditioning circumstances is in its turn conditioned by innumerable others, and every one of these again by others, and so on into the infinite, backwards and on all sides, so that here again something without end and incapable of end must have come to an end, and must be thought of as having an end, before any event whatever can really come to pass. But this again is a sheer impossibility for our thinking: we require and must demand something completed, because now is really now, and something happens now, and yet in the world as it appears to us we are always forced to face what cannot have an end.

The Antimony of Our Conception of Space.

To bring our examples to a conclusion, we find the same sort of antinomy in regard to space, and the world as it is extended in space. Here, too, it becomes apparent that space as we imagine it, and as we carry it with us as a concept for arranging our sense-impressions, cannot correspond to the true reality. As in regard to time, so also in regard to space, we can never after any distance however enormous come to a halt and say, “Here is the end of space.” Whether we think of the diameter [pg 073] of the earth's orbit or the distance to Sirius, and multiply them by a million we always ask, “What lies behind?” and so extend space into the infinite. And as a matter of course we people it also without end with heavenly bodies, stars, nebulae, Milky Ways and the like. For here again there can be no obvious reason why space in our neighbourhood should be filled, while space at a greater distance should be thought of as empty. Therefore we actually think of star beyond star, and, as far as we can reckon, stars beyond that without end. For space extends not merely so far, but always farther. And the number of the stars is not so many, but always one more. This sounds quite obvious, but it has exactly the same impossibility as we found in our “past infinity.” For although we are carried by our conceptions into the infinite, and to what never could have an end, it is impossible to assume the same of reality.

It is remarkable and quite characteristic that the whole difficulty and its peculiar nature become much more intelligible to us through the familiar images and expressions of religion. There we readily admit that we cannot comprehend the number of the stars and stellar spaces, because for us they never reach an end, there being always one more; but that in the eyes of God all is embraced in His universality, in a “perfect synthesis,” and that to Him Being is never and in no point “always one more.” God does not count.

Without the help of religious expressions we say: Being itself is always itself and never implies any more; [pg 074] for if there were “always one more” it would not be Being. It can only exist “as a perfect synthesis,” which does not mean an endless number, which nevertheless somewhere comes to an end—again wooden iron—but something above all reckoning and beyond all number, as it is beyond space and time. And that which we are able to weigh and measure and number is therefore not reality itself, but only its inadequate manifestation to our limited capacity for understanding.

But enough of this. The puzzles in the doctrines of the simple and the complex, of the causeless and the caused, into which this world of ours forces us, should teach us further to recognise it for what it is—insufficient and pointing beyond itself,—to its own transcendent depths. So, too, the problems that arise when we penetrate farther and farther into the ever more and more minute, and the indefiniteness of our thought-horizons in general should have the same effect.

Intuitions of Reality.

(5.) There are other evidences of this depth and hidden nature of things, towards which an examination of our knowledge points. For “in feeling and intuition appearance points beyond itself to real being.” So ran our fifth proposition. This subject indeed is delicate, and can only be treated of in the hearing of willing ears. But all apologetic counts upon willing ears; it is not conversion of doubters that is aimed at, it is religion which seeks to reassure itself. Our proposition [pg 075] does not speak of dreams but of facts, which are not the less facts because they are more subtle than others. What we are speaking of are the deep impressions, which cannot properly be made commensurable at all, which may spring up directly out of an inward experience, an apprehension of nature, the world and history, in the depths of the spirit. They call forth in us an “anamnesis,” a “reminiscence” in Plato's sense, awakening within us moods and intuitions in which something of the essence and meaning of being is directly experienced, although it remains in the form of feeling, and cannot easily, if at all, find expression in definable ideas or clear statements. Fries, in his book, “Wissen, Glaube, und Ahnung,” unhappily too much forgotten, takes account of this fact, for he places this region of spiritual experience beside the certainties of faith and knowledge, and regards these as “animated” by it. He has in mind especially the impressions of the beautiful and the sublime which far transcend our knowledge of nature, and to which knowledge and its concepts can never do adequate justice, facts though they undoubtedly are. In them we experience directly, in intuitive feeling, that the reality is greater than our power of understanding, and we feel something of its true nature and meaning. The utterances of Schleiermacher[3] in regard to religion follow the same lines. For this is precisely what he means when he insists [pg 076] that the universe must be experienced in intuition and feeling as well as in knowing and doing. He is less incisive in his expressions than Fries, but wider in ideas. He includes in this domain of “intuitive feeling” not only the aesthetic experiences of the beautiful and sublime, but takes the much more general and comprehensive view, that the receptive mind may gather from the finite impressions of the infinite, and may through its experiences of time gain some conception of the eternal. And he rightly emphasises, that such intuition has its true place in the sphere of mind and in face of the events of history, rather than in the outer court of nature. He, too, lays stress on the fact that doctrinal statements and ideas cannot be formulated out of such subtle material.

The experience of which we are speaking may be most directly and impressively gained from the great, the powerful, the sublime in nature. It may be gained from the contemplation of nature's harmonies and beauties, but also of her overflowing abundance and her enigmatical dæmonic strength, from the purposeful intelligibility as well as the terrifying and bewildering enigmas of nature's operations, from all the manifold ways in which the mind is affected and startled, from all the suggestive but indefinable sensations which may be roused in us by the activity of nature, and which rise through a long scale to intoxicated self-forgetfulness and wordless ecstasy before her beauty, and her half-revealed, half-concealed mystery. If any or all of these be stirred up [pg 077] in a mind which is otherwise godless or undevout, it remains an indefinite, vacillating feeling, bringing with it nothing else. But in the religious mind it immediately unites with what is akin to it or of similar nature, and becomes worship. No dogmas or arguments for disputatious reasoning can be drawn from it. It can hardly even be expressed, except, perhaps, in music. And if it be expressed it tends easily to become fantastic or romantic pomposity, as is shown even by certain parts of the writings of Schleiermacher himself.

The Recognition of Purpose.

(6.) We must now turn to the question of “teleology.” Only now, not because it is a subordinate matter, for it is in reality the main one, but because it is the culminating point, not the starting point, of our argument. If the world be from God and of God, it and all that it contains must be for some definite purpose and for special ends. It must be swayed by eternal ideas, and must be subject to divine providence and guidance. But naturalism, and even, it appears, natural science, declares: Neither purposes nor ideas are of necessity to be assumed in nature. They do not occur either in the details or in the whole. The whole is an absolutely closed continuity of causes, a causal but blind machinery, in regard to which we cannot ask, What is meant to be produced by this? but only, What causes have produced what exists? This opposition goes deep and raises difficulties. And in all vindication or defence [pg 078] of religion it ought rightly to be kept in the foreground of attention, although the points we have already insisted on have been wrongly overlooked. The opposition concentrates itself to-day almost entirely around two theories of naturalism, which do not, indeed, set forth the whole case, but which are certainly typical examples, so that, if we analyse them, we shall have arrived at an orientation of the fundamental points at issue. The two doctrines are Darwinism and the mechanical theory of life, and it is to these that we must now turn our attention. And since the best elucidation and criticism of both theories is to be found in their own history, and in the present state of opinion within their own school, we shall have to combine our study of their fundamental principles with that of their history.

We can here set forth, however, only the chief point of view, the gist of the matter, which will continue to exist and hold good however the analysis of details may turn out. For the kernel of the question may be discussed independently, without involving the particular interests of zoology or biology, though we shall constantly come across particular and concrete cases of the main problem in our more detailed study.

The struggle against, and the aversion to ideas and purposes on the part of the nature-interpreters is not in itself directed against religion. It does not arise from any antagonism of natural science to the religious conception of the world, but is primarily an antagonism of [pg 079] one school of science to another, the modern against the mediæval-Aristotelian. The latter, again, was not in itself a religious world-outlook, it was simply an attempt at an interpretation of the processes of nature, and especially of evolution, which might be quite neutral towards religion, or might be purely naturalistic. It was the theory of Entelechies and formæ substaniales. In order to explain how a thing had come to be, it taught that the idea of the finished thing, the “form,” was implicit in it from the very beginning, and determined the course of its development. This “form,” the end aimed at in development, was “potentially,” “ideally,” or “virtually” implicit in the thing from the beginning, was the causa finalis, the ultimate cause which determined the development. Modern natural science objects to this theory that it offers no explanation, but merely gives a name to what has to be explained. The aim of science, it tells us, is to elucidate the play of causes which brought about a particular result. The hypothetical causa finalis it regards as a mere asylum ignorantiæ, and as the problem itself not as its solution. For instance, if we inquire into the present form and aspect of the earth, nothing is advanced by stating that the “form,” the primitive model of the evolving earth was implicit in it from the beginning, and that it gradually determined the phases and transition-stages of its evolution, until the ultimate state, the end aimed at, was attained. The task of science is, through geology, geognosy, [pg 080] mineralogy, geodesy, physical geography, meteorology, and other sciences to discover the physical, chemical, and mechanical causes of the earth's evolution and their laws, and from the co-operation of these to interpret everything in detail and as a whole.

Whether modern natural science is right in this or not, whether or not it has neglected an element of truth in the old theory of Entelechies which it cannot dispense with, especially in regard to living organisms, it is beyond dispute that, from the most general point of view, and in particular with reference to teleology, religion does not need to concern itself in the least about this opposition. “Purposes,” “ideas,” “guidance” in the religious sense, are quite unaffected by the manner in which the result is realised; everything depends upon the special and particular value of what has been attained or realised. If a concatenation of causes and stages of development lead to results in which we suddenly discern a special and particular value, then, and not till then, have we a reason and criterion for our assumption that it is not simply a result of a play of chances, but that it has been brought about by purposeful thought, by higher intervention and guidance of things. Certainly not before then. Thus we can only speak of purposes, aims, guidance, and creation in so far as we have within us the capacity for feeling and recognising the value, meaning and significance of things. But natural science itself cannot estimate these. It can or will only [pg 081] examine how everything has come about, but whether this result has a higher value than another, or has a lower, or none at all, it can neither assert nor deny. That lies quite outside of its province.

Let us try to make this clear by taking at once the highest example—man and his origin. Let it be assumed that natural science could discover all the causes and factors which, operating for many thousands of years, have produced man and human existence. Even if these causes and factors had actually been pure “ideas,” formæ substantiales and the like, that would in no way determine whether the whole process was really subject to a divine idea of purpose or not. If we had not gained, from a different source, an insight into the supreme and incomparable worth of human existence, spiritual, rational, and free, with its capacity for morality, religion, art and science, we should be compelled to regard man, along with every other natural result, as the insignificant product of a blind play of nature. But, on the other hand, if we have once felt and recognised this value of human existence, its highest dignity, the knowledge that man has been produced through a play of highly complex natural processes, fulfilling themselves in absolute obedience to law, in no way prevents our regarding him as a “purpose,” as the realisation of a divine idea, in accordance with which nature in its orderliness was planned. In fact, this consideration leads us to discover and admire eternal plan and divine guidance in nature.

For it does not rest with natural science either to discover or to deny “purpose” in the religious sense in nature; it belongs to quite a different order of experience, an entirely inward one. Just in proportion as I become aware of, and acknowledge in the domain of my inward experience and through my capacity of estimating values, the worth of the spiritual and moral life of man, so, with the confidence of this peculiar mode of conviction, I subordinate the concatenations of events and causes on which the possibility and the occurrence of the spiritual and moral life depend, to an eternal teleology, and see the order of the world that leads to this illuminated by everlasting meaning and by providence.

Teleological and Scientific Interpretations are Alike Necessary.

(7.) Thus religion confidently subjects the world to a teleological interpretation. And to a teleological study in this sense the strictly causal interpretations of natural science are not hostile, but indispensable. For how do things stand? Natural science endeavours by persistent labour to comprehend the whole of the facts occurring in our world, up to the existence of man, as the final outcome and result of an age-long process of evolution, attempts also to follow this process ever higher up the ladder of strictly causal and strictly law-governed sequences, and finally to connect it with the primary and simplest fundamental facts of existence, beyond which it cannot go, and which must simply be [pg 083] accepted as “given.” If these results of this causally interpreted evolution reveal themselves to our inward power of valuation as full of meaning and value, indeed of the deepest and most incomparable value, the causal mode of explanation is in no way affected, but its results are all at once placed in a new light and reveal a peculiarity which was previously not discoverable, yet which is their highest import. They become a strictly united system of means. And purposefulness as a potentiality is thus carried back to the very foundation and “beginning,” to the fundamental conditions and primary factors of the cosmos itself. The strict nexus of conditions and causes is thus nothing more than the “endeavour after end and aim,” the carrying through and realisation of the eternal purpose, which was implicit potentially in the fundamental nature of things. The absolute obedience to law, and the inexorableness of chains of sequence are, instead of being fatal to this position, indispensable to it. When there is a purpose in view, it is only where the system of means is perfect, unbroken, and absolute, that the purpose can be realised, and therefore that intention can be inferred. In the inexplicable datum of the fundamental factors of the world's existence, in the strict nexus of causes, in the unfailing occurrence of the results which are determined by both these, and which reveal themselves to us as of value and purpose, teleology and providence are directly realised. The only assumptions are, that it is possible to judge the results [pg 084] according to their value, and that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal sequences—that is, the world as we know it—can be conceived of in accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.

In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in the concrete.

Chapter IV. Darwinism In General.

Darwinism, which was originally a technical theory of the biological schools, has long since become a veritable tangle of the most diverse problems and opinions, and seems to press hardly upon the religious conception of the world from many different sides. In its theory of blind “natural selection” and the fortuitous play of the factors in the struggle for existence, it appears to surrender the whole of this wonderful world of life to the rough and ready grip of a process without method or plan. In the general theory of evolution and the doctrine of the descent of even the highest from the lowest, it seems to take away all special dignity from the human mind and spirit, all the freedom and all the nobility of pure reason and free will; it seems to reduce the higher products of religion, morality, poetry, and the æsthetic sense to the level of an ignoble tumult of animal impulses, desires and sensations. Purely speculative questions relative to the evolution theory, psychological and metaphysical, logical and epistemological, ethical, æsthetic, and finally even historical and politico-economical questions have been drawn into the [pg 086] coil, and usually receive from the Darwinians an answer at once robust and self-assured. A zoological theory seems suddenly to have thrown light and intelligibility into the most diverse provinces of knowledge.

But in point of fact it can be shown that Darwinism has not really done this and cannot do it. It leaves unaffected the problem of the mind with its peculiar and underivable laws, from the logical to the ethical. Whether it be right or wrong in its physiological theories, its genealogical trees and fortuitous factors, preoccupation with this theory is a task of the second order. Nevertheless it is necessary to study it, because the chief objections to the religious interpretation of the world have come from it.

The Development of Darwinism.

In studying it we should like to follow a method somewhat different from that usually observed in apologetic writings. “Darwinism,” even in its technical, biological form, never was quite, and is to-day not at all a unified and consistent system. It has been modified in so many ways and presented in such different colours, that we must either refrain altogether from attempting to get into close quarters with it, or we must make ourselves acquainted to some extent with the phases of the theory as it has gradually developed up to the present day. This is the more necessary and useful since it is precisely within the circle of technical experts that revolts from and criticisms of the Darwinian theory [pg 087] have in recent years arisen; and these are so incisive, so varied, and so instructive, that through them we can adjust our standpoint in relation to the theory better than in any other way. And in thus letting the biologists speak for themselves, we are spared the fatal task of entering into the discussion of questions belonging to a region outside our own particular studies.

We cannot, however, give more than a short sketch. But even such a sketch may do more towards giving us a general knowledge of the question and showing us a way out of the difficulties it raises than any of the current “refutations.” To supplement this sketch, and facilitate a thorough understanding of the problem, we shall give somewhat fuller references than are usual to the relevant literature. And the same method will be pursued in the following chapter, which deals with the mechanical theory of life. This method throws more upon the reader, but it is probably the most satisfactory one for the serious student.

The reactions from the Darwinism of the schools which we have just referred to, and to which the second half of this chapter is devoted, are, of course, of a purely scientific kind. And while we are devoting our attention to them, we must not be unfaithful to the canon laid down in the previous chapter, namely that with reference to the question of teleology in the religious sense no real answer can be looked for from scientific study, not even if it be anti-Darwinian. In this case, too, it is impossible to read the convictions [pg 088] and intuitions of the religious conception of the world out of a scientific study of nature: they precede it. But here, too, we may find some accessory support and indirect corroboration more or less strong and secure. This may be illustrated by a single example. It will be shown that, on closer study, it is not impossible to subordinate even the apparently confused tangle of naturalistic factors of evolution which are summed up in the phrase “struggle for existence” to interpretation from the religious point of view. But matters will be in quite a different position if the whole theory collapses, and instead of evolution and its paths being given over to confusion and chance, it appears that from the very beginning and at every point there is a predetermination of fixed and inevitable lines along and up which it must advance. In many other connections considerations of a like nature will reveal themselves to us in the course of our study.

Darwinism, as popularly understood, is the theory that “men are descended from monkeys,” and in general that the higher forms of life are descended from the lower, and it is regarded as Darwin's epoch-making work and his chief merit—or fault according to the point of view—that he established the Theory of Descent. This is only half correct, and it leaves out the real point of Darwinism altogether. The Theory of Descent had its way prepared by the evolutionist ideas and the speculative nature-philosophy of Goethe, Schelling, Hegel and Oken; by the suggestions and glimmerings of the [pg 089] nature-mysticism of the romanticists; by the results of comparative anatomy and physiology; was already hinted at, at least as far as derivation of species was concerned, in the works of Linné himself; was worked out in the “zoological philosophies,” by the elder Darwin, by Lamarck, Etienne Geoffrey St. Hilaire and Buffon; was in the field long before Charles Darwin's time; was already in active conflict with the antagonistic theory of the “constancy of species,” and had its more or less decided adherents. Yet undoubtedly it was through and after Darwin that the theory grew so much more powerful and gained general acceptance.

Darwinism and Teleology.

But the essential and most characteristic importance of Darwin and his work, the reason for which he was called the Newton of biology, and which makes Darwinism at once interesting and dangerous to the religious conception of the world, is something quite special and new. It is its radical opposition to teleology. Du Bois-Reymond, in his witty lecture “Darwin versus Galiani,”[4] explains the gist of the matter. “Les dés de la nature sont pipés” (nature's dice are loaded). Nature is almost always throwing aces. She brings forth not what is meaningless and purposeless, but in great preponderance what is full of meaning and purpose. What “loaded” her dice like this? Even if the theory of descent be true, in what way does it directly [pg 090] help the purely scientific interpretation of the world? Would not this evolution from the lowest to the highest simply be a series of the most astonishing lucky throws of the dice by which in perplexing “endeavour after an aim,” the increasingly perfect, and ultimately the most perfect is produced? And, on the other hand, every individual organism, from the Amœba up to the most complex vertebrate, is, in its structure, its form, its functions, a stupendous marvel of adaptation to its end and of co-ordination of the parts to the whole, and of the whole and its parts to the functions of the organism, the functions of nutrition, self-maintenance, reproduction, maintenance of the species, and so on. How account for the adaptiveness, both general and special, without causæ finales, without intention and purposes, without guidance towards a conscious aim? How can it be explained as the necessary result solely of causæ efficientes, of blindly working causes without a definite aim? Darwinism attempts to answer this question. And its answer is: “What appears to us ‘purposeful’ and ‘perfect’ is in truth only the manifold adaptation of the forms of life to the conditions of their existence. And this adaptation is brought about solely by means of these conditions themselves. Without choice, without aim, without conscious purpose nature offers a wealth of possibilities. The conditions of existence act as a sieve. What chances to correspond to them maintains itself, gliding through the meshes of the sieve, what does not perishes.” It is an old idea of the [pg 091] naturalistic philosophies, dating from Empedocles, which Darwin worked up into the theory of “natural selection” through “the survival of the fittest” “in the struggle for existence.” Of course the assumption necessary to his idea is that the forms of life are capable of variation, and of continually offering in ceaseless flux new properties and characters to the sieve of selection, and of being raised thereby from the originally homogeneous to the heterogeneous, from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the higher. This is the theory of descent, and it is, of course, an essential part and the very foundation of Darwin's theory. But it is the doctrine of descent based upon natural selection that is Darwinism itself.

The Characteristic Features of Darwinism.

We do not propose to expound the Darwinian theory for the hundredth time; a knowledge of it must be taken for granted. We need only briefly call to mind the characteristic features and catchwords of the theory as Darwin founded it, which have also been the starting points of subsequent modifications and controversies.

All living creatures are bound together in genetic solidarity. Everything has evolved through endless deviations, gradations, and differentiations, but at the same time by a perfectly continuous process. Variation continually produced a crop of heterogeneous novelties. The struggle for existence sifted these out. Heredity [pg 092] fixed and established them. Without method or plan variations continue to occur (indefinite variations). They manifest themselves in all manner of minute changes (“fluctuating” variations). Every part, every function of an organism may be subject individually to variation and selection. The world is strictly governed by what is useful. The whole organisation as well as the individual organs and functions bear the stamp of utility, at least, they must bear it if the theory is correct. In the general continuity the transitions are always easy; there are no fundamentally distinct “types,” architectural plans, or groups of forms. Where gaps yawn the intermediate links have gone amissing. There is no fundamental difference between genus, species, and variety. Even the most complicated organ such as the eye, the most puzzling function such as the instinct of the bee, may be explained as the outcome of many more primitive stages.

The chief evidences of the theory of descent are to be found in homologies, in the correspondences of organs and functions, as revealed by comparative anatomy and physiology, in the recapitulation revealed by embryology, in the structure of parasites, in rudimentary organs and reversions to earlier stages, in the distribution of animals and plants, and in the possibility of still transforming, at least to a slight extent, one species into another, by experimental breeding.

Transformation and differentiation go on in nature as a vast, ceaseless, but blind process of selection. In [pg 093] artificial selection evolution is secured by choosing the most fit for breeding purposes; so it is secured in natural selection by the favouring and survival of those forms which are the most fit among the many unfit or less fit, which happened to be exposed to the struggle for existence, that is, to the competition for the means of subsistence, to the struggle with enemies, to hostile environment, and to dangers of every kind. The adaptation thus brought about is of a purely “passive” kind. The variations arise fortuitously out of the organism, and present themselves for selection in the struggle for existence; they are not actively acquired by means of the struggle. The secondary factors of evolution recognised are: correlation in the growth and in the development of parts, the origin of new characters through use, their disappearance through disuse (Lamarck), the transmission of characters thus acquired, the influence of environment and sexual selection.[5]

The Darwinian theory, the interpretation of the teleological in the animate world by means of the theory of descent based upon natural selection, entered like a ferment into the scientific thought-movement, and in a space of forty years it has itself passed through a series of stages, differentiations, and transformations which have in part resulted in the present state of the theory, and have in part anticipated it. These are represented [pg 094] by the names of workers belonging to a generation which has for the most part already passed away: Darwin's collaborateurs, such as Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently and simultaneously expounded the theory of natural selection, Haeckel and Fritz Müller, Nägeli and Askenasy, von Kölliker, Mivart, Romanes and others. The differentiation and elaboration of Darwin's theories has gone ever farther and farther; the grades and shades of doctrine held by his disciples are now almost beyond reckoning.

Various Forms of Darwinism.

The great majority of these express what may be called popular Darwinism [“Darwinismus vulgaris”], theoretically worthless, but practically possessed of great powers of attraction and propagandism. It expresses in the main a conviction, usually left unexplained, that everything “happens naturally,” that man is really descended from monkeys, and that life has “evolved from lower stages” of itself, that dualism is wrong, and that monism is the truth. It is exactly the standpoint of the popular naturalism we have already described, which here mingles unsuspectingly and without scruple Lamarckian and other principles with the Darwinian, which is enthusiastic on the one hand over the “purely mechanical” interpretation of nature, and on the other drags in directly psychical motives, unconscious consciousness, impulses, spontaneous self-differentiation of organisms, which nevertheless adheres to “monism” [pg 095] and possibly even professes to share Goethe's conception of nature!

Above this stratum we come to that of the real experts, the only one which concerns us in the least. Here too we find an ever-growing distance between divergent views, the most manifold differences amounting sometimes to mutual exclusion. These differences occur even with reference to the fundamental doctrine generally adhered to, the doctrine of descent. To one party it is a proved fact, to another a probable, scientific working hypothesis, to a third a “rescuing plank.” One party is always finding fresh corroborations, another new difficulties. And within the same group we find the contrasts of believers in monophyletic and believers in polyphyletic evolution, the mechanists and the half-confessed or thoroughgoing vitalists, the preformationists and the believers in epigenesis. Opinions differ even more widely in regard to the rôle of the “struggle for existence” in the production of species. On the one hand we have the Darwinism of Darwin freed from inconsequent additions and formulated as orthodox “neo-Darwinism”; on the other hand we have heterodox Lamarckism. The “all-sufficiency” of natural selection is proclaimed by some, its impotence by others. Indefinite variation is opposed by orthogenesis, fluctuating variation by saltatory mutation (Halmatogenesis in “Greek”), passive adaptation by the spontaneous activity and self-regulation of the living organism. The struggle for existence is variously regarded as the [pg 096] chief factor, or as a co-operating factor, or as an indifferent, or even an inimical factor in the origination of new species.

And among the representatives of these different standpoints there are most interesting personal differences: in some, like Weismann, we find a great loyalty to, and persistence in the position once arrived at, in others the most surprising transitions and changes of opinion. Thus Fleischmann, a pupil of Selenka's, after illustrating during many years of personal research the orthodox Darwinian standpoint, finally developed into an outspoken opponent not only of the theory of selection but of the doctrine of descent. So also Friedmann.[6] Driesch started from the mechanical theory of life and advanced through the connected series of his own biological essays to vitalism. Romanes, a prominent disciple of Darwin, ended in Christian theism, and Wallace, the discoverer of “the struggle for existence,” landed in spiritualism.

Nothing like an exhaustive view of the present state of Darwinism and its many champions can here be attempted. But it will be necessary to get to know what we may call its possibilities by a study of typical and leading examples. In the course of our study many of the problems to which the theory gives rise will reveal themselves, and their orientation will be possible.

This task falls naturally into two subdivisions: (1) the [pg 097] present state of the theory of Evolution and Descent, and how far the religious conception of the world is or is not affected by it; (2) the truth as to the originative and directive factors of Evolution, especially as to “natural selection in the struggle for existence,” whether they are tenable and sufficient, and what attitude religion must take towards them. These two problems must be kept distinct throughout, and must be discussed in order. For the validity of what is characteristically Darwinism is in no way decided by proving descent and evolution, although it appears so in most popular expositions.[7]

The Theory of Descent.

Again and again we hear and read, even in scientific circles and journals, that Darwinism breaks down at many points, that it is insufficient, and even that it has quite collapsed. Even the assurances of its most convinced champions are rather forced, and are somewhat suggestive of bills payable in the future.[8] But here again it is obvious that we must distinguish clearly between the Theory of Descent and Darwinism. Of the Theory of Descent it is by no means true that it has “broken down.” With a slight exaggeration, but on the whole with justice, Weismann has asserted that the [pg 098] Theory of Descent is to-day a “generally accepted truth.” Even Weismann's most pronounced opponents, such as Eimer, Wolff, Reinke, and others, are at one with him in this, that there has been evolution in some form; that there has been a progressive transformation of species; that there is real (not merely ideal) relationship or affiliation connecting our modern forms of life, up to and including man, with the lower and lowest forms of bygone æons.

The evidences are the same as those adduced by Darwin and before his time, but they have been multiplied and more sharply defined:—namely, that the forms of life can be arranged in an ascending scale of evolution, both in their morphological and their physiological aspects, both as regards the general type and the differentiation of individual organs and particular characters, bodily and mental. All the rubrics used by Darwin in this connection, from comparative anatomy, from the palæontological record itself, and so on, have been filled out with ever-increasing detail. Palæontology, in particular, is continually furnishing new illustrations of descent and new evidence of its probability, more telling perhaps in respect of general features and particular groups than in regard to the historical process in detail. For certain species and genera palæontology discloses the primitive forms, discovers “synthetic types” which were the starting-point for diverging branches of evolution, bridges over or narrows the yawning gulfs in evolution by the discovery of [pg 099] “intermediate forms”; and, in the case of certain species, furnishes complete genealogical trees. The same holds true of the facts of comparative anatomy, embryology, and so on. In all detailed investigations into an animal type, in the study of the structure, functions, or the instincts of an ant, or of a whale or of a tape-worm, the standpoint of the theory of descent is assumed, and it proves a useful clue for further investigation.

In regard to man—so we are assured—the theory finds confirmation through the discovery of the Neanderthal, Spy, Schipka, La Naulette skulls and bones—the remains of a prehistoric human race, with “pithecoid” (ape-like) characters. And the theory reaches its climax in Dubois' discovery of the remains of “Pithecanthropus,” the upright ape-man, in Java, 1891-92, the long sought-for Missing Link between animals and man;[9] and in the still more recent proofs of “affinity of blood” between man and ape, furnished by experiments in transfusion. Friedenthal has revived the older experiments of transfusing the blood of one animal into another, the blood of an animal of one species into that of another, of related species into related species, more remote into more remote, and finally even from animals into man. The further apart the two species are, the more different are the physiological [pg 100] characters of the blood, and the more difficult does a mingling of the two become. Blood of a too distantly related form does not unite with that of the animal into which it is transfused, but the red corpuscles of the former are destroyed by the serum of the latter, break up and are eliminated. In nearly related species or races, however, the two kinds of blood unite, as in the case of horse and ass, or of hare and rabbit. Human blood serum behaves in a hostile fashion to the blood of eel, pigeon, horse, dog, cat, and even to that of Lemuroids, or that of the more remotely related “non-anthropoid” monkey; human blood transfused from a negro into a white unites readily, as does also that of orang-utan transfused into a gibbon. But human blood also unites without any breaking-up or disturbance with the blood of a chimpanzee; from which the inference is that man is not to be placed in a separate sub-order beside the other sub-orders of the Primates, the platyrrhine and catarrhine monkeys, not even in a distinct sub order beside the catarrhines; but is to be included with them in one zoological sub-order. This classification was previously suggested by Selenka on other grounds, namely, because of the points in common in the embryonic development of the catarrhine monkeys and of man, and their common distinctiveness as contrasted with the platyrrhines.[10]

Haeckel's Evolutionist Position.

The average type of the Theory of Descent of the older or orthodox school, which still lingers in the background with its Darwinism unshaken, is that set forth by Haeckel, scientifically in his “Generelle Morphologie der Organismen” (1866), and “Systematische Phylogenie” (1896), and popularly in his “Natural History of Creation” and “Riddles of the Universe,” with their many editions. We may assume that it is well known, and need only briefly recall its chief characteristics. The “inestimable value,” the “incomparable significance,” the “immeasurable importance” of the Theory of Descent lies, according to Haeckel, in the fact that by means of it we can explain the origin of the forms of life “in a mechanical manner.” The theory, especially in regard to the descent of man from the apes, is to him not a working hypothesis or tentative mode of representation; it is a result comparable to Newton's law of gravitation or the Kant-Laplace cosmogony. It is “a certain historical fact.” The proofs of it are those already mentioned.

What is especially Haeckelian is the “fundamental biogenetic law,” “ontogeny resembles phylogeny,” that is to say, in development, especially in embryonic development, the individual recapitulates the history of the race. Through “palingenesis,” man, for instance, recapitulates his ancestral stages (protist, gastræad, vermine, piscine, and simian). This recapitulation is condensed, [pg 102] disarranged, or obscured in detail by “cenogenesis” or “cænogenesis.” The groups and types of organisms exhibit the closest genetic solidarity. The genealogical tree of man in particular runs directly through a whole series. From the realm of the protists it leads to that of the gastræadæ (nowadays represented by the Cœlentera), thence into the domain of the worms, touches the hypothetical “primitive chordates” (for the necessary existence of which “certain proofs” can be given), the class of tunicates, ascends through the fishes, amphibians and reptiles to forms parallel to the modern monotremes, then directly through the marsupials to the placentals, through lemuroids and baboons to the anthropoid apes, from them to the “famous Pithecanthropus” discovered in Java, out of which homo sapiens arose. (The easy transition from one group of forms to another is to be noted. For it is against this point that most of the opposition has been directed, whether from “grumbling” critics, or thoroughgoing opponents of the Theory of Descent.)

Haeckel's facile method of constructing genealogical trees, which ignores difficulties and discrepant facts, has met with much criticism and ridicule even among Darwinians. The “orator of Berlin,” Du Bois-Reymond, declared that if he must read romances he would prefer to read them in some other form than that of genealogical trees. But they have at least the merit that they give a vivid impression of what is most plausible and attractive in the idea of descent, and moreover [pg 103] they have helped towards orientation in the discussion. Nor can we ignore the very marked taxonomic and architectonic talent which their construction displays.

Weismann's Evolutionist Position.

The most characteristic representative, however, of the modern school of unified and purified Darwinism is not Haeckel, but the Freiburg zoologist, Weismann. Through a long series of writings he has carried on the conflict against heterodox, and especially Lamarckian theories of evolution, and has developed his theories of heredity and the causes of variation, of the non-transmissibility of acquired characters, and the all-sufficiency of natural selection. In his latest great work, in two volumes, “Lectures on the Theory of Descent,”[11] he has definitely summed up and systematised his views. These will interest us when we come to inquire into the problem of the factors operative in evolution. For the moment we are only concerned with his attitude to the Theory of Descent as such. It is precisely the same as Haeckel's, although he is opposed to Haeckel in regard to the strictly Darwinian standpoint. The Theory of Descent has conquered, and it may be said with assurance, for ever. That is the firm conviction on which the whole work is based, and it is really rather treated as a self-evident axiom than as a statement to be proved. Weismann takes little trouble to [pg 104] prove it. All the well-known, usually very clear proofs from palæontology, comparative anatomy, &c., which we are accustomed to meet with in evolutionist books are wanting here, the genealogical trees of the Equidæ, with the gradually diminishing number of toes and the varying teeth, of Planorbis multiformis, of the ammonites, the graduated series of stages exhibited by individual organs, for instance, from the ganglion merely sensitive to light up to the intricate eye, or from the rayed skeleton of the paired fins in fishes up to the five-fingered hands and feet of the higher vertebrates, &c. These are only briefly touched upon in the terse “Introduction,” and the whole of the comprehensive work is then directed to showing what factors can have been operative, and to proving that they must have been “Darwinian” (selection in the struggle for existence), and not Lamarckian or any other. This is shown in regard to the coloration of animals, the phenomena of mimicry, the protective arrangements of plants, the development of instinct in animals, and the origin of flowers.

In reality Weismann only adduces one strict proof, and even that is only laying special stress on what is well known in comparative embryology; namely, the possibility of “predicting” on the basis of the theory of descent, as Leverrier “predicted” Neptune. For instance, in the lower vertebrates from amphibians upwards there is an os centrale in the skeleton of wrist, but there is none in man. Now if man be descended [pg 105] from lower vertebrates, and if the fundamental biogenetic law be true (that every form of life recapitulates in its own development, especially in its embryonic development, the evolution of its race, though with abbreviations and condensations), it may be predicted that the os centrale is to be found in the early embryonic stages of man. And Rosenberg found it. In the same way the “gill-clefts” of the fish-like ancestors have long since been discovered in the embryo of the higher vertebrates and of man. Weismann himself “predicted” that the markings of the youngest stage of the caterpillars of the Sphingidæ (hawk-moths) would be found to be not oblique but longitudinal stripes, and ten years later a fortunate observation verified the prediction. Because of the abundance of evidential facts Weismann does not go into any detailed proof of evolution. “One can hardly take up any work, large or small, on the finer or more general structural relations, or on the development of any animal, without finding in it proofs for the evolution theory.”

But assured as the doctrine of descent appears,[12] and certain as it is that it has not only maintained its hold since Darwin's day, but has strengthened it and has gained adherents, this foundation of Darwinism is [pg 106] nevertheless not the unanimous and inevitable conclusion of all scientific men in the sense and to the extent that the utterances of Weismann and others would lead us to suppose. Apart from all apologetic attempts either in religious, ethical, or æsthetic interests, apart, too, from the superior standpoint of the philosophers, who have not, so to speak, taken the theory very seriously, but regard it as a provisional theory, as a more or less necessary and useful method of grouping our ideas in regard to the organic world, there are even among the biologists themselves some who, indifferent towards religious or philosophical or naturalistic dogma, hold strictly to fact, and renounce with nonchalance any pretensions at completeness of knowledge if the data do not admit of it, and on these grounds hold themselves aloof from evolutionist generalisation. From among these come the counsels of “caution,” admissions that the theory is a scientific hypothesis and a guide to research, but not knowledge, and confessions that the Theory of Descent as a whole is verifiable rather as a general impression than in detail.

Virchow's Position.

Warnings of this kind have come occasionally from Du Bois-Reymond, but the true type of this group, and its mode of thought, is Virchow. It will repay us and suffice us to make acquaintance with it through him. His opposition to Darwinism and the theory of descent was directed at its most salient point: the [pg 107] descent of man from the apes. In lectures and treatises, at zoological and anthropological congresses, especially at the meetings of his own Anthropological-Ethnological Society in Berlin, from his “Vorträge über Menschen-und Affen-Schädel” (Lectures on the Skulls of Man and Apes, 1869), to the disputes over Dubois' Pithecanthropus erectus in the middle of the nineties, he threw the whole weight of his immense learning—ethnological and anthropological, osteological, and above all “craniological”—into the scale against the Theory of Descent and its supporters. Virchow has therefore been reckoned often enough among the anti-Darwinians, and has been quoted by apologists and others as against Darwinism, and he has given reason for this, since he has often taken the field against “the Darwinists” or has scoffed at their “longing for a pro-anthropos.”[13] Sometimes even it has been suggested that he was actuated by religious motives, as when he occasionally championed not only freedom for science, but, incidentally, the right of existence for “the churches,” leaving, for instance, in his theory of psychical life, gaps in knowledge which faith might occupy in moderation and modesty. But this last proves nothing. With Virchow's altogether unemotional nature it is unlikely that religious or spiritual motives had any rôle in the establishment of his convictions, and in Haeckel's naïve blustering at religion, there is, so to speak, more [pg 108] religion than in the cold-blooded connivance with which Virchow leaves a few openings in otherwise frozen ponds for the ducks of faith to swim in! And he has nothing of the pathos of Du Bois-Reymond's “ignorabimus.” He is the neutral, prosaic scientist, who will let nothing “tempt him to a transcendental consideration,”[14] either theological or naturalistic, who holds tenaciously to matters of fact, who, without absolutely rejecting a general theory, will not concern himself about it, except to point out every difficulty in the way of it; in short, he is the representative of a mood that is the ideal of every investigator and the despair of every theoriser.

His lecture of 1869 already indicates his subsequent attitude. “Considered logically and speculatively” the Theory of Descent seems to him “excellent,”[15] indeed a logical moral(!) hypothesis, but unproved in itself, and erroneous in many of its particular propositions. As far back as 1858, before the publication of Darwin's great work, he stated at the Naturalists' Congress in Carlsruhe, that the origin of one species out of another appeared to him a necessary scientific inference, but——And throughout the whole lecture he alternates between favourable recognition of the theory in general, and emphasis of the difficulties which confront it in detail. The skull, which, according to Goethe's theory, has [pg 109] evolved from three modified vertebræ, is fundamentally different in man and monkeys, both in regard to its externals, crests, ridges and shape, and especially in regard to the nature of the cavity which it forms for the brain. Specifically distinctive differences in the development and structure of the rest of the body must also be taken into account. The so-called ape-like structures in the skull and the rest of the body, which occasionally occur in man (idiots, microcephaloids, &c.) cannot be regarded as atavisms and therefore as proofs of the Theory of Descent; they are of a pathological nature, entirely facts sui generis, and “not to be placed in a series with the normal results of evolution.” A man modified by disease “is still thoroughly a man, not a monkey.”

Virchow continued to maintain this attitude and persisted in this kind of argument. He energetically rejected all attempts to find “pithecoid” characters in the prehistoric remains of man. He declared the narrow and less arched forehead, the elliptical form, and the unusually large frontal cavities of the “Neanderthal skull” found in the Wupperthal in 1856, to be simply pathological features, which occur as such in certain examples of homo sapiens.[16] He explained the abnormal appearance of the jaw from the Moravian cave of Schipka as a result of the retention of teeth,[17] accompanied by directly “antipithecoid” characters.

The proceedings at the meetings of the Ethnological Society in 1895, at which Dubois was present, had an almost dramatic character.[18] In the diverse opinions of Dubois, Virchow, Nehring, Kollmann, Krause and others, we have almost an epitome of the present state of the Darwinian question. Virchow doubted whether the parts put together by Dubois (the head of a femur, two molar teeth, and the top of a skull) belonged to the same individual at all, disputed the calculations as to the large capacity of the skull, placed against Dubois' very striking and clever drawing of the curves of the skull-outline, which illustrated, with the help of the Pithecanthropus, the gradual transition from the skull of a monkey to that of man, his own drawing, according to which the Pithecanthropus curve simply coincides with that of a gibbon (Hylobates), and asserted that the remains discovered were those of a species of gibbon, refusing even to admit that they represented a new genus of monkeys. He held fast to his ceterum censeo: “As yet no diluvial discovery has been made which can be referred to a man of a pithecoid type.” Indeed, his polemic or “caution” in regard to the Theory of Descent went even further. He not only refused to admit the proof of the descent of man from monkey, he would not even allow that the descent of one race from another has been demonstrated.[19] [pg 111] In spite of all the plausible hypotheses it remains “so far only a pium desiderium.” The race obstinately maintains its specific distinctness, and resists variation, or gradual transformation into another. The negro remains a negro in America, and the European colonist of Australia remains a European.

Yet all Virchow's opposition may be summed up in the characteristic words, which might almost be called his motto, “I warn you of the need for caution,” and it is not a seriously-meant rejection of the Theory of Descent. In reality he holds the evolution-idea as an axiom, and in the last-named treatise he shows distinctly how he conceives of the process. He starts with variation (presumably “kaleidoscopic”), which comes about as a “pathological” phenomenon, that is to say, not spontaneously, but as the result of environmental stimulus, as the organism's reaction to climatic and other conditions of life. The result is an alteration of previous characteristics, and a new stable race is established by an “acquired anomaly.”[20]

Other Instances of Dissatisfaction with the Theory of Descent.

What was with Virchow only a suggestion of the [pg 112] need for caution, or controversial matter to be subsequently allowed for or contradicted, had more serious consequences to others, and led to still greater hesitancy as regards evolutionist generalisations and speculations, and sometimes to sharp antagonism to them.

One of the best known of the earlier examples of this mood is Kerner von Marilaun's large and beautiful work on “Plant Life.”[21] He does, indeed, admit that our species are variations of antecedent forms, but only in a very limited sense. Within the stocks or grades of organisation which have always existed, variations have come about, through “hybridisation,” through the crossing of similar, but relatively different forms; these variations alter the configuration and appearance in detail, but neither affect the general character nor cause any transition from “lower” to “higher.”

Kerner disposes of the chief argument in favour of the theory of descent, the homology of individual organs, by explaining that the homology is due to the similarity of function in the different organisms. A similar argument is used in regard to “ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny.” Palæontology does not disclose in the plant-world any “synthetic types,” which might have been the common primitive stock from which many now divergent branches have sprung, nor does it disclose any “transition links” really intermediate, [pg 113] for instance, between cryptogams and gymnosperms, or between gymnosperms and angiosperms. That the higher races are apparently absent from the earlier strata is not a proof that they have never existed. The peat-bog flora must have involved the existence of a large companion-flora, without which the peat could not have been formed, but all trace of this is absent in the still persistent vestiges of these times.[22] Life, with energy and matter, has existed as a phenomenon of the universe from all eternity, and thus its chief forms and manifestations have not “arisen,” but have always been. If facts such as these contradict the Kant-Laplace theory of the universe, then the latter must be corrected in the light of them, not conversely. The extreme isolation of Kerner and his theory is probably due especially to this corollary of his views.

Among the most recent examples of antagonism to the Evolution-Theory, the most interesting is a book by Fleischmann, professor of zoology in Erlangen, published in 1901, and entitled, “The Theory of Descent.” It consists of “popular lectures on the rise and decline of a scientific hypothesis” (namely, the Theory of Descent), and it is a complete recantation by a quondam Darwinian of the doctrine of his school, even of its fundamental proposition, the concept of evolution itself. For Fleischmann is not guilty, like Weismann, of the inaccuracy of using “Theory of [pg 114] Descent” as equivalent to Darwinism; he is absolutely indifferent to the theory of natural selection. His book keeps strictly to matters of fact, and rejects as speculation everything in the least beyond these; it does not express even an opinion on the question of the origin of species, but merely criticises and analyses.

It does not bring forward any new and overwhelming arguments in refutation of the Theory of Descent, but strongly emphasises difficulties that have always beset it, and discusses these in detail. The old dispute which interested Goethe, Geoffroy St. Hilaire, and Cuvier, as to the unity or the fundamental heterogeneity of the “architectural plan” in nature is revived. Modern zoology recognises not merely the four types of Cuvier, but seventeen different styles, “phyla,” or groups of forms, to derive one of which from another is hopeless. And what is true of the whole is true also of the subdivisions within each phylum; e.g., within the vertebrate phylum with its fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. No bridge leads from one to the other. This is proved particularly by the very instance which is the favourite illustration in support of the Theory of Descent—the fin of fishes and its relation to the five-fingered hand of vertebrates. The so-called transition forms (Archæopteryx, monotremes, &c.) are discredited. So with the “stalking-horse” of evolutionists—the genealogical tree of the Equidæ, which is said to be traceable palæontologically right back, without a break, from the one-toed horses of the present day to [pg 115] the normal five-toed ancestry; and so with another favourite instance of evolution, the history of the pond-snails (Planorbis multiformis), the numerous varieties of which occur with transitions between them in actual contiguity in the Steinheim beds, and thus seem to afford an obvious example of the transformation of species. Against these cases, and against using the palæontological archives as a basis for the construction of genealogical trees in general, the weighty and apparently decisive objection is urged, that nowhere are the soft parts of the earlier forms of life preserved, and that it is impossible to establish relationships with any certainty on the basis of hard parts only, such as bones, teeth and shells. Even Haeckel admits that snails of very different bodily structure may form very similar and even hardly distinguishable shells.

Fleischmann further asserts that Haeckel's “fundamental biogenetic law” has utterly collapsed. “Recapitulation” does not occur. Selenka's figures of ovum-segmentation show that there are specific differences in the individual groups. The origin and development of the blastoderm or germinal disc has nothing to do with recapitulation of the phylogeny. It is not the case that the embryos of higher vertebrates are indistinguishable from one another. Even the egg-cell has a specific character, and is totally different from any unicellular organism at the Protistan level. The much-cited “gill-clefts” of higher vertebrates in the embryonic stage are not persistent reminiscences of [pg 116] earlier lower stages; they are rudiments or primordia shared by all vertebrates, and developing differently at the different levels; (thus in fishes they become breathing organs, and in the higher vertebrates they become in part associated with the organs of hearing, or in part disappear again).

Though Fleischmann's vigorous protest against over-hastiness in construction and over-confidence on the part of the adherents of the doctrine of descent is very interesting, and may often be justified in detail, it is difficult to resist the impression that the wheat has been rejected with the chaff.[23]

Even a layman may raise the following objections: Admitting that the great groups of forms cannot be traced back to one another, the palæontological record still proves, though it may be only in general outline, that within each phylum there has been a gradual succession and ascent of forms. How is the origin of what is new to be accounted for? Without doing violence to our thinking, without a sort of intellectual autonomy, we cannot rest content with the mere fact that new elements occur. So, in spite of all “difficulties,” the assumption of an actual descent quietly forces itself upon us as the only satisfactory clue. And the fact, which Fleischmann does not discuss, that even at present we may observe the establishment of what are at least new breeds, impels us to accept an analogous [pg 117] origin of new species. Even if the biogenetic law really “finds its chief confirmation in its exceptions,” even if we cannot speak of a strict recapitulation of earlier stages of evolution, there are indisputable facts which are most readily interpreted as reminiscences, as due to affiliation (ideal or hereditary), with ancestral forms. (Note, for instance, Weismann's “prediction,” &c.[24]) Even if Archæopteryx and other intermediate forms cannot be regarded as connecting links in the strict sense, i.e., as being stages in the actual pedigree, yet the occurrence of reptilian and avian peculiarities side by side in one organism, goes far to prove the close relationship of the two classes.

Fleischmann's book strengthens the impression gained elsewhere, that a general survey of the domain of life as a whole gives force and convincingness to the Theory of Descent, while a study of details often results in breaking the threads and bringing the difficulties into prominence. But the same holds true of many other theoretical constructions, and yet we do not seriously doubt their validity. (Take, for instance, the Kant-Laplace theory, and theories of ethnology, of the history of religion, of the history of language, and so on.) And it is quite commonly to be observed that those who have an expert and specialist knowledge, who are aware of the refractoriness of detailed facts, often take up a sceptical attitude towards every comprehensive [pg 118] theory, though the ultimate use of detailed investigation is to make the construction of general theories possible. Fleischmann does exactly what, say, an anthropologist would do if, under the impression of the constancy and distinctiveness of the human races, which would become stronger the more deeply he penetrated, he should resignedly renounce all possibility of affiliating them, and should rest content with the facts as he found them. Similarly, those who are most intimately acquainted with the races of domesticated animals often resist most strenuously all attempts, although these seem to others a matter of course, to derive our “tame” forms from “wild” species living in freedom.

But to return. Even where the Theory of Descent is recognised, whether fully or only half-heartedly, the recognition does not always mean the same thing. Even the adherents of the general, but in itself quite vague view that a transformation from lower forms to higher, and from similar to different forms, has taken place, may present so many points of disagreement, and may even stand in such antagonism to one another, that onlookers are apt to receive the impression that they occupy quite different standpoints, and are no longer at one even in the fundamentals of their hypotheses.

The most diverse questions and answers crop up; whether evolution has been brought about “monophyletically” or “polyphyletically,” i.e., through one or many genealogical trees; whether it has taken place in [pg 119] a continuous easy transition from one type to another, or by leaps and bounds; whether through a gradual transformation of all organs, each varying individually, or through correlated “kaleidoscopic” variations of many kinds throughout the whole system; whether it is essentially asymptotic, or whether organisms pass from “labile” phases of vital equilibrium by various halting-places to stable states, which are definitive, and are, so to speak, the blind alleys and terminal points of evolutionary possibilities, e.g., the extinct gigantic saurians, and perhaps also man. And to these problems must be added the various answers to the question, What precedes, or may have preceded, the earliest stages of life of which we know? Whence came the first cell? Whence the first living protoplasm? and How did the living arise from the inorganic? These deeper questions will occupy us in our chapter on the theory of life. Some of the former, in certain of their aspects, will be considered in the sixth chapter, which deals with factors in evolution.

The Theory of Descent itself and the differences that obtain even among its adherents can best be studied by considering for a little the works of Reinke and of Hamann.

Reinke, Professor of Botany in Kiel, has set forth his views in his book, “Die Welt als Tat,”[25] and more recently in his “Einleitung in die theoretische Biologie” (1901). Both books are addressed to a wide [pg 120] circle of readers. Reinke and Hamann both revive some of the arguments and opinions set forth in the early days of Darwinism by Wigand,[26] an author whose works are gradually gaining increased appreciation.

It is Reinke's “unalterable conviction” that organisms have evolved, and that they have done so after the manner of fan-shaped genealogical trees. The Theory of Descent is to him an axiom of modern biology, though as a matter of fact the circumstantial evidence in favour of it is extremely fragmentary. The main arguments in favour of it appear to him to be the general ones; the homologies and analogies revealed by comparative morphology and physiology, the ascending series in the palæontological record, vestigial organs, parasitic degeneration, the origin of those vital associations which we call consortism and symbiosis. These he illustrates mainly by examples from his own special domain and personal observation.

The simplest unicellular forms of life are to be thought of as at the beginning of evolution; and, since mechanical causes cannot explain their ascent, it must be assumed that they have an inherent “phylogenetic potential of development,” which, working epigenetically, results in ascending evolution. He leaves us to choose between monophyletic and polyphyletic evolution, but himself inclines towards the latter, associating with it a [pg 121] rehabilitation of Wigand's theory of the primitive cells. If, in the beginning, primitive forms of life arose (probably as unicellulars) from the not-living, it is not obvious why we need think of only one so arising, and, if many did so, why they should not have inherent differences which would at once result in typically different evolutionary series and groups of forms. But evolution does not go on ad libitum or ad infinitum, for the capacity for differentiation and transformation gradually diminishes. The organisation passes from a labile state of equilibrium to an increasingly stable state, and at many points it may reach a terminus where it comes to a standstill. Man, the dog, the horse, the cereals, and fruit trees appear to Reinke to have reached their goal. The preliminary stages he calls “Phylembryos,” because they bear to the possible outcome of their evolution the same relation that the embryo does to the perfect individual. Thus, Phenacodus may be regarded as the Phylembryo of the modern horse. It is quite conceivable that each of our modern species may have had an independent series of Phylembryos reaching back to the primitive cells. But the palæontological record, and especially its synthetic types, lead Reinke rather to assume that instead of innumerable series, there have been branching genealogical trees, not one, however, but several.

These views, together or separately, which are characterised chiefly by the catch-words “polyphyletic descent,” “labile and stable equilibrium,” and so on, crop [pg 122] up together or separately in the writings of various evolutionists belonging to the opposition wing. They are usually associated with a denial of the theory of natural selection, and with theories of “Orthogenesis,” “Heterogenesis,” and “Epigenesis.”

We shall discuss them later when we are considering the factors in evolution. But we must first take notice of a work in which the theories opposed to Darwinian orthodoxy have been most decisively and aggressively set forth. As far back as 1892 O. Hamann, then a lecturer on zoology in Göttingen, gathered these together and brought them into the field, against Haeckel in particular, in his book “Entwicklungslehre und Darwinismus.”[27]

Hamann's main theme is that Darwinism overlooks the fact that “there cannot have been an origin of higher types from types already finished.” For this “unfortunate and unsupported assumption” there are no proofs in embryology, palæontology, or anatomy. He adopts and expands the arguments and anti-Haeckelian deliverances of His in embryology, of Snell and Heer in palæontology, of Kölliker and von Baer in their special interpretation of evolution, of Snell particularly as regards the descent of man. It is impossible to derive Metazoa from Protozoa in their present finished state of evolution; even the Amoeba is so exactly adapted in organisation and functional activity [pg 123] to the conditions of its existence that it is a “finished” type. It is only by a stretch of fancy that fishes can be derived from worms, or higher vertebrates from fishes. One of his favourite arguments—and it is a weighty one, though neglected by the orthodox Darwinians—is that living substance is capable, under similar stimuli, of developing spontaneously and afresh, at quite different points and in different groups, similar organs, such as spots sensitive to light, accumulations of pigment, eye-spots, lenses, complete eyes, and similarly with the notochord, the excretory organs, and the like. Therefore homology of organs is no proof of their hereditary affiliation.[28] They rather illustrate “iterative evolution.”

Another favourite argument is the fact of “Pædogenesis.” Certain animals, such as Amphioxus lanceolatus, Peripatus, and certain Medusæ, are very frequently brought forward as examples of persistent primitive stages and “transitional connecting links.” But considered from the point of view of Pædogenesis, they all assume quite a different aspect, and seem rather to represent very highly evolved species, and to be, not primitive forms, but conservative and regressive forms. Pædogenesis is the phenomenon exhibited by a number of species, which may stop short at one of the stages of their embryonic or larval development, become sexually mature, and produce [pg 124] offspring without having attained their own fully developed form.

Another argument is the old, suggestive, and really important one urged by Kölliker, that “inorganic nature shows a natural system among minerals (crystals) just as much as animals and plants do, yet in the former there can be no question of any genetic connection in the production of forms.”

Yet another argument is found in the occurrence of “inversions” and anomalies in the palæontological succession of forms, which to some extent upsets the Darwinian-Haeckelian genealogical trees. (Thus there are forms in the Cambrian whose alleged ancestors do not appear till the Silurian. Foraminifera and other Protozoa do not appear till the Silurian.)

From embryology in particular, as elsewhere in general, we read the “fundamental biogenetic law,” that evolution is from the general to the special, from the imperfect to the more perfect, from what is still indefinite and exuberant to the well-defined and precise, but never from the special to the special. According to Hamann's hypothesis we must think of evolution as going on, so to speak, not about the top but about the bottom. The phyla or groups of forms are great trunks bearing many branches and twigs, but not giving rise to one another. Still less do the little side branches of one trunk bear the whole great trunk of another animal or plant phylum. But they all grow from the same roots among the primitive forms of life. Unicellulars these must [pg 125] have been, but not like our “Protists.” They should be thought of as primitive forms having within themselves the potentialities of the most diverse and widely separate evolution-series to which they gave rise, as it were, along diverging fan-like rays.

It would be instructive to follow some naturalist into his own particular domain, for instance a palæontologist into the detailed facts of palæontology, or an embryologist into those of embryology, in order to learn whether these corroborate the assumptions of the Theory of Descent or not. It is just in relation to these detailed facts that criticisms or even denials of the theory have been most frequent. Koken, otherwise a convinced supporter of the theory, inquires in his “Vorwelt,” apropos of the tortoises, what has become of the genealogical trees that were scattered abroad in the world as proved facts in the early days of Darwinism. He asserts, in regard to Archæopteryx, the instance which is always put forward as the intermediate link in the evolution of birds, that it does not show in any of its characters a fundamental difference from any of the birds of to-day, and further, that, through convergent development under similar influences, similar organs and structural relations result, iterative arrangements which come about quite independently of descent. He maintains, too, that the principle of the struggle for existence is rather disproved than corroborated by the palæontological record.

In embryology, so competent an authority as [pg 126] O. Hertwig—himself a former pupil of Haeckel's—has reacted from the “fundamental biogenetic law.” His theory of the matter is very much that of Hamann which we have already discussed; development is not so much a recapitulation of finished ancestral types as the laying down of foundations after the pattern of generalised simple forms, not yet specialised; and from these foundations the special organs rise to different levels and grades of differentiation according to the type.[29] But we must not lose ourselves in details.

Looking back over the whole field once more, we feel that we are justified in maintaining with some confidence that the different pronouncements in regard to the detailed application and particular features of the Theory of Descent, and the different standpoints that are occupied even by evolutionists, are at least sufficient to make it obvious that, even if evolution and descent have actually taken place, they have not run so simple and smooth a course as the over-confident would have us believe; that the Theory of Descent rather emphasises than clears away the riddles and difficulties of the case, and that with the mere corroboration of the theory we shall have gained only something relatively external, a clue to creation, which does not so much solve its problems as restate them. The whole criticism of the “right wing,” from captious objections to actual denials, proves this indisputably. And it seems likely that in the course of time a sharpening of [pg 127] the critical insight and temper will give rise to further reactions from the academic theory as we have come to know it.[30] On the other hand, it may be assumed with even greater certainty that the general evolutionist point of view and the great arguments for descent in some form or other will ultimately be victorious if they are not so already, and that, sooner or later, we shall take the Theory of Descent in its most general form as a matter of course, just as we now do the Kant-Laplace theory.

Chapter V. Religion And The Theory Of Descent.

In seeking to define our position in regard to the theory of descent it is most important that we should recognise that, when it is looked into closely, the true problem at issue is not a special zoological one, but is quite general, and also that it is not a new growth which has sprung up suddenly and found us unprepared, but that it is very ancient and has long existed in our midst. In the whole theory the question of “descent” is after all a mere accessory. Even if it fell through and were seen to be scientifically undemonstrable, “evolution in the realm of life” would remain an indisputable fact, and with it there would arise precisely the same difficulties for the religious interpretation of the world which are usually attributed to the Theory of Descent.

Evolution or development has been a prominent idea in the history of thought since the time of Aristotle, but descent is, so to speak, a modern upstart. According to long-established modes of thought, to evolve means to pass from δυνάμει to ἰνεργεία εἴναι, from potentia to actus, from the existence of the rudiment as in the seed to full realisation as in the tree. In the course of its [pg 129] development the organism passes through many successive phases, which are related to one another like steps, each rising directly from the one beneath, and preparing for the one above. Thus all nature, and especially the realm of life, implies a ladder of “evolution.” What is “potentially” inherent in the lowest form of life has in the highest, as in man, become actual or “realised” through a continuous sequence of phases, successively more and more evolved. This view in its earlier forms was very far from implying that each higher step was literally “descended” from the one below it, through the physical and mental transformation of some of its representatives. As the world, in Aristotle's view for instance, had existed from all eternity, so also had the stages and forms of life, each giving rise again to its like. Indeed, the essential idea was that each higher step is simply a development, a fuller unfolding of the lower stage, and finally that man was the complete realisation of what was potentially inherent in the lowest of all.

This doctrine of evolution was in modern times the fundamental idea of Leibnitz and Kant, of Goethe, Schelling and Hegel. It brought unity and connectedness into the system of nature, united everything by steps, denied the existence of gaping chasms, and proclaimed the solidarity of all the forms of life. But to all this the idea of actual descent was unnecessary. An actual material variation and transition from one stage to another seemed to it a wooden and gross [pg 130] expression of the evolution idea, an “all too childish and nebulous hypothesis” (Hegel).

All the important results of comparative morphology and physiology, which the modern supporters of the doctrine of descent so confidently utilise as arguments in its favour, would have been welcomed by those who held the original and general evolution idea, as a corroboration of their own standpoint. And as a matter of fact they all afford conclusive proofs of evolution; but not one of them, including even the fundamental biogenetic law and the inoculated chimpanzee, is decisive in regard to descent. This contention is sufficiently important to claim our attention for a little. Let us take the last example. Transfusion of blood between two species is possible, not necessarily because they are descended from one another or from a common root, but solely because of their systematic (ideal) relationship, that is to say because they are sufficiently near to one another and like one another in their physiological qualities and functions. If, assuming descent, this homology were disturbed, and the systematic relationship done away with, for instance through saltatory evolution, the mere fact of descent would not bring the two species any nearer one another. Thus the case proves only systematic relationship, and only evolution. But as to the meaning of this systematic relationship, whether it can be “explained” by descent, whether it has existed from all eternity, or how it has arisen, the experiment does not inform us.

The same idea may be illustrated in regard to Weismann's “predicting.” This, too, is a proof of evolution, but not of descent. Exactly as Weismann predicted the striping of the hawk-moth caterpillars and the human os centrale, Goethe predicted the formation of the skull from modified vertebræ, and the premaxillary bone in man. In precisely the same way he “derived” the cavities in the human skull from those of the animal skull. This was quite in keeping with the manner and style of his Goddess Nature and her creative transformations, raising the type of her creations from stage to stage, developing and expanding each new type from an earlier one, yet keeping the later analogous to and recapitulative of the earlier, recording the earlier by means of vestigial and gradually dwindling parts.

But what has all this to do with descent? Even the “biogenetic law” itself, especially if it were correct, would fit admirably into the frame of the pure evolution idea. For it is quite consistent with that idea to say that the higher type in the course of its development, especially in its embryonic stages, passes through stages representative of the forms of life which are below it and precede it in the (ideal) genealogical tree. Indeed, the older doctrine of evolution took account of this long ago.

“The same step-ladder which is exhibited by the whole animal kingdom, the steps of which are the different races and classes, with at the one extreme the [pg 132] lowliest animals and at the other the highest, is exhibited also by every higher animal in its development, since from the moment of its origin until it has reached its full development it passes through—both as regards internal and external organisation—the essentials of all the forms which become permanent for a lifetime in the animals lower than itself. The more perfect the animal is, the longer is the series of forms it passes through.”

So J. Fr. Meckel wrote in 1812 in his “Handbook of Pathological Anatomy,” with no thought of descent. And the facts which led to the construction of the biogenetic law were discovered in no small measure by Agassiz, who was an opponent of the doctrine of descent.[31]

But the advance from the doctrine of evolution to that of descent was imperatively prompted by a recognition of [pg 133] the fact that the earth is not from everlasting, and that the forms of life upon it are likewise not from everlasting, that, in fact, their several grades appear in an orderly ascending series. It is therefore simpler and more plausible to suppose that each higher step has arisen from the one before it, than to suppose that each has, so to speak, begun an evolution on its own account. A series of corroborative arguments might be adduced, and there is no doubt, as we have said before, that the transition from the general idea of evolution to that of descent will be fully accomplished. But it is plain that the special idea of descent contributes nothing essentially new on the subject.

It is an oft-repeated and self-evident statement, that it is in reality a matter of entire indifference whether man arose from the dust of the earth or from living matter already formed, or, let us say, from one of the higher vertebrates. The question still would be, how much or how little of any of them does he still retain, and how far does he differ from all? Even if there be really descent, the difference may quite as well be so great—for instance, through saltatory development—that man, in spite of physical relationship, might belong to quite a new category far transcending all his ancestors in his intellectual characteristics, in his emotional and moral qualities. There is nothing against the assumption, and there is much to be said in its favour, that the last step from animal to man was such an immense one that it brought with it a freedom and [pg 134] richness of psychical life incomparable with anything that had gone before—as if life here realised itself for the first time in very truth, and made everything that previously had been a mere preliminary play.

On the other hand, even were there no descent but separate individual creation, man might, in virtue of his ideal relationship and evolution, appear nothing more than a stage relatively separate from those beneath him in evolution. It was not the doctrine of descent, it was the doctrine of evolution that first ranked man in a series with the rest of creation, and regarded him as the development of what is beneath him and leads up to him through a gradual sequence of stages. And his nearness, analogy, or relationship to what is beneath him is in no way increased by descent, or rendered a whit more intimate or more disturbing.

The Problema Continui.

The problem of descent thus shows itself to be one which has neither isolated character nor special value. It is an accessory accompaniment of all the questions and problems which have been raised by, or are associated with, the doctrine of evolution, which would have been in our midst without Darwin, which are made neither easier nor more difficult by zoological knowledge, and the difficulties of which, if solved, would solve at the same time any difficulties presented by descent. The following considerations will serve to [pg 135] make this clear. The most oppressive corollary of the doctrine of descent is undoubtedly that through it the human race seems to become lost in the infra-human, from which it cannot be separated by any hard and fast boundaries, or absolute lines of demarcation. But it is easy to see that this problem is in fact only a part of a larger problem, and that it can really be solved only through the larger one. Even if it were possible to do away with this unpleasing inference as regards the whole human race, so that it could be in some way separated off securely from the animal kingdom, the same fatality would remain in regard to each individual human being. For we have here to face the problem of individual development by easy transitions, the ascent from the animal to the human state, and the question: When is there really soul and spirit, when man and ego, when freedom and responsibility? But this is the same problem again, only written with smaller letters, the general problema continui in the domain of life and mind. And the problem is very far-reaching. In all questions concerning mental health and disease, abnormalities or cases of arrest at an early stage of mental development, concerning the greater or less degree of endowment for intellectual, moral, and religious life, down to utter absence of capacity, and this in relation to individuals as well as races and peoples, and times; and again, concerning the gradual development of the ethical and religious consciousness in the long course of history, in its continuity and [pg 136] gradual transition from lower to higher forms: everywhere we meet this same problema continui. And our oppressive difficulty is bound up with this problem, and can be dispelled only by its solution, for the gist of the difficulty is nothing else than the gradualness of human becoming.

This is not the place for a thoroughgoing discussion of this problema continui. We can only call to mind here that the “evolution idea” has been the doctrine of the great philosophical systems from Aristotle to Leibnitz, and of the great German idealist philosophers, in whose school the religious interpretation of the world is at home. We may briefly emphasise the most important considerations to be kept in mind in forming a judgment as to gradual development.

1. To recognise anything as in course of evolving does not mean that we understand its “becoming.” The true inwardness of “becoming” is hidden in the mystery of the transcendental.

2. The gradual origin of the highest and most perfect from the primitive in no way affects the specific character, the uniqueness and newness of the highest stage, when compared with its antecedents. For, close as each step is to the one below, and directly as it seems to arise out of it, each higher step has a minimum and differentia of newness (or at least an individual grouping of the elements of the old), which the preceding stage does not explain, or for which it is not [pg 137] a sufficient reason, but which emerges as new from the very heart of things.

3. Evolution does not diminish the absolute value of the perfect stage, which is incomparably greater than the value of the intermediate stages, it rather accentuates it. The stages from the half-developed acorn-shoot are not equivalent in value to the perfect tree; they are to it as means to an end, and are of minimal value compared with it.

4. All “descent” and “evolution,” which, even in regard to the gradual development of physical organisation and its secrets, offer not so much an explanation as a clue, are still less sufficient in regard to the origin and growth of psychical capacity in general, and in relation to the awakening and autonomy of the mind in man, because the psychical and spiritual cannot be explained in terms of physiological processes, from either the quantity or the quality of nervous structure.

This problem, and the relation of the human spirit to the animal mind, will fall to be dealt with in Chapter XI. It is neither the right nor the duty of the religious conception of the world to inquire into and choose between the different forms of the idea of descent which we have met with. If it has made itself master of the general evolution idea, then descent, even in its most gradual, continuous, monophyletic form, affects it not at all. It can then look on, perhaps not with joy, but certainly without anxiety, at Dubois' monkey-man and Friedenthal's chimpanzee. On the [pg 138] other hand, it is obvious that a secret bond of sympathy will always unite it with the right wing of the theory of descent, with the champions of “halmatogenesis,”[32] heterogenesis,[33] kaleidoscopic readjustment, &c., because in all these the depth and wealth and the mystery of phenomena are more obviously recognisable. For the same reasons the religious outlook must always be interested in all protests against over-hastiness, against too great confidence in hypotheses, and against too rapid simplification and formulation. And it is not going beyond our province to place some reliance on the fact that there are increasing signs of revolt from the too great confidence hitherto shown in relation to the Theory of Descent. The general frame of the theory will certainly never be broken, but the enclosed picture of natural evolution will be less plain and plausible, more complex and subtle, more full of points of interrogation and recognitions of the limits of our knowledge and the depths of things.