Part 2 (2/2)

Note VII ”Contributions towards a Theory of Descent, and towards a Methodology of the Sciences of Nature.”

Note VIII ”Ludwig Feuerbach's Philosophy of Science, and the Philosophical Criticism of the Present Time.”

Note IX ”Cosmos: The Development of the Cosmos according to Monistic Principles on the Basis of Exact Science.”]

[Footnote 13: _History of Descent_.

The idea and the task of phylogeny, or the history of descent, I first defined in 1866, in the sixth book of my _General Morphology_ (_vol_. ii.

pp. 301-422), and the substance of this, as well as an account of its relation to ontogeny or history of development, is set forth in a popular form in Part II. of my _Natural History of Creation_ (8th ed., Berlin, 1889). A special application of both these divisions of the history of evolution to man, is attempted in my _Anthropogenie_ (4th ed.), revised and enlarged, 1891: Part I. History of development. Part II. History of descent.]

[Footnote 14: _Opponents of the Doctrine of Descent_.

Since the death of Louis Aga.s.siz (1873), Rudolf Virchow is regarded as the sole noteworthy opponent of Darwinism and the theory of descent; he never misses an opportunity (as recently in Moscow) of opposing it as ”unproved hypothesis.” See as to this my pamphlet, _Freedom in Science and in Teaching_, a reply to Virchow's address at Munich on ”Freedom of Science in the Modern State” (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr., 1892).]

[Footnote 15: _Cellular Psychology_.

See on this my paper on ”Cell-souls and Soul-cells,” in the _Deutsche Rundschau_ (July 1878), reprinted in Part 1, of _Collected Popular Lectures_; also ”The Cell-soul and Cellular Psychology” in my discourse on _Freedom in Science and Teaching_ (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr., 1892, p.

46); _Natural History of Creation_ (8th ed., pp. 444, 777); and _Descent of Man_ (4th ed., pp. 128, 147). See also, Max Verworn, _Psycho-physiologische Protisten-Studien_ (Jena, 1889), and Paul Carus, _The Soul of Man: An Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psychology_ (Chicago, 1891). Among recent attempts to reform psychology on the basis of evolutionary doctrine in a monistic sense, special mention must be made of Georg Heinrich Schneider's _Der thierische Wille: Systematische Darstellung und Erklarung der thierischen Triebe und deren Entstehung, Entwickelung und Verbreitung im Thierreiche als Grundlage zu einer vergleichenden Willenslehre_[X] (Leipsic, 1880).

Compare also his supplementary work, ent.i.tled _Der menschliche Wille vom Standpunkte der neuen Entwickelungstheorie_[XI] (1882); also the _Psychology of Herbert Spencer_ and the new edition of Wilhelm Wundt's _Menschen-und Thierseele[XII]_ (Leipsic, 1892).

Note X ”Will in the Lower Animals: a Systematic Exposition and Explanation of Animal Instincts, and their Origin, Development, and Difference in the Animal Kingdom, as Basis of a Comparative Doctrine of Volition.”

Note XI ”The Human Will from the Standpoint of the Modern Theory of Evolution.”

Note XII ”Soul in Man and Brute.”

[Footnote 16: _Consciousness_.

The antiquated view of Du Bois-Reymond (1872)--that human consciousness is an unsoluble ”world-riddle,” a transcendent phenomenon in essential ant.i.thesis to all other natural phenomena--continues to be upheld in numerous writings. It is chiefly on this that the dualistic view of the world founds its a.s.sertion, that man is an altogether peculiar being, and that his personal soul is immortal; and this is the reason why the ”Leipsic ignorabimus-speech” of Du Bois-Reymond has for twenty years been prized as a defence by all representatives of the mythological view of the world, and extolled as a refutation of ”monistic dogma.” The closing word of the discourse, ”ignorabimus,” was translated as a present, and this ”ignoramus” taken to mean that ”we know nothing at all”; or, even worse, that ”we can never come to clearness about anything, and any further talk about the matter is idle.” The famous ”ignorabimus” address remains certainly an important rhetorical work of art; it is a ”beautiful sermon,” characterised by its highly-finished form and its surprising variety of philosophico-scientific pictures. It is well known, however, that the majority (and especially women) judge a ”beautiful sermon” not according to the value of the thoughts embodied in it, but according to its excellence as an aesthetical entertainment. While Du Bois treats his audience at great length to disquisitions on the wondrous performances of the genius of Laplace, he afterwards glides over, the most important part of his subject in eleven short lines, and makes not the slightest further attempt to solve the main question he has to deal with--as to whether the world is really ”doubly incomprehensible.” For my own part, on the contrary, I have already repeatedly sought to show that the two limits to our knowledge of nature are one and the same; the fact of consciousness and the relation of consciousness to the brain are to us not less, but neither are they more, puzzling, than the fact of seeing and hearing, than the fact of gravitation, than the connection between matter and energy. Compare my discourse on _Freedom in Science and Teaching_ (1878), pp. 78, 82, etc.]

[Footnote 17: _Immortality_.

Perhaps in no ecclesiastical article of faith is the gross materialistic conception of Christian dogma so evident as in the cherished doctrine of personal immortality, and that of ”the resurrection of the body,”

a.s.sociated with it. As to this, Savage, in his excellent work on _Religion in the Light of the Darwinian Doctrine_, has well remarked: ”One of the standing accusations of the Church against science is that it is materialistic. On this I would like to point out, in pa.s.sing, that the whole Church-conception concerning a future life has always been, and still is, the purest materialism. It is represented that the material body is to rise again, and inhabit a material heaven.” Compare also Ludwig Buchner, _Das zunkunftige Leben und die moderne Wissenschaft_ (Leipsic, 1889); Lester Ward, ”Causes of Belief in Immortality” (_The Forum_, vol. VIII., September 1889); and Paul Carus, _The Soul of Man: an Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental Psychology_ (Chicago, 1891). Carus aptly points out the a.n.a.logy between the ancient and the modern ideas with respect to light, and with respect to the soul.

Just as formerly the luminous flame was explained by means of a special fiery matter (_phlogiston_), so the thinking soul was explained by the hypothesis of a peculiar gaseous soul-substance. We now know that the light of the flame is a sum of electric vibrations of the ether, and the soul a sum of plasma-movements in the ganglion-cells. As compared with this scientific conception, the doctrine of immortality of scholastic psychology has about the same value as the materialistic conceptions of the Red Indian about a future life in Schiller's ”Nadowessian Death-Song.”]

[Footnote 18: _Monistic Ethic_.

All Ethic, the theoretical as well as the practical doctrine of morals, as a ”science of law” (_Normwissenschaft_), stands in immediate connection with the view that is taken of the world (_Weltanschauung_), and consequently with religion. This position I regard as exceedingly important, and have recently upheld in a paper on ”Ethik und Weltanschauung,” in opposition to the ”Society for Ethical Culture”

lately founded in Berlin, which would teach and promote ethics without reference to any view of the world or to religion. (Compare the new weekly journal, _Die Zukunft_, edited by Maximilian Harden, Berlin, 1892, Nos. V.-VII.). Just as I take the monistic to be the only rational basis for all science, I claim the same also for ethics. On this subject compare especially the ethical writings of Herbert Spencer and those of B. von Carneri--_Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus_ (1871); _Entwickelung und Gluckseligkeit_ (1886); and more particularly, the latest of all, _Der moderne Mensch_ (Bonn, 1891); further, Wilhelm Streeker, _Welt und Menschheit_ (Leipsic, 1892); Harald Hoffding, _Die Grundlage der humanen Ethik_ (Bonn, 1880); and the recent large work of Wilhelm Wundt, _Ethik, eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen und Gesetze des sittlichen Lebens_ (Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 1892).]

[Footnote 19: _h.o.m.otheism_.

Under the term h.o.m.otheism (or anthropomorphism) we include all the various forms of religious belief which ascribe to a personal G.o.d purely human characteristics. However variously these anthropomorphic ideas may have shaped themselves in dualistic and pluralistic religions, all in common retain the unworthy conception that G.o.d (_Theos_) and man (_h.o.m.o_) are organised similarly and according to the same type (h.o.m.otype). In the region of poetry such personifications are both pleasing and legitimate.

In the region of science they are quite inadmissible; they are doubly objectionable now that we know that only in late Tertiary times was man developed from pithecoid mammals. Every religious dogma which represents G.o.d as a ”spirit” in human form, degrades Him to a ”gaseous vertebrate”

(_General Morphology_, 1866; Chap, x.x.x., G.o.d in Nature). The expression ”h.o.m.otheism” is ambiguous and etymologically objectionable, but more practical than the c.u.mbersome word ”Anthropotheism.”]

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