Part 5 (1/2)
Therefore, if that first and second step in the rejection of the highest intelligence and omnipotence as the final cause of the world, are once made, it is easy for us to comprehend still other supports which this view of the world draws to itself. However large the number of things in the world for whose existence we can give a reason, or of which we can show that that, which preceded, aimed at their appearance, still the number of those to which we can not ascribe aim and design is just as large. There are even phenomena enough which in their main effects appear to us directly irrational; as, for instance, those which operate destructively,--all the tortures which animals inflict on one another, etc. Besides, we can also find imperfections in the degree of the {169} conformity to the end in view in all those phenomena which appear to us as properly planned; for instance, the organic appears to us higher than the inorganic, and yet it is in its existence not only dependent on the inorganic, but is often destroyed prematurely by it. Of course, all these limits and barriers of our teleological perception are abundantly used by all antagonists of a teleological view of the world for the basis of their position.
Furthermore, the way and manner in which man fixes his ends and reaches them, is essentially different from the way and manner in which nature acts. Man seeks to attain his ends with less expenditure of power and means, the more he acts conformably to the end in view; while nature, it often enough appears to us, when we have reason to imagine an effect of its processes also as the probable end of them, reaches this end only by an immense squandering of means--for instance, the preservation of organic species simply by the production of thousands of germs and eggs, most of which perish, and but very few of which are developed, and still less are transmitted. This is a difference to which Lange points, in order to reject a theory which recognizes a striving toward an end (Zielstrebigkeit) in nature, or at most to allow it a little place as the lowest form of teleology, and to reject every attempt to regard it as a.n.a.logous to human striving toward an end, as _anthropomorphism_. Nature, he says, acts, as if a man, in order to shoot a hare, should in a large field discharge millions of guns in all possible directions; as if he, in order to get into a locked room, should buy ten thousand different keys and try them all; as if, in order to have a house, he should build up a town and {170} leave the superfluous houses to wind and weather. n.o.body should call such actions conformable to an end in view, and still less should we suppose behind this action any higher wisdom, hidden reasons, or superior sagacity. It is true, Wigand is right in replying to this, that when we observe such things in nature, we have to draw the conclusion that the very end supposed by the observing man--in this case, the preservation of the species--is not the only end, but that it has other ends besides; as, for instance, richness of life, inexhaustible abundance, preservation of other organisms, etc.
Besides, this is but a single side of the comparison between the action of man and that of nature; and from this side action of man, conformable to an end in view, appears as a higher form of teleology, that of nature as a lower. But there are other sides of comparison, which just as clearly strike the eye; nature builds from within in full sovereignty of its process over matter and form. Man approaches his materials from without; nature works with never-erring certainty (Hackel's latest theory, that nature _falsifies_ its laws and processes, can surely not be meant in earnest!); man often enough with error, false calculation, awkwardness, failure and capricious arbitrariness. In these directions, teleology of nature is infinitely superior to that of man.
We must be very careful in using anthropomorphism as a term of reproach. It may be used as a reproach in warning against careless reasoning and hasty comparison, but the idea of anthropomorphism is so extensible that it can be extended over all human reasoning and conception. Are not the reasons on account of which the so-called anthropomorphism is to be rejected, often {171} enough just as anthropomorphistic as the ideas which are attacked?
For instance, when the idea of the personality of G.o.d is attacked as an anthropomorphistic one, are not the reasons with which it is a.s.sailed exactly as anthropomorphistic as the conceptions which are to be a.s.sailed?
Do we not derive all our reasoning, logic, our views, and in fact everything, at first from our human nature, and do we not in our most abstract reasoning always operate simply with the laws, as they inhere in our human nature? Is there even a single scientific description conceivable without its being full of anthropomorphisms? Even the works of Darwin which, according to the opinion of these opponents of anthropomorphism, destroy anthropomorphism and teleology, are the most striking proof in favor of it. The discovery of the general reign of the law of causality invalidates, as they say, the reign of the category of teleology; for the one category contradicts the other. Suppose it were so (we will, however, immediately see that the contrary is true) whence do we know that the category of causality has the preference over that of finality or teleology? The one, as well as the other, is anthropomorphistic, and is an undoubtedly necessary form of our human reasoning. We _believe_ in their objective validity, because we cannot believe that the sum of existences and the relations between the perceiving subject and the perceived object aim at deceiving man; we do not want to be robbed of either the one or the other category; but if the question is as to the preference of the one category over the other (which we contest), who knows whether the category of finality has not more reasons for its superiority than causality?
Compare, in reference {172} to this whole question, also the clear a.n.a.lyses in the second volume of the work of Wigand, and the instructive lecture of the Duke of Argyll upon anthropomorphism in theology.
Nevertheless, all the points against teleology thus far quoted can be understood by us as attempts at rejecting the _necessity_ of acknowledging a teleologically acting principle of the world--or, to express ourselves more clearly, of a living G.o.d--after having once rejected the deepest motive for this acknowledgment, namely: the self-testimony of G.o.d in the human conscience and mind. But it is one thing to declare that we are not obliged to accept a certain conclusion, and quite another to declare that we are obliged to accept directly the opposite of such a conclusion. It is one thing to declare that the phenomena in the world do not yet oblige us to suppose an author with a preconceived plan, and still another to declare that because I have found or still hope to find the causal connexion of phenomena conformable to the end in view, no author with a preconceived plan exists. This last a.s.sertion is one which the author of this work confesses not to understand, and in whose conclusion he cannot agree.
Knowledge of the _origin_ of something certainly does not exclude the question _wherefore_ it exists, and does not even take its place, and when I have answered both questions satisfactorily, then I may and must justly ask whether both that for which something exists and that by which something exists, is intended or not, whether that which in the language of causality I call cause and effect, also belongs to the category of finality, according to which that very cause is at the same time called means, and that very effect also design. {173} The one way of viewing postulates the other as its necessary completion; and the teleological point of view is so little an impediment for the causal, that we are much more fully convinced scientifically of the correctness of the teleological way of viewing, when first the causal chain of causes and effects lies plain before our perception without any wanting links.
We still have to mention two monstrosities which, as it seems to us, necessarily result from the rejection of teleology, although the opponents of teleology contest the fact.
The one is the reduction to _chance_ of all single formations in the world.
It is true, necessity reigns in laws and their effect; but if the degree and the sum of all qualities in the world are not based the one upon the other, if especially the single organizations originate by the way of natural selection, every coincidence of each single causal chain in the world with any other causal chain is something accidental for the one as well as for the other. Now, an explanation of that in the world which is conformable to the end in view, by chance, is a scientifically illogical idea. An accidental coincidence of many circ.u.mstances can in a single case produce something which is conformable to an end in view; but the probability that the formation conformable to the end in view is again nullified by the next throw of the dice of chance, is so great, and with every following throw grows so decidedly in geometrical progression, that this probability after a few terms becomes a certainty, and we can directly demonstrate mathematically that the world without a teleological plan would be and remain a chaos. As we have seen, even Lange finds himself obliged to {174} admit this plan, with the exception that he makes this plan itself chance--special chance among infinitely many possibilities.
The other consequence of that elimination of the idea of design is that it forbids every difference between _higher_ and _lower_, and changes everything into an indifferent and equivalent continual stream of coming and going. For the whole idea of higher and lower belongs to the category of teleology. If the new which originates is _but_ a product of that which was already in existence, and if the latter does not aim at the production of the new, then the new is equivalent to the preceding; and it is but an illusion of man, preconceiving an end, when in the products of nature he discriminates between higher and lower. A beginning of the acknowledgment of this consequence is made, when Hackel, in his Anthropogeny, so violently attacks the idea that man is end and design of the terrestrial creation.
But generally the antagonists of teleology are guilty of the inconsequence which, although from the principles of their system to be rejected, is indelibly impressed on our thinking mind and especially on our moral consciousness, that they still discriminate between higher and lower, and particularly that they willingly a.s.sign to the moral disposition and demand, and to the morally planned individual, the priority among existences. This fact is p.r.o.nounced in a very striking way in the concessions of Strauss, which we have quoted on page 126, according to which nature, where it can no longer go beyond itself, wishes to go into itself, and in man has wished to go not only upwards but even beyond itself.
Therefore, not only theology, but also philosophy, {175} and even natural science, in their most prominent advocates, have in a uniform chorus protested against this destruction of the idea of design. That it was unanimously done on the part of _theology_, is quite natural, and needs no further proofs. When we, nevertheless, mention expressly a single essay on these questions, it is done on account of the fact that in its energetic defense of the teleological point of view it is especially effective by frankly and impartially admitting the strongest positions of the opponent's standpoint--a thing which rarely happens on the part of theologians. It is the essay of Julius Kostlin ”Ueber die Beweise fur das Dasein Gottes”
(”Proofs of the Existence of G.o.d”), in the ”Theologische Studien und Kritiken,” 1875, IV and 1876, I; especially 1876, I, p. 42 ff. On the part of philosophy, we have to mention Ulrici, Fichte, Huber and Frohschammer, who have rejected the attack against teleology with inflexible criticism.
Even Friedrich Vischer in the sixth part of his ”Kritische Gange”
(”Critical Walks”), has forcibly maintained the right of teleology, especially of its highest revelation, the moral order of the world--in contrast to his friend D. F. Strauss, whose ”The Old Faith and the New” he criticises; but it is true, in consequence of his pantheism, he reaches the wholly imaginary conclusion of supposing a moral order of the world without a regulator. And, to be able to make the systematized order and beauty of nature conceivable to himself without a Creator, to be able to make conceivable to himself a design in nature, an ideal, according to which nature works as an unconscious artist, he gives to philosophy the certainly unsolvable problem of finding the idea of {176} timeless time, to which the ”afterward” can just as well be a ”beforehand”; he prefers to do this rather than to find the equally clear and deep solution of that teleological difficulty in the simple idea of a Creator, who, as such, also stands above time. One of the most remarkable philosophic testimonies for the right of teleology is the philosophic system of Eduard von Hartmann who, although he calls his absolute the unconscious, ascribes to it an unconscious intelligence and an unconscious will, and makes the observation and acknowledgment of designs and ends, which he sees in the whole realm of the world of phenomena, an essential part of his entire system. All attempts of this kind, as those of Vischer and Hartmann, fully and correctly to understand the language of facts on the one side and to reject on the other the necessary conclusion to which it leads--namely, the acknowledgment of a creative intelligence _above_ the facts, and having an end in view--only increase in like manner as the above-quoted cosmogonic idea of Lange by the monstrosities of reasoning to which they lead, the power of demonstration for that which they undertake to contest. Natural scientists, finally, even Darwinians, have not only in _casual_ utterances often spoken a weighty word in favor of teleology--as, for instance, those who, like Oswald Heer, Kolliker, Baumgartner, believe in a metamorphosis of germs, but also men who are quite favorable to the idea of an origin of the species through descent--as, for instance, Richard Owen, at the end of his ”Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrates,” separately published as ”Derivative Hypothesis of Life and Species”; Alexander Braun, in his lecture ”Ueber die Bedeutung der Entwicklung in der Naturgeschichte” {177} (”On the Importance of Development in Nature”), Berlin, 1872; A. W.
Volkmann ”Ueber die Entwicklung der Organismen” (”On the Development of Organisms”), Halle, 1875; Schaaffhausen, in his opening address to the Wiesbaden Anthr. Versammlung, Braunschweig, 1874, and others; but they have also given to teleology entire treatises. Besides a more popular treatise of the astronomer Madler in ”Westermann's Monatshefte,” October, 1872, there belong to them the frequently mentioned work of Wigand, and especially three essays of great importance from the pen of a man who in questions of development and its extent has among all contemporaries the first right to speak, namely, Karl Ernst von Baer. They are the essays on the conformity to the end in view in general, on the conformity to the end in view in organic bodies, and on Darwin's doctrine, published together with two other essays in the already mentioned ”Studien aus dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften,” (Reden und Kleinere Aufsatze, 2ter Theil), Petersburg, 1876. Nay, even the two founders of Darwinism, Darwin himself and A. R. Wallace, as we shall see in defining their position in reference to religion, express themselves decidedly teleologically; this is especially true of Wallace, and likewise of their active and able second, Huxley. Only a single utterance of Darwin in a later publication seems to take a sceptical position in regard to teleology; compare below Part Second, Book I, Chapt. III, -- 1.
Finally, we have to say a word concerning the _name_ which the anti-teleological view of the world gives to itself: the name ”_monism_.”
The view of the world which monism gives us, seems hardly comprehensible; and {178} just as little does the name which it gives itself, seem justifiable.
If this name is to indicate only a maxim of _investigation_--the directive which scientific investigation has to take, in order to reach more general points of view--we could declare ourselves in full accord with it. All investigation strives after a unity of principle; this impulse is a scientific leading motive of our nature. Besides the absolute limits of our knowledge, there are still enough relative and provisory limits to it; and there also are enough low points of view, mistakes, and imperfections in science, to justify us when we expressly form and establish monism as a maxim of scientific investigation. All those theories and points of view need such a spur and corrective, which are hastily satisfied with a dualistic or a still farther expanded limit of our knowledge. Among them we rank in theology the antique heathenish dualism which separates G.o.d and the world in such a way that G.o.d is but the architect of the eternal matter, existing independently of G.o.d; and also the modern deistic dualism which considers only the elements, principles, and beginning of the world, as dependent on G.o.d, but not the entire course of their developments as a whole and in detail. In philosophy, taken in a narrower sense, we reckon with them the one-sided atomism which can no longer find the connecting link between the single elements of the world, or the one-sided a.s.sertion of realism or idealism, since at this time all views of the world which win acceptance from the present generation claim the praise of showing the reconciliation and higher unity of realism and idealism. In anthropology, there belongs to them {179} such a treatment of psychology and physiology, that the one science does not trouble itself about the other, and the investigation does not seek or keep in mind that which is common to both, or that which is higher and superior to them; and in all natural sciences, every mode of investigation belongs to them, where the single science retains no sympathy with all other sciences and with the principles of all scientific investigation. In regard to these low points of view, mistakes, or imperfections, monism certainly is a correct and necessary maxim of investigation; but this maxim ought not to lead us so far that we--as very often happens from the _unity_ or the possibility of grouping several forms of existence under general conceptions--make an _ident.i.ty_, that we efface the differences instead of explaining them, and then think the effacement is an explanation; that we set forth the _a.s.sumed_ form of unity as if one we had found, and in this manner falsify the method of knowing. For as certainly and as much as man is subject to the dangers of error and falsification, just so certainly and so little is nature subject to falsification.
But if the name ”monism” is to designate a certain _view of the world_, it is for such a designation either too comprehensive and quite applicable to _all_ views which have a right to the name of view of the world; or it is misleading, and not applicable to any. For the name, as if it were properly called henism, either expresses only the _unity_ of the principle of the world, and designates a quality which is the characteristic of every view of the world, and which especially belongs to theism in a clearer and more perfect way than to any other standpoint; or the name is used to attest that the world _alone_ {180} exists, and that monism knows of but _one_ existence,--namely, that of the world; while the contrary view of the world--that of theism, which in a manner wholly incompetent, and historically wholly unjustified, is called dualism--supposes _two_ existences, G.o.d and the world. But then this name does not correctly represent either itself or theism. It does not correctly represent itself: for the so-called monism does not, indeed, suppose that that which _appears_ in the world is the really existing, or that the processes which come into appearance have again their _final_ cause only in the appearance, but it seeks the final causes of the phenomena in laws and principles which can no longer be observed by our senses, and of those it again seeks the common, highest, and very last principle, the perception of which it either, with Hackel, renounces or finds it, with other theories, now in atomism, and in attraction and repulsion, then in the law of causality.
Thus it has not only a single existence and mode of existence, but it does exactly the same thing that theism does: it seeks the final principles of the world. And it does not correctly represent theism: for theism also does not know of two existences to which the idea of existing is applicable in fully the same way--namely, the world _and_ G.o.d---but in seeking a cause for the existence of the world, it finds it in G.o.d; the world, according to its view, only exists by the fact that it exists in and through G.o.d. So theism in this sense also contests with monism for the right of the name.
Therefore, when teleology allows the opponent's view of the world to appropriate the name monism exclusively to itself, it can do this only in the same {181} sense as that in which, in order to avoid disputes, we are satisfied with many irrational names which have forced themselves upon us; as, for instance, we can perhaps call the clerical party in Bavaria the patriotic, because it calls itself so, or as we accept the t.i.tle of the ultramontane paper ”Germania,” at Berlin, without conceding to the bearers of those names the care of patriotism and of the interests of the German empire in a higher degree than to parties and papers of a different standpoint. In fact, this linguistic arbitrariness does not particularly tend to clearness of conception and to the avoidance of obscure phrases.
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PART II
THE POSITION OF THE DARWINIAN THEORIES IN REFERENCE TO RELIGION AND MORALITY.