To cite another example in illustration of the subjective element of feeling in cognition, we may compare our knowledge of the world to the map of a city. The map may be printed in black, green, red, blue, or any other color. The color in which the map is printed represents the subjective element of feeling, while the form of the lines, their geometrical configuration, contains the objective element of the things represented. The map is good, i. e. its representations are true, if the squares and the streets of the city stand in the same relation among each other, as the little blocks and divisions on the map do. Whether the map is printed in green or blue will make no difference so long as we find everything we want to know about the city represented in a way such that we should be able to set ourselves aright and to find our bearings if we went astray.
The subjective element in mind is not of one half the importance generally attributed to it. The objective element, being that which is represented, is paramount, and it is the aspiration of all the sciences to concentrate their entire attention upon the objective features of observation. Objective truth is what we want, and objective truth is identical with a scientific description of facts.
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What then is the criterion of objective truth for the interpretation of facts? Is it not wanting? May it not be that a person, Mr. A., will under given circumstances regularly see a ghost. Indeed we do not doubt that he will, and we can even prove it by experiment. This being so, is not the interpretation of facts as to whether the phenomenon is a real ghost or a mere vision, beyond any criterion of truth?
If the methods of science are reliable, (and they have been justified by their brilliant success,) we have indeed a criterion for the interpretation of facts; and this criterion for the interpretation of facts, no less than the criterion of single observations is based upon monism. If the world is really a universe, if there is oneness in the All, if there is a unity of law throughout nature, our interpretations of the different facts must agree among themselves. They cannot and should not contradict one another; and whenever they do, it is a certain sign that somewhere there is something wrong in our interpretation of facts.
Philosophy has ceased to be a metaphysical world-theory. The interpretation of facts no longer means a hypothetical assumption which will square all the irregularities among facts that we are unable to account for, but simply a methodical systematisation of facts, enabling us to recognise the sameness of law in the irregularities apparent in innumerable individual instances. Interpretation in this sense means harmonisation; it means an orderly arrangement; classification with due discrimination. An explanation of natural phenomena is not the carrying of an hypothesis in to facts out of the realms of our imagination, out of depths unknown, by what might be styled revelation or inspiration, but it is a comparison of facts with facts. The hypothesis we apply to facts must come from facts and must cover facts. That element in an hypothesis which does not cover facts is redundant as an explanation; it is useless as such, or even dangerous; and unless it serves as an aid to thought where ignorance of facts requires some assistance, some allegorical symbol, some auxiliary construction,—unless it is to the scientist what crutches are to the lame,—it must be dropped.
Accordingly, the criterion of truth is the perfect agreement of all facts, of all interpretations and explanations of facts among themselves. If two facts (such as we conceive them) do not agree with each other, we must revise them; and it may be stated as a matter of experience, that our mind will find no peace until a monistic conception is reached. A monistic conception is the perfect agreement of all facts in a methodical system, so that the same law is recognised to prevail in all instances, and the most different events are conceived as acting under different conditions yet in accord with the same law.
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It does not lie within the scope of this essay to enter upon the practical application of the principle which we have set forth as the criterion of truth. One hint only may be supplied, to point out the most obvious maxim derivable from it—a maxim that is instinctively obeyed by all scientists and has often been popularly expressed in the sentence: An ounce of fact is worth a hundred pounds of hypothesis, or of any interpretation of facts. All the theories in the world, scientific and economical, our dearest ideals not excepted, and all the most ingenious hypotheses have no value unless they have been derived from, and agree with, the laws that live in the facts of our experience.
The trouble of applying this rule lies mainly in the difficulty of distinguishing between facts and our interpretation of facts. Considering that mind is representativeness in feelings we have to analyse the mind in order to come down to objective facts. The percept of a tree is not the tree; it is an interpretation of a group of facts; it is a mental picture produced by a synthesis of sensations, the latter being caused by sense-impressions. Considering that all the images, ideas, abstract concepts, and theories of which our mind consists are not the facts represented by them but their several interpretations, we at once see how careful we have to be for purposes of philosophical and scientific exactness in the statement of facts.
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On this occasion, a few critical remarks concerning the leading essay of this number, "The Architecture of Theories," by Mr. Charles S. Peirce, may be added. Mr. Peirce is one of our subtlest thinkers and logicians, and it is incumbent upon one to reflect twice before criticising any sentence of a man who writes upon the most recondite topics,—upon what I should call the higher mathematics, the differential and integral calculus of logic,—with ease and masterly accuracy. Mr. Peirce's essay "The Architecture of Theories,"[55] presented in this number ofThe Monist, is the first publication of his in which he propounds not mere criticism or the discussion of abstruse logical subjects, but his own positive opinion, presenting in great and clear outlines the foundations of his philosophy.
[55] The term "architecture of theories" seems inappropriate from the standpoint of a positive conception of the world. Many monisms have been constructed in the way Mr. Peirce so well describes in his comparison of these philosophical systems to the building a house of one and the same material, for instancepapier mâché, with roof of roofing paper, foundations of paste-board, windows of paraffined paper, etc., etc. Philosophy, however, is not a construction of a theory comparable to the building of an edifice; it is rather the mapping out of the house in which we live for the purpose of orientation.
The world-conception of Mr. Peirce agrees in one fundamental maxim with our own, but it disagrees with the latter in the main and most important application of this maxim. Mr. Peirce says, "Law ispar excellencethe thing that wants a reason." This maxim was the guiding star of our inquiry into the fundamental problems of philosophy.[56] The world considered as a universe displaying in all its innumerable actions one and the same law is called a cosmos; if considered as a heap of processes with no common law pervading them it is called a chaos. We found in our inquiry into the forms of existence that the laws of form possess intrinsic necessity. The laws of the form of existence are represented in the laws of formal thought (arithmetic, mathematics, logic, mechanics, and pure natural science). So long as the formal laws hold good, (and we have found in the chapter "Form and Formal Thought" that they will hold good under all circumstances,) any kind of world, whatever materially or dynamically it be, must be a cosmos, and cannot be a chaos. We can imagine that we had a world consisting of some other substance and being different either in the amount or in the action of its energy to this world of ours, but we cannot imagine that a world should exist which does not exhibit the harmony of form, and is not regulated as it were by the formal laws of existence. One plus one would be two in any kind of a world, and obviously all the other more complex statements of formal laws would remain true with the same intrinsic necessity. The truth 'one plus one makes two' contains the universal applicability of causation and of the conservation of matter and energy. Taking this ground we arrived at the conclusion that the world is a cosmos: there is no chaos and there never has been a chaos. A chaos, in the sense of an absolute non-existence of law, is an impossibility.
[56] See the author'sFundamental Problems.
Accordingly, we cannot agree with Mr. Peirce that the occurrence of chance "calls for no particular explanation." There is no chance, if chance means absence of law. Chance, if the word be admissible, is a mere subjective conception produced by limited knowledge and signifying a state of things not determinable with the means of knowledge at our disposal. Law once recognised is the death of chance (in the objective sense of the word); and chance, or sport, or chaos, or indeterminacy, or whatever one may call the absence or at least the imperfect cogency of law, far from "calling for no particular explanation," must be classedprima facieamong those theories that areper seimpossible: These conceptions whether applied to the world at large or to special processes of nature are in contradiction to those interpretations and systematised statements of facts which are most fundamental, most reliable, most indispensable and universal. Whatever generalisation the theory of evolution may be capable of, it is certainly not capable of being applied to law. The formal order of Nature and especially the mechanical laws of physics cannot be thought of as having been developed out of a state of sportive chance; they must be considered as having always been the same as they are now: they are eternal.[57]
[57] Mr. Peirce seems to define Mind as sportive chance; for according to his theory, as soon as sportiveness assumes fixed habits, it settles into the mechanical motions which physical science observes in gravitating masses; and matter is thus defined as "effete mind."
In stating this difference of opinion, I apprehend a possibility that although Mr. Peirce has stated his case with most admirable and I should say unequivocal clearness, I have misunderstood his views. In a former article of his, Mr. Peirce makes a statement concerning Nature considered as a possible chaos, which seems to concur rather with my views on the subject than with his own. Mr. Peirce says in his fourth Paper on the "Illustrations of the Logic of Science":
"If there be any way of enumerating the possibilities of Nature so as to make them equally probable, it is clearly one which should make one arrangement or combination of the elements of Nature as probable as another…. It would be to assume that Nature is a pure chaos, or chance combination of independent elements, in which reasoning from one fact to another would be impossible; and since, as we shall hereafter see, there is no judgment of pure observation without reasoning, it would be to suppose all human cognition illusory and no real knowledge possible. It would be to suppose that if we have found the order of Nature more or less regular in the past, this has been by a pure run of luck which we may expect is now at an end. Now, it may be we have no scintilla of proof to the contrary, but reason is unnecessary in reference to that belief which is of all the most settled, which nobody doubts or can doubt, and which he who should deny would stultify himself in so doing.
"The relative probability of this or that arrangement of Nature is something which we should have a right to talk about if universes were as plenty as blackberries, if we could put a quantity of them in a bag, shake them well up, draw out a sample, and examine them to see what proportion of them had one arrangement and what proportion another. But, even in that case, a higher universe would contain us, in regard to whose arrangements the conception of probability could have no applicability."
I rest the case here in the hope that the statement of both sides of the problem will contribute to elucidate truth.
The investigation of the psychical faculties of animals is comparable to a journey into fairy-land. We do not know, and according to Du Bois-Reymond, we shall never know, how our own mental activity has originated, yet in spite of this we deliberately form theories and opinions concerning the psychical powers and faculties of other beings that in point of nervous organisation are perhaps altogether different from us! The ancients wisely limited themselves to expressing the intelligence of animals in the form of instructive fables, and in the famous park of Versailles the charming idea was actually carried out of representing the fables of Æsop in a so-called labyrinth, every turn of the intricate lanes of which led to a different group of animals whose speech was symbolised by streams of water spouting from their mouths, and the purport of their imagined utterances was to be read in golden letters upon marble tablets placed at the side. How often have I wandered over the scene of those long since ruined mazes and have thought of the deep meaning that frequently lies in childish pastime of this kind.
But labyrinth aside—when we see an animal perform before our eyes purposive acts; and we recognise that our own thought operates in accordance with definite, rigorous laws; we shall still have to say to ourselves that a comparative animal psychology is after all not necessarily so hopeless a thing as one might be led to believe from the bold, and yet faint-hearted, "Ignorabimus" of the distinguished Berlin physiologist. And as a matter of fact the range of insight obtained in very recent times into this very field is highly encouraging. On this occasion I should like to select for discussion one of the most remarkable of questions, that, namely, which concerns the psychical activity ofmany-souledanimals.
Quite a stir was made some years ago in the scientific world when Haeckel began to philosophise about the souls of cells, or so-called plastidule-souls; for it was patent that the course of life in the individual single cell of an animal or vegetable body flowed on in such strict conformity with reason that it was logically necessary to posit the presence of psychical guidance in the instance in question as much as in the case of composite cellular colonies in higher organic beings,—especially since every single one of these composite organisms begins its life as a simple cell, from which the others afterward spring. The wide-spread opposition that Haeckel's view met with, must be regarded as the result of current and common ignorance of the history of philosophy; since otherwise it must have been known that the idea of a cell-soul or a germ-soul which controls the development of the young, has been propounded by innumerable philosophers, and that it was proclaimed by Daniel Sennert, of Wittenberg, who died in 1637, with perfect consistency as the foundation of all psychological knowledge. Many beings, such as Algæ, Fungi, and Infusoria, never in their lives get beyond the state of a single cell, and yet under the microscope we may observe them seeking light, capturing prey, and in the majority of cases founding families. And when the Genevan Trembley discovered, in 1740, the fact of the divisibility of fresh-water Polyps and showed that after cutting them up every piece grew and developed into a new individual endowed with sensation, will, and other psychical capacities, philosophers began to debate whether there were initially present in every divisible polyp a number of souls in the germinal state, or, if such were not the case, whether the simple soul of a polyp possessed the property of divisibility. The Leipsic theologian Crusius, who died in 1775, declared in favor of the presence in every polyp of a plurality of germinal souls; the Dutch insect anatomist, Peter Lyonnet (died 1796) declared in favor of the divisibility of the single polyp soul.
[Illustration: Fig. 1.—STAR-FISH. (After Haeckel.)]
But let us pass by these subtle speculations to turn to a class of animals in the case of which we may speak with more propriety than in the case of polyps and other zoöphytes of a plural soul, since physically and psychically they act in every respect as if they had grown together out of five or more individuals,—I mean the Echinoderms in general and the Star-fish (Asteroidea) in particular. In the following paragraphs, for the sake of brevity, I shall speak of only five-rayed star-fishes, because the sacred number five is the one that lies at the basis of the physical structure of the great majority of star-fishes developed from the egg, and of all other echinoderms, although there really do occur star-fishes which are supplied, some with more and some with less than five rays,—single rays often being cast off and a larger number growing out in their places,—and although many species are regularly and normally supplied with more than five rays. From visits to the sea-shore or to aquariums, at any rate from pictures, my readers all know how a star-fish in general looks. In the first cut which accompanies this article a number of echinoderms are presented. The star-fish is in the centre to the left. It resembles the decorative star of an Order, and has short or long, broad or slender rays, as the case may be, and a disc-shaped central body.
The observation which is most important for our present discussion, and which strikes us on first seeing a star-fish, or its relatives the sea-urchin and the sea-anemone, consists of the fact that these animals possess no head, which even the most insignificant worm or insect does not lack, and that consequently its organs are in want of a guiding, regulative member, possessing externally organs of sense and having within a brain with the power to communicate the requisite commands for the movement and the conduct of the same. On the contrary, each single branch or ray possesses its own individual nervous system; and in the case of the voluntary separation of the rays, which frequently occurs, is able to continue life of its own independent accord, developing itself by the growth of new rays into a new and complete star-fish. (See Fig. 2.) But these five or more nervous systems do not radiate from a common central nerve-ganglion which might be termed a central brain, but are merely joined to a nerve-ring which lies in a common central portion, encircling the esophagus; this nerve-ring in the majority of cases forms a regular polygonic figure, and into each angle of the polygon the nerve-cord of a ray enters. It will be seen from this structural arrangement of things, that the psychical and mental guidance of these animals is entrusted to a board of five members who possess, it is true, sentient communication with each other, but act without the intermediation of a presiding officer.
[Illustration: Fig. 2.—COMET-FORM OF ARM OF A STAR-FISH.
A cast-off arm re-forming by the sprouting of four new rays.]
We may well look forward with intense interest to the outcome of a psychical administration of this kind, and to tell the truth, until recently its importance has been greatly underestimated. Every inference made with respect to the psychical excitability of an animal must be derived from its movements and actions in various natural and artificially produced positions, by observing what its conduct under these conditions is. To start with, star-fishes, like sea-urchins (which psychically are similarly governed), admit with respect to the position of their bodies a distinction of top and bottom; that is to say, the side on which the mouth lies situated in the centre of the five rays belongs properly face downwards, while the opposite surface is to be regarded as the dorsal side. But the conceptions of a forepart and a hindpart, of a right and a left are not applicable. The rays of the star-fish, like the central disc, also plainly exhibit a distinction of lower and upper parts. Among the real star-fishes (Asteroidea) the inferior or ventral surface of the arms is supplied either with two or with four rows of sucker-feet or pedicels, consisting of long, extensile, hollow sacs, which when filled and extended by the water let into their widely ramified ambulacral systems, protrude into the grooves of the arm through openings in the hardened calcareous integument. To level surfaces they easily cling fast by simply drawing back the terminal discs of their tubular feet and thus creating a rarefied atmosphere in the space between the object to which they adhere and the puffed out walls of the extremities of the pedicels. Star-fishes may be seen climbing in this way, with their hundreds and hundreds of tube-feet, up slippery cliffs and even the perpendicular glass walls of aquariums, and they are even able to hang suspended from a horizontal glass ceiling for a considerable length of time after they have been taken out of the water. When they wish to change their position they do it by alternately loosening and fastening their extensile feet in such a way that those loosened reach forward in one and the same direction uniform in all the arms, and fasten themselves to the surface anew, whereupon the others also let loose and go through the same movement in the same direction. The sucker-feet also help to convey to the mouth the food seized at the end of the arms.
[Illustration: Fig. 3.—MODE OF LOCOMOTION OF SAND-STARS. (AfterPreyer.)
In the cut to the left1first advances, then (5) and (2);3and4remaining at rest. Whereupon (5) and (2) simultaneously come back to the positions5and2,cis lifted and pushed forwards with1, while the two rays3and4are pulled along behind. In the figure to the right the same animal first shoves forward the pairs (1) (2) and (5) (3),4remaining at rest, and then bends both pairs backwards, dragging only4behind;cis lifted and thrown forward in the direction of the arrow.]
While in this instance, accordingly, the arms, although they are not immovable and bend and approach each other, officiate rather as the bearers of organs than as prehensile and locomotory apparatuses themselves,—the sucker-feet performing the principal tasks and requiring for their work a very finely ramified nervous system; in the case of a certain other division of the star-fishes, the so-called sand-stars (Ophiuridae), the arms are thinner and more supple, and act as organs of prehension and locomotion, dispensing more or less entirely with their suctorial pedicels. By alternately thrusting three feet forward (Fig. 3) and then drawing back the two side feet of these three, the five-footed sea-stars move more swiftly than the others, sometimes proceeding by jumps even; but they cannot climb up smooth surfaces, or cliffs, unless irregularities are present which may be grasped by their pliant arms, whereas on the other hand the common star-fishes, which are furnished with sucker-feet, climb best of all on smooth and slippery surfaces, each one of their countless pedicels being able to suspend a considerable weight, in some species as much as twenty-five grammes. In other respects, especially with regard to the ring-shaped connection of the five nerve-cords, their organisation is essentially the same; only in the sand-stars the central portion forms a disc more distinctly separate from the arms, in which former the common organs of feeling and digestion have more fully retracted.
Recognising thus, that the star-fishes and all their relatives act physically like a federal animal-union, composed of five independent animal-states, I called attention in the first edition of my work "Werden und Vergehen" (1876) to the psychological enigma that we were here confronted with a five-fold Siamese monster, as it were, in which five separate persons were brought mentally under the same guidance, or where five minds had to pull, simultaneously, one rope. On account of the absence of a head and a brain in these animals, certain well-known modern animal psychologists have taken the position that their powers of psychical performance are very scanty, and that, in a much fuller sense than was predicated of all animals by the Cartesians, these especially were irrational automatons, or, to use a technical expression, were mere "reflex-organisms," animals in which only direct external excitations evoke with unalterable regularity responsive movements, so that, for example, if any unpleasant excitation were brought to bear on them from any direction they would move in the opposite direction, but world approach if anything became perceptible that excited their desire for food. On this ground the distinguished English animal psychologists Romanes and Ewart claim to have established that these animals actually do respond like machines to external excitations; if they were excited at any part of their body by a wound, by the application of acids, an electric current, or any other irritant, they would run without exception in a straight line in the opposite direction, but if the excitation were applied to any two parts of their body at some distance from each other they would move in the line of the diagonal of the two directions, in accordance with the principle of the parallelogram of forces. Similarly their movements after prey and food (the presence of which at a distance was made known by the emission of odors), their movements toward more brightly illuminated parts of the containing vessel, their flight from the air into the water, their recovery of their normal position when placed on their backs, and finally their so-called autotomy or self-amputation, that is the casting off of their members under the irritation of powerful stimuli—were all held to represent mere automatic responses to prearranged conditions without a trace of intelligence being exhibited.
In view of this condition of things it was a very welcome announcement, that one of the most brilliant representatives of modern experimental physiology and psychology, Professor W. Preyer, at present of Berlin, had determined to undertake a comprehensive series of experiments with these very animals, and was able to carry out his intention at the zoölogical station in Naples, so admirably adapted to the purpose. To obtain clear ideas generally with regard to animal reflex-mechanisms, fitter specimens for experiment could scarcely be presented than the star-fishes, which unite a rare degree of decentralisation, power of independent action, and absence of a cerebral centre, with a nervous system of the minutest ramifications. Here, if anywhere, were simple, clear and transparent results to be expected, and finally information relating to the co-operative activity of different nervous systems. Preyer published the results of his observations in the "Mittheilungen der Zoologischen Station in Neapel" for the years 1886 and 1887, and although he does not regard his labors as completed, the scientific reading public may nevertheless take sufficient interest in the present state of his researches to justify a presentment of the principal and most general results obtained.
In confirmation of the view that previously obtained it was found that these animals actually did respond in a rare degree to given stimuli in a manner determined once for all; it could be foretold with a degree of sureness verging on astronomical certainty, how, for example, the sucker-feet of a star-fish would act if the animal in its normal and sound condition was irritated at this or that place, powerfully or weakly, one time or many times successively, by mechanical or chemical applications, by electric currents, or heated instruments. With all the means of irritation employed the result was always identical, and consisted in the fact that the distensible feet were drawn in at the point of application when the irritation did not extend beyond its region, no matter whether it was applied at the inferior or superior surface of the animal, but that protrusion of the feet never resulted from local irritations of this character so long as they did not exceed a certain intensity. A more powerful irritation, on the other hand, radiating over a greater portion, or over the whole animal, produces a general protrusion of the distensible pedicels, so far as the irritation extends, with the single exception of the point of application itself when the same lies on the inferior surface.
Inasmuch as this swarming protrusion of pedicels may spread over the entire inferior surface when only a single arm is irritated in the neighborhood of its extremity, it follows from this that the nervous excitation must first be conveyed to the ring at the centre in order to radiate thence to the pedicels of the other arms; and from the manner in which the irritation is propagated, the course of the radiation can be accurately followed. Thus, if the irritation of an arm proceeded from the dorsal region, the distensible pedicels of this arm were the first to protrude, then those of the two adjacent arms, and finally those of the two remaining arms, but in the latter not quite out to the extremities unless the irritation exceeded a certain intensity. That is to say, the effect of the irritation was propagated through the inner nerve-ring according to the same laws by which a fluid under pressure or an electric current in a similar conductory system would proceed. But if the connection of the ring was severed at both sides of the irritated arm, the effect would remain confined to that arm. If the connection was broken only on one side the irritation advanced round the other side and reached the severed neighbor last. On the other hand, a powerful irritation of the central disc immediately provoked the extension of all the pedicels. The phenomena recorded occurred moreover in accordance with simple mechanical laws as was expected from the outset, and when the irritations were unusually powerful the effect was manifested by a continuous alternate extension and contraction of the pedicels.
Amputated arms of the common sucker-footed star-fish act like arms isolated at both sides by severance of the nerve-ring, as just explained. Upon local irritation they draw in their pedicels, and protrude them upon being powerfully irritated; they creep forward in a definite direction, and when placed upon their backs are able even to turn themselves over like the uninjured animal. The severed arms of sand-stars are less independent. They twist about aimlessly hither and thither, but if any considerable portion of the central disc and nerve-ring adheres to them they are able to perform adaptive movements. Similarly the disc, with one or two arms attached, is not helpless; and is able to get along quite alone without any arms. We could explain all these movements by so-called reflex actions and might grant also that the mechanism that effects these results operates in this case upon a greater scale and with more independence than in other classes of animals, for the reason that here a real guiding organ is not present.
But whatever might be inferred from the experiments just described in favor of a senseless and unintelligent life of star-fishes, Professor Preyer was nevertheless able by extending his experiments to win the conviction that the old conception of star-fishes being real reflex animals was wholly untenable, since a great number of capacities and capabilities could be verified and provoked, which are intelligible only on the basis of adaptive co-operation and mutual concerted action in the five rays. We shall not discuss here whether this is also proved by the wonderful fact that a star-fish, which fastens its arms to everything possible, never seizes its own arm and thus, like Molière's miser, in its visits to its oyster beds never catches itself for a thief. We might say, indeed, that the arm seeking a hold does not seize its companion because it feels it and has learned by experience that it takes a Münchausen to pull one's self out of a swamp by the tops of one's boots. But we find exactly the same phenomenon among creeping plants, which clasp every kind of support in their way, but never, as Darwin observed, take hold of their own stalks; whence we might assume that there probably exists in these beings some sort of power of reflex inhibition dependent upon a property of the body and developed in consequence of the fact that clasping and grasping parts of itself would involve a useless waste of energy. We shall see, however, that under certain circumstances this instinctive "dread" of contact with self is inoperative.
But to our main task. In the simplest changes of place and position, intelligent co-operation of the arms is manifest. For if in moving from one place to another, or in turning around each arm tended to perform on its own account the necessary movements of extension or rotation, without giving any heed to the others, the animal would endure the torments of Tantalus before it could reach, if ever at all, the choice bit of food that it had scented from afar, or the ray of light towards which an obscure impulsion drove it. On the contrary, when a star-fish is spying after food, we observe it lift the ends of its pedicel-covered arms so that the downward deflected eye there situated may obtain a good view of things in the neighborhood, and if in any direction an object worth going after is discovered we see the many hundreds of sucker-feet on the five arms push out in one and the same direction,—a phenomenon that requires the presence of a very widely ramified nervous system, since every tactile pedicel needs its separate telegraph wire in order to be properly moved and not always in the same direction, as for example when the animal wishes to perform a rotation about its own axis. For these comical animals sometimes do rotate about their axis, although our simple mind wonders why a Janus-head should want to turn around, these animals being able to look simultaneously in the four directions of the compass, and having still another eye for looking downward. Similarly in the sand-stars, to which the Medusa-heads with branched arms belong, an adaptive co-operation of the arms in creeping and swimming occurs; which can be explained only as the result of a common understanding issuing from the central ring.
It would seem to follow from Preyer's extensive observations, that as a rule no one individual arm of a star-fish enjoys to the exclusion of its fellows the prerogative of universal or even general precedence; the lead of any one arm is rather solely determined by the object sought, so that the one next to the object generally starts first and assumes the lead of the little army of arms. Of course in the case of new-growing star-fishes which have sprung from a single arm by sprouting, this is different; for in this instance the old arm will undoubtedly retain control of the others for some length of time until the young ones have reached a certain size. Preyer does not seem to have instituted observations to ascertain this, but it would be interesting to determine whether an arm of this kind always takes the lead, or in the proper cases acts as driver from behind and pushes the baby-carriage with the children before it.
[Illustration: Fig. 4.—RECOVERY OF NORMAL POSITION BY ASTROPECTENAURANTIACUS. (After Preyer.)
Through the end of each ray of the animal a thread is drawn and affixed to a cork; the animal lying back downwards. At first the creature swung the corks alternately inwards and outwards, taking the positions represented in the above figure. After the lapse of an hour the ray with the smallest cork attached, upon which thus the least upward pressure was exerted, was pulled downwards and sidewise and brought beneath an adjacent ray; the two opposite rays were retracted centrally, the disc lifted, the centre of gravity of the animal thus displaced, and the turning effected.]
Examples of surprisingly dexterous co-operation and concerted adaptive action are observed in these animals in their climbing on difficult surfaces, and in their attempts, also, to regain their normal position when placed on their backs or made to swim in reversed positions by discs of cork fastened to the extremities of their arms. Scientists have observed members of the ordersAsteroideaandOphiuroidea, in difficult positions of this kind, display an astounding sense of equilibrium and a skilfulness in gaining firm holds, suggestive of the athletic feats of monkeys, and that even when placed in very unusual positions such as never occur in nature. Thus many star-fishes let themselves drop from steep rocks and cliffs, if that happens to be the best way of getting down; but in such cases before they let their whole weight go hold fast to the last moment with one or two arms, as if it were previously necessary to calculate the leap into the depths below. To furnish the counter-test of this, and to prove that the central nerve-ring is, as assumed, the indispensable and necessary condition of this united co-operation, Preyer severed the ring in individual specimens of the class between every two arms, sparing the other parts as much as possible. In this way the nervous systems of the five rays were disconnected. As was expected, it was found that the more connections there were severed, the more difficult the animal found it when placed on its back to regain its normal position. For since the recovery of the normal position must be introduced by the groping about and the fastening of the pedicels of one or of several adjacent and half-turned arms, two arms or pairs of arms might for want of a mutual understanding act directly in opposition to one another and thus make the turning impossible. On the other hand, the central disc was able, though deprived of all arms, to accomplish the turning, if only the nerve-ring were preserved intact; and the more there remained of the nerve-ring on a single arm the better the single arm was able to do it.
But in circumstances which were wholly new, the adaptive co-operation of the arms demonstrated itself in so striking a manner that we may say they are not to be easily put out of countenance or confounded. When Professor Preyer, for example, slipped narrow rubber bands or cylinders over their rough spiny arms, they rid themselves as a rule of these unwonted fetters in a very short time, and in the most various but always well calculated ways. Generally the two nearest ones seized their poor imprisoned fellow "under the arms," bracing themselves with their rough spiny surface against the rubber sleeve, and thus finally stripping it off. (See Fig. 5; next page.) Sometimes, when the band was loosely adjusted, twisting movements of the arm in the water sufficed gradually to loosen it, until it could be finally cast off. Often the peeling off was effected by pressing against a rough surface, whereby sometimes an adjacent arm held the sleeve fast; and when no other expedient was of avail the animal cast the arm, sleeve and all, away from itself; and the latter may possibly have not gotten rid of it at all. At times the casting off of the arm occurred subsequently, after the obstacle had been entirely removed, and often even a day later, as if the impeded arm was still sensible of some obstruction which caused it to afterwards separate from its companions.
[Illustration: Fig. 5.—REMOVAL BY OPHIOMYXA OF A RUBBER SLEEVE. (AfterPreyer.)
The figure represents the moment at which the band is about to be removed. An adjacent arm is braced against the lower edge of the band, forcing it off in the direction of the extremity of the ray.]
Attempts at flight and liberation from unwonted compulsory positions or narrow confinement, also deserve special attention. Many a person who has put a star-fish into a cage and fancied that he was assured of its possession, has been disappointed on finding that the animal had effected its escape through the meshes. But star-fishes have, in consequence of their abhorrence of the air, been made to creep into the narrow necks of bottles filled with water. Professor Preyer, for example, thrust two of the arms of a common star-fish species (Asterias glacialis) into a tube filled with salt water leaving the three other arms exposed to the atmosphere outside; and although it would have been impossible to force the animal into the tube without crushing it, the three arms exposed to the air were also pulled in within the space of three minutes. If the tube was placed perpendicularly in water the animal quickly crept out again. The performance seemed utterly impossible, for each single arm of the star-fish was almost as thick at its base as the greatest width of the tube, and yet three of these arms had to pass in side by side. This was made possible by the animal emptying during the passage all the numerous water-vesicles in the interior of the arms which serve to fill and to empty the distensible pedicels therein; the star-fish, after the expulsion of the water, becomes very soft in all its parts and does not harden again until it has forced itself completely through and refilled itself with water. In order to accomplish these emptyings, bendings, turnings, and rollings, thousands of muscular fibres must work in harmony within the body of the animal. This experiment was also successfully carried out with other star-fishes, but I cannot agree with the observer when he says that in so doing he brought the animals into a completely new and hitherto unexperienced position. In their haunts on rocky coasts they must assuredly often have to force their way through narrow fissures and holes; and they must find occasion to make use of the advantages of being able to evacuate water in the case also of single arms, as when they search with them in narrow apertures and snail-houses.
But undoubtedly new for these animals was the position in which they were fastened to a board by five long pins with broad heads, which Preyer drove in close to the central disc between the rays, so that the star-fish, as it seemed, was fastened to its resting-place in a way that admitted of no escape. Nevertheless, the star-fish found a means of freeing itself with ease and elegance from this constrained imprisonment in a great variety of ways, even when the exterior parts of their bodies were girded in by a much greater number of pins. Ordinarily they began by shoving one of their rays, accompanied by a backward bending movement of its two companions, far out between the two encompassing pins, and then drew with the greatest care first the one and then the other adjacent ray through the same narrow avenue of escape, whereupon then the two remaining rays, the one slightly overlapping the other, were enabled to follow with perfect ease. (See Fig. 6.) A practised knot-untier who had studied the position could not have given them better advice. But if no agreement of plan and purpose existed in this case between the separate rays, if each ray sought to free itself of its own accord, a successful extrication from the difficulty could hardly have been foreseen; and we must infer from this great unanimity of action in times of danger.
[Illustration: Fig. 6.—EXTRICATION OF STAR-FISH IMPRISONEDINTERRADIALLY BY TACKS. (After Preyer.)
1.Original encompassment.2.First stage of extrication.3.Second stage.4.Third and last stage. The smaller figures indicate the successive positions of the same rays.]
Preyer thinks that at times the concurrence of all the rays in matters of concerted action might have to be effected by first obtaining the concurrence and assent of any individual ray that might be hostilely disposed; he holds it as not improbable that profound dissensions may arise between the united brothers, and refers to the fact that perhaps the voluntary section of a star-fish into a three-rayed and a two-rayed portion,—which frequently takes place,—may have to be regarded as the violent dissolution of a community of fellow animals formerly living in harmony, but now lapsed into a state of conflict. We shall pass this view by, however, to point out in a few words Preyer's general inferences with regard to the mutual relation of the five communal souls. Progression and flight in a direction once taken and unimpeded by obstacles,—an observation often made and easily verified,—the acrobatic performances, and lastly the intelligent behavior, so to say, of imprisoned and fettered star-fishes, prove that generally, and especially in moments of peril, strength-giving unanimity prevails.
But Preyer is nevertheless of opinion that it is not therefore necessary to assume the existence of a permanent central government, a central soul, holding simultaneous sway over the five radial souls, and in which is lodged, especially in times of battle, full executive power. He employs the simile of five hunting-dogs yoked together in the form of a ring, of like age, like power, and the same training, who hunt a hare in concert, or stand simultaneously and mechanically before a partridge; when thrown into the water make for the shore all in the same direction, and when equally tired fall simultaneously asleep. "Like the Siamese twins," he says, "these yolked-together dogs will have upon the whole apparently but one will, although they often obey only necessity in this and not their own impulses." Preyer arrives in this at the same conclusion that I pronounced in 1876 in the work I have mentioned, where I compared the concerted actions and movements of star-fishes and sea-urchins to the walking and dancing of human twin-monsters, who in spite of a difference of mental individuality, often very far reaching, nevertheless bring about perfect harmony in their external movements. In this I had especially in mind the so-called "two-headed nightingale," two girls closely united in growth, who often violently quarreled but sang and danced so harmoniously with one another that for the time being the sorrowful fate of the indissoluble union of two so different natures was completely forgotten. In the majority of their relations the five or more associates united in the star-fish are much better off than unfortunate human beings like those just described, and especially in this one particular that they do not have to die with one another, but are able to break loose with impunity from a companion whom death threatens, when they observe that he has suffered a wound or loss, simply expelling him from the community.
You have requested me to write you for your new quarterly magazine a review of the philosophy of contemporary Germany as manifested in its most important tendencies and endeavors. In setting out to comply with your wish, I feel that this is no simple task. With mere titles of books neither you nor your public will be satisfied. The readers ofThe Monistwill demand a deeper insight into the workshops of German philosophy; they will want to know if the old mother soil of speculative thought has retained its pristine fertility. Fertile it has remained. But in quite another sense from formerly. In a few years a century will have elapsed since Schelling published in thePhilosophische Journalof Niethammer and Fichte, his "General Survey of Modern Philosophical Literature," and it is well to recall to mind that treatise and that period in attempting to characterise the present state of philosophy in Germany; contrasts, we all know, are quite as important for the acquisition of knowledge as resemblances. One central problem stood at that time predominantly in the foreground; the problem, namely, of the unification of knowledge. Neither the idea nor the tendency it involves, is unknown to the philosophy of to-day, but its meaning has become a different one. At that epoch it was sought to solve the problem from within, to solve it from the centre; it was sought to find a supreme species of knowledge possessing a certainty founded unconditionally in itself, and to expand this dialectically into a system of ideas.
I do not need to set forth here the great and peculiar acquisitions that this method has won for us, nor to point out what wealth of noble power was dissipated by it in the treatment of impossible problems. These things belong to history. The speculative period of German philosophy is dead. Ludwig Feuerbach in the middle of this century sung its funeral dirge. But it took some time before people accustomed themselves to regard it as really dead,—a time in which countless attempts were made to resuscitate it; it took some time before philosophers began generally to bestow upon the corpse the kicks of abuse that Schopenhauer in its own lifetime administered to it, and for which he was rebuked by a universal silence of indignation.
Earlier history, still under the influence of the speculative masters, had characterised the progress of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel as the necessary and logical evolution of the idea of philosophy in its highest sense. But the present prevailing method of presentation is accustomed to draw a sharp, deep line at the termination of Kant's activity, and to regard the entire subsequent speculative development of the Kantian philosophy as a fallacious digression and an abandonment of the fundamental critical idea. "Back to Kant" is the watchword that has resounded since the beginning of the sixties, at first in solitary utterances, and then with greater, ever-increasing emphasis—the incipient condemnation of a period in which German philosophy had celebrated its grandest and most brilliant triumphs, and at a time when German speculative thought had just begun to grow better known and more influential abroad.
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Back to Kant. Yes. But to which Kant? To the Kant of the first or the second edition of the Critique of the Pure Reason? To the Critique of the Pure or the Critique of the Practical Reason? Very perplexing questions these. The philosophy of Kant is not so easily reducible to a simple and comprehensive formula. It is a veritable Proteus, that changes at will form and appearance. Every one interprets it, in the end, as he wishes Kant should have thought. The cry "Back to Kant" has become in the ranks of German philosophers a veritable apple of discord. An enormous Kantian literature has sprung up; critical, exegetical, constructive. No one can dispute its acumen, learning, erudition, and profundity. But the traits of Alexandrianism unmistakably cling to it. A more pernicious waste of intellectual power, perhaps, than that of the much deplored speculative period. One has the feeling often as if one would like to cast into the tumultuous, struggling crowd of combatants a different battle cry—"Back to Nature! Back to to the examination of the true contents of things!"
I shall select on this occasion from the superabundant store of Kantian literature the works of two writers only to whom the characterisation just advanced does not apply, and to whom independent and fundamental importance belongs. They are, first, ERNST LAAS,[58] professor at the University of Strassburg, who died in 1885, and second, ALOIS RIEHL,[59] formerly of Gratz, now of Freiburg. Both began with Kantian research. Neither remained identified with it. Both sought to supply a new foundation for that branch of philosophy that deals with the theory of cognition; both brought to the service of their task, in addition to eminent critical and analytical acumen, comprehensive historical knowledge. Widely different in method, both pursued the same end—the eradication of that transcendent bias which had so pernicious an influence with Kant himself and his immediate followers, and the replacing of all dualistic opposition of a higher and a lower, or a real and a phantom world, by a philosophy of reality based upon the rigid analysis of pure experience. Both, therefore, are, in this sense, indispensable preconditions of every monistic philosophy that is not founded on immediate intellectual perception, or mere postulates, but aims at a critical foundation.
[58] Laas,Idealismus und Positivismus, 3 Vols. 1876-87.
[59] Riehl,Der philosophische Kriticismus und seine Bedeutung für die positive Wissenschaft, 3 Vols. 1876-87.
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Simultaneously with this battle for the "real" Kant and the measure of that in his philosophy which could be utilised as the groundwork of a new structure conforming to the conditions of the times, German philosophy in the second half of this century waged another war. No fratricidal struggle this, no mere scholastic feud, but a battle for existence with a foreign foe—the physical sciences. After the speculative philosophy had retired from the throne that it had so long occupied, and the vacancy seemed yet unfilled, the attempt was made to place in the unoccupied seat another intellectual power whose credit and authority with the contemporary world had begun to keep pace with the success that attended its endeavors. We shall designate these attempts briefly as "materialism," and understand by the term any and every endeavor that aims at constructing a conception of the world with the means and methods of the mathematical and mechanical sciences alone. That which was here sought after was the exact opposite of the state of things that obtained in the speculative period; and the treatment that the speculative philosophy had to submit to at the hands of many of the spokesmen of the new movement was not entirely undeserved. The battle that German philosophy here had to fight was no easy one. Its foe occupied every position of vantage. The real or apparent exactness of its principles, the detailed character of the structure of the world that it bade fair to offer were a power. What we want is facts, not ideas; intelligibility, not profundity—these were the demands with which philosophy was confronted. It was impossible to outflank, in this direction, the representatives of a scientific discipline that admitted of skilful popularisation. There was nothing similar to oppose to it. Philosophers were accordingly compelled to confine themselves to criticism, to show forth the unmistakable defectiveness of the pure-mechanical philosophy, the weaknesses and flaws in its demonstrations and the arbitrary character of its construction; and to point out by a display of much acute reasoning what fifty years before was self-evident, that mind and mental life are not merely an accidental phase of things, not a product incidentally resulting, but an indestructible feature of the inward nature of the world itself.
Much of this extensive antimaterialistic literature, in which may also be included by far the greater part of anti-Darwinian literature, can put forth no claim to lasting worth, and is to-day wholly antiquated. For the simple reason that people no longer understand, or at least will soon no longer be able to understand, the circumstances and conditions out of which this polemical activity sprung: namely the transcendent metaphysical philosophy; mistaken idealism which imagined that existence and reality had to be transfigured in and by cognition instead of through will and action; the secret fear of an endangerment or indeed of a dislodgment of the religio-theological world-conception, the supernatural God-idea, the pure spiritual and immortal soul, the freedom of the will, and other phantoms whatsoever the designations they may bear.
But this warfare against materialism, which was waged by minds of widely varying rank and power, resulted at least in the substantial advantage of having brought the hostile parties closer together, of having forced them to the reciprocal study of their respective means of investigation, and of having put an end to the complete estrangement that formerly existed between them. Not only did it enrich philosophy, but it also led physical science to a correction of many of its conceptions and to a re-examination of its methodological hypotheses.
This is best to be studied, perhaps, by taking to hand the writings of a man who may be characterised pre-eminently as a spokesman of the materialistic movement in Germany,—I mean JAKOB MOLESCHOTT. His well known workDer Kreislauf des Lebenshas become in its last, the eighth edition, something quite different from what it was in its first; and the rich collection of his lesser writings (Kleinere Schriften, 2 Vols., 1879-87) also offers the philosopher, especially from a methodological point of view, much that is worthy of especial attention. Moreover, this reciprocal influence of mind upon mind is manifested in the case of many of the most distinguished investigators of the last thirty years, in the most remarkable and gratifying manner. It is impossible to study the discourses and treatises of physiologists like DU BOIS-REYMOND and WILHELM PREYER, of physicists like HELMHOLTZ and ERNST MACH, and the discussions occasioned by their works, without being surprised at the extent to which the points of view of psychology and of the theory of cognition have penetrated into the problems and inquiries of the physical sciences. Andvice versaphilosophical works, like FR. A. LANGE'S History of Materialism (Geschichte des Materialismus und Kritik seiner Bedeutung in der Gegenwart), UEBERWEG'S Collected Essays (Gesammelte Abhandlungen, just recently edited in a commendable manner by Moritz Brasch), the numerous works of LUDWIG NOIRÉ, and, last but not least, the entire scientific activity of WILHELM WUNDT,—all show an intimate familiarity with the methods of the physical sciences and an assimilation of materials from these branches of knowledge such as the speculative period can furnish no example of.
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Nevertheless, this intellectual revolution, far-reaching as it was, has led neither to solid systematic construction nor even to the successful development of positive methods of thought. Since the decline of speculative philosophy,—in which in this connection the Herbartian may also be included,—two systems only have dominantly influenced the German mind: the system of ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER and that of HERMANN LOTZE. In both a resonance still lingers of the older time. In Schopenhauer we detect the spirit of Schelling's nature- and art-philosophy; in Lotze, traces of the finely studied subtlety of Herbartian metaphysics. But though both are indebted for a portion of their real intrinsic worth to this organic though involuntary connection with a great epoch, their influence upon the present time rests upon very different grounds; and primarily upon the symmetrical, finished, and compact totality of their intellectual creations. They arose at a time in which philosophers had begun to lay aside the older systems as useless, and in which that multitudinous dismemberment of knowledge already began to make itself felt which to-day seems to be still growing greater. Although it may be difficult in many phases of the development of science to satisfy the impulse latent in us to unify knowledge, and although this endeavor is characterised ever anew by the representatives of special research as a delusion, nay as a ruinous delusion,—yet this impulse is not to be eradicated from the human mind and in some way or other it will ever procure itself recognition. Works likeDie Welt als Wille und Vorstellung(World as Will and Idea), orDer Mikrokosmus(Microcosm) embrace in fact the entire sphere of knowledge, not in an extensive, but in an intensive sense: they furnish a definite view of the complete inter-relation and meaning of life.
It will perhaps appear strange to the reader that works are here mentioned in the same breath and their effects upon the present time discussed, which are separated in origin from each other by a space of about forty years. Yet this very anomaly is characteristic of the development of the German mind. When Schopenhauer published, in 1819, his principal work, the time for it had not yet come. The philosophy of Hegel, a rationalistic panlogism, was then in the very midst of its career of triumph. The irrationalistic and pessimistic elements of Schopenhauerian thought were repulsive. We now know that the two first editions of theWelt als Wille und Vorstellungmouldered in the shops of the booksellers. Not until shortly before Schopenhauer's death in 1860 did the literary public and the scholastic circles of Germany begin to occupy themselves more seriously with this philosopher. Not until then did he really enter as an active factor into our intellectual life.
This influence, in the case both of Schopenhauer and Lotze, rests, aside from the fact of the universal character of their thought-creations, already referred to, pre-eminently in the circumstance that both made thoroughly their own the scientific theory of things and recognised that conception as one whose justification was contained in itself, and which, regarded from the standpoint of its own hypotheses, was irrefutable, though they were nevertheless far removed from perceiving in it the final and irreversible verdict of human knowledge. In this endeavor to fix the limits of scientific cognition Schopenhauer and Lotze form important pillars of the antimaterialistic movement in Germany, and are just in this respect also intimately related with the task of the modern Critical Philosophy or Neo-Kantianism. But while the latter movements came to a stop with predominantly negative or preparatory criticism, Schopenhauer and Lotze owe a great portion of their wide-spread influence on German culture to the circumstance that they undertook, from the point of view of the critical theory of knowledge already acquired, to sketch the plans of structures of the world which would furnish a general background and scheme of synthetic connection for the collective special results of the physical and mental sciences. That these sketches of world-construction have an individual coloring can only lessen their value in the eyes of those who believe they are privileged to apply to such a synthetic, constructive formulation of the highest ideas of all existence and thought, the standard of the exact determination of a single law. And so I shall only hastily point to the fact, that the contrariety and oppositeness that permeates the world and all our thought about the world also comes sharply to light in the case of these two philosophers, not to their mutual destruction, but to the heightenment of the effect by the contrast.
The fortunes of the two systems, which began about the same time to acquire influence, were dissimilar. The pessimistic element alone evinced itself fruitful, in the sense that it came immediately into contact with general culture through manifold forms of presentation and extensive discussion. The royal structure of the Schopenhauerian philosophy has given a host of dispensing draymen for thirty years an abundance to do. The leader of this army, EDUARD VON HARTMANN, has long since taken a place by the side of the sage of Frankfort, as independent master-builder, and presented a system planned and executed with the most diffuse architectural details. The nuclear idea of the Philosophy of the Unconscious (Die Philosophie des Unbewussten) has been amplified by the author himself in every direction, extended, exhibited in its historical relationships, and applied to the special departments of philosophical science. The theory of cognition, ethics, æsthetics, the philosophy of religion have all been treated of by Hartmann in the last two decades in voluminous works, and often repeatedly elaborated. In addition thereto, come several volumes of essays in which the philosopher has had something to say upon every conceivable topic, political, literary, æsthetical, pedagogical, and politico-economical. Hartmann's fecundity is only surpassed by his volubility. In him appears anew that union of philosophy and journalism that had remained disunited since the close of the period of illumination. The utility, nay the necessity, of this combination, with which, unfortunately, the academical philosophy of the passing century would have naught to do, Hartmann knew the value of, and skilfully exhibited his appreciation; though one often wishes that its popular character had, in places, been made to do service in behalf of different ideas.
The writings of no other philosopher have obtained so wide a circulation as those of Hartmann. His chief work, "The Philosophy of the Unconscious," first published in 1870, has long since been put in stereotype form, and from time to time passes through repeated new editions. Also his numerous other writings have for the greater part been repeatedly republished. We possess a collection entitled "Select Works," and have just received a "Popular Edition." And it is moreover generally known that it has only been since the appearance of the Philosophy of the Unconscious, that the sale of the writings of Schopenhauer has assumed great proportions. Through the mediation of Hartmann Schopenhauer's fundamental ideas first reached the general public.
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The philosophy of Lotze lacked an interpreter of like versatility and fecundity, although it had need of such a one in a much higher degree. Both thinkers were masters of the philosophical style. But Lotze's symmetrically rounded and intricate periods, with their inexhaustible influx of incident relations, makes very different demands upon the patient resignation of the reader than the lightly moving, epigrammatically pointed style of Schopenhauer. Lotze for this reason never really became popular. His influence has remained rather a scholastic and academic one. It has been fruitful in high degree in its effect on the special departments of philosophical science, particularly on psychology, whose present representatives in Germany almost without exception received from him incitation and a solid scientific view-point. Not unimportant, too, is his influence upon academic instruction in philosophy, through the "Dictations" to his lectures, published after his death, which are in every student's hands and serve in many ways as a substitute for the study of his principal work. Lotze's authority, finally, stands like a rock with all whose great concern it is to find ways of reconciling the claims of theology and of religious belief with the present state of science.
And their number is by no means inconsiderable. Official Germany has become pious, or, at least, would like to appear so; and although this is not to be understood exactly in the sense of especial dogmatic zeal, yet people adhere nevertheless with a certain tenacity to the religious background of the prevailing world-conception. Abroad it is the custom to regard the Germans upon the whole as a nation of atheists, because they have produced several curious fellows like Strauss and Feuerbach, enjoy having a good time on Sunday, and drink plentifully. Nothing can be more erroneous than this opinion. The average German has long since learned to place implicit confidence in the declaration of his teachers, that the great critical liberal movement of the later Hegelian school is not to be seriously taken but to be looked upon merely as the outcome of a "pathologically over-excited" epoch. Nowhere in the great civilised countries has freethought practically found so little footing; nowhere is its dependence upon the central powers of government greater; nowhere is it more impossible to wrest even a tittle from the authority of the old system of education with its foundation laid in the theological world-theory.
This condition of things, the obstinacy, the timidity with which state and public opinion hold fast to religion,—and now in times of imminent social danger more so than ever,—must be borne in mind if we wish to understand the comparatively great success that the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Hartmann has had in Germany. In the support of these two systems the philosophical opposition of freethought has simply found expression—the opposition that has arisen against the official philosophy, of which it cannot exactly be said that it theologises, but which carefully avoids coming into conflict with theology, and does not, in its aristocratic academic exclusion, endeavor to influence more extended circles. The factor that made this philosophy of opposition accord with the spirit of the times—its proximity, namely, to the scientific world-theory—has already been emphasised; and the fact that its pessimistic coloring has not been changed by its connection therewith will be found intelligible when we consider the turn that pessimism took in the hands of Hartmann. Only the quietistic Buddhism that Schopenhauer taught, could, in an age of the highest expansion and display of power both at home and abroad, appear as an incomprehensible riddle of the national mind. The evolutionistic pessimism of Hartmann, however, which demands of the individual complete and resigned submission to the struggle for existence, although it is able to offer him in the remotest background of time no better outlook than the ultimate annihilation of existence itself—is in its immediate practical commands too closely akin to an optimistic conception not to satisfy fully the needs of life, and is again too analogous to certain cosmological prophecies of natural science not to pass as the metaphysical expression of a truth otherwise accredited.
As opposed to this state of things Neo-Kantianism or the Critical Philosophy in its various forms has taken no firm position; no more than its master Kant himself did. To a great extent it makes use of the limitations of knowledge that have been critically determined, in order to leave open behind the same a realm of transcendent possibilities in which religion may lead a passably secured existence. Behind the greatest critical acumen theological prejudice is only too often concealed.
Few only of the intellectually eminent representatives of this movement like Alois Riehl and Ernst Laas exhibit in this respect perfect determination and the consciousness that the consequences of modern science unavoidably demand the laying aside of current religious conceptions and the substitution for them of more correct ones. Laas especially, in many passages of his principal work (Idealism and Positivism), as also in his readable little treatiseKant's Stellung im Conflicte zwischen Glauben und Wissen,[60] has emphasised strongly the view that there can be ideals only for the man who acts, and that so-called ideals where mingled with the function of pure cognition only falsify reality and lead to irresolvable conflicts. And Laas likewise belongs to the few who have laid prominent stress upon the educational task of modern philosophy as a substitute for systems of religious ideas.
[60]Kant's Position in the Struggle between Faith and Knowledge.
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From the point of view of different systematic hypotheses, but substantially with exactly the same tendencies, analogous ideas find representation in EUGEN DÜHRING, who in versatility of talent and literary activity is perhaps to be placed directly by the side of Lotze and Hartmann, though the favor in which his works stand and the circulation they have obtained fall far below the position of the latter. He presents a different form of positivistic philosophy in Germany, a philosophy not preponderantly critical but constructive, and begins with what Ludwig Feuerbach about the middle of this century in his Principles of a Philosophy of the Future (Grundsätze einer Philosophie der Zukunft) once propounded as programme. His chief work,Cursus der Philosophie als strengwissenschaftlicher Weltanschauung und Lebensgestaltung(Course of Philosophy as Exact-Scientific World-Conception and Conduct of Life), and the treatise against pessimism entitledDer Werth des Lebens(The Value of Life) sketch a world-picture that is intended theoretically to be but the simple conceptual interpretation of the present contents of experience, and therefore rejects the metaphysical constructions of Lotze, as well as the new conceptual mythology of Hartmann, and criticistic doubts concerning the objective reality of the world given in consciousness. In the practical direction, as an offset to the world-throe of humanity, the gladdening power of a life and action based on universal sympathy is emphasised. Dühring is a unique, but isolated phenomenon; standing, like Schopenhauer once did, in sullen antagonism towards the official academic philosophy, and totally ignored by it; unable by virtue of the conditions already delineated to influence wider circles, which the unanimated rigidity of his manner of presentation does not contribute to make easy. Eminent mental endowment and extensive knowledge are perhaps displayed in a higher degree in his historical works (Kritische Geschichte der Allgemeinen Principien der Mechanik[61];Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie[62];Kritische Geschichte der Nationalökonomie und des Socialismus[63]) than in his systematic treatises.
[61]Critical History of the General Principles of Mechanics.
[62]Critical History of Philosophy.
[63]Critical History of Political Economy and Socialism.
Nevertheless, Dühring can at the farthest be regarded only as one of the forerunners of that Messiah that is destined for German philosophy and German intellectual culture perhaps in the coming century; of that man who shall be able to cast up the accounts of the work of the present period, with its infinite analyses, its historical comparative character, and its pyramidal yield of material, and to condense that which now everywhere surges about us like a spiritual ether, but nowhere palpable or tangible, into the unity of a system that shall point out the paths to be followed and shall dominate all minds.
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There are many,—and among them eminent investigators and estimable scholars,—who smile at this prophecy as an Utopian dream; nay, almost stand in dread of such hopes, as perilous to science. The day of systems, say they, is past. Philosophy, too,—perhaps it were more proper to say "mental science,"—is breaking up into a number of special sciences, over which it is sought to place a general science of knowledge or theory of science, as the last representative of that which was once called philosophy and was recognised as the queen of the sciences.