DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 
 
 https://archive.org/details/forcematter01buch 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
FORCE AND MATTER 
 
 v v — 
 
 OR 
 
 PRINCIPLES OF THE NATURAL ORDER 
 OF THE UNIVERSE. 
 
 WITH A SYSTEM OF MORALITY BASED THEREON. 
 A POPULAR EXPOSITION 
 
 Prof. LUDWIG BUCHNER, M. D., 
 
 FORMERLY MEDICAL LECTURER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TUBINGEN. 
 
 Translated from the Fifteenth German Edition, enlarged and revised by 
 the Author. 
 
 REPRINTED FROM THE FOURTH ENGLISH EDITION. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 PETER ECKLER PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 1920 
 
Contents 
 
 31 
 
 •'Preface to the First Edition v 
 
 Treface to the Fifteenth Edition ix 
 
 vForce and Matter i 
 
 Immortality of Matter 14 
 
 Immortality of Force 21 
 
 Infinity of Matter 31 
 
 Value of Matter 46 
 
 Motion 58 
 
 Form 67 
 
 Immutability of Natural Laws 74 
 
 Universality of Natural Laws ..... 89 
 
 ’/The Heavens . 104 
 
 Periods of the Creation of the Earth .... iry 
 
 Original Generation 129 
 
 Secular Generation 145 
 
 The Fitness of Things in Nature (Teleology.) . . 172 
 
 Man 197 
 
 Brain and Mind 209 
 
 Thought 241 
 
 Consciousness 247 
 
 Seat of the Soul 255 
 
 Innate Ideas . 275 
 
 The Idea of God 301 
 
 Personal Continuance 316 
 
 Vital Force 337 
 
 The Soul of Brutes 351 
 
 Free Will . . . ' . . , . . . 366 
 
 v/frlorality 379 
 
 Concluding Observation 391 
 
 Appendix 397 
 
 445890 
 
To the dialectician the world is an idea, to the bel esprit a picture, to the en- 
 thusiast a dream, to the scientist alone it is a truth — Orgks. 
 
 The criterion of a true philosopher is that he is not a professor of philosophy. 
 The plainest truths are those precisely upon which man hits last of all. — Lud- 
 wig Feuerbach. 
 
 Experience and observation must be our sole guides ; we meet with them in the 
 case of physicians who have been philosophers, but not in the case of philoso- 
 phers who have not been physicians.— Lamettrib. 
 
 We must have facts and a positive philosophy, based upon nature and reason.— 
 H. Tuttle. 
 
 And if the inscription on the ancient pyramid of Sal's says, “ I am all that is, that 
 was, and that will be ; no mortal man has yet raised my veil," it might be re- 
 plied thereto : “ Modern science has removed the veil and has discovered that 
 Force and Matter were, are, and will be. — F. J. Pisko. 
 
 The number of errors is unlimited, truth alone is but one.— P h. Sfiller. 
 
 It nettles men to find that truth should be so simple. — G oethb. 
 
Preface to the First Edition.* 
 
 Now what I want is — facts. — Boz. 
 
 T HE following pages do not claim to form a system, 
 or an aggregate exhaustive treatise. They are scat- 
 tered thoughts and ideas, collated from the almost 
 boundless province of the empirical study of natural 
 philosophy, yet essentially connected with, and mutually 
 completing, each other. A merciful judgment at the hands 
 of my confreres is claimed for them on account of the dif- 
 ficulty to which an individual is necessarily subject in grap- 
 pling with the innumerable mass of materials spread over 
 the vast fields of natural science. If these pages may ven- 
 ture to claim any merit or characteristic, it is that of 
 representing a determination not to shrink with dismal 
 horror from the simple and unavoidable consequences of an 
 unprejudiced contemplation of nature from the standpoint 
 of empirical philosophy, but to admit of the truth regard- 
 less of what may follow. We cannot make things different 
 from what they are , and nothing seems to us more pre- 
 posterous than the attempts of some distinguished naturalists 
 at introducing orthodoxy into natural science. We do not 
 pretend to bring forward anything absolutely new or any- 
 thing that has never been heard of before. Similar 
 views and views cognate to ours have been taught in all 
 ages, and some of them were laid down by the oldest Greek 
 and Indian philosophers ; but their groundwork, which is 
 
 * Written at Tubingen in the year 1855. 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 necessarily empirical, could only be supplied by the pro- 
 gress of natural science in the present century. It is 
 therefore obvious that these views, in their present clear- 
 ness and consistency, are essentially a trophy of modern 
 times and closely connected with the new and gigantic 
 achievements of empirical science. Indeed, scholastic 
 philosophy, ever riding the high, though from day to day 
 more and more emaciated horse, lays the flattering unction 
 to its soul that these views have long been disposed of, and 
 would fain consign them to the limbo of oblivion, with 
 which object it has labelled them “ Materialism,” “Sen- 
 sationalism,” “ Determinism,” and so on ; nay, the 
 gentlemen of that school go so far, in their assumed 
 supercilious superiority, as to talk of having given them 
 “ the historical quietus.” But they themselves are going 
 down day by day in the public estimation, and losing 
 ground in their speculative hollowness before the rapid 
 rise of the empirical sciences, which are making it daily 
 more evident that both the macrocosmic and microcosmic 
 worlds obey at every stage of their genesis, existence and 
 subsidence, the mechanical laws which lie in the very nature 
 of things. Starting from the recognition of the indis- 
 soluble relation that exists between force and matter as an 
 indestructible basis, the view of nature resting upon em- 
 pirical philosophy must result in definitely relegating every 
 form of supernaturalism or idealism from what may be 
 called the hermeneutics of natural facts, and in looking upon 
 these facts as wholly independent of the influence of any 
 external power dissociated from matter. There seems to 
 us to be no doubt about the ultimate victory of this real- 
 istic philosophy over its antagonists. The strength of its 
 proofs lies in facts , and not in untelligible and meaningless 
 phrases. For in the long run there is no contending against 
 facts; it is useless to “ kick against the pricks.” It need 
 scarcely be said that our exposition has no connection with 
 the idle fancies of the older school of natural philosophy. 
 These curious attempts at constructing nature by thought 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 VII 
 
 instead of by observation, have so completely failed and 
 have brought their advocates into such public discredit, 
 that the very name of ‘ ‘ philosopher of nature ’ ’ is all but 
 generally used at this day as the reverse of a flattering 
 epithet. It is obvious that this reproach can only be 
 levelled at a certain tendency or school, and not at natural 
 philosophy in itself ; and there is now an almost general 
 consensus of opinions that natural science must be the basis 
 of every philosophy that lays claim to exactitude. “ Nature 
 and experience ’ ’ is the watchword of the age. The failure 
 of previous attempts of natural philosophers serves as the 
 clearest proof of the fact that the universe is not the reali- 
 zation of a uniform creative thought, but a complex of 
 things and facts, which we must take for what it is, and not 
 for what we may be pleased to fancy it. “We must ac- 
 cept things as they really are,’’ says Virchow, “ not as we 
 choose to imagine them.” We shall seek to present our 
 views in a generally intelligible form and to base them on 
 known or easily comprehensible facts, and in doing so 
 shall avoid all those philosophical technicalities the use or 
 rather abuse of which has justly brought all theoretical, 
 and especially German, philosophy into discredit in the 
 eyes both of the learned and unlearned. It is part of the 
 very nature of philosophy to be mtellectually the joint 
 property of all. Philosophical disquisitions which cannot 
 be understood by every educated man, are not, in our 
 opinion, worth the printer’s ink that is spent on them. 
 What is thought clearly, can be expressed clearly and 
 without circumlocution.* The philosophical mist which 
 enshrouds the writings of learned men, seems rather in- 
 tended to hide than to reveal thoughts. The days of 
 learned tail-talk, of philosophical charlatanism, and of 
 “ intellectual legerdemain, ” as Cotta strikingly expresses 
 
 •“Men who belong neither to the highest nor to the lowest intellectual 
 spheres,” admirably says the famous English physicist Tyndall, ‘‘often infer 
 want of depth from perfect clearness. They find comfort and support in ab- 
 stract and learned phraseology.” 
 
Vi 1 1 
 
 preface. 
 
 it, are over by this time, or ought to be. May our 
 German philosophy come to recognize that words are not 
 deeds, and that, those who wish to be understood ought 
 to speak an intelligible language. 
 
 We shall meet with no lack of opponents, and of the 
 bitterest, too. But we shall take no notice of any but 
 those who meet us on the ground of facts and of em- 
 piricism. Let the speculative gentry go on fighting one 
 another from standpoints that are their own creation, 
 but let them not run away with the strange notion that 
 they possess the monopoly of philosophic truth. “Spec- 
 ulation,” says Ludwig Feuerbach, “is philosophy in- 
 toxicated. When philosophy shall have become sober 
 again, it will be to the mind what pure spring-water 
 is to the body.” 
 
Preface to the Fifteenth Edition. 
 
 Comprehensive works, if not simply collated from the works of others, bnt 
 having grown out of independent efforts, are at this day, as they were hereto- 
 fore, made to suffer from the fact that the shadow they necessarily cast is seen 
 more clearly than their bright side. They labor under this additional draw- 
 back that, in order to accomplish their ends, they have to contend against 
 perennial errors and prejudices which are not only firmly rooted in the minds 
 of men, but command perfect strongholds in the shape of textbooks and Uni- 
 versity chairs. How readily soever the younger generation may at any time 
 have fallen in with the new teachings, the old school would still remain in 
 existence by the side of the new and would not give way, until all its repre- 
 sentatives and advocates had gone the way of the flesh. — Radenhausen. 
 
 E IGHT and twenty years have passed away since the 
 first edition of this book appeared. Many things 
 have changed since then, both in the intellectual and 
 the material worlds. A great political exhaustion has come in 
 the wake of a great political impetus ; a general reaction of 
 relaxation, recalcitrance and retrogression has followed a 
 period of intellectual and material progression. This has 
 produced some deletenous influence on the intellectual cur- 
 rent originally induced by this book, and it seems as 
 though the distance that separates us from the goal were 
 now greater than ever. But who can tell how near the 
 rising wave may be at hand, which shall once more carry 
 us all onward ? The ocean of mankind moves according 
 to the same laws as the sea that covers the greater part of 
 the earth’s surface. It is in the innermost nature of both 
 to ebb and to flow. 
 
 In science also so many things have changed during 
 these eight and twenty years, that it appeared imperative 
 to re-write this book which has had so many readers, and 
 has passed through seventeen German and twenty-two 
 foreign editions. The author has spared no labor in 
 bringing this last edition, as far as it is possible, up to the 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 scientific mark of the present age, and inserting new 
 chapters with a view to connect the various orders of ideas 
 represented in the individual sections with one another. 
 When the book was first written, the empirical materials 
 were not sufficient to form between them a body with 
 clearly marked outlines, and the author was therefore 
 under the necessity of confining himself to publishing them 
 under the unassuming title of Empirical Studies on Natural 
 Philosophy. Since then, the progress of science has been 
 such that these empirical materials have so accumulated as 
 to make it appear permissible to venture upon a bolder 
 course, and endeavor to build up a more closely connected 
 and more coherent fabric as a system of the natural order 
 of the universe and as a more homogeneous theory of the 
 world. Hence the change of the title of Studies into the 
 more assuming and more promising epigraph of Principles 
 of the Natural Order of the Universe. No doubt, the op- 
 ponents will have a great many faults to find with this title ; 
 they will urge that the empirical materials are not nearly 
 sufficient for such an object, and that the gaps still existing 
 in our knowledge are far too great and too numerous to be 
 bridged over in such a manner by theoretical constructions. 
 In their eyes, the whole mass of facts which militate in 
 favor of a natural order of the universe, is of no value what- 
 ever, because in some, nay in many, points absolute or 
 relative obscurity still prevails. In this, as Du Prel very 
 pointedly remarks, they resemble a chess-player whose 
 king has only a few pawns left to cover him, but who 
 will not own himself beaten despite the superiority of the 
 men arrayed against him. But in the eyes of all truly 
 competent men the game has long been lost, and the 
 question whether the universe, as we see it, is the result of 
 regularly working forces, having a causal connection with 
 each other and therefore capable of being understood by 
 human reason, or whether it is the work of an automatic, 
 incomprehensible being that admits of no recognition by 
 the reason of man, has long since been decided in favor 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XI 
 
 of the former alternative. Every item of human knowl- 
 edge, every page of practical experience, every conquest 
 of science, gives but this one answer and makes the old 
 theistic theory of the universe, which originated in the days 
 when mankind was still in its first childhood, appear as a 
 mere fable, engendered by the reverie of past ages. There- 
 fore, the author cannot in fairness be taxed with pre- 
 sumption, if he considers himself justified, after twenty-eight 
 years of experiment and evolution, in raising his modest 
 Studies to the rank of a system of the natural order of the 
 Universe, based upon scientific principles. Nor will it be 
 deemed unwarrantable arrogance or self-laudation on his 
 part if he ventures to point out that the advances and con- 
 quests made by science in the course of these twenty-eight 
 years have in no one point controverted the theories put 
 forward in the first edition, but have, on the contrary, 
 confirmed them in various directions and in the most 
 astonishing manner. This has especially been done in the 
 department of natural philosophy by the wonderful dis- 
 covery of spectral analysis and the universal recognition of 
 the law of the conservation of energy and the transmutation 
 of forces ; in the department of astronomy by the further 
 discoveries on the condition and movements of distant 
 heavenly bodies and the universality of natural laws ; in 
 that of geology by the corroboration of Lyell’s theory of 
 stability ; in anthropology by the demonstration of the de- 
 scent of man from animals and of the antiquity of the 
 human race on earth ; in the department of biology by the 
 powerful influence of Darwin’s famous theory of evolution 
 and by the facts that go to show the genesis of the lowest 
 primal organisms, as well as by the entire abandonment of 
 the baneful theory of design ; in that of anatomy by the 
 discovery of the cell as the fundamental form of the or- 
 ganic world, and by its being clearly proved that the brains 
 of men and of animals are not fundamentally distinct from 
 one another ; in that of physiology by those investigations 
 on the localization of the functions of the brain which form 
 
XII 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 a landmark in the history of science at large, and by the 
 total rejection of the theory of vital force ; in the depart- 
 ment of chemistry by the gigantic strides made by chemical 
 synthesis ; in that of psychology by the searches made 
 into the psychical and intellectual life of animals, and by 
 the abandonment of the theory of instinct, induced by a 
 clearer understanding on the laws of heredity. All these 
 discoveries had either not been made, or were still in an 
 embryonic state, when the author first put pen to paper in 
 the year 1855 ; and yet this imperfect state of our knowl- 
 edge did not prevent him, impelled, as he felt, by the want 
 of philosophical unity, from getting at views which have 
 received such a thorough confirmation and have been so 
 fully complemented by the progress of science within a com- 
 paratively brief space of time. On this account the author 
 has felt justified in reinstating, either wholly or in part, 
 various expressions and utterances contained in the first 
 edition of this book, which appearing to him to go to 
 rather an undue length, he had, under the pressure of the 
 general and passionate opposition, expunged from the sub- 
 sequent editions. For instance, in the chapter on Free 
 Will contained in the first edition, there were certain re- 
 marks — afterwards omitted — which dealt with the moral 
 consequences of his views on natural philosophy. These 
 remarks have been restored and amplified in this edition in 
 a special chapter on Morality. The author has felt him- 
 self all the more bound to do this, since one of the ob- 
 jections most frequently urged against his views, is that he 
 was destroying the old faith and putting no new one in its 
 place. No doubt, the belief in the existence of a natural 
 order in the universe is at least as good as, and in reality 
 far better than, a belief in the existence of an order o t 
 things antagonistic to nature, as has already been proved 
 to demonstration by D. Strauss, in his famous book on 
 The Old Faith and the New. Yet the author thought 
 it right not to omit to supply facts which prove so very 
 clearly that morality is compatible with a natural order ol 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 XIII 
 
 things, and to show to those who accept the new faith that, 
 in doing so, they lose nothing in moral value either in 
 their own eyes or in those of Society at large, but that on 
 the contrary they have only to gain by it. The reader 
 must judge for himself whether or not the author has suc- 
 ceeded in furnishing this demonstration. 
 
 The author has held that the prefaces to the editions 
 published subsequent to the first, might be omitted with- 
 out any detriment to the book. They have for the most 
 part lost their former special interest, since the combats 
 waged around the book have now exhausted their fury, and 
 are not likely to rise again as before. In fact, the author 
 is now so situated as to stand no longer in need of such 
 commentaries, having in the meanwhile published a large 
 number of additional writings, which further develop and 
 complete the views laid down in Force and Matter in all 
 essential points. . . . 
 
 The author does not intend to enter on further polemics 
 and controversies with his opponents, in the way he used 
 to do ; for the fact of his enemies being so very numerous, 
 he derives comfort and consolation from the old German 
 saying, “He who has many enemies, is much honored.” 
 Well does he know that, like all men, he is liable to error, 
 but that, as Lessing says , — “ The value of a man does not 
 depend on the truth he possesses or believes he possesses, 
 but on the sincere labor he has bestowed upon getting at 
 the truth ; for it is not the possession of, but the search 
 for truth, that increases his strength and thereby makes him 
 more perfect.” This sincere labor undertaken with the ob- 
 ject of getting at the truth, or an ardent love of truth, 
 simplicity and candor, could alone induce the author to 
 issue this book, in which he has placed himself in such a 
 keen and to him most distasteful opposition to the ruling 
 ideas and authorities of his own time. It is not the present 
 age, but a remote future which he himself will never live to 
 see, that can and will do justice to his intentions. Looking 
 at things in this light, he thinks he may bid farewell to the 
 
XIV 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 host of those who have been his opponents, by quoting the 
 following brief verses : — 
 
 Wer richtet zwischen mir und Euch ? — 
 
 Nicht ein Geschlecht, dess schwache Art, 
 
 An alien Vorurtheilen reich, 
 
 Von Eurer Hand erzogen ward ! 
 
 Doch Einstens, wenn mit jaliem Fall 
 Zusammenbriclit der Liige Reich, 
 Dann spricht die Zeit zum Zweitenmal 
 Das rechte Urtheil mir und Euch ! 
 
 (Who shall judge between you and me ? Not a race of 
 feeble type, rich in prejudices, and trained by your hand ! 
 But some day, when the realm of lies shall have come down 
 with a sudden crash, then shall time deliver an equitable 
 judgment upon you and me !) 
 
 As regards the verses that are scattered here and there 
 through the book, they were mostly contained in the earlier 
 editions, but had subsequently been struck out for want of 
 space. The prefaces having now disappeared, there was 
 no further reason for omitting them, and they have there- 
 fore been reinstated. In those cases in which the name of 
 the poet is not given, they are the author’s own pro- 
 ductions. 
 
 Finally, it may be noted that the book in its new shape 
 is being issued simultaneously in German, in English and 
 in French. 
 
 Darmstadt , April , 1884. 
 
 The Author. 
 
Force and Matter. 
 
 “The universe, that is the All, is made neither of gods nor of men, but ever has 
 been and ever will be an eternal living Fire, kindling and extinguishing 
 in destined measure, a game which Zeus plays with himself.” — Heraklitus 
 of Ephesus. 
 
 “He to whom time is as eternity, and eternity as time, is free from all turmoil.” 
 — J. Bohme. 
 
 (Where there are three students of nature, there are two atheists.) 
 
 U I ^ORCE is no impelling god, no entity separate from 
 M the material substratum ; it is inseparable from 
 matter, is one of its eternal indwelling properties.’ ’ 
 “A force unconnected with matter, hovering loose over 
 matter, is an utterly empty conception. In nitrogen, carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen, in sulphur and phosphorus, their sev- 
 eral properties have dwelt from all eternity.” — Moleschoti. 
 
 “ Fundamentally, as is readily seen, there exists neither 
 force nor matter. Both are abstractions of things, such as 
 they are, looked at from different standpoints. They com- 
 plete and presuppose each other. Isolated they are mean- 
 ingless. . . Matter is not a go-cart, to and from which 
 
 force, like a horse, can be now harnessed, now loosed. A 
 particle of iron is and remains exactly the same thing, 
 whether it shoot through space as a meteoric stone, dash 
 along on the tire of an engine-wheel, or roll in a blood- 
 corpuscle through the veins of a poet. Its properties are 
 eternal, unchangeable, untransferable.” — Dubois -Reymond. 
 
 “ Nothing in the world authorizes us to suppose the ex- 
 istence of forces in and by themselves, without bodies, from 
 which they can go out and on which they work.” — Cotta . 
 
2 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 “As we can think of no force without a material sub 
 stratum, so we know of no matter which is not connected 
 with a number of forces.’’ — F. Mohr. 
 
 “ Force without matter is not a reality, and both by 
 their union have made the world and all its phenomena. 
 Without matter no force, without force no phenomenon, 
 also without matter no phenomenon.’’ — Ph. Spiller. 
 
 “We know of no matter which does not possess force, 
 and on the other hand we know of no forces which are 
 not joined to matter.’’ — Hceckel. 
 
 “To regard matter as passive, and to suppose a force 
 working on it from without, is so grave an error that it 
 would not be possible to fall into it if inborn and mystical 
 fancies did not cloud the mind. Matter and force, like 
 force and matter, are no separable entities, but different 
 conditions of one and the same thing. — F. Vignoli. 
 
 “Matter and force are separable only in thought : in 
 reality they are one.’’ — A. Mayer. 
 
 “ We must hold firmly to the principle that matter and 
 force are indivisibly joined together, so that force without 
 matter has no independent existence.’’ — .S'. Cornelius. 
 
 “ It is apparent that all attempts to isolate forces from 
 matter, and vice versa , are only one-sided abstractions, 
 depending on the notion that force and matter may be 
 found in Nature as distinct entities, because in speech they 
 are distinct words.” — Weis. 
 
 “ The first and last word of Science will always be the 
 indivisible union between or the identity of force and 
 matter.” — A. Lefevre. 
 
 With these quotations from well-known investigators, 
 learned men, and authors, we commence a chapter that 
 is to serve as a foundation for the subsequent investi- 
 gations into one of the simplest and weightiest of truths, 
 which is, perhaps, for that very reason, one of the least 
 known and least recognized. No force without matter — • 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 3 
 
 no matter without force. One is no more possible, and 
 no more imaginable by itself than the other. Separated 
 from each other, each becomes an empty abstraction or 
 idea, which is only useful as showing two sides or manifes- 
 tations of the same existence, the nature of which in itself 
 is unknown to us. Force and matter are fundamentally 
 the same thing, contemplated from different standpoints. 
 In the material world we know of no example of a particle 
 of matter not endowed with force or working by it. We 
 must further admit on closer investigation, that matter as 
 such could make no impression on our sense-organs or 
 minds ; it can only do this by means of the forces united 
 with or at work within it. A piece of lead held in the 
 hand presses on it because of the attractive force of the 
 earth and so produces the idea of weight. Neither can we 
 imagine an ideal substance of forceless matter. Think of 
 what original substance we may, a system of reciprocal 
 attraction and repulsion must always exist between its 
 smallest particles, and this is the cause of the subsequent 
 changes, and the relationship of each particle with the 
 others is regulated or controlled by forces which lend their 
 properties to the combinations or forms arising therefrom. 
 “A thing without properties,” says Drossbach, ‘‘is an 
 absurdity, neither imaginable in reason nor experienced in 
 Nature.” “ As water flows through the fingers,” forcibly 
 remarks A. Laugel, “so disappears the idea of matter, as 
 soon as we try to separate it from the idea of motion or of 
 force, just as if we seek to part it from that of shape.”* 
 Equally empty and untenable as the notion of matter 
 without force, is that of force without matter. Only the 
 superstition or ignorance of former centuries could regard 
 
 * Hence comes it that we are learning more and more to regard Chemistry or 
 the science which deals with matter (as was partly done in the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries) as a branch or subdivision of Physics, the science 
 which deals with force. Perhaps, and even probably, the distinction between 
 chemical and physical forces lies only in this, that the first deals chiefly with the 
 so-called atoms, minutest particles of matter, while the second deals chiefly with 
 the molecules, groups of like or unlike atoms. Or, in other words, Chemistry may 
 be regarded as the mechanics of the atom, Physics as the mechanics of the molecule. 
 
4 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 as possible the existence of forces in Nature which act apart 
 from matter ; such possibilities are to-day wholly banished 
 from science. Nothing can prove to us the real existence 
 of a force, except the properties, changes and movements, 
 which we become conscious of in matter, and these we call 
 different “ forces ” according to the resemblances or differ- 
 ences in such manifestations : any knowledge of them by 
 other ways is impossible. If we try to think of an Electri- 
 city, a Magnetism, a Weight, a Heat, a chemical affinity, 
 etc., without the substances in which we have observed the 
 manifestations of these forces, or without those material 
 particles the molecular interaction of which gives rise to the 
 manifestations — nothing remains to us save an empty idea, 
 a word-sign, which we can only use in order to designate 
 and separate off a certain class or group of material phe- 
 nomena. Any real conception of what forces are in them- 
 selves, or what force can be outside of matter, escapes us 
 just as does the idea of what material bodies or matter 
 would be without force. In strictness we cannot speak of 
 Electricity, but only of the electrical condition of or of 
 electrically excited matter. We cannot speak of Light, 
 but only of shining bodies, of bodies giving light by vibra- 
 tion ; nor of Heat, but only of a change in the reciprocal 
 positions of vibrating atoms or molecules from their so- 
 called statical condition ; nor of Weight, but only of bodies 
 which exercise pressure by gravitation, and so on. 
 
 All the so-called imponderables — -a name which desig- 
 nated formerly as matter incapable of being weighed cer- 
 tain forms of force, as Heat, Light, Electricity, Magnetism, 
 are neither more nor less than changes in the reciprocal 
 conditions or the active state of the minutest particles, 
 changes which are transmitted from one body to another, 
 from material to material, by a kind of contagion or trans- 
 ference of motion. Hence forces, as Mulder well points 
 out, cannot be imparted or made, but only excited, or 
 changed from a latent to a free or cognizable state. Mag- 
 netism cannot be transferred, as it would seem, but only 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 5 
 
 evoked or opened up as we change the inner active condition 
 of its medium. The magnetic forces are present in the 
 molecules or smallest particles of the iron and are — as for 
 example in a magnet— strongest exactly in the part where 
 they are least or not at all noticeable from without, i. e. in 
 the middle. Heat— that most ancient and essential force 
 of Nature which is ceaselessly at work everywhere and can 
 be changed into all other forms of force or can be obtained 
 from them — is not, as was once thought, imponderable 
 matter, passing from body to body, but molecular or atomic 
 motion, an exceedingly swift, trembling, swaying or vibra- 
 ting movement of the smallest particles or molecules of a 
 body, whereby at the same time these particles recede from 
 each other, while under the influence of the contrary or of 
 cold they press more closely together. Heat and Cold are 
 only to be distinguished by the fact that this molecular 
 motion in a relatively cold body is less energetic than in one 
 relatively warm. Heat is also generally manifested by the 
 expansion, Cold by the contraction of the material ; we 
 know, as Grove ( Correlation of Physical Forces') remarks, 
 “nothing but the constant change of matter whereof Heat 
 is the universal sign ; the entity Heat is unknown to us.’’ 
 Similarly with Light , which, according to the latest dis- 
 coveries, must be looked upon as identical with Heat, since 
 the difference is only the difference’ in the number of the 
 ether-vibrations and the vibrations of the molecules of 
 bodies caused by these ; this is no imponderable matter, 
 as was once supposed, but an inconceivably swift vibrating 
 or wave-like motion of matter, of the atoms of the un- 
 aggregated matter filling space and penetrating into all 
 bodies, the infinitely rare light-ether ; a motion which 
 according to circumstances is now Light, now Heat, now 
 Electricity, now Magnetism, now chemical affinity. So also 
 Sound , resembling Light in its motion, is no hearing- 
 matter, carried by the air to the ear, but is only the moving 
 air itself, which imparts its movement to our organ of 
 hearing. 
 
6 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 The remarkable and brilliant prospects opening in the 
 iuture to the force of Electricity do not rest, as was first 
 thought, on the existence of a so-called electrical fluid, thac 
 flows from body to body ; on the contrary, late investigation 
 into electrical action teaches us to regard it as merely a 
 change of condition of the universal material or matter. 
 “ When we throw a glance around all the known groups of 
 electrical phenomena or manifestations,” says Grove , “ we 
 do not find a single one that cannot be relegated to a 
 change of the molecules in the electrically excited substance. 
 For instance let the charge from a Leyden jar be sent 
 through a platinum wire ; it will be found that the wire has 
 shortened, so that molecular change must have taken place. 
 If the discharge is continued, the wire will at length rise 
 into little folds or actual irregularities. A lead wire swells 
 into knots, which press on each other, as bodies of a soft 
 substance threaded against each other on a string. Further, 
 metallic wires through which an electric current has been 
 passed for a long time, gradually change their internal 
 structure and become sometimes stronger, sometimes more 
 brittle. Magnetism also changes the elasticity of iron or 
 steel, and a bar slightly bent by its own weight straightens 
 itself when magnetized.’ ’ In a similar way bodies are acted 
 upon, according to Grove , ( mutatis mutandis) by all other 
 forces. Thus, for instance, the chemical dissociation of 
 compounds, whose elements are very weakly united, can 
 be brought about by purely mechanical causes, e. g. by the 
 vibrations produced by a sound in the air. 
 
 In a still greater extent is this true of the vibrations of 
 light, which bring about the most startling chemical 
 reactions, sometimes decompositions of chemical com- 
 pounds, sometimes unions of chemical elements ; as an 
 instance of the latter we may take the explosive union of 
 chlorine and hydrogen into hydrochloric acid by the action 
 of sunlight, and of the former the decomposition of the 
 carbonic acid of the air by the vegetable kingdom under 
 the action of light. This also shows how the so-called latent 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 7 
 
 forces or energies — among which, besides the chemical 
 difference or affinity, must be reckoned the weight or 
 general mass attraction and the cohesion or molecular 
 force — can be changed every moment into living or active 
 forces or can be drawn out of the latter, and how therefore 
 in these also we can only speak of the condition or move- 
 ments of molecules. Whether this condition manifests 
 itself in a possible or in a real movement, whether only an 
 activity or a true motion of the force-bearer results, makes 
 in reality no difference. The time no longer appears far 
 off when science will be able to derive all forces without 
 exception not merely out of capacity for motion but out of 
 motion itself. 
 
 On these grounds the investigators and authors named 
 at the beginning of this chapter define force as a mere 
 property of matter or as its capacity for work. To put 
 it more accurately. Force may be defined as a condition 
 of activity or a motion of matter or of the minutest particles 
 of matter or a capacity thereof ; yet more precisely, as an 
 expression for the reaso?i of a possible or actual movement 
 — differences which in reality alter nothing in the matter 
 itself Force can no more exist without Matter, than seeing 
 without an organ of sight, or a thought without an organ 
 of thinking. “ No one has ever thought,” says Karl Vogt , 
 ‘‘of maintaining that secretion can exist separate from the 
 gland, or contractility separate from the musclefibre. The 
 absurdity of such an idea is so striking that nobody has 
 ventured to think of it in connexion with these organs.” 
 
 “Not outside matter, or outside bodies is the supposed force 
 or property found, but only within them ; and the thought 
 that affinity (Force) has a separate existence outside the 
 bodies in which it inheres or to which it gives the capacity 
 for their particular demeanor, is so utterly monstrous, 
 so wholly incomprehensible, that it is almost an insult to 
 common sense to further enlarge upon it.” — A. Mayer. 
 
 What general philosophic consequence is deducible from 
 this simple and obvious fact? 
 
8 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 That those who talk about an independent or super- 
 natural creative force, which has evolved the universe out 
 of itself or out of nothing', are in antagonism with the first 
 and simplest axiom of a philosophical view of nature, 
 grounded on experience and reality. Neither can force 
 create matter, nor matter force, for we have seen that a 
 separate existence of these is neither empirically possible 
 nor logically imaginable. But things which cannot be 
 separated can never exist separately. That the universe 
 cannot have arisen from nothing we shall find presently, 
 when we treat of the conservation or eternity of matter and 
 force. Nil is as much an empirical as it is a logical non- 
 entity, a general negation of all existence. Never can 
 nothing become something, nor something nothing. Ex 
 nihilo nihil fit , et in nihilum nihil potest reverti . — Lucretius 
 Carus. The universe or matter with its properties, con- 
 ditions or movements, which we name forces, must have 
 existed from and will exist to all eternity, or — in other 
 words — the universe cannot have been created. If we are 
 to accept such a creation it must first of all be proven to us 
 how it is possible or imaginable that something can come 
 out of nothing — which is an impossibility. It must further 
 be shown how it is possible or thinkable that the creative 
 force which is to be regarded as the cause of the universe, 
 existed before the creation, without creating or without 
 activity — and this is a still greater impossibility. The con- 
 ception of an inactive creative force without any real 
 existence besides itself is as impossible as that of Force 
 without Matter. If however an original chaos is supposed, 
 into which at a given time the creative force introduced 
 order and reason, then is the idea of creation as such given 
 up, and we come back to the eternity of the universe, 
 which, as will be presently shown, excludes or renders 
 superfluous any creative or regulating principle. What 
 educated person, in the face of the discoveries of modern 
 science, or even with a superficial acquaintance therewith, 
 can seriously doubt that the universe is not — as used to be 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 9 
 
 said in the phraseology of theological cant — governed, i. e. 
 led or guided by a force outside itself, but that, in all its 
 movements and transmutations, it obeys a manifest necessity 
 of nature from which there is no exception? Never and 
 nowhere, at no time, nor in the furthest realms of space to 
 which our telescope reaches, can one fact be demonstrated 
 with scientific certainty which contradicts this natural 
 necessity and admits or necessitates the admission of an 
 active self-conscious force, outside the natural order of the 
 universe. If man will have a creative force, an absolute 
 power, a world or original soul, an unknown x — no matter 
 by what alias it goes — as the cause of the universe, then 
 must he say, applying to it the idea of time, that it could 
 exist neither before nor after the creation. It could not exist 
 before it, for the reasons already stated ; it could not exist 
 afterwards, because again rest and inactivity cannot be 
 connected with the conception of such a force, and would 
 abrogate it. A creative force that does not manifest itself 
 and that shows no sign of its presence cannot exist, or at 
 least cannot in any way be taken into account in our 
 thought. De non apparentibus et non exisientibus eadem 
 est ratio. (The non-apparent and the non-existent must be 
 treated in the same way.) If the creative force after creation 
 is to be regarded as sunk in eternal self- contented repose 
 or in inward self-contemplation, this can only be taken as 
 a philosophical fancy picture, without any real or trust- 
 worthy basis. 
 
 There remains only a third possibility, i. e. the super- 
 fluous and monstrous conception that the creative force 
 suddenly and without any definite reason emerged from 
 Nothingness, created the universe (out of what?) and 
 directly the work was done, sank back into itself, in some 
 measure embodied itself in the world, or dissolved into the 
 universe. Philosophers and laymen have always clung to 
 this theory, because they hope in this fashion to reconcile 
 the undeniable fact of an invariable and established order 
 of nature with a belief in a supernatural, independent, crea- 
 
IO 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 tive principle. Most religious conceptions lean more or 
 less towards this idea, but with this difference, that they 
 regard the universal spirit as indeed resting after creation, 
 but as a higher power which can at any time and at his 
 own will suspend or alter the laws of nature. This may 
 suffice for those who would solve the problem of the uni- 
 verse by faith. But for those who here also take reason 
 and logic as their rule, this conception is as inadmissible as 
 its fellows. The very application of finite conceptions of 
 dme to the creative force entails an incongruity ; a still 
 greater one is its rise from the nil. A creative force that 
 either creates itself or arises from nothing, and which is a 
 causa sui (its own cause), exactly resembles Baron Miinch- 
 hausen, who drew himself out of the bog by taking hold 
 of his own hair. If, in order to avoid this difficulty, we 
 give the attribute of eternity to the creative force, then this 
 is merely another phrase for the eternity of the universe, 
 which, as we have already seen, excludes or renders super- 
 fluous every creating principle. The useless search of 
 philosophers for a cause of the universe is a regressus in 
 infinitum (a stepping backwards into the infinite) and re- 
 sembles climbing up an endless ladder, the recurring ques- 
 tion as to the cause of the cause rendering the attainment 
 of a final goal impossible. At any rate the existence of the 
 universe wfith its perfections and imperfections, with its for- 
 ever and ever interacting processes of development and 
 reversion, is a more possible and more intelligible concep- 
 tion than the theory of a perfect self conscious creative 
 force springing from a reasonless Nothing. 
 
 If therefore the creative force cannot have existed before 
 the universe came into being ; if it cannot exist after the 
 same event; if it is not imaginable that it existed only for 
 a moment; if Matter and Force (as will be presently shown) 
 are indestructible, and if there is no matter without force, 
 no force without matter — there can remain no doubt that 
 the universe was not created, that it was not called into life 
 by some will residing outside itself, but that it is eternal. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 II 
 
 That which has neither beginning nor end in time or space 
 can have none in existence. That which cannot be de- 
 stroyed cannot have been created. ‘ 1 Matter is uncreatable 
 as it is indestructible.” — Carl Vogt. “If matter is inde- 
 structible, then it is also uncreated.” — Spiller. “The 
 
 Universe as a totality is without cause, without origin, 
 without end.” — Du Prel. 
 
 Simple and self-evident as may appear to us, in the 
 present state of knowledge, the inseparability of the con- 
 ceptions of Force and Matter, this has not always been so, 
 and human reason only attained that simple idea after 
 passing through many phases of ignorance or error. For 
 the simplest idea of a matter, as Grove very well remarks, 
 is generally that to which the human mind turns last ; and 
 simplicity is the hall-mark of truth. ( Simplex veri sigillum.) 
 According to one of the excellent essays of the English 
 thinker Bence Jones, the conceptions of Force and Matter 
 have passed through three separate and distinct phases of 
 development, in the last of which we now are. In the first 
 phase, men regarded Force and Matter as two wholly 
 distinct entities and bestowed separate names on the self- 
 existent forces of nature or their manifestations, regarding 
 them as the results of the activity of certain supernatural 
 beings ( vulgo gods). Thus earth, heaven, air, water, wind, 
 stream, light, fire, sun, darkness, day, night, etc., each 
 had its own spirit or god. Thus, among the Greeks, Zeus 
 was the god of thunder and lightning, while his consort 
 Hera represented rain and vapor ; Phoebus was the god of 
 the day, his sister Artemis the goddess of the night, Uranus 
 represented the sky, Gaia the earth, Poseidon the sea, 
 Hephczstos the fire, Asolus the winds, Aphrodite the power 
 of fascination, and so on. The ancient Indians, Chinese, 
 Egyptians, Persians, etc., held similar views. The Greek 
 philosophers, although several among them cherished very 
 refined cosmological theories, generally made a very sharp 
 division between Force and Matter and regarded the latter 
 as moved from without, being itseh k, capable of movement 
 
12 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 — a theory which held its ground until the times of Des- 
 cartes and Newton, owing to the vast influence of the 
 Aristotelian philosophy. This first phase was followed by 
 the second, in which, instead of a complete separation 
 between Force and Matter, there was an incomplete sepa- 
 ration of these concepts. Force was then united in some 
 way to ponderable matter, but was fundamentally some- 
 thing quite different, being itself a kind of matter that could 
 not be weighed, i. e. an imponderable. From this theory 
 resulted the famous but now discredited emanation or 
 emission theory of light, according to which light con- 
 sisted of minute imponderable particles, travelling with 
 inconceivable rapidity. Heat was regarded as a fluid con- 
 veyed from body to body : in similar fashion Electricity 
 and Magnetism were looked upon as special electrical and 
 magnetic fluids. The belief in the famous Phlogiston or 
 combustible principle — which was supposed to be the 
 cause of combustion, and which was set aside at the end of 
 the last century by the discovery of oxygen — comes in 
 under this head ; it is the same with the spirit of amber, 
 which Thales gave as the reason for its property of at- 
 traction, and so with many others. In the third phase 
 only, the phase of modern thought, has it been recognized 
 that there is no such thing as imponderable matter, and the 
 unity, unchangeability and indestructibility of the force- 
 endued atoms have been discovered. This is the phase of 
 the unity and inseparability of Force and Matter, in which 
 it is seen that, for instance, there can no more be matter 
 without attraction or weight, than force of weight or attrac- 
 tion without matter, and all known forces and activities 
 only consist in the conditions or movements of the smallest 
 particles of matter. Wherever matter is found, there must 
 also be force in a state of motion, tension and resistance, 
 and vice versd. 
 
 Moreover we find, as might be expected, many stages of 
 transition between these phases. The most difficult one to 
 set aside is the dualistic hypothesis of Force and Matter in 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 13 
 
 Biology, the Science of Life, which, in consequence of the 
 complicated and therefore less easily traced relationships 
 of the transmutations of organized matter, stands chiefly in 
 the way of a more accurate theory. Thus, for instance, 
 the famous physician, Paracelsus , did not venture to rep- 
 resent the physical functions of nutrition, digestion, secre- 
 tion, etc., as what they really are, the functions or activities 
 of their proper bodily organs, but described them as the 
 work of certain vital spirits. In similar fashion appeared 
 later on the “ Archaeus ” or “stomach spirit” of van 
 Helmont, Borelli’s “ nerve spirit,” Hofmann’s “life-sub- 
 stance,” Haller’s “ irritability,” Stahl’s “Anima animata" 
 and the whole host of names of nerve-force, imagination- 
 force, vital-force, force of the circulation of the blood, etc., 
 which in the science of life took the place of the imponder- 
 ables of inorganic nature. Here, too, Force is considered 
 as a subtle fluid substance or an imponderable elementary 
 principle, whose previous union with material bodies was 
 dissolved at death. We are sorry to confess that biological 
 hypotheses have not yet completely got out of the second 
 phase, and that the ghost of “vital force” — which will 
 be fully dealt with in a later chapter — still haunts many 
 wise heads, notably those of philosophers, while the physi- 
 cal and chemical sciences have long since passed into the 
 third and last stage. 
 
Immortality of Matter 
 
 u From nothing nothing. Nothing that is can be annihilated.” — Democritus. 
 
 “ It is an indubitable fact, proved by a thousand chemical experiments, that no 
 ponderable bodies or elements can perish nor disappear, and equally that no 
 new ones can originate, l he property that cannot perish in time cannot be 
 evolved in time. That which cannot be destroyed cannot be originated. 
 It follows that matter has existed from eternity, that it was neither created 
 nor evolved, that its totality which is infinitely great can be neither increased 
 nor diminished, and this also on the ground that the infinitely great cannot 
 be increased by the addition of the finite, and that its characteristic of in- 
 destructibility includes that of non-creation.” — F. Mohr. 
 
 "Although in the course of ages catastrophes have taken place in the heavens, 
 and still take place, although ancient systems dissolve and new systems are 
 built up out of their ruins, yet the molecules of which these systems consist, 
 the foundations of the material universe, remain unbroken and uninjured.” — 
 C. Maxwell. 
 
 “ Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay, 
 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away ; 
 
 Oh, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, 
 
 Should patch a wall to expel the winter’s flaw ! ” 
 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 W ITH these words, the outcome of the keenest 
 perceptive ability, the great Briton pointed out, 
 three hundred years ago, a scientific truth, which 
 despite its clearness and simplicity, despite its unanswera- 
 bleness, has not yet attained that general recognition 
 which is its due. Matter as such is indestructible, it can- 
 not be annihilated ; no grain of dust in the universe can 
 vanish from, and none can enter it. It is the greatest ser- 
 vice rendered to us by chemistry that for the last hundred 
 years it has taught us this indubitable fact, that the un- 
 ceasing changes and transformations of phenomena, which 
 pass daily before our eyes, the formation and destruction 
 
 04) 
 
IMMORTALITY OF MATTER. 
 
 15 
 
 of organic and inorganic forms and figures, do not consist 
 of the formation of matter previously non-existent, nor of 
 the destruction of matter then present, as was generally 
 thought in earlier times, but that this change consists in 
 nothing save in a continual and unbroken rotation of the 
 same substance, of which the mass and the quality remain 
 unalterable and identical for all ages. By the aid of the 
 balance matter has been pursued through its manifold and 
 hidden ways, and it has always been found to issue from a 
 combination the same in mass and in properties as when it 
 entered into it. The calculations which have been founded 
 on this law of the indestructibility of matter have proved 
 correct throughout. We burn a piece of wood, and at the 
 first superficial glance it seems as if its particles had per- 
 ished or been destroyed in fire and smoke. But this de- 
 struction is apparent only, for the balance of the chemist 
 tells us that not only have that wood and its constituent 
 particles lost nothing, but that on the contrary the total 
 weight of the constituents of the wood has increased : it 
 shows us that the products, gathered and weighed, con- 
 sisting of the gases evolved in combustion and the ashes 
 left behind, not only contain all the matter of which the 
 wood originally consisted, although in a different form and 
 composition, but that in addition other materials are con- 
 tained therein, with which the constituents of the wood 
 united during the combustion. In a word, the wood by 
 the occurrence of combustion has increased, not diminished 
 the total weight of its constituents. ‘ ‘ The carbon of the 
 wood,” says Karl Vogt, “ is imperishable, it is eternal and 
 therefore indestructible, as are the hydrogen and oxygen 
 with which it is combined in the wood. This combination 
 and form into which it enters are destructible, but the ma- 
 terial perishes not.” “ Carbon,” says Czolbe, (Neue Dar- 
 siellung des Sensualismus — New Exposition of Sensation- 
 alism — 1855) ‘ 1 which we find in the spar crystal, the wood 
 fibre, or the muscle, can after the destruction of those 
 bodies enter into other combination of different appear- 
 
i6 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ances, but as an element it can never be changed and never 
 be destroyed.” 
 
 If we bury a dead body we find years afterwards nothing 
 in the place save a heap of bones mixed with earth. The 
 sight awakens the belief that there is nothing more left of 
 the former constituents of the body committed to the 
 ground beyond these remains, but science tells us that in 
 reality nothing, not' even the smallest particle thereof, has 
 been lost, but that the whole change consists in this, that 
 the elements have left their former combinations and have 
 returned to the rotation of matter, to-day in this, to-morrow 
 in that form to pursue their endless course. With full 
 justification then did the bold fancy of the British poet fol- 
 low the matter which once helped to build up the body of 
 imperial Caesar to the point at which, in the shape of earth 
 or mortar, it patched up a hole in a wall. 
 
 With each breath that passes from our lips we exhale 
 part of the food we eat and of the water we drink. They 
 change so quickly that we may well say that in a space of 
 from four to six weeks we are materially quite different 
 and new beings — with the exception of the skeletal organs 
 of the body, which are firmer and therefore less liable 
 to change. The atoms, or the smallest particles of the 
 chemical elements, change, but the manner of combination 
 remains the same. Those atoms are themselves unalterable, 
 indestructible ; to-day in this, to-morrow in that combina- 
 tion, they build up by the variety of their positions or their 
 unions the countless different forms in which matter presents 
 itself to us, speeding from one to another in a ceaseless 
 change and flow. At the same time, the quantity of atoms 
 of a simple element remains on the whole unchanged ; not 
 one of these particles of matter can form itself anew nor 
 add to itself ; none that has once existed can disappear from 
 being ; none can change its nature. An atom of oxygen, of 
 nitrogen, of hydrogen, of iron, is everywhere and under all 
 conditions one and the same thing, endued with the same 
 inseparable properties or energies, and can never to all 
 
immortality of matter. 17 
 
 eternity become anything else. Be it where it may, it will 
 be the same being everywhere ; however different the com- 
 pound may be, it will issue from it on its breaking-up the 
 same as it was when it entered into combination. But it can 
 never originate anew nor vanish out of existence, it can only 
 change its combinations. The same atom which to-day 
 helps to form the haughty mien of a sovereign or a hero, 
 may perchance lie to-morrow as the street-dust beneath his 
 feet. The same atom which to-day drones in the brain of 
 a sheep, may perchance to-morrow aid the thinking of a 
 philosopher or of a poet. The same atom which to-day 
 forms part of dirt or manure, may perchance to-morrow 
 sleep with its fellows on the flower-bud as fragrant bloom. 
 
 “A simple elemental atom ” says B. Stewart, “is really 
 an immortal being and rejoices in the power of remaining 
 unchanged and unmoved in its being under the mightiest 
 attacks which may be levelled against it ; it is probably in 
 a condition of ceaseless movement and change of form, but 
 remains none the less evermore the same.” 
 
 “An atom of hydrogen,” says the anonymous author of 
 an essay on the Philosophy of Chemistry ( Revue Philosoph- 
 ique, 1880, No. 6) “will ever remain a hydrogen atom, to 
 whatever tests it may be submitted. If it enters into any 
 combination, or leaves it again, it remains still the same, it 
 always possesses the same properties. The necessary con- 
 sequence of this is that the indestructible atom cannot be 
 created.” 
 
 This eternal and ceaseless ebb and flow of minute 
 particles, changeless in themselves, has been called trans- 
 mutation of matter by scientists, and science offers countless 
 examples and proofs thereof. It is enough to remark of 
 the changes and cycles through which matter passes in the 
 Universe, and which man has partly followed by balance 
 and measuring-rod, millionfold and ten millionfold, that 
 they are without end and limit. Dissolution and generation, 
 destruction and re-formation clasp hands everywhere in an 
 endless circle. In the bread that we eat, in the air that we 
 
i8 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 breathe, we draw in the matter that once built up the bodies 
 of our forefathers ; nay, we ourselves give every day a 
 portion of the matter forming our bodies to the outside 
 world and shortly after we re-take this substance or matter 
 similarly given off by our neighbors. Of the English we 
 can literally say that they gratefully repay their forefathers 
 who fell fighting for them and their freedom against the 
 French Empire, by eating them as daily bread, for the bones 
 from the battlefield of Waterloo were carted off in great 
 quantities to England for manuring the fields, the yield of 
 which was very much increased thereby. 
 
 But, as we have said, no further proof is needed to 
 demonstrate that matter is indestructible, and that it cannot 
 therefore be created. How can that be created which can- 
 not be annihilated ? Matter must have been eternal, is 
 eternal, and shall be eternal. “ Matter is eternal ; it 
 changes only its forms.” — Rossmcessler. 
 
 The eternity of matter, or of substance, appears also 
 from the following consideration : Science teaches us that 
 an absolute vacuum cannot exist, and never can have ex- 
 isted, while the infinity of space is set down by reason as 
 axiomatic. Hence follows necessarily the -conclusion that 
 space must have been filled with matter, and that this must 
 have existed from eternity. It follows, in addition, as was 
 shown in the preceding chapter, that the universe must be 
 uncreated. A beginning and an end of the universe are as 
 such inconceivable, and must be relegated to the limbo of 
 spiritual or theological fancies. 
 
 The phrases ‘‘mortal body” and ‘‘immortal spirit,” 
 which have been repeated ad nauseam , are misnomers 
 altogether. Exact thought might possibly reverse the 
 adjectives. The body in its individual form or shape is 
 indeed mortal, but it is not so in its constituent particles. 
 Not in death only but throughout life it changes un- 
 ceasingly, as we have seen ; but in the wider sense it is 
 immortal, since not the smallest particle of it can be anni- 
 hilated. On the other hand we see that what we call 
 
Immortality of matter. 
 
 19 
 
 spirit, soul, consciousness, disappears with the cessation of 
 the individual combination of matter ; and it must appear 
 to the unprejudiced mind that this action having been 
 brought about by peculiar and very complicated unions, 
 must come to an end with its cause, that is to say, with the 
 cessation of those peculiar combinations. 
 
 To-day the indestructibility or permanence of matter is 
 a scientific fact firmly established and no longer to be 
 denied. It is interesting to observe that former philoso- 
 phers and thinkers also possessed a knowledge of this 
 important truth, although in an incomplete form and rather 
 as a presentiment than as a scientifically known and estab- 
 lished certainty. The experimental proof thereof could 
 only be yielded by our balances and retorts. 
 
 Sebastian Frank , a German, who lived in 1528, says : 
 “Matter was from the beginning in God, and is hence 
 eternal and unending. The earth, the dust, every created 
 thing indeed perishes ; but we cannot say that that perishes 
 out of which they are created. Substance abides eternally. 
 A thing falls into dust, but out of the dust is developed 
 another. The earth, as Pliny says, is a phoenix and re- 
 mains once for all. When it becomes old it burns itself to 
 ashes that out of them a young phoenix may arise, the 
 former but rejuvenated.” 
 
 Yet more directly do Italian philosophers of the Middle 
 Ages express this idea. Bernard Telesius (1580) says : 
 
 “ Bodily matter is alike in all things and remains ever 
 the same ; dark sluggish matter can neither be increased 
 nor diminished. ” 
 
 Finally, Giordano Bruno , (who was burned alive in 
 Rome in 1600), remarks : 
 
 “ That which was seed at first, becomes grass, hence the 
 ear, then bread, nutritive juice, blood, animal seed, em- 
 bryo, man, corpse, then again earth, stone, or other min- 
 eral, and so forth. Herein we recognize therefore a thing 
 which changes into all these things and essentially remains 
 ever one and the same. Nothing appears to be really 
 
20 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 durable, eternal, and worthy of the name of a principle 
 save matter only. Matter as the Absolute includes within 
 itself all forms and dimensions. But the infinity of forms 
 under which matter appears is not accepted by her from 
 another nor as it were only in outward appearance, but she 
 brings them forth from herself and bears them from her 
 own womb. Where we say there is death, there is only 
 the outgoing towards new life, a loosing of one union 
 which is the binding into a new.” 
 
 But a yet far more remote age was not unacquainted 
 with the outlines of this truth, which now appears likely to 
 become the corner-stone of every exact or experimental 
 philosophy. Empedocles , a Greek philosopher who lived 
 450 years B. C., says : “ They are children or persons of 
 narrow views who imagine that anything originates which 
 before was non-existent, or that anything can wholly die or 
 perish.” And again before him had the Greek philosopher 
 Anaxagoras (B. C. 500-428) taught : ‘‘ Existence in space 
 neither increases nor diminishes ; ” while his contemporary 
 Democritus , the famous parent of the materialistic philoso- 
 phy of the old world and of the theory of atomicity, formu- 
 lated very plainly the hypothesis of the indestructibility of 
 matter and defined the position as follows : “ Out of 
 nothing arises nothing : nothing that is can be annihilated. 
 All change is only the union and separation of particles. 
 The varieties of all things depend on the varieties of the 
 atoms in number, size, form, and arrangement,” etc. 
 
Immortality of Force. 
 
 “In Nature nothing is lost, nor Matter, nor Force, nor mechanical work.” — 
 P. A. Secchi. 
 
 11 No zephyr breathes, no wavelet ripples on the bank, but the movement thrills 
 through all space.” — H. Tuttle. 
 
 “ Out of nothing no energy can arise.”— Liebig. 
 
 "Motion, Heat, Light, Magnetism, Electricity, chemical affinity pass one into the 
 other; they are only different modes of one and the same original energy and 
 each if not directly can yet indirectly be converted back again into the old 
 form out of which it has been evoked.”— Du Prel. 
 
 E QUALLY uncreatable, equally indelible, equally im- 
 perishable, equally immortal as Matter is the Force 
 bound up with it. United in infinite amount to the 
 infinite mass of Matter, in most intimate union therewith, 
 and like matter, it runs in an unresting never ending circle 
 and emerges from each mode or union exactly the same in 
 amount as when it entered in. As it is an indubitable fact 
 that Matter can be neither newly created nor annihilated, 
 but only changed in form, so must it be accepted as an 
 absolutely certain experience that there is not a single in- 
 stance in which a force has been brought out of nothing nor 
 reduced to nothing, in other words born nor annihilated. 
 In all cases in which forces make their appearance they can 
 be traced back again to their sources , that is it can be shown 
 out of what other forces or energies a given amount of force 
 has been obtained directly or through transmutations. 
 This transmutation does not proceed arbitrarily, but ac- 
 cording to definite equivalents or weight-numbers, so that 
 the minutest amount of force can no more be lost than the 
 minutest amount of matter in the transformation of matter. 
 
22 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 While the indestructibility or permanence of Matter has 
 been a known and settled fact for about a century past, this 
 is not equally the case with the indestructibility or con- 
 servation of Force, which, despite its great simplicity and 
 ever self-evident character, has only been observed by 
 scientists during the last forty years — and not without 
 almost insuperable obstacles to general recognition being 
 opposed at first to the new truth. We call it simple and 
 self-evident, because it follows immediately and without 
 further argument on the simple consideration of the relation- 
 ship between cause and effect, and because a solitary 
 instance in which the conservation of Energy failed, must 
 have brought about the final stoppage of all motion in the 
 universe ; in the second place because the law of the inde- 
 structibility of Matter necessarily includes within itself the 
 indestructibility of Force. When Lavoisier , in the year 
 1774, discovered the nature of combustion and put oxygen 
 in the place of phlogiston or combustible air, the theory of 
 the indestructibility of Matter and of the eternity or indelible 
 nature of atoms was proved simply from the results given 
 by the balance. Had the same theory of the relationship 
 between Matter and Force been known then as it is now, the 
 thesis of the indestructibility of Force would at once have 
 been recognized as a necessary consequence. For if forces 
 in the most general sense represent the properties of Matter, 
 and if by means of them motion and change enter into life, 
 then it is self-evident that the totality of forces present in 
 Nature, whether static or dynamic, must also remain the 
 same, that is can neither be increased nor lessened. But 
 since scientists are a suspicious folk and will only accept that 
 for truth which can be demonstrated by experiment or by 
 calculation, and since it is far more difficult to measure and 
 calculate forces than to weigh matter, so the rotation of 
 forces, analogous as it was to and implied in the rotation of 
 Matter, remained hidden for more than half a century, until 
 in the year 1837 F Mohr distinctly noted it in his treatise 
 “ On the nature of Heat." He was followed in the year 
 
IMMORTALITY OF FORCE. 
 
 23 
 
 1842 by R. Mayer , who first calculated the mechanical 
 equivalent of Heat, and later on by the Englishman Joule 
 (1843 — 49) who, without knowing of his predecessors, 
 carried out during several years experiments on the relation 
 between Heat and Work, or Heat and Motion, and by these 
 experiments raised the connexion of these forces to an in- 
 disputable theorem. But not until between 1850 and i860 
 and a long time after the publication of the first edition of 
 this work, this theorem was recognized and demonstrated 
 as regards the remaining forces ; it rejoices to-day in an 
 uncontested recognition, so that, as F Mohr says, it has 
 become the polar star whereby scientists now direct their 
 course. 
 
 According to this theory, no motion in Nature arises 
 from nothing nor passes into nothing, and as in the material 
 universe each individual form can only realize its existence 
 by drawing upon a vast and never changing store of matter, 
 so each motion forms the basis of its existence out of an 
 incommensurable, never changing store of force and returns 
 this borrowed quantity of energy sooner or later in some 
 fashion or other to the Whole. A mode of motion may 
 indeed be latent , that is to say, it may pass for the moment 
 into apparent hiding, but it is not therefore lost, but has 
 only passed into a qualitatively different, yet quantitatively 
 equivalent state of force, out of which it again emerges in 
 some way or other. In thus emerging, if it has changed , 
 it has done nothing more than alter its form. For Force 
 may assume very varied forms in the Universe, but remains 
 still essentially the same. These different forms can pass 
 one into another, but, as already intimated, without loss 
 and according to the fundamental law of equivalents or 
 equal values, so that the total sum of energy present neither 
 increases nor diminishes, and only the totals of the different 
 forces are changed. 
 
 “The existing amount of F orce ’ ’ — says the author of an 
 essay on the law of the Conservation of Energy in Wester- 
 mann’s “ Unsere Tage" — “ remains changeless. We can 
 
24 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 change its effects at our pleasure, but only qualitatively ; in 
 its quantity no increase nor diminution is in any fashion 
 possible.” 
 
 The science of Physics, or of the system of forces, of 
 their changes and transmutations, makes us acquainted 
 with seven or eight different forces, which in concert with 
 matter and indivisibly united with it “form and build up 
 the universe.” These are : Gravitation or the general at- 
 traction between masses, including mechanical energy, 
 Heat, Light, Electricity, Magnetism, Affinity or chemical 
 relationship, Cohesion and Adhesion or molecular at- 
 traction, Molecular Force — among which are generally 
 reckoned Weight, Cohesion and Affinity as well as the so- 
 called latent or static energies, and the rest as dynamic 
 energies or as atomic and molecular motion. These forces 
 can be transmuted into one another almost without ex- 
 ception and in such a fashion that in the transmutation 
 nothing is lost, but that the newly arising force is equiva- 
 lent or equal to the original one and can perform new work 
 as an independent energy. In the universe from which an 
 inexhaustible store of energy comes to us, the forces are 
 connected with the heavenly bodies, mostly under the forms 
 of light and heat in the sun and the fixed stars; as mechanical 
 energy in the planets revolving round their central orb, and 
 as chemical difference, cohesion and magnetism in the 
 ponderable materials of the bodies in the universe. 
 
 Of the change or the so-called transmutatio7i of energy 
 we here adduce some examples : 
 
 By combustion or combination of various chemical ele- 
 ments, light and heat are evolved. Heat may further be 
 changed as steam into mechanical force, as for instance by 
 being used in the steam-engine ; and mechanical energy 
 can again be reconverted into heat by friction, and in the 
 magneto-electric machine it can be re transmuted into 
 Heat, Electricity, Light, and chemical difference. One of 
 the commonest transmutations of energy is that of heat 
 into mechanical force and vice versa. If two pieces of 
 
IMMORTALITY OF FORCE. 
 
 25 
 
 wood are rubbed together, heat and fire are produced. 
 On the other hand, if a steam-engine be heated, then heat 
 in turn is transmuted into friction and motion. The change 
 of heat into mechanical motion and vice versd may be most 
 strikingly demonstrated by a railway train. The heat 
 obtained by combustion in the engine changes into the 
 movement of the carriages. But what happens when the 
 train stops ? Its mechanical energy cannot be destroyed, 
 it can only be changed. The brakes are put on, and the 
 train is thereby brought to a standstill, the motion being 
 transmuted into heat, as is proved by the smoke and 
 sparks caused by the friction. 
 
 While by the combustion of coal in the steam-engine, 
 chemical action is transmuted into heat, which in its turn 
 is transformed again into mechanical energy, so in reverse 
 manner can we transmute mechanical energy into heat if 
 we make it drive a wheel which works a massive wooden 
 cone within a hollow metal one that fits closely round it. 
 This becomes heated to such an extent that we can thus 
 warm a room by means of the energy obtained from a 
 waterfall, a river or a windmill. 
 
 In gunpowder, unsatisfied chemical affinities lie side by 
 side. So soon as the igniting spark reaches it, the chemical 
 differences are compensated, and heat, light, and mechani- 
 cal energy are given forth. 
 
 In the voltaic pile the chemical action between zinc and 
 oxygen is transmuted into a current of electricity, and this 
 may appear at the poles as heat and light, or again as 
 chemical action in the voltameter. 
 
 In the electric machine, the mechanical energy of the 
 arms turning the disc, which itself results from an equaliza- 
 tion of chemical difference (respiration), is changed into 
 electrical tension and current, and this can again appear, ac- 
 cording to circumstances, as attraction (mechanical energy) 
 or as light, heat, and chemical action. 
 
 The English philosopher, W. R. Grove, has constructed 
 an apparatus by means of which, using light as the original 
 
26 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 force, he can develop simultaneously Jive other forms of 
 force, viz. chemical activity, electricity, magnetism, heat 
 and motion. It may indeed be accepted as a law that 
 when a certain energy is evolved from a body, all other 
 energies also manifest themselves as active therein. If, for 
 instance, antimonious sulphate is electrified, it becomes at 
 the same time magnetic, warm, radiant (if the excitation is 
 carried over a certain limit), moved by extension and 
 chemically active by decomposition, so that six different 
 forces thus become active. Similar phenomena are seen 
 in the electrification of metals ; it is only doubtful whether 
 with them there is any chemical decomposition. 
 
 In all these processes of transmutation, the calculated 
 amount of force spent on one side agrees most accurately 
 with that which is spent on the other. By means of an 
 electric current, for instance, water can be resolved into its 
 constituents, hydrogen and oxygen, and so much of these 
 two gases is set free that by their combustion exactly as 
 much heat is evolved as forms the equivalent of the electric 
 current which was transmuted. 
 
 In the impact of moving bodies, mechanical energy is 
 generally changed into heat, as may be seen in the iron 
 heated by the smith’s hammer or in two inelastic balls (as 
 of lead) impelled against each other, which become heated 
 by the impact, whereas, on the other hand, two elastic 
 bodies (as billiard balls) do not become heated because 
 they utilize the mechanical force imparted to them in the 
 rebound. Or, when a cannon-ball strikes the side of an 
 armored ship, a flash and a visible glow mark the spot 
 struck, for the impact has changed the motion of the ball 
 into intense heat, or the total motion has become heat. If 
 two heavenly bodies were to rush against each other — an 
 occurrence which must doubtless have often happened in 
 the past, as it will yet happen — then a quantity of heat 
 would be liberated by the shock, sufficient to reduce the 
 total mass of those bodies to their original condition, i. e. 
 to convert them into vapor. Like impact, the mechanical 
 
IMMORTALITY OF FORCE. 
 
 27 
 
 force of pressure or condensation develops heat, as may 
 easily be observed in the pneumatic tinder-box or in coin- 
 ing works. All molecules of a body, as they approach 
 each other, set free the heat or energy which they before 
 used in repulsion — whereby heat is evolved. It is thought, 
 not improbably, that all the light and heat present in the 
 universe arise from this source, and chiefly the most usual 
 form in which energy is given forth, viz. the light and 
 warmth of the central suns. All energies on this earth, 
 whether in the organic or inorganic worlds, can and must 
 directly or indirectly be derived from the beams of the sun. 
 The flowing water, the driving wind, the passing clouds, 
 the rolling thunder and the flashing lightning, the falling 
 rain, snow, dew, frost, or hail, the growth of plants, the 
 warmth and motion of animal and human bodies, the com- 
 bustion of wood, of coal, etc., etc., may be referred without 
 argument to the sun. By burning wood or coal, the total 
 amount of the vanished sunshine laid up in these substances 
 may again be evolved. The force which urges forward the 
 locomotive, is a ray of sunshine converted into work by a 
 machine, just the same as the work which creates thoughts 
 in the brain of the thinker, or forges nails by the arm of 
 the smith.* 
 
 The tremendous force with which the tunnel of Mont 
 
 *In 1857, Mr. Murray, of London published a biography of the famous English 
 engineer George Stephenson, born 1781, died 1848, by Smiles, from which we take 
 the following interesting account: "On Sunday, just when the company had 
 returned from church and were standing on the terrace overlooking the railway 
 station (Drayton,) a train rushed by, leaving a long line of white steam behind. 
 
 ' Now,’ ’ said Stephenson to Buckland, the well-known theological geologist, "can 
 you tell me what power moves that train?" — ‘Why.’’ replied the other, " I sup- 
 pose it is one of your big engines.” — "But what moves the engine?” — " O, 
 probably one of your stout Newcastle engine-drivers.” — " What do you say to the 
 light of the sun?”— “What do you mean?” — " Nothing else moves the engine,” 
 said the great engineer, "it is light which for thousands of years has accumulated 
 in the earth — light which was inhaled by plants, that these during the time of 
 their growth might fix the carbon, and which now, after having for thousands of 
 years been buried in the coal-beds of the earth, is again brought forth and set 
 free, to serve the great purposes of mankind, as here in this engine.” Assuredly 
 a most remarkable utterance, considering the time in which it was made, and one 
 instantaneously illumining a new field of science. 
 
28 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Cenis or of St. Gothard was driven through the highest 
 mountains, is nothing more than solar heat converted into 
 mechanical motion. ‘ ‘ The heat wherewith we warm our 
 dwellings,” says Liebig, “ is sun-heat, the light wherewith 
 we turn night into day is light borrowed from the sun.’ ’ 
 The light which is sent by suns to the non-transparent 
 planets illuminated by them, does not perish on these, but 
 is converted into heat, while, on the other hand, in- 
 creased heat appears as light from the heated bodies, as 
 may be easily observed by heating a bar of iron above a 
 certain temperature. 
 
 Magnetism can be manifested in the magneto-electric 
 machine as an electric current, and this again in various 
 other forms. 
 
 Gravitation appears directly as mechanical energy and 
 can then as such be converted into all the forms already 
 mentioned. In every pendulum clock it can be seen that 
 weight not only can be changed into motion, but also into 
 heat, since the parts of the clock are warmed by the 
 friction. 
 
 Under such circumstances a given amount of energy is 
 seldom completely and perfectly changed into another, but 
 a part of it is either transmuted into other energies and is 
 consequently not observed, or it is not transmuted at all. 
 In the steam-engine, for instance, a large, indeed by far 
 the greatest part of the heat produced is not changed into 
 mechanical force, but emerges as heat with the escaping 
 vapors or the condensation water or by the cooling of the 
 parts of the machinery. In the fire-arm it appears as if a 
 part of the mechanical energy were lost ; but it is only 
 apparently lost as to the effect or intended object, because, 
 in the first place, it warms the gun-barrel, and secondly is 
 changed into the report. In similar fashion in an electric 
 machine a part of the force is lost by being imparted as 
 heat to the disc, the rubbers, etc. The word “lost” is, 
 however, a misleading one, for in all these and similar 
 cases not the smallest quantity of force is absolutely lost or 
 
IMMORTALITY OF FORCE. 
 
 29 
 
 lost to the universe, but is only lost to the immediate object 
 and therefore seems to have vanished from the superficial 
 glance. In reality the excited energy has only taken a 
 different shape, the amount of which must be equal to that 
 of the former. In general, all forms of force and motion can 
 be completely and without loss transmuted into heat, while 
 heat in each case can only be partially changed into the 
 other modes. The examples by which this truth may be 
 particularly demonstrated are countless in Nature ; they 
 may all be summed up in the proposition : Force can be 
 neither created nor destroyed — a proposition from which 
 follows the indestructibility of force and the impossibility 
 of its having as such either a beginning or an end. The 
 result deduced from this newly discovered physical truth is 
 the same as that deduced from the indestructibility of mat- 
 ter ; the twain together have built up from eternity and 
 will build up for evermore that totality of phenomena which 
 we call the Universe. The “ circulation of force” must be 
 placed side by side with the “ circulation of matter ” as its 
 necessary corollary and its necessary completion, and it 
 teaches us that nothing originates and nothing perishes, 
 and that the secret of Nature lies in an eternal self-sustained 
 circle, wherein cause and effect are united without begin- 
 ning and without end. That only can be eternal which has 
 been from eternity, and that which is eternal, cannot be 
 created or made. 
 
 “ Everywhere is change, nowhere is annihilation. In 
 the organic as well as in the physical world, in living 
 as well as in dead bodies, there is everlasting motion. 
 Absolute repose is found nowhere. All is changing, and 
 from the mould of the dust new life arises unceasingly.” 
 — Tyndall. 
 
 In judging this newly discovered physical truth and its 
 consequences, it is certainly very interesting to find that 
 Voltaire, known to be bitterly opposed to the teaching of 
 his materialistic countrymen and contemporaries, required 
 nothing further from them to convince him than exactly 
 
3 ^ 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 this proof of the conservation of the energies of Nature. 
 “ The materialists,” he says in his Traite de Mataphysique , 
 Chap. II, “ must maintain that motion is inseparable from 
 matter. They are therefore further compelled to maintain 
 that motion can never be increased or diminished ; they 
 must assert that a hundred thousand men set in motion 
 and a hundred canons fired at one time, introduce no new 
 motion into Nature.” This fact, which Voltaire held to 
 be so impossible that he thereby thought to demonstrate 
 the emptiness of the materialistic views, is to-day completely 
 proved. How many similar arguments opposed to so- 
 called Materialism will meet with a similar fate in days to 
 come ! 
 
Infinity of Matter. 
 
 “ Hence we recognize that it will never be possible to decide the dimensions of 
 the final particles of matter ; our ideas are shut in between two infinities, 
 between the infinite vastness of planetary space and the infinite minuteness 
 of molecular structure.” — Secchi. 
 
 “ Indeed the conception of the infinitely minute is as little capable of being grasp- 
 ed by us as is that of the infinitely great. Despite this the admission of the 
 reality of the infinitude both in the direction of greatness and of minuteness 
 is inevitable.”— Dr. C. Jakob. 
 
 “ The idea of space is only an unavoidable illusion of our Consciousness or of our 
 finite nature and does not exist outside ourselves ; the universe is infinitely 
 small and infinitely great.” — Radenhausen. 
 
 A S matter is endless in time or eternal, so it is no less 
 without beginning or end in space ; in its real exist- 
 ence it withdraws itself from the limitations imposed 
 on our finite mind by the conceptions of time and space, 
 conceptions from which it cannot free itself in thought. 
 Whether we enquire about or investigate the extension of 
 matter in the minutest or the greatest, we nowhere find an 
 end or a final form, whether we call to our aid experiment 
 or reflexion. When the discovery of the microscope or the 
 juxtaposition of magnifying glasses, opened up worlds un- 
 known before, and revealed to the gaze of the investigator 
 a fineness and minuteness of organic life and organic form- 
 elements undreamed of until then, man cherished the 
 audacious hope of coming on the track of the final organic 
 element, perhaps on the very basis of existence. This hope 
 disappeared in proportion to the improvement of our instru- 
 ments. In the hundredth part of a drop of water was 
 found a world of little animals, often of the daintiest and 
 prettiest form, which moved, ate, digested, lived like every 
 
 (31) 
 
32 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 other animal, and by the fashion of their movements left no 
 doubt that they were not without the two chief marks of 
 animal life, sensation and will. The smallest of these under 
 the highest magnifying power are barely recognizable as 
 to their outlines ; their internal organization naturally re- 
 mains wholly unknown to us. It is also unknown to us, 
 what yet smaller forms of living things can or may exist. 
 “Shall we,” asks Cotta, “with yet improved instruments 
 see the Monads as giants in a dwarf- world of still smaller 
 organisms ?” 
 
 The remarkable wheel-animalcule, formerly mistakenly 
 classed among the Infusoria, which measures from to 
 of an inch, has a gullet, toothed jaws, stomach, intestine, 
 glands, ovaries, eyes, blood, vessels and nerves. A drop 
 of sea-water contains a crowd of the most various and most 
 curious forms, as balls, crosses, baskets, screws, stars, 
 chess-like figures, horns, caps, helmets, etc., and each of 
 these forms represents a perfectly developed independent 
 living creature, endowed with sensation and power of 
 movement. 
 
 The swift Monad (Flagelleta) measures the twenty-four- 
 thousandth part of an inch, and several millions of these 
 maybe found in a drop of liquid. The vibriones, micro- 
 scopic animals of the minutest kind, appear under magnifi- 
 cation as heaps of tiny quivering, scarcely perceptible 
 points or threads, sometimes straight, sometimes twisted 
 like a corkscrew, and of these it is calculated that more 
 than four thousand millions would occupy a cubic line. 
 As to their near allies the bacteria, the so-called protista or 
 original life-forms, which stand midway as to their nature 
 between the plant and animal kingdoms, or the rod-like 
 bodies which move quickly through the water by means of 
 a fine and often scarcely visible vibrating flagellum and 
 have lately been recognized as most dangerous vehicles of 
 disease — of these, according to Prof. Cohn’s calculation, 
 663 millions go to a cubic millimetre, and 636,000 
 millions would be required to balance the weight of a 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 33 
 
 gramme or the five hundredth of a pound. The spores of 
 i- fungus discovered on the vine in Italy are so small that a 
 htman blood -corpuscle looks like a giant beside them 
 under the microscope ; but the blood-corpuscle is itself so 
 minute that the smallest drop of blood, a cubic-millimetre 
 in size, contains more than five millions of them. The 
 Ascaris (a round worm) lays about sixty-four millions of 
 eggs, and almost as many ovules are produced by a single 
 orchid. In all these minute bodies resides the organic 
 energy of transmission or the tendency of the reproduction 
 of a being resembling the parental form in all its finest 
 peculiarities — a specially complicated collocation of the 
 material elements of which we can form no conception, for 
 our power of vision here comes to an end. Still less is the 
 microscope able to give us any explanation as to the won- 
 derful arrangement and internal conditions of animal or 
 human seed, in which a single cell of microscopic minute- 
 ness is able to determine the physical and mental nature or 
 characteristics of a future being, often to the finest shades 
 during the course of a whole life. 
 
 Still all these bodies or objects, minute as they may be, 
 are yet visible to our enlarged eyesight. But when we 
 come to the newly discovered method of spectrum analysis 
 and find it capable of revealing with certainty the presence 
 of the third part of the thousand millionth part of a gramme 
 - — five hundred grammes to a pound- — of a heavy body (as 
 for example kitchen salt) in the air of a room, we have 
 here a particle which lies outside the limits of our direct 
 perception, even though we should largely increase the 
 magnifying power of our microscopes. None the less must 
 it be presumed that this particle is in turn composed of an 
 indefinite number of atoms and molecules grouped together, 
 and that the interspaces which separate these minutest par- 
 ticles of matter from each other, must be as wide, as enor- 
 mously great in comparison to their size as the interspaces 
 which separate from each other the individual worlds. 
 “The most powerful microscope,’’ says Professor Valentin, 
 
34 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 “will never bring within our view either the form or the 
 position of the molecules nor even those of the smaller 
 groups of atoms. A grain of salt which we can scarceb 
 taste, contains myriads of atom -groups, which no humsn 
 eye will ever see.” The English philosopher, Professor 
 Thompson , has sought to determine the size of a zinc-mole- 
 cule at the thirty-millionth part of a millimetre, and in this 
 it must not be forgotten that the molecule may, and indeed 
 must, be very large as compared with an atom ; while the 
 diameter of a blood-corpuscle is reckoned to be only -j^Vo 
 part of an inch, and that of the smallest Infusioria the fifteen- 
 hundredth of a millimetre. But then, this number is 
 merely the extremest limit of what we are able to compute 
 on the ground of ascertained data. The same scientist has 
 calculated that if a drop of water could be expanded to the 
 circumference of the globe, which has a diameter of 8000 
 miles, and if each single water molecule were expanded to 
 the same relative size, then each of these molecules or dis- 
 tinct water particles, which are composed in their turn of 
 atoms of hydrogen and oxygen, would only be about the 
 size of a bullet! Professor Perty ( Die Natur , 1869) com- 
 municates a calculation according to which a cubic line of 
 organized substance must contain about 240,000 billions of 
 elementary atoms ! But all this is far surpassed by the 
 calculations which have lately been made by English and 
 German scientists upon the molecular constitution of the 
 lightest bodies known to us, viz. the gases. The so-called 
 kinetic theory of gases, set up by Clausius and Maxwell, 
 puts the number of molecules (the groups of atoms, atomic 
 systems) in a cubic centimetre of gas or vapor at no less 
 than twenty-one trillions , their relative distances from each 
 other being from a three-millionth to a four-millionth of a 
 millimetre ; and that 144 trillion molecules of the pure 
 hydrogen gas weigh a milligramme (the thousandth part 
 of a gramme). According to Cams Sterne there are six 
 trillion molecules in a thimbleful of gas — a number of 
 which Prof. Kundt endeavors to give an idea as follows ; 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 35 
 
 “ If a printing-press were able to print every day a lexicon 
 containing three million letters, it would then have to work 
 continually for 64,000 years in order to print as many let- 
 ters as there are contained molecules in a thimbleful of air.” 
 And it must not be forgotten that the individual molecules 
 do not lie closely one on the other, but are so widely 
 separated in consequence of their so-called “molecular 
 spherules,” that according to Clausius they in reality oc- 
 cupy only the three thousandth part of the entire space. 
 The velocity with which these molecules vibrate among 
 each other has been reckoned at 1698 metres per second 
 for the lightest gas, hydrogen ; while those of the heavier 
 gases vibrate with a similar relative velocity, but still ap- 
 preciably slower. In a medium velocity of 477 metres the 
 number of repulsions between the molecules is reckoned at 
 4700 millions per second. The ingenious English scientist 
 Crookes , as is well known, has reduced enclosed gases by 
 mechanical and chemical methods to such a state of rare- 
 faction that he obtained the remarkable phenomena of 
 “radiant matter’’ or the so-called “fourth state of aggre- 
 gation of matter,” wherein the freer or unconstrained 
 molecules move among themselves more easily and more 
 swiftly. These phenomena prove that it was a great error 
 to suppose that by such rarefaction could be obtained 
 a vacuum or space emptied of air or even a condition of 
 matter approaching thereto. For example, suppose a 
 globe or a space from 13 to 14 centimetres in diameter, 
 which according to the best authorities should contain 
 about a quadrillion gas-molecules, exhausted to the 
 millionth of an atmosphere, yet according to Dr. Kalischer 
 ( Journ. Natur, 1880, Nos. 17 and 18) there will still remain 
 in it a trillion molecules ! In order to give an idea of this 
 vast number, the same writer makes the following cal- 
 culation : If in such an exhausted globe a hole could be 
 made of such minuteness that in each second a hundred 
 million gas-molecules could enter through it, then must 
 about 400 million years pass away before the globe would 
 
36 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 again contain air of the original density of the atmosphere, 
 or would again contain a quadrillion gas-molecules ! 
 
 We may learn the incredible rarefaction or extension of 
 which matter is capable, as the resultant of its molecular 
 or atomic groupings, by a glance at the calculations which 
 have been made on the inconceivable rarity of ether — 
 a substance, imponderable by the mechanical means at 
 our disposal, which fills all planetary space as well as the 
 finest interspaces within all bodies ; and also by those made 
 on the density of certain celestial bodies, or on the original 
 vaporous condition of our own solar system. Imagine the 
 total mass or ponderable matter of our planetary system, 
 including the sun, distributed over a ball which has for its 
 circumference the orbit of Neptune, the outermost planet 
 known to us — and the vaporous ball from which the system 
 evolved must have had such an extension and very probably 
 a much greater one — then the matter composing it would 
 be so rare that the density of that primal mist would be 
 only the 553 millionth part of that of our atmosphere; ac- 
 cording to Radenhausen it would have one ten-millionth of 
 the density of hydrogen, the lightest of all terrestrial bodies; 
 according to Helmholtz , a single grain of solid earthly sub- 
 stance would, if made equally rare, fill many million cubic 
 miles. If we believe with many astronomers that the primal 
 sphere of our solar system had in reality a radius of two 
 billion miles, then the density of that primal matter could 
 only have been the 600,000 billionth part of the density of 
 hydrogen, whilst at the period that the ring of the earth- 
 planet severed itself from the solar orb it must have already 
 attained a density equal to the nine-hundredth part of that 
 of hydrogen gas ! ! 
 
 Cometic matter or the matter of which are composed 
 these remarkable knights-errant of the universe, is, accord- 
 ing to the calculations of astronomers, so fine or rare, 
 that a cubic mile of it would scarcely weigh a few grammes, 
 or borrowing the astronomer IV. Meyer's phrase, the 
 comets, if compared with the planets relatively to their mass, 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 37 
 
 are scarcely as a paper snip compared with a cannon-ball. 
 Light and fluid, however, as are these erroneously dreaded 
 sky visitants, yet the ether — that excessively rare, to us 
 imponderable substance, which according to the views of 
 physicists not only fills the realms of space but fills also the 
 tiniest interspaces of even the densest bodies, and which 
 passes through glass walls and unceasingly flows around 
 all atoms and molecules — this ether offers to the passage of 
 the comets a resistance comparatively so slight, that its 
 lightness or rarity far surpasses that of everything else 
 that is known, and that we hesitate to state the figures, 
 because they sound too audacious* 
 
 An atom (from the Greek a and re/ivu, i. e. a thing which 
 cannot be divided) is the name we give to the smallest 
 portion of a chemical element or elemental matter, which 
 we regard as capable of no further division, or the division 
 of which we cannot conceive ; and we regard all materials 
 or bodies as built up out of such atoms or out of groups of 
 two or more of such constituting a common body, the so- 
 called molecules, and existing and maintaining these char- 
 acteristics by a changing system of mutual attraction and 
 repulsion. 
 
 Perhaps we are not mistaken if we regard a molecule as 
 somewhat resembling in miniature the systems of the uni- 
 verse and compare the separate atoms, out of which it is 
 
 * Later physicists deny the existence of the ether and accept in its stead an 
 excessively rare gas or rarefaction of ordinary matter. According to Secchi it 
 consists perhaps of none but the primitive or true atoms of the unknown primal 
 matter, from which were built up in separate sets or groups those we erroneously 
 name elements or original matter, so that all forms of matter would thus be 
 constituted from ether. According to Spiller ( Die Urkraft des Weltalh, 1876 — a 
 book well worthy of study) the ether, as the universal force-endued matter, the 
 one primal energy of the universe or the soul of the world, is the universe-will or 
 the energy-matter, the unwearied architect to whom all atoms must yield obedi- 
 ence without volition, and “ which without personality or self-consciousness 
 dictates all natural laws from the gravitation of the greatest and most distant 
 worlds to the chemical action of the body-forming and to us invisibe atoms of 
 matter.” He calls his system Etherism or the system of universal ether. If the 
 theory be accurate, that the matter filling the interplanetary spaces is only the 
 remains of the former primal vapor, then it must be far rarer than it was originally, 
 since the materials have been taken out of it for the making of the solid bodies 
 evolved therefrom. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 38 
 
 built up, to the separate celestial bodies joined sometimes 
 in pairs, sometimes in a system. But suggestive as is such 
 an image, and appropriate as it seems to throw a wel- 
 come light upon a large number of chemical and physical 
 problems, on the phenomena, properties and activities of 
 matter, we must yet admit that the word “atom’'’ is only 
 a name for an artificial idea resulting from the craving of 
 our mind for limits in space, and which we require for the 
 sake of scientific objects. The science of chemistry especial- 
 ly seems impossible without atomicity, and every theory or 
 concrete representation in it must be at an end without this. 
 But yet atomicity is and remains a scientific hypothesis, 
 and we are wholly without any real grasp of the thing that 
 we call an atom. We know nothing of its size, its weight, 
 its form, character, color, etc.; we know not if it is elastic 
 or fusible, if it is angular or spherical, etc. ; although spec- 
 ulations as to the shape and properties of atoms have not 
 been wanting. No one has seen the atom, and no one will 
 ever see it ; speculative philosophers deny its existence 
 because they cannot admit that a thing can exist, the divis- 
 ion of which cannot be imagined, and they declare that it 
 is impossible both logically and empirically. In fact the 
 unlimited divisibility of atoms or of the molecules built up 
 from them can be doubted when looked at either from a 
 theoretical, a metaphysical, or an empirical point of view, 
 and it can only be maintained that we are not in a position 
 to divide them further by the chemical and physical forces 
 known to us. If for instance chemistry teaches that a 
 molecule of quicksilver is a hundred times as heavy as a 
 molecule of hydrogen, then must the former in comparison 
 with the latter have a comparatively large size and hence 
 must be divisible. It has also become very probable 
 through recent investigations that the substances hereto- 
 fore regarded by us as elements or original bodies are noth- 
 ing of the kind, but are themselves compounds, and that 
 the so-called atoms therefore consist of units of a higher 
 grade, as the molecule does of atoms. Hence we must re- 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 39 
 
 gard the atom, if we desire to retain this idea, as being 
 physically the type of the infinitely small.* 
 
 Thus neither by observation nor by thought can we, in 
 contemplating matter in minuteness, reach a point at which 
 we can stop, and there is no likelihood of such a point 
 being reached. 1 ‘ Everywhere we find, ’ ’ says Stewart, ‘ ‘ that 
 the limitations of our reasoning faculties in respect of space 
 and time shut out the possibility of our becoming accurately 
 acquainted with these exceedingly minute bodies, which 
 are none the less the raw material out of which the universe 
 is built up.” On the other side of the present outposts 
 of microscopical investigation the famous English scientist 
 Tyndall, on the occasion of a meeting in the Philharmonic 
 Hall, London, suggested a yet unmeasured field of scien- 
 tific imagination. For we have here to deal with bodies so 
 infinitely small, that in comparison with them the test ob- 
 jects of the microscope are literally immeasurable. “As 
 the distances in space of the planetary realms merely give 
 us a dizzy notion of immeasurability, without leaving any 
 definite impress on the mind, so the quantities with which 
 we have to deal here, leave with us a dizzy feeling as to 
 the minute.” 
 
 Hence we can say nothing except that matter and therefore 
 the universe are infinite in minuteness, and it matters little 
 if our reason, accustomed to find quantity and limit every- 
 where, should be startled by such an idea. 
 
 As the microscope guides us in the world of the minute, 
 so does the telescope direct us in the world of the vast. 
 Here also astronomers audaciously dreamed of penetrating 
 
 * Atomicity, or the explanation of the whole by the parts, was founded by the 
 Greek philosopher Leukippus (500 B. C.) and developed by his disciples Democritus , 
 Epikurus and Lucretius. Expelled from general knowledge by Christianity and 
 from science by the Socratic philosophy, it was resuscitated and brought out 
 again by Gassendi, Hobbes, Dalton and others (1592-1844,) while Lavoisier , to- 
 wards the end of the last century, proved the indestructibility of the atom and 
 founded thereupon modern chemistry. A modern speculative natural philosophy, 
 somewhat fantastic in its methods, seeks to throw doubt upon the material exist- 
 ence of atoms and to regard them as centres of energy. Particulars of this, as 
 well as of the criticism of the Atomic Theory, will be found in the author's work 
 JVatur und Geist, 3rd edition, p. 79, et seg. 
 
4 ° 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 to the very limits of the universe, but the more they per- 
 fected their instruments, the more immeasurably did the 
 worlds expand before their astonished gaze. The light 
 white mists seen by the naked eye in the vault of heaven 
 were resolved by the telescope into myriads of stars, of 
 worlds, of suns, of planetary systems ; and the earth with 
 its inhabitants, so fondly and proudly deemed the very 
 crown and centre of existence, fell from its fancied exalta- 
 tion to a mere atom moving in immeasurable space. “All 
 Dur experiments yield us not the slightest trace of a limit ; 
 each increased power of the telescope only opens to our 
 gaze new realms of stars and nebulae, which, if not consist- 
 ing of galaxies of stars, are self- illumining matter.” — Grove. 
 “ With each sharpening of our tools which bear our gaze 
 into the waves of light of the furthest starry realms, new 
 waves of suns break forth from the limitless ocean of the 
 stars.”— IV. Meyer. “ Even with the most powerful teles- 
 copes we see so many faintly-shining stars that we are 
 unable to doubt that on the further side of these there are 
 yet others which will become visible by larger instruments.’ ’ 
 — G. J. Klein. “ From all these experiments we conclude 
 that the depth of celestial space cannot be sounded, and 
 that we shall never succeed in reaching its bounds. We 
 should vainly strive by a cumulation of resemblances to 
 give even an approximate idea of the immeasurableness of 
 the starry universe.” — Secchi. 
 
 The distances calculated by astronomers in space are so 
 vast that our intellect grows dizzy as we contemplate them, 
 and our fancy tries in vain to follow the conceptions sug- 
 gested by them. Seeing that even the distances in our 
 own solar system cannot be realized by our minds, how 
 much less can those of the fixed stars, which are generally 
 designated by the so-called “solar distances” (20 million 
 German miles or I48'6 million kilometres) or by the time 
 taken by light to travel across them. Thus in order to find 
 a mathematical expression for the enormous distances in 
 space, astronomers have adopted the so-called light-time t 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 41 
 
 based on the extraordinary velocity of light, which, as is 
 well known, travels at the rate of 40,160 German miles per 
 second (186,000 English miles Tr.). A second of light- 
 time therefore means a distance of 186 thousand miles ; a 
 year of light-time means nearly six billion miles (5,865,- 
 696,000,000). Now the distance of the fixed star nearest to 
 us (a Centauri), the sun nearest to us outside our solar sys- 
 tem (one of the brightest of the stars), is reckoned at about 
 3)4 years of light-time, or at 224,500 solar distances, or 
 nearly 22 billion miles (21,996,360,000,000) ; the distance 
 of the star 61 Cygni is about 400,000 solar distances, or 37 
 billion miles, or nearly 60 billion kilometres. The distance 
 of the brilliant Sirius or of the dog-star of Aquarius from 
 the earth is calculated at 17 light-years, or at more than a 
 million times the distance of the earth from the sun. If we 
 wanted to travel from the earth to the nearest fixed star we 
 should require 30,000 years for our journey— supposing 
 that we were able to move towards it in a straight line with 
 the velocity of our solar system in space (i8)4 miles per 
 second), and that it did not change its position. But the 
 above-named stars all belong to those lying near to us, 
 whereas the distant fixed stars are reckoned at a distance 
 of hundreds and thousands of light-years. The number of 
 these stars, or rather suns, lying outside our system, has 
 been raised by the giant-telescopes of late years to about 20 
 millions, whereas we can see only some 4000 or 5000 of 
 them with the naked eye ; and these countless suns are 
 divided from each other by such spaces as we have above 
 described, including the yet more countless satellites and 
 sub-satellites which probably accompany them. But all these 
 taken together do not form the universe ; on the contrary, 
 they one and all belong to a definite and comparatively 
 much limited star-system, beside which there are countless 
 others and mostly larger systems in the universe. This 
 system or republic of stars, of which our sun with its sat- 
 ellites only forms a small part, or this island of worlds 
 stretches in form like a somewhat strongly flattened lens 
 
42 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 through space, and is bounded at its periphery by two 
 almost parallel annular aggregations of suns, which are 
 visible to us in the form of the well-known via lacUa. The 
 distance of these from the earth is calculated at from 4000 
 to 5000 light-years, that is to say, light would require this 
 time to travel thence to us, while according to Madler's 
 calculation it requires 9000 years to travel round the ring 
 of the milky way from one end to the other. Our sun 
 which is not quite in the centre of this system of fixed stars, 
 but stands on one side, is 573 light-years from the centre 
 of this ring and lies about a thousand light-years nearer to 
 one side of the inner milky way than to the other. The whole 
 system most probably revolves round a common and yet 
 undiscovered fixed point or virtual centre. 
 
 But even this is not enough ; the telescope informs us 
 that this system with all its countless hosts of stars, with 
 its distances and extensions escaping from our grasp, is yet 
 but a finite limited part of the immeasurable universe, and 
 that at distances, in comparison with which all the be- 
 wildering dimensions of the ring of the milky way are 
 infinitely small, there exist other world systems which lead 
 their existence quite independently of ours. These are the 
 so-called nebulae, those wondrous forms in the deepest 
 depths of space, whose position, shape and condition show 
 all imaginable variety, and of which, since W. Herschel 
 first intimately observed them, considerably more than 
 6000 are known at present. Part of them by far exceed in 
 their extension — although they often appear to the eye as 
 mere shining dots and sometimes cannot be seen without 
 the greatest difficulty — that of the milky way, and they 
 like the latter must either consist of many millions and 
 thousands of millions of celestial bodies or of planetary 
 systems coming into existence. Their distances from us 
 are so fabulous that they can only be reckoned by millions 
 of years of light-time ; nay, some even are said to have 
 been observed which must be at a distance of a hundred 
 million years of light-time. These are indeed merely 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 43 
 
 phrases, with which we are unable to connect any idea, 
 for we have no sort of terrestrial measure for them ; only 
 the word “infinite” is and remains applicable here. “The 
 universe, ’ ’ forcibly remarks the French philosopher Pascal , 
 “is a circle whose centre is everywhere and whose circum- 
 ference is nowhere.” 
 
 If from these facts it is sought to draw any conclusion as 
 to the antiquity of the world, it then cannot be doubted 
 that the present order of the celestial bodies, that which 
 we call in the widest sense the “ order of the universe,” 
 must have existed for millions of years in the same or in 
 similar order to that we find to day. In fact as we gaze at 
 the firmament, we read thereon only the circumstances, 
 the record of past minutes and hours or of times lying far 
 behind us, and occurrences which perhaps took place 
 before our earth separated itself as an independent body 
 from the solar sphere, appear to us as present. When we 
 observe a change in the sun, we can only say that such a 
 change took place seven and a half minutes ago, for the 
 light requires that time to travel from it to the earth. If 
 Neptune, the most distant planet of our system, were de- 
 stroyed by any catastrophe, it would only vanish from our 
 sight four or five hours later, for that is its distance from 
 us reckoned by “ light-times.” If the beautiful star Vega in 
 the constellation of the Lyre were suddenly to cease to exist, 
 we should none the less behold it shining in the sky for 
 eighteen years to come, for the rays of light that strike our 
 eyes in witness of its existence quitted it eighteen years be- 
 fore. But the stars whose light is visible to us by the aid of 
 our best telescopes are calculated to be at a distance of from 
 2000 to 3000 years of light-time, that is that the dying ray, 
 which brings us the tidings of their existence, left its source 
 about the time that Homer sang on our earth, or the great 
 sages of Greece lived and taught. And when perhaps a 
 hundred million years ago the first and earliest forms of 
 life began to germinate on the young earth, then sprang 
 from yonder furthest nebulae the ray of light which sinks 
 
44 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 to-day into our eyes as the witness of their existence ! ‘ ‘Yes, 
 there can be no doubt that there are stars which give us no 
 light simply because their rays have not yet reached our 
 earth, and others again that lie so far away that their rays 
 can no longer reach the globe, either because they have 
 already ceased to exist or because the illuminating power 
 of the ray cannot traverse the enormous distance.” — 
 DU Prel. 
 
 But that even these stars do not and cannot signify the 
 limits of the world-filled realms of space can be deduced 
 from the law of gravitation as well as from analogy. Empty, 
 boundless space is an astronomical as it is a logical 
 absurdity. ‘‘To suppose” says Grove {Correlation of 
 Phys. Forces , 6th. ed. p. 125) ‘‘the stellar universe to be 
 bounded by infinite space or by infinite chaos, that is to say, 
 to suppose a spot — for it would then become so — of 
 matter in definite forms, with definite forces, and probably 
 teeming with definite organic beings, plunged in a universe 
 of nothing, is, to my mind at least, far more unphilosophi- 
 cal than to suppose a boundless universe of matter existing 
 in forms and actions more or less analogous to those which, 
 as far as our examination goes, pervade space.” 
 
 If then we can find no limit to matter in the minute, still 
 less are we able to find a limit in the vast ; we must there- 
 fore pronounce matter to be infinite in both directions, in 
 the great as in the small, and to be independent of the 
 limitations of space and time. If the laws of thought postu- 
 late an infinite divisibility of matter, if, according to them, 
 it be also impossible to imagine a limit to space and nil 
 beyond it, we find a remarkable and satisfying unanimity 
 between the laws of logic and the results of our scientific 
 investigations. We shall hereafter have an opportunity of 
 proving the identity of the laws of thought with the 
 mechanical laws of external nature on other points as 
 well, and to show that the former are the necessary pro- 
 duct of the latter. 
 
 ‘‘ Beyond the range of human reason,” says Rade?ihausen 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 
 
 45 
 
 in his Isis, vol. IV, p. 172, “there is neither space nor 
 time ; they are arbitrary conceptions of man at which he 
 has arrived by the comparison and arrangement of differ- 
 ent impressions which he has received from the outside 
 world. The conception of space arises from the sequence 
 of the various forms which fill space, by which the external 
 world appears to the individual man. The conception of 
 time arises from the sequence of the various forms which 
 change in space (motion), by which the external world 
 acts on the individual man, and so on. But externally to 
 ourselves the distinction between repletion of space and 
 mutation of space does not exist, for each is in constant 
 transmutation, whatever is is filling and changing at the 
 same time, nothing is at a standstill ” etc. 
 
 “ Weder Anfang hat die Welt, noch Ende, 
 
 Nicht im Raum, noch in der Zeit. 
 
 Ueberall ist Mittelpunkt und Wende 
 Und im Nu die Ewigkeit.” 
 
 (“The world has neither beginning nor end, in space 
 nor in time. Everywhere is centre and turning-point, and 
 in a moment is eternity.’’) — Riickert. 
 
Value of Matter. 
 
 " By an intellectual necessity 1 cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, 
 and discern in that Matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, 
 and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto 
 covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.” — 
 Tyndall. 
 
 “ The times are gone by in which man dreamed of spirit independent of matter. 
 But the times are also past in which the spiritual was supposed to be degraded 
 if it was only manifested through matter.” — Moleschott. 
 
 “ Men have constantly endeavored to degrade matter, but have only succeeded 
 in showing that the divine beauty of a fundamental constituent of their nature 
 is hidden from them.” — Elements of social science. 
 
 T HERE was a time when men, in a frame of mind 
 hostile to earth and seized with a sort of mental and 
 moral crapulence over the destruction of this present 
 world, imagined that they saw approaching the end and 
 ruin not only of political but also of all earthly things. In 
 this mood they turned in thought to the wonders and 
 delights of that other non-earthly world, which should 
 recompense them for the intolerable tribulation of the 
 present one. Hence arose, or at least found wider accept- 
 ance that foolish conception which matter looks upon as a 
 crude, dismal, inert Something, hostile or opposed to 
 spirit ; it received support from the then ruling philosophy 
 of Aristotle, which also regarded matter as incapable of 
 independent motion and therefore as dependent on a 
 moving reason ( vovc ). Thus religious fanatics began to 
 vent their rage against their own bodies, which were re- 
 garded as the chief obstacle to the higher mental or moral 
 impulse. The earth was looked on as a vale of tears, 
 Nature as a thing subject to the curse of the deity ; man’s 
 
 46 ) 
 
VALUE OF MATTER. 
 
 47 
 
 own flesh was the most contemptible of all and was to be 
 injured and punished as much as possible. Had not the 
 apostle Paul, the real founder of the new universal religion, 
 expressly declared : “They that are Christ’s have crucified 
 the flesh, with its affections and lusts.” 
 
 “This whole island (Capraria)” says an ancient Roman 
 historian at the time that Christianity was imported into a 
 world doomed to destruction and hastening to its fall, “ is 
 occupied or rather disfigured by men who shun the day. 
 They call themselves monks or hermits, because they live 
 alone and wish to have no witnesses of their actions. They 
 avoid the gifts of fortune lest they should lose them ; and 
 in order not to become unfortunate, they devote themselves 
 to voluntary destitution. How absurd is their choice ! how 
 preposterous their reason! to fear the evils of human con- 
 ditions without being in a position to enjoy its pleasures ! 
 This melancholy insanity must be the result of a disease, 
 or else the consciousness of guilt drives these unhappy 
 men to rage against their own bodies, upon which they 
 inflict torments such as are assigned by the hand of justice 
 to runaway slaves.”* 
 
 In the Middle-Ages, that desolate period of rude noble 
 tyranny and fanatical priestly dominion, so-called servants 
 of God had carried things so far that matter was treated 
 with great contempt and that they nailed their own bodies, 
 
 * Compare the famous Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire of Gibbon, who 
 writing on the monks and monasteries of that period, adds : " The freedom of the 
 mind, the source of every generous and rational sentiment, was destroyed by the 
 habits of credulity and submission ; and the monk, contracting the vices of a 
 slave, devoutly followed the faith and passions of his ecclesiastical tyrant. The 
 peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics, incapable of 
 fear, or reason, or humanity ; and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without 
 shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with fiercest Bar- 
 barians.” And again: “They aspired to reduce themselves to the rude and 
 miserable state in which the human brute is scarcely distinguished above his 
 kindred animals ; and a numerous sect of Anachorets derived their name from 
 their humble practice of grazing in the fields of Mesopotamia with the common 
 herd.” He also quotes with regard to the effect of the monasteries on the em- 
 pire the characteristic remark of Zosimus, “ that for the benefit of the poor, the 
 Christian monks had reduced a great part of mankind to a state of beggary.” 
 (See chap. XXXVII, Gibbon, for further details. 7 >.) Also, chap. X, pages 561 to 
 608, Gibbon’s History of Christianity. 
 
4 8 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the noble work of Nature, to the pillory. Some crucified 
 themselves, others tormented themselves ; crowds of flag- 
 ellants or self-floggers wandered through the country, 
 openly exhibiting their voluntarily torn bodies ; men strove 
 by refined methods to ruin health and strength, in order 
 that the spirit — -regarded as something supernatural, as 
 something independent of matter — might gain the victory 
 over its sinful bearer. The saintly Bernard , as Feuerbach 
 relates, so lost his sense of taste by excessive asceticism, 
 that he ate grease for butter, and drank oil for water. 
 Rostan tells us that in many monasteries the superiors 
 were in the habit of bleeding their monks several times a 
 year, in order to subdue the rebellious passions which the 
 divine service by itself was incapable of containing. But 
 he also informs us that nature trampled upon sometimes 
 avenged herself, and that in these living graves revolts 
 were not uncommon, when the superiors would be threat- 
 ened with poison and dagger. It has long been known 
 what sad and wretched ascetics are still found among the 
 poor people of India. The consequence is that their glori- 
 ous land is a prey and they themselves have become the 
 slaves of a small number of aliens. 
 
 Such errors and perversions of right feeling are fortu- 
 nately only possible at this day as generally condemned 
 exceptions, or as follies commited by individuals instigated 
 by fanaticism or insanity. A nobler view has shown us 
 that, as Schleicher says, neither spirit nor matter exists in 
 the sense that is generally supposed, but that there is only 
 one which is equivalent to the twain, and that as we de- 
 grade matter, we in the same proportion degrade the spirit; 
 that as we dishonor nature, we injure the universal womb 
 which has conceived and brought forth all of us ; that as 
 we ill-use our body we ill-use our spirit, and that he who 
 acts thus injures himself to just the extent that he in his 
 foolish fancy imagined that he had benefited his soul. Let 
 us form and cultivate our bodies or what is matter in us not 
 less than our spirit, and let us not forget that the twain are 
 
VALUE OF MATTER. 
 
 49 
 
 inseparable, and that what we do to the one, the other also 
 benefits by. The old Ciceronian saying : Mens Sana in 
 corpore sano (healthy mind in healthy body) contains as 
 much truth as its opposite : The mind builds its own body. 
 On the other hand we ought not to forget that as individuals, 
 as separate entities, we are only a fugitive part of the whole, 
 which must sooner or later return into that whole. Nature, 
 or matter in its totality, is the universal mother, evolving 
 everything from herself and having everything restored 
 to herself. 
 
 1st denn nicht, was ihr Materie nennt, 
 
 Der Welt urkraftig Element, 
 
 Aus dem, was immer lebt und webt, 
 
 Empor zu Licht und Bewegung strebt, 
 
 Und das dich selbst und die ganze Welt 
 Im unergriindlichen Schoosse halt 
 Und Alles gebiert und Alles verschlingt, 
 
 Was bier nach Leben und Dasein ringt ? 
 
 (All that is called matter is the primal forceful element 
 of the universe, out of which all that lives and moves strug- 
 gles upwards to light and movement, which contains itself 
 and the universe in its unfathomable womb, which brings 
 forth and devours up everything that here wrestles for life 
 and being.) 
 
 No nation knew better than the Greeks how to honor the 
 purely human on its own account, and none knew better 
 how to esteem life in contrast with death. Lucian relates : 
 “When Dsemonax, a greybeard of one hundred years, 
 was asked before his death how he desired to be buried he 
 answered : ‘ Do not trouble yourselves, the corpse will be 
 buried by the smell.’ ‘ But,’ said his friends, ‘would you 
 then serve as food to dogs and birds ? ’ ‘ Why not ? ’ he 
 
 answered, * so long as I have lived I have striven to serve 
 men with all my power, and why should I not give 
 something to the brutes after my death ? ’ ’’ 
 
 Our modern society can certainly not raise itself to this 
 point of view. It is thought grander to barricade the piti- 
 
50 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ful corpse with flagstones for a century, or to shut it up in 
 the family vault with beringed fingers, rather than to re- 
 store to the Whole that which has been received there- 
 from and which cannot be withheld in perpetuity. 
 
 A medical theologian, Professor Leupoldt of Erlangen, 
 maintains that those who from scientific reasons start from 
 matter instead of from God, must really renounce all scien- 
 tific ideas, because beings who are themselves only minute 
 portions of nature and particles of matter, are incapable of 
 penetrating into or of conceiving nature and matter. This 
 reasoning is truly more worthy of the theologian than of 
 the physician ! Have those who start from God and not 
 from matter, ever been able to give us any intelligence 
 about the laws of nature or about the properties and activi- 
 ties of this matter which they regard so contemptuously? 
 Could they tell us whether the sun moves or stands still? 
 Whether the earth is round or flat ? What is God’s nature, 
 or design? and so on. Can they give us the smallest 
 scientific information on those great questions which are 
 agitating the mind of every thoughtful person, as to the 
 origin of the world and of man ? or as to the laws by which, 
 according to them, the universe is governed? No! that 
 were an impossibility. “To start from God in the study 
 and investigation of nature’’ is a phrase without thought 
 or reason, which signifies nothing and by which nothing is 
 got. That melancholy method of investigating nature, of 
 philosophically contemplating nature, which starting from 
 theoretical premisses or metaphysical ideas, fancied that 
 the universe could be constructed and the truths of nature 
 ascertained by speculative methods, has fortunately been 
 overthrown many a long day ;* and exactly the opposite 
 plan, the investigation of natural laws and natural phenom- 
 ena by the deepest study of nature herself and by the en- 
 quiry into material facts and laws has yielded all those 
 great results and beneficial effects in which we now rejoice 
 
 * Bacon ofVerulam. the famous experimental philosopher, said in his days: “All 
 purely logical explanations are worthless, since Nature far exceeds in fineness 
 (subtilitas) all arguments drawn from inductive ratiocination.” 
 
VALUE OF MATTER. 
 
 51 
 
 both in spiritual and material respects. Then why should 
 those who proceed from matter, or who base thereon their 
 investigations, be unable to understand matter? On the 
 contrary, we shall be able all the better to understand it 
 and to control it, the more we endeavor to learn to know 
 it in its infinite fineness and its incredible energy and capac 
 ity, by means of observation, of investigation, of experi- 
 ment. Experience has spoken here with sufficient clear- 
 ness. The scientists, unfairly decried as ‘ ‘ Materialists, ’ ’ 
 have not only made it possible for our mind to penetrate 
 by thought into the All and to obtain scientific certitute on 
 questions and things which appeared for ever sealed to it ; 
 but we also owe it to them that the human race is more 
 and more borne upwards in the mighty arms of matter, 
 known and controlled through its laws, and that we can 
 perform by it works and acts, which in former times seemed 
 possible only to giants and magicians. Such results must 
 silence envy, and the times appear gone by wherein a world 
 falsely framed by fancy was deemed by men worth more 
 than the real one. Even if many hypocritically turn their 
 faces away from it, it is only done in pretence. In their 
 deeds they manifest the contrary of their words. No one 
 now tortures nor scourges himself, nor seeks asceticism in 
 lieu of enjoyment. On the contrary each strives with all 
 his powers to snatch the share of goods and of pleasures 
 due to him, and offered to him by this life, beautified and 
 exalted a thousandfold. To those, who nevertheless per- 
 sist in turning their eyes to heaven rather than to earth, is 
 applied the striking phrase of Ludwig Feuerbach : “The 
 hypocrisy of self-infatuation is the cardinal sin of the age.” 
 This is due more or less to those who, if not in every- 
 day life, yet in theory and philosophy, continue to hold 
 fast to that unreasonable idea of matter, already mentioned, 
 as a dead, inert, dark, motionless, rough Something, op- 
 posed to the spirit and either hostile or subservient to it, 
 rightly designated as a ‘‘horrid dream ” by F. A Lange in 
 his History of Materialism , and who from this theory de- 
 
52 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 duce consequences which put fancies in the place of realities, 
 seli-deceptions in the place of truth. These foolish people 
 utterly forget in their spiritualistic stultification that, as the 
 study of the primal earth has clearly shown, matter (out of 
 which they have themselves arisen) existed long before the 
 spirit , and that all yet future forms, including reasoning 
 beings, potentially or in capacity must have been contained 
 in that primal world-mist out of which our solar system 
 was gradually evolved with all its wonders and its inhabit- 
 ants. They forget also that spirit can only exist on a 
 substratum of organized matter, and that not the shadow of 
 a proof can be brought forward to show that spirit can attain 
 to an independent existence outside of matter. Further, 
 they do not appear to know that all forces active in the 
 earth, without exception, (including, of course, the spirit- 
 ual ones produced by a definite arrangement of organized 
 matter) ultimately arise from the sun and take origin in the 
 form of light and heat coming to us by the vibrations of 
 ether-particles. Lastly they overlook that which in fact is 
 proved everywhere, that if spirit and matter were opposites 
 they could not act upon each other, nor in any essential 
 respect be transmutable. The simple solution of the problem 
 lies in the fact that not only physical but also psychical 
 energies inhere in matter, and that the latter always become 
 manifest wherever the necessary conditions are found, or 
 that, wherever matter is arranged in a certain manner and 
 moved in a certain way in the brain or the nervous system, 
 the phenomena of sensation and thought are produced in 
 similar fashion, as those of attraction and repulsion are 
 under other conditions. “ If matter can fall to the ground 
 then it can also think,” — Schopenhauer. In the form of a 
 stone it falls to the ground ; in the form of a muscle it con- 
 tracts ; in the form of living nerve-substance it becomes 
 capable of feeling and of thinking, or rises into self- 
 consciousness. The development of mind from matter is 
 indeed one of the the latest, most difficult and most com- 
 plicated triumphs of physical forces, and is the product of 
 
VALUE OF MATTER. 
 
 53 
 
 a protracted toil, rising from step to step, through countless 
 centuries, till reaching the height of humanity. Nor can 
 we say what shall be brought forth of similar fruit by the 
 coming ages ; we must confess that perhaps as yet we see 
 only the incomplete, the imperfect, and that perchance we 
 have no conception of what matter may yet be able to 
 accomplish in its future evolution in mental phaenomena or 
 faculties, by further complications and yet more highly 
 developed forms of motion. 
 
 “The opinion that spirit has created matter,” says the 
 anonymous author of the Elements of Social Science , 
 (London, 1854,) “is an utterly groundless hypothesis, 
 founded on no shadow of proof. There is not the smallest 
 analogy in its favor, and it would appear as if human reason 
 were yet in its childhood. In how much is it the least 
 more conceivable that spirit should be infinite than that 
 matter should be ? It is indeed much more, infinitely more 
 inconceivable ; for while we can find no possible reason 
 why matter should not be infinite, but are forced to that 
 conclusion by the study of nature, we can on the other 
 hand find no possible reason in nature why spirit should be 
 infinite, but are forced to the conclusion that it is not infi- 
 nite. Spirit is a manifestation of life, and all life, by the 
 law of its being, is subject to change and therefore to death. 
 Spirit is perishable, for it is absolutely indivisible from the 
 perishable forms of matter, and it is a wholly natural force, 
 not foreign to other natural forces, but indivisibly bound up 
 with all other in mutual interdependence. . . . The spirit 
 which designs in man is indissolubly bound up with a 
 living organized brain. To maintain that the designer of 
 the cosmical plan is a pure spirit is to argue against all 
 analogy. According to our experience spirit is without 
 exception found in conjunction with a brain, and never 
 creates matter. ... To separate matter from spirit, bodies 
 from souls, is to destroy the truth of nature ; to place one 
 above the other is a monstrous presumption which destroys 
 the unity of the universe.” 
 
54 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 “ Divorced from matter,” says Tyiidall, “where is life 
 to be found ? Whatever our faith may say, our knowledge 
 shows them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, 
 and every cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious control 
 of Mind by Matter.” 
 
 There are philosophers who, in order to escape from the 
 consequences of these or of similar considerations, go so 
 far in their spiritualistic presumption as to deny or to 
 throw doubt upon the existence of matter as such. The 
 logical fallacy thus made has been cogently exposed by 
 Stanski (Sur la spontantite de la matilrc , Paris, 1873.) It 
 lies in this, that the unknoiun idiosyncrasy of matter 
 (compare the chapter on the infinity of matter) is taken for 
 matter itself. We indeed do not know what matter is in 
 itself, any more than we know what force is in itself. We 
 do not even know whether matter is single and simple, or 
 if it is made up of the 60 — 70 known chemical elements. 
 But this we know with all certitude, that something is there 
 which attracts, repels, resists, moves, evolves the phenom- 
 ena of light or of heat, and that when this something is 
 taken away, the phenomena or activities evolved by it come 
 to an end. This something is that which we call matter ; 
 the phenomena mentioned are its actions ; and the cause of 
 these actions is the force inherent in the matter. It is really 
 comical that these philosophic gentry, after they fancy they 
 have demonstrated the non-existence of matter and have 
 shown that it is merely a thing of thought, yet continue in 
 their writings and expositions to speak again and again of 
 matter and its effects. Did they care to be consistent, they 
 should begin by denying their own existence, for this 
 wholly consists of matter, and should regard themselves as 
 non-existent appearances, or phenomenal modes of an 
 unknown something, or as the product of their own imagi- 
 nation ! With such ghostly antagonists one would readily 
 waive all further discussion, even admitting — a thing which 
 has never been seriously denied — that there are a number 
 of properties of bodies which do not inhere in them as such, 
 
VALUE OF MATTER. 55 
 
 but which find their basis in the creation of our sense- 
 organs. 
 
 After all that has been said, it scarcely needs any further 
 demonstration that matter in reality is not that empty thing, 
 furnished with a set of negative attributes, which it was so 
 erroneously represented to be, but in truth is the very 
 opposite. Matter is not dead, inanimate or lifeless, but — 
 as will be more fully shown in a later chapter — is in motion 
 everywhere and is full of most active life. It is not shape- 
 less ; but — as again a subsequent chapter will show — form, 
 as well as motion, is its necessary and inseparable attribute. 
 Nor is it crude, as badly informed people, using the word 
 in a bad sense, will have it, but is so infinitely delicate that 
 all conception of it fails us. It is not worthless, but is the 
 common mother and generatrix of all that exists or is com 
 ing into existence, and is thus of the highest importance. 
 It is not senseless, spiritless or thoughtless, but is full of the 
 most delicate sensibility and capable of the highest evolu- 
 tion of thought in the living creatures that proceed there- 
 from stage by stage. Neither is it unconscious, but in its 
 gradual earthly process of evolution and development it 
 evolves all imaginable stages of consciousness from the 
 lowest to the highest. Further and lastly it is not unpro- 
 gressive and eternally the same and unchangeable, as 
 spiritualistic controversialists maintain, but brings forth 
 ever increasing vital and intellectual forces by an ever 
 higher and enhanced complexity of organic compounds. 
 It seems to be only the impressions of our education, led 
 ever in opposition to the progress of science along roads of 
 spiritualistic fancies, which make it so difficult in the case 
 of most people to see the simple truth, and to let the well- 
 spring of fact come forth in place of phantasmic specula- 
 tions and imaginations. 
 
 Materialists — albeit since the first publication of this 
 book the term has become to some extent current and at 
 each fitting and unfitting opportunity the designation has 
 been dragged in neck and heels, unsuited though as it is to 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 56 
 
 the defenders of a philosophy which regards matter, force 
 and mind not as separate entities, but only as different 
 sides or various phenomenal modes of the same primal or 
 basic principle — have been overwhelmed by their count- 
 less opponents with a great number of accusations and 
 charges, among which the reproach of (mental or moral) 
 “ grossness ” has played a great part. They can, however, 
 console themselves with the example of the great Greek 
 philosopher Anaxagoras, who was compelled to leave 
 Athens because, with a knowledge of nature or a foresight 
 marvellous for his time, he declared that the sun was not a 
 god, but a fiery ball, a glowing mass of stone. His great 
 contemporary, the spiritualistic philosopher Socrates, spoke 
 of him on account of this theory as an “ impious man ” — 
 an epithet which, if well-merited, must now be applied to 
 the whole educated human race. This, like thousands of 
 similar examples, shows, as F. Mohr strikingly remarks, 
 that more courage is needed to think with consistency or to 
 proclaim new truths, than to charge at hostile cannons. 
 
 For the rest, the whole struggle yet proceeding between 
 Materialism and Spiritualism, still more that between 
 Materialism and Idealism, must appear futile and groundless 
 to him who has once attained to the knowledge of the un- 
 tenability of the dualistic theory which always underlies it. 
 All philosophical systems up to the present time have 
 almost without exception been more or less dualistic, that 
 is they have made a definite severance between matter and 
 force, substance and form, being and becoming, movement 
 and mover, nature and spirit, world and god, body and 
 soul, earth and heaven, death and life, time and eternity, 
 finite and infinite, — and all these things or conceptions have 
 been placed in opposition to each other and been treated as 
 antitheses, whereas modern science has shown that these 
 oppositions do not exist in reality, and that the separation 
 can only take place in thought. There is no matter with- 
 out force, but neither is there any force without matter; there 
 is no mind without matter, but neither is there any matter 
 
VALUE OF MATTER. 
 
 57 
 
 without mind ; there is no nature without arrangement, but 
 there is also no arrangement without nature ; there is no 
 earth without heaven, but neither is there a heaven without 
 earth ; there is no time without eternity ; and there is no 
 eternity without time ; there is no finite without infinite, 
 neither is there an infinite without a finite. 
 
 “ Natur ist weder Kern noch Schale, 
 
 Alles ist sie mit Einemmale.” 
 
 (“ Nature is neither kernel nor shell, but is both at the 
 same time.”) — Goethe. 
 
 Science is not idealistic, nor spirtualistic, nor material- 
 istic, but simply natural ; she seeks to learn everywhere facts 
 and their logical corollaries, without doing homage in 
 advance to a system in this or in that direction. Systems 
 can generally include not the whole , but only half the truth, 
 and offer to investigation certain hard and fast lines which, 
 in its irresistible progress, it is compelled, or may be com- 
 pelled, to overstep every moment. “ Science,” says Grove 
 ‘‘should have neither desires nor prejudices; truth should 
 be her sole aim.” 
 
Motion. 
 
 Tldvra f)ti (All things flow.) — H eraklitus ok Ephesus. 
 
 Wherever our eyes dwell on the universe, whithersoever we are carried in the 
 flight of thought, everywhere we find motion.— K. Zittei.. 
 
 AH is dependent on Matter and Motion. — P. A. Secchi. 
 
 Matter possesses one inherent quality; it is continual activity. — Gerhardt. 
 
 To explain an appearance is to lead it back to motion and demonstrate the con- 
 ditions of motion.— Bellingshausen. 
 
 O NE of the strongest supports of the natural order of 
 the universe and of a unified view thereof, is the 
 knowledge that motion is a necessary and indispen- 
 sable attribute of matter and of the whole organic and 
 inorganic world. Physical astronomy teaches us with ab- 
 solute certainty that the giant forms of the skies are in a 
 state of constant change in shape and condition or consti- 
 tution, like the forms of organic life on our earth ; and 
 apparently the ceaseless movements which they execute 
 among and against one another, controlled by the law of 
 gravitation or attraction, are closely similar to those per- 
 formed under gravity by the atoms and molecules, the 
 finest constituent parts of each body or material form. 
 For if, as Secchi says, the infinitely great is the province 
 of the astronomer, while that which we may call the infi- 
 nitely minute is the realm of the physicist and of the 
 chemist, yet there is no distinction between the fundamental 
 laws of mechanics which rule over each of these extremes. 
 According to the same scientist, physicists to-day hold that 
 motion is as indestructible as matter ; and if people have 
 gradually arrived at the conviction that no atom of matter 
 
 ( 58 ) 
 
MOTION. 
 
 59 
 
 is ever annihilated, he thinks they will also more and more 
 recognize the indestructibility of motion as a fundamental 
 axiom. In fact the English physicist Grove, in the before- 
 cited work, (p. 16), proves conclusively that motion is the 
 most evident state of activity or energy of matter, and that 
 “ of absolute rest Nature gives us no evidence ; all matter, 
 as far as we can ascertain, is ever in movement, not merely 
 in masses, as with the planetary spheres, but also mole- 
 cularly or throughout its most intimate structure : thus 
 every alteration of temperature produces a molecular 
 change throughout the whole substance heated or cooled ; 
 slow chemical or electrical actions, actions of light or invis- 
 ible radiant forces are always at play, so that as a fact we 
 cannot predicate of any portion of matter that it is abso- 
 lutely at rest.” The final result of his investigations is 
 given by this scientist as that all the conditions of matter 
 described by him are modes of motion ; or that all these 
 conditions ‘‘are only matter moved or molecularly agitated 
 in certain definite directions.” (p. 169.) 
 
 Hence motion must be regarded as an eternal and in- 
 separable property or as a necessary condition of matter. 
 Matter without motion exists no more than matter with- 
 out force ; motion without matter exists as little as force 
 without matter. Nor can motion be deduced from any 
 force, for it is the very essence of force itself, and can 
 therefore have no origin, but must be eternal and in all 
 places. Motion is everywhere in the universe, in the 
 small as in the great. The conception of dead or motion- 
 less matter is utterly untenable; it exists only theoretically 
 or as an abstraction, and not in reality, like that of forceless 
 matter. F Engels ( Streitschrift gegen Diihring , p. 40) 
 speaks of a motionless condition of matter as “ one of the 
 shallowest and most absurd conceptions, a mere phantasm 
 of a heated brain.” According to him motion is the mode 
 of existence of matter. Never and nowhere has there been 
 matter without motion, nor can there exist any. Motion 
 in the universal space, mechanical motion of smaller masses 
 
6o 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 in the individual spheres, molecular vibration as heat or as 
 electrical or magnetic action, chemical decomposition and 
 composition, organic life — each single atom of matter in 
 the world is in one or other of these modes of motion, or 
 in many of them at the same time, at any given moment. 
 All rest, all equilibrium is but comparative and has only a 
 meaning as a transference from this or that definite mode 
 of motion. For instance, a body may be at rest mechani- 
 cally, i. e. in mechanical equilibrium on the earth ; but this 
 does not prevent it from sharing in the motion of the earth 
 as in that of the whole solar system, neither does it prevent 
 its smallest physical particles from completing the vibra- 
 tions necessitated by its temperature, or its material atoms 
 from undergoing chemical change. Matter without motion 
 is as impossible as motion without matter ; and motion is 
 therefore as uncreatable and indestructible as matter itself. 
 
 In fact we are incapable, either logically or empirically, 
 of framing a conception of motionless matter, or of a mo- 
 tionless body. When for instance a solid or heavy body, 
 supported on a stand, continues in apparent rest, this rest 
 is in fact but apparent, being in reality only an arrested 
 or suspended motion, in which two equal and opposite 
 motions balance each other. By removing the check the 
 latent force can at any moment be re-transformed into 
 dynamic force or work. The same holds good of an ex- 
 tended spring or of compressed air, etc. Rest must then 
 be conceived not as incapacity for motion, but only as the 
 resistance between two equal and opposite motions. And 
 then the apparently inert body is not completely at rest, 
 but only appears to be so in relation to its immediate sur- 
 roundings. For it not only revolves with the earth on its 
 axis, but also with it in its revolution round the sun, and 
 with the latter again round the great central sun or the 
 great centre of the milky way. “ Everything,” says 
 IV. Mayer ( Kosmographisch.es Skizzenbuch, p. 217), is en- 
 gaged in motion with respect to its surroundings. Every- 
 thing moves with the surface round the centre of the globe, 
 
MOTION. 
 
 6l 
 
 with this round the sun, which ceaselessly whirls with us 
 through space, and the mind becomes dizzy when it seeks 
 to unravel this Gordian knot of interwhirling motions.” 
 But even if this movement of our earth through space 
 did not exist, the apparently inert body would yet appear to 
 move, inasmuch as it takes part in the never-ceasing oscil- 
 lations or vibrations of the interior and of the surface of the 
 earth, which become apparent to our senses from time to 
 time in stronger and more striking fashion as earthquakes, 
 volcanic eruptions, landslides, overthrows of mountains, 
 emergings of islands, etc. The firm earth resting on such 
 apparently unshakable foundations is in reality anything 
 but stable and immovable ; it is only owing to the imper- 
 fection of our means of observation or perception that we 
 are not permanently conscious of these never-resting 
 movements, nor in a position to control them. On the 
 other hand the observations and investigations of geolo- 
 gians have shown beyond doubt that a continuous slow ele- 
 vation of one, and a corresponding subsidence of another 
 tract of land occur, and that so far as we know, there is no 
 point of the surface nor of the interior of the earth which 
 can be regarded as being in a state of absolute rest. The 
 lightest pulsation of the sea or the softest breath of wind is 
 enough to impart vibrations to the surface of the globe and 
 the objects thereupon. ‘‘As we,” relates W. Meyer {loc. 
 cit.') ‘‘were assisting Prof. Plantamour in the autumn of 
 1877 at the Geneva Observatory in watching certain lately 
 discovered movements which the point of support of a pen- 
 dulum made with the pendulum itself, thereby influencing 
 its period of vibration, we observed by a three-thousand- 
 fold linear increase the very slightest breeze, which, press- 
 ing against the strong sandstone wall of the low building 
 from outside, set the wall vibrating.” 
 
 But even if these cosmical and telluric influences, which 
 impart some of the motions induced by them to apparently 
 resting bodies, did not exist, they could not by any means 
 be regarded as motionless, for their interiors are continually 
 
62 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 disturbed by a number of most powerful motions. For the 
 most solid body owes its condition only to the mutual attrac- 
 tive force of its minutest particles, which continually oscil- 
 late or swing round the so-called centre of gravity, and 
 without which it would at once fall to pieces. That these 
 particles are never able to attain a condition of relative rest 
 is proved by the universally present force of heat, which is 
 known to be nothing more than a mode of motion and 
 which, since all bodies without exception contain heat, 
 keeps these smallest particles or molecules in a state of 
 continual movement. With each change of temperature, 
 however slight, is connected an internal motion ; and this 
 influence is sufficient to keep the whole of nature and all 
 its substances and forces in ceaseless motion and change. 
 Heat must indeed be regarded as the sole moving principle 
 in the constant rotation of energies, without the presence 
 of which a state of equilibrium would long since have been 
 reached and therewith universal rigidity have set in. “All 
 the substances in nature,’’ says Clausius in an excellent 
 treatise on the nature of heat, “ even when they appear to 
 be perfectly at rest, are engaged in the most rapid internal 
 movement, and these movements in the bodies are trans- 
 mitted to the surrounding ether, so that all space is contin- 
 ually traversed in every possible direction by wavelike 
 vibrations, and the perception of the vibrations is what we 
 term heat.” “ Heat and motion,” says Du Prcl, “ are the 
 two factors out of which we must construct the laws of the 
 cosmos.’ ’ 
 
 But even this is not all ; for apart from heat-motions 
 every body, however solid, undergoes a constant, though 
 often slow and unnoticeable change, or transposition of its 
 particles and its shape. Even the hardest and most solid 
 body of stone, which serves as an example of rigidity and 
 immutability, forms no exception to this rule, and is, as 
 the researches of chemical geology have shown, in a state 
 of constant inward change and transmutation, both on the 
 chemical and on the physical side. As in the organic, so 
 
MOTION. 
 
 63 
 
 also in the inorganic world a constant change of matter 
 takes place, and this may be best observed in the neigh- 
 borhood of mineral springs. For it is chiefly water — es- 
 pecially when it is in a heated and corbonate laden state — 
 which initiates and assists each change, and it does so with 
 unceasing and uninterrupted efficiency. After water it is 
 the heat of the interior of the earth and mechanical pres- 
 sure, and on its surface the influence of the atmosphere, 
 which co-operate in a constant chemical and physical alter- 
 ation and transmutation of the constituent particles of our 
 ancient planet. 
 
 This transmutation obviously occurs most actively and 
 most energetically in the organic world, the very existence 
 of which depends thereupon. Even the province of latent 
 or hidden activity is no exception to this, and if our senses 
 or our means of observation were sufficiently keen, we 
 should be able to observe in this also a constant change of 
 composition and of form, while the external appearance 
 deludes us with the image of absolute rest. “Nothing,” 
 concludes Hanste.in from his researches on protoplasm, the 
 primitive form of organic life (Heidelberg 1880) ‘ ‘ is constant 
 in shape and mass. Even the outline and the minute con- 
 struction of the nucleus or seed, which perhaps are compar- 
 atively the most constant in the cell, do not remain the 
 same. Each moment the parts may alter in number and in 
 form, the body may change its structure or position, each 
 molecular group may now firmly hold together, now freely 
 dissociate itself. Yet are the form and individuality of the 
 whole thing steadily preserved. ‘ Everything escapes and 
 nothing subsists.’ ” 
 
 In a former chapter we dealt fully with the law of the 
 conservation or indestructibility of force, in order to show 
 that no kind of motion can originate nor disappear, and 
 that motion must therefore be regarded as the primal con- 
 dition or in some measure as the soul of matter. Before 
 this law was known, it might well appear to the laity in 
 many instances that a movement disappeared or was de- 
 
6 4 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 stroyed without leaving anything behind it, i. c. that it had 
 passed into a condition of rest. This mistake is no longer 
 possible, and this belief, founded on mere outward appear- 
 ance, has been discovered to be one of the most radical 
 errors which has ever ruled in science. Motion is as 
 indestructible, as incapable of annihilation as force and 
 matter ; it assumes other forms, other appearances, of 
 which the new forms are equivalent to those from which 
 they have arisen. It follows hence with absolute certainty 
 that motion is as eternal and uncreatable, or as beginning- 
 less, endless and originless as force or matter. Conserva- 
 tion of force, conservation of matter, ceaseless change of 
 motion, work and velocity — such is the general result of 
 our present physical science. So well had the ancient 
 natural philosopher Oken understood this — although he 
 lacked the positive knowledge of the present day, — that 
 he made this remark: “Motion is from eternity;’’ and 
 on the same grounds the philosopher Descartes was led to 
 say : “ Give me matter and motion, and out of them I will 
 build the universe.’ ’ The well-known physical law of the 
 “ inertia of matter ’’ does not mean that matter is inert in 
 itself, but only that rest or motion once begun cannot of 
 itself change into its opposite, without being counteracted 
 by some other force or motion. Rest is therefore not the 
 absence of motion, but the resistance between two motions. 
 Absolute rest does not exist ; it is, as W. Meyer says, an 
 exquisite dream, a phantom of hope which the world 
 knows not, which is without an instance in Nature. Na- 
 ture itself knows no death, but only change ; no destruction, 
 but only the passing over into other forms of motion ; it is 
 an eternally raging whirling sea of motion and of change. 
 
 Ruhe willst Du ? Siehe doch, 
 
 Wie so thoricht Dein Verlangen; 
 
 Der Bewegung hartes Joch 
 Halt die ganze Welt gefangen. 
 
 Nirgendwo in dieser Zeit 
 Magst Du jemals Ruhe finden, 
 
MOTION. 
 
 65 
 
 Und vom Fluch der Thatigkeit 
 Kann Dich keine Macht entbinden. 
 
 Ruhe kann es geben nicht 
 Noch im Himmel, noch auf Erden; 
 
 Und aus Tod und Sterben bricht 
 Neues Wachsen, neues Werden. 
 
 Alles Leben der Natur 
 1st ein Meer von Thiitigkeiten ; 
 
 Ohne Rast auf ihrer Spur 
 
 Must Du mit dem Ganzen schreiten. 
 
 Selbst des Grabes dunkles Thor 
 Gibt Dir Ruhe nicht hienieden, 
 
 Und aus Deinem Sarg hervor 
 Sprossen neue Lebensbliithen. 
 
 (“Dost thou ask for rest? See then how foolish is thy 
 desire ; the stern yoke of motion holds in harness the whole 
 universe. Nowhere in this age canst thou ever find rest, 
 and no power can deliver thee from the doom of activity. 
 Rest is not to be found either in heaven or on earth, and 
 from death and dying break forth new growth, new birth. 
 All the life of nature is an ocean of activity ; following on 
 her footsteps without ceasing thou must march forward 
 with the whole. Even the dark portal of death gives thee 
 no rest, and out of thy coffin will spring blossoms of a 
 new life.”) 
 
 The eternity of motion and its necessary existence were 
 laid down as axioms long ago by the most ancient Greek 
 philosophers who lived prior to the Socratic age. Especially 
 did the atomists, Lenkippus and Demokritus and their 
 famous diciples Epikurus and Lucretius, regard it as self- 
 evident that the atoms, out of which proceed all existence, 
 should be considered as having been in motion from all 
 eternity. On the other hand, Anaxagoras (500 B. C.) was 
 the first who divided spirit from matter, and derived motion 
 from the activity of a reasoning ordering spirit (vovr.) He 
 was followed by Plato’s pupil Aristotle, who also held mat- 
 ter to be incapable of self-movement and maintained the 
 
66 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 necessity of the existence of a world-moving spirit or 
 reason, or a primurn ?nobile, not moved by anything else. 
 This opinion, which was thoroughly acceptable to the Chris- 
 tian conception of God, was sustained by the powerful 
 influence of the Aristotelian philosophy down to the times 
 of Descartes and Spinoza. Thus, the great mathematician 
 Newton , the discoverer of the laws of gravitation, considers 
 matter as originating and set in movement by the will of 
 God. Leibnitz (1646-1716,) one of the most comprehensive 
 minds that ever existed, was the first to venture upon stat- 
 ing once more that motion was self-originated. “Every- 
 where,” he says, “there is activity, and I give it a firmer 
 ground than does the ruling philosophy, for I am of opinion 
 that there are no bodies without motion, and no substances 
 without mighty energies.” According to this view, matter 
 is neither dead nor inert, and is not impelled nor driven 
 from outside in some fashion by some dcus ex machina, but 
 has in itself force and resistance. The conception of 
 dead matter is a mere abstraction, answering to nothing 
 real, for matter, as we know experimentally, is everywhere 
 full of life and motion and bears within itself its formative 
 energies. Just the same view relating to matter was 
 maintained by the materialistic philosophers of the eight- 
 eenth century. According to Holbach ( Syst'cme de la 
 Nature') the world is nothing more than matter and 
 motion and an endless concatenation of causes and effect. 
 Everything in the universe is in constant flow and change, 
 and all rest is but apparent. Matter and motion are 
 eternal. Diderot and his successors held the same opinions. 
 
 And all this is entirely borne out by modern science. 
 The investigation of motion is her peculiar task, and her 
 province embraces everything that may be traced back to 
 motion. Matter in motion or capable of motion is or must 
 be her first and last word. “Eternal motion in infinitely 
 manifold forms,” says L. K. Popow “grouping itself to- 
 gether and dissociating itself, but never wholly disappear- 
 ing — -that is the nature of the cosmos as a whole.” 
 
Form. 
 
 The mass of living things does not present itself to us as the carrying-out of a 
 reasoned, designed and followed plan, but as a historical result; that is, as 
 the continually modified outcome of a number of causes which have acted 
 successively, and in which there is a cause for each accident and each 
 irregularity — the plan has no existence save in appearance. Forces necessa- 
 rily work blindly, and existence arises from their co-operation. If any one 
 imagines that nature works on a serial plan, he will find himself mistaken. 
 The series is a result, not a thought, not a design of nature : it is nature itself. 
 — It is however, perfectly obvious that if the forces of the whole universe 
 constantly act uniformly upon our globe, their work must form a complete 
 and perfectly graduated series — Jouvencel. 
 
 This formative law is and remains a purely teleological, incomprehensible, im- 
 material principle, in its essence identical with vital force. — Haeckel. 
 
 Nature is generally more simple than our conception thereof ; we begin with very 
 complicated theories and end with the most simple. — Du Prel. 
 
 T HE idea of form can no more be separated from that 
 of matter than can those of force or of movement be 
 separated from it. A shapeless matter is a nonentity, 
 neither logically conceivable nor empirically present in 
 nature. Let anyone think of matter as he will, he can only 
 think of it under some form, even if it be an embryological 
 or incomplete one ; and experience shows that even that 
 chaotic mass of matter or primal world-mist, which must 
 be regarded as the embryo of future worlds and solar sys- 
 tems, appears to the observer under the most varied forms. 
 Form however did not spring from matter, as Minerva did 
 from the head of Jove, but in the perfection in which we 
 now see it is the result of slow and laborious evolution, 
 which took millions upon millions of years in the doing. 
 And indeed this evolution proceeded in such fashion that 
 no doubt remains that we cannot speak even in the very 
 
 (67) 
 
68 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 widest sense of a preconceived plan or a preordained 
 formal order, but that all militates most emphatically in 
 favor of Nature’s own action in the moulding of her form 
 without any previous design. But since this action had 
 occasion ever to develop itself under external circumstances 
 that were slowly and gradually changing in every direction 
 in a uniform manner and without interruption, it is obvious 
 that an apparent order and an apparent plan should have 
 arisen ; that is to say, that a perfectly graduated series of 
 more and more perfect forms should have developed. Had 
 these forms been in any way imposed upon nature from 
 without or from above, or were they — to say the least — 
 the outcome of preconceived ideas or of firmly-grounded 
 principles, then would the processes be wholly incompre- 
 hensible by which were shaped, step by step, the forms of 
 the universe, or of the different solar and planet systems, 
 or of our earth with its living organic or inorganic forma- 
 tions. In all these formations do we behold so much in the 
 shape of accident, irregularity, imperfection and depen- 
 dence on changing circumstances or conditions that the 
 theory of a pre-ordained formal arrangement is met by 
 insuperable difficulties. On the other hand, the endless 
 astonishing variety of formations in nature, in which an 
 absolute repetition is never found, is the best proof of the 
 eternal internecine conflict in matter, evoked by the conflict 
 of the forces at work therein. Let anyone study the won- 
 derful and beautiful forms of snowflakes or snow-stars fall- 
 ing to the ground on a cold winter’s day, and he can con- 
 vince himself that one day the forms are quite different 
 from those of the day before or of the day after, although 
 the conditions may differ but in the very smallest degree. 
 Nevertheless this minute difference has sufficed to evolve 
 these very different forms ; it shows that, as Cams Sterne 
 (, Sein und Werden) says, ‘ ‘ each of these fugitive forms is 
 the exact expression of a special complex relation between 
 the moisture, motion, pressure, temperature, rarity, elec- 
 trical tension and chemical composition of the air that pre* 
 
FORM. 
 
 69 
 
 vailed during their formation. With a many-sidedness of 
 ideas, which anyone engaged in the drawing of patterns 
 and designs for fabrics might envy, the intrinsic faculties 
 of the simplest and most indifferent compounds we know 
 of show themselves thus in opposition to the moulding 
 influences of the outer world.” 
 
 Still more does the gradual evolution of the organic 
 world prove most conclusively — since herein the strife of 
 forms in nature has reached its highest point — that form is 
 nothing more than the necessary result of material actions 
 and counteractions. Slowly and only with the help of an 
 almost unending series of years have these organic forms 
 attained their present perfection and variety, and now re- 
 veal to us in this fashion all imaginable varieties and 
 transitions, and a ceaseless interchange of form and mode 
 of living, according to the variations of the external and in- 
 ternal influences under which they lived or were constrained 
 to live. Only through countless transitions and transfor- 
 mations could they evolve the vegetable and animal worlds 
 from the scantiest and most imperfect beginnings up to the 
 present wealth of forms, and this we shall show and illus- 
 trate more fully in a later chapter. None of these forms, 
 whether they belong to our own age or to prehistoric ages, 
 manifest in any one instance fixed character, which they 
 preserve unchanged as a distinct type throughout varying 
 external circumstances. On the contrary ; everywhere this 
 type is easily changed, and there is no type of any organic 
 group of which there cannot be found the most striking 
 exceptions and variations. Indeed, by virtue of the proofs 
 yielded by the theory of evolution, there can be no doubt, 
 that the types, or organic phyla, which, at their furthest 
 points, appear most severed from each other and of the 
 most diverse kind, such as the birds and reptiles or the 
 fishes and the higher Rotifera, are closely connected at their 
 points of origin, and that everywhere a higher type can be 
 educed from a lower, and a lower from one still further 
 beneath it. All this shows that form is not a firmly fixed 
 
7 o 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 nor a pre-ordained type, but is more or less accidental, 
 that it is not original but proceeding from gradual amend- 
 ment, not essential but superficial, and dependent upon 
 circumstances without which a material entity cannot be 
 conceived. 
 
 A yet stronger argument in favor of this theory is found 
 in the single fact that — as has been proved beyond doubt 
 by modern biological science — the whole range of the 
 organic world from the lowest to the highest, from the 
 simplest to the most complex forms, has been made up of a 
 single and very simple form-element and from its products, 
 the cell , and that this simple form, which consists of enclo- 
 sure, contents, and nucleus, arises again from a yet simpler 
 original compound of matter, viz. the protoplasm, or forma- 
 tive matter. This protoplasm or living matter, the re- 
 markable vital properties of which are due to the peculiar 
 chemical and physical properties of the carbon it encloses, 
 and of its compounds, presents itself in a semi-coagulated, 
 homogeneous form of larger or smaller bodies of albumen, 
 capable of nutrition and reproduction, in which all organic 
 functions are not, as in the higher animals, discharged by 
 special organs, but are the immediate outcome of the un- 
 formed organic material. These forms thus stand on the 
 border-land between organic and inorganic bodies and 
 clearly reveal to us how organic beings are gradually de- 
 veloped out of more or less formless compounds of matter, 
 through influences and circumstances which will be more 
 fully investigated in a later chapter. 
 
 * What the cell is to the organic, the crystal is to the in- 
 organic world, although we must not allow ourselves to be 
 led away into the false idea that the two kingdoms can be 
 sharply divided off by this difference of shape, and that 
 they can be separately built up on these foundations of 
 completely distinct forms. For as the cell springs from 
 the protoplasm, so does the crystal form itself out of the 
 shapeless mother-ley or out of previously amorphous, i. e. 
 formless bodies by mere re-arrangement of atoms, and, in 
 
FORM. 
 
 71 
 
 doing so, manifests very striking signs of an inner life, 
 which do not allow us to look on it as a mere aggrega- 
 tion of lifeless matter, but show manifold resemblances to 
 the internal processes of plant and animal life. In point of 
 fact, the remarkable proteid or albuminoid crystals, discover- 
 ed by Reichert in 1849, or Ndgeli's so-called “crystalloids,” 
 which behave exactly like organic bodies and exhibit all 
 the peculiar properties of protoplasm, practically fills up 
 the apparent gulf between cell and crystal or between the 
 inorganic world and the organized cellular formations of 
 the plant and animal worlds. In fact, a crystalloid can 
 only be regarded as a crystallized cell or as a cell-like 
 crystal ; we are constrained to agree with Nageli when, 
 basing his opinion on such facts, he declares that the dif- 
 ference between organic and inorganic is no other than 
 that which exists between the simple and the complex. 
 
 Under such circumstances it cannot surprise us to find 
 that the lowest living things, which stand on the lowest 
 steps of organic existence midway between plants and ani- 
 mals, the so-called protista or primitive life-forms, manifest 
 in their various shapes a startling approach to the inorganic 
 world, and in contradistinction from the more highly de- 
 veloped plants and animals, show mathematical outlines 
 most closely resembling crystals and crystalline forms. 
 “ If,” says Haeckel, ( The Realm of the Protista , pp. 38 
 and 46), ‘‘the formative power of the formless protoplasm 
 calls forth our highest admiration among the remarkable 
 Polythalamia, this is yet increased when we turn to the 
 nearly allied Radiolaria. In these most interesting primal 
 beings we meet with the greatest variety of beautiful and 
 strange forms that can be found in the organic world. All 
 possible types which could be placed in a promorphological 
 system are found embodied in these.” — “ We have as yet 
 no conception of the significance of these very varied, 
 strange and exquisite forms, nor of the way in which they 
 are shaped by the formless protoplasm of the Radiolaria.” 
 
 From this common root of the plant, animal, and mineral 
 
72 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 realms that whole rich world of forms in nature with which 
 we are surrounded to-day, has gradually developed by slow 
 differentiation and improvement. “Just as with crystals,” 
 says Jouvc 7 icel (. History of Creation , II, p. 308) “each 
 tetrahedral and prismatic type is capable of passing by con- 
 secutive modifications into ever more complex forms, so 
 were the earliest primeval forms of life capable of taking on 
 ever more complex forms by consecutive modifications. 
 But as among crystals all forms, even the most complex, 
 of any given type, are obtained by a very simple process of 
 modification, viz. the formation of new faces by a con- 
 secutive deposition of new molecules — so in the case of the 
 living thing even the most complex forms can be evolved 
 from a given type by a very simple process of modification, 
 which consists in thei formation of new parts by a con- 
 secutive addition of new cells.” 
 
 We therefore require no mysterious “type-creating 
 power,” no peculiar law of formation, no pre-ordained 
 scheme of thought to account for the existence of form, 
 but only a simple contemplation of nature as she is. Form 
 is not a principle but a result ; it is not the execution of a 
 predesigned plan, but the necessary product of the interac- 
 tion of a large number of causes, contingencies or energies, 
 which, blind and unconscious in themselves, yet working 
 on everywhere and at all times without cessation, cannot 
 but produce an apparently perfect and graduated order and 
 succession. When the ancient philosophers of Hindustan 
 and Greece could not reconcile the opposition between 
 matter and form and sought, now to get out of the difficulty 
 by the conception of an eternal form-design of matter, now 
 by setting form against matter as the higher and ruling 
 principle, now by treating both on terms of equality, but 
 still as antitheses, it was scarcely possible to do otherwise 
 at a time when the principles of the theory of evolution had 
 barely dawned upon the human mind. To-day, when we 
 are to some extent in a position to follow up the history of 
 the endless events lying behind us, in ascending to thf 
 
FORM. 
 
 73 
 
 world-embryo of primal mist, it should be recognized that 
 to exaggerate the importance of form as is still done by 
 many scientists, is as much an error as to exaggerate the 
 importance of matter. The former leads to Idealism, the 
 latter to Materialism ; but the conception that form and 
 matter are as indivisible as matter and force or as matter 
 and motion can only lead to that unified conception of 
 the world, based on the recognition of a natural and self- 
 existent order of things, which, taking its stand on the 
 progress of science, is destined to become, more and more 
 the common creed of all men of culture. 
 
Immutability of Natural Laws. 
 
 The government of the universe should not be regarded as the ordainmentof the 
 world-order by an extramundane intelligence, but rather as the immanent 
 intelligence of cosmic energies and their proportions. — Strauss. 
 
 The energies working in matter work, so far as our observation extends, accord- 
 ing to immutable laws, which never vary, but which always have been and 
 always will be valid.— Th. Moldenhaur. 
 
 If modern sceince denies miracles, it is only to reveal to us a world which is in 
 itself an everlasting miracle.— A. Langel. 
 
 T HE laws by which Nature works and acts in her endless 
 movement, in her ceaseless being and becoming, in 
 building-up and destroying, are not, as the child like 
 phantasy of nations used to imagine them in ancient times 
 and as weak and uncultivated minds still believe at this day, 
 laid down and dictated to Nature by some lawgiver or 
 lawgivers standing outside or above Nature, but are the 
 natural and necessary expression of the interaction of all 
 physical forces. By analogy with human activity and con- 
 ditions the inaccurate and misleading name of “law” has 
 been employed to express this fact. But this analogy is in- 
 applicable, because the phenomena or facts of Nature, inter- 
 linked by absolute necessity, have nothing in common with 
 the arbitrary commands of a human lawgiver. The law of 
 Nature does not exist beside nor outside matter or Nature, 
 but is only, as stated above, an expression for the proper- 
 ties or motions indissolubly united with it. While human 
 laws necessarily presuppose a lawgiver or a controlling will, 
 be it that of a single ruler or that of the community at large, 
 it is not so in the case of natural laws, which are not 
 imposed upon matter or upon Nature, but are inseparable 
 from and identical with her very self. 
 
 (74) 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 75 
 
 Hence it follows — as has been proved beyond doubt by 
 experience — that natural laws are immutable, that is to 
 say, that they are inaccessible to caprice or to outside in- 
 fluence, and that they must be regarded as being as eternal 
 as matter and as Nature itself. Nothing can happen in the 
 universe, be it the greatest or the least of things, except by 
 the influence and as the result of natural laws. Rigid in- 
 exorable necessity rules the whole and the course of Nature. 
 “ Natural law,” says Moleschott , “is the most stringent ex- 
 pression of necessity.” There is neither exception nor 
 limitation here and no conceivable power is able to escape 
 from this necessity. At all times and for evermore, a stone 
 which is upheld by no support falls towards the centre of 
 the earth ; never has a command been given, nor ever will 
 such be given, bidding the sun stand still in heaven. The 
 experience of more than a thousand years has pressed on 
 observers the conviction of the immutability of natural law’s 
 with ever increasing and at last with such absolute certainty, 
 that not the least doubt can remain as to this great truth. 
 Inch by inch has science, in seeking after light, won their 
 positions from the ancient childish creed of the w r orld, — 
 wrested from the hands of the gods their thunder and light- 
 ning and the darkening of the stars, and has subdued under 
 the controlling fingers of man the mighty forces of the old- 
 world Titans. All that seemed incomprehensible, miracu- 
 lous, caused by a supernatural powder, how quickly and how 
 easily has the torch of investigation shown it to be the out- 
 come of hitherto unknown or imperfectly estimated natural 
 forces ; how swiftly did the might of the spirits and the 
 gods melt away beneath the hands of science ! Supersti- 
 tion must fall before cultured reason and knowledge must 
 step into its place. With the most absolute truth and wfith 
 the greatest scientific certainty can we say at this day : 
 There is nothing miraculous in the world ; everything that 
 happens, has happened and shall happen, happens, has 
 happened and shall happen naturally; that is to say, in 
 a manner that rests exclusively on the regular working 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 76 
 
 together or interaction of materials that have existed from 
 all eternity and of the natural forces united with them. No 
 revolution of earth or sky, however violent, could have 
 taken place in any other way ; no mighty hand, reaching 
 down from the ether, raised up the mountains and limited 
 the seas, nor traced their orbits for the suns and planets, 
 nor created animals and men after its own whim and 
 pleasure ; but all this was done by the very same forces 
 which at this day still make seas and mountains, regulate 
 the course of the worlds and bring forth living things ; and 
 all this took place as the expression of the most stringent 
 necessity. Where fire and water meet, there vapor must 
 arise and exert its irresistible force on its surroundings. 
 Where a grain of corn falls on the ground, there it must 
 grow. Where the lightning is attracted there it must 
 strike. Where two bodies with chemical affinity meet un- 
 der certain conditions there they must combine, and under 
 other conditions they must separate. When an organism 
 suffers an incurable injury it must perish, and so on. Can 
 there be any doubt about these truths? No one who has 
 studied nature and his own surroundings even in most su- 
 perficial fashion, and who knows the merest outlines of the 
 acquisitions of natural science, can help becoming con- 
 vinced of the necessity and immutability of the laws of 
 Nature. 
 
 “Everywhere,” says G. H. Schneider ( Der thierische 
 Wille, p. 137 et seq.P) “we observe only immutable natural 
 laws and blindly working causes. Hence the ghost of a 
 personal, universal spirit, interfering in natural processes, 
 has long been banished from astronomy, physics and chemis- 
 try ; no chemist now thinks of ascribing the union of two 
 elements to the will of a god, and no scientist now sees the 
 manifestation of the divine will in any phenomenon of 
 attraction or friction. The ignorant layman may believe in 
 a personal god ; but the scientist or the educated layman, 
 who is able to grasp the fact of adaptation without assuming 
 the will of a personal god, would place his reason below 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 77 
 
 that of the simplest peasant if he believed in such a one 
 without foundation. . . . Belief in God is therefore almost 
 confined at the present time to those so-called learned men 
 who know scarcely anything about natural processes, and 
 who are therefore compelled to fall back on the will of a 
 personal god' for the explanation of the simplest physical 
 processes.” etc. 
 
 As with the doings of nature so is it also with the doings 
 of man, which arise from natural causes and influences, and 
 which similarly obey that inexorable regularity which rules 
 throughout all existence and which admits of no exception. 
 It lies in the nature of each individual being that it should 
 begin, exist and perish, and no living thing has ever yet 
 formed an exception to this rule. Death is the surest 
 calculation that can be made, and is the inevitable fate or 
 end of every individual existence. His hand is stayed by 
 no mother’s prayer, by no wife’s tear, by no man’s wrath ; 
 he snatches the blooming child from the arms of the des- 
 pairing mother or the tender parent from the side of the 
 helpless child ; he reaps terrible harvests and incessantly 
 goes on heaping up hecatombs of perished lives, the 
 destruction of which brings pain and anguish, trouble and 
 poverty on the bereaved. “The laws of Nature,” says 
 Vogt , “ are rude unbending forces, which know nothing of 
 morality nor of compassion.” “Nature,” says Die Prel, 
 “is neither cruel nor loving, neither tender nor hard-hearted; 
 she merely acts according to laws, and in the whole uni- 
 verse notan atom moves except by law.” No power in 
 the Universe quells the wrath of the elements, contending 
 against each other and against men with destructive violence; 
 no command from on high checks the devastating fury of 
 storm, water or burning sun ; no call wakes the dead from 
 their sleep ; no angel lets the prisoner out of his dun- 
 geon ; no hand stretched out from the clouds reaches bread 
 to the hungry nor drink to the thirsty ; no sign from heaven 
 grants supernatural knowledge ; no light from above gives 
 comfort or solace to the despairing soul. “ Nature,” says 
 
78 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Feuerbach, “answers neither the questions nor the plaints 
 of man ; she inexorably flings him back upon himself.” And 
 even Luther found himself compelled to say in his ingenu- 
 ous way : “For we see by experience that God does not 
 take care of this temporal life.” The same thought is 
 expressed by Leopardi, the famous poet of Pessimism, in 
 the following words ; “ Yet O Nature, as I understand the 
 world, thou troublest not thyself in thy courses over our 
 good nor over our ill.” 
 
 We know of no “spirit that is independent of natural 
 forces in its manifestations,” as Liebig terms it; for never 
 has an unprejudiced and scientifically trained observer 
 discovered any such manifestations. And how could it be 
 otherwise ? How would it be possible that the unchange- 
 able order and regularity in which all things move could 
 ever have been destroyed, without making an irreparable 
 rent in the Universe, without handing over ourselves and 
 the world at large to an unfathomable and unspeakable arbi- 
 trary will, and without making all human science appear as 
 mere childish drivelling, all earthly effort as idle toil or as 
 a useless striving after something that in a higher order of 
 things would have been obtained long ago ? Above all, 
 what object or significance could there be in this whole 
 world, regularly appointed and developed as it is, if it were 
 under the arbitrary influence of a higher power which 
 could at any moment suspend or break through its laws or 
 institutions at its own pleasure ? 
 
 Such exceptions to the rule, such deviations from the 
 normal order of things have been called miracles , and plenty 
 of them have been put forward in all ages. Their origin 
 is due partly to intentional fraud, partly to superstitious 
 ignorance and to that strange longing for the wonderful 
 and supernatural which seems indelibly wrought into human 
 nature. How plainly soever the facts may speak, it is 
 difficult for man to persuade himself that he is everywhere 
 and under all circumstances surrounded by a network of 
 uninfringible laws. The idea produces a feeling of op- 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 79 
 
 pression within him, and he does not resign the hope of 
 discovering some thing that might break through this 
 network. The younger and the more uncivilized and 
 uneducated the human race, the greater play must this 
 desire, have had and the more numerous must have been 
 the miracles wrought ; for as Radenhausen says : ‘ ‘ the more 
 ignorant man is, the more miracles must there be for him.” 
 Even at this day, among savage and ignorant nations and 
 among the uneducated generally, there is no lack of miracles, 
 and there remains rampant a belief in goblins and diablerie 
 and in certain higher influences mocking the laws of nature; 
 even the shocking belief in witches and the devil, under 
 whose poisonous breath our unhappy deluded race had to 
 suffer heart-breaking tortures for such a length of time, still 
 prevails among the lower classes of our society, despite its 
 vaunted high degree of civilization — not to mention the 
 miracles and apparitions to which the priests treat the 
 unthinking multitude every now and then in various places 
 and which prove such great and highly remunerative 
 attractions. It would be an insult t c the intelligence of our 
 readers, were we to further expatiate on the physical 
 impossibility of miracles. No educated man who has ac- 
 quired but the most superficial knowledge of nature, still 
 less a man proficient in science, can at this day believe in a 
 miracle or in the possibility of anything happening in 
 opposition to the recognized laws of Nature. We only 
 consider it most remarkable that a man possessed of so 
 much acumen and of such a clear mind as Ludwig Feuer- 
 bach , should deem it necessary to use all his dialectic 
 power to upset the Christian miracles. Where is the founder 
 of a religion who did not think it incumbent on him to usher 
 it into the world with a flourish of miracles? And did not in 
 each instance the result show that he was right? What 
 prophet, what saint has not worked miracles? What seeker 
 after miracles does not even at this day find plenty of pabu- 
 lum to satisfy his craving with ? And do not they also 
 belong to the miraculous, those talking and dancing tables, 
 
8o 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 those drum-beating spirits, those spiritualistic mediums and 
 those beings of four-dimensions, who rejoice in so large a 
 following and have inveigled even men of a serious turn of 
 mind and men of learning into the meshes of their folly? 
 In the eyes of science all miracles are alike, they are the 
 outcome of an ill-regulated fancy, combined with an utter 
 ignorance of the laws of Nature. 
 
 “ There are no miracles in Nature,” says the famous 
 Systbne de la Nature , ‘‘except for those who have not 
 sufficiently studied her.” 
 
 ‘‘Every miracle,” says Cotta , ‘‘if it really took place, 
 would lead to the conviction that Creation is unworthy of 
 the reverence with which we all regard it ; and were there 
 any, mystics would have to infer from the imperfection of 
 the things created, that the creator also is imperfect.” 
 
 ‘‘Miracles,” says Giebel , ‘‘are the greatest monsters in 
 the sphere of natural science, in which no blind faith holds 
 good, but only the knowledge acquired by personal con- 
 viction.” 
 
 And Jouvencel, the French savant, says : “ I believe 
 neither in chance nor in miracle, but only in phenomena 
 regulated by laws.” 
 
 Would any one have thought it possible for the clergy 
 of a nation so intelligent as the English to have given in 
 the face of the whole world a proof of such crass supersti- 
 tion as they did in their controversy with Lord Palmerston 
 which created quite a sensation at the time ? When they 
 moved the government to have a day of national humilia- 
 tion appointed for the purpose of averting the cholera, the 
 noble Lord answered that the spread of the disease was 
 owing to natural and partially known causes, and could be 
 prevented very much better by sanitary measures than by 
 prayer. For having given this sensible answer, Lord 
 Palmerston was taxed with Atheism, a much more serious 
 charge in England than anywhere else, and the clergy pro- 
 nounced it to be a sin of the deepest dye not to believe that 
 the Almighty could at any moment set aside the laws of 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 8 1 
 
 Nature as he pleased ! Any commentary on this would be 
 superfluous. 
 
 Dogmatic works declare that the view that the world, 
 like a wound-up watch, can go on regularly by itself, is a 
 view unworthy of God ; in their showing, God must be 
 regarded as the constant regulator, who either creates 
 anew or gets the machine over all the hitches it is subject 
 to. On that account, our great master of natural science, 
 A. v. Humboldt , has been censured by some for having 
 represented the cosmos as a complex arrangement of nat- 
 ural laws and not as the product of a creative will. They 
 might as well blame the natural sciences for existing, for 
 not a single author, but science itself has taught us to re- 
 gard the cosmos as a complex arrangement of unchangeable 
 natural laws. 
 
 Whatever theological interest or narrow-minded pedantry 
 can urge in opposition to this, is controverted by the 
 strength of the facts, which in this respect leave no room 
 for any doubt. To be sure, our opponents know how to 
 adduce plenty of facts on their side of the case. If we are 
 to credit the accounts of the Bible, God created the world 
 in six days and according to the contention of theological 
 geologists, has never left off since, calling, ever and anon, 
 new entities into being. To be sure, he once dried up the 
 Red Sea, so that the Jews might pass over it, and in all 
 ages he has frightened people out of their wits with comets 
 and eclipses. The New Testament tells us that he actually 
 clothes the lillies of the field and feeds the birds of the air. 
 But where is the educated person who, at this day, beholds 
 in these occurrences anything more than the results of nat- 
 ural causes and conditions ? and who is ignorant of the 
 fact that neither the lillies of the field nor the birds of the 
 air could exist if the natural conditions of life remained 
 unfulfilled ? And lastly, can it be regarded as a very dig- 
 nified view of the Deity to imagine, as the great Newton 
 thought himself compelled to believe, that God represents 
 an extramundane power or force, which every now and 
 
82 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 then gives the world a push, adjusts a screw or does similar 
 things, like Sam Slick the Yankee clock-mender? The 
 theological theory makes out — and it could not very well 
 do otherwise — that the world was created by God faultless 
 and perfect. How then can it want repairing ? 
 
 It stands to reason, therefore, that the conviction of the 
 immutability of the laws of Nature is the same among all 
 unprejudiced investigators, who only differ in the fashion 
 in which they seek to make this conviction agree with the 
 traditional belief in the existence of a personal omnipotence, 
 or intelligence, or creative energy, or so-called absolute 
 power. Both naturalists and philosophers have tried their 
 hand at it for a long while in many different ways, but ap- 
 parently with the same unsatisfactory result. Indeed, it 
 was scarcely possible for these attempts at reconciling faith 
 and science to prove successful, if carried on scientifically ; 
 for they either contend against facts, or trespass on the 
 province of theology, or entangle themselves in contradic- 
 tions, or shelter themselves behind an impenetrable obscu- 
 rity. Thus, for instance, the famous Oersted , the discoverer 
 of electro-magnetism, says: “The world is governed by 
 an eternal intelligence, which manifests to us its workings 
 as immutable natural laws.” But nobody can comprehend 
 how an eternal and ruling intelligence can be in unison 
 with immutable natural laws. Either the natural laws rule, 
 or the eternal intelligence rules ; working side by side, 
 they would fall to loggerheads at every moment ; the rule 
 of the latter would render the former useless, while the 
 working of immutable natural laws admits of no exception 
 nor of any personal interference, and therefore can never 
 be set down as a system of government rule. On the other 
 hand we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of noting a 
 sentence from the same authority for the benefit of those who 
 hold that this recognition of the working of immutable 
 natural laws must need produce a feeling of alarm and de- 
 pression in man. “By means of this knowledge,” says 
 Oersted , “ the soul obtains internal peace and unison with 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 83 
 
 all Nature and is thereby relieved of that superstitious 
 dread, which has its foundation in the idea that some su- 
 pernatural powers can interfere with the order of the eternal 
 course of Nature.” The same thought is expressed by 
 W. R. Grove as follows : “To the educated man the feel- 
 ing of acquired knowledge yields a higher satisfaction than 
 the love of the miraculous ; ’ ’ similarly by Radenhaicsen : 
 “ Self-reliance must increase with the knowledge that the 
 world is ruled not by capricious, unknown spirits, but 
 by known infrangible laws.”* 
 
 Most signally have those failed who regard the supreme 
 or absolute power as so interwoven with the things of na- 
 ture as to cause everything that happens to take place by 
 his direct influence, though in accordance with settled laws; 
 or in other words, that the world is a state ruled by laws, a 
 kind of constitutional monarchy. The immutability of nat- 
 ural laws is such that in no place and at no time has an ex- 
 
 * Ever since popular works have diffused the results of modern science among 
 classes that had not been previously reached by it, cries of woe and lamentations 
 innumerable have come from all holes and corners, complaining of the “disconso- 
 late nature” of these results, and this wailing has, if it be possible, become even 
 more frenzied since the appearance of the first issue of this book. Complaints of this 
 kind are mostly uttered by ignorant people only. The exceptionless regularity 
 which rules the World and Nature, and the limits of which cannot be overstepped 
 by any individual, and the consciousness that nothing within us or around us is 
 caprice, but that all is necessity, are on the contrary, calculated to produce in the 
 mind of a rational being a feeling of humility, and at the same time one of repose, 
 self-contentment and self-respect, and to yield an inward strength that does not 
 rest on doubtful fancies, but on certain knowledge of the truth. How beautifully 
 is this sentiment expressed by Virgil, in the famous lines so felicitously rendered 
 by Drydeti : — 
 
 “ Happy the man, who, studying Nature’s laws, 
 
 Through known effects can trace the secret cause — 
 
 His mind, possessing in a quiet state, 
 
 Fearless of fortune and resigned to fate!” 
 
 Any other opinion, which seeks to refer the destiny of man to its relation with 
 an unknown, capriciously acting and ruling Something, degrades him to a mere 
 toy in the hands of unknown forces, to a powerless ignorant slave of an invisible 
 lord. “ Are we but sucking pigs, who are flogged to death with rods for princely 
 tables, that their flesh may taste more savoury?” (Herault in George Buchner's 
 Danton’s Tod .) — “ He who finds this theory of the universe comfortless,” forcibly 
 remarks A. Wiessner (Der wiedcrerstandene Wtinderglaube, Leipzig, 1875,) 
 “ philosophizes with wishes instead of with knowledge.” 
 
8 4 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ception to them occurred, that under no circumstances do 
 they reveal the working of a controlling hand, and that 
 their interaction constantly takes place quite independent 
 of all rules of a superior intelligence, now building up, now 
 destroying, now apparently according to a design and now 
 again quite blindly and in opposition to all laws of morality 
 or reason. 
 
 Some of the facts that are as obvious and as plain as day- 
 light show that no guiding intelligence can be directly at 
 work either in the organic or inorganic formations that are 
 continually renewing themselves upon the earth. There 
 exists in Nature a tendency to form, which is the outcome 
 of a definite formula, and is so blind and so dependent upon 
 casual external circumstances, that it often gives birth to 
 the most senseless and aimless forms, that it is often in- 
 capable of surmounting or conquering the smallest obstacle 
 it meets in its way, and that it frequently obtains the very 
 opposite of the effect which it ought to obtain according to 
 the laws of reason or intelligence. We shall take the op- 
 portunity of adducing an abundance of examples of this in 
 a subsequent chapter, viz. in that on Teleology. It thus 
 happens that the theory alluded to has found the fewest 
 adherents among naturalists, who have daily and hourly 
 opportunities of satisfying themselves of the purely me- 
 chanical action of physical forces. A rather larger number 
 of people have given in their adhesion to a compromise 
 which consists in submitting to the force of facts and ad- 
 mitting that the present play of physical energies is wholly 
 mechanical, utterly independent of any impulse received 
 from without and in no way arbitrary, while contending, 
 on the other hand, that this state of things could not have 
 existed from all eternity, but that a creative power, endow- 
 ed with the highest intelligence, both created matter and 
 imparted to it those forces and laws, binding them up with 
 it by an indissoluble union, according to which it should 
 work and live ; and that, having done all this, the creative 
 power gave to the universe the first impulse to movement 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 85 
 
 and thenceforward subsided into inactivity. ‘ ‘ There are 
 many naturalists, ’ ’ says Rudolf Wagner ( Ueber Wissen 
 und Glauben , 1854,) who believe in an original creation, 
 but who maintain that since the creation the universe has 
 been left to itself and preserved by the excellence of its 
 intrinsic mechanism.”)* In an earlier chapter, we have 
 already expressed at some length our views as to the ten- 
 ability of this theory, and shall have to revert to it again 
 hereafter in dealing with creation in detail. It will there 
 be shown that the traces of a direct creation can nowhere 
 be found among the facts at our command, but that every- 
 thing rather compels us to set aside such an idea and to 
 look upon the eternal changeful play of physical forces 
 alone as the primal cause of all evolution and decay. 
 
 “I am of opinion,” said the famous Kepler long ago, 
 ‘‘that we should try every other method of explanation 
 first, before we take refuge in the admission of creation 
 (that is, in miracle,) for when once miracles are admitted, 
 every scientific explanation is out of the question .” 
 
 It is no part of the object of this work to take much no- 
 tice of those who seek and find in the province of religious 
 faith an explanation of the problem of existence and a sat- 
 isfaction of their moral wants. We are only busying our- 
 selves with that world which is accessible to our means of 
 
 *This view has been gone into at greater length and with more detail by the 
 famous scientist G. A. Him in his interesting little book entitled : La vie future 
 et la sciejice moderne (1882.) He says: “ For the scientist the only necessary act 
 of the creative omnipotence is the creation of the form-producing elements with 
 their properties, and a first compound of these which may have had no re- 
 semblance to those forms now under our eyes. It is the Fiat lux for everything 
 that fills space ; matter, force, life. . . . For the scientist the universe, as it is now 
 before us, is the result of a gradual evolution. The elements that were originally 
 scattered throughout space, have gradually approached each other to build up 
 definite forms ; but the whole universe was virtually in the condition of a primal 
 mass of vapor and has evolved thence according to the definite laws impressed 
 upon the elements. To say that earth, moon, sun and stars were created severally 
 as complete bodies, is as ridiculous in the eyes of a scientific man as if, for ex- 
 ample, one were to say to any one who is not a scientist : ‘ A tooth has been 
 created for your child.’ In a word, for the scientist Creation is reduced to a 
 single act of the creative omnipotence, while it appears to the layman as a series 
 of separate acts ; and a perfect abyss lies between these two views.” 
 
86 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 intelligence, and can find no scientific reasons compelling us 
 to believe that behind this world there is another, a higher 
 one, independent of the influence of the laws of Nature and 
 perhaps arranged in an entirely different fashion. But for 
 this very reason we have not the remotest intention to im- 
 pugn the rights of those who fancy that they can find in 
 such theory any comfort for their souls. Let every one 
 believe whatever and as much as he likes, and let his fancy 
 have free scope where science forsakes him ! Faith and 
 knowledge belong to two entirely distinct provinces, whose 
 boundaries are constantly changing, and the change always 
 takes place at the expense of the former and not of the lat- 
 ter. There are departments which, but a hundred years 
 or so ago, were wholly under the sway of religious faith, 
 and which at this day are occupied by science ; and as 
 time goes on, this will continue to be the case to an ever 
 increasing extent. “ It is impossible, ” says Virchow , “to 
 calculate faith scientifically ; for science and faith exclude 
 one another.” Theology and Natural Science cannot walk 
 peacefully side by side, and a theological or ecclesiastical 
 natural science does not and cannot exist until men drop 
 down ready-made from heaven, and until the telescope 
 gazes into the meetings of the angels. He who cannot 
 put up with this and with the naked truth, may cling to 
 faith, but for scientific investigations truth is the only avail- 
 able standard. Nor is truth arid or disconsolate ; for it 
 is in the very nature of true knowledge to restore more 
 with one hand than what it seems to take away or destroy 
 with the other. It is not therefore necessary that those 
 who love the truth more than they do Plato or Socrates, 
 should follow the well-known advice of a distinguished nat- 
 uralist, who suggested that people might have two separate 
 consciences, a scientific one and a religious one, which for 
 the sake of peace should be kept strictly separate, seeing 
 that they cannot possibly be made to agree with each other 
 — a system which is technically known by the name of 
 book-keeping by double entry. He who considers such a 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 87 
 
 double entry as necessary or desirable for the repose of his 
 conscience, and does not shrink from its logical difficulties, 
 may always put it in practice on his own account, but he 
 should not seek to introduce it into science, nor into the 
 rational view of Nature. Our English neighbors have suc- 
 ceeded in managing this affair far better than the German 
 scientists, by inventing the well-known distinction between 
 first and secondary causes. No more of that unnatural 
 setting-up of two separate methods of thought or of that 
 inixing-up together of the natural and the religious view 
 of the universe. Everything passes off in a natural and 
 regular way ; a break in the connection of causes and 
 effects is not possible, since one secondary cause is neces- 
 sarily linked on to another ; and if this connection is not 
 found or discovered everywhere, it yet exists and its dis- 
 covery is the aim of science. But human science does not 
 and cannot get beyond this search into secondary causes, 
 since the totality of existence and the order that rules it, 
 depend in the last resort on a supreme or first cause, which 
 does not indeed interfere with the ordinary course of 
 events, but which nevertheless rules, guides, and governs 
 everything — and is not to be found out by knowledge , but 
 by faith only. This first cause is synonymous with God, 
 and here begins the province of religion, of the church, 
 of the worship of God, which has nothing to do with sci- 
 ence as such, and on which the investigator can wholly 
 turn his back while searching into secondary causes. In 
 this theory God does not, as he does in the German view, 
 play in some measure the part of a stop -gap, but rather 
 that of the sole ruler enthroned above the universe, who 
 does not mix in the natural course of things, but is quite 
 contented so long as his laws are in force everywhere and 
 secondary causes are at work. This theory has the one 
 great advantage that without touching upon or entirely 
 banishing the idea of God, it yet makes it perfectly unnec- 
 essary for science, and leaves men free to investigate natu- 
 ral laws without misgivings. Scientific men are thereby 
 
88 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 enabled to hold fast to their Christianity and yet to allow 
 themselves the most perfect freedom of investigation within 
 the province of science. It is true that a sound logic will 
 never be able to admit that from the existence of the so- 
 called secondary causes can be deduced the existence of a 
 supernatural force or power independent of natural forces, 
 which moreover never gives the smallest sign of its exist- 
 ence, and with which science has nothing to do. Credulous 
 spirits or minds who feel unable to manage without some 
 spiritist fealty, may amuse themselves with the fancy that 
 behind the impenetrable veil of phenomena a man stands 
 with a rod in his hand, with which he will one fine day 
 scourge all those who during their lives have not been suf- 
 ficiently obedient slaves. But thinking and liberty-loving 
 spirits will rather delight in the idea that the universe is in 
 reality a republic rather than a monarchy , and that it is 
 self-governed in accordance with eternal and immutable 
 laws. 
 
 “Wir haben lang genug geglaubt, 
 
 Wir wollen endlicb wissen.” 
 
 (Long enough have we believed ; now we want to know.) 
 
Universality of Natural Laws. 
 
 The old myths disappear, and the isolation of natural phenomena ceases as we 
 come to understand that a few great natural laws bind together and regulate 
 all the diversities that exist in the universe. — Girard. 
 
 The spectroscope teaches us that everywhere the same material works in the same 
 way, so that we can designate force and matter, supposing them not to be 
 identical, as the corner-stones of the universe.— N. Lockyer. 
 
 The universality of terrestrial laws is above all doubt, as far as science is con- 
 cerned. — Dii Prel. 
 
 W HEN the progress of astronomy had made it clear 
 that sun, moon and stars are not lights fixed on 
 the firmament for the purpose of giving light by 
 night and by day to the dwelling places of the human race, 
 but that they are bodies existing for themselves — when it 
 became moreover apparent that the earth was not a footstool 
 for the feet of God, but a dot or a speck in the universe, a 
 star amid billions of other stars, to most of which it is very 
 much inferior both in size and importance,* the human 
 mind, having been deprived of the chance of drawing 
 fanciful pictures of things within easy reach, did not hesitate 
 in giving all the more scope to its fancy in regard to things 
 far away from these. Distant regions were then invested 
 with the glory of miracle and of paradise ; remote planets or 
 fixed stars were populated with races having ethereal bodies, 
 exempt from the oppression of matter and from the natural 
 laws that obtain with us. Those who had taught that this 
 
 * Among the billions of stars which fill the vast realms of space there are only 
 five, or at the most seven (Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,) 
 to wh jse inhabitants, if such there are, the existence of our earth would be 
 recognizable, either with the naked eye or by the help of enormous telescopes. 
 For the worlds of fixed stars, lying outside our planetary system, it stands to 
 reason that it must be altogether unrecognizable. 
 
 (89) 
 
90 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 earthly life was a preparatory school for a better life else- 
 where (without being able to explain why there should be 
 such a preparatory school,) hastened to open to their pious 
 sheep a glorious, boundless vista of a career, rising by 
 schools and by classes, from planet to planet, from sun to 
 sun, wherein the industrious and pious should be ever at 
 the top, but the lazy and godless, as usual, always at the 
 bottom. Even sober-minded men of learning did not 
 scruple to allow a pretended “soul-substance” of the de- 
 parted to pass from star to star with the swiftness of light, 
 although they did not seem to have borne in mind that such 
 journeys, despite the fabulous velocity of light, considering 
 the enormous distances and the extreme cold of the ethereal 
 space, must have taken up terribly long periods of time, 
 spent with the least possible amount of comfort.* However 
 charming such progress from the fourth class to the third, 
 from the third to the second and so on, may appear to minds 
 inured to school discipline, a sober study of Nature, based 
 on experience and observation, cannot acquiesce in these 
 extravagant phantasies. In the present condition of our 
 knowledge with respect to the worlds surrounding our earth, 
 we can declare with perfect assurance that the same materi- 
 als, the same forces, the same physical laws, with which we 
 on this earth find ourselves moulded and surrounded, are 
 found in the All which is visible to us, and that they are at 
 work in all places in the same fashion and with the same 
 inherent necessity as in our immediate proximity. Natural 
 philosophy and astronomy have furnished us with complete 
 proofs of this in sufficient number ; astronomical science 
 indeed could not exist as such, if the universality of ter- 
 restrial laws were not recognized. 
 
 Let us first consider Gravitation , that universal primal 
 and fundamental force of Nature, by which are regulated 
 the movements and the general mutual effects produced by 
 all bodies in the universe upon each other. The laws by 
 which these movements and effects take place, or the laws 
 
 *Compare the chapter on “ Innate Ideas.” 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 91 
 
 of motion and attraction, are invariable in all the realms of 
 space into which the telescope peers and which are reached 
 by calculation. The movements of all, even the most 
 distant, bodies take place according to the same laws by 
 which bodies thrown on our earth move, by which a stone 
 falls, a cannon-ball flies, or a pendulum oscillates. When 
 we see the countless atoms of dust dancing in our room in 
 the light of the sun their movement is governed (as Dii Prel 
 remarks) by the same law which guides the movements of 
 the stars in the furthest realms of space to which our eyes 
 can reach by aid of the most powerful instrument — that is, 
 by the law of gravity. All astronomical calculations re- 
 specting the most distant planets and their movements have 
 been based on this known law, and they have proved 
 correct. Everybody knows that by the aid of this calcu- 
 lation, astronomers foretell eclipses of the sun and of the 
 moon, transits of planets, etc., with unfailing certainty as to 
 the day, hour and minute, and calculate hundreds of years 
 in advance the appearances and re-appearances of comets, 
 those well known knights-errant of space, having for their 
 orbits now an ellipse, now a parabola, now a hyperbola ; 
 and they do so despite the many disturbances and irregu- 
 larities to which the movements of these bodies are liable. 
 
 Astronomers have even succeeded by calculations based 
 wholly on the law of gravitation or rotation in determining 
 the presence of stars which were only discovered by the 
 telescope when it was known in which direction they were 
 to be looked for. Thus, in the year 1846, the French 
 astronomer Leverrier came on the track of Neptune , until 
 then unseen by any telescope, in directing his attention to 
 the disturbance shown by the neighboring planet Uranus 
 in its orbit. When, in consequence of this, Galle, at Berlin, 
 turned his telescope towards the specified place, he found 
 the planet of which both the spot and the mass had been 
 already determined. Just the same thing has happened 
 within the last few years in the case of the intramercurial 
 planet Vulcan, which has not yet been seen with complete 
 
92 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 certainty, but the existence of which is scientifically proved. 
 But that which, more than everything else, proves that 
 the laws of gravitation or attraction exist in the remotest 
 regions of fixed stars, which are separated from us by 
 many billions of miles, just the same as these laws are in 
 force in our solar system or on our earth, is the study of 
 the remarkable double stars , which have become better 
 known only of late years. These are situated so close 
 together that they can only be distinguished from each 
 other by means of the most powerful instruments, and re- 
 volving around each other. In their singular movements 
 they obey the law of gravity, as do the planets of our solar 
 system. Thus, the presence of a second body near the 
 splendid fixed star Sirius ( a in Ca?iis Major) now known 
 to be a double star, was deduced from its peculiar move- 
 ments on the basis of the law of gravitation, twenty years 
 before Clark discovered the star itself at Boston, on Jan. 
 31, 1862. It had revealed its existence, thanks to our con- 
 viction of the universal force of gravitation, before ever a 
 human eye had gazed upon it. “If anywhere” said the 
 astronomer M. IV. Mayer , ‘ ‘ we have in this discovery the 
 most conclusive argument in favor of the universality of 
 attraction between masses in the universe.” Indeed, the 
 existence of these remarkable double stars shows that while 
 in the fathomless depths of space the creative force of Na- 
 ture seems to love to reveal itself in very much the same 
 variety as here on our earth, yet it never, nor in any place, 
 follows any laws unknown to us, or others than those to 
 which it would have entrusted the building-up and the 
 governance of the world. On the contrary, all these mar- 
 vellous worlds have been evolved according to the same 
 simple laws as those which built and rule our little earth. 
 
 Astronomers, confidently relying on the laws of gravita- 
 tion, do not hesitate to authoritatively lay down the exist- 
 ence of dark or to our eyes imperceptible satellites of some 
 of the fixed stars, e.g. Procyon , as the consequence of their 
 peculiar movements. 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 93 
 
 It may also be remarked that the physical condition of 
 all the planets whose proximity to our globe renders pos- 
 sible a sufficiently exact determination of their surfaces, is 
 similar or analogous to that of our earth. Venus has high 
 mountains ; Mars has continents and seas, summer and 
 winter. The moon has mountains, plains, valleys and vol- 
 canoes like the earth. All the planets of our system have 
 seasons, days and nights as we have, although their relative 
 lengths vary. Besides, they are all spherical in shape, like 
 the earth ; i. e. they bulge out at the equator and are flat- 
 tened at the poles ; like the earth, they are more or less 
 inclined on their axes and have the double motion of rota- 
 tion and translation ; all these are signs of a similar origin. 
 Hence the genesis of our globe yields us a sure analogy 
 for the history of the origin and evolution of the other 
 planets. 
 
 The laws of light , no less than those of gravitation, are 
 the same throughout the universe and the same as on our 
 earth. Light, whether solar or artificial, has throughout 
 the same composition and the same velocity, and its re- 
 fraction takes place everywhere in the same way. The 
 light sent to us by the most distant fixed stars through a 
 space of many billions of miles, is distinguishable in nothing 
 from the light of our sun ; it follows the same laws and is 
 of the same composition. So little doubt is there among 
 learned men on this head that the different coloring of the 
 light proceeding from fixed stars enables them to decide 
 with absolute certainty, on the one hand as to the temper- 
 ature, condition and stage of development of these stars, 
 on the other as to their individual and relative movements 
 in space. Thus we are likewise in a position to determine 
 according to terrestrial processes the areas of the umbrae 
 and penumbrae arising from solar and lunar eclipses. Even 
 the ring of the planet Saturn throws a shadow on it and 
 receives in its turn a shadow from the planet. Lastly, the 
 photographs taken of individual fixed stars prove that the 
 light emitted by them contains, like sunlight, chemically 
 
94 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 active as well as luminous rays. The same remark applies 
 to the heating rays, as has been shown by very delicate 
 instruments. 
 
 Like the laws of light, the laws of heat are the same 
 throughout the universe, heat being the commonest and 
 most widely distributed form of energy known to us, and 
 being at this day universally regarded as merely another 
 form of light. The heat coming to us from the sun or from 
 the other fixed stars works exactly according to the same 
 principles as the rays of heat do which are emitted by our 
 earth or by the hot-springs found therein. On caloric cir- 
 cumstances depend the solidity, the fluidity, the gaseous 
 condition of bodies ; therefore these conditions must exist 
 everywhere upon similar terms, so to speak. It has been 
 shown in a preceding chapter that the other forces of 
 nature, such as electricity, magnetism, mechanical power, 
 chemical affinity, etc., are so closely bound up with caloric 
 circumstances and stand to these in such intimate relation- 
 ship, based upon reciprocal interchange, that they cannot 
 be separated from one another ; therefore must all these 
 forces exist where warmth exists, that is to say, everywhere. 
 This is especially true of the relation of heat to the form 
 and manner of chemical combination and dissociation, 
 which must necessarily proceed throughout the universe in 
 a uniform manner, since the experiments carried on by the 
 help of spectral analysis have proved to demonstration the 
 universal distribution of chemical elements identical with 
 those existing on our earth. But long before this most 
 recent and interesting method of investigation had become 
 known, the same conclusion had been arrived at by the 
 study of those visible and tangible messengers from another, 
 non-terrestrial world, which we designate as meteorites or 
 meteoric stones. Chemistry has not been able to discover 
 a single element not present in our world in these remark- 
 able bodies, the cosmic origin of which was for centuries 
 regarded as a preposterous myth, while people on the other 
 hand believed firmly and steadfastly in downright impos- 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 95 
 
 sible things and events. These bodies are hurled to us 
 from other worlds or from the primal ether, in all proba- 
 bility from the very depths of the space pertaining to the 
 fixed stars, possibly as pieces or remnants of shattered 
 planets or dissolved comets. Among the twenty-one ele- 
 ments or chemical groups found in these bodies up to 
 the present time, there is not a single one alien to those 
 of our own globe, and the substances predominant in them, 
 such as iron, silicon, oxygen, are the very ones which 
 also predominate on the surface of the earth. Daubree 
 has also discovered that the similarity that exists between 
 these meteorites and the terrestrial minerals increases in 
 proportion as we penetrate more deeply into the crust of 
 the earth, and that several of the minerals found at the 
 greatest depths (such as olivine, herzolite, serpentine,) are 
 in composition and condition almost identical with the me- 
 teorites ; and lastly, that in closer proximity to the surface 
 of the earth minerals are found which are formed of con- 
 stituents similar to those of the meteorites, but oxidized 
 (united with oxygen,) and thereby having their mineral 
 character changed. Daubree further succeeded in artificially 
 obtaining from terrestrial stones substances closely resem- 
 bling meteorites. The investigation of meteorites has 
 shown moreover that the crystals distributed throughout 
 their internal structure are formed according to the very 
 laws of crystallization which we recognize in terrestrial 
 crystals, and that their forms in no wise differ from those 
 known to us. Even the microscope, as Moldenhauer re- 
 marks, ( Das Weltall und seine Entwicklung , I, p. 7), has 
 not failed to render aid in this direction. “ It appears in 
 the structure of the meteorites, those little bodies that fall 
 upon us from far-off unknown regions, that the internal 
 construction of alien inorganic masses is essentially identi- 
 cal with that of our own.” 
 
 These facts alone would be sufficient to prove that — in 
 the words of Professor Spiller — “ the unity of the forces of 
 Nature extends to the very atoms of matter,” and that 
 
96 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the formative force for each material and for each atom 
 of matter is the same in the whole universe.’’ But that 
 which was only raised to high probability by the investiga- 
 tion of meteorites, has been made almost into a certainty 
 by spectral analysis, that ‘ ‘ language of light ” as it has 
 been rightly termed, the glance of which pierces through 
 the chemical constitution of the most distant stars. Above 
 all things it has taught us that the mass of the sun — and 
 indeed nothing else could be expected from the fact of all 
 the members of the solar system deriving their origin from 
 the same primal mist — contains no other chemical elements 
 in its ardent or incandescent integument than those which 
 exist in our earth. These elements, as everyone knows, 
 are sodium, iron, calcium, magnesium, chromium, nickel, 
 barium, zinc, cobalt, manganese, titanium, aluminium, 
 strontium, lead, copper, cadmium, cerium, uranium, po- 
 tassium, vanadium, palladium, molybdenum, hydrogen, 
 oxygen, nitrogen. There is still some doubt about the 
 presence of a number of other known elements, such as 
 indium, lithium, rubidium, caesium, bismuth, tin, silver, 
 beryllium, lanthanum, yttrium, iridium, silicon, sulphur, car- 
 bon, etc. Probably all the metalloids (non-metals) are to be 
 found in them ; other heavy metals, such as gold, silver and 
 mercury, may be present in the deeper parts of the sun or of 
 its envelope, inaccessible to spectral analysis. The chem- 
 ical composition of the solar envelope offers generally the 
 greatest resemblance to, or analogy with, the chemical 
 constitution of meteoric stones.* 
 
 Of course, astronomers have not contented themselves 
 
 * It must not be forgotten that one material, or one substance has been dis- 
 covered in the solar spectrum that corresponds with no terrestrial one, and which 
 has therefore been named helium. But according to the distinguished spectro- 
 scopist Norman Lockyer, helium is apparently nothing more than a modified form 
 of hydrogen ; and besides, Professor Palmieri of Naples states that he has lately 
 discovered the helium line in the spectrum of the lava of Vesuvius. In point of 
 fact it is very possible that an element, the presence of which has not yet been 
 discovered on the earth, may play an important part elsewhere, and on the other 
 hand an element predominant with us may only be present to a slight extent in 
 the composition of other stars. The general identity or unity of materials is 
 therefore open to no doubt whatever. 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 97 
 
 vith merelj using the spectroscope — which is able to yield 
 such positive data on the chemical composition of the most 
 distant bodies — To investigate the sun, but, despite the 
 great difficulties involved, it has been turned also to account 
 in the study of the planets, comets, fixed stars, nebulae, 
 falling stars, etc. The result has been materially the same 
 throughout. These enquiries have proved the truth of the 
 theory propagated by earlier astronomers, viz. that the so- 
 called fixed stars are nothing but actual suns, in the atmos- 
 pheres or luminous envelopes of which are found again in 
 an incandescent condition those known bodies, some of 
 which have already been mentioned, like iron, calcium, 
 sodium, magnesium, tellurium, antimony, bismuth, mer- 
 cury, hydrogen, nitrogen, etc., etc. Hydrogen appears to 
 play the chief part in most of the fixed stars, and to cause 
 the same violent eruptions and whirlwinds in them as it 
 does in the sun. If all the substances found in the sun have 
 not yet been shown to exist in the fixed stars, this probably 
 results from the faintness of the spectra, arising from the 
 immensity of the distances. The same remark applies to 
 the yet more distant nebulae or to those glowing masses of 
 gas which astronomers regard as systems of worlds in 
 course of evolution, and the spectra of which denote 
 principally hydrogen and nitrogen. The comets have also 
 been analyzed by means of the spectroscope, notwithstand- 
 ing the dimness of their light which renders accurate 
 observation very difficult, and carbon and hydrogen have 
 been discovered in them. Even falling stars have been 
 submitted to the same analysis, and it is claimed that car- 
 bon, as well as glowing vapors of sodium and magnesium, 
 have been discovered in them. It need hardly be mentioned 
 that the light of the planet, being borrowed from the sun, 
 must show the same composition as that of the sun itself. 
 
 These discoveries form landmarks in the history of science 
 and are worthy of being placed side by side with the great- 
 est discoveries of all ages. They prove that matter is 
 essentially identical not only within our solar system, but 
 

 98 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 in the whole universe, down to the regions of dxed stars 
 and nebulae. Now seeing that identity of substances must 
 necessarily imply identity of forces, and thac “the special 
 form in which a substance produces its regular effect is the 
 direct outcome of its chemical condition” (Dii Prel,) no 
 doubt can remain as to the similarity of materials and forces 
 throughout the universe and as to the similarity of develop- 
 ment in our solar system and in the most distant heaven of 
 the fixed stars — a view which is now thoroughly accepted 
 by all scientists who have concentrated their attention on 
 the study of this question. Professor Kirclihoff himself, 
 the famous discoverer of spectral analysis, has stated his 
 conviction “ that the substances and forces in the whole 
 universe are essentially the same.’’ 
 
 All these facts and observations — with those already 
 given at the beginning of the chapter — prove to demon- 
 stration the universality of natural laws, a phrase which is 
 indeed but another expression for the regular working of 
 matter and of its forces, arising from its chemical and 
 physical nature, and these laws cannot therefore be con- 
 fined to our globe, but must act in a similar fashion 
 throughout the entire universe. In no part of that 
 space, boundless though it may be, is there a loophole left 
 for imagination to bring one of its wild fancies into the 
 world and to indulge in one of its dreams of some fabulous 
 existence, subject to none of the ordinary limitations. The 
 visible universe surrounding us is an infinite whole, com- 
 posed of the same substances, borne by the same energies, 
 swayed by the same immutable natural laws.* 
 
 Oerstedt rightly maintained, in treating of the identity of 
 mental and physical laws, that this universal application of 
 the laws of Nature which are conceived by reason, presup- 
 
 * Should the opinion of natural philosophers and chemists be confirmed a 
 view often expressed and becoming more and more probable that in reality 
 there is but one matter and there is but one force, and that what we term sub- 
 stances or forces are only different modifications or phenomena or condition of 
 the primary matter and the primary force, the proposition laid down above must 
 become still more simplified. 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 99 
 
 poses also a fundamental equality of the conceptive faculty 
 of the intellect throughout the universe. Should reasoning 
 beings exist outside of our planet — and this is probable 
 enough, since it is difficult to see why the same or similar 
 causes should not, under the same or similar conditions, 
 produce the same or similar results everywhere — their 
 thinking power must necessarily be the same as, or similar 
 to, ours, although in degree or development it may vary 
 to almost any extent. The principles of the physical 
 development of man are also likely to be on the whole iden- 
 tical. So great, however, is the diversity of the individual 
 worlds in point of mass, temperature, density, illumination, 
 physical condition of the surface, etc., and so far do the 
 phases of development diverge from each other in the in- 
 dividual stars, that we have a perfect right to assume also 
 the possibility of an endless diversity in the respective 
 organization of the inhabitants of each individual world. 
 We know that adaptation to the surrounding conditions of 
 life is one of the foremost factors in the formation and pro- 
 gressive development of organic beings, and the history of 
 our own earth proves that relatively small differences in 
 the physical condition of the surface of the globe, which 
 have accrued in the course of geological periods or epochs, 
 have been attended by the most radical changes in the 
 fauna and flora of the earth ; and from this we may infer 
 that there exists an infinite variety of biological phenomena 
 in the cosmos. In this respect, however, positive or scien- 
 tific data are so entirely wanting that all further speculations 
 on this topic should be cast aside as aimless and useless. 
 One thing only, as we have said already, can be stated 
 with comparative certainty, and it is that the identity of 
 cosmical substances and laws admits of the inference that 
 the fundamental principles of physical and mental phenom- 
 ena, of organic and inorganic life, must be the same every- 
 where ; and that throughout the cosmos, wherever the 
 material conditions are found for the genesis or evolution 
 of living or organized beings, this genesis or evolution 
 
IOO 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 will take place with the same energy and abundance as it 
 does in our earth. In the planets or moving stars especially, 
 which on mechanical principles must accompany the fixed 
 stars, or other suns, as our planets do our sun, though 
 perhaps on a few of them only, the possibility of life at 
 certain times and under certain circumstances must show or 
 have shown itself very much as it has in this earth of ours ; 
 for “the formation of living matter denotes nothing but the 
 setting in of the effect when the given causes are sufficient.’’ 
 (Dii Prel.) As far as our own planetary sytem is concerned, 
 it must be admited that the circumstances conducive to the 
 production of living and rational beings, similar to those 
 on earth, are rather limited ; for the period at which such 
 a development becomes possible can only occur on the 
 large or external planets when the sun shall have so far 
 cooled down that it can no longer heat and light them suf- 
 ficiently, and it is therefore quite possible that the conditions 
 without which no production of a vigorous process of life 
 can take place, are fulfilled on none but the so-called inner 
 planets. The greater number of planets revolve as inert 
 worlds round a central sun, which is only able to maintain 
 life on some of them for a comparatively short time. On 
 comets and meteorites it is obvious that no life is conceiv- 
 able. The question has been propounded : May not the 
 inhabitants of other planets be possibly endowed with a 
 higher or richer organization of their senses, and thereby 
 be susceptible of impressions which we are not sensitive 
 enough to receive? This possibility, supported as it is by 
 the fact that the mental powers of man can only be regard- 
 ed as the gradually developed result of a process of life that 
 is adapted to its surroundings, may well be admitted with- 
 out in any way affecting the general results laid down in 
 the foregoing. 
 
 “ And if,” says Zeise (Das Endlose der grossen und der 
 kleinen materiellen Welt , Altona, 1855,) “as there is not 
 the least reason to doubt, more highly- organized living 
 beings exist in remote worlds, these would yet, in their 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 101 
 
 superior development as rational beings, undoubtedly resem- 
 ble the earth-man in regard to intellect, since in the whole 
 universe only one intelligence can be imagined which is the 
 same everywhere — an intelligence which makes all physical 
 laws appear as intellectual laws.” 
 
 “ In the life of the mind,” says Ph. Spiller ( Die Urkraft 
 des Weltalls , 1876,) ‘‘there must eventually be some 
 features of absolute unity, despite the diversity that may 
 exist in its organization. The laws of thinking are no doubt 
 the same throughout the universe." 
 
 That mind and nature must, in the last resort, be the 
 same, that physical and mental laws must be identical, is 
 essentially involved in what has been said in preceding 
 chapters as to the relations between matter, force and 
 movement. Could it be otherwise, considering that Nature’s 
 laws themselves have created the mind and that the same 
 forces are at work in it which rule the world and Nature? 
 Hence the laws of thought of our minds must be in unison 
 with the most recondite principles of the laws governing in 
 Nature, and hence the laws of thought are also the laws of 
 the universe. The laws of thought themselves must there- 
 fore be looked upon as pure natural laws and as the result 
 of a development that accrues from the laws of nature and 
 from natural history. Human reason or mental activity is 
 in some measure as the mirror which reflects the All, it has 
 gradually proceeded from that broken interaction which 
 goes on between the organism and its environment during 
 cosmical and geological periods. Beginning at the lowest 
 step of sensibility or of capacity for sensation, the human as 
 well as the animal mind has raised itself gradually, through 
 countless stages of action and reaction, to its present height, 
 and in doing so has acquired those well-known forms 
 of thought, which in the eyes of those who are un- 
 able to appreciate the principle of evolution in its full 
 strength, appear erroneously as innate ideas preceding all 
 experience. 
 
 ‘‘The fulcrum of the argument,” says Oerstedt, ‘‘that 
 
102 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the laws of nature are laws of intelligence, lies in the fact 
 that irom laws of nature known to us we are enabled by 
 thought to deduce others which experience brings again be- 
 fore us, and that, when this does not happen, we find in 
 the regular course that we have blundered in our inferences. 
 Hence it follows that the laws of thought by which we draw 
 inferences apply also to Nature itself.” 
 
 “ The laws of thought flowing from the human brain,” 
 says Ph. Spiller {loc. cit.) “ have no logic other than 
 that which is to be found in the laws of the Universe. 
 Conscious human mathematical reasoning is none other in 
 essence than unconscious physical thought. It results 
 also herefrom that logically thinking heads, far away from 
 one another, have discovered this almost at the same 
 time.” 
 
 Paul von Lilienfeld expresses this same thought with 
 even greater force in the following words : 1 1 The necessary 
 laws of thought and of matter are one and the same. 
 Thought is a condensed motion, and since the human or- 
 ganism is but an involution of physical forces, thought 
 must also be regarded as merely the condensed action of 
 physical forces.” 
 
 This theory agrees of necessity to the fullest extent with 
 those results of the empirico-philosophical conception of 
 Nature which we shall deal with in a subsequent chapter 
 on innate ideas and on the gradual mode of evolution of 
 human and brute intelligence. Knowing nothing of so- 
 called absolute and superhuman ideas or conceptions 
 implanted into it by a supreme power, but deriving all 
 knowledge, thought, sensation and volition from the 
 millionfold repeated impressions of the surrounding world, 
 the laws prevailing in the latter cannot but be reflected or 
 reproduced in some measure in the former ; or, as Carus 
 Sterne expresses it, the human mind is nothing but a more 
 or less faithful lens which brings to a focus the rays of 
 knowledge dispersed throughout Nature. Although it may 
 be difficult or impossible to disentangle or lay bare in each 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF NATURAL LAWS. IO3 
 
 individual instance the manifold interwoven threads of these 
 relationships, yet no doubt appears to us to rest on the 
 matter as a whole. 
 
 “ Dieselbe Ordnung waltet iiberall : 
 
 Im wechselvollen Reigen der Gestirne 
 Gebietet das Gesetz nacli Mass und Zahl, 
 
 Wie in des Menschen denkendem Gehirne.” 
 
 (F. Krasser.) 
 
 (The same order rules everywhere ; the law of measure 
 and number rules in the changeful hosts of the stars as it 
 does in man’s thinking brain.) 
 
'I he Heavens. 
 
 The conception of “ heaven ” as a definite spot in space can be looked upon by 
 science as nothing but a procreation of empty heads. — Ph Spii.ler. 
 
 The idea of an Almighty Power which acted as an impulse at a definite moment, 
 is so antagonistic to all our notions of the working of physical forces, that 
 we can give to such a possibility no right of citizenship within science. — 
 A. Bernstein. 
 
 The thought of a bodiless force hovering over the chaos of the elements as a 
 creative spirit belongs to the dreams of visionaries. — E. Harless. 
 
 E VERY schoolboy knows to-day that the heaven is no 
 blue vault suspended over the earth, with holes in it 
 through which the fiery sphere of the universe gleams 
 in the shape of sun and stars, but that, in looking at it we 
 are gazing into an incommensurable and almost empty 
 space without beginning and without end, the vast desert 
 of which is interrupted only by single stars or groups of 
 stars, few in number and infinitely far between, and in 
 which e.g. our own solar system, despite its gigantic extent, 
 appears as a mere dot in the infinitude of space. Therefore, 
 if the religious theory of the universe teaches us that after 
 the conclusion of our earthly career we are destined to “go 
 to heaven,’’ astronomical science informs us on the contrary 
 that we are already in this dreamed-of heaven, surrounded 
 in the far distance by countless worlds and world-systems 
 similar to our earth or our solar system. Out of more or 
 less formless masses of vapor or mist — spread originally 
 over many billions of miles, the constituent materials of 
 which must have been of a rarity far beyond our concep- 
 tion — individual rotating points must have issued, in which 
 the atoms drew more closely together, and thence these 
 
 (104) 
 
THE HEAVENS. 
 
 I°5 
 
 worlds and world-systems must have evolved by a process 
 of condensation increasing step by step, and have gradually 
 rolled themselves together in compact masses or organized 
 systems. These masses are constantly in both individual 
 and reciprocal motion in space ; this motion is obviously 
 combined and complicated in the most diverse ways, yet 
 controlled in all its phenomena and modifications by a single 
 natural law of which we have spoken heretofore and which 
 applies everywhere, viz., the law of gravitation or attraction. 
 All the large or small worlds without exception and with- 
 out the very slightest deviation that could by any possibility 
 be regarded as being in contradiction to the simple me- 
 chanical principles of their motion, follow this perhaps most 
 important and most widely diffused of all natural laws, to 
 which every substance is subject, and which can be ob- 
 served directly in every individual body and in every particle 
 of a body. Such a contradiction or such an exception must 
 be regarded as an absolute impossibility, and the existence 
 of a fact in opposition to that law would be a miracle as 
 great as any other physical miracle. In reality no such 
 exception nor deviation, pointing to the working of an ex- 
 tramundane power or of an arbitrarily ruling or governing 
 hand, could ever be scientifically demonstrated. On the 
 contrary it has been shown that all such motions, so far as 
 they are not affected by interruptions that are beyond com- 
 putation, can be ascertained, determined and foretold with 
 mathematical accuracy and certainty. As far as the teles- 
 cope reaches and as far as man is able to espy the laws 
 of the heavens — and this has been done to the extent of 
 billions and trillions of miles — he has met everywhere with 
 the same law, the same simple, mechanical principles, the 
 same mathematical formula, and the same phenomena that 
 are subject to computation. But never has been found the 
 slightest trace of an arbitrary finger ordaining the spheres 
 of the heavens and appointing the courses of the earths, 
 the suns, and the comets. ‘ ‘ I have searched through the 
 heavens,” says Lalande , the great astronomer, “and 
 
106 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 nowhere have I found a trace of God.” And when the 
 Emperor Napoleon asked the celebrated astronomer La- 
 place , why not a word was said of God in his Mecanique 
 celeste, the latter answered: ‘‘Sire, je n’avais pas besoin 
 de cette hypothese.” The further astronomy advanced in 
 the knowledge of the laws and phenomena of the heavens, 
 the further it repelled the idea or hypothesis of a su- 
 pernatural cause, and the easier it became to trace 
 back the origin, grouping and motions of the heavenly 
 bodies to the simplest possible phenomena induced by 
 matter and by the laws of its motion. The mutual attraction 
 of the smallest particles rolled the worlds together, and the 
 laws of attraction with their primal motion gave rise to that 
 system of reciprocal revolution which we now perceive in 
 them. Many indeed who have reached this point, refuse to 
 look for that initial impluse in matter itself, preferring to 
 trace it to the touch of some supernatural finger which is 
 supposed in some fashion to have stirred the general incho- 
 ate world-materials and imparted motion to matter. Thus 
 even the great Newton pretended to see the finger of God 
 in the tangential or lateral motion of the stars; and Laplace 
 himself could not refrain from exclaiming: ‘‘O philoso- 
 pher, show me the hand which has thrown the planets on 
 the tangents of their orbits ! ’ ’ 
 
 But even in such a remote position, personal creative 
 force cannot hold its own. The principle, demonstrated 
 in a former chapter, that there is no matter without motion, 
 and that eternal matter implies eternal motion, is in itself 
 sufficient to put an end to this difficulty. There can be no 
 doubt that throughout space motion has existed from all 
 eternity and will exist for evermore, that all bodies without 
 exception are subject to a regular succession of origin and 
 decay, and that each traverses a cycle of origin, existence 
 and death, which occupies enormous periods of time, and 
 eventually melting away again into the so-called cosmic 
 mist, re-enacts the process either in the same or in a sim- 
 ilar fashion. Thus it happens that an eternal and eternally 
 
THE HEAVENS. IO7 
 
 existing change takes place throughout the space of the 
 universe. 
 
 But even apart from this general principle, it is by no 
 means impossible or even difficult to conceive the manner 
 in which that particular kind of motion took place which 
 gave, or must have given, the primal impulse to the process 
 of globular aggregation referred to. The very slightest 
 dissimilarity of size or of attractive force or of the relative 
 positions of the atoms in the primal state would have been 
 sufficient to induce the origin of the first centres of con- 
 densation. The necessary contraction of the incipient ball 
 of mist by cooling, or by irregular radiation into the cold 
 space around it, must have sufficed to draw the atoms 
 together in different ways and thereby initiate in certain 
 places the process of condensation and motion which would 
 eventually lead to the formation of individual bodies. It 
 may be that there was a lateral attraction from neighboring 
 bodies at work, which produced in some portions of the 
 ball of mist increased condensation and agglomeration in 
 that one direction and eventually caused it to rotate on its 
 own axis. Possibly there were also chemical affinities at 
 play, inducing certain atoms, after the cause of the original 
 dispersion had ceased to act, to draw near to one another 
 and form new substances, in such a manner that the larger, 
 overpowering the smaller ones that surrounded them, at- 
 tracted these towards themselves and thus gave rise to 
 further chemical processes, favored by the higher tempera- 
 ture resulting from the increase of density. By the irregu- 
 lar accumulation of larger or smaller masses coming from 
 different sides a displacement of the centre of gravity be- 
 came inevitable. Hence currents set in within the various 
 parts of the sphere of gas, and these eventually resulted in 
 a rotatory movement which led to the formation of individ- 
 ual spheres moving in regular orbits. In point of fact, the 
 telescope has revealed to us the existence in the sky of 
 such rotating mists, or spheres of mist of annular spiral 
 form. The whole build of the so-called spiral mist-masses 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 io3 
 
 goes to show that those remarkable bodies are in a state of 
 revolution, in the course of which enormous currents of 
 incandescent matter descend in spiral lines upon the central 
 masses, producing in doing so, whirling and circling move- 
 ments, which eventually lead to the formation of spherical 
 planets. Besides, this rotatory of revolving motion exists 
 so generally throughout space and is so universally per- 
 ceptible among all aggregated cosmic masses as to clearly 
 point to the presence of some universal cause, that is to say 
 of some physical necessity. According to Spiller , there 
 exists in reality no rectilinear but only a curvilinear motion 
 in space. The velocity of this motion must obviously in- 
 crease in proportion to the increase of the density of the 
 cosmic mass. 
 
 The further development of this revolving cosmic mass 
 into articulated solar and planetary systems also proceeds 
 on purely mechanical principles and in accordance with 
 known physical laws. Acceleration of the velocity of the 
 induced motion by curtailment and contraction- — -a lens- 
 like flattening of the aggregated sphere of mist with a 
 greater condensation at the centre — the separation of 
 equatorial zones of vapor by vibration or centrifugal force, 
 like that which is still to be found in the case of the planet 
 Saturn — these zones finally broken up and the separated 
 portions rolling into spheres (planets, moons, etc.) — grad- 
 ual cooling down of these separated bodies to various 
 degrees — all this in accordance with Kant and Laplace’s 
 famous and now universally accepted nebular hypothesis — 
 these are the simple means by the aid of which Nature has 
 obtained and still goes on obtaining her great aims of 
 world -formation, which are computed to the extent of 
 myriads of years. For even now astronomers, starting 
 from the most solid foundation, see in the so-called nebulae 
 in the heavens the various stages of development of our 
 own solar system or revolving worlds arising from wide- 
 spread masses of mist, which will gradually, by increasing 
 condensation and rotation, develop into various planetary 
 
THE HEAVENS. 
 
 IO9 
 
 or solar systems. “Who,” says Professor Forster , ( The 
 Beginning and End of the World , p. 18), “can see the 
 so-called spiral or whirling mists without the conviction of 
 their inherent motion at once forcing itself upon him ? ” 
 
 There are indeed many nebulce in the sky which are 
 merely groups of stars and which can be resolved into such 
 by the observer with the help of powerful instruments. 
 Then again there are others, essentially different from these, 
 which cannot be resolved into separate stars and which 
 clearly consist of cosmic or primal world- masses in different 
 stages of development. Some of these have nuclei, which 
 have already separated themselves from the whole mass in 
 the shape of more solid centres ; others have annular forms, 
 and so on ; by comparison of earlier and later observations 
 of the same nebulse it has even been possible to recognize 
 certain changes that have been going on in them. A great 
 number of these nebulae appear to have a double motion, 
 resembling that of our sun and of its planets, and are likely 
 to develop like these in the end. Nay, thei'e are actually 
 criteria which go to show that even within the limits of our 
 own planetary system there are remnants of that mass of 
 mist from which that system must originally have sprung. 
 More recent searches into the analysis of light have fully 
 confirmed and proved the theory of the primal world-mist, 
 put forth by Herschel and Laplace, and have shown that 
 there exists in space genuine mists endowed with inherent 
 luminous properties and being nothing more than glowing 
 masses of gas. The only force which lies at the base of all 
 these formative processes and movements is nought but 
 attraction — attraction, which condenses the mists, which 
 forms suns and planets out of them, which regulates their 
 movements and finally evolves from the induced condensa- 
 tion heat and light, the sole and ultimate source of all 
 phenomena of life. 
 
 All these observations and facts give us the right to con- 
 clude, judging from analogy with that which has already 
 been discovered, that certain phenonema which take place 
 
I IO 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 in the heavens and the explanation of which is still more or 
 less wanting, do not represent exceptions to the general 
 laws of Nature, and that the cause of their peculiar kind of 
 motion lies either in themselves or in the ordinary laws of 
 matter. We are all the more justified in doing this, if we 
 bear in mind that there are so many irregularities and so 
 many things more or less fortuitous, nay, looking at them 
 from the point of view of design, actually aimless or inex- 
 pedient in the order of the universe and of its individual 
 organs, which go directly against the theory of the working 
 or interference of a higher intelligence or creative power, 
 analogous to the laws of the human mind. If, as must be 
 assumed according to the teleological idea of the world, a 
 personal creative power, guided by definite aims, meant to 
 create worlds as dwelling-places for intelligent thinking 
 beings worshipping his omnipotence, why should there be 
 these huge, vacant and useless tracts of space, in which but 
 here and there isolated suns and earths swim as almost im- 
 perceptible dots — resembling a handful of globules thrown 
 into the vast ocean ? * Why then are not the other planets 
 of our solar system (with perhaps the solitary exception of 
 Mars) adapted to be likewise inhabited by men or by man- 
 like beings? Would not the formation of many smaller 
 planets have been much more calculated to secure the 
 objects of life, seeing that, as shown heretofore, the so- 
 called outer or larger planets are in no way suited for ever 
 developing life ? Why is the moon, our everlasting com- 
 panion, with its craters and burnt-out volcanoes, left without 
 water and without atmosphere, and therefore inimical to 
 all organic development ? f Why is not the sun, the sur- 
 
 *The famous astronomer Tycho de Braht, who died in the year 1608, “ put the 
 place of the fixed stars as not far beyond the orbit of Saturn, the outermost planet 
 according to the knowledge of his time ; for the idea of wide starless tracts of 
 ether would not have agreed with his conception of a creator pervading all 
 space." — F. Nobbe. 
 
 t According to more recent views the moon is really thought to have an atmos- 
 phere, but one of such rarity that its density is only from i-200th to i-40oth of 
 that of the earth, so that it must be quite unfit for the existence of animals, plants, 
 or human beings. The other physical conditions of the moon’s surface are also 
 
THE HEAVENS. 
 
 Ill 
 
 face of which is 12,500 times greater than that of the earth, 
 inhabitable as it was once thought to be ? and why are the 
 fixed stars, scattered through space in incalculable millions, 
 in a similar condition ? If it should be said that these suns 
 serve to enlighten and to warm their inhabited planets, then 
 must it not be forgotten that in this case the means and the 
 end stand in a most startling contrast to one another and that 
 our own sun, for instance, the centre of our planetary sys- 
 tem, is constantly squandering uselessly huge quantities of 
 light and heat in the cold realms of space, while our little 
 earth, the supposed centre of the universe, receives of all 
 this but the 2300-millionth part or even less, and the whole 
 of the planets between them are benefited to only the 230- 
 millionth part of this enormous waste of force. Nay, what 
 is the object, from a teleological View, of the change of day 
 and night, which necessarily results from the relation of the 
 sun and earth ? If such a change is necessary for the life 
 of the creatures inhabiting the earth, why should the polar 
 zone have a day and a night lasting each six months, and 
 why should the necessary darkness of the night be broken 
 by the influx of moonlight ? 
 
 In the well-known inclination of the axis of the earth 
 towards the plane of its orbit, known by the name of the 
 angle of the ecliptic, which is the cause of the change of the 
 seasons, many perceive a design of heaven intended for 
 our welfare. But they do not consider that they are con- 
 
 such as to make it absolutely impossible for the moon to be inhabited. According 
 to Nasmyth the surface of the moon, which is now known to us with perfect 
 accuracy, offers nothing but a desolate waste, a terrible desert which no human 
 imagination can realize, and in which life resembling that of our terrestrial home, 
 with perhaps the exception of certain minute forms, is quite impossible or incon- 
 ceivable. A fearful heat reigns close to the ground during the day, which lasts 
 336 hours, and a frightful cold beyond the ground and during the equally long 
 night. There are to be found but crude forms, dead materials and the soundless 
 play of mighty forces I Wherefore this great development of energy without 
 any visible aim of life? For as a mere illuminant of our nights the moon clearly 
 fulfills its duty but very imperfectly, for it changes, and over and above this it 
 may be the cause of terrible earthquakes. Besides, the question why the moon 
 should always turn the same side to the earth, is utterly unanswerable from a 
 teleological standpoint. 
 
I 12 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 founding effect: and cause, and that our organization would 
 most probably be different were the inclination of the 
 ecliptic different or non-existent. Besides, this very angle 
 of the ecliptic, the object of such mistaken praise, does not 
 even seem to be in any way conducive to our advantage ; 
 and if it were in our power to change this slope of the axis 
 of the earth towards the plane of the earth’s orbit, we 
 should most certainly do it and thereby bring about a 
 greater equality in the seasons. For if the earth’s axis 
 were perpendicular to its orbit, there would be in our lati- 
 tude, for instance, a perpetual spring, calculated in all 
 probability to lengthen human life. 
 
 Why — we must ask still further — did the sun show its 
 beauty to the earth day by day, why did the moon shed its 
 silvery beams over the world, why did the glorious stars 
 and constellations shine in radiant beauty on it during 
 those untold ages of the past in which no creature existed on 
 its surface to turn these glorious arrangements to account, 
 to admire them and meditate on their object ? What is the 
 meaning of the irregularities and of the striking differences 
 in the size and distances of the individual members of our 
 solar system, and why is there an absence here of all order, 
 symmetry or harmony, beauty, regularity, law, in regard 
 to size, density, position, habitability, etc. ? Why have 
 all the comparisons, analogies, speculations, founded on 
 the number and formation of the planets, such as the great 
 Kepler earnestly engaged in, proved to be mere idle phan- 
 tasies ? What is the object of the so-called asteroids, or 
 smaller planets, with their orbits crossing each other, of 
 which considerably more than two hundred are known at 
 this day, although it is not very long since rambling philos- 
 ophers thought that they could demonstrate on speculative 
 grounds that no further planets could exist in the recog- 
 nized astronomical gap between Mars and Jupiter? What 
 duties do the countless meteors or meteorites discharge 
 which cross the earth’s orbit and do so much mischief in 
 their descent ? or the innumerable comets with their ever- 
 
THE HEAVENS. 
 
 1*3 
 
 changing paths, which only seem to exist for the purpose 
 of aiding and abetting in the worst kind of superstition, 
 and of which, to use Kepler’s phrase, the heavens are as 
 full as the sea is of fishes ? or those thousands of suns with- 
 out planets, the so-called twin stars, which revolve eternally 
 round each other or round a common centre? Finally, 
 why is our planetary system so arranged that, having 
 originated in time, it must perish in time, and with it all 
 that is great, all that man has ever accomplished or ever 
 done on earth, must subside again into the chaos of eternal 
 oblivion ? * 
 
 If — as the theists make out — the world or the cosmos 
 were created or governed by an eternal reason, or as they 
 are wont to say, designed by intelligence, how can all these 
 contradictory facts be explained? and why did not the 
 eternal reason give the planetary systems an order from 
 which its object and meaning could be recognized without 
 any doubt? Why did not the everlasting creative power 
 write his name in starry letters in the heavens, and thus put 
 an end to all those doubts that torture and trouble the human 
 breast, to all those endless controversies about his own ex- 
 istence, which have caused so much pain and grief to poor 
 humanity, groping for ever in darkness? Why should he 
 hide himself from us and lay snares for our reason, which 
 inveigle us into endless doubtings and discomfort of every 
 sort? How could God, if he existed, quietly witness all 
 the sad results of this uncertainty about his own existence, 
 seeing that he could so easily put an end to them ? 
 
 These thoughts, these questions and strictures might be 
 multiplied ad infinitum; but multiplying them would change 
 nothing in the result, that no unprejudiced investigation of 
 
 * According to the most modern veiws of astronomers, which are strongly sup- 
 ported by the discoveries made by the help of spectrum analysis, all solar and 
 planetary systems pass through a life-cycle of origin, existence and decay, oc- 
 cupying thousands of millions of years, and reiterating itself eventually in the 
 same or in a similar manner by renewed decomposition into cosmic mist (primal 
 world mist ) Throughout all space a perennial change is going on and has gone 
 on from eternity. 
 
U4 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Nature, wherever it may search, can discover any trace of 
 a supernatural influence either in space or in time. The 
 renowned “harmony of the universe” rests, as has been 
 shown already, partly on imagination or ignorance, partly 
 on the same causes by which, as will be more fully explained 
 in subsequent chapters, the apparent design in other natural 
 phenomena, especially in the organic forms living on our 
 earth, is brought about ; and if, without prejudice to the 
 views stated above, a certain order and regularity must be 
 recognized in the phenomena of the sky, such order is but 
 the necessary and unavoidable result of the process of evo- 
 lution in the heaven itself, which could never have existed 
 as such without such order. For a chaos, which in the course 
 of ages is neither developed nor decomposed, must ever 
 remain a chaos, while a movement once begun must neces- 
 sarily in the course of immense periods of time, and by the 
 gradual excision of all that is incapable of life or unsuitable, 
 as also by reciprocal adaptation of individual beings, give 
 rise to the genesis or survival of such forms as are suited 
 for their surroundings and therefore capable of life or suit- 
 able therefor. When the unsuitable has perished long since, 
 the suitable remains. Therefore, the suitable movement or 
 position of any individual heavenly body is but an individ- 
 ual instance of movement, and all movements of such a 
 body which are unsuitable or which collide with the move- 
 ments or positions of other heavenly bodies must be 
 gradually eliminated or cut off, until those only remain 
 which do not bring about their own destruction by irregu- 
 larity or incompatibility with a definite order; so that in 
 the end the whole vaunted beauty and order of the universe 
 amount to nothing but the mechanical relation of physical 
 forces. In a most ingenious work entitled Kampf urn's 
 Dasein am Himmel , ( Struggle for existence in the 
 heavens') — Berlin, 1874; 3rd revised edition, Leipzig, 1882 
 — Dr. Karl Freiherr Dii Prel first and very successfully 
 sought to apply to the astronomical world the Darwinian 
 principles which have in modern times become the standard 
 
THE HEAVENS. 
 
 US 
 
 for judging the organic world. According to him, the 
 apparent design in the arrangement of our planetary system 
 is merely the result of a very long process of evolution, and 
 is to be regarded as the simple outcome of the fact that all 
 planets which did not follow regular orbits, left the system, 
 or re-united themselves to the sun, or were flung off into 
 long-stretched paths along which they subsequently travel- 
 ed as comets and groups of meteorites. It is probable 
 that the sun originally possessed a much larger number of 
 satellites, many of which were eliminated in this manner ; 
 this possibly accounts for the great gaps that exist in the 
 system. Only in the group of asteroids does this pro- 
 cess of elimination appear to be still incomplete, since 
 this group, being a portion or broken-up fragment of some 
 planet, shattered to pieces by some cause unknown to us, 
 has not been as long in existence as the remaining planets. 
 In the case of comets also, which must be regarded as a 
 direct offspring of the sun, Dii Prel holds that this process 
 is as yet far from being complete. He regards them as the 
 youngest members of the system, while the planets are the 
 oldest and the asteroids lie midway between the two classes. 
 But everything in this (and other) classes that is incapable 
 of fitting into the general system and into the order that 
 reins in it to a certain extent, must, in process of time, be 
 eliminated or crowded out. ‘ ‘ Thus the physical struggle 
 which commenced by the law of gravitation, ends with those 
 marvellous combinations of mighty stars, at the sight of 
 which we scarcely forbear from coming to the conclusion 
 that their movements must from the very first have been 
 regulated by an all-wise design. And yet we can only at- 
 tribute this orderly result to the aimless working of physical 
 forces, which here, as everywhere, act according to the 
 principle of adaptation and must infallibly evolve harmony 
 in the end.” 
 
 None the less this harmony is by no means complete, 
 despite the great regularity of the movements in our solar 
 system. One planet keeps constantly pulling at the other 
 
1 1 6 
 
 force and matter. 
 
 and striving with more or less success to influence its 
 course. The moon drags at its mother-planet whose oceans 
 it often raises up to devastating tides and whose intestines, 
 if a modern theory be true, it stirs up to destructive com- 
 motion. Comets and meteorites drive their path right 
 across the system, bestowing no benefit on it, but only in- 
 juring it. The supreme force of the sun alone keeps the 
 whole system in tolerable order. 
 
 We close this chapter with the same words with which 
 Dii Prel concludes the preface of his interesting work : 
 
 ‘ 1 Epicurus of old said : The Gods dwell in the interspaces 
 of our knowledge of the world.” 
 
 “Nie hat der Geist des Menschen mehr geglanzt, 
 
 Als da er unbekannte Welten mass, 
 
 Da er in jenen Hohen, unbegrenzt, 
 
 So wie in einem offnen Buche las. 
 
 Den Himmel hat er zu sich hergezogen, 
 
 Den Schleier aufgehoben von den Fernen, 
 
 Und wenn sein Geist ihm iiberall gelogen, 
 
 Dort fand er ew’ge Wahrheit in den Sternen.” 
 
 J. F. Castelli. 
 
 (Never has man’s spirit shone more brilliantly than in 
 measuring unknown worlds and in reading, as in an open 
 book, those illimitable heights. He has drawn the heavens 
 down to himself, he has lifted the veil from the distant, and 
 if his spirit deceived him everywhere, he yet found eternal 
 truth in the stars.) 
 
Periods of the Creation of the 
 Earth. 
 
 Modern geology has shown that none of the so-called geological formations are 
 spread over the whole earth, but that all formations have taken place simul- 
 taneously at every period ; it has also shown that they are still progressing all 
 over the world and will continue to progress for ever. — F. Mohr 
 Things happening to-day are merely the copy and reflex of things that happened 
 in former times. — Isnard. 
 
 The forces now at work in the world are the same in quality and quantity which 
 brought about geological changes in the most distant ages — Lyell 
 In the time-piece of Nature thousands of years are but a single beat of the 
 pendulum ; they are but what a second is to us. — H. Tutti.e. 
 
 A FTER the earth had separated itself as an individual 
 self-existent body from the rotating primal mist and 
 begun its rotatory motion around the remaining 
 central mass, a number of changes began in its interior which 
 tended to produce a continually increasing condensation of 
 its mass in the centre and a simultaneous refrigeration on 
 the outside. Whereas the ancients, in their imperfect cos- 
 mogony, taking the earth for the centre of the universe, 
 fancied that in the course of the supposed division of the 
 solid from the liquid, the fire rose to heaven in order to 
 form the radiance and glow of the firmament, it in reality 
 receded slowly deeper and deeper into the bosom of the 
 earth, and now betrays its presence only by the ever in- 
 creasing heat of the interior of the earth, by hot springs, 
 volcanoes, etc. The outside of the earth, on the contrary, 
 becoming more rigid and forming a crust, assumed more 
 and more the characteristics of apparent solidity and im- 
 
 (117) 
 
1 1 8 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 mutability which it has at this day. Fierce conflicts took 
 place between fire and water, after the water had precipita- 
 ted itself on the surface of the earth as a hot primal ocean 
 from the watery mists surrounding the globe, and had uni- 
 formly spread over its surface. Out of these conflicts, and 
 by virtue of influences destructive on the one hand, con- 
 structive on the other, of forces partly physical, partly 
 chemical, partly representing the working of inferior organ- 
 isms, there arose, in the course of enormous periods of 
 time, earth-formations and strata which are accessible to 
 our investigations, and in which geologists read the history 
 of the earth as in an ancient chronicle. The day-book of 
 Nature, it is true, is not so complete and uniform as to 
 require merely to be read off ; on the contrary, it is in the 
 highest degree imperfect, full of gaps, continually inter- 
 rupted, and written in many different spots all over the 
 surface of the earth ; its leaves are in many ways damaged 
 or put out of order by subsequent events ; individual letters 
 are destroyed or rendered illegible, so that it needs no 
 little trouble and no little keenness to fill up the gaps to 
 some extent, to interpret accurately the obliterated passages 
 and to get at their true connection. 
 
 Indeed, such an interpretation would probably have been 
 impossible, if scattered solid fragments and remains of the 
 earlier world of living organisms, such as mussels, teeth, 
 scales, bones, feathers, shells, plants, etc., — the so-called 
 fossils — had not resisted destruction, and had not, by 
 giving to each geological formation a definite and easily 
 recognizable character, served in some measure as guides 
 or clews through the labyrinth of that geological chronicle. 
 This circumstance, in connection with erroneously inter- 
 preted geological facts, unfortunately gave rise to the famous 
 theory of geological catastrophes and revolutions which, 
 for a length of time, ruled supreme in science. As an out- 
 come of this theory, it was imagined that from time to time 
 a complete change was caused in the surface of the earth 
 by gigantic revolutions and catastrophes, accompanied by 
 
PERIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EARTH. 119 
 
 the destruction and subsequent new creation of all living 
 things to be found thereon, and that this proceeding had 
 been repeated some thirty or fifty times in the history of 
 the earth. Fire and water, each after its fashion, were sup- 
 posed to have co-operated in destroying the world of living 
 things at a blow, and to have afforded the creator, after the 
 elements had quieted down again, an opportunity of setting 
 to work his creative omnipotence in establishing a new 
 order of things. The names of the famous French scientists 
 Baffon (1707 — 1788) and Cuvier (1769 — 1832) are most 
 closely connected with this theory of cataclysms ; it was 
 also believed in by the famous naturalist Agassiz, who died 
 a few years ago, and it still musters numerous adherents, 
 though rather in theological than in specially scientific cir- 
 cles. The greater number of the ancient philosophers, like 
 Heraclitus, Plato, etc., also looked upon the history of the 
 globe in a similar fashion and had an idea of periodical 
 catastrophes and new creations of the world, recurring at 
 intervals of a larger or smaller number of thousands of 
 years ; whilst others, whose tendency was of a more ma- 
 terialistic nature, such as Anaxagoras, Okellus, Democritus, 
 and his disciples Epicurus and Lucretius expressed even 
 then an opinion that the cosmic process ever followed its 
 regular course and that the violent changes were confined 
 within very narrow limits. 
 
 This theory of catastrophes, as will be easily seen, afforded 
 the theological tendency in natural science a welcome pre- 
 text for calling in the co-operation of a supernatural power, 
 by whose impulse or permission those revolutions were 
 thought to have been brought about, in order that the 
 earth might be led through various stages of gradual im- 
 provement to a form suited for certain objects or designs. 
 It was supposed that this power had intervened frequently 
 and directly, or that a continual and new creation had 
 taken place, at stated periods, and that new and improved 
 organic beings and species had sprung up after each suc- 
 cessive destruction. The Bible was thus borne out when 
 
120 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 it said that God had visited the earth with a deluge in 
 order to destroy the disobedient human race, wallowing 
 in iniquity, so that he might put a better one in its place. 
 God was thought with his own hand to have raised moun- 
 tains, dried up oceans, created living things, and so on. 
 
 All these fancies about the intervention of an indepen- 
 dent, supernatural, and mysterious power in the course of 
 the earth’s history have turned out to be mere illusions and 
 dreams, when looked at by the light of sober scientific 
 thought. With the same keenness of vision with which 
 astronomical science pierced through and discovered the 
 conditions of the furthest realms of space, the eye of geo- 
 logical science ranged backwards over a past of millions 
 upon millions of years, the unlifted veil of which had hid- 
 den the history of our globe from man’s ken in a mysterious 
 gloom which readily lent itself to superstitious reverie ; and, 
 in so doing, it discovered the clearest evidence of the fact 
 that this history owes its existence throughout to none but 
 the simplest and most natural processes, which may in 
 many instances be traced with the greatest scientific accu- 
 racy. The theory of the so-called periods of creation of 
 the earth, which in former days were so frequently and so 
 readily spoken of, and which even at this day a cosmogony 
 based on childish error would feign identify with the biblical 
 days of creation — was found to be altogether inadmissible, 
 and the whole past of the earth appeared as the present of 
 our globe, unrolled. It is the great glory of the eminent 
 English geologist, Sir Charles Lyell , who died only a few 
 years ago, to have been the first who proved convincingly 
 that the catastrophes or revolutions, on which had been 
 built up the theory of the periods of creation, were never 
 universal, but purely local, in point of fact that no geolog- 
 ical convulsions had taken place simultaneously over the 
 whole surface of the globe, but that the past history of the 
 earth is only a continuous and gradual process of evolution, 
 springing from the same forces, phenomena, and diminutive 
 changes which are actively at work at the present time in 
 
PERIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EARTH. 121 
 
 the formation of the surface of the earth, and which day by 
 day keep going on under our very eyes. It is true that 
 this process generally goes on in such a slow, gradual, im- 
 perceptible manner, that the period of time allotted to our 
 observation and experience is much too short for us to ac- 
 quaint ourselves with the great results of its working. No 
 doubt it must at first sight have appeared as though the 
 changes of which we see such powerful traces on the surface 
 of the earth, must have originated in powerful convulsions 
 of its interior ; but riper experience and observation teach 
 us the very opposite. “ For the earth,” says Burmeister 
 in his excellent History of Creation , “ is entirely formed by 
 forces which we find active in their full strength even at 
 this day : it has never been subjected to evolutionary ca- 
 tastrophes essentially more powerful or entirely different 
 from those which affect it now ; on the other hand, the 
 length of time in which the changes have taken place is 
 
 immeasurable The gigantic and startling nature of 
 
 the terrestrial evolution lies only in the huge periods of 
 time during which it has been proceeding,” etc. 
 
 In fact, the main solution of the apparent enigma lies in 
 the enormous periods of time through which the history of 
 the earth extends. As a drop of water ever falling on the 
 same spot will in time perforate a stone, so forces apparent- 
 ly weak and scarcely perceptible on a small scale produce 
 incredible and seemingly miraculous results when working 
 through long periods. Now, as formerly, the earth is con- 
 stantly changing under our very eyes; constantly terrestrial 
 strata appear and disappear, volcanoes are ignited, earth- 
 quakes rend the ground, mountains rise or collapse, whole 
 continents are levelled up or slowly recede again into the 
 bosom of the earth, islands rise and sink, the sea retreats 
 from the terra firma or overflows other lands, rivers change 
 their courses, now tearing away tracts of land, now laying 
 down fresh soil on other spots; to this very day, the count- 
 less myriads of plants and animals are still actively engaged 
 in gradually building up the crust of the earth, while water, 
 
122 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 wind, and storms seek to pull down again what has been 
 built up * All these slow and natural effects produced by 
 natural causes at different times and in different places, 
 which effects have needed so many millions of years to 
 evolve themselves, we now behold united into one grand 
 collective picture, and so striking and powerful is the im- 
 pression wrought upon us by this picture, that we are 
 driven, as it were, to the thought of, or the belief in, a 
 ceaselessly creating power ; whereas in reality everything 
 has occurred in the most natural fashion, as the necessary 
 sequence of cause and effect. No doubt, the difference 
 between individual geological formations is very great, so 
 great, indeed, that they cannot directly depend on each 
 other, but must have been separated by protracted geo- 
 logical periods. In taking up a diagram of the strata of the 
 surface of the earth, one notices at the first glance that 
 rocks of such various structure and mineralogical compo- 
 sition cannot be the result of a closely connected formative 
 process, but that long pauses must have intervened, in the 
 course of which important geological changes, upheavals 
 and subsidences, alterations of oceanic currents, differences 
 of sedimentary deposits, etc., must have taken place. During 
 the upheavals the waves also began to carry on their process 
 of destruction, so that whole tracts of land with the organ- 
 isms embedded in them were washed away again, and the 
 whole geological and paleontological record must necessa- 
 rily have suffered a complete break in that particular spot. 
 To those who look only at the surface of things and who 
 have no understanding of the intimate connection of things, 
 this break may appear as real and as a proof of a new 
 creation having taken place ; but the rational and enlight- 
 ened mind of an educated man, aided by scientific training, 
 
 *Any one who wishes to acquaint himself with the practical evidence of these 
 fuCts, can find it in the following works: Burmeister, “ Geschichte der Schop- 
 fung;” Rossmassler, "Geschichte der Erde;’’ O. Vogler, "Erde und Ewigkeit;” 
 F. Mohr, "Geschichte der Erde;’’ Lyell, "Principles of Geology,” and "Antiquity 
 of Man;” lastly, in the author’s works, " Natur und Geist,” and “Die 
 Darwin’sche Theorie.” 
 
PERIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EARTH. 1 23 
 
 will judge very differently indeed. It knows that the inves- 
 tigation into the history and the stages of development of 
 the earth, like the investigation into the laws of the heavens, 
 is unable to find anywhere the traces or the workings of a 
 supernatural power, holding a position independent of the 
 natural connection of things ; that investigation has, on the 
 contrary, proved that everywhere and in all periods of that 
 history the same materials, forces and physical laws were 
 active as those by which we are now surrounded. No- 
 where, nor in the remotest periods of the past, has this 
 investigation found a spot which, when reached, it became 
 necessary to put a stop to scientific research or to accept 
 the notion of unknown or supernatural forces ; everywhere 
 have been found the same laws, the same matter, the same 
 processes accessible to scientific analysis. “ Historical re- 
 search (into the history of the evolution of the earth) has 
 led to the conclusion that the past and the present rest on 
 exactly similar bases ; that the past developed in a fashion 
 identical to that in which the present rolls on, and that the 
 forces which are active on our earth have been the same 
 from time immemorial.” — Burmeister. ‘‘This immutable 
 identity in the nature of phenomena gives us a certainty 
 that fire and water have had the same energies at all periods 
 as they have now and will have henceforth ; that gravita- 
 tion, and hence the phenomena of weight, electricity, 
 magnetism, and the volcanic activity of the interior of the 
 earth, have never been different from what they are now. ’ ’ 
 — -Rossmassler. “ Nature almost always works in dumb 
 silence ; cataclysmic convulsions and violent destruction 
 are but exceptional. The catastrophes which authors have 
 crudely painted from fancy, are either exaggerations or 
 have never taken place at all. There have been great 
 changes, and vast upheavals ; but for the most part with 
 less tumult than fanciful authors have made about them, 
 and they have certainly not taken place by means of any 
 but the normal and known forces of nature.” — H. Tuttle. 
 
 Hence the human mind, enlightened by scientific training, 
 
124 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 no longer needs that mighty hand which, working from 
 without, as men were once obliged to believe, rouses the 
 incandescent spirits of the bowels of the earth to a sudden 
 tumult, which pours the waters of the deluge over the globe 
 and from time to time moulds the whole system to his pur- 
 poses as the sculptor does the plastic clay. If these objects, 
 as theists would have us suppose, were really the gradual 
 preparation of the surface of the globe for the living 
 creatures that are to exist upon it, more particularly man- 
 kind, it is quite impossible to understand why divine Om- 
 nipotence, which must be regarded as the cause of all these 
 changes, should have needed such efforts and such round- 
 about ways to attain its end, and why it should not, or 
 could not, have done at once and without hesitation what 
 appeared to be good or expedient for the realization of 
 these designs. It requires a stupendous amount of imag- 
 ination for any one to deem it possible that the divine 
 Omnipotence or supreme Intelligence can have found it 
 necessary to use such vast periods of time and work such 
 fearful catastrophes, involving in each instance the exter- 
 mination of all living creatures in existence, to finally carry 
 the earth and its inhabitants, through a cycle of transitions 
 and improvements, to its last and highest goal, which is no 
 other than that of forming a suitable dwelling-place for the 
 most highly organized of animals, man. Can a power 
 which we look upon as unlimited and absolutely perfect, 
 knowing everything and foreseeing everything, be subject 
 to such narrow limitations and require, as it were, such 
 protracted training and rehearsals, before it can attain its 
 objebt or accomplish its will ? And what reason could such 
 a power allege for the continually recurring destruction of 
 a whole creation and world of living things, if not the need 
 of constant self-improvement, which is in diametrical oppo- 
 sition to its omnipotence, perfection and omniscience? 
 This is so clear, so obvious even to the intelligence of a 
 child, that a savage belonging to the Bechuanas, (who 
 inhabit the interior of South Africa,) when Moffat, the mis- 
 
PERIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EARTH. 1 25 
 
 sionary, was trying to make him understand the Christian 
 idea of creation, replied with a sneer : “If you really think 
 that only one being created all men, you must admit that 
 this being gradually improved as it went on creating. At 
 first it tried its hand at the Bushman, then at the Hottentot, 
 then at the Bechuana, till in the end it succeeded in making 
 the white man.” 
 
 Hence there is no other explanation of the events con- 
 nected with the story of the creation of the earth than that 
 which lies in the natural facts themselves. Only the 
 inevitable and endless difficulties which Nature had to over- 
 come in the gradual formation of the crust of the earth and 
 of its organic population, which difficulties could only be 
 mastered in vast periods of time, can offer us a satisfactory 
 solution of the problems with which the genesis of the 
 organic as well as the inorganic worlds taxes our perspicacity. 
 
 The actual length of the periods needed for the earth to 
 attain its present condition can be fairly well estimated in 
 consulting the computations geologists have made respect- 
 ing single phases thereof, or respecting the length of time 
 necessary for forming individual strata. Thus, for instance, 
 according to Professor Bischoff's calculation, the formation 
 of the carboniferous strata required a period of more than 
 a million, and according to Chevandier from 600,000 to 
 
 700.000 years. This figure, however, applies only to the 
 formation of coal itself, so that it would be necessary to add 
 the time required for the formation of the nearly 10,000 
 feet of “grit” (sandstone, conglomerate and shale.) Pro- 
 fessor Philipps ( Life on the earth , i860) computes that the 
 oval-beds of South Wales, including the grit, took about 
 
 500.000 years to form. The time required for the develop- 
 ment of the strata of the tertiary period, ranging from 3000 
 and 5000 feet in thickness, must have been at least 350,000 
 years, while, according to a calculation made by A. von 
 Humboldt, the guano deposits, some of them nearly 100 
 feet thick, consisting of the excreta of sea birds, must have 
 taken nearly three times as long to form. The calculation 
 
126 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 of the English scientist Croll , quoted by Grove, make it 
 certain that since the last glacial period (falling at the end 
 of the tertiary or at the beginning of the post-tertiary 
 period) no less than 100,000 years must have elapsed — “a 
 space of time apparently not very long, if measured by 
 geological eras, but probably very much longer.” The 
 same author estimates the duration of the so-called Eocene 
 or Miocene, the first two subdivisions of the great tertiary 
 period, at from one million to several millions of years prior 
 to the year 1800 of our era ! It is obvious that we encounter 
 much higher numbers, when we come to consider the periods 
 it must have taken to form the entire stratification of the 
 earth’s surface, such as we know it ; these periods must 
 count by many millions of years. Lyell considered that 
 they represent a total of 560 million years. This figure may 
 be and probably is excessive, and we shall be nearer the 
 mark if we assume a period of a hundred million years to 
 have elapsed from the time when the first living forms 
 appeared on the earth and the oldest stratified rocks were 
 deposited, down to the present day. According to Helmholtz 
 this figure, or even a smaller one, is near enough for the 
 entire age of the world as an individual planet, while on 
 the other hand some scientists, such as Falb , Klein , etc., 
 bring the number up to 2000 million years. As regards 
 the age of the solar heat, it appears from astronomical 
 researches that our earth cannot have existed as an inde- 
 pendent planet for more than a hundred million years, 
 while on the other hand Prof. Bischoff , judging by experi- 
 ments with a molten and slowly cooled disc of basalt, has 
 come to the conclusion that the originally incandescent 
 mass of the earth must have required at least 350 million 
 years to cool from a temperature of 3600° down to 400°. 
 Blayidet and Vinot , two French scientists, have obtained 
 yet higher figures, grounding their calculations on the physi- 
 cal theory of light. They estimate the age of the earth at 
 the enormous number of about 6000 million years. If we 
 take our stand on this number as a basis, we find that the 
 
PERIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EARTH. 1 27 
 
 age of Neptune, the oldest planet of our solar system, would 
 come up to 42,000 million years ! What endless periods of 
 time must have elapsed since the original mist of our solar 
 system had become sufficiently condensed for Neptune to 
 separate itself from its equator in the form of a ring of vapor! 
 
 Now, whether one or another of these calculations be the 
 more accurate, they show in any case what endless periods 
 of time our dwelling-place the earth required, in order that, 
 after passing through innumerable and scarcely perceptible 
 transitions, it should at length become what it is now ; and 
 this is to be accounted for only by the theory of a gradual 
 and very slow development, and not by that of the personal 
 intervention of an omnipotent entity. The numbers quoted 
 above lead us to another inference, which is this : In con- 
 nection with the immeasurable distances which the astrono- 
 mers have discovered in the universe and from which our 
 powers of imagination derive problems they are unable to 
 cope with, the immensity of the periods alluded to brings 
 home to us the necessity of recognizing the illimitability 
 of time and space, that is to say, eternity and infinity. 
 
 Should the conceptions of religion, which represent God 
 as eternal and infinite, be preferable when carried to their 
 logical ends, to the theories of science? Does the rabid 
 fanaticism of priests, which invented the eternity of hell-fire, 
 surpass scientific research in boldness of thought? “What- 
 ever may be said of the end of the world, it is all as vague 
 as the legend of the beginning, which the infantile mind of 
 nations invented. The earth and the universe are eternal, 
 since eternity is an essential property of matter. But matter 
 is not unchangeable, and because it appears in varied forms 
 man’s limited intellect, while yet unillumined by scientific 
 research, holds it to be finite and destructible.” — Burmeister. 
 
 “Aeonen komraen und Aeonen gehn, 
 
 Doch unbeachtet rollen sie voriiber; 
 
 Denn was sind selbst Aeonen, wenn gesehn, 
 
 Der unbegriff’nen Ewigkeit geniiber?” 
 
 Helionde. 
 
128 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 (Ages come and ages go, rolling past unnoticed ; for 
 what are even ages in comparison to unconceived eter- 
 nity ?) 
 
 That which modern science, armed with the most mag- 
 nificent appliances, teaches as an almost irrefragable fact, 
 man had learned some thousands of years ago by logical 
 thought, unsophisticated by the religious and philosophical 
 prejudices of our enlightened age, and it seems inconceivable 
 that such a simple and necessary thought as that of the 
 eternity of the universe , could ever have faded away from the 
 human mind “ Almost all the ancient philosophers are 
 agreed in regarding the universe as eternal. Ocellus 
 Lukanus says expressly, in speaking of the universe, that 
 it has always been and evei will be. All unprejudiced persons 
 will feel the force of the axiom that out of nothing nothing 
 comes. Creation, in the acceptation in which the word is 
 used by the moderns, is a theological subtlety.” (Systeme 
 de la nature , premiere partie, Note 7.) “ None of the gods 
 has formed the world, nor has any man ; it has always 
 been.” (. Empedocles , 450 B. C.) 
 
Original Generation. 
 
 It is certain that the appearance of animal bodies on the earth is the expression 
 of such forces, and a function of these, resulting with mathematical certainty 
 from the existing conditions.— Burmeister. 
 
 One thing may be unhesitatingly proclaimed by modern science, viz., that organ- 
 ized things are no more the results of separate creations than the so-called 
 unorganized ones ; that they are nothing more than special forms in which 
 universal matter appears, and from which, like all the other individualized 
 bodies, they have gradually evolved. — V. Graber. 
 
 It appears to me that every rational physiologist, provided he admits such a 
 thing as the genesis of life, is compelled to trace it to a peculiar aggregation 
 of chemical and physical forces.— V irchow. 
 
 It is not to be doubted that in the early history of our earth organisms must have 
 been produced abiogenetically ; the origin of living things must necessarily 
 have sprung from inorganic matter. — W. Wundt. 
 
 T HERE was a time when the earth as a fiery ball was 
 not only incapable of producing living things, but 
 actually hostile to the existence of any vegetable or 
 animal organisms in close proximity to its surface. Not 
 until after it had gradually cooled down and become solidi- 
 fied, and after the surrounding watery vapors had been 
 precipitated on it, did the crust of the earth assume a form 
 and condition which in its further development prepared 
 the possibility of the origin and existence of manifold 
 organized forms. With the formation of water, and as 
 soon as the temperature permitted, organic life also evolved. 
 At first it appeared but in the lowest and most imperfect 
 forms, but in the course of long periods and in keeping 
 with the development of the earth itself, it unrolled itself 
 gradually into the whole wealth of forms, shapes and indi- 
 viduals which now inhabit the surface of the globe, and 
 which inhabited it throughout the almost endless duration 
 
 (129) 
 
130 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 of pre-historic ages. This we infer with absolute certainty 
 from the fact already mentioned in the preceding chapter, 
 that every stratum accessible to our investigation contains 
 within itself the clear and partially well-preserved remnants, 
 traces and relics of the vegetable and animal organisms 
 which existed at the period of its deposition. For those 
 ages of the deepest scientific ignorance are long gone by 
 and will never return, in which these remains were looked 
 upon as mere Lusus natures , i. e. when it was thought that 
 Nature had amused herself in representing the forms and 
 features of living animals in stone, or when they were 
 thought to be ruins left by the Mosaic deluge. The times 
 are also gone by in which it was held almost universally 
 that all the various kinds of lower animals or plants, down 
 to the Infusoria, had arisen without parents from the mere 
 interaction of the elements or by what was called spontane- 
 ous generation.* The more progress science achieved by 
 the aid of the microscope, the narrower became the bounds 
 within which the belief in spontaneous generation, once so 
 widely spread, receded ; until at last a halt was made at 
 the simplest form-element, from which all aggregated 
 organic beings originate without exception, viz. the cell. 
 The English physician Harvey , the famous discoverer of 
 the circulation of the blood (1619,) laid down this important 
 principle : Omne vivum ex ovo (all that lives is from an 
 egg,) and this principle was subsequently expanded into: 
 Omne vivum ex vivo (all that lives is from the living ;) it 
 being understood that the propagation not only takes place 
 through the germ previously procreated by similar parents, 
 but also more directly from existing parental bodies, by the 
 processes of fission, buds, shoots, free cell formation, etc. 
 
 ’Aristotle thought that eels were generated in inud ; Ovid assigned the same 
 origin to frogs, and Pliny in his Natural History made all insects spring from the 
 dust of caves. Even as late as the Middle Ages it was thought possible to pro- 
 duce snakes and mice in the laboratory ; fishes, frogs, snakes and rats were be- 
 lieved to be generated spontaneously, and it was seriously contended that the 
 black or mourning-duck originated in the rotten wood of old ships or from a 
 mussel (Lefias anatxfera.) Even at this day, popular superstition still clings to 
 the idea of a spontaneous generation of all kinds of vermin, (fleas, bugs, etc.) 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 
 
 I 3 I 
 
 This phrase means therefore that life, or anything living, 
 can never originate spontaneously, nor from the mere ag- 
 gregation of its elements, but only as the continuation of an 
 already existent identical or similar life. In modern times, 
 as the cell became recognized as the ultimate organized 
 form-element, or as the organic unity, the theory of it was 
 formulated more accurately by Virchow , in the words : 
 Omnis cellula ab cellula ; that is to say, there is no organ- 
 ized cell which has not originated from a previously existent 
 cell of the same or of similar kind. But as it was found in 
 the further course of these researches that the cell was a 
 somewhat variable form, that it was not always the same, 
 but sometimes showed one kind of ingredients, sometimes 
 another, a yet more exact distinction was drawn, and by 
 directing attention to that part of the cell which seemed the 
 most constant, the so-called nucleus, the phrase was again 
 changed to : Omnis nucleus e nucleo, or each cell-nucleus 
 originates from another nucleus. But whatever formula was 
 given to the theory- — or may be given to it in the future — 
 the thought or principle lying at the root of it is that organ- 
 ized forms cannot originate spontaneously, and that one or 
 more organized individuals or units must have been present 
 in order that a new one should originate. The stories of 
 the Old Testament expressed this truth, already known in 
 its broad outlines, in an allegorical form, by making two of 
 every kind of animal enter the ark to be saved from the 
 universal deluge. 
 
 For those who are not contented with biblical stories, 
 several questions must arise in the face of such facts, viz., 
 where and how did the origin take place ? What was the 
 primal generation of organized things ? If all organized 
 beings have proceeded from previously existent organi- 
 zations, from parent forms, how did the first parents arise? 
 Did these arise spontaneously, merely by the fortuitous or 
 necessary concourse of the elements under certain condi- 
 tions, or were they called into existence by the voice of an 
 external power, by a supernatural creative act? And if the 
 
132 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 first be the case, why does the same thing happen no 
 more at this day ? 
 
 This weighty question has long occupied philosophers 
 and scientists, and has given scope for the most varied 
 and most extensive controversies. Before we enter upon a 
 closer investigation of this question, we must first remark 
 in regard to the axiom quoted heretofore : Omne vivum ex 
 vivo, (All that lives is from the living), that whilst it is true so 
 far as the vast majority of all organisms is concerned, it 
 cannot under present conditions be accepted as holding 
 good throughout. In spite of numerous and very carefully 
 made experiments, in spite of the severest efforts made and 
 discussions carried on among scientific men, the disputed 
 question of generatio <zquivoca ( generatio spontanea , or 
 primaria , or heterogenea, or incequalis ;) known also as 
 archibiosis, autogony, or abiogenesis, that is spontaneous 
 generation, or heterogenesis as it is called in France, has 
 not not yet entered upon such a stage that it can be re- 1 
 gardecl as definitely decided. Generatio czquivoca signifies 
 the generation of organized beings without the pre-existence 
 of similar parents or parental germs, merely by the neces- 
 sary or accidental aggregation of unorganized elements 
 and physical forces, or from organized but dissimilar pa- 
 rents by the decomposition of their constituents. These 
 two forms of generation have lately been distinguished, 
 according to the nomenclature proposed by Professor 
 Haeckel , of Jena, as autogony and plasmogony. By autog- 
 ony is meant the coming into existence of the simplest 
 organized individual in an inorganic fluid containing am- 
 monia, carbonic acid, etc.; by plasmogony the coming into 
 existence of such a being in an organic fluid, containing 
 the constituent materials in the form of complex and free 
 carbon-compounds. The numerous experiments on spon- 
 taneous generation made up to the present time have been 
 almost entirely of the latter kind, that is to say, on 
 plasmogony. 
 
 Although, as we have said before, the most recent re- 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 
 
 133 
 
 searches have gone to show that this kind of generation, 
 despite the wide range that used to be given to it, has no 
 scientific basis to rest on, it does not seem altogether out 
 of the question that it may hold good for the smallest and 
 simplest organism, the so-called microphyta and microzoa. 
 Such well-known scientific investigators as Pouchet, Joly, 
 Pennetier, Musset, and Onimus in France ; Child and 
 Bastian in England ; Mantegazza in Italy ; Wyman in 
 America ; Schaafhausen in Germany, and many others, 
 have declared themselves in favor of this hypothesis, and 
 rejected, in a certain measure, at any rate, the theory of 
 panspermism, or of the universal presence of organized 
 germs in the atmospheric air, as put forth by those who, 
 like the French scientist Pasteur , are opposed to hetero- 
 genesis. They regard the building-up of formed organized 
 bodies out of unformed organic substance as no more 
 miraculous or striking than the formation of crystals from 
 the so called mother-lye, that is to say, from a fluid con- 
 taining their constituent elements. Of course this relates 
 only to the lowest and simplest beginnings of life in the 
 form of the so-called monads, while the forms that are 
 somewhat more highly organized develop from these stage 
 by stage ; just as in the course of geological periods the 
 plant and animal life has developed or evolved step by step. 
 “There is,” says Pennetier, “ a greater distance between 
 a colpoda or a ciliated infusorium of the higher sort and a 
 bacterium, than between an elephant and the lowest mam- 
 mal.” Very diverse forms may also be produced in 
 infusions by changing the materials and the surrounding 
 conditions ; and by driving the same air into different so- 
 lutions, the most varied fauna and flora can be evolved. 
 Spontaneous generation is the original condition of life, while 
 the transformation of species represents its continuance. 
 
 It stands to reason that even supposing everything to 
 be true which is advanced by the advocates of spontaneous 
 generation in the form of plasmogony, it does not follow 
 by any means that there exists that organic material which 
 
134 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 forms the mother, or necessary precedent, of all the organic 
 forms proceeding therefrom. This, in connection with the 
 fact that most scientists have either rejected or doubted the 
 theory of spontaneous generation in the alleged manner, 
 and without the presence of a precedent germ, has afforded 
 to the theological tendency in science a welcome pretext 
 for appealing to the intervention and activity of a higher 
 Power standing outside nature, which, it is contended, 
 must, of its own free will and authority, have created those 
 earliest and first beginnings of organized existence at a 
 definite period of the earth’s formation and must have 
 implanted in them the capacity for their vast subsequent 
 development. In point of fact, the supporters of the hy- 
 pothesis of creation, as F. A. Lange cogently remarks in 
 his History of Materialism, love to shelter themselves in 
 those dark corners which science has not yet illumined with 
 its rays, and there to hang up their cobwebs to catch sound 
 reason in. Nay, not even the most distinguished scientists 
 and thinkers, such as a Cotta or a Secchi , have been able 
 to keep their minds free from the influence of these ideas 
 and from the bewildering pressure of this problem, so much 
 so that, with respect to the genesis of organic beings, 
 the former cannot help himself but must needs call in the 
 ‘ ‘ unfathomable power of a creator, ’ ’ and the latter feels 
 constrained to appeal to “the conscious activity of an 
 eternal architect.” 
 
 Without troubling too much about a natural explanation 
 of organic origin and growth, it may be replied to these 
 believers that the germs or first beginnings of all living 
 things existed from all eternity, awaiting only the concourse 
 of definite external circumstances — either in that formless 
 vapor from which the earth was gradually condensed, or 
 else in space, from which they descended on the crust of 
 the earth after it had formed and cooled down, and that 
 they only became capable of further development wherever 
 the necessary conditions were favorable to it. However 
 startling such a theory may appear at the first blush, it 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 135 
 
 must certainly be admitted that there is more intrinsic 
 probability in it than in the hypothesis of creation, which 
 rests on no scientific foundation whatever. Moreover, this 
 bold theory, since it was first propounded by the author of 
 this work in the year 1855 , (see the first edition of Kraft 
 und Stoff, pp. 74-75,) has been corroborated by such a num- 
 ber of important facts, that the conception of the cosmical 
 nature and the cosmical origin of life and of organized matter 
 has by this time obtained a recognized standing among 
 the current scientific hypotheses on the beginning of life, 
 and this has been acknowledged by many scientists of mark. 
 At any rate, there is no reason for rejecting as impossible 
 the idea that organized matter or even complete organisms 
 existed in the earliest ages in the higher regions of the 
 terrestrial atmosphere, considering that great numbers of 
 microscopic organisms have been found in the finely 
 divided watery particles of the highest clouds of vapor that 
 can be got at, and that Angus Smith has shown by means 
 of permanganate of potassium that atmospheric air, how- 
 ever pure, always contains a very small quantity of organ- 
 ized matter. Ehrenberg gives out as his deliberate opinion 
 that organized beings actually exist in space, from whence 
 they occasionally come down on our globe. Indeed, it 
 happens frequently enough that the earth passes through 
 meteoric clouds, tails of comets and similar bodies, and 
 might, in its progress, gather up millions of organized 
 beings or of their germs. According to Quinet , {Die 
 Schopfung , Leipzig, 1871 , pp. 276 , 277 .) life is of cosmical 
 origin and cosmical nature and is as old and as wide- 
 spread as matter itself. The earth, he thinks, attracted and 
 still attracts the germs of future life to itself from the cosmic 
 mass. Meibauer (in the second edition of his Sonnen- 
 System , Berlin, 1872 ) has collected together all the facts 
 which go to show ‘ ! that organized germs (of cosmical 
 origin) are carried to us on the earth by the air spread 
 throughout the solar system.” The famous traveller and 
 naturalist Moriz Wagner also accepts this theory in several 
 
136 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 excellent articles written by him in the Allgemeine Zeilutig, 
 and considers that life is as old as matter itself, or is im- 
 ported into it from universal space. “ The atmospheres of 
 the celestial bodies,” says Wagner, “like those of the 
 revolving cosmical vapor-masses, must henceforth be re- 
 garded as permanent conservatories for the living forms 
 and as the eternal green-houses of organized germs.’’ 
 Prof. Semper ( Der Hdckelismus in der Zoologie, 1876) 
 speaks of the hypothesis according to which “the life on our 
 globe is derived from organic germs belonging to other 
 worlds, which fell upon it before the existence of any earthly 
 life in one of the earliest geological periods.’’ The English 
 scientist Sir W. Thompson, and the famous German physi- 
 ologist Helmholtz , have declared in favor of this hypothesis. 
 There is but one thing that militates against it, and that is 
 the extraordinarily low temperature (- 238° to- 256° F.) 
 of the cosmical space. This difficulty, however, does not 
 make any difference if we assume, as some scientists do, 
 that the meteoric stones and meteorites which fall on the 
 earth actually bring with them the cosmical life that exists 
 beyond our earth. Chemists have in fact been fortunate 
 enough to demonstrate the presence of organized sub- 
 stances, generally in a carbonized condition, in a great 
 number of meteorites ; * and in connection with this it must 
 not be forgotten that although meteorites may be incan- 
 descent on the surface in consequence of friction, it is quite 
 possible that in their interior they may harbor organized 
 substances without these being injured. This circumstance 
 further proves the presence of organized substances in the 
 spaces traversed by the meteorites ; and since it has been 
 suggested that the whole earth may have been formed by 
 meteorites falling in a heap together or by particles attracted 
 from space, there would hence be nothing strange in the 
 idea that organized substances existed on earth from the 
 
 * Further details may be found in F. Mohr’s Geschichte der Erde , 2.ed 1875 
 and Uber Natur und Entstehungs- Art der Meteoriten , in Liebig’s Annalen der 
 Chemie , vol. 179; also in Klein’s Kosmologische Brief (1877) PP* I 43” I 45* 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 
 
 137 
 
 very first. Nay assuming the meteorites, which fall every 
 year in countless numbers on our earth, to be, as many 
 learned men hold, broken fragments of other worlds, it is 
 self-evident that organized germs or substances must nec- 
 essarily be conveyed by them to the earth. Dr. Otto Hahn 
 lately made out that he had discovered actual traces of 
 plant and animal remains in meteoric stones, and various 
 investigators, such as Dr. Weinland, Professor Karsten and 
 others, have pronounced his discovery to be accurate. If 
 this be so, we have before our eyes the actual remains of 
 living creatures from another, possibly broken-up, celestial 
 body. The commonest kind of meteoric stones consists of 
 a mixture of iron and various rocks, and contains a number 
 of small globular bodies, which have obtained for these 
 stones the name of chondrites. These chondrites are some- 
 times quite black and contain amorphous carbon and bitu- 
 minous substances, probably products of the decomposition 
 of organic compounds. According to Dr. Hahn, they are 
 nothing more than a mass of tissue of animals or plant- 
 animals of the lowest kind, such as sponges, crinoids, 
 corals, etc. According to Dr. Weiland , ( Ausland , 1881, 
 p. 302,) they are remains of corals belonging to the family 
 of the favositina, which on earth are found only as fossils 
 in the very oldest strata ; in the chondrites they are of 
 liliputian size as compared with their terrestrial relatives. 
 C. Kapp ( Westermann s Monatshefte , August, 1881) re- 
 gards this discovery as authentic and thinks that meteoric 
 stones and meteoric iron are o?ily of organic origin ; indeed, 
 that the earliest beginnings of all planets (including, of 
 course, the earth) were organic formations ! 
 
 Some savants have lately gone so far in this direction as 
 to completely reverse the view hitherto considered as true 
 and to regard all inorganized nature as a product of vital 
 activity, while others again maintain that both the organic 
 and the inorganic kingdoms are products of differentiations, 
 or evolutions, proceeding from an originally indifferent 
 condition of matter. Life, on this hypothesis, is only a 
 
138 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 peculiar mode of motion of the molecules of the primal 
 matter in a state of condensation, and this theory would 
 render any explanation of the origin of that primal matter 
 unnecessary. 
 
 All this is as yet a mere hypothesis or conjecture and 
 goes no more to solve the problem in an empirical or 
 scientific sense than does the hypothesis of the cosmical 
 origin of organized substances or germs. For if the latter 
 hypothesis were shown to be the explanation of the presence 
 of life on the surface of the globe, it would not yet answer 
 the question of the first origin of organized matter as such or 
 of the first germ of life — unless indeed the theory be ac- 
 cepted, as explained above, that living matter has always 
 existed or at any rate must be regarded as latent in the 
 primal condition of matter. But since the idea of the eter- 
 nity of an individual is illogical and all that is individual is 
 transitory ; and seeing that motion as such is eternal or 
 without beginning, yet life as a special or definite mode 
 of motion must have had a beginning, we are no nearer to 
 a solution of the difficulty ; we must assume or admit that 
 the organized compound in the form of what is called proto- 
 plasm or the material of primal formation or life must have 
 originated at some time in some place. And this offers in 
 reality no logical nor empirical difficulty. On the contrary, 
 spontaneous generation in this restricted and limited sense 
 must be regarded as a logical postulate or as a necessary 
 demand of human reason and science. It is the logical 
 consequence of the appearance and gradual growth of or- 
 ganized beings on the surface of our own or of other planets, 
 and an indispensable hypothesis by the side of the funda- 
 mental facts of astronomy and geology. It would imply a 
 perfectly inadmissible interruption of, and break through, 
 the universal causal relationship that obtains throughout 
 the correlation of nature, if we admitted that there was a 
 single moment in the history of the formation of the earth 
 and the celestial bodies in which that unity was interrupted 
 or destroyed by a supernatural intervention or creative act. 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 
 
 139 
 
 Most probably living combinations of material particles, and 
 similar combinations endowed with vitality, have at all 
 times existed somewhere in the universe, and have de- 
 veloped further wherever certain external circumstances or 
 conditions were realized. Long before the commencement 
 of animal or vegetable life on the earth there may have 
 existed combinations either living, or endowed with vitality, 
 which developed further on that same earth, when its sur- 
 face had reached a condition favorable to such development. 
 
 But those also who do not accept the hypothesis of the 
 cosmical origin or the cosmical diffusion of organic matter, 
 or who prefer not to take it into account, are forced to 
 admit that somewhere and at some period in the history of 
 the formation of the earth, there must have been a moment 
 at which organic matter sprang from inorganic matter under 
 conditions as yet unknown. That such a springing into 
 existence may perhaps occur no longer at this day or — we 
 had better say — has not yet been observed, proves nothing 
 against the occurrence of spontaneous generation at an 
 earlier period and under conditions differing essentially from 
 those of the age we live in. It is obvious that the general 
 conditions of life in the primordial or earliest periods of our 
 planet must have been very different from those of the 
 present and must have been favorable to the springing-up 
 for spontaneous generation. We need only remember 
 that at that time the atmosphere was replete with that most 
 important of organic elements, carbon, which subsequently 
 assumed the shape of coal-mines ; we need but think of the 
 difference in the density and the electrical conditions of the 
 atmosphere, the peculiar chemical and physical state of the 
 primeval ocean, and many other similar facts. “When our 
 planet,” says Professor O. Schmidt , in his excellent little 
 work, Darwinismus und Descendenzlelire, (Leipzig, 1873,) 
 ‘ ‘ had arrived at that stage of evolution at which the 
 temperature of the surface permitted the formation of water 
 and the existence of albuminous substances, the quantities 
 and proportions of the component parts of the atmosphere 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 I4O 
 
 were different from what they are now. A thousand cir- 
 cumstances which we are unable to produce, may have led 
 to the formation of protoplasm or of the primal organism 
 from its constituent particles.” Thus there is not the re- 
 motest scientific difficulty in imagining that the law of nature 
 from which spontaneous generation must have resulted, is 
 at present latent, or hidden, owing to the absence of the 
 necessary conditions, whereas it was in full activity in the 
 past, under conditions essentially different. This is also 
 evidenced by the fact that a large number of widely diffused 
 inorganic substances, such as precious stones, pit-coal, 
 granite, quartz, etc., are apparently formed no longer at 
 the present time, yet no one has any doubt that they 
 originated in the past in perfectly natural fashion as the 
 products of chemico-physical forces. 
 
 ‘ 1 Chemistry,” says Virchow ( Gesammelte Abhandlungen 
 zur wissenschaftliclien Medicin , 1856, p. 25,) ‘‘has not yet 
 built up any of the formative substances (sarcode, albumen, 
 starch) out of their elements, nor can as yet natural phi- 
 losophy, outside the living organization, force any of these 
 given bodies to form cells. What does it matter ? If the 
 history of the earth shows us that there was a time when 
 none of these substances existed or could exist ; if 
 we see that, later on, certain periods arose in which 
 these bodies were formed, and from them organized bodies, 
 what can we conclude save that in the most unusual 
 conditions the miracle happened, which means the mo- 
 mentary manifestation of the latent law?” And again, 
 in another place: ‘‘We can only suppose that, as I said 
 on a previous occasion, at a certain period of the earth’s 
 evolution unusual conditions supervened, under which 
 elements entering into new combinations, in statu nascente , 
 assumed the vital movement, and thus the ordinary 
 mechayiical conditions were formed into vital ones.” And 
 finally : “ The law by virtue of which the formation of 
 organic generation or cells takes place, must necessarily 
 be eternal, and at each period at which, in the course of 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 
 
 I 4 I 
 
 natural processes, the conditions are favorable to its mani- 
 festation, organic formation results. The cause of this 
 activity can only be sought in a peculiar arrangement of 
 physical conditions, in an unusual interaction of ordinary 
 materials occurring at specific periods ; and the process of 
 life , both in its beginning and in its repetition , must be 
 referred to a special kind of mechanics. ” 
 
 However, since the above was written, the whole ques- 
 tion of abiogenesis has entered upon quite a new stage and 
 one far more favorable to the theory of its occurrence at 
 the present time, in consequence of the influence of the 
 famous Darwinian theory, and the investigations of Prof. 
 Haeckel of Jena on the monera , the simplest primal organ- 
 isms out of which the first cellular organisms must have 
 developed, which investigations open up new paths to 
 Science. According to these investigations the cell or 
 organic unit, which had previously been taken as the 
 starting point of spontaneous generation, and which was 
 regarded as such even by a Virchow, appears in its complete 
 formation of integument, substance, contents and nucleus, 
 as a formation that is much too complicated and too highly 
 organized to be regarded as the subject of autogony, that 
 is to say, as arising immediately from inorganic matter. 
 Such a springing into existence appears as much of a mir- 
 acle, or an impossibility, from a scientific point of view, as 
 the spontaneous growth of a more highly organized crea- 
 ture from dead matter, which was at one time so widely 
 believed in. On the contrary, the cell is itself apparently 
 a product of a whole cycle of preceding processes of devel- 
 opment, and the beginning of life is not to be sought for 
 in it, but much further backwards among yet lower forms 
 of life, lately discovered, which exist not as cells nor as 
 cell-like forms, but as mere lumps, as wholly unformed 
 slime, or an aggregation of albuminoid jelly. These 
 simplest primal organisms, which are nothing more than 
 simple living protoplasmic masses without any differentia- 
 tion, “organisms without organs,” and which stand just 
 
142 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 on the boundary between organic and inorganic bodies, 
 have been named by Haeckel monera (from novyprir, simple, - ) 
 and organisms more simple or more imperfect than these 
 cannot, he thinks, be imagined. It is these only which 
 have arisen and still arise from spontaneous generation, by 
 autogony or self-formation from compounds of organic 
 materials ; and from these only can be evolved cells or 
 cellular formations. ‘ ‘ They prove irrefragably that life is 
 united not to a special anatomical arrangement of the living 
 body ; not to the co-operation of various organs ; but to 
 a certain physico-chemical constitution of formless material, 
 to the albuminoid substance which we call sarcode or pro- 
 toplasm, a nitrogenous carbon-compound in a semi-fluid 
 state. Life is therefore not the result of organization, but 
 the reverse. The formless protoplasm makes the organized 
 forms. . . . The oldest organisms , which arose by sponta- 
 neous generation from inorganic matter , must have been 
 monera .” (Haeckel, Das Protistenreich, 1878, p. 84.) 
 
 The conception of getieratio czquivoca, or spontaneous 
 generation, appeared only so difficult, Haeckel thinks, while 
 those simplest organisms, the monera, were still unknown; 
 but now there can be no doubt that they represent the 
 earliest stage of life, and that from them were developed 
 cells or cellular organisms, in a manner upon which we 
 cannot discourse here at greater length. The real or true 
 cells arose by internal , the pseudo-cells or cell-like anu- 
 cleated cytods by external evolution of the monera. The 
 first stage of this evolution is represented by the most un- 
 differentiated cell-form, which in the shape of amoeba or 
 Proteus animalcula still leads an independent solitary exist- 
 ence at this day. Such an undifferentiated cell of the 
 simplest amoeboid form is the original egg, as it appears 
 throughout almost in a uniform configuration in the ovary 
 of the most widely-separated animals. The most ancient 
 amoebae lived as hermits ; from them were formed little 
 amoeba communities, such as may yet be found as groups 
 simple homogeneous, naked communities of cells or 
 
ORIGINAL GENERATION. 143 
 
 Aggregations of monads, living together. Here we find the 
 earliest demarcation between the vegetable and animal king- 
 doms ; for the naked but nucleated amoeboid cells, capable 
 of movement, partake rather of the latter, while those 
 which are furnished with an enclosing membrane, which 
 imbibes fluid nourishment through its pores, rather belong 
 to the former. 
 
 As regards the first or earliest appearance of the monera, 
 it must, according to Haeckel, have taken place at the 
 bottom of the primal ocean which enveloped the earth 
 as it first cooled down. “Many generations of monera 
 may for thousands of years have peopled the primal ocean 
 which covered our cooled-down globe, ere the change of 
 the external conditions of life which were suitable to these 
 homogeneous original forms, brought about also a change in 
 their own homogeneous albuminous bodies.’’ The greater 
 number of the species of Monera which so arose may have 
 again perished in the struggle for existence, while others 
 survived and became the ancestors of the whole organized 
 world. 
 
 Haeckel does not answer the question, whether this pro- 
 cess of autogony or of the spontaneous generation of 
 albuminous and living material from lifeless matter, which 
 must certainly have taken place formerly, still continues 
 at the present day. But the question may in all probability 
 be decided in the affirmative, although this spontaneous 
 generation takes place under circumstances and conditions 
 with which we are as yet not fully acquainted, and which, 
 if we knew them, we should possibly not be able to produce 
 artificially. However, it does not follow by any means that 
 this must hold good for ever and at all times. When we 
 think of the magnificent results of synthetical chemistry, 
 which has succeeded in building up by chemical means, 
 out of none but inorganic substances, a whole mass of 
 materials and bodies which were thought to be producible 
 only by the vital activity of plants and animals, such as : 
 urea, alcohol, ether, grape-sugar, racemic acid, ocalic acid, 
 
1 44 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 formic acid, butyric acid, acetic acid, lactic acid, fat, 
 amyloids, alkaloids, etc., — that man need be no visionary 
 who holds that chemistry may at some future day succeed 
 in artificially producing living protoplasm ; and we may 
 readily agree with IV. Wundt, (. Lehrbuch der Physiologie , 
 p. 169,) when he says that our present chemical synthesis 
 “ is perhaps only the first step towards such a consumation.” 
 When once we are in a position to make living proto- 
 plasm, we shall also be able to originate artificially or 
 voluntarily those lowliest forms of life, about which there 
 is at present so much controversy going on between the 
 opponents and supporters of heterogony or spontaneous 
 generation, a controversy which is carried on with such 
 extreme bitterness, although, to our thinking, it is not at 
 all likely for science to derive any benefit from it. Nature 
 presents but a single chain of cognate phenomena, unbroken 
 by any insuperable gaps. By her own power — whether 
 in one fashion or in another — she brought forth the first 
 materials and forms of life ; by her own power she caused 
 these to develop further and further ; by her own power 
 she will destroy again her own creations, and resuscitate 
 them in other places, and in new forms and shapes ! 
 
Secular Generation. 
 
 “ Evolution,” is henceforth the magic word by which we shall unravel, or at least 
 get into the way of unraveling, all the enigmas that surround us.— Haeckel. 
 
 The hypothesis of creation, as postulated by certain dogmatic principles in a 
 pretended connexion with religious, i. t., ethical veiws, cannot for a moment 
 be entertained by natural science. The ever-recurring attempt at effecting a 
 compromise between revelation and knowledge is a useless playing with 
 ideas — O. Taschenberg. 
 
 We shall recognize that by this rule all that is fixed is only apparent; growth, In 
 the form of evolution, alone is true and lasting. — von Baer. 
 
 If thou wilt comprehend and hold fast these things, then will it be clear to thee 
 that Nature, set free and relieved from her haughty lords, does all things by 
 intuition and without the interference of the gods. — Poems of Lukretius 
 Carus. (99 — 52 b. c.) 
 
 A BIOGENESIS is succeeded by biogenesis, or that 
 long succession of organized forms and species, which, 
 when the first beginnings of life were once given, 
 was to populate the surface of the world by gradual devel- 
 opment in the course of millions of years. This proceeded 
 in strict conformity with the modified external vital con- 
 ditions of the earth’s surface becoming gradually more 
 favorable ; and the more removed and diverging these 
 conditions are from those in existence at the present day, 
 the more removed and diverging do these forms or beings 
 appear also from those which now surround us, and which 
 must be regarded as the latest and highest outcome of a 
 long process of evolution and improvement. For the more 
 ancient the fragments, traces or outlines of this earlier 
 organic world found in the individual strata, or portions of 
 strata, of the earth, the lower and the less complex are in 
 general the forms or formations corresponding to these, 
 and vice versa. At the same time we come across the very 
 
 (145) 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 146 
 
 significant fact that the periods of development of these 
 lowest organisms must have been in comparison by far the 
 longest, and that these periods decrease in length in pro 
 portion as the newly arising forms of life ascend in the 
 scale of evolution. Thus the archezoic or primordial period , 
 during which none but the lowliest water-plants and water- 
 animals could exist at the bottom of what used to be the 
 hot or tepid original ocean which covered the whole earth, 
 was probably longer than the united four geological periods 
 which succeeded it. Many million years had to pass away 
 prior to the evolution of the protista, mollusca, vermes, of 
 some Crustacea and of the lowest cryptogams, such as algae; 
 millions of years again went by before the great age of 
 fishes and fern forests set in. During the vast period of 
 this primordial age it is probable that only aquatic plants 
 and animals existed ; certain it is that in all the rock for- 
 mations of this age there has not been found a single fossil 
 which can be referred with accuracy to a terrestrial organism. 
 Only at the very fag-end of this long period in the Upper 
 Silurian formation, do we find the first definite represen- 
 tatives of the vertebrate type, or the lowest organized 
 descriptions of fish, preceded by the lowest vertebrates, 
 which Haeckel designates as the “ acrania.” The ocean of 
 the Silurian age, which left a deposit of no less than 20,000 
 feet in thickness, swarmed with invertebrate animals of 
 all kinds, such as rhizopoda, brachiopoda, cephalopoda, 
 radiata, polyps, articulata, graptolites, corals, mollusca, 
 Crustacea, etc. ; among the last, the remarkable trilobites, 
 tripartite crab-like animals, played the principal part. 
 They lived through this whole transitional period in great 
 numbers and varieties of form, in a thousand different 
 species, but died out completely during the later carbon- 
 iferous age. At the same time, the habitat of the Silurian 
 animals was the same over the whole surface of the globe. 
 
 The age of the fishes and fern -forests, which is termed 
 chronologically the palceozoic or primary age and which 
 itself is composed of three great subdivisions, deposited 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 147 
 
 strata 42,000 feet in thickness, and occupied a period com- 
 puted at a third of the whole strata-forming ages. The two 
 highest classes of animals, birds and mammals, are com- 
 pletely wanting during this period ; on the other hand, as 
 the distinction between land and water which in the sequel 
 became gradually more strongly marked, began to show 
 itself, there appeared the first terrestrial plants and animals, 
 which only succeeded in gaining a permanent footing after 
 an obstinate and long-continued struggle with the changing 
 physical conditions surrounding them. But during this 
 whole long period aquatic life was so much the more preva- 
 lent that the whole of this age, as stated above, has been 
 styled the age of fishes. Fishes existed in many forms and 
 kinds, although they had not yet attained their most highly 
 developed type, which is that of the osseous fishes. Side by 
 side with these, the vegetable kingdom attained during the 
 middle subdivision of the primary period, the carbonferozis 
 age, that luxuriant development, the useful results and 
 remains of which we are fully enjoying at the present day. 
 In this primal vegetation, especially in its earlier stages, it 
 is hardly necessary io remark that we have before us plants 
 of the most primitive and original character. They are 
 flowerless and seedless, the ancestors of our present equi- 
 setaceae and silices. But whereas these latter are but the 
 dwarfed remnants of their mighty precursors, crowded out 
 by better developed rivals, and no longer able to attain any 
 remarkable size and development, their great ancestors 
 grew till they formed vast impenetrable tropical marshy 
 forests, many expanding into gigantic trees, whose dead 
 bodies during the long carboniferous period, built up, layer 
 upon layer, the coal-seams which we work at the present 
 day. A dreary monotony was the characteristic of those 
 primeval forests of the pre historic ages, in which there was 
 no trace of the variety and the floral beauty of the modern 
 vegetable kingdom, and in which no butterfly flitted from 
 flower to flower, no bee flew about, humming in its search 
 for honey, and no bird hopped gaily from twig to twig. 
 
148 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Scantily leaved calamites, or the pillar-like and almost 
 branchless trunks of sigillaria or lepidodendra, with their 
 furcated crown of bristly leaves, held supreme sway — while 
 pale green ferns or cabbage-like scaly haulms occupied the 
 place of the underwood, the grass and the flowers. Foliage 
 trees were utterly wanting at this period. In these hot, 
 moist forests, contrasting by their extent and luxuriance with 
 those that existed at the beginning of the preceding period, 
 there appeared new formations of animal life, emancipated 
 from the supremacy of water, air-breathing articulata and 
 vertebrata, the latter in the form of creeping amphibia, 
 prone on the ground, and able to live equally well in water 
 or on land. The variety of their forms increases largely in 
 the following Permian period, while the plants of the car- 
 boniferous age are being gradually supplanted by the more 
 highly developed gymnosperms. Toward the close of this 
 epoch we meet for the first time with lizard-like animals, 
 being the earliest representatives of the reptilia , the lowest 
 order of the higher vertebrata ; these were to rule the third, 
 or, leaving out the primordial age, the second great sub- 
 division of the earth’s history, that is to' say, the secondary 
 or mesozoic periods. But even in that age, the amphibious 
 animals still hold a very subordinate place, as regards num- 
 ber and variety, in comparison to the colossal abundance 
 of fishes, which, especially in the form of the ganoidian or 
 enamel-scaled fishes, characterize several strata of the lime- 
 stone formation, as for instance the Kupferscliiefer, (the 
 marl-slate of the Permian.) Numerous embryonic or mixed 
 types, which were subsequently to give rise to new forms 
 by division and migration, impress on the palaeozoic age 
 the stamp of the highest degree of imperfection. Within 
 the most diverse types, classes, orders and families we 
 always meet first with the more imperfect design ; some- 
 times they rise swiftly to the highest possible development, 
 and subsequently disappear, to make room for other forms 
 belonging to a family of a higher grade. In the course of 
 this development there are undoubtedly to be noticed 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 149 
 
 criteria, of an apparently lawless rising and falling-off of 
 individual forms ; yet we cannot but perceive therein, on 
 the whole, an unmistakable progress from the simpler to 
 the more complex, and from the lower to the higher for- 
 mations. 
 
 The same remark holds good in regard to the subsequent 
 secondary period of the mesozoic age, which follows now, 
 and which, from the prevalence of the so-called creeping 
 animals and of the higher development of the vegetation, 
 has been termed the age of reptiles and of conifers. It 
 consists of the three great subdivisions of the triassic, 
 jurassic and cretaceous formations and embraces about the 
 tenth or eleventh part of the organic history of our globe. 
 The enormous development of the vegetable kingdom 
 during the preceding periods had relieved the terrestrial 
 atmosphere of the surplus of carbonic acid, a gas deleterious 
 to the higher air-breathing animals, which was theretofore 
 present in it, and had caused the greater part of it to 
 subside beneath the ground in the form of coal. Thence- 
 forward, the existence of higher animal life on the earth 
 became possible, and it rose stage by stage, while the 
 older forms receded more and more into the background or 
 disappeared altogether. Among those that disappeared at 
 the beginning of this epoch are the remarkable trilobites or 
 tripartite crustaceans of the primordial ocean, as well as the 
 strange, brilliantly mailed fishes of the silurian age. The 
 huge display of the kingdom of creeping things, the reptilia, 
 imparted a peculiar idiosyncracy to this middle period, as 
 mentioned heretofore. During this period the whole of the 
 subdivisions of the animal kingdom also underwent a rich 
 and multifarious development, which was connected with 
 an increasing elevation and extension of dry land and a 
 greater diversification of the conditions of life, especially 
 in consequence of the vivifying changes of clouds and 
 winds, and of light and heat, which had now set in. Side 
 by side with the palseozoic cryptogams or flowerless plants, 
 was now evolved a rich flora of conifers, cycads and palms, 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 150 
 
 and eventually of foliage trees. The waters swarmed with 
 varied forms of the simplest animals, as well as beautiful 
 radiates, corals and sea-urchins. The cephalopoda , those 
 greedy pirates of the molluscan kingdom, which had existed 
 in thousands of species during the silurian age, now reached 
 their highest development. Mussels and snails showed 
 a marked increase, and the Crustacea , or lobster-class, 
 represented in the preceding age almost by the trilobites 
 alone, now appear in whole classes and species. “ Butterflies 
 and libellulcE are seen, like dream-shapes pointing to a 
 close blossoming future.”— Dodel. But most of the new 
 and interesting forms are evolved in the vertebrate phylum. 
 Among the fishes appear for the first time the teleostei or 
 osseous fishes , destined to almost completely supersede their 
 more imperfect predecessors with cartilaginous skeletons. 
 In overpowering variety and multiplicity of species are seen 
 the amphibia and reptilia, towering in strange and some- 
 times colossal shapes, and besides these w r e encounter avian 
 and mammalian forms in their earliest beginnings, marching 
 like heralds of an approaching future. 
 
 “The mesozoic world,” says Zittel ( Aus der Urzeit, 
 1872,) “surpasses the preceding ages not only in its variety, 
 but also by a higher degree of perfection, both collectively 
 and in its individual parts. In the vegetable kingdom, 
 cycads and palms and further on the most highly developed 
 type of dicotyledonous foliage-trees, and in the animal 
 kingdom the three highest classes of vertebrates, viz., reptiles 
 birds and mammals, make their appearance as entirely or 
 almost entirely new elements among those that previously 
 existed, and this fact imparts a character of greater dis- 
 tinction to the whole array. But even within the individual 
 classes and orders, forms of more perfect organization 
 have almost everywhere crowded out the earlier and un- 
 developed ones.” 
 
 “ Finally, the gradual springing into blossom of ceratites 
 and ammonites may be accepted as a proof of the fact that 
 throughout nature there exists a tendency to gradually 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 151 
 
 fill up all places in her economy with an ever more perfect 
 Personnel. No less characteristic is the number of the so- 
 called collective forms ’ ’ etc. etc. 
 
 Yet another step forward, and we come to the tertiary 
 or cainozoic age (from k aivo?, new,) which, it is true, barely 
 embraces the third part of the organic history of the earth, 
 but which must be reckoned as having lasted many 
 hundreds of thousands of years. In this period the present 
 aspect of things begins to prevail more and more, and in 
 progression, too, that proceeds at such a regular rate, that 
 Lyell thought proper to arrange it in three subdivisions, in 
 accordance with the greater or lesser relationship of their 
 fossil testacean shells to those of the present time. These 
 subdivisions are ; the eocene , or dawn of recent, with 
 per cent, of shells of living species of testacea ; the miocene , 
 or less recent, with about 17 per cent.; and the pliocene , or 
 more recent, with from 35 to 40 per cent, of the same. This 
 division has in the course of time obtained general accept- 
 ance. As far as the vegetation of this period is concerned, 
 it is characterized by palms and foliage-trees, while in the 
 animal kingdom the highest class, the mammalia , pre- 
 dominate, so that this epoch has been styled the age of 
 mammals and foliage-trees. This change did not occur 
 without concomitant changes in the surface of the earth 
 itself, which, gradually losing its former general character, 
 became more and more specialized. The vast oceans of 
 yore were split up into smaller independent basins ; each 
 great continent developed its individual characteristics of 
 landscape and climate, of geographical and biological 
 peculiarities. The vegetable and animal kingdoms as- 
 sumed more and more the character of those now existing 
 with their infinite variety. “For the first time a brilliant 
 world of flowers unfolded to the sunshine, and the modest 
 plants of an earlier age which flourished unperceived, 
 yielded the mastery to their coquettish rivals, gorgeous in 
 color and in fragrance.’’ — Dodel. Among animals the 
 lowliest, up to the fishes, already possessed their present 
 
152 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 form in all its essentials. But while the monstrous tran- 
 sitional types of the amphibian and reptilian worlds dis- 
 appeared, which had characterized the former period, similar 
 transitional mammalian types appeared in great variety. 
 There arose the oldest fore-runners of our present hoofed 
 animals, ruminants, and pachyderms, in some places in 
 such vast numbers as cannot now be found anywhere on 
 the earth’s surface, the warm luxuriant climate of the earlier 
 tertiary period yielding them a sufficient vegetable growth 
 for food. The later tertiary period is characterized by the 
 gradual drying-up and absorption of the great molasse 
 ocean, and the permanent elevation of the Alpine ranges, 
 with all the effects wrought by these great events on the 
 geographical and climatic conditions of the continents, and 
 in it the average temperature of the earth was raised i6° F. 
 and the distribution and regulation of the zones of the 
 earth became more like what they are at present. During 
 this period both the invertebrata, and the fishes and birds 
 attained in all essentials their existing development, while 
 the variety of the fauna of the higher vertebrate animals 
 surpassed everything that can be seen at this day in the 
 most luxuriant scenery of the tropics. Then appeared 
 those colossal proboscides (mastodons, dinotheria, etc.,) 
 whose descendants are represented among us by our 
 elephants and walruses; then arose also hyaenas and viverras 
 and the terrible machairodus, belonging to the feline tribe, 
 with its dagger-like side-teeth, five inches long, the pre- 
 cursor of those carnivorous beasts of prey, whose meridian 
 period is found in the succeeding diluvial age. Neither 
 are numerous representatives of the remarkable race of apes 
 wanting in this period. 
 
 In the following and last great division of the earth’s 
 history, the so-called quaternary or cultural age (the post- 
 tertiary of Lyell,) which is divided into the two sections of 
 the dilivium or drift, and the alluvium or new deposit, we 
 stand almost, if not quite, on the threshold of the present 
 time. Although this period seems very brief in comparison 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 153 
 
 with its predecessors, and, according to Haeckel, represents 
 only one-half per cent, of the organic history of the earth, 
 yet with its two great glacial periods , intervening between 
 the tertiary and quaternary ages it embraces at least a lapse 
 of 100,000 years, and probably far more. All the changes 
 which took place in living things during this time, ex- 
 pended themselves exclusively on the highest animal forms; 
 the lines of demarcation of the present geographical pro- 
 vinces of fauna, which placed a limit to the further spread 
 of individual species, were then already in existence. In 
 the quaternary age, as the last and highest stage of terrestrial 
 evolution, appears on the scene of existence the highest form 
 of life, our own race, Man , in some measure the summit 
 and crown of the graduated development, although his 
 half-brute precursors, his preparatory forms, had already 
 existed in more or less protracted succession during the 
 tertiary period. On account of the vast importance of 
 this event, which was henceforth to exercise an all-embrac- 
 ing influence on the whole future of the earth and on its 
 vegetable and animal inhabitants, the quaternary period 
 has been named the anthropological or more correctly the 
 anthropozoic age. At any rate, the discoveries of modern 
 investigation compel us to reckon the antiquity of ma?i on 
 the earth at a long succession of thousands, perhaps of 
 hundreds of thousands of years, and not, as was formerly 
 done, at a very much shorter lapse of time, scarcely ex- 
 ceeding the historic period. The latest researches, as well 
 as general considerations, make it appear in the highest 
 degree probable that the much controverted existence of 
 the so-called tertiary man is neither a myth nor a fable ; 
 that is to say, the earliest existence of man on the earth 
 goes back into the last or perhaps even into the middle 
 subdivision of the age preceding the quaternary, the great 
 tertiary period. According to the famous American palae^ 
 ontologist, Professor O. E. Marsh (Paper read before the 
 American Scientific Association, August 28, 1879,) it is 
 not excessive to set down the origin of man’s existence as 
 
154 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 far back as the last glacial period of Europe, that is to say, 
 at 250,000 years. But in the opinion of the author quoted, 
 it appears to be proved by Professor Whitney s famous 
 discovery, in the American pliocene, of undoubtedly human 
 remains and utensils made by human hands, that the tertiary 
 man must have existed even prior to the time mentioned. 
 
 Be this, however, as it may, considering the enormous 
 period taken up by the evolution of the earth, which period 
 must be set down at many millions of years, man must 
 always be regarded as one of the latest and most recent 
 results of the great organic process of terrestrial formation 
 and evolution, which finds in him in some measure its 
 highest and thus far its final expression.* 
 
 This progress of the organic history of the earth, of 
 which we have given here but quite a general outline, 
 proves, in our opinion, clearly and without the shadow of 
 a doubt, that a perfecting and evolving principle, due 
 partly to internal, partly to external physical conditions, is 
 universally active, spurring on the individual forms to an 
 ever higher development by countless intermediate steps 
 and through protracted spaces of time, or causing continual 
 changes in them. Of course, if all these intermediate steps, 
 and the countless transitions which connect all individual 
 forms with one another, be left out of the reckoning, and if 
 the moneron or the primal slime be set side by side with a 
 highly developed form, such as man, it becomes impossible 
 to understand how the one could spring from the other, 
 without taking into account the millions upon millions of 
 intermediate forms. Even within a very limited circle of 
 forms this appears often impossible ; a fortiori it cannot be 
 possible in the great whole. Thus the sao hirsuta, a trilo- 
 bite from the Bohemian beds, which has already been 
 ranged in twelve different genera and seven-and-twenty 
 
 * The important question of the antiquity of man on the earth is thoroughly 
 treated in the excellent work of the famous English geologist Lyell, On the 
 antiquity of Man. A more condensed exposition of the matter may be found in 
 the author’s Man and his place in Nature , part I ; also in the note on p. 160 et 
 seq. of his work Aus Natur und IVissenschaft. 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 155 
 
 different species, is so unlike the later developments pro- 
 ceeding from it, that it would not be regarded as the same 
 animal were it not that the transitional forms can be 
 distinctly shown. Similar examples of palaeontological 
 series of development might be cited in large numbers. 
 
 It stands to reason that it must not be supposed, as was 
 done by the old school of natural history, that the organic 
 stages of evolution can be represented as an unbroken 
 chain, on which the links follow one another in direct suc- 
 cession ; or, in other words, that we are to begin with the 
 monera or the sponge, and thence proceed through all 
 geological periods, following a strict sequence in time, until 
 we reach the most highly organized forms, eventuating in 
 man. This idea is so completely at war with facts that it 
 was necessarily abandoned so soon as facts became better 
 known. The consequence was that the whole theory of 
 evolution fell for a time into disrepute. The organic 
 graduation is not a simple one ; it is complex and full of 
 ramifications, which are often difficult to trace. The great 
 organic kingdoms consist of a number of independent 
 divisions or groups ( e . g., radiate or star-like animals, 
 mollusca, articulata, vertebrata) of which it is impossible to 
 say that they are strictly graduated and leveled up on the 
 top of each other. On the contrary, each division, after 
 branching out from the main trunk or common stem, de- 
 veloped without connection with the collateral branches to 
 such a height as its nature or structure admitted of, very 
 much like the branches and twigs of a tree, each of which 
 develops independently of its neighbors, until it reaches a 
 certain size or height, and then either dies off, or remains, 
 or is overtaken by other branches that are growing up. 
 Thus, an individual group, although springing from a 
 much lower point in the main trunk, may, in its highest 
 developments, overtake and get ahead of the one that 
 originated further up, without in the least interfering with 
 the general growth and development of the tree as such, 
 or infringing the law of progress as a whole. And thus, 
 
156 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the development of the vegetable kingdom, being the less 
 perfect, did not necessarily, as was formerly believed, pre- 
 cede the development of the animal kingdom, being the 
 more perfect of the two ; but both kingdoms have evolved 
 simultaneously and side by side with one another, from 
 the primal stock of those lowest existences, the protista, 
 which stand midway between the two kingdoms. However, 
 the lowest strata have always contained the representatives 
 of the typical forms of the higher and later developments in 
 none but their earliest beginnings, thus on the one hand 
 proving clearly that there are successive stages of evolu- 
 tion, and on the other showing that the theory of a single 
 line of evolution and of the transformation of one great 
 class into another cannot possibly be sustained. Each 
 individual example has the tendency, as we have said, 
 not to change into the next higher form, but to further 
 develop and perfect itself after its own type. Thus, the 
 cephalopoda, being a sub-division of the mollusca, are 
 perfect animals of their type, and as such stand far above 
 many groups of fishes, albeit the latter stand much higher 
 as a class in the general scale of animal existence. The 
 same holds good of the articulata which, although, as a 
 class, they rank far below the vertebrata, yet in their 
 highest development, the bees and ants rise to a point in 
 many respects closely approaching man himself. The 
 Vertebrate type, although bearing within itself the highest 
 conditions for organization, and therefore leaving all other 
 classes far behind it in its ultimate development, actually 
 begins with forms which, in themselves, stand much below 
 the representatives of those same classes. If Professor 
 Haeckel is right, this type begins with beings of such a 
 very low organization that they were not even looked upon 
 as fishes by their original discoverers, but were thought 
 to be worms or snails. It is also in evidence that these 
 remarkable animals closely connect the great subdivision 
 of vertebrata with the invertebrata or mollusca. Yet, de- 
 spite this lowly origin, the vertebrate phylum in its higher 
 
157 
 
 SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 developments has so surpassed all other phyla, that a direct 
 comparison of its highest representatives with one another 
 is scarcely possible. The great law of the progress and 
 evolution of organized Nature shows itself all the more 
 clearly by the fact of this group having attained such a 
 high development. In a great many instances we are able, 
 without much difficulty, to trace back the more modern to 
 the more ancient forms, or to show how the fossil repre- 
 sentatives of later classes unite in themselves the general 
 characteristics of subsequently appearing and, to some ex- 
 tent, of still existing forms, and thus become after a fashion 
 the progenitors of the subsequent generations. The pos- 
 sibility of this proof increases year by year in proportion 
 as the rapidly advancing palaeontological investigation of 
 our times enlarges the extent of its interesting discoveries. 
 Thus the teleostei or osseous fishes of the secondary period 
 and of the present time, have developed from the embry- 
 onal cartilaginous and enamel fishes (placoids and ganoids), 
 which are the representative species of the preceding pe- 
 riod, and occupy the lowest stage of the piscal type. The 
 transition from these to the higher group of toads, the 
 amphibia, is found in the archegosaurus (from dpxyyoc, 
 ancestor, oavpor, lizard) of the palaeozoic period, which 
 stands midway between fishes and amphibians. In the 
 formation of its body it combines characteristics which we 
 now meet but separately among fishes, frogs, salamanders, 
 lizards and crocodiles, and which make it clear that this 
 animal was the ancestor, evolved from the fish-type, of the 
 saurians, those voracious monsters, which dominated the 
 earth in the secondary period. The ancient labyrinthodons 
 or fish-lizards, of which the archegosaurus must be set 
 down as one of the earliest representatives, are, in Bzir- 
 meister’s opinion, the true and most beautiful prototypes 
 of the amphibian conception in its totality, a conception 
 worked out in many different forms through an evolution 
 of millions of years. They combine the characteristics of 
 the most heterogenous groups which subsequently evolved 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 158 
 
 from them, and among them we find the peculiarities of 
 saurians, turtles, frogs and fishes. In the plesiosaurus or 
 the snake-lizard we perceive, as it were, the first attempt 
 of nature to emerge from the fish and reptile period. It 
 has the body of a whale, the neck of a bird, and the head 
 of an alligator, and on this account this animal, which 
 sometimes reaches up to eleven feet oi length, has very 
 appropriately been compared to a snake drawn out through 
 a turtle. From that time forward it has beet; modified and 
 repeated in countless species. “ It is strange” says Zittel, 
 ‘‘to remark how the characteristics of the most widely 
 divergent aquatic animals appear combined in the Plesio- 
 saurus just as though Nature had wished to produce in it 
 the prototype of a swimming vertebrate of higher organi- 
 zation. We must now seek for its cranial characteristics in 
 two perfectly distinct orders ; its long neck having been 
 inherited by aquatic birds, and its fins by marine mammals, 
 while its sternum has been developed in a special manner 
 by the turtles.” Its contemporary, the mighty ichthyo- 
 saurus, or fish-lizard, which has from twenty to twenty-five 
 feet in length, is, as its name implies, a creature midway 
 between fish and lizard, and likewise a fine specimen of an 
 ante-deluvian collective type, or a reptile in the form of a 
 fish. Its body resembles that of the dolphin, its head that 
 of the crocodile, and its tail that of the fish. The protero- 
 saurus, a true reptile from the marl-slate, is, according to 
 K. Vogt , the first five-toed animal of the higher vertebrate 
 type. The mosasaurus found in the later chalk ( Maestricht ) 
 with its cranium from three to four feet long, with its snake- 
 like body extending from fifty to seventy feet and containing 
 more than one hundred vertebrse, with its short webbed fore- 
 feet, seems most closely allied to the fabulous sea-serpent, 
 in which some still believe at the present day. The megalo- 
 saurus, a monster of colossal proportions, combines within 
 itself the anatomical peculiarities of reptiles and of mam- 
 mals, and the order of the so-called dinosaurians , to which 
 it belongs, combines in a most remarkable manner the 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 159 
 
 characteristics of lizards, crocodiles, mammals and even 
 birds. A. step higher towards mammals is seen in the igua- 
 nadon, a gigantic lizard with massive body, thirty feet in 
 length and from twelve to fifteen feet in height, “ with which 
 the creative force of Nature appears as if it would close the 
 gigantic race of amphibians.” — ( Buck der Geologiei) 
 
 The pterosaurians or winged lizards (not to be con- 
 founded with the pterodactyl, the “ winged lizard ’ ’ of Lyell), 
 are an offshoot of the lizards which approaches the avian 
 type, while in the omithoskelidce, or reptiles with legs of 
 birds, the peculiar characteristics of birds are to be found. 
 One of these ornithoskelidae is the aetosaurus, recently 
 described by Prof. O. Fraas from the Stuttgard Keuper, or 
 the mailed bird-lizard of Stuttgard, which is so perfect a 
 median type between a creeping and flying animal that it 
 has received the name of the “eagle-lizard.” By means of 
 these and of other discoveries, both of reptiles with avian 
 characteristics and of birds with reptilian characteristics, 
 the apparently wide gulf between two classes which are as 
 widely separated as those of birds and reptiles , has been 
 narrowed to such an extent that there is now no difficulty 
 in tracing both to the same origin, and in setting the bird 
 down as a reptile adapted to an aerial life. The transfor- 
 mation itself probably dates from the jurassic age. During 
 the same period originated the pterodactyl , which is also 
 adapted for flying, an enigmatic aeriously-shaped animal, 
 half bat and reptile, half amphibian and bird, which has 
 been referred to all classes in turn. In the cetiosaurus are 
 combined the characteristics of the whale, the phoca, and 
 the crocodile. In the tertiary period, during which the 
 present condition of things came more and more into view, 
 the vertebrate animals already assumed the mammalian 
 trunk and appendages, while still preserving to some extent 
 the reptilian form. As the first representative of the higher 
 classes of Mammalia, appears the palcEotherium (from na.Xa.16e 
 old, and Sripiov, animal), an interesting animal, of which 
 many specimens are extant, ranging from the size of a hare 
 
i6o 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 to that of a horse, and showing characteristics of the horse, 
 tapir, pig and rhinoceros ; these specimens, being different 
 varieties of the same genus, must have existed in very large 
 numbers at the beginning of the tertiary period in South- 
 Western Germany, especially on the Schwabische Alps, in 
 Wurttemberg. This may be regarded to some extent as a 
 prototype of mammalian classes, for the conceptions or ten- 
 dencies of the most various mammalian forms are dormant 
 therein. From this animal the horse of the present day was 
 evolved through a series of the most varied intermediate 
 forms (the orohippus of the eocene, the mesohippus of the 
 lower, and the miohippus or anchitherium of the upper 
 miocene, the hipparion or protohippus of the lower, and 
 the pliohippus of the upper pliocene). Not less interesting 
 for the palaeontologist or student of the pre-historic world, 
 are the near relatives of the palaeotherium, the anoplotlieria , 
 which also originated in the earliest tertiary age, and, being 
 possessed of the characteristics of the pachydermata, the 
 ruminantia and the swine, must be regarded as the ances- 
 tral form of our present swine, hippopotami and ruminants. 
 The tillotheriuni , which has quite recently been discovered 
 by Professor Marsh in the mountains of the far West of 
 North America, was an animal which combined within itself, 
 in a truly surprising manner, the most opposite peculiarities 
 of the most widely divergent mammals, such as beasts of 
 prey, rodents, hoofed animals, etc. The most probable 
 ancestor of the tapir-group has been discovered by the 
 American palaeontologist Leidy in the basin of the Platte 
 river, and received of him the name of hyracluis. In point 
 of fact, the researches of American palaeontologists, such 
 as Marsh, Leidy, Cope, etc., in the wide plains of the 
 Mississippi, have brought to light countless remains of 
 fossil mammalia, chiefly of hitherto unknown species, which 
 furnish as many proofs of the theory of evolution. — In the 
 later tertiary period, the same as in the subsequent dihivial 
 age, we find gigantic mastadons and dinotheria as fore- 
 runners of our present elephants, the terrible machairodus 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 161 
 
 as fort-runner of our present feline species, the cave-bear 
 as ancestor of our present brown bear, the bos primigenius 
 as ancestor of our neat cattle, and so on.* 
 
 These examples might be multiplied to any extent, but 
 all palaeontological knowledge is, as it were, but one ex- 
 ample. The lowest forms of each group first appear, and 
 from them arises the ascending succession of the higher, 
 in species as in individuals. “The remains found in the 
 crust of the earth,’’ says Oersted, “ reveal to us a series of 
 ever more highly developed formations, succeeding one 
 another, until at last the conditions were reached in which 
 man, and a vegetable and animal kingdom suitable for 
 man, could prosper.” “ My belief in the law of progress,’’ 
 says even more emphatically the famous English naturalist 
 Professor R. Owen , at the conclusion of an excellent de- 
 scription of ancient mammalia of the mesozoic period, 
 “from the general to the special, from the lower to the 
 higher, has been confirmed. This is shown by the suc- 
 cession of mammalian forms from the trias upwards, as 
 through the other classes from the earliest dawn of life up 
 to the present day.” 
 
 This law of gradual and ascending development has 
 been continued from pre-historic times down to the present 
 living and organic world, and has impressed upon it its 
 unmistakable stamp. That science of comparative anatomy 
 or “philosophy of organized forms,” as it is termed by 
 Haeckel, a science cultivated with especial predilection in 
 our own time, rests on the attempt to prove the unity of 
 organic forms throughout the animal world, and on the 
 
 * Even down to the present time some such early transitional or intermediate 
 forms have existed as “living fossils.” The remarkable Australian ornithor- 
 hynchus is an intermediate form between quadrupeds, birds and amphibians. 
 When it was first brought to Europe it was believed to be an imposition ; it was 
 an old moleskin, people said, attached to the mandible of a duck. The lepido- 
 tiren of South America and Africa, being a connecting link between amphibia 
 and pisces, breathes half by gills, half by lungs. The gill-bearing Axolotl 
 (Siredon mexicanus ), if reared on land, loses its gills and turns from an aquatic 
 into a terrestrial animal, breathing by lungs, and standing in the same relation 
 to its previous form as a developed animal does to its larval shape. Further 
 examples of palaeontological transitional forms may be found in the author’s 
 work on the Darwinian Theory. 
 
162 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 scientific recognition of the existence of a joint plan (?) or 
 fundamental principle underlying all animal forms, and 
 admitting of no modifications or deviations except in a 
 few particulars. An unbroken chain of the most numerous 
 and multifarious analogies binds together tlie whole animal 
 world from the lowest to the highest. Even our own race, 
 which we have hitherto in our pride regarded as raised so 
 high above the rest of the animal kingdom and as a 
 creation of a different and nobler kind, is far from being 
 an exception to this general rule. Its whole bodily organi- 
 zation connects it so closely and so narrowly with the 
 animals that come nearest to it, being the highest repre- 
 sentatives of the vertebrate type, that no really learned 
 man thinks at this day (as people did formerly) of making 
 a special “human kingdom’’ of it or merely setting man 
 down as a special “order’’ of mammalia, distinct from the 
 order of the so-called “ quadrumana.” Nowadays, man is 
 universally regarded as nought but a special “family” of 
 the highest mammalian order, the Primates (that is to say, 
 the top forms or lords paramount). “ Thus Man shows,” 
 says Haeckel, ( Antliropogenie , third ed.,p. 87) “in all the 
 essential characteristics of his internal organization such an 
 agreement with other mammals, that comparative anatomy 
 has never entertained any doubt as to his belonging to this 
 class. The whole internal construction of the human body 
 so completely agrees with that of all other mammals, that 
 by the side of it the dissimilarity of the external form 
 weighs as nothing.” Even his brain, the organ of his 
 mind and thought, is far from being an exception to this 
 rule ; it is a mammalian brain, modified and brought to a 
 higher stage of development in size, shape, internal struc- 
 ture and composition, as has been conclusively shown by the 
 deep researches of many brain-anatomists, and in keeping 
 with this circumstance it develops the mental capabilities 
 spread throughout the animal world to a higher degree of 
 perfection. 
 
 The law of gradual transition reveals itself for the third 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 163 
 
 time in the history of the development of individual animal 
 entities. Even at this day, all animal forms so strongly 
 resemble each other in the earliest period of their individual 
 procreation, that in order to recognize their fundamental 
 type it is only necessary to refer to this history of their 
 development. It is a very interesting and significant fact 
 that all embryos or germs resemble each other, and that it 
 is absolutely impossible to distinguish an inchoate sheep 
 from the inchoate man, whose genius may perhaps shake 
 the world at a future time. This, indeed, is true to such 
 an extent that an attempt has been made to trace in the 
 development of a given animal, or of man himself, how the 
 embryo in the various stages of its corporeal development 
 represents and repeats the chief types of the groups coming 
 next below it in the animal kingdom, thus yielding, as it 
 were, a miniature of the whole range of existence put in a 
 narrow frame ; and this attempt has proved by no means 
 unsuccessful. 
 
 “The opponents of Evolution,” says Haeckel, “who 
 look upon the gradual development of man out of lowly 
 animal forms and his original descent from a unicellular 
 moneron as a miracle past belief, do not consider that just 
 the same miracle is actually repeated under our own eyes, 
 in the short space of nine months, in the embryonic devel- 
 opment of each individual human being. This same cycle 
 of varying forms through which our animal ancestors have 
 passed during the course of many millions of years, has 
 been traversed by every one of us within his mother’s 
 womb, during the first forty weeks of his individual ex- 
 istence.’ ’ * 
 
 Whoever looks with unprejudiced eyes on these three 
 clearly defined consentaneous groups of evolutional facts — 
 the palaeontological, the comparative anatomical and the 
 
 * For further details see the excellent work of J. H. Huxley, Evidences for 
 Man's Place in Nature , essay on the relationship of man to the animals next 
 below him; also the Author’s Der Mensch und sei7ie Stellung in der Natui ; 
 lastly Professor Haeckel’s various writings, in which that ingenious author 
 proves conclusively that the history of the embryo is nothing more than an 
 epitome, or a condensed and shortened repetition of the history of the race. 
 
164 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 embryological gradations — and throws a glance over the 
 whole — quite apart from all preconceived theories and 
 explanations brought forward hitherto — cannot feel any 
 doubt that in the whole organic world there exists a neces- 
 sary internal connection, and that one thing must have 
 followed and must follow after the other. Even if we had 
 not lived during the last twenty years, through the great 
 revolution in organic science brought about by the teachings 
 of Darwin, the general result would yet remain certain to 
 every philosophical mind — as it was, in fact, some scores 
 of years since, to the minds of some naturalists, gifted 
 with greater perspicacity than their colleagues, such as a 
 Lamarck, a Geofifroy St. Hilaire, or most of the adepts of 
 the so-called naturalistic school. As far back as 1855, five 
 years before Darwin, the author of this work spoke in its 
 first edition of that general result with as much certainty 
 as was possible at that time, and represented the genesis of 
 new species to be a natural process, brought about by 
 descent, variation, and development, resting his argument 
 upon considerations generally derived from research in 
 palaeontology, comparative anatomy and embryology. 
 Nor did he fail to apply these considerations to the very 
 “question of questions,” and to set forthwith a boldness 
 which drew down upon him a storm of obloquy from all 
 quarters, that “animal descent of man’’ about which, at 
 present, scarcely any scientist entertains the slightest doubt. 
 As regards the intrinsic causes of these phenomena of trans- 
 formation, he was, no doubt, obliged to confine himself, in 
 the then state of knowledge, to pointing out, on the one 
 hand, the external circumstances or changing conditions of 
 the surface of the earth, and on the other the possibility of 
 embryonic transformations, expressing at the same time a 
 hope that future researches might throw more light on the 
 question This hope was fulfilled much more rapidly than 
 he could have ventured to dream ; it met with its realization 
 by the theory which, in such a brief lapse of time, became 
 famous all over the world — the theory of that great Eng- 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 165 
 
 lishman, Charles Darwin , who with keen insight and on 
 the strength of an abundance of facts, laid down the follow- 
 ing as the natural causes of evolution : (1) The struggle 
 
 for existence ; (2) Variation and the variability of species ; 
 (3) Transmission and heredity ; (4) Natural Selection acting 
 through enormous periods of time. Within a compara- 
 tively small number of years this admirable theory has 
 obtained the mastery of organic science ; it has especially 
 found acceptance among the younger scientists, who no 
 longer bow to the former conception of “species.” In 
 fact, scarcely anyone who examines Darwin’s exposition 
 and views without prejudice can seriously deny that 
 species, or creatures organized in a new fashion, can 
 and must have been evolved in the manner described 
 by him. But it becomes quite another matter when 
 the question is propounded, whether this manner, and 
 the variations described by Darwin, are sufficient to ex- 
 plain the total growth and the super-abundant variety of 
 the organic world. In all probability this is not the case, 
 and with a view to this end we must take into account a 
 series of other momentous facts to which Darwin paid little, 
 if any, attention. Among these facts we encounter, first 
 and foremost, the very essential influence of external and 
 varying conditions of life — such as climate, soil, food, air, 
 light, heat, distribution of land and water, etc. This influ- 
 ence appeared so important to the famous French scientist 
 Geojfroy St. Hilaire , that he considered it as sufficient by 
 itself to explain the variation of species. Next we must 
 consider the influences of exercise, habit, necessities, adap- 
 tation to changed conditions of life, use or disuse of organs 
 or of parts of the body, the crossing of breeds, etc., which 
 influences the Frenchman Lamarck, Darwin’s great prede- 
 cessor, and the true father of the evolutional philosophy, 
 who was for so long unjustly decried as a dreamer, and 
 who died in poverty, looked upon as the real causes of the 
 variation of species. Then we must take into account the 
 powerful influence of migration on organized beings, a 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 1 66 
 
 matter to which a living German scientist, Professor Moriz 
 Wagner of Munich, first drew attention, in connection 
 with, and for the purpose of complementing, Darwin’s 
 theory.* Lastly we must not forget the influence, to which 
 notice was called in the first edition of this book, and which 
 relates to the remarkable phenomena of the so-called alter- 
 nation of generations, parthenogenesis, metamorphosis, 
 etc., viz., the variations in the germ or the egg induced by 
 external or internal forces, through which in individual 
 cases a change and development of the world of fossil 
 plants and animals may have been brought about by leaps 
 and bounds rather than by a gradual process. These views 
 have been stated and dilated on, at greater length, by one 
 of our most distinguished German scientists, Professor 
 Kolliker of Wurzburg, who based upon them his Theory 
 of Heterogeyieous Generation , to which he subsequently 
 gave the name of The Science of Evolution .f 
 
 This general law of variation, transformation and devel- 
 opment, whatever may be the causes of the change in 
 individual instances, being once laid down and recognized, 
 we reach a firm standing-ground for the solution of the 
 apparently almost insoluble question as to the “ Whence? ” 
 of the organic world, and as to the natural causes of that 
 which in the heading of this chapter we have termed “sec- 
 ular generation ’’ or biogenesis, as the sequel of primeval 
 generation From the least promising beginning and from 
 the simplest organic form-element, which the combination 
 of inorganic materials evolved by spontaneous generation 
 from the lowliest vegetable or animal cells, or even from a 
 yet lower or yet more primal organic formation, that whole 
 rich and multiform organic world which surrounds us at 
 this day has developed itself progressively, in the course of 
 
 * See M. Wagner, Die Darwin' sche Theorie nnd das Migrationsgesetz der 
 Organismen , Leipzig, 1878. 
 
 f Consult Kolliker’s essay on the Darwinian creation-theory (Leipzig, 1864) ; 
 further, Zittel's Aus der Urzeit," p. 594; A . Wiegand's Genealogie der Urzellen 
 (Braunschweig, 1872); Dr. G. yager's In Sachen Darwin's , p. 176; lastly, the 
 author’s work on The Darwinian Theory , pp. 178 et seq. 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 167 
 
 endless periods of time, by the aid of natural phenomena. 
 Whatever may have been the nature of the process of 
 evolution as regards the details, however much may yet 
 remain obscure and doubtful in regard to the exact manner 
 in which the organic formation has taken place, this much 
 at any rate we can aver with certainty : that it has , and 
 must have , happened without the interference of a super- 
 natural power. If at the present day this creation, while 
 we survey the surrounding Nature, impresses us beyond 
 measure, and if we cannot entirely repel the intellectual 
 impression which points to the existence of a direct creative 
 power, this feeling is in reality to be accounted for by the 
 fact that we see the final results of natural forces that have 
 worked through many millions of years spread out before 
 us in one aggregate picture, and that, while we look only 
 at the present, without remembering the past, it is difficult 
 for us to imagine at first sight that Nature has evolved all 
 this out of herself. And yet, there is no getting over it. 
 Whatever may have happened in each individual instance, 
 the general truth rests on irrefutable facts ; there is the law 
 of analogies, existing sometimes in the domain of embry- 
 ology, sometimes in that of comparative anatomy ; there 
 are the prototypal organisms ; there is the necessary con- 
 nection between the external conditions of the crust of the 
 earth, and the origin and form of organic creatures ; in 
 fine, the gradual evolution of the higher organic forms out 
 of the lower and lowest, keeping pace with the changes in 
 the development of the earth ; and there is the paramount 
 fact that the origin of organized beings was not an instan- 
 taneous process, but one extending throughout all geologi- 
 cal periods. All these circumstances and conditions are 
 indubitable truths, and are wholly incompatible with the 
 idea of a personal and omnipotent creative power ; such a 
 power could not have contented itself with such a slow, 
 gradual and wearisome process of creation, nor could it 
 have rendered the progress of its work dependent on the 
 stages of the natural evolution of the earth. 
 
i68 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 The work of Nature, on the contrary, is the very antith- 
 esis of such a conception ; it is wholly spontaneous, and 
 consisting, as it does, partly of fortuitous and partly of 
 necessary productions, it is infinitely slow, gradual and 
 climacterical. Therefore we cannot perceive in this work 
 anything in the shape of a leap, pointing directly to a 
 personal volition ; form links itself on to form and transition 
 on to transition. “ Nature,’ ’ once said Linnseus, “ takes no 
 leaps ; ’ ’ and every new discovery, every fact in the fabric 
 of Nature, furnishes an additional proof of the truth of his 
 assertion. Imperceptibly the plant glides into the animal, 
 the animal into the man. Despite all efforts, we have not 
 yet been able to draw a hard and fast line between the 
 vegetable and animal kingdoms, widely separate though 
 these divisions of the organized world appear, and there is 
 no probability that we ever shall be able to do so. On the 
 contrary, the latest researches on the protista, which bridge 
 the gulf between the two kingdoms, and from which they 
 have developed in two different directions, clearly show that 
 these are in turn half animal, half plant, and that the dis- 
 tinctive features of the two types clearly emerge only in the 
 higher stages of development. Like the physique, the 
 intellectual capacity rises, step by step and gradually, from 
 the lowliest and least noticeable beginnings, to ever higher 
 and more perfect developments, until it reaches what is as 
 yet its highest perfection in the sensation and volition, the 
 imagination and ratiocination of man. The supposed in- 
 surmountable boundary between the human race and the 
 animal world, which, despite all the progress of science, is 
 still so generally believed in, is fully as much a myth as 
 any other strict division of nature, whether man be looked 
 at from a physical or an intellectual point of view ; and if, 
 in the progress of civilization, man has reached to a level 
 on which he towers as much above his brute relations as 
 God did formerly above man, he owes this to nought but 
 that same gradual evolution, rising stage by stage, by which 
 the whole organic world has been procreated. Geologists \ 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 169 
 
 set down the age of the human race — as mentioned in an 
 earlier portion of this chapter — at one hundred thousand 
 years at the very lowest, adding, however, that this figure 
 is probably very much below the mark. The history of the 
 existence of the race, on the contrary, in its civilized state, 
 is but a few thousand years old. What immense periods of 
 time must therefore have elapsed ere man could have reached 
 such an intellectual height as to feel the need and devise the 
 means of transmitting his experiences to posterity by word 
 and writing, ad perpetuam rei memoriam , to use the standing 
 formula of the See of Rome. And what right have we to 
 trace back to supernatural causes or to a creative will what- 
 ever may be done and has been accomplished by the civil- 
 ized man, who at present stands at the top of a ladder of a 
 hundred thousand years, and has behind him and beneath 
 him the whole work of countless generations ? If we but 
 remember his humble origin, which is lost in the impene- 
 trable darkness of pre-historic ages, we shall look at the 
 matter in quite a different light, and come to perceive that 
 such a result could only be obtained by long and slow 
 development and by continued improvement. In those 
 earliest times there is no doubt that the highest of organ- 
 ized creatures, in his whole physical and intellectual being, 
 was much more closely allied to the brute than to his present 
 form and condition. The oldest human bones and human 
 skulls, dug out of the very bowels of the earth, exhibit for 
 the most part rough and undeveloped forms, far exceeding, 
 in their resemblance to the brute, the most brute-like of 
 existing races of men ; and yet it must be remembered that 
 these fossils belong to periods much further removed from 
 the real genesis of man than the time in which they were 
 deposited or buried is from the age we live in. To what ex- 
 tent the formation of the skull of Europeans has improved 
 even within historic ages will be told in detail in a later 
 chapter. 
 
 If it be assumed, then, contrary to all scientific ratioc- 
 ination, that the hand of the creator superintended all 
 
170 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 these phenomena, at all times and in all places, scattered in 
 space and time , we come to general pantheistic notions, and 
 in that event it becomes impossible to deny that this rela- 
 tionship still exists, seeing that the evolution of the earth 
 and of the vegetable and animal species, that live thereon, 
 has not ceased, but is going on at this day, the same as it 
 did heretofore In that event it must also be assumed that 
 no lamb can be conceived or born without the co-operation 
 of that creative power ; that no child can cut a tooth with- 
 out divine assistance, and that every gnat that lays its eggs 
 depends on the care of that supreme power for the hatching 
 of its progeny. But science has long since proved to de- 
 monstration that these processes are natural, mechanical, 
 and spontaneous, and has overruled every thought of a 
 supernatural interference. And thus, these circumstances 
 may be used by us in support of the views expressed above, 
 for it is justifiable to infer from the natural character of the 
 present processes of the organic world, their equally natural 
 origin, and vice versa. We must go on as we commenced. 
 
 ‘ ‘ A supernatural origin implies a supernatural continu- 
 ation.” ” He who cancels one law of nature, cancels them 
 all.” (L. Feuerbach.) 
 
 ‘‘Though self-contained as an individual,” says Bur- 
 meister, ‘‘the earth remained in a definite immutable re- 
 lation to its environment, and whatever occurred upon it, 
 independently of that relation, was accomplished by it of 
 its own accord ; for there never was, and even at this day 
 there does not exist, any power on earth save that which is 
 inherent in the earth itself. By that inherent power it de- 
 veloped ; its results extended exactly as far as this power 
 acted. Where the terrestrial forces disappear, every ter- 
 restrial action also ceases and determines, and what it could 
 not bring forth has never existed, nor will ever be brought 
 forth.” 
 
 Never has science gained a more brilliant victory over 
 those who appeal to another world and a supernatural prin- 
 ciple for the explanation of existence, than it has in geology 
 
SECULAR GENERATION. 
 
 171 
 
 and palaeontology ; and never has the human mind more 
 emphatically vindicated the rights of Nature, even under 
 difficulties which can only be understood by those who are 
 thoroughly familiar with the history of science. Nature 
 knows neither a supernatural origin nor a supernatural 
 continuation ; she, the all-bearing and the all-devouring, is 
 her own Alpha and Omega, her own generation and death. 
 By her power she brought about the so-called creation, and 
 created man as the crown thereof ; by her own power she 
 will take him back again, when his dwelling-place, the earth, 
 has completed its natural term of life in the endless cycle 
 of worlds. May not therefore this race of man die out and 
 disappear, the same as so many other races recorded in the 
 history of the organic world died out and vanished after 
 having attained a certain goal ? and may not another and 
 perhaps a more perfect race take its place? No one has 
 known, no one knows, and no one will ever know it, save 
 those who survive ! 
 
The Fitness of Things in Nature. 
 
 (TELEOLOGY.) 
 
 Design is introduced into the world by the reflecting reason, which is there- 
 after startled by a miracle of its own creation.— Kant. 
 
 It can no longer be doubtful that the world progresses in a manner that has 
 no resemblance to human design ; nay, that its essential method is such 
 that, measured by the standard of human reason, it can only be regarded 
 as the blindest chance .... Development “according to Nature” is one 
 special case out of a thousand. It is the exception, and this exception is 
 created by that very same Nature whose apposite self-preservation is 
 admired by your short-sighted teleologist. — F. A. Lange. 
 
 Each inapposite condition is an untenable condition. Each development is 
 the removal of something which ought not to be, of something inapposite, 
 and a transition towards something apposite that does not exist yet.— Dii 
 Prel. 
 
 Strife is the parent of things. — Heraclitus of Ephesus. 
 
 O NE of the chief strongholds of those who ascribe 
 the genesis and preservation of the world to an all- 
 ruling and all- organizing creative Power, has been 
 and still is the so-called Jit7iess in Nature. Each flower 
 that unfolds its many-colored petals ; each gust of wind 
 that chases away a cloud ; each star that lightens the night ; 
 each leaf that flutters in the air ; each wound that heals ; 
 each thing, each phenomenon of Nature ; all these afford 
 the faithful teleologist or the seeker after fitness an oppor- 
 tunity of admiring the unfathomable wisdom of that Higher 
 Power. Modern investigation and natural philosophy have 
 shaken themselves tolerably free from these empty and 
 superficial conceptions of design, and leave such childish 
 views to those who are incapable of liberating themselves 
 from such anthropomorphic ideas, which unfortunately still 
 
 (172) 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 173 
 
 obtain in school and church to the detriment of truth and 
 of science. 
 
 If matter, as has been shown in our earlier chapters, can- 
 not exist nor be thought of without force, motion and form, 
 it stands to reason that the genesis and destruction of in- 
 dividual forms, existences, and institutions of nature are 
 a necessary and obvious result and product of physical ex- 
 istence or of the interaction of natural forces. Not less 
 obvious and indubitable must it appear that these natural 
 forces, by their mutual millionfold reactions, must deter- 
 mine and limit each other, so that at length an apparent 
 order and design must have arisen, which, if we look at 
 with human eyes and measure by the standard of human 
 institutions, without taking into consideration its original 
 causes, must necessarily appear to have been extrinsically 
 called into being by a conscious reason ordering things 
 with perfect consciousness. We omit to note in limine , 
 that there could be no other result, owing to the very 
 nature of the case, and that inapposite and unfitting things 
 and institutions, or even attempts at creating such, must 
 have perished by their own inherent defects in course of 
 time ; or, in other words, that an apposite institution is 
 only one case among a thousand inapposite or less apposite 
 ones, which, from their very unfitness, were incapable of 
 surviving. Therefore, as Kant already observed, it is to 
 our reflecting reason, which deals only with what it has 
 before its eyes and not with the past, and which judges by 
 the standard of its short experience, derived from human 
 activity, that this apparent design is to be traced, which is 
 really nothing more than the necessary result of the inter- 
 action of natural materials and forces, and of their develop- 
 ment in course of time which brings everything to a certain 
 level by preserving those things which have vitality in them 
 and expunging those which have not. Nature, as Dii Prel 
 correctly remarks, is her own physician, and her regular 
 working itself represents its own remedy, by which what is 
 unfitting is weeded out and none but the fitting things are 
 
174 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 allowed to subsist. It is the organic or living things which 
 are more particularly capable of the most varied modifi- 
 cations and adaptations by virtue of their pliable character. 
 They transmit to their descendants, in ever increasing ratio, 
 the characteristics thus obtained, while the succeeding gene- 
 rations, in their turn, go on acquiring new properties In 
 this way we arrive at an ever increasing evolution towards 
 forms and conditions imbued with ever increasing vitality, 
 or, in other words, becoming more and more fitting and 
 apposite. 
 
 This view is so simple and so clear that it must neces- 
 sarily commend itself to sober and unprejudiced minds, 
 even wfithout any further scientific investigation. In point 
 of fact, it was clearly expressed, as far back as the first 
 century after Christ, by Lucretius Cams , the author of the 
 famous didactic poem De rerum naturd , who says : — 
 
 “For truly the origin of things has neither been led up 
 to the present order by wise pre-ordainment, nor have its 
 motions been regulated by the compulsory force of law ; 
 but shaken by countless impulses, constantly changing, 
 endless in numbers it drove through the universe, and at 
 length, after attempting every form of motion and of com- 
 position, it finally arrived at the present order of things.” 
 
 But even apart from this general consideration, we are 
 not justified in speaking of design, knowing, as we do, 
 things only in the one form and condition in which they 
 lie before our eyes, and having no conception of what they 
 would look like if their condition were quite different from 
 what it is. In order to form a competent judgment, we 
 ought to be in a position to compare the order of things of 
 this world with that of one quite differently constituted, and 
 this, of course, is an impossibility. But whatever the ar- 
 rangement of the world might be, it would always appear 
 to a certain extent designed, provided we were able to exist 
 in it. In fact, this is so much the case that the most varied 
 conditions under varied circumstances, appear designed to 
 us, according as our individuality has become adapted to 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 1 75 
 
 them. To the Northerner the cold seems pleasant and use- 
 ful, and to the Southerner the heat ; the Arab loves the 
 desert, the sailor the ocean, the huntsman the woods and 
 mountains, the agriculturist the fields, the townsman houses 
 and men. Thus, to every one of these only that seems 
 fitting which is agreeable to him on account of his individual 
 and personal tastes or wants, or which is beneficial to him 
 or in keeping with his idiosyncrasy. Moreover our reason 
 need by no means content itself with the existing reality, 
 lying before it. For where is there an institution or con- 
 trivance of nature but might be imagined better, or more 
 appropriate in one way or another ? Nay, there are natural 
 contrivances of a very complicated and highly developed 
 kind, in regard to which it may be scientifically proved that 
 gradual development and adaptation has never yet imparted 
 to them that degree of perfection which they would have 
 attained had they been created with a preconceived view 
 to fitness. Thus, that apparently most skilfully designed 
 organ of sight, the human eye, appears to the outsider as 
 a marvel of fitness, as an arrangement for seeing, bespeak- 
 ing the highest and most matured wisdom in its design ; 
 but upon its being examined by the scientist, there are 
 brought to light a number of faults and imperfections, such 
 as chromatic dispersion, spherical aberration arising from 
 the imperfect construction of the lens, astigmatism or im- 
 perfect adaptation for simultaneous vertical and horizontal 
 vision, springing from a defect in the curve of the cornea ; 
 besides the blind spot, the shadows cast by the vessels, the 
 incomplete transparency of the media, and so on. If a 
 human optician were to supply an instrument made in the 
 same way, it would, as Helmholtz remarked, be at once 
 rejected as a bad piece of workmanship. The reason of it 
 all lies in the fact that the eye — like all organs and con- 
 trivances in the plant or animal body — has passed through 
 countless gradations of imperfection, by the gradual ad- 
 dition and retention of small improvements, from a simple, 
 sensitive nerve lodged beneath the skin, to its ultimate and 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 176 
 
 highest development, and even this highest development is 
 by no means complete even in the most perfect eye. In this 
 respect, comparative anatomy furnishes us with the most 
 conclusive proofs, showing that the earliest beginnings of 
 the organ of sight in the lowest animals are not even repre- 
 sented by nerves, but by small gatherings of red or violet 
 pigment-cells, to be found in the skin at the fore-part of the 
 body. Exactly the same or similar things occur in con- 
 nection with all the other sense-organs, which were origin- 
 ally nothing more than portions of the external skin, through 
 which nerves of sensation were spreading, and which devel- 
 oped gradually, in the course of many millions of years, by 
 dint of practice, division of labor, adaptation and inheritance, 
 until they arrived at their present degree of perfection. This 
 gradual development of the organs of sense may be pursued 
 even at this day through all its stages in the incubated hen’s 
 egg, as parts of the outer covering of the body or epidermis, 
 or simple epidermal cells, are gradually transformed to the 
 characteristic sense-cells. On the lowest rung of the scale 
 of life, c. g. in the protista and the infusoria, the senses are 
 actually at work without there being any special organs of 
 sense or nerves. “ These facts,” Haeckel remarks, “ prove 
 most conclusively that the most perfect organs of sense are 
 not the factitious production of a preconceived plan of 
 creation, but that, like all other organs of the animal body, 
 they are the unconscious product of natural selection in the 
 struggle for existence.” * 
 
 What paramount influence the mere external agency of 
 light has wrought on the development of the organ of sight 
 appears more particularly by the well-known facts relating 
 to the blind cave-animals, which, led by chance into the 
 absolute darkness of their caves and being compelled to 
 live there, have gradually lost their eyes, these having be- 
 come degraded to mere rudiments. On the other hand, 
 fishes and other denizens of the sea have the larger eyes 
 
 * Further details may be found in Haeckel’s Ueber Ur sprung und Entv/ick- 
 lung der Sinneswerkzeuge . 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 177 
 
 the more they are wont to live in the dark depths of the 
 ocean, for in the struggle for existence natural selection 
 must have favored those who could best collect the sparse 
 rays of light by possessing a larger eye. 
 
 It results from all this that eyes were not bestowed upon 
 us in order that we might see with them, any more than we 
 have received feet in order that we may walk with them. 
 Rather do we see and walk because we have eyes and feet. 
 The function is not the origin, but the result of the organ. 
 Sight did not exist before the eye, nor speech before the 
 tongue, but the reverse. On the same ground we cannot 
 say that the stag and the doe have received long legs in 
 order that they may run fast ; but they run fast because they 
 have long legs. The mole has short spatulate feet for dig- 
 ging ; if he had not it would never have occurred to it to 
 burrow in the earth. Things are as they are because they 
 have so developed among millionfold mutual frictions and 
 interactions ; had they developed or been able to develop 
 otherwise, we should not have regarded them as less fitting 
 or apposite. Animals in the North have a thicker fur than 
 those in the South, and in winter they have thicker hair or 
 feathers than in summer. Is it not more natural to look 
 upon such phenomena as the necessary result of external 
 influences, and in this particular instance as the result of 
 thermal conditions, than to believe, as the teleologist does, 
 in a heavenly tailor who sews the winter and summer gar- 
 ments of every animal ? It is, in point of fact, a well- 
 known thing that in prolonged low temperature the skin 
 produces a stronger growth of hair ; thus, for example, the 
 elephants and various species of the rhinoceros, now only 
 found in tropical countries, are almost naked, whereas their 
 antediluvian relatives of the cold North, the mammoth and 
 the woolly rhinoceros, were clothed with long thick hair. 
 To this must be added the influence of the struggle for ex- 
 istence, discovered by Darwin, that is to say, the ceaseless 
 mutual competition carried on by all organized beings both 
 against each other and against the conditions of life, a 
 
Force and matter. 
 
 178 
 
 struggle which resulted and results in the permanent pre- 
 servation of such forms only as are distinguished from their 
 fellows by some advantage, however slight it may be at 
 first, and which hand down this advantage to their young 
 for gradual further development. Thus the protective colors 
 of many animals, as the green of insects, the white of the 
 ptarmigan, the brown of animals living on the bark of trees, 
 the grey hue, resembling sand, of desert animals, and so 
 on, are the result of selection in the struggle for existence, 
 for while animals of other colors soon succumbed to their 
 enemies, these survived and transmitted their favorable pe- 
 culiarities to their young. Again, in cold countries, animals 
 with a thick fur are more likely to survive than those with 
 thin ; they transmit this peculiarity to their young, and it 
 increases from generation to generation, thus giving them 
 the greatest advantage and to the superficial observer the 
 impression of a divine or intentional contrivance, whereas 
 a more thorough observation shows that these are but the 
 natural effects of natural causes. Therefore, those things 
 that now exist in the world are but the remains of an infinite 
 number of beginnings and of countless processes of devel- 
 opment. We should not omit to notice in connection with 
 this that the views so admirably put forth by Darwin were 
 known long since to the most ancient Greek philosophers, 
 and that the Greek philosopher Empedocles (450 B. C.) who 
 is now often termed the ancestor of the Darwinian theory, 
 taught with marvelous ingenuity that in the moulding of 
 matter into form many irregular forms may have previously 
 existed, which were partly unable to maintain themselves, 
 and but gradually, as they became more advantageously 
 moulded and thereby imbued with more vitality, attained a 
 fitting constitution. 
 
 These considerations are also calculated to refute the ob- 
 jection that the non-teleological view of the world leads us 
 to mere chance , whereas chance could never produce suit- 
 able forms. As far back as two thousand years ago, Cicero 
 contended in opposition to the pantheistic philosophers of 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 179 
 
 his time : ‘ ‘ Let any one toss up a number of letters ever so 
 many times, they will never form a poem, such as the Iliad 
 or the Odyssey .' ’ Of course they will not — for such a con- 
 tingency would be entirely out of the question, and would 
 be like a single prize among countless blanks. But a chance 
 of this kind does not occur in Nature, in which everything 
 proceeds in final resort in a natural and regular manner. 
 What we still designate as chance, merely depends on a 
 concatenation of circumstances, the internal connection and 
 final causes of which we have as yet been unable to unravel. 
 “To chance,’’ says the famous Systeme de la Nature, ‘ ‘ we 
 ascribe those effects of which we cannot trace the connection 
 with their causes. — Order and disorder are not in Nature.” 
 Therefore, the alternative ‘ 1 God or Chance ’ ’ which is so 
 often presented to us by teleologists, has no real existence. 
 There is a third course, and this is the gradual evolution of 
 what is suitable in the natural course of things by the already 
 described processes of selection, adaptation, etc. Under ex- 
 isting natural conditions, quite an incommensurable number 
 of fitting mechanisms, forms and contrivances, may be im- 
 agined or realized, of which some actually spring into ex- 
 istence, although it does not follow that they must be the 
 most fitting that could be conceived. Sufficient if they be 
 fitting enough to be able to exist under certain conditions. 
 This view thoroughly coincides with the actual facts of the 
 matter and with the constantly changing phenomena and 
 conditions, as we find them in the natural history of the 
 earth and of the universe. Let people leave off, then, 
 meeting the arguments of the defenders of the existence of 
 natural laws with the weak and insipid commonplaces about 
 chance or about the tossing-up of letters ; such objections 
 only bespeak either want of knowledge or want of reflection. 
 
 If, after all this, it becomes perfectly obvious that Nature 
 does not act from a conscious design or plan, but obeys a 
 blind necessity, it is no less self-evident that, working as 
 she does, she necessarily calls into life and being a number 
 of things which must appear to us — if we judge only by the 
 
I So 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 standard of fitness — as utterly perverse, useless, absurd and 
 imperfect. In fact, if once we begin to look at Nature from 
 the point of view of fitness, it is easy not only to discover 
 numbers of such aimless and useless things, absurdities 
 and imperfections, but also to demonstrate that Nature, 
 when interrupted in her blind action by external or internal 
 difficulties, becomes guilty of the most startling blunders 
 and perversities. She is oftentimes unable to conquer the 
 smallest obstacle in her path, or to smooth it away in a 
 befitting manner, and in the course of her utterly involun- 
 tary action she entangles herself every moment in quite 
 unnecessary or insoluble difficulties and perplexities, which 
 would inevitably be steered clear of by a conscious reason, 
 or even by an unconscious activity guided and determined 
 by considerations of fitness. 
 
 Above all, no one can deny that Nature, in her blind 
 creative impulse, has given birth to a number of beings and 
 things which cannot be regarded as designed for their own 
 sake, and which rather destroy than promote the natural 
 order of things and the good of the whole. Upon this 
 ground, the existence of mischievous animals and plants has 
 always been a thorn in the flesh of the teleologists and the 
 advocates of a religious conception of the world, who have 
 tried in every imaginable way to explain the raison d'etre 
 of these destructive beings. In this they have utterly failed, 
 as proved by the results of those religious systems in which 
 the Fall, or original sin, is represented as the cause of the 
 anomaly alluded to. According to the theologians Meyer 
 and Stilling ( Blatter fur holier e Wahrheit), injurious reptiles 
 and mischievous insects are the result of the curse which 
 smote the earth and its inhabitants, and in the monstrous 
 form and appearance of many of them we behold to some 
 extent the image of sin and destruction ! In keeping with 
 this it is alleged that they are a later creation, and not 
 part of the original one, because their very existence is 
 bound up with the destruction of vegetable and animal 
 matter ! 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. l8l 
 
 In old German paganism these animals were regarded 
 as wicked elves, from whom sprang all diseases, and who 
 owed their origin to the worship of the demons on May- 
 night. 
 
 These curious attempts at an explanation show the utter 
 inability of man to explain on ground of usefulness the ex- 
 istence of these mischievous, harmful and disgusting crea- 
 tures, or to bring them into accord with the working of a 
 benevolent and beneficent Providence. On the other hand, 
 we know that perfectly harmless and very useful animals 
 have died out or are in course of becoming extinct, without 
 Nature finding any means of preserving their existence. 
 Yet mischievous creatures, such as field-mice, are gifted 
 with such fertility that their extinction is not within the 
 range of possibility. There is scarcely any limit to the pro- 
 lific power of those microscopic organisms which are the 
 causes of so many terrible diseases, and which inflict on 
 man such incalculable injury, sometimes directly, and some- 
 times by the destruction of useful plants. Locusts and 
 migratory pigeons form flocks which darken the sky, and 
 which spread ruin, death and famine over the unhappy 
 lands on which they rest from their flight. 
 
 “ He who only seeks wisdom, design and appropriateness 
 in Nature,” says Professor Giebel , “ had better turn to the 
 natural history of the tape-worm, to try his ingenuity upon. 
 The entire object of its life consists in the production of 
 eggs capable of development, and cannot be attained except 
 through the sufferings of other creatures ; millions of eggs 
 perish aimlessly ; some are developed, and the embryo 
 finally becomes evaginated and grows into a sucking and 
 reproductive scolex, the young of which produce eggs 
 and putrify in the excreta of other beings. Here we have 
 nothing of beauty, design or wisdom, in the ordinary 
 human construction of the terms.” 
 
 Whence — we may fairly ask of the teleologist — come 
 the hosts of diseases and of physical evils ? Why should 
 Nature inflict such frightful cruelties and horrors, on her 
 
182 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 own children and creatures, daily and hourly, by means of 
 floods, earthquakes, lightning, fire, hail, volcanoes, storms, 
 etc. ? Why is the existence of millions of creatures possible 
 only by their destroying other millions of their fellow-crea- 
 tures or making them suffer in the most cruel way imagin- 
 able ? Can it have been divine goodness and mercy which 
 imparted cruelty to the cat and the spider, and endowed 
 man himself, the so-called crown of creation, with a nature 
 that makes him capable of practicing every description 
 of the most dastardly brutality and atrocity on his own 
 race ? 
 
 Of course, theologians lay the flattering unction to their 
 souls that all this is only the result of the Fall, and has 
 been factitiously brought into an originally pure and uncor- 
 rupt Nature by the moral ruin of mankind. They do not 
 know, or do not want to know, that natural laws have been 
 the same at all times, and that palaeontology can bring 
 forward countless and irrefutable instances of bones of men 
 and animals having been injured by disease, though be- 
 longing to a period prior to the supposed date of the 
 original sin. Disease is as old as organic life, as evidenced 
 moreover by internal causes, and a Paradise that is not 
 reached by evils and disease is, to the clear eye of the 
 scientific investigator, nothing more than one of the myths 
 hatched by the childish fancies of nations, the outcome of 
 the unsatisfied longing of the human mind for a better state 
 of things. 
 
 The colors of flowers, the teleologist is wont to say, exist 
 to delight the eyes of man. But how long did flowers 
 blossom without being seen by a human eye, and how 
 many are there that bloom at this day in inaccessible spots, 
 or at the bottom of the ocean where no eye but that of the 
 diver can light upon them ? Moreover, it is in evidence 
 that fully one half of all the plants in Creation possess no 
 beautiful, many-colored blossoms ; and Darwin, by his 
 investigations, arrived at the remarkable conclusion that 
 flowers as a rule are only gaily-colored in order to attract 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 183 
 
 the insects which aid their fertilization, while those flowers 
 which are fertilized by the wind are never bright-colored. 
 Therefore no flower would be endowed with a beautiful 
 color, if such color were not beneficial to the flower itself 
 and had not been evolved, by way of predilection, in the 
 struggle for existence. This calls to our mind the fact that 
 very many flowers are so badly contrived that the conditio 
 sine qua non of their fertility, i. e. the union of pollen and 
 ovule, is either prevented or rendered difficult in every pos- 
 sible way, and that their propagation is rendered possible 
 by mere fortuitous circumstances, such as rain, wind, insects, 
 etc. Why is this? There are so many aimless or useless 
 parts and organs in the vegetable world, that the famous 
 botanist Schleiden was led to say : ‘ ‘ The boldest imagin- 
 ation is paralyzed in the end, in seeking any definite con- 
 ception of design in the manifold forms and configurations 
 of plants.” 
 
 The same thing holds good of animals and of men, in 
 whose physical structure numerous aimless contrivances and 
 organs, permanent or temporary, may be shown to exist. 
 No one can tell the use of the tail of the human embryo, or 
 of the forms of foetal transition, or of the rudiments of op- 
 posite sexes in male and female mammals, such as the male 
 mammary glands, or of the so-called appendix vermiformis, 
 or the muscles of the ear, or the inside of the foot, or the 
 tonsils, or the thymus, or the semilunar of the eye in man, 
 or the clavicle of the cat, or the wings of some birds which 
 are useless for flying purposes, or the teeth of the whale, 
 etc., etc. These belong chiefly to the great class of rudi- 
 mentary or degraded organs, which are explicable by the 
 theory of descent, but which offer an insoluble problem to 
 the teleological conception of the world and to the theory 
 of creation, being, as they are, not only useless and aimless, 
 but in some cases actually injurious. “ If everything that 
 is fit in this world had been created by a rational spirit, the 
 long persistence of rudimentary organs would be incon- 
 ceivable ; for God, who was able to create the whole uni- 
 
184 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 verse in six days, would surely have been able, in an equal 
 space of time, to get rid of an organ which had become 
 useless. ’ ’ (G. A. Schneider.) K. Vogt states that there are 
 
 animals which may be set down as complete hermaphro- 
 dites, that is to say, possessing perfectly developed organs 
 of both sexes, and yet incapable of self-fertilization ; the 
 rule being that two individuals are necessary for repro- 
 duction, while self-fertilization is the exception. “What 
 end,” he pertinently adds, “does such a contrivance sub- 
 serve?’’ Again, why must some aquatic birds remain 
 content with a small extension between their claws, while 
 animals which never swim are furnished with skin between 
 their toes? And what is the good of the existence of 
 thousands of drones in the realm of bees, which only seem 
 to live in order that they may be killed by their laboring 
 sisters? What is the use of the large clumsy beak of the 
 Brazilian toucan, which makes it impossible for the bird to 
 take its food directly, compelling it, as it does, to throw it 
 up into the air and then to catch it deftly with its open 
 beak near the root, so as to be able to bite or swallow it? 
 The sting of the bee or the wasp, which, according to the 
 teleological view, was given to these creatures for their de- 
 fence, serves as a rule, when used, to bring about the death 
 of its owner ! The natural history of insects, above all, 
 yields so many facts that go against the theory of a de- 
 sign, that Professor Graber ( Die Insekten , Munich, 1879, 
 II, p 569) says: “In the course of the development of 
 insects we not only meet with a number of processes which, 
 to put it mildly, can scarcely serve to illustrate the idea of 
 design ; but there are also numerous structures and organs 
 which may, with absolute certainty, be pointed to as per- 
 fectly useless.’’ And again (p. 45): “ The entire morphology 
 of insects is a network of clear and circumstantial evidence 
 against the notion of a predestined and previously intended 
 fitness of the organ.” 
 
 The fertility of many animals is so great that if they were 
 left to themselves, they would in a few years crowd the seas 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 185 
 
 and cover the land right up to the housetops.* What is 
 the object of such an arrangement, seeing that there is 
 neither space nor food enough for such crowds of animals? 
 Or is it consistent with the idea of a creative spirit that 
 such countless germs or complete creatures should merely 
 be created for the purpose of immediately perishing again 
 in the pitiless struggle for existence? Even the human 
 race, despite its slow rate of progression, would, but for 
 the fact of innumerable lives coming to a premature end, 
 double its numbers in a quarter of a century, although the 
 earth has neither space nor food enough for such multi- 
 tudes of human beings. 
 
 One of the strongest arguments against the pretended de- 
 sign in the actions of Nature is afforded by malformations 
 and monstrosities. With what object did Nature allow a 
 mammary gland to grow on the shoulder of a man thirty- 
 four years of age, as recorded by Dr. Klob of Vienna ? or 
 give a woman three well-developed breasts, as seen by Dr. 
 S. Johns 07 i, ( Lancet , and Gazette des Hopitaux, 1861, Nr. 
 81)? or give grown men four nipples instead of the normal 
 two — a case that has been observed twice by the author in 
 his own practice, and of which one hundred and five ex- 
 amples were collected in thirteen years by Professor Leich- 
 tenstern of Tubingen ? (Virchow’s Archiv fur pathol. Ana- 
 tomie und Physiologic, Vol. 3, Part II.) With regard to 
 monstrosities, the unsophisticated human mind has been 
 so little able to reconcile them with belief in a benevolent 
 
 * The bactaria, which are microscopic organisms of the minutest kind, mul- 
 tiply by the simple binary division of their bodies, in such a manner that from 
 one bacterium two new creatures are formed in one hour, four in two hours, 
 eight in three hours, sixteen in four hours, and so on. Assuming this process 
 simply to go on, then, according to Professor F. Cohn’s calculation, there would 
 be within three days as many as forty-seven trillions of bacteria in existence, 
 and within five days the creatures evolved from one germ would completely 
 fill the whole nine hundred and twenty-eight cubic miles of the ocean ! Yet, as 
 already stated in an earlier chapter, these creatures are so tiny that six hundred 
 and thirty-three millions of them occupy but one cubic millimeter, and six hun- 
 dred and thirty-six milliards of them only weigh a gramme. The queen bee 
 can produce one hundred thousand, the female termite twelve million descend- 
 ants every year ; and even less prolific insects, increasing in geometrical pro- 
 gression, would soon fill the world with the progeny of a single individual. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 186 
 
 creator, that they were formerly regarded as a sign of the 
 wrath of the gods, and even at this day uneducated people 
 often look upon them as a punishment from heaven. The 
 author of this book saw in a collection of a veterinary 
 surgeon a new-born kid, which was perfectly developed in 
 every part, except that it had coyne into the world without a 
 head ! Professor Depaul presented to the French Academy 
 a human foetus without a head and without limbs, with breast 
 and abdomen imperfectly formed, and the place of the head 
 on the trunk represented by a tuft of hair. This misshapen 
 creature grew in a corner of the decidua. ( Compt . rendus 
 de 1' Academie des Sciences , March, 1875.) From a teleo- 
 logical point of view, is there any more glaring absurdity 
 to be imagined ? Professor Lotze of Gottingen surpasses 
 himself when he says in speaking of monstrosities: “If 
 the brain is wanting in a foetus, it would be only rational in 
 a power with a free choice to suspend its action, as this 
 want cannot be compensated. But since the formative forces 
 carry on their work in order that a creature so purposeless 
 and wretched, and so opposed to the idea of generation, 
 may exist for a time, this appears to us to be a striking 
 proof of the fact of the design of the final result depending 
 on the disposition of purely mechanical and determined 
 forces, the action of which, once begun, proceeds straight 
 on without thought and without reflection according to the 
 law of inertia, as long as no obstacle happens to stand in 
 its way,’’ etc. 
 
 This is plain speaking, and by the side of it, it seems 
 scarcely credible that the same author should elsewhere 
 contend that “ Nature, distrustful of the inventive power of 
 the mind, has furnished the body with certain mechanical 
 contrivances,” the effect of which is, e.g., that a foreign 
 body should be expelled from the trachea by coughing. If 
 i'c were possible that such philosophical views, as ascribing 
 distrust to Nature, should be generally accepted, there 
 would be an end to every real investigation into Nature, 
 and nothing would remain but passive faith. That the 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 187 
 
 same author, who is actually regarded as an authority , 
 should utter, in one breath, two theorems that are so 
 diametrically at variance with each other, proves the philo- 
 sophical confusion and inconsistency of our time.* If 
 Nature, according to Lotze, had reason to distrust the 
 inventive faculty of the mind, she would have had infinite 
 opportunities of making preventive provision for certain 
 contingencies ; she might have arranged things in such a 
 way that bullets should rebound from the body, and that 
 swords should hit without cutting. A foreign body in the 
 trachea may perhaps be ejected by coughing, but a foreign 
 body in the sesophagus may bring about suffocation by 
 causing excessive nervous irritation at the top of the trachea. 
 What a preposterous arrangement ! and yet there is no 
 trace of distrust towards the inventive faculty of the mind 
 which has invented pincers and dungeons. Every day and 
 every hour the physician has opportunities of convincing 
 himself of the helplessness of Nature, among diseases, 
 wounds, miscarriages, etc., and of her often unsuitable, per- 
 verse or unsuccessful efforts to heal. There would indeed 
 be no need of physicians if Nature were to act with a set 
 purpose. Inflammation, gangrene, mortification, wasting, 
 and similar processes are chosen by nature and are fatal, 
 when she might have attained the object by simpler means 
 and might have effected a cure. Is it fitting that a foetus 
 should fix itself and be developed outside the uterus, the 
 place assigned to it by nature ? yet such cases of extra- 
 uterine pregnancy occur frequently enough, and result in 
 the painful death of the mother ; worse still, that in such 
 cases of extra-uterine pregnancy, labor- pains, that is efforts 
 to expel the child from the uterus, should set in at the 
 normal period, while there is really nothing to be expelled ? 
 There is no healing power in Nature, in the sense in which 
 the phrase is generally used, any more than there is a vital 
 
 * Karl Vogt in his well-known work, Kohlerglaube und Wissenschaft, calls 
 Herr Lotze a “speculating Struwwelpeter,” an epithet that could scarcely have 
 been better chosen. 
 
i88 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 power in it. In pursuing the direction once imposed on it 
 by definite natural formulae, the organism often adjusts 
 morbid disturbances in its further development. At other 
 times it does exactly the contrary, and following its neces- 
 sary and determined activity it entangles itself in a number 
 of insoluble and perfectly unnecessary difficulties. The 
 existence of definite specifics against specific diseases is 
 often quoted as a striking proof of the accuracy of the 
 teleological conception of the world. But there are no such 
 definite specifics that heal certain definite diseases with cer- 
 tainty under all circumstances, and which might therefore 
 be regarded as designed for the curing of such diseases. 
 All rational physicians now deny the existence of so-called 
 specific remedies in the sense alluded to ; on the contrary, 
 they hold that the action of a medicine does not consist 
 in a specific neutralization of the disease, but must be 
 explained in quite another way as depending chiefly on 
 accidental circumstances, reposing on a far-reaching causal 
 nexus of intermingled conditions. Hence we must abandon 
 the idea that Nature has allowed certain herbs to grow as 
 remedies for certain diseases — a view that imputes to the 
 creator an utter absurdity, for it implies that he created an 
 evil with its antidote, instead of leaving both uncreated. 
 
 To return once more to the subject of monstrosities, 
 we must note that such can be artificially produced, by 
 injuring either the ovum or the foetus. Nature has no 
 means of meeting this attack and of remedying this injury ; 
 on the contrary, she obeys the fortuitous impulse, and 
 moulding in the false direction brings forth — a monstrosity. 
 Is it possible not to recognize that here we have nought 
 before us but factitious and merely mechanical processes ? 
 Can the idea of a conscious creator, ruling matter with a 
 purpose, be reconciled with such phenomena ? Is it pos- 
 sible that in its action of producing fitting formations, the 
 forming hand of the creator can be arrested or turned in a 
 wrong direction by the capricious finger of man ? It does 
 not matter whether man interferes with the working of such 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 1 8 $ 
 
 a hand at an earlier or at a later stage ; nothing is gained 
 by assuming that Nature has only received from outside an 
 original impulse towards the formation of designed works, 
 but accomplishes these works by mechanical means. For 
 the designed impulse must necessarily involve the designed 
 result. And where shall we seek this designed impulse, 
 since the natural circumstances under which the natural 
 beings arise are fully known to us, and since we know that 
 traces of a creative force external to the natural order of 
 things are to be found nowhere ? 
 
 Nature accomplishes many alleged objects in a clumsy, 
 roundabout fashion, while it cannot be denied that if it had 
 only been a question of attaining these objects, the result 
 might have been obtained in a very much easier and simpler 
 way. The greatest pyramids of Egypt and other gigantic 
 monuments are built from stones which owe their existence 
 to the calcareous shells of minute organisms. The free- 
 stone of which nearly all Paris is built, consists of the 
 shells of small animals, of microscopically minute creatures 
 belonging to the foraminiferae, of whice some two hundred 
 millions are contained in one cubic foot. The time neces- 
 sary for the formation of these stones must be reckoned by 
 myriads of years ; they are now useful to man and appear 
 to him to be a proof of the care of a designing nature. But 
 the disproportion between the means and the end stands 
 out in this instance in startling clearness. Such formations, 
 in which the product of the silent working of many thou- 
 sands of years appears suddenly before our eyes, seem to 
 the ordinary mind marvelous, supernatural and factitious, 
 but the investigator’s eye sees in them nought but the slow, 
 necessary cycle of Nature, which is complete in itself. 
 
 Man is wont to look upon himself as the culminating 
 point of creation, and to consider the earth, with all that 
 lives and moves therein, as created by a beneficent power 
 for his use and dwelling. A glance at the history of the 
 earth and the geographical distribution of the human race 
 might teach him rather more modesty. How long did the 
 
FORCE AND MATTEk. 
 
 190 
 
 earth exist without him ! how long did all the beauties of 
 sky and earth shine without there being a creature gifted 
 with reason, to behold and admire them ! Why should all 
 those endless pre-human ages have rolled away, if man were 
 actually the be-all and the end-all of creation? “Man,” 
 says Helmholtz , ‘ ' is wont to measure the greatness and 
 wisdom of the Universe by the duration and advantage it 
 promises to his own race ; but the past history of the globe 
 in itself shows how brief a spell in its duration is the exist- 
 ence of the human race.” But not only is his existence on 
 the earth limited in time, but so also is his distribution in 
 proportion to the extent of the earth’s surface, of which 
 only a comparatively small part may be turned into fairly 
 comfortable dwelling-places. By far the greatest part of 
 the earth’s surface consists of deserts of water, sand and 
 ice. Two-thirds of it are covered with water, and of the 
 remaining third some parts only are suited for men to dwell 
 in. Even these as a rule cannot be inhabited without toil- 
 some cultivation and a permanent ruinous struggle against 
 unfavorable natural conditions and against hunger, disease, 
 climate, wild beasts, etc. Why should so many wasted sun- 
 beams brood daily over the huge sandy solitudes of Africa, 
 while the poor and miserable men of the Polar regions are 
 pining away in semi-darkness and everlasting cold ? Why 
 should there be drought in one place, and inundations 
 in another ? why famine in one and super-abundance in 
 another ? why fertility here, and barrenness there ? Why 
 should frost, rain, vermin, the scorching heat of the sun 
 and other similar agencies destroy whatever man, struggling 
 for dear life, imagines that he has wrung from the elements 
 by gigantic exertions and superhuman efforts ? Must not 
 he be actually bereft of his senses who seriously contends 
 that the earth has been fitted up by an all-wise and all- 
 merciful providence as a becoming dwelling-place for man? 
 Only by the uttermost exertion of his physical and mental 
 faculties is man enabled to eke out a bare existence on 
 earth, jeopardized all the while by thousands of dangers. 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 191 
 
 And these faculties of his were not betsowed on him by a 
 benevolent creator, but are the final result of that slow and 
 toilsome evolution by natural means, which has been de- 
 scribed in an earlier chapter. 
 
 Let us see what view was taken of these things by the 
 unsophisticated mind of an adept of the most free-thinking 
 and most widely diffused religious system in the world, 
 which is Buddhism. When a Christian missionary said to 
 the late king of Siam, Maha Moughut , who himself wrote 
 on theology, that the Most High let fall the rain in order 
 that men might cultivate their fields, he answered: “But 
 the rain falls irregularly ; in some places there is too much 
 of it, and in others too little. A great part of it falls into the 
 sea and on mountain ranges. Sometimes the water carries 
 away towns, while at other times there is not even enough 
 to make rice grow. Many parts of the earth are utterly 
 barren and unfitted for the support of human life.” Upon 
 being told that God had created the earth for man and 
 man’s good, he pointed out that there were hidden reefs 
 on which ships foundered, and fiery mountains which only 
 brought destruction on man. He spoke of diseases and 
 epidemics, and hearing that these were intended by God to 
 punish men for their sins, he replied that epidemics were 
 caused by foul and poisonous air, and that the rich could 
 escape from the punishment by leaving the infected places. 
 The Buddhist sage could not conceive why the Most High 
 should have human qualities and passions, nor why he 
 should only reveal himself to a privileged few ; nor why 
 error and false doctrines should exist ; nor how each human 
 germ could be transformed into a never-dying creature? 
 When he was told that woman was God’s second creation 
 and his master-piece, he answered: “ Then hold her in 
 honor and not in subjection .’ ’ ‘ ‘ Buddha, ’ ’ he said, ‘ ‘ taught 
 very different things altogether, and sought to make men 
 happy and wise on earth, instead of referring them to a 
 fantastic world to come.” 
 
 Let man only take counsel with himself and inquire 
 
ig2 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 whether, if God created him with a view to happiness, 
 well-being and knowledge, he might not have formed him 
 in a far more perfect and suitable fashion ! Why should 
 not man have four eyes, one for each of the four sides of 
 the body, instead of the two with their limited range? 
 Why cannot he fly like the birds ? Why has he not the 
 swift legs of the stag, and the muscular strength of the 
 lion? Why cannot he live on air, instead of working the 
 greatest part of his life tied to the ground, merely to satisfy 
 the insatiable cravings of his stomach ? Why has he no 
 more than five senses? and why can he not perceive the 
 phenomena of electricity and magnetism by means of a 
 special sense, the same as he does those of light and heat ? 
 Why is his knowledge so very circumscribed ? and why is 
 his life so short, and his intellectual capacity so limited ? 
 Why do thousands upon thousands of natural obstacles 
 stand in the way of the free working of his powers? Why 
 is he left a prey to tyranny, malice and every kind of in- 
 justice? Nobody can satisfactorily answer these questions 
 from the teleological or theological standpoint, whereas 
 they meet with the most plausible solutions when looked at 
 from the point of view of a natural order of things, pro- 
 ceeding from a gradual and spontaneous evolution. 
 
 Modern science (see Helmholtz : Ueber die Wechselwir- 
 kung der Naturkrafte , 1854, and the writings of Clausius , 
 Thomson , Tart , Stewart , and others) has calculated, or is 
 supposed to have calculated, that as there was once a period 
 in which the earth was without organic life, so there must 
 and shall appear also in a future which, so far as human 
 conception goes, is as yet infinitely and immeasurably re- 
 mote, a period in which the present forces of Nature will 
 become exhausted and be consigned to temporary inactivity, 
 through the constant loss of heat and the gradual equilibrium 
 of temperature ; causing everything that lives on earth to 
 return to night, to death and oblivion. On astronomical 
 grounds also there can be no doubt that just as our whole 
 planetary system originated in time, it must necessarily 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 193 
 
 perish within a definite period, however remote that period 
 may be ; for the sun, the source of all terrestrial force, will 
 cease to shine, and the planets, owing to the gradual dim- 
 inution of their orbits, will re-unite themselves with the 
 sun, their cradle and their grave, in the chaos of the primal 
 elements.* All great things wrought by man on earth 
 must then necessarily be consigned to the limbo of eternal 
 oblivion. In the face of such a fact let us just ask, what is 
 the meaning of all the high-sounding philosophical phrases 
 of universal purposes to be effected in the creation of man ; 
 of the incarnation of God in history ; of the story of the 
 earth and of the human race as the spontaneous revelation 
 of the Absolute ; of the eternity of consciousness ; of the 
 freedom of the human will, and so on ? What is the whole 
 life and working of man in the face of this everlasting and 
 irresistible course of Nature, induced by inflexible neces- 
 sity and inexorable regularity ? It is but the brief play 
 of an ephemeron, hovering over the ocean of eternity and 
 infinity ! 
 
 It must not, however, be forgotten that though our little 
 earth with its inhabitants may perish, it by no means follows 
 that the fate of the immeasurable and everlasting universe 
 should likewise be sealed. Nay, at the very time when our 
 own race dies away in cold and desolation, we have a right 
 to assume that on thousands upon thousands of other spots 
 in the universe the conditions of things will have reached 
 a culmination point from which a new race can take its 
 departure, similar or analogous to ourselves in the funda- 
 mental principles of physical and intellectual formation, and 
 doomed, like ourselves, to eventual individual and collective 
 extinction. Therefore, the destruction of our earth with 
 everything on it does not seem to signify any more in the 
 universe, than the death of one individual does on our own 
 earth ; and the wave of life which passes over our earth is, 
 as Proctor says so forcibly and so beautifully, “but a gentle 
 
 * Further details will be found in the Author’s Licht und Leben , in the 
 Essay : Der Kreislauf der Krafte und der Weltuntergang . 
 
194 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ripple on the sea of life within the solar system, and this 
 sea of life, again, is itself nothing more than an insignificant 
 wave in the ocean of the eternal life of the universe.” 
 
 Like the wife of Ulysses, who undid at night what her 
 industrious fingers had wrought by day(Di'iPrel), Nature 
 amuses herself with an eternal building-up and destroy- 
 ing, the beginning of which is like its end, and the end 
 like the beginning. 
 
 Thence, as Spiller thinks, by a ‘‘continual perfecting in 
 the aggregation of atoms [as actually occurs on the earth] 
 there might possibly arise an improvement in organi- 
 zation and in the conditions of life ” which would enable 
 us to imagine that a gradual progression from the imperfect 
 to the perfect and from the lowlier to the higher, as we 
 have learned from the history of our earth, would take place 
 within definite periods in the never-ending regions of the 
 universe. But for us men, who shall never see nor ex- 
 perience this, it must be sufficient to know that the minute 
 particle of the eternal cycle of the universe which we are 
 able to survey, strives upwards within certain limits towards 
 perfection, and that we by our very existence must con- 
 tribute our share to it. 
 
 There is no other object in the existence of the indi- 
 vidual or in that of the universe but existence itself ; and 
 each thing and each life discharges its duty fully and 
 thoroughly by taking part within its individual sphere 
 in the eternal life of the universe, which moves in an 
 unbroken orbit : 
 
 Willst Du, dass sich an einem Bild 
 Der Welt Geheimniss Dir enthlillt, 
 
 So sieh’ auf einem Blatte weiss 
 Gezogen einen dunklen Kreis. 
 
 Und wie sich in der runden Bahn 
 Das End’ dem Anfang fuget an. 
 
 So fiiget sich im Weltenall 
 
THE FITNESS OF THINGS IN NATURE. 
 
 195 
 
 Das End’ dem Anfang iiberall. 
 
 In ew’gem Laufe ohne Ruh 
 Strebt Alles seinem Anfang zu, 
 
 Und aller Anfang wunscht zu sein 
 Da, wo das Ende fiigt sich ein. 
 
 Drum glaube nicht, dass einst die Welt 
 Aus einem Nichts geworden sei, 
 
 Und nicht, dass einst zusammenfallt 
 In Nichts der Welten Einerlei 1 
 Denn Alles, was geboren wird, 
 
 1st ewig schon gewesen da, 
 
 Und nicht der kleinste Staub verirrt 
 Sich in des Todes Arme ja. 
 
 Du selbst bist nur ein kleiner Theil 
 Der unbegrenzten Ewigkeit 
 Und nur fiir eine kurze Weil 
 Gebannet bier in Raum und Zeit. 
 
 Drum streitet, Thoren, ferner nicht, 
 Ob Ihr im Geist unsterblich seid, 
 
 Denn keines Todes Macht zerbricht 
 Der Dinge Unverganglichkeit, 
 
 Die Alles, was da ist und lebt. 
 
 In einem ew’gen Kreise fiihrt 
 Und, wo sie zur Vernichtung strebt, 
 Die Flainmen neuen Lebens schiirt. 
 Unsterblich ist der kleinste Wurm, 
 Unsterblich auch des Menschen Geist, 
 Den jeder neue Todessturm 
 In immer neue Bahnen reisst. 
 
 So lebet Ihr, gestorben auch, 
 
 In kunftigen Geschlechtern fort, 
 
 Und dieser ewige Gebrauch 
 Verwechselt nichts als — Zeit und Ortf 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 196 
 
 (Wilt thou have revealed to thee as in a picture the secret 
 of the universe ? Then gaze at a dark circle drawn on a 
 blank sheet. And as in its orbit the end joins the begin- 
 ning, so is the end one with the beginning throughout the 
 universe. In the eternal cycle everything ceaselessly strives 
 towards its commencement, and every beginning yearns to 
 be where the end joins it. Therefore dream not that the 
 universe has arisen out of nothing, nor that the worlds will 
 collapse into nothingness. For whatever is born has been 
 in existence from eternity, and not the tiniest speck of dust 
 ever loses itself in the arms of death. Thou thyself art but 
 a minute portion of the boundless Eternity, and art but for 
 a brief period bound up within Time and Space. 
 
 Therefore quarrel no longer, ye fools, as to whether you 
 are immortal spirits, for no power of death can break the 
 imperishable chain of things ; whatever is and lives moves 
 in an eternal circle, and wherever it struggles towards anni- 
 hilation it but fans the flames of new life. Immortal is the 
 tiniest worm ; immortal also is the mind of man, which 
 each fresh storm of death drags into ever new roads to life. 
 Thus, dead, thou livest in future generations, and this 
 eternal use changes nought but Time and Space.) 
 
Man. 
 
 There are many marvels — but there is no greater marvel than Man. — Soph- 
 ocles. 
 
 Men originate in brutes and must become Gods. — L. Jakoby. 
 
 God was my first, Reason my second, Man my third and last thought. Man 
 alone is and shall be our God. Outside man is no salvation. — L. Feuer- 
 bach. 
 
 T H E same laws which in the preceding chapters have 
 been showm as ruling in the macrocosm , or universe, 
 rule also in the microcosm , or the world of man, in 
 whose existence, being and thinking, the universe is, as it 
 were, reflected and contemplated. That man with all his 
 eminent qualities and faculties is not a work of God but a 
 product of Nature, like all his fellow-creatures, and has 
 proceeded from a natural and gradual evolution and self- 
 education — this momentous and notorious truth can only 
 be doubted at this day by the uninformed or deliberately ob- 
 stinate. During the short space of scarcely more than forty 
 years the researches on the early history of the human race 
 have grown into a comprehensive science and have shown 
 that mankind has behind it a past in comparison with 
 which the historical period is but very brief. As regards 
 the biblical myths and fairy-tales about the world and man 
 having been created some five or six thousand years ago by 
 a creative fiat , they are really too childish, too radically 
 at variance with the most notorious facts and results of 
 the whole geological, archaeological and archaeogeological 
 science, to be made the subject of a serious controversy. 
 Not only has it been shown by the results of countless 
 
 (197) 
 
198 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 excavations, as well as by the investigations of Egyptolo- 
 gists, based on the reading of hieroglyphic scrolls, that in 
 the venerable land of the Nile an admirable and highly de- 
 veloped culture and civilization existed at a period to which 
 the Bible only traces the creation of the first man ; but the 
 researches of archseogeology as the union of geological 
 and archaeological science is called, have proved beyond 
 doubt that man was a contemporary of the huge mammals 
 of the Diluvian age, which are now either extinct or have 
 emigrated from Europe ; that he existed in one of the 
 earlier periods of the formation of our earth, during which 
 time the surface of the globe had a very different geo- 
 graphical configuration and was subject to different climatic 
 conditions from those that exist at the present time. Nay, 
 there are a number of theoretical arguments, the full expo- 
 sition of which wou’d take up too much of our space, and 
 which, taken in conjunction with the results of many 
 archseogeological researches — though there may yet be 
 some controversy on the inferences to be drawn from these 
 — - make it appear in the highest degree probable that the 
 existence of man, or rather of his earliest beginnings on 
 earth, goes back to a time that must be computed by geo- 
 logical, and neither by historic nor prehistoric standards of 
 measurement. By all appearances it will not be long before 
 the existence of the so-called tertiary man — that is to say, 
 of a human or anthropoid creature, existing in a later or 
 earlier division of the last great period of formation of the 
 earth — will be looked upon with as much certainty as is 
 now the existence of the prehistoric or diluvial man, which 
 had been doubted for such a length of time. Of course 
 this would not affect the ancient belief in the principle of 
 perfection, according to which man is the last and as yet 
 highest outcome of the organic process of evolution or 
 graduated progression on the stage of existence ; for al- 
 though, as scholars are now forced to admit, the antiquity 
 of man on earth must be measured by hundreds of thou- 
 sands of years, this period is yet but exceedingly brief when 
 
Man. 
 
 199 
 
 compared with the many millions of years which the earth, 
 together with her organized inhabitants, has lived through, 
 in her gradual progress of development ; so that the exist- 
 ence of man on earth must upon all hands be considered as 
 comparatively very short. Then again, modern science 
 ranges among exploded fables that idea that used to be 
 entertained on the strength of religious myths, and ac- 
 cording to which man came out of the creator’s hand as a 
 ready-made product, endowed with all the qualities of his 
 race. The unchangeable principle of the order of the 
 world, based upon natural and mechanical causality, acts 
 and works in the same way in the gradual genesis and 
 formation of the highest of all organized beings as it does 
 in the formation of the least and lowliest. However obscure 
 and incomprehensible the appearance of man on the earth’s 
 surface may have seemed in former times, and however 
 necessary it may have been thought to explain or elucidate 
 what an English scientist designated as the ‘ ‘ secret of 
 secrets” by the aid of a great miracle or of a supernatural 
 act of creation, it has now become obvious to all men of 
 science that the lofty form of man only owes its origin to a 
 slow and gradual uprisal from the animals next below him, 
 and that the beginnings of, and tendencies to, all his high 
 physical and intellectual qualities and faculties are clearly 
 present in the forms of life beneath him. The well-known 
 lines of demarcation upon which the idealistic philosophy 
 of the past laid so much stress, and which, in the opinion 
 of many learned men, proved the existence of an abyss 
 between men and animals which could never be bridged 
 over, have been shown, by closer investigation, to be one 
 and all of but a relative and not an absolute nature, and 
 they can all be explained by gradual development, im- 
 provement and spontaneous evolution. Therefore man 
 does not stand outside nor above Nature, but wholly and 
 thoroughly in her midst, and the great and mischievous 
 error that all Nature was created for his sake and for his 
 use and enjoyment must be looked upon as exploded, just 
 
200 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the same as science has forever done away with the anti- 
 quated notion of the importance of our little earth as the 
 centre of the universe. Of course it is difficult for most 
 men to emancipate themselves from the impressions wrought 
 by an education permeated with spiritualism, and to grasp 
 the great truth of the real place of man in Nature ; but 
 this cannot prevent the eventual triumph of true knowledge. 
 “ Gather together all these phenomena,” says Carus Sterne 
 ( Werden imd Vergehen , p. 340), ‘‘and their convincing 
 force is so great that he who, in the face of them, impugns 
 man’s descent from animals, lays himself open to the re- 
 proach that he is not capable of drawing an inference of 
 the simplest nature.” ‘‘Such objections as the absence of 
 transition -forms can,” as Professor O. Schmidt ( Descen - 
 denzlehre tind D arwinisnuis , p 275), cogently remarks, 
 “ only be raised by dilcttayiti , to whom the realm of living 
 things as a whole remains a sealed book.” 
 
 Those who believe that they ought to trace the origin of 
 man to other than natural causes, will find it quite impos- 
 sible to explain why the original stock of men should have 
 branched off into so many different races and species, and 
 why the innumerable languages should differ from one an- 
 other so very widely as to make it impossible to conceive 
 that they could all have sprung from a common root or 
 primitive tongue. All investigators into this subject are 
 now agreed that the formation of races must have pre- 
 ceded the formation of languages ; that is to say, that 
 mankind, though existing originally in a single form, but 
 in many pairs, had been split up into different races a long 
 time prior to the origin of language ; nay, it must be 
 thought possible or probable that the same race, even after 
 its divergence from the common stock, evolved various 
 different languages. From this it follows with certainty 
 that articulate speech, the distinguishing mark of humanity, 
 which in the opinion of eminent scientists must necessarily 
 have preceded and not followed the evolution of higher 
 human intellectual activity and civilization, was not in pos - 
 
MAN. 
 
 201 
 
 session of the first man, and that the biblical Adam, if he 
 existed, must have been an oAaAor or speechless savage, 
 occupying a position much nearer to the brutes than to 
 man as he is now. To this very day there are still plenty 
 of speechless tribes, whose faculty of language is not raised 
 much above that of animals, and even among ourselves we 
 still find speechless human animals ; these are our sucking 
 babies, and children brought up in the desert or in solitude, 
 who, like animals, utter sounds but have no language. 
 Now it is impossible to conceive that the gift of language, 
 if bestowed or transmitted by divine wisdom upon man as 
 originally created, would ever have been lost, especially 
 within the short space of from five to six thousand years, 
 allowed by the biblical cosmogony. But if no reason can 
 exist without language, it is plain that the first man can 
 have been no rational being, that is to say, no man in the 
 present sense of the word ; he was rather a hybrid creature 
 between man and beast, and from a savage anthropophagist 
 has gradually worked his way up to his present position, 
 through very protracted periods of time, by the well-known 
 natural influences, and all the while in a constant struggle 
 for his existence. To the civilized and cultured man, who 
 has always his own form before his eyes, it may seem diffi- 
 cult to descend in thought into those wild depths of his 
 primal and natural origin and condition : but a glance at so 
 many of his human brothers who have lagged behind or 
 stood still on the road towards a higher human condition, 
 and a rapid survey of the great results of pre historic 
 science will be amply sufficient to make him forget the 
 childish fable about the creation of the ready-made man. 
 Nor will his sense of human dignity be affected by this, if 
 he remembers the admirable words of a French writer : 
 “It is better to be an ennobled animal than a degenerate 
 Adam,” and if he bears in mind that among all the forms 
 brought forth by the working of natural forces through 
 long and toilsome evolution, he is, after all, the highest 
 and, comparatively speaking, the most perfect. Not as the 
 
202 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 humble and submissive slave of a supernatural master, nor 
 as the helpless toy in the hands of heavenly powers, but as 
 a proud and free son of Nature, understanding her laws 
 and knowing how to turn them to his own use, does the 
 creature of modern civilization, the Freethinker, appear ; 
 being no longer, as Brookes called him, that “unhallowed 
 medium between angel and beast,” but the incarnation of 
 the mightiest effort of Nature ; though on the one hand he 
 partakes of all the weaknesses and imperfections of his 
 animal nature and origin, on the other he is raised up 
 above this nature of his and becomes the ruler of the 
 world, by virtue of the enhanced powers of his highly 
 developed nervous system. 
 
 In fact, neither the enervating influences ot a factitiously 
 fostered fear of God, nor the bewildering phrases of scho- 
 lastic philosophy have been able to debar the human race as 
 such from taking its due place at the head of the natural 
 order of things, and man from wielding a dominion, cir- 
 cumscribed only by his own impotence, over the mass of 
 his fellow-creatures, as well as over Nature herself, so far 
 as he understands her and knows how to curb her. Of 
 those very forces of Nature which have produced man, he 
 has, by the power of his reason, made his willing and 
 powerful servants, and this he will do in the future in an 
 ever progressing ratio. 
 
 Of course, this has not always been so, and only by a 
 long and weary training through study and experience has 
 man, after surmounting countless steps of error, reached 
 that pure clearness of free and unprejudiced thought in 
 which all scientific minds now move or ought to move. 
 Deep ignorance of the laws of the Nature surrounding him, 
 and a very intelligible fear of the natural forces pressing 
 on him and threatening him, in conjunction with a belief in 
 the continuance of the principle of life after death, which 
 was incomprehensible to him, must necessarily have led the 
 earliest man, when he came to consider a little, to anthro- 
 pomorphic ideas and fancies of a divine and supernatural 
 
MAN. 
 
 203 
 
 government of the world, which belief being fostered and 
 worked upon by ambitious priests, has brought so much 
 misery and such great trouble on poor suffering humanity. 
 “O unhappy race of mortals,” exclaims Lucretius Carus 
 in his famous poem, ‘‘ that ascribes such things to the Gods 
 and imputes to them such embittered wrath ! What grief 
 have they not brought upon themselves, what injuries upon 
 us, and what tears upon our posterity ! ” 
 
 This unnatural idolatry flourished most exuberantly in 
 the dark days of mediaeval mysticism, when people imagined 
 all Nature filled with angels and devils fighting one another, 
 and sought relief from the misery of earthly existence in 
 the joys of an imagined paradise. “ I would not give up 
 one moment in heaven for all the possessions and joys of 
 earth, even though they should last for thousands upon 
 thousands of years,” said Luther , the great Reformer, who 
 despite the great merit he acquired in setting man’s mind 
 and conscience free from the yoke of Rome, remained a 
 consummate priest at the bottom of his heart. In the 
 words quoted he clearly expressed the views and notions of 
 those who only behave themselves on earth in order that 
 they may be rewarded a thousandfold in heaven, and who 
 act like Jews lending money at usury. “ The pious,” says 
 Bdrne, ‘‘look at heaven as a court, and look down with 
 contempt on all those who have not the entry, like them- 
 selves. ’ ’ 
 
 If ever such views could become general and practical, 
 so that life and thought should be ruled by them, then man 
 would cease to strive after earthly improvement and per- 
 fection and would subside into a passive faith, turning up 
 his eyes like a dying duck in a thunderstorm. ‘‘For,” as 
 Ludwig Feuerbach tersely and cogently remarks, ‘ ‘ if we 
 are born for heaven, we are lost for earth.” When man 
 has once got used to regard himself as a poor, miserable 
 sinner, who can only escape eternal damnation by unceasing 
 genuflections and undignified self-abasement, it is obvious 
 that there is an end not only of human dignity and human 
 
204 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 pride, but also of human energy and vigor. If we allow 
 supernatural wisdom and power to lord it over us and to 
 provide for us, then an existence worthy of the true end of 
 humanity, or of what the Scotch catechism calls the chief 
 end of man, becomes an impossibility. “ The malicious 
 devil,” says Luther, ‘‘the enemy of God and Christ, en- 
 deavors to allure us to think and care for ourselves, so that 
 we may presume to usurp God’s office, which is to care for 
 us and be our God.” 
 
 Fortunately such views have usually prevailed rather in 
 theory than in practice ; and the sound sense of human 
 nature, which is not entirely to be stifled by any dogma, 
 as well as the irresistible pressure of life, have guarded 
 mankind as a whole from the ruinous influences of a con- 
 ception of life divorced from the terrestrial ; a conception 
 which, on account of its spiritualistic convulsion, must be 
 regarded as the most inveterate enemy of material culture 
 and elevation, and which has inflicted, and continues to 
 inflict, infinite injury on man. But there will be less and 
 less of this as man advances in knowledge and intellect, 
 and as he learns to understand that the aim and object 
 of all human effort must not be the contempt, but the 
 knowledge, control, and utilization of Nature. Towards 
 this the whole thought and working of civilized mankind 
 are actually tending at the present day. In practical life 
 men give the lie direct to their faith, which has sprung from 
 Oriental fatalism and despair of life ; a faith to whose dia- 
 metrical and irreconcilable opposition to all intellectual and 
 mental progress and to all efforts directed towards the joy 
 and happiness of life, no thoughtful person can shut his 
 eyes. ‘‘In practice,” says L. Feuerbach very correctly, 
 “ all men are Atheists ; they deny their faith by their acts.” 
 Only the vast power of habit and of education directed into 
 a religious channel can explain and render it conceivable, 
 that this antithesis is so little appreciated in general, and 
 that the majority both of the learned and the unlearned, as 
 though spellbound within a magic slumber, continue to 
 
MAN. 
 
 205 
 
 feed their minds with long-exploded nursery stories and 
 fancies, while all around them the sun of truth and knowl- 
 edge scatters its rays, as it were, from every corner of 
 contemporaneous literature. 
 
 It has been reserved for our time to complete theoreti- 
 cally and scientifically the victory long since won in practical 
 life by the human principle over the divine. As a star of 
 the first magnitude we are met here by the name of Ludwig 
 Feuerbach , the philosopher par excellence of emancipated 
 and self-contained humanity. To this deep-thinking philos- 
 opher, who traces all ideas of God back to man’s invention 
 and self-idealization, the human being is at the same time 
 the highest being. “The Godhead of the individual,” he 
 exclaims, “is the revealed mystery of religion, and the 
 negation of God is the position of the individual.” But 
 when once nations have advanced so far as no longer to 
 build up their God from sensual, but from intellectual con- 
 ceptions, then the word “God” expresses no longer an 
 idealization of the whole man or a deification of the human 
 entity, but only a blending together and involution of the 
 highest intellectual properties of human nature, that is to 
 say the idealized existence of human reason. “ God, un- 
 anthropomorphic and stripped of human characteristics, is 
 nothing more than the essence of Reason.” 
 
 Feuerbach has thus arrived at his peculiar standpoint, 
 from which he seeks with a singular abundance of knowl- 
 edge and perspicacity to vindicate the natural right of man, 
 which has seemingly been swallowed up in a vortex of dog- 
 matic quarrels, priestly ignorance and philosophic chiaro- 
 oscuro. To man he now traces every intellectual quality ; 
 and anthropology, or the knowledge of man in the widest 
 sense of the word, is to him the crown and blossom of every 
 science and a perfect substitute for religion and philosophy. 
 In fact, the great and unexpected development of this 
 science during the last ten years has shown the Radical 
 thinker to have been in the right, and has proved most 
 conclusively that man, evolved by natural means as the 
 
206 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 highest product of Nature and of the natural order of 
 things, need not make any but his own nature, and his own 
 idiosyncrasy the starting point of his most ideal conceptions 
 and efforts. What is common to the knowledge of all men 
 and of all times, and being common, advances in constant 
 progression , is God, or rather the idealized existence of human 
 reason transmuted into the idea of God. Not “to” God, 
 but “towards” God will man have to rise in the future, if 
 he remains loyal to Feuerbach’s thought, and in doing so 
 will verify the words of our motto, that men have indeed 
 originated from the brutes, but are destined to become Gods. 
 
 It does not detract from the merit of Feuerbach, but on 
 the contrary adds to the greatness of his idea, to find that 
 in earlier or more ancient schools of thought views had 
 been given utterance to which are analagous and cognate 
 to his. Thus it is said of the Chinese religious teacher 
 Lao-Tse (translated, “the old child”) — a contemporary of 
 the great Confucius, who was born some 565 or 604 years 
 before Christ, and who wrote the famous book Tao-te-king 
 (the way to virtue, or the book on force and action)- — that 
 he called the highest being Tao, a word which philologists 
 render by “ Reason,” or “ Universal Reason,” and that he 
 identified reason in man with the reason of the universe and 
 with the highest being itself ; yet, in his system there is no 
 trace of an intimation of the existence of a personal God. 
 Tao loves all beings and cares for all, but does not want to 
 be their lord a?id ruler. It is eternal and has no earthly 
 desires. Lao-Tse, from the purity and elevation of his 
 teaching, has rightly been styled the Chinese Christ ; and 
 this teaching of his so much resembles that of the Christian 
 Church that the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and 
 eighteenth centuries very properly held that the secret of 
 Christianity must have been revealed to the Chinese five 
 hundred years earlier than to the Jews. But as though a 
 curse rested on all religion, Lao-Tse’s disciples and succes- 
 sors, by the contemptible Shamanistic impostures, brought 
 contempt and disrepute upon themselves and the Tao 
 
MAN. 207 
 
 doctrine too, just as the successors of Christ did upon his 
 teachings. 
 
 The contemporary of Lao-Tse, the great and more 
 sensible moralist Confutsee or Confucius, strove, by ban- 
 ishing from his system all that was supernatural, to direct 
 human thoughts and actions entirely to the earth ; it was 
 he who laid down the famous maxim that makes all other 
 moral commandments unnecessary : “ Do unto others as 
 you would that others should do unto you.” He never 
 spoke of a creator, nor of a supernatural order of things ; 
 and a pious regard for one’s ancestors is the only precept of 
 his religion which goes beyond the range of earthly life. 
 
 The famous natural religion of Buddha, the great founder 
 of the rationalist creed of the Hindoos, which will be dealt 
 with at greater length in a subsequent chapter, is at the 
 bottom nothing more than a deification of human nature ; 
 and to this are linked a large number of similar and kin- 
 dred ideas and apophthegms on the history of human 
 thought. The same thought inspired Thomas Muntzner, 
 the famous leader of peasants, when he said to his fol- 
 lowers : “ The Holy Ghost is our reason and our under- 
 standing.” 
 
 And these alone are in reality the two things, which man 
 should consult and on which he must rely, on turning his 
 glance to the future that lies before him ; which future, in 
 all probability, portends much greater things that the past 
 ever worked. When we come to consider how short a 
 period has been occupied by the development of the civili- 
 zation of mankind, as compared with pre-historic periods, 
 and to what a very small portion of the earth’s surface this 
 development extends ; when we further bear in mind what 
 vast horizons are being opened up on all sides by the 
 advance of science, knowledge and industry, and how the 
 comparative rate of progress increases with progress itself; 
 and finally, when we remember how much we still retain in 
 our refined life of the crude tendencies and instincts of our 
 barbarous past, and how the savage ‘ ‘ struggle for exist- 
 
20S 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ence ” handed down to us from animal life still rages as bad 
 as ever, though in a modified shape, we feel compelled to 
 admit that our civilization is still altogether in its infancy, 
 and that we have as yet traversed but a small portion of the 
 path marked out for us. Increased means of conquering 
 the material obstacles which Nature and life place in our 
 way ; the growth of culture and knowledge, combined 
 with enhanced success in contending against ignorance and 
 superstition ; the lessening of the evils that flesh is heir 
 to ; the abolition of war, of poverty, of every method oi 
 men taking undue advantage of one another, and the 
 substitution of the principle of universal human love and 
 universal peace among nations for the ruinous struggle for 
 existence — these and many more that are interwoven with 
 them should be the aims and objects of man’s aspiration in 
 the future. ‘ 1 We stand,” says Lubbock ( Prehistoric Time), 
 “ in reality but on the threshold of civilization. Far from 
 showing any indications of having come to an end, the 
 tendency to improvement seems latterly to have proceeded 
 
 with augmented impetus and accelerated rapidity 
 
 There are many things which are not as yet dreamt of in 
 our philosophy ; many discoveries which will immortalize 
 those who make them and confer upon the human race ad- 
 vantages which, as yet, perhaps, we are not in a condition 
 to appreciate. We may still say with our great country- 
 man, Sir Isaac Newton, that we have been but like children, 
 playing on the sea-shore, and picking up here and there a 
 smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the 
 great ocean of truth lies all undiscovered before us. Thus, 
 then, the most sanguine hopes for the future are justified by 
 the whole experience of the past.”* 
 
 * This matter has been treated by the Author at much greater length and 
 much more thoroughly than has been possible in this condensed chapter, in 
 his work on “ Der Mensch und seine Stellung in der Natur ; oder , IVoher 
 kommen wirf Wer sind uuir? Wohin gehen wir t ’ ' In this treatise he dwells 
 chiefly on the antiquity of man, the animal origin of man, and his probable 
 future development. 
 
Brain and Mind. 
 
 Mind and the totality of the living active nerve-centres of an animal or human 
 existence are perfectly identical notions for the unprejudiced natural inves-. 
 tigator. Outside the nerve-centres there is no mind. — Prof. C. B. Bruhl. 
 The soul is the brain in action, and nothing more.— Brgussais. 
 
 From matter we rise to mind by means of the brain. — H. Tuttle. 
 
 T HAT the brain — that soft organ which fills the in- 
 terior of the cranium, and which, next to the liver, is 
 of all the organs of the human body the densest and 
 therefore comparatively the richest in blood-supply — is the 
 organ of thought, volition and sensation, and that the latter 
 cannot be conceived without the former, is a truth about 
 which hardly any physician or physiologist can be in doubt. 
 Science, daily experience, and a number of the most telling 
 facts, of necessity force this upon their conviction. There- 
 fore, in sketching the subjoined outline of facts, we are less 
 actuated by the desire of imparting something new to them, 
 than a desire to give some clearer notions of the subject to 
 the general public, which often finds insoluble problems in 
 the simplest and clearest truths of natural research. It is 
 strange that in this matter people have at all times stub- 
 bornly refused to acknowledge the irresistible power of 
 facts ; but this is easily accounted for, and considerations 
 of a certain amour-propre and egotism are decidedly at the 
 bottom of it. 
 
 The brain is the seat and organ of thought ; its size, its 
 shape, its development, the manner or grade of its compo- 
 sition and formation, and the arrangement of its individual 
 parts, stand in a definite relation to the quality and quantity 
 
 (209) 
 
210 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 of the psychical and intellectual performances thereof. The 
 important science of comparative anatomy is here of the 
 greatest value, showing, as it does, how, throughout the 
 animal kingdom, from the lowest up to the highest animal 
 and to man himself, there exists a definite and gradually 
 progressing proportion between the qualitative and quanti- 
 tative condition of the brain. Man who, by virtue of his 
 intellectual faculties, is admitted to be far above the col- 
 lective animal world, has also — apart from a few exceptions 
 which shall be more closely examined by and by — the 
 largest brain, absolutely and relatively , among all living 
 beings. Although the bulk of brain possessed by a few 
 animals, known as the largest now in existence, such as the 
 whale, the elephant and the large species of dolphins, sur- 
 passes the brain of man, this apparent exception really 
 arises from the greater size of those parts which do not 
 represent either intelligence or capacity for thought, but 
 serve the nervous system of the body as centres of move- 
 ment and sensation, as well as of unknown nervous action, 
 and have necessarily a greater development of mass on 
 account of the greater number and thickness of the nervous 
 fibres in connection with them ; whilst the parts of the brain 
 concerned with the function of thought are in no animal 
 equal in size, form, and relative composition to what they 
 are in man. Therefore, quite another result follows when 
 the relative weight of the brain, i. e. its weight in relation 
 to that of the body, is taken into consideration. In this 
 respect also man (with a few insignificant exceptions) sur- 
 passes the whole animal world, and so much is this the case 
 that, whilst in man the weight of the brain amounts to from 
 one-fiftieth to one-thirty-fifth part of the weight of the body, 
 in the dolphin it amounts only to the hundredth part, in the 
 elephant to the five hundredth, and in the whale to the 
 three-thousandth part of the aggregate weight of their re- 
 spective bodies. If this relative proportion is calculated 
 upon the mass of the body, then (according to Leuret) the 
 average weight of brain to each ten thousand parts of body- 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 21 1 
 
 substance is : in fishes, r8 ; in reptiles, 7'6 ; in birds, 42‘2; 
 in mammals, 53 '8 ; in man, 277'8. These figures sufficiently 
 show the enormous gradual increase of the mass of brain 
 in the vertebrate sub-kingdom, corresponding to the rise 
 in the intellectual scale. Even among the articulata — 
 whose highest divisions in perfection of organization and 
 intellectual endowment are far above the lowest divisions of 
 the vertebrata, though the latter stand above them as a 
 whole — the bees and ants, as also their nearest relations, 
 whose extraordinary and almost miraculous intellectual 
 capacity has become proverbial, are distinguished by a 
 brain highly developed in shape and composition, and 
 very large in proportion to the size of their bodies. 
 
 However, the intellectual value of the brain, both among 
 men and animals, must not be computed exclusively by its 
 size, that is by its size as a whole, which is a very imperfect 
 standard of its intellectual capacity, but also and very much 
 more so by the proportions of its shape and composition. 
 “ Not the quantity only, but also the quality of the nervous 
 tissues,” says Valentin ( Textbook of Physiology/) ‘‘and the 
 consequent amount of energy, and of the reciprocal action 
 of the individual elements, forms the measure of the pro- 
 portionate value of intellectual activity.” 
 
 In this respect also comparative anatomy and physiology 
 have shown that man stands higher than all other creatures ; 
 for instance in man the hemispheres of the cerebrum, the 
 external layer of which — the gray matter — is to be re- 
 garded as the peculiar seat of intellectual activity, are far 
 more highly developed than in any other animal in com- 
 parison with the cerebellum. When the brain is looked at 
 from above, they completely cover the cerebellum, while 
 this is not the case with the brain of any brute. Closely 
 connected with this development of the cerebral hemispheres 
 is the greater development of the famous convolutions of the 
 brain, which cover the external surface, disposed in a reg- 
 ular system of winding, interceding furrows, and which 
 have no other use than that of giving the greatest possible 
 
212 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 extension and anatomical complexity of arrangement to the 
 gray matter of the brain ; this substance covering the whole 
 surface to the depth of several lines, and the two funda- 
 mental elements of the nervous system, fibres and cells 
 (ganglionic or nervous centres), being so arranged in it as 
 to afford the greatest possible number of material points of 
 contact between them. This is all the more necessary since 
 it is the function of the fibres to convey to the brain im- 
 pressions from without and from the body itself, while the 
 ganglionic or nerve-cells, having received these impres- 
 sions, work upon them, and with the aid of the efferent 
 and the intercommunicating fibres transmute them into 
 reflective or volitional impulses. The fibrous tissue of the 
 brain is dead white in color, whilst, wherever nerve-cells 
 or ganglionic masses are found with them, the brain-sub- 
 stance is of gray-rose color, partly because of the cells and 
 partly from its greater vascularity ; hence the distinction 
 between the gray and the white matter of the brain. This 
 gray matter has also been termed the brain-mantle, partly 
 because it covers the brain like a mantle, and partly because 
 of its peculiar disposition in folds. This arrangement in- 
 creases the mass or extension of the gray matter, which 
 covers all the folds of the windings to the before-mentioned 
 depth, thus obtaining more than twelve times the superficial 
 extent, without increasing the size of the head or the arch 
 of the skull to an unnatural or excessive proportion. 
 
 This brain -mantle, as we have said, is without any doubt 
 whatever the portion of the brain to which are entrusted 
 the higher mental or intellectual functions, such as thought, 
 imagination, consciousness, sensation and volition ; while 
 the underlying white or fibrous tissue only serves as an 
 organ of conduction, and the islands of gray matter in the 
 interior of the cerebrum serve as centres for the nervous 
 action of the brain, in its capacity of superintendent of the 
 whole nervous system 
 
 If the human brain, as shown in the foregoing, surpasses 
 all animal brains in absolute or relative development of 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 213 
 
 mass, except in the few above-mentioned instances, it is 
 still more above them in the internal arrangement of its 
 individual parts, especially in the development and arrange- 
 ment of the gray substance and of the convolutions, which 
 in extent, depth, number, multiformity and asymmetry or 
 irregularity of disposition are approached by no animal 
 brain ; perhaps a few exceptions to this should be made in 
 favor of the brain of the large anthropoid apes, though 
 these again labor under other and important defects. The 
 lower we descend in the animal scale, the more rapidly do 
 the numbers of convolutions decrease. Thus, the brain- 
 surface of fishes and amphibians is quite, and that of birds 
 almost smooth and without convolutions. The lowest 
 orders ol mammalia have also smooth brains, or show but 
 the merest trace ol convolutions ; and it is only in apes, 
 elephants, dolphins, dogs, carnivora and ruminants that 
 they obtain a larger development. On the other hand, the 
 brain of bees and ants is very rich in convolutions. 
 
 The same differences that exist between human and 
 animal brains are also to be noticed in comparing indi- 
 vidual human brains with each other, both in regard to the 
 convolutions and the increase of surface obtained thereby ; 
 it is easy to prove by countless examples that intellectual 
 endowment or capacity for achievement is like a mathemat- 
 ical function of the development of the convolutions and 
 of the gray matter of the brain. This is true not only of 
 individual races and nations, but equally of individual 
 specimens of mankind. The subject has been treated in a 
 remarkable work by that painstaking scientist Dr. Hermann 
 Wagner,* from which it clearly appears that the superficial 
 extent of the brain mcreases with the intellectual power. 
 Thus, Wagner found the aggregate area of the brain of an 
 orang-outang he measured, to amount only to a fourth of 
 that of the average human brain, while in the case of a 
 manual laborer the surface of the brain was some fifty 
 square inches less than in the case of two scientists. The 
 
 * Massbestimmungen der Oberfiache des grosscn Gehirns , 1864. 
 
214 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 convolutions of the brain of Beethoven, the great musician, 
 were, according to Dr. J. Wagner’s report, “ twice as deep 
 and numerous as usual.” On the other hand Longet shows 
 that in the brains of idiots, or creatures who are born im- 
 beciles the convolutions are less deep and the gray matter 
 is less thick than in normal brains. A child, also, despite 
 the large size of his brain in comparison with that of his 
 body, has but very imperfect convolutions, and only de- 
 velops these after attaining a certain age. Prior to the 
 ninth month of pregnancy the convolutions are not even 
 visible ; until then the human foetus has a smooth brain, 
 like that of the lower vertebrates. 
 
 We should, however, fall into a serious error if we rated 
 the intellectual value of a brain only by the conditions 
 above-mentioned, by its size and the number of its con- 
 volutions ; much more depends on the details of its internal 
 structure and its chemical composition, so that if an indi- 
 vidual brain be deficient in one direction, the defect may be 
 compensated by advantages in other directions. Especially 
 does it appear averred from the unanimous statements of 
 brain-anatomists, that the physical density or firmness of 
 the mass of the brain is beyond doubt of very great im- 
 portance, so that the brain of an intelligent and clever 
 person is denser and firmer than that of a stupid and weak- 
 minded one. So also is the brain of higher races, which 
 have advanced in culture, proportionately more dense, firm 
 'and compact than that of lower or savage ones. It is well 
 known that the brain of the child in comparison to that of 
 the adult is remarkable for its softness and want of density, 
 owing to the greater percentage of water it contains. The 
 microscopic peculiarities of the brain, the commencement 
 of very indistinct fibres, the difference between gray and 
 white matter, the large blood-supply, the furrows, etc., only 
 become recognizable in the course of time and in pro- 
 portion as the intellectual power increases. Conversely, 
 as the brain grows older and the intellectual power declines, 
 the gray substance absorbs more water and the brain re- 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 215 
 
 turns to a condition similar to that of childhood. In doing 
 so, the brain of old people subsides as a rule into a state of 
 atrophy and shriveling-up ; gaps are formed between the 
 convolutions which formerly were close together, and these 
 gaps become filled with water ; the substance of the brain 
 itself becomes more tenacious, the color deeper gray, the 
 blood-supply less, and the convolutions become smaller. 
 The weight of the brain, having rapidly increased up to 
 the tw'enty-fifth year of life, and having reached its maxi- 
 mum volume between the age of forty and fifty, now begins 
 to fall off. Everybody knows that in keeping with what 
 w r e have said, reason comes with years, and also departs 
 with years. 
 
 “ The greatest thinker of his age,” says Tuttle, “ may in 
 one hour’s illness lose all his intelligence ; in advanced age 
 he enters a second childhood, as helpless and simple as the 
 first. With the decay of the body decays also the reason, 
 and with the last breath it expires, the same as a lamp does 
 v'ithout oil, flickering feebly.” This is exactly the reverse 
 of what would happen if, as so many think, the spirit were 
 a thing independent of the body, and the spiritual powers 
 increased in proportion as the body drew nearer to its 
 dissolution. 
 
 From wffiat has already been said it may readily be in- 
 ferred that the proportionate thickness of the gray matter 
 is of the highest importance in connection wdth intellectual 
 capacity, and this thickness varies very much among ani- 
 mals and men. Thus, Dr J. Jessen* perceived to his great 
 surprise that the brain of a female idiot, called Nasmer, 
 twenty -three years old, showed numerous well-developed 
 convolutions on the surface, but he soon found the solution 
 of the difficulty when, on dissecting the brain, he saw that 
 the gray matter had become atrophied, apparently from 
 disease contracted in early childhood, and consequently had 
 become very thin and narrow. Jessen’ s researches also 
 
 * Untersuchungen Uber die Beziehung zwischen Grosshirn und Geistes stoning, 
 Archiv fur Psychiatric , 1875 Vol. IV, Part. 3. 
 
2l6 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 prove that a deficiency of superficial development of gray 
 matter, brought about by the smallness of the cranium, 
 may be made up for by a greater development in thickness. 
 This in itself explains — apart from many other compen- 
 sating agencies — how it is that a comparatively small brain 
 may exceed in mental power a comparatively large one, 
 just as a small nose may exceed a large one in olfactory 
 power. This also seems to explain, at least partially, the 
 capacity for intellectual performances of some animals, such 
 as dogs and others, which are possessed of comparatively 
 small and otherwise less perfectly developed brains. 
 
 Similar results may be looked for from differences in the 
 chemical composition of the brain, a matter about which, 
 up to the present time, very little trustworthy information 
 has been supplied. But it is known that the brain of 
 children, old men and animals, compared with that of 
 adults, is very poor in those peculiar phosphoric fatty or 
 fat-like substances which play so great a part in the chem- 
 ical composition of the central portions of the nervous 
 system, and are on the whole found in greater quantity in 
 proportion as the animal or the man stands higher in the 
 intellectual scale. From the more recent investigations of 
 Borsarelli it appears that the average amount of phosphates 
 in the brain is far greater than had been supposed, and that 
 among all the organs of the body the brain contains by far 
 the greatest amount of phosphates, twice as much, for in- 
 stance, as muscle. Hence the great proportion of free 
 phosphoric acid and of alkaline phosphates in brain-ash. 
 This observation is confirmed and supplemented by the 
 researches of Dr. H. Byasson, which have shown that 
 wearisome intellectual labor is followed by the presence of 
 considerable quantities of alkaline phosphates and sulphates 
 in the urine. Dr. L’Heritier has also shown that in old 
 age and in a state of idiocy the phosphorus contained in 
 the brain is but one-half in quantity of what it used to be, 
 and recedes in point of fact to the proportion contained in 
 the brain of an infant. Violent passion or excitement leads 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 217 
 
 to an accession of alkaline phosphates (originating- from 
 the brain and nerves) in the urine, while conversely a 
 decrease of these substances is noticeable when there are 
 functional disturbances in the activity of the brain. These 
 facts place it beyond doubt that the phosphoric compounds 
 present in the brain have a special significance, and suggest 
 the conjecture that there exists some definite ratio between 
 these and intellectual work. They show further that the 
 literary outcry raised at the time over Moleschott’s well- 
 known phrase : ‘ ‘ Without phosphorus no thought !” merely 
 proved the scientific ignorance of the criers. They also 
 bring to our knowledge the important fact that all foods 
 containing phosphorus in the form of lecithine (which is a 
 component of brain-substance) are specially devoted to 
 make up for the substance wasted by intellectual work, and 
 that the nerve-strengthening power of an article of food 
 increases with the amount of phosphorus present within its 
 nitrogenous components. 
 
 When all these facts are borne in mind, it becomes clear 
 that the intellectual value of a brain depends not merely on 
 its absolute or relative size, mass, and weight, but on quite 
 a host of morphological, histological, chemical and physical 
 circumstances, the accurate valuation of which presents se- 
 rious difficulties in each instance. But there is yet another 
 coefficient to take into account, and one of the greatest im- 
 portance, too, which, as a rule, is wont to be more or less 
 overlooked in judging this momentous question ; and this 
 is the great influence wrought on the capacity of the mental 
 organ by breeding , exercise and training. This influence 
 is so great that a man with a comparatively small or badly- 
 formed brain and small talents, but who has had these 
 talents thoroughly cultivated, may give an impression of 
 greater intelligence than a man with an excellent brain and 
 many talents that have not been properly brought out and 
 trained. This is the less surprising as we find that the 
 same thing holds good of the other organs of our body, 
 which often manifest very distinct capabilities without a 
 
2l8 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 corresponding anatomical distinction ; such organs are the 
 muscles, the larynx and the hand. Fine work, or that re- 
 quiring technical ability, can no more be performed by an 
 untrained hand, than a remarkable intellectual work can be 
 performed by an unexercised or untrained brain, however 
 large or well-formed it may be. A large brain may be 
 compared to a large house with many rooms in which many 
 persons may live ; but in which many do not always live ; 
 whereas a small house may readily be filled with inhabitants. 
 
 On the other hand, there can be no doubt that the brain, 
 the same as the sculptor’s hand or the singer’s larynx, may 
 be improved and rendered more efficient by practice and 
 use. All anatomists who have had frequent opportunities 
 of dissecting human brains, agree in saying that the brains 
 of learned men, of thinkers, poets and persons who have 
 done much intellectual work, are denser, firmer, more con- 
 voluted and generally better developed in every way than 
 those of ordinary persons. Nay, we are led to infer, from 
 the important observations and measurements made by the 
 famous physician and anthropologist Professor Broca on 
 skulls in Paris cemeteries, that the influence of civilization 
 and of advancing culture alone had availed to cause a con- 
 siderable increase in the perimeter of the skull, that is a 
 growth of the brain, in the course of a few centuries ; and 
 also that the brains of persons belonging to the higher 
 classes, who are more engaged in mental work, have as a 
 rule a greater circumference than the brains of those be- 
 longing to the lower classes which are rather employed in 
 manual labor. This law of growth of the brain, pari passu 
 with increased intellectual activity, may be illustrated also 
 in the animal world. According to the views of the famous 
 American palaeontologist Prof. O. C. Marsh, all the mam- 
 mals of the tertiary age had comparatively small brains ; 
 and a gradual advance can be shown from that time forward 
 in the size as well as in the formation of the upper parts oi 
 the brain. The same law apparently holds good for reptiles 
 and birds, from the mesozoic age down to the present time. 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 219 
 
 The birds of the cretaceous period had brains that, com- 
 pared with their bodies, were only one-third the size of 
 those of their descendants now living, while the dinosauria 
 of the jurassic age had crania which were far smaller in 
 comparison to those of any reptiles now existing. 
 
 The observations of Professor Broca fully agree with the 
 fact known long since, that the skull and the brain are the 
 only parts of the body which among people who lead an 
 active intellectual life, continue to grow and to increase in 
 mass after the rest of the body has left off growing, that is 
 to say, right up to the fortieth year and even beyond. 
 
 The further observation of Broca, that the increase in the 
 Parisian skulls was as a rule less in the brain as a whole 
 than in the prosencephalon or forepart of the brain, is like- 
 wise borne out by earlier observations and measurements, 
 which seem to show that an increase of the sinciput and a 
 simultaneous flattening of the occiput, or a throwing for- 
 ward of the whole cranium with a simultaneous widening in 
 the middle region, are the chief result of the fact of the 
 brain having been developed by civilization in course of 
 time. Abbe Frere’s fine collection of skulls belonging to all 
 the centuries of our era, recently bequeathed to the Anthro- 
 pological Museum of Paris, shows the different phases of 
 this increasing development. 
 
 Broca’s observations further agree to a nicety with the 
 well-known experience according to which the forehead 
 and its adjacent parts are, as a rule, less developed among 
 the lower classes of the population than among the higher, 
 and that there exists also a very marked difference in the 
 circumference of the skull. The best proof of this is yielded 
 by the common experience of hatters and cap-makers, that 
 the educated classes on an average take larger hats and 
 caps than do the uneducated, and also, as shown by the 
 observations of Professor Ranke, that there is a marked 
 difference in the average size of the brain between town 
 and country, this difference being decidedly in favor of the 
 inhabitants of the towns. 
 
220 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 The largest known brains (excepting those enlarged by- 
 disease) have belonged to men who distinguished them- 
 selves in their lifetime by remarkable mental ability. While 
 the average normal weight of the human brain is three 
 pounds, the brain of Ciivier, the famous and ingenious 
 naturalist, weighed nearly four. One of the largest known 
 brains, according to the statement of Prof. Broca, who 
 made an exact measurement of the skull, belonged to our 
 great poet Schiller. Next to his, if the statements relating 
 to them are accurate, come the crania or brains of Byron , 
 Cromwell, Napoleon I, etc. There is, nevertheless, no lack 
 of reports on the brains of learned men, which were scarcely, 
 if at all, larger than the average, and in which this relative 
 deficiency may have been compensated by other advantages 
 or by the industry and painstaking of their owners. 
 
 On the other hand, the weight of the brain of born idiots 
 or imbeciles is as a rule far below the average. Tiedemann 
 weighed the brains of three full-grown idiots, and found the 
 weight in all three varying between one and two pounds. 
 Dr. Wilder actually found that the brain of an idiotic 
 woman, of forty-two years of age, weighed only 330 gram- 
 mes, and that of an idiot boy, twelve years of age, weighed 
 only 260 grains, (10.6 oz. troy and 8.3 oz. avoirdupois.) 
 Persons whose heads are less than sixteen inches in circum- 
 ference, are invariably imbecile or weak-minded. “An 
 exceptional smallness of head is always found in idiotcy,” 
 says Valentin. The famous poet Lenau became insane and 
 died in idiotcy ; his brain, atrophied and ruined by dis- 
 ease, weighed only two pounds eight ounces. According 
 to Parchappe ( Comptes Rendus du 31 juillet, 1848) the 
 gradual falling-off of reason in insanity is connected with 
 the gradual decay of the brain. Drawing an average from 
 782 cases, he proved numerically that the comparative de- 
 crease of weight of the brain was proportionate to the 
 intensity of the intellectual disturbance. 
 
 Almost all great mountain ranges harbor in deep and 
 damp valleys an unfortunate race of men, or rather semi- 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 221 
 
 men, whose whole existence is rather brutish than human. 
 They are repulsive, dirty, deformed beings, with very small 
 or else excessively large heads, very largely developed 
 jaws, badly shaped angular ape-like skulls, low small fore- 
 heads, protuberant abdomens, weak legs, bent carriage, 
 very slight sensibility, and they are but rarely able to utter 
 articulated sounds. None but alimentary and sexual appe- 
 tites, and digestive and generative capacities are developed 
 in them. Who on a mountain journey has not seen these 
 cretins , standing stupid and indifferent with blank eyes in 
 the road, or crouching at the doors of huts ? The existence 
 of this horrible anomaly in the human race results from a 
 defect of brain which is mostly congenital. A commission 
 appointed ad hoc by the Sardinian government issued some 
 time since a very exact and detailed report on the cretins, 
 in which it was stated that in all cretins a faulty formation 
 of the cranium and a defective or faulty development of the 
 brain are to be found. The same truth appears from Prof. 
 Virchow’s classical researches, which have shown that Cre- 
 tinism arises from a defective formation of the cranium and 
 rests on a defective and faulty formation of the brain, caused 
 by an early ossification of the sutures of the brain, the de- 
 velopment being therefore checked as a whole or in certain 
 directions. Dr. Knolz observed in corroboration of this 
 that cretins remain children even to their greatest age and 
 keep doing everything that children are wont to do. 
 “ While I was studying the most important stages of the 
 development of cretins,” says Baillarger, “ I found that the 
 general form of the body and of the limbs remained equal 
 to that of very young children, and that cretins also pre- 
 served the tastes and desires of childhood. Vrolik of 
 Amsterdam has published the results of a dissection of a 
 nine-year-old cretin boy, who died on the Abendberg. 
 ( Verhandl. der koninglijken Akademie der Wetenschapen, 
 1854.) In this boy the mental development was so small 
 that he had only learned to utter a few words. The crani- 
 um was small and oblique, the forehead narrow, the back 
 
222 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 of the head flattened ; then, again, the convolutions were 
 few and imperfect, the sulci shallow, the brain asym- 
 metric, with both the cerebrum and cerebellum imperfectly 
 developed, and the lateral ventricles expanded by water. 
 In similar fashion the dissection of the body of an imbecile 
 girl of twenty-nine years of age — who had been in that 
 state from her earliest childhood, who could neither read 
 nor white, and who died of inflammation of the lungs — 
 revealed a symmetrical atrophy (shriveling) of both the 
 posterior lobes of the cerebrum, so that they were two 
 inches too short, and that the cerebellum projected an inch 
 and a half beyond them. 
 
 The nature of the physical and corresponding mental 
 differences that exist between the various human races, or 
 species of mankind, are so well known that only a brief 
 mention of them is requisite. Who has not seen either in 
 reality or in a picture the narrow sloping skull, recalling 
 that of the ape, of the African negro, and compared it in 
 thought with the noble and broad cranial expansion of the 
 Caucasian ? And who does not know the innate mental 
 inferiority of the black race, and how it is and must ever 
 remain as an infant compared to the white ? 
 
 The brain of the negro is smaller, more brutal, less con- 
 voluted than that of the European, although it is not, as 
 many think, the smallest in existence, seeing that Australi- 
 ans, Carribbeans, Bushmen, Hindoos, aborigines of Peru, 
 etc., have considerably smaller crania. For, while the av- 
 erage capacity of the cranium is ninety cubic inches in the 
 white races, some Hottentot and negro crania have been 
 found with a capacity of from sixty-five to sixty-three, and 
 some Hindoo crania fall as low as forty-six cubic inches. 
 This approaches very nearly to that of the highest cranial 
 capacity of the gorilla , the largest of the anthropoid apes, 
 which reaches thirty-four cubic inches. Among the Car- 
 ribbeans and Hindoos the average weight of the brain barely 
 exceeds two pounds. The ancient Egyptians, despite their 
 high culture, had, as a rule, comparatively small heads, 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 223 
 
 while the Esquimaux, with an average capacity of eighty- 
 six cubic inches, approach the normal volume of the cul- 
 tured European races. According to Wallace, individual 
 Esquimaux skulls have been found which are scarcely in- 
 ferior to the largest European ones. The Peruvians and 
 Mexicans — who became highly civilized and cultured long 
 before any other American nation — had smaller brains 
 than the rough barbarous American Indians, who were 
 partly subdued by them. 
 
 These facts — together with the circumstance that in 
 some French caves belonging to the pre-historic Stone- 
 Age (as in the Cro-Magnon cave, or in the “ Caverne de 
 l’homme mort”) ancient pieces of skulls of the Caucasian 
 type have been found, some of which exceed the present 
 French skull in circumference and capacity — show how 
 little the mere proportion of cranial development is a relia- 
 ble measure of the intellectual value of a brain or of its 
 mental capacity, if size alone be considered without refer- 
 ence to other conditions. But if it be insufficient as a 
 standard of capacity for work, it is still less to be taken as 
 a safe guide to go by in determining the nature of the work 
 itself, the performance of which does not depend on 
 breeding and formation alone, but also on the important 
 influence of the external conditions of life. Of what use, 
 for instance, is his comparatively large brain to the Esqui- 
 maux — -assuming the other conditions of form, structure, 
 and composition to correspond to its size — seeing that in 
 his home of eternal ice and snow he is bereft of the very 
 possibility of developing his talents ? How could a similar 
 privilege benefit the naked dweller of the tropics, who, on 
 the one hand, is favored, and on the other rendered indo- 
 lent by the climate ? What advantage could a day-laborer, 
 or a peasant, derive from his large and well-formed brain, 
 if compelled to spend his life under the pressure of constant 
 drudgery, far away from the intellectual impulses of civili- 
 zation ? In what way could that pre historic denizen of 
 caves benefit by his intellectual ability, ample though it 
 
224 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 may have been, seeing that the circumstances in which he 
 was placed, rendered its development impossible? Or, 
 looking at the animal world, what is the benefit to the dol- 
 phin of his large brain and of his apparently corresponding 
 intelligence, as it betrays itself in his large, thoughtful eyes, 
 seeing that the element in which he is compelled to live, 
 and the clumsy form of his body, are a bar to all further 
 development of his talents ? And what is the use of the 
 possession of a still larger brain to the elephant, since he 
 lacks that differentiation of limbs and larynx, which has 
 given man so great a supremacy over the animal world in 
 his assuming an upright position and originating articulate 
 speech ? All these examples, however, are mere exceptions 
 which do not upset the rules that are based on countless 
 facts, and their explanation probably depends on collateral 
 circumstances as yet unknown to us. 
 
 Anatomy also bears out our contention about the neces- 
 sary connection between the brain and the soul in the 
 well-known experiments of vivisection performed by phys- 
 iologists on the brains of living animals, — which experiments 
 defy all contradiction. The most famous among these 
 experiments are those of the French physiologist Flour ens, 
 who experimented on animals, whose physical consti- 
 tution enables them to endure considerable injuries to 
 cranium and brain. He cut away the upper portions of 
 the brain, layer by layer, one after another, and it is not 
 saying too much to assert that as the layers disappeared one 
 by one, the mental faculties of the animals diminished at 
 the same time and eventually disappeared altogether. 
 Thus Flourens succeeded in reducing fowls to a condition 
 in which every mental function and every capacity of 
 receiving sensational impressions or of performing any 
 conscious action were completely annihilated, and yet 
 physical life went on. The animals remained motionless 
 at any spot in which they were placed, as though they were 
 in a deep sleep ; they responded to no external stimulus, 
 and were kept alive by artificial feeding ; they led, as it 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 225 
 
 were, a mere vegetable existence. Thus they remained 
 alive for months and years, and increased in weight and 
 size of the body. Similar experiments have been success- 
 fully performed on higher animals, that is to say, on 
 mammals. “If the cerebral hemispheres of a mammal 
 are cut away piecemeal,” says Valentin, “the mental 
 activity descends all the deeper, the further the quantitative 
 loss extends. As a rule, when the ventricles are reached, 
 complete unconsciousness supervenes.” What stronger 
 proof of the connection between mind and brain can there 
 exist, than that of the anatomist’s scalpel, cutting the mind 
 away piece by piece? 
 
 This connection is fully as much corroborated by physi~ 
 ological examples — that is to say, by examples taken 
 from life, — as it is by anatomical facts. By means of the 
 nervous system, which radiates from the brain and which 
 must in some measure be regarded as the controller of all 
 organic functions, the brain superintends the whole organ- 
 ism and throws back upon the furthest points thereof the 
 impressions it receives from without, whether they be of a 
 physical or a psychical nature. This is known well enough, 
 particularly in connection with the emotions. We grow 
 pale with fear, we get red with anger or with shame. In 
 joy the eyes glitter, the pulse beats more quickly in the 
 excitement of gladness, fright brings on a sudden swoon, 
 and vexation causes an efflux of gall. The mere thought 
 of a nauseous thing will cause sudden vomiting ; the sight 
 of an appetizing dish induces the rapid secretion of saliva 
 in great quantity. A mother’s milk is in a short time so 
 altered by emotion — as, for instance, by a sudden fright — 
 that it may do the child the most serious injury. The fear 
 of death turns the hair white from the same reasons which 
 under other circumstances bring about this result far more 
 slowly, simply as the consequence of increasing age. It is 
 an interesting fact that intellectual work not only increases 
 the desire for food, but also raises the temperature and the 
 amount of carbonic acid given out from the body as a 
 
226 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 product of metabolic activity. Thus, as we mentioned 
 before, the quantity of phosphoric compounds which appear 
 in the urine as products of nervous waste, increases very 
 much after violent mental excitement, emotion, etc., and 
 grows much less when the activity of the brain is hemmed 
 in. People of a sanguine temperament live quicker and die 
 earlier than others, because the stronger mental excitation 
 of the nervous system adds to matabolism and exhausts 
 life more rapidly. On the other hand, phlegmatic persons 
 live longer. Short necked people are more lively and pas- 
 sionate, long-necked passive and quiet, because in the 
 latter the blood-wave rushing to the brain is further from 
 the heart — the centre and cause of its movement' — than in 
 the former. Parry succeeded in controlling cases of insan- 
 ity by means of a compression of the carotid artery, and 
 according to Fleming’s experiments {Brit. Rev., April, 
 1855) this manipulation immediately causes sleep and fever- 
 ish dreams in healthy persons. More accurately even than 
 in men may the character be estimated in animals, such as 
 horses and dogs, by the length of their necks. Great intel- 
 lectual knowledge and power exercise, on their part, a 
 strengthening and sustaining influence on the body, through 
 the agency of the nervous system, and Alibert mentions as 
 a frequent observation of physicians that a disproportionately 
 large number of old men are found among the learned. 
 Conversely, the most varied physical conditions are directly 
 reflected in the mind. What an immense influence does 
 not the secretion of gall exercise on mental disposition ! 
 Degeneration of the ovaries causes satyriasis and nympho- 
 mania ; any affection of the sexual organs often causes an 
 uncontrollable desire to murder or to commit other crimes. 
 How often is hypocrisy in religion connected with excess 
 of sensual desires ! etc. 
 
 Finally, pathology, the science of disease, abounds in 
 the most striking facts, and teaches us that no serious ma- 
 terial or functional derangement of the parts of the brain 
 concerned in the function of thought can occur, without 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 227 
 
 corresponding injuries to the mind. Whenever such a 
 case does happen, it is only when the lesion is entirely con- 
 fined to one cerebral hemisphere, and the other hemisphere 
 assumes, as it were, a vicarious trust.* The stories about 
 men who remained uninjured in their reason when both 
 sides of the brain were destroyed or diseased, are mere 
 fables. Inflammation of the brain brings on delusions and 
 insanity ; effusion of blood on the brain causes stupefaction 
 and complete unconciousness, pressure on the brain occa- 
 sions mental weakness, idiotcy, etc. Who has not beheld 
 the painful sight of a child suffering from water on the 
 brain ? Mad people, and people who are mentally diseased, 
 always have diseased brains, sometimes from direct brain- 
 lesion, sometimes as a reflex from some other diseased 
 bodily organ, and by far the greater number of physicians 
 and medical psychologists now hold that a physical in- 
 jury, and more especially one of the brain, lies at the root 
 of all psychical or mental diseases, or is connected with 
 them, even though the latter may not in all cases be per- 
 ceptible to our senses, owing to the imperfection of our 
 diagnostic appliances. And even those who do not wholly 
 agree in this view are compelled to admit at least that no 
 mental disease can be imagined without a serious functional 
 disorder. But such functional disorders again cannot be 
 conceived without material disorganization, whether it be 
 permanent, transitive, or not even noticeable ; and if they 
 should continue long they lead to anatomical changes in 
 the substance of the brain. Gayet (Arch, de Physiol. 1875) 
 relates a case in which a man of twenty-eight years of age, 
 merely from a sudden fright, became mentally diseased and 
 
 * This vicarious action of one hemisphere in lieu of the other does not always 
 take place. Dr. Meissner {Wagner s Archiv der H eilkunde, 1861, vol. i.) de- 
 scribes a case of dropsy in one hemisphere, originating in the sixth month of life. 
 The patient lived to be over seventy-one years old, his body was powerfully 
 developed, but his mind remained backward, until complete insanity supervened, 
 and the man was good for no other avocation but that of cutting wood. Every 
 four weeks he had an attack of epilepsy. The weight of the brain was only 
 twenty-seven ounces. The ventricles on the healthy side were also slightly 
 expanded. 
 
228 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 died after several months. The post mortem showed an 
 enormous reddening and softening of different important 
 parts of the brain. Experiments on animals (for instance 
 on rabbits), whose crania have been opened, have shown 
 that a sudden fright at once causes a whitening and con- 
 traction of the blood-vessels of the pia mater, and also a 
 momentary contraction of the whole brain. (See Deutsches 
 Arcliiv fur klin. Medicin, vol. XIV.) According to the 
 psychiatrist Dr. Wille ( Versuch iiber Seelenstdrunge?i, 1863) 
 mental disorder consists only in a nervous disease of the 
 brain, and it is a settled law that “morbid changes in the 
 gray matter of the brain are always connected with morbid 
 phenomena of psychical life, or in other words, they cause 
 a morbid condition of the mind.” Besides, even mere 
 functional or nutritive disorders of the nervous elements by 
 anemia or plethora, by mixture of blood, by drunkenness, 
 narcotism, delirium, bad food or bad air, etc., bring on 
 mental disease or disturbance without any important ana- 
 tomical change in the brain becoming perceptible. These 
 anatomical changes are often, as heretofore stated, so very 
 slight that they can only be shown by the most minute 
 microscopical research. Thus, Prof. Heschl, ( Oesterr . 
 Zeitschr. fur prakt. Heilkuyide , 1862) found ossified nerve- 
 cells in the gray layer of the brain of a hypochondriac, and 
 Dr. Leidesdorf twice observed cases of rapid delirium com- 
 bined with raving madness, which brought the patients 
 quickly from previous health to the grave. In both cases 
 microscopic investigation revealed a very considerable in- 
 crease of the nucleus in the ganglionic cells of the gray 
 matter , while there was nothing else essentially diseased in 
 the brains, save a serous moistening throughout them and 
 their envelopes. 
 
 A fatty pigmentary degeneration and softening of the 
 same elements brings on what is called dementia paralytica , 
 or idiotcy, combined with phenomena of lesion generally, 
 and this is followed by a more complete destruction of the 
 mind than is caused by any other brain-disease. But even 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 229 
 
 without perceptible anatomical changes of the ganglionic 
 cells of the grey matter, a mere suspension of their nourish- 
 ment by injury to the blood- supply or by the hardening 
 of the cellular tissues around them suffices to bring about 
 the most serious mental disorders and even incurable 
 idiotcy. 
 
 No one who thinks scientifically and values facts will 
 hold that the well-known psychiatrist Griesinger was 
 wrong, when he said, in his lecture at the opening of the 
 school of clinical psychiatry at Zurich (1863), that mental 
 diseases were nothing more than “symptoms of disorders 
 of the brain and nerves.” 
 
 We should consider also the well-known and unfortu- 
 nately too frequent transmission of mental diseases, a 
 result that can only accrue from a changed condition of the 
 germinal matter, and the transmission of this material 
 condition to the brain and nervous system of the being 
 originating therefrom. 
 
 Physical lesions or injuries of the brain often cause 
 remarkable psychical effects. It has been credibly reported 
 that in St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, a man badly injured 
 on the head spoke in a foreign language. It was his native 
 Welsh, which he had formerly spoken at home, but had 
 forgotten in the course of a thirty years stay in London. 
 Owing to the same cause he had forgotten English entirely. 
 The same thing happened to a German American, Dr. 
 Solger, who, when he died, held the position of secretary 
 to the Treasury of the United States. He had received a 
 serious injury to the skull and brain by a fall from his 
 horse. From that moment forward he entirely forgot his 
 English and French (he had married a Frenchwoman), 
 and until his death, which took place shortly after the 
 fall, he spoke nothing but German. A Parisian painter, 
 Victor X., fell from the balcony of a house and suffered a 
 concussion of the brain. He at once forgot the names of 
 his friends and of the members of his family, and only 
 remembered some letters out of their names. On Sept. 13, 
 
230 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 1848, a blaster named Phineas Gage, residing at Cavendish 
 in America, had an iron rod driven through his head by a 
 premature explosion while he was tamping. The rod 
 destroyed a considerable portion of the left cerebral hemi- 
 sphere. After a long illness he recovered, but' his mind 
 and character were so changed that his friends said of him 
 that he was Gage no more. The balance between his 
 mental capacities and his animal propensities was destroyed. 
 He left his employment and, having led the life of a va- 
 grant, died twelve and a half years after the injury; his skull 
 with the iron rod may be seen in the anatomical museum 
 of Harvard University. (See Proceedings of ihe Mass. 
 Med. Soc. 1863, vol. II, N. 3, p. 330.) 
 
 The well-known fact that mad delirious persons some- 
 times recover consciousness before death and partly regain 
 the use of their reason, is often brought forward in support 
 of a spiritualistic conception of the relationship between 
 brain and mind. It should, on the contrary, be understood 
 in such cases, that the reason of this remarkable phenome- 
 non is the fact that the brain, having by long illness and 
 general exhaustion been brought to the verge of death, is 
 relieved from the troublesome and morbid influences of the 
 body, and this fact, if looked at in that light, is a striking 
 confirmation of our position. But even physiologically this 
 remarkable phenomenon has been explained by the assump- 
 tion that in such cases only one hemisphere of the brain had 
 been diseased, while the other and healthy one has gradually 
 been affected, in sympathy with it, in the same way as for 
 instance in a stoppage of circulation in one finger the 
 corresponding finger of the other hand will sometimes 
 begin to ache. Now if death should result in consequence 
 of the brain-lesion, the hemisphere that was first affected and 
 most diseased naturally dies first while the sympathetically 
 affected hemisphere is freed from the pressure that weighs 
 on it, and the patient recovers consciousness until the second 
 hemisphere also dies. 
 
 Quite apart from all this, the pathological facts support- 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 23I 
 
 ing the identity or necessary connection between brain and 
 mind are so numerous that whole books or libraries might 
 be filled with them, and to a great extent they are accessible 
 to daily experience or to the simplest observation. In point 
 of fact, the weight of this evidence has never been denied 
 by thinking men. “If the blood,” says Frederick the Great 
 in a letter to Voltaire, written in the year 1775, “circulates 
 too rapidly in the brain, as in the case of persons in a state 
 of drunkenness or in the paroxysm of fever, the ideas 
 become confused and are turned topsy-turvy ; if there is a 
 slight obstruction in the nerves of the brain, insanity re- 
 sults ; if a drop of water passes into the cranium, the loss 
 of memory supervenes ; if a drop of blood exudes from the 
 vessels on to the brain and the nerves of reason, we en- 
 counter at once the cause of apoplexy,’’ etc. 
 
 If the mind, as spiritualists contend, be a thing independ- 
 ent or self-existent, and controlling or utilizing matter, why 
 is it so little able to defend itself against and repel these 
 attacks? Why does it yield or succumb to a blow on the 
 head, the commingling of a few drops of blood with the 
 substance of the brain, a sunstroke, a few inhalations of 
 chloroform, a few glasses of wine, or a few drops of opium, 
 prussic acid, or other poison ? 
 
 But enough of facts! All anthropology, the whole science 
 of man is one continued proof of the inseparability of the 
 ideas of brain and mind. Let philosophical psychologists 
 talk as they may about the autonomy of the human mind 
 and its independence of its material substratum, their utter- 
 ances appear as idle clatter in the light of facts. “ I do the 
 spiritualists no injustice,” says J. C. Fischer (Z?z> Freiheit 
 des vienschlichen Willens, Leipzig, 1871), “when I say 
 that their deductions are one and all most pitiable delusions; 
 they only speak to show that they are too impotent to 
 bring forward a single positive proof. They will remain 
 impotent so long as they continue their speculative labor 
 of Sisyphus, instead of using the positive experimental 
 method of natural science,’’ etc. 
 
232 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 It was thought that a weighty argument had been brought 
 forward against the materialistic or monistic conception of 
 the relation between brain and mind by showing the 
 material simplicity of the organ of thought. The brain, it 
 was said, is mainly a soft, homogeneous mass, distinguished 
 neither by a complicated structure and delicate formation, 
 nor by a special chemical composition. How is it possible, 
 then, that this simple, homogeneous material can be the 
 fundamental cause of so infinitely delicate and complicated 
 a machinery as is represented to us in the human or animal 
 mind? Complicated forces and activities imply complicated 
 materials or combinations of matter. Clearly the connection 
 is rather a loose and accidental, than a necessary one ; the 
 mind exists by itself, independent of earthly matter, and is 
 but accidentally or for a brief space of time connected with 
 the material tissue which we call brain. 
 
 This whole objection, weighty as it may appear in the 
 eyes of uninstructed persons, rests altogether on false 
 premises or suppositions. The brain is not a simple organ, 
 but is in the highest degree composite, rich in structure and 
 delicately formed, to such an extent, too, that in the whole 
 organized world there is nothing which we can in this re- 
 spect compare with it. “To the superficial observer,” says 
 H. Tuttle, “the brain appears to be only a homogeneous 
 mass ; on closer investigation its structure is seen to be one 
 of the most delicate organization and of the highest per- 
 fection.” 
 
 As regards first of all this structure in its broad outlines, 
 a mere cursory inspection of the brain brings before our 
 eyes a large number of wonderfully shaped and intricate 
 external forms, the physiological significance of which is 
 more or less doubtful, and on its surface we behold numerous 
 irregular, deep convolutions, already described heretofore, 
 among which the two principal components of the brain, 
 the gray and the white, meet each other at the greatest 
 possible number of points, and the exact activity, form and 
 quantity of which, as we have seen, stands in a very definite 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 233 
 
 relationship to mental and intellectual activity. The variety 
 and curious nomemclature of these individual parts of the 
 brain show with what various and peculiar forms we have 
 here to deal. “In the brain,’’ says Prof. Huschke in his 
 famous work, ( Schadel , Him und Seele des Menschen), 
 “we find mountains and valleys, bridges and water-courses, 
 beams and arches, pins and hooks, claws and ramshorns, 
 trees and sheaves, harps and trumpets, etc. No one knows 
 the significance of these wonderful shapes.’’ If, in this 
 respect, we compare the brain with other organs of our 
 body, we find that the latter are so far beneath the former 
 that it becomes impossible to speak of an analogy between 
 them. We arrive at a similar result in comparing their 
 relative blood supply. As we have already mentioned, the 
 brain among all the organs of the body is the one to which 
 by far the largest quantity of blood goes from the heart, 
 and in which therefore the metabolism proceeds more 
 swiftly and more actively than anywhere else. It has, in 
 fact, been shown by experiment that among all the organs 
 of the body the brain has the highest temperature, and that 
 about one-third of the entire process of oxidation of the 
 body is needed in the brain to maintain the fire that burns 
 unceasingly in it during waking hours. Corresponding to 
 this, the anatomical activity and arrangement of the blood- 
 vessels and the large blood sinuses within the skull are 
 such as are found in no other part of the body, and the 
 blood circulation within the brain is so great that a cross- 
 section of the collective blood-vessels of the neck is three 
 times as great in extent as a cross-section of the large 
 blood-vessels of the thigh, although the latter is far more 
 massive and includes moreover the whole of the blood- 
 vessels of the leg. Among the individual parts of the brain 
 the gray substance, or the peculiar seat of mental processes, 
 is comparatively the richest in blood, for these processes 
 require the most rapid metabolism and the most intense 
 oxidation. Hence, every disturbance in this necessary 
 interchange between the blood and the substance of the brain 
 
234 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 is at once attended with a disturbance of consciousness or 
 of other mental activities. 
 
 Problems far greater, and much more difficult to solve, 
 than those of the general anatomy of the brain, make 
 their appearance when we come to subject it to a closer 
 microscopical examination. Yet this much we know above 
 everything else, that the brain is no simple homogeneous 
 mass, as persons imperfectly instructed imagine, but that, 
 like the nervous system generally, it consists partly of an 
 almost innumerable array of very delicate primitive or 
 nerve-fibres , and partly of an equally innumerable host of 
 nerve-cells or ganglionic centres. The former are so 
 minute that the aggregate thickness of six hundred of them 
 does not exceed the twenty-fourth part of an inch, and the 
 total number of them contained in the body has been 
 computed at from 600 to 1000 millions ; they are exceed- 
 ingly fine and exceedingly soft transparent tubes, containing 
 an oily, coagulable substance called nerve-marrow , which 
 in its turn consists of two concentric and chemically distinct 
 layers, one surrounding the other ; the middle one is the 
 axis-cylmder, and the envelope of nervous substance is the 
 marrow tube (white substance of Schwann). The nerve- 
 cells , nervous or gaiiglionic centres , being the second 
 histological element or tissue of the nervous mass, are 
 found in vast quantity, more especially in the gray matter 
 of the brain and spinal cord (the ganglionic cells of the gray 
 external layer of the brain alone being estimated at from 
 500 to 1000 millions), and having received the impressions 
 coming to them from the external world by the fibres, work 
 upon these and change them into reflective or volitional 
 acts. These cells exhibit many peculiarities and differences 
 of build, and are disposed in no less than from five to seven 
 distinct layers in the gray envelope of the brain of which 
 they form the chief part ; each layer in its turn exhibiting 
 peculiarly shaped cells of different sizes. The researches 
 of Prof. W. Betz of Kieff ( Centr.-Blattdcr medic. Wissen- 
 schaften 1881, N. 11 to 13) have shown that there is a 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 235 
 
 greater diversity in the grouping of the third or pyramidal 
 cell-layer than elsewhere. The same scientist thinks that 
 he has discovered that each small portion of the surface of 
 the human brain, whether formally marked off or not, is 
 distinguished by a peculiarity of build, which view agrees 
 admirably with the well-known investigations of modern 
 scientists (Ferrier, Hitzig, Frisch, Nodnagel, etc.) on the 
 so-called “centres of motion’’ to be found in the surface of 
 the brain. 
 
 As regards the relationship of the ganglionic centres to 
 the nerves or primitive fibres, the former are connected with 
 the latter by each nerve ending in a cell, and from each 
 cell several fibres — at least three — are given off, which 
 either go over into the nervous system, or unite the several 
 cells with each other. The nerves or nerve-fibres may very 
 truly be compared with the wires of an electric telegraph, 
 which convey news in both directions alike, while the 
 ganglionic centres may be equally well compared with the 
 electric apparatus itself, which receives the impulses coming 
 to it from without and gives them forth again, or forwards, 
 as it were, its own telegrams. 
 
 It is to these cells or ganglia that we must look for the 
 peculiar seat or anatomical element of our mental and in- 
 tellectual activity, and it can scarcely be doubted that the 
 variety that exists in their internal and external form and 
 arrangement stands in a definite relation to the multiplicity 
 of these processes. To all appearance there are not only 
 special cells or nervous centres for the performance of the 
 actions of sensation, movement, nutrition, and reflection, 
 like a parallel to what we know already of the nerves, but 
 there are also such centres for the different forms of higher 
 psychical activity, such as reason, imagination, reflection, 
 sense of number, of space, of music, of beauty, etc., albeit 
 anatomy has hitherto been unable to discover them, owing 
 to the clumsiness and imperfection of its appliances. If we 
 consider the enormous number (i. e. from 500,000,000 to 
 1,000,000,000) of nerve-cells that are present in the gray 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 236 
 
 layer of the human brain, and from which issue at least five 
 or ten times as many nerves, uniting them with each other 
 and with the outer world, it must be admitted that these 
 numbers offer even to the boldest imagination a more than 
 sufficient perspective as an anatomical basis of all con- 
 ceivable psychical processes or nervous actions. If the 
 aggregate number of conceptions which are, or may be, 
 contained within the brain, be set down at 200,000 — an 
 estimate very much above the mark, seeing that our most 
 polished language has at most 15,000 words, that there are 
 very few wordless conceptions, and that, even supposing 
 that each conception might be couched in four or five dif- 
 ferent forms, we should make up but a total of 100,000 at the 
 most — it becomes plain that each conception would have 
 from 2500 to 5000 cells and from 10,000 to 50,000 fibres 
 corresponding to it, assuming, of course, that those con- 
 ceptions be uniformly distributed over the whole surface of 
 the two cerebral hemispheres. Now inasmuch as this is 
 certainly not the case, it cannot be doubted that, however 
 rich our conceptual life may be, the number of the nervous 
 elements representing it must yet greatly exceed its neces- 
 sities, and that the brain possesses an enormous abundance 
 of unoccupied and unused spots for the utilization of which 
 there is no prospect whatever. At all events, the anatom- 
 ical structure and disposition of the brain would admit of a 
 very much richer conceptual life than is as yet possessed 
 by the hnman mind, and this being so, the enthusiastic 
 partisan of progress and evolution sees opened up to him 
 the prospect of the fulfillment of his boldest hopes for the 
 future achievements of his race. 
 
 Taking all these things into consideration, and remem- 
 bering that the chemical composition of the brain is not so 
 simple as it was formerly thought to be, but that very pe- 
 culiarly constituted bodies, such as cerebrine and lecithine, 
 are present in it, and that there are marked chemical dif- 
 ferences between different parts of the brain, it must be 
 admitted that the materiality of the brain, whether regarded 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 237 
 
 under its morphological, histological, or chemical aspects, 
 is by no means fitted to serve as an essential objection to 
 the materialistic or monistic view of the relation between 
 brain and mind. 
 
 Even assuming that if the brain were not the wonderfully 
 organized structure which we have learned that it is, and 
 that the simplicity of the brain-materiality did not contrast 
 with its achievements, we should yet have one thought left 
 to reassure us. Countless examples make it plain that 
 Nature is able to achieve the greatest and most wonderful 
 results by the simplest and least pretentious means, accord- 
 ing to the way in which she arranges the innermost condi- 
 tions and motions of infinitely small and delicate materials. 
 
 Why, even man is able to form out of coarse metal or 
 bits of wood, by the aid of very imperfect tools, instruments 
 that play many tunes, time-pieces that tell the hour, ma- 
 chines that weave, knit, sew, write, run, and outstrip the 
 speed of the swiftest animals. In this we see nothing mar- 
 velous. But just put a savage, or a man who has never 
 heard of mechanics, in our place ; would he not imagine 
 that these machines were living things, moving by their 
 own volition ? and would not one of the imbecile aborigines 
 of New Holland have as good a right, as Virchow remarks, 
 to maintain that these machines do not act on mechanical 
 principles as the partisans of the spiritualistic theory have 
 to maintain that the mind cannot be explained by material 
 motions ? Perhaps the simile does not run on all fours and 
 may be thought to prove nothing ; perhaps it may only 
 point out to us the way of understanding that possibly the 
 mind may after all be but a product of material combina- 
 tion. “Nature,” says Prof. Pfliiger, “ works with infinitely 
 small atoms, and therefore can form a mechanical con- 
 trivance in a very small space which can play a million of 
 the most varied tunes, which are exactly calculated for and 
 fitted to a million wants that may possibly arise in the 
 course of a man’s life.” 
 
 In this connection we should also consider a marvelous 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 238 
 
 force that surpasses all imagination, viz., that of the animal 
 or human seed, (mentioned in a preceding chapter), which, 
 by a single organized cell of such minuteness that it can 
 only be seen through a microscope, is able to control to a 
 certain extent the whole of the physical and psychical life 
 of that which has been begotten, by the aid of the forces or 
 tendencies of motion communicated to it by the begetter. 
 And what this one cell can do, why should not thousands 
 of millions of other similar or cognate forms be also able to 
 do, though in a different way, being connected together in 
 the most wondrous union and composition ? “ This fact,” 
 
 forcibly remarks Prof. Hackel in his Generelle Morphologie 
 der Organisme?i (1866), ‘‘gives us an idea of the infinite 
 fineness of organized matter and the inconceivable compli- 
 cation of molecular movements in the same state, which 
 neither the power of observation of our senses nor the power 
 of thought of our reason fully enables us to understand.” 
 
 However, for the purpose of this enquiry it is really quite 
 immaterial whether and in whatever way a conception of 
 all this be possible, or how mental phenomena arise from 
 material combinations or from the activities of the brain. 
 It is quite sufficient to have proved by facts the necessary, 
 indissoluble and normal connection between the brain and 
 the mind. 
 
 The spiritualistic philosophers and psychologists, who 
 regard the mind as an entity, independent, self-contained, 
 and but temporarily united to the body, have sought to get 
 over these facts in various ways, but, as it appears to us, 
 invariably with an unfortunate result. They fall into con- 
 tradiction either with themselves, or with the facts, or they 
 seek to veil the clearness of the question in a sort of half 
 mist, or they invent theories and delusions which call for 
 compassion rather than refutation. They find themselves 
 utterly unable to show how it is imaginable or possible that 
 a thing purely spiritual or immaterial, such as they repre- 
 sent the mind to be, can enter into union with matter, can 
 act upon it, or be acted upon by it. Absolute antitheses 
 
BRAIN AND MIND. 
 
 239 
 
 can never be united, whereas we find brain and mind, body 
 and spirit, always in absolute and actual union. “ No phi- 
 losophy,” says David Strauss {Alter und Neuer Glaube), 
 “ has ever explained nor will ever explain how it is possible 
 _ that from a thing with dimensions and without thought, 
 like the human body, impressions could ever pass to a non- 
 thinking thing without dimensions, such as the mind is 
 supposed to be — how impressions can be returned from 
 the latter to the former, and how above all there can be 
 any kind of communion between the two.” 
 
 As a last resource, spiritualism has hit upon the so-called 
 piano-theory , according to which the mind stands in the 
 same relation to the brain as a player does to his instru- 
 ment. There is no escape through this loophole either. 
 Who has ever heard of a piano that grows with its player, 
 that lives with him, sleeps with him, falls off and becomes 
 ill with him, or by being out of tune makes him incapable 
 of reflection, or continues to play confused melodies after 
 the player has gone away, or which can only maintain its 
 strength by constant change of material and a regular alter- 
 nation of activity and rest? Such a piano would indeed be 
 a remarkably strange thing, apart from many other diffi- 
 culties which militate against that theory. To carry this 
 monstrous comparison to its logical ends, we must admit 
 the same or a similar proposition for every other organ of 
 the body, and assign a nerve-soul to the nerves, a muscle- 
 soul to the muscles, a liver-soul to the liver, etc., all rank 
 absurdities, into which it is not worth while to enter any 
 further. 
 
 The word “mind” is in reality nothing more than a 
 collective word and a comprehensive expression for the 
 whole of the activities of the brain and its several parts or 
 organs, just as the word respiration or breathing is a col- 
 lective word for the activity of the breathing organs, or the 
 word digestion is a collective word for the activity of the 
 digesting organ. 
 
 No doubt, in the case of the brain, that highest and 
 
240 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 fairest blossom of all terrestrial organization, something 
 more is meant than in the case of the organs of breathing 
 or digestion ; we are dealing with the highest achievement 
 of material combinations, we might say with the intellectu- 
 alization of matter and with the life and destiny of all that 
 is great and noble among man’s achievements on earth. 
 Everything comes from it, and everything proceeds out 
 of it. It receives everything, and gives back everything. 
 Who that has thrown but a single glance at the powers and 
 tendencies of this most wonderful of all organs, of which 
 unfortunately so many men scarcely know the proper use, 
 can refuse to endorse what Huschke says : 
 
 “In the brain lies the temple of the highest that is of 
 interest to us. Yea, the destiny of the whole human race 
 is indissolubly bound up in the sixty-five or seventy cubic 
 inches of brain-mass, and the story of mankind is recorded 
 therein, as in a vast book, full of hieroglyphic symbols ! ’ ’ 
 
Thought. 
 
 Thought is a motion of matter. — Moleschott. 
 
 As color is to the vibrations of light, as sound is to the vibrations of elastic 
 fluids, so is thought related to the neuro-electrical vibrations of the brain- 
 fibres.— Huschke. 
 
 Since man, a material being, actually thinks, matter also enjoys the power of 
 thinking. — Holbach. 
 
 A REASON for writing this chapter is afforded us by 
 the well-known and well-abused phrase of Karl Vogt: 
 “Thoughts stand in the same relation to the brain, 
 as bile does to the liver or urine to the kidneys ; ’ ’ which 
 idea had, for that matter, been uttered long before Vogt and 
 in an exactly similar fashion by the French physician and 
 philosopher Cabanis (1757 to 1808). “The brain,” said 
 he, “is destined for thought, as the stomach is for digestion, 
 or the liver for secreting the bile from the blood,” etc. 
 
 Without in the least wishing to join in the general cry of 
 condemnation which this expression brought on its author 
 (although he had introduced it with the words, “to express 
 myself somewhat coarsely”), we yet cannot refrain from 
 finding the comparison unsuitable and badly chosen. Even 
 in looking at the matter without the least prejudice, we 
 cannot possibly find any analogy or true resemblance 
 between the bilious and renal secretions and the process by 
 which thought is produced in the brain. 
 
 Urine and bile are tangible, ponderable, visible substances, 
 and are moreover excreta or waste products discharged 
 from the body ; thought or thinking, on the other hand, is 
 
 (241) 
 
242 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 no excretion, but an activity or motion of the substances 
 and material compounds grouped together in a definite 
 manner in the brain. The secret of thinking does not lie 
 in the brain materials as such, but in the special form of 
 their combination and in their co-operation towards one 
 object under the perfectly definite anatomico-physiological 
 conditions which were described in a former chapter. 
 Thinking can and must be regarded as a special mode of 
 general natural motion, which is as characteristic of the 
 substance of the central nervous elements as the motion of 
 contraction is of the muscle-substance, or the motion of 
 light is of the universal ether. Therefore understanding or 
 thought is not a substance ; it is material only in this sense 
 that it is the manifestation of a material substratum, just as 
 heat, light and electricity are inseparable from their sub- 
 strata. Thinking a, 7 id extension are therefore only to be 
 regarded as two sides or phenomenal manifestations of one 
 and the same single existence. 
 
 That thinking is and must be a mode of motion is not 
 merely a postulate of logic, but a proposition which has of 
 late been demonstrated experimentally. It has been shown 
 by minute observations of the rapidity of the transmission 
 of nervous impulses that this rapidity, compared with other 
 modes of motion, is very small, and that the same thing is 
 true of the psychical processes or thought-motions going on 
 in the brain, which only become possible by the help of the 
 communicating nerve-fibres which join the ganglionic cells 
 of the gray layer together. Very ingenious experiments 
 have proved that the swiftest thought that we are able to 
 evolve occupies at least the eighth or tenth pari of a second, 
 and that this spell of time increases in proportion as absence 
 of mind, inattention, weariness, or indolent or disordered 
 mental action, affect the rapidity of reception or of reaction. 
 Thence follows this essential conclusion, that, as Prof. 
 A. Herzen says in an excellent article ( Kosmos , 1879-80, 
 pp. 207 et seq.), the psychical act or thought act takes place 
 in an extended resistant and composite substratum, where- 
 
THOUGHT. 
 
 243 
 
 fore such an act is nothing more than a mode of motion, 
 which on its part again must, like every metabolic change 
 in the body, be attended with the production of a definite 
 amount of heat. In point of fact, physiological experi- 
 ment has proved that the temperature of the nerve rises 
 when it enters into activity. In the same way Prof. Schiff 
 has proved, by very ingenious experiments, that the arrival 
 of a sensational impression in the brain causes an immediate 
 rise of temperature. All this goes to show that psychical 
 activity is nothing more than a motion going on between 
 the cells of the gray matter, caused by an external im- 
 pression. For there is no such thing as a thought whose 
 subject does not bear on the senses. All intellectual activity 
 proceeds in final resort from sensation and from the reaction 
 or response of him who experiences the sensation towards 
 the outer world. There are no ideas unconnected with 
 the impressions that are received or have been received by 
 the senses ; and in the joining together of these ideas by 
 means of the inter-communicating nerve-fibres lies the 
 essence of intellectual activity. 
 
 The words mind , spirit , thought, sensibility , volition, life, 
 designate no entities and no things real, but only proper- 
 ties, capacities, actions of the living substance, or results 
 of entities, which are based upon the material form of exist- 
 ence. The great blunder of the philosophic schools was 
 that they took the words or signs which in reality have but 
 a conventional meaning as entities, and as things real ; by 
 so doing they created an incurable confusion in a state of 
 things that is very simple in itself. This confusion is main- 
 tained and increased by the utterly false conception of mat- 
 ter, dealt with in a former chapter, which they have put 
 forward, and which prevents them from doing justice to it. 
 What earthly ground have spiritualists to stand on in con- 
 tending as they do, that matter cannot think? None, save 
 that false one, which has to some extent become our second 
 nature, owing to our spiritualistic training. Is it not, on 
 the contrary, a patent fact obvious to all but the wilfully 
 
244 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 blind, that matter does think? De la Mettrie made merry 
 over this narrowness of the spiritualists, in saying : “When 
 people ask whether matter can think, it is as though they 
 asked whether matter can strike the hours ! ’ ’ Matter, in- 
 deed, as such , thinks as little as it strikes the hours ; but it 
 does both, when brought into such conditions that thinking 
 or hour-striking results as a natural action or performance. 
 
 Voltaire compares the mind with the song of the nightin- 
 gale, which rings as long as the organic machine that emits 
 it lives and works, but which ceases with the extinction of 
 that activity. The same simile holds good of any machine 
 made by man. When a steam-engine performs work, or a 
 clock shows the hours, these are the results of their activity, 
 just as thought is the result of the complex machinery of that 
 material tissue which we call brain. But the be-all and end- 
 all of the steam-engine does not consist in producing steam, 
 nor is it the chief object of the watch to evolve heat by its 
 motion ; in the same way the essential part of the brain- 
 mechanism does not consist in its producing heat or that 
 minute quantity of fluid which is present in the ventricles 
 of the brain. It does not produce matter, like the liver or 
 the kidneys, but is an activity, which appears as the highest 
 blossom and fruit of all terrestrial organization. 
 
 It having once been shown that thought is indissolubly 
 conjoined with definite material motions, it will be sufficient 
 to throw a mere glance on the great and invariable law of the 
 maintenance or conservation of energy, in order to convince 
 every person endowed with a clear mind, that thought or 
 psychical activity is everywhere but a form or a particular 
 manifestation of that great, universal and simple natural force 
 which sustains the eternal cycle of energies, revealing itself 
 now as mechanical, now as electrical, now as mental force. 
 It is of no great consequence whether the metabolism main- 
 tained by nutrition, and constantly going on in our bodies, 
 lends to the laborer or pedestrian their muscular force, or 
 to the scientist, thinker, or poet, the force which creates 
 thoughts in the brain : the form or the effect only differs in 
 
THOUGHT. 
 
 245 
 
 accordance with the variations in the organs concerned. 
 Recent investigations have shown that a force, which had 
 hitherto been noticed and observed clearly in the inorganic 
 world alone, plays so important a part in the physiological 
 processes of the nervous system, that nervous energy and 
 electricity may be looked upon as the same thing. Each 
 nerve must be regarded as the source of an electric current, 
 generated therein by the motion of countless electro-motive 
 molecules that make up the nerve. The nerves, therefore, 
 are not merely, as was formerly thought, conductors , but 
 actual generators of electricity ; they generate it by meta- 
 bolic changes occurring in their interior, that is in the 
 nerve-marrow and axis-cylinder. Very subtle experiments 
 have proved that the electricity generated in the nerve 
 subsides or vanishes completely when the nerve is excited, 
 or when it performs a physiological function, which is the 
 same thing ; while on the other hand it accumulates electro- 
 motive force during rest and inactivity. This proves con- 
 clusively that nerve-force, nerve-activity, and nerve action, 
 are synonymous with transmuted electricity, and that the 
 nerve is only one of those countless appliances to be found 
 in Nature, which are destined to change static or latent 
 into active or dynamic force. This change is effected, in 
 the first instance, by electricity being set free, as a result 
 of the chemical processes that take place in its interior, and 
 next by this free electricity being changed into nerve- 
 activity. But since this activity consists chiefly in the 
 phenomena of sensation and volition, and since — as indeed 
 no proficient psychologist doubts at the present day — all 
 physical activity is developed and built up successively by 
 repeated and gradually intensified sensations or impressions 
 from without transmitted by the nerves, we actually stand 
 on the very threshold of a knowledge which will no longer 
 allow the evolution of all psychical action from Nature’s 
 general store of power and its subordination under the great 
 law of the conservation of energy to appear in the least 
 doubtful. Neither can it be doubted that this is possible and 
 
246 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 conceivable only by the mediation of the material substrata 
 or organs specially fitted therefor, as the brain more particu- 
 larly is for thinking, that is to say, for the reciprocal concat- 
 enation of the conceptions arising from external impressions 
 by means of the fibres or conductive organs connecting the 
 cells of the gray layer of the brain with one another. 
 
 In the foregoing we have expressed the perfectly accurate 
 fundamental thought which lies at the root of Vogt’s com- 
 parison, however inappropriately such a comparison may 
 have been chosen. As there is no bile without liver and 
 no urine without kidneys, so there is no thought without 
 brain. Mental activity is a function of brain-substance. 
 This truth is simple, clear, and borne out by countless facts. 
 The so-called acephali or headless beings are children who 
 are born into the world with a mere rudimentary brain- 
 structure, i. e., with one but partially developed. These 
 unhappy creatures, which offer the most unfavorable argu- 
 ment possible for the alleged theory of design in Nature, 
 are incapable of any human development and die early ; 
 for they lack the essential organ of human existence and 
 thought. The microcephali , or small-headed children, are 
 closely related to these. They have imperfectly developed 
 brains, and though they can live and grow, they are in their 
 whole being more like animals than men, and in mental ca- 
 pacity stand far below the grade of an intelligent animal. 
 “Nothing is more certain,” said the spiritualistically-minded 
 Lotze, “than that the physical condition of bodily elements 
 may formulate a number of activities on which the existence 
 and form of our mental condition of yiecessily depend.” 
 
 When matter vanishes, thought vanishes also ! 
 
 Hamlet , in the famous church-yard scene, pertinently asks: 
 
 “Why may not that be the skull of a lawyer? Where be his 
 quiddities now, his quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks ? 
 Why does he suffer this rude knave now to knock him about the 
 sconce with a dirty shovel, and will not tell him of his action of 
 
 battery? Where be your gibes now, poor Yorick? your 
 
 gambols ? your songs ? your flashes of merriment that were wont 
 to set the table in a roar? Not one now ! ” 
 
Consciousness. 
 
 Capacity of consciousness must lie dormant in tile existence of the atoms ; other- 
 wise our brain, which is a group of atoms, could not possess consciousness. — 
 Meynert. 
 
 The attempt to construct an immaterial being or an unchangeable Ego out of the 
 phenomena of consciousness and self-consciousness must be considered as 
 having failed just as much as every other similar attempt. — A. Mayer. 
 Sensation and consciousness differ from one another but quantitatively and not 
 qualitatively. — H. Kuhne. 
 
 I F, as has been shown in the foregoing chapter, our 
 whole mental life has been built up gradually from 
 repeated sensations, caused by impressions from with- 
 out, the same thing must be true of consciousness, and 
 especially of self-consciousness; for this is essentially nothing 
 more than the sum total of our sensations, or a cumulation 
 and aggregation of pictures imprinted on the memory. 
 Therefore, the lower we go down the ladder of organisms, 
 the less clear and the more confused does consciousness 
 become, until, having finally arrived at the simplest proto- 
 plasmic animals, we see all reactions to external stimuli 
 merged in almost imperceptible movements, and no longer 
 able to separate these movements, caused by pleasure or 
 pain, from the elementary properties of organized matter. 
 (O. Schmidt.) Only when we get to the higher animals 
 and to man does consciousness become a factor of such 
 importance that a special study of it as a separate intel- 
 lectual capacity becomes possible. This, however, does not 
 take place suddenly, but very slowly and gradually on the 
 strength of the improved organization of the brain and 
 nervous system, and of an increasing abundance of im- 
 pressions and of the ideas that are formed by them. In 
 
 (247) 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 248 
 
 this respect the new-born human child stands scarcely 
 higher than the lowest animal. It requires long use and 
 experience before it can localize its individual sensations and 
 learn to draw a line between them. When it has succeeded 
 in doing this, it gradually develops self-consciousness and 
 recognizes its own Ego as distinct from other Egos and 
 from the Non-Ego. Yet this can only be performed to 
 perfection when thought has reached a certain stage of 
 development, and when long experience supplies sufficient 
 material to it. But since this material is subject to continuous 
 changes, the consciousness must also change ; it can never 
 be the same in two separate moments. And this is actually 
 the case; only the change proceeds under normal circum- 
 stances in such a gradual and imperceptible manner that 
 we only become aware of it when we survey large portions 
 of our life at once, whereas in the case of diseases of the 
 brain and the nerves the change may go on very rapidly. 
 
 The moral personality behaves just the same as does the 
 physical. Both change unceasingly, but only after long 
 periods can we recognize the change with clearness. Do 
 we not, in point of fact in afterlife, find it often quite impos- 
 sible to place ourselves back into the opinions, views and 
 mental tendencies of earlier years, or to believe that at one 
 time our idiosyncrasy was such or such? Of our earliest 
 childhood we, as a rule, know either nothing at all, or we 
 know it but from hearsay. Therefore to be accurate, we 
 should not speak of being conscious, but only of becoming 
 conscious, as it were, in an incessantly, changing, now 
 increasing, now decreasing proportion. 
 
 Besides, this one thing can never be sufficiently empha- 
 sized in opposition to all theistical and pantheistical con- 
 ceptions, that consciousness can only originate in the 
 individual, for the individual only can have an opposite or 
 a Non-Ego from whom he differs by his consciousness, 
 whereas consciousness can never belong to the Infinite, 
 which has no opposite and can receive no impressions from 
 without. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 249 
 
 The spiritualistic psychologists or spirit-hunters, who see 
 ghosts everywhere where there are none, and who try to 
 obfuscate the simplest and most lucid things by wrapping 
 them in a cloud of words, have bandied about the word 
 consciousness even more than they have that of mind, 
 seeking, as they do, to represent it as a metaphysical, 
 immaterial, single and simple, inextensible, indivisible, and 
 ever unchangeable being, as the last and chief resort of all 
 mental activities, something like the manager of a play, 
 who, standing behind the scenes, superintends the play of 
 the phenomenal world of sensations caused by impressions. 
 
 But of consciousness the same remarks hold good as of 
 the mind ; it is not that single, simple, inextensible and 
 indivisible being as which the philosophers are wont to 
 represent it, but on the contrary a very complicated com- 
 posite thing, dependent on a whole range of diverse brain 
 and nerve particles separated in space. Far from being 
 single and simple, inextensible or indivisible, consciousness 
 is composite, extensible, divisible and changing, and in 
 proof of this, countless experiments of practical mental 
 science can be adduced. 
 
 It is, as Bastian remarks, one of the worst errors to 
 suppose that consciousness includes the whole mental being, 
 for experimentally it has been found that many mental 
 processes go on without consciousness. In fact many 
 phenomena prove that consciousness may for a time 
 disappear or be injured, without psychical life being 
 extinguished at the same time. On the other hand, con- 
 sciousness may in many instances of daily life be perfectly 
 preserved and remain uninjured, and yet keep outside the 
 range of numerous stimuli and purposive movements. For 
 instance, if we read aloud, as Huxley has pointed out, 
 (. Principles of Physiology, Lecture II), a number of delicate 
 muscular movements are going on of which the reader is 
 wholly unconscious, such as the movements of the hand, 
 the eyes, the lips, the tongue, the laryngeal and respiratory 
 muscles, etc., while the whole attention is directed entirely 
 
250 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 to the contents of the book. Or when, in lively discourse, 
 we accompany our words with corresponding gestures, all 
 this goes on as a rule quite instinctively and without con- 
 scious volition taking any part therein. In the same way, 
 a soldier marching while he sleeps, or an animal deprived 
 of the cerebrum, makes a whole series of purposive move- 
 ments without consciousness having any share in them. 
 It is well known that in the sensational sphere a number of 
 stimuli, which under other circumstances would be felt, 
 remain unperceived, when consciousness or attention are 
 vigorously attracted elsewhere. 
 
 That consciousness is divisible may be shown by the 
 fact that lowly animals (worms and polyps) may be cut 
 into as many pieces as the operator pleases, and yet each 
 piece will continue to live as a separate individual with a 
 separate consciousness. Lyonnet cut up a nais (a fresh- 
 water worm) into nearly forty pieces, and found that each 
 piece developed into a complete animal. (See Darwin : 
 Variation , etc., vol. II, p. 351.) This is true of a large 
 number of lowly animals, which propagate themselves by 
 simple fission, and so suddenly produce by mechanical 
 division a double or treble consciousness from their previous 
 single one. This principle of division extends in essence 
 as far as the highest classes of animals and even to man 
 himself, for in each generation of a new being a part or 
 piece of the parental body is thrown off, which piece, as is 
 well known, conveys to the begotten creature not only the 
 physical, but also the psychical peculiarities of the begetter. 
 
 But we may go further and say that even in man the 
 complete, fully-developed consciousness is not simple and 
 unchangeable or indivisible, as spiritualists will have it. 
 This is evidenced by cases — so frequently observed of late 
 — of what is called double or alternating or changing con- 
 sciousness, in other words the doubling of the Ego, in 
 which, on different days and at different times, the same 
 man has a different consciousness and does not know one 
 day what happened to him on another. 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 251 
 
 A number of highly instructive facts of this description 
 have been observed and recorded by Schroder, van der 
 Kolk, Jaffe, Krishaber, Azam, Galizier, Laveran, Camiiset, 
 Dr. J. Theyskens, and others. According to Dr. Krishaber 
 the remarkable condition of those affected with this malady 
 may be best compared to that of a caterpillar which, while 
 retaining its caterpillar reminiscences, is suddenly turned 
 into a butterfly with all its senses and sensations. A deep 
 gulf exists between the old and the new condition, i. e., be- 
 tween the caterpillar and butterfly state ; the new sensative 
 faculties cannot knit themselves on to the old, and the 
 patient cannot re-discover them in himself; first he comes 
 to the notion, ‘ ‘ I am not I ” ; next to the conclusion, ‘ ‘ I am 
 some one else,” or he seems to himself like a newborn child. 
 Others experience a sensation as though they existed no 
 longer ; they feel their own bodies without being able to 
 convince themselves of their reality ; others again see them- 
 selves transmogrified into two persons; sometimes every con- 
 nective memory between the two conditions so completely 
 breaks down, that the patient not only thinks that he is, but 
 actually is another person. If the second condition becomes 
 the normal or permanent one, as was observed in the case 
 of Felida X. (1859 — -75), then a part of the earlier life is 
 perfectly obliterated for the sufferer. In the case reported 
 by Dr. Camuset, (Ann ales m/dico-psychologiques, Jan. 
 1882), one year had completely vanished from the memory 
 of a youth of seventeen. 
 
 These remarkable phenomena, the study of which does 
 more to elucidate the nature of the Ego and of consciousness 
 than whole volumes of metaphysical dissertations, owe their 
 origin, according to some to a periodical cramp of the blood- 
 vessels that nourish a certain part of the mesencephalon; 
 according to others they are due to an irregularity in the 
 working in the two hemispheres. They show that the con- 
 sciousness of Ego is but a changing form of the totality of our 
 sensation, and that it only remains the same as long as these 
 pursue an accustomed and uniform course. As soon as any 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 252 
 
 interruption occurs, the consciousness of Ego changes in its 
 turn. The most rapid changes are represented by cases of 
 double consciousness ; the most regular and gradual by the 
 above-mentioned variations and transitions that occur in 
 the normal progress of life. The consciousness of the 
 graybeard is other than that of the mature man ; that of 
 the mature man differs from that of the youth ; that of the 
 youth again is not the same as that of the child. The con- 
 sciousness of the man who has grown wealthy, is other than 
 that of the poor man ; that of the savant other than that of 
 the student. The consciousness of the invalid differs from 
 that of the healthy man, and so on. Therefore, all those 
 cases of double consciousness can only be looked upon as 
 the superlative degree of a natural physiological condition 
 and process, and regarded from this point of view, they 
 scarcely deserve the name of “disease.” Besides, those 
 who suffer from double consciousness are perfectly rational 
 and in no sense mentally diseased. The Ego only remains 
 the same so long as the sensations are the same ; it changes 
 with their change, and re-appears so soon as these return 
 to their normal condition. 
 
 The theory of the unity and immateriality of conscious- 
 ness, as set forth by spiritualists, likewise rests but on 
 self-deception and ignorance of facts. The mere circum- 
 stance that consciousness is united to the activity of the 
 ganglia or nerve-cells spread over so large a surface as the 
 gray envelope of the cerebrum, or rather that it is the 
 expression of this activity, militates against the very thought 
 of such a spiritualistic unity ; and the theory is still further 
 disproved by the well-known fact that w r ith the loss of 
 certain parts of the brain by wounds whole periods of life 
 may vanish from the memory of the wounded person. 
 
 The unity of consciousness can only exist in this sense 
 that the person to whom it belongs is one, and has his or- 
 ganic centre in the correlation of the whole nervous system, 
 just as the body is composed of many individual parts, and 
 yet presents a unity, without being, on that account, one 
 
CONSCIOUSNESS. 
 
 253 
 
 and indivisible, like the first French Republic. Physiology 
 has not yet succeeded, and never will succeed, in finding a 
 single spot in the interior of the brain for consciousness ; 
 the famous sensorium commune , the general centre of the 
 brain, wherein, according to the ancient views, all sensa- 
 tions met, thence to pass to the motorium commune or 
 general centre of all movements, has long since been con- 
 signed to the limbo of physiological fables. 
 
 But even the discovery of such a point would not satisfy 
 the spiritualistic demands, for consciousness as an immate- 
 rial thing cannot be conjoined to an extensible, but only to 
 an inextensible, that is to say, a non-existent spot. But 
 seeing that a blow on the head, or a few drops of opium, 
 or a few glasses of wine taken in excess, or a passing cramp 
 of the blood-vessels, or a slight loss of blood, or the action 
 of abnormally changed blood on the ganglia, is sufficient 
 to make consciousness disappear or throw it into confusion, 
 the idea of its immateriality cannot seriously be entertained. 
 Consciousness like thought, is a performance or action or 
 phenomenal activity of certain parts or tissues of the brain, 
 and in that capacity it is subject to all the changes which 
 take place in the condition, nutrition and growth of the brain. 
 But the question as to whether, as Meynert thinks, capacity 
 for consciousness is latent in the essence of the atom itself, 
 or whether it is to be regarded as the result of a certain 
 mode of atomic union taking place under certain conditions 
 and circumstances, may for the present remain unanswered. 
 How and in what way the atoms, the nerve-cells, or, to 
 speak generally, matter began to produce and bring forth 
 sensation and consciousness, is quite unimportant for the 
 purpose of our investigation ; it is sufficient to know that 
 such is the case. 
 
 Upon all these grounds, the endeavors lately made by a 
 renowned modern physiologist, amid the applause of spirit- 
 ualistic triflers, in order to prove that consciousness cannot, 
 and never will be explained by material conditions,* seem 
 
 *E. Dubois-Reymond, Essay on the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature. 
 
254 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 wholly vain and useless, proceeding, as they do, from an 
 erroneous basis. How can it be thought possible to explain 
 consciousness from material conditions, while matter itself is 
 not understood, and while we are unable to give an ade- 
 quate account entering into the very heart of Nature, of a 
 single phenomena or natural force ? If the progress of our 
 knowledge and of our convictions were made to depend on 
 answering such questions, we should probably have to re- 
 main forever were we are now. On the other hand we 
 know with absolute certainty that all existence including 
 sensation and consciousness, is one and self-dependent, 
 ruled without exception by the law of cause and effect, and 
 that no breaking through these boundaries set up by the 
 necessity of Nature is possible at any point or at any time. 
 Herr Dubois-Reymond will be the less prepared to deny 
 this, as he himself has, on other occasions, stood up so 
 vigorously for “the law of mechanical causality.” But 
 this is perfectly sufficient to vindicate the monistic stand- 
 point, not only in questions relating to the brain and the 
 mind, but also in questions of consciousness as the only 
 accurate method of proceeding, since in macrocosmic mat- 
 ters it has long been regarded as the only tenable one. 
 
 It is true that with this view disappear all those unscien- 
 tific and chimerical hopes with which philosophical and 
 religious spiritualism has so long fascinated the mind of 
 man after the fashion of Puck, and of which we shall speak 
 more in detail in a subsequent chapter. It neither can nor 
 should be denied that the transitory nature of the conscious- 
 ness, to which matter has gradually attained in the mind of 
 man, stands in an unsatisfactory opposition to the moral 
 feeling of the individual, and that in all ages this opposition 
 has rightly called forth countless bitter complaints from 
 poets and thinkers. But To turn that feeling, as unfortu- 
 nately many do, into a starting-point for philosophical 
 conviction, amounts, as Wieszner says, to philosophizing 
 with wishes instead of with truths. 
 
Seat of the Soul. 
 
 Physiology teaches us with absolute certainty that the brain is the seat and vehicle 
 of our reflections and sensations. — Beneke. 
 
 Who therefore, is to remain unmoved at this idea of the seat of the mind ? We 
 stand astonished before the fane within which the intellectual forces act and 
 work, before the enigmatical forms, which throughout all the life and work 
 and doing and performing of the human race from the beginning even until 
 our own time, have carried on their mysterious play. — Hoschke. 
 
 Narrow is the world, and wide is the brain. — Schiller. 
 
 T HE brain is not only the organ of thought and of all 
 the higher intellectual abilities, which have their 
 exclusive seat in its gray layer, but it is also the only 
 seat of the soul , taking that word as signifying the activity 
 of the whole brain in all its parts, and including the sensorial 
 and motive functions or the sensational and volitional acts, 
 induced of the central gray ganglia, as well as its control 
 over the whole nervous system. The word “soul” represents 
 the inclusive and general, the word “spirit” the narrower and 
 particular conception; and thus we speak of the “soul” or 
 anima of animals in a general, but of the “spirit” or animus 
 in a very limited sense. Therefore, the principle of the 
 soul may be traced through the whole organic world down 
 to the lower and lowest animals, wherein it is only joined 
 to single nerve-spots or to the nerveless body-substance, 
 and may be followed even down to the plants, in which it 
 is represented at its lowest stage as an excitability without 
 consciousness and without sensation. The animus , on the 
 other hand, is but the product of the activity of a single 
 centrally placed nervous structure, and grows in strength 
 in the same ratio as the principle of the division of labor 
 and of the differentiation of the individual parts or divisions 
 of the nervous system gradually increases. 
 
 (255) 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 256 
 
 So long as the soul was regarded as a self contained, im- 
 material being or unit, which was but temporarily and 
 transitorily joined to the body, it is readily understood that 
 a special ‘ ‘ seat ’ ’ or dwelling-place within the latter was 
 eagerly sought for. 
 
 Yet it is an averred fact that Hippocrates, the Nestor of 
 physicians (500 b. c.), the philosopher Plato, and the Greek 
 physician Galen (born A. D. 131), whose system of medi- 
 cine ruled supreme for nearly fourteen centuries, regarded 
 the brain as the seat of the soul, at least of what they dis- 
 tinguished as the rational or reasoning soul. But Plato’s 
 pupil Aristotle swerved from this correct view, and sought 
 for the seat of the soul in the heart, which organ, as every- 
 body knows, is set down in the Old Testament as the seat 
 of all intellectual activities, and which, even now, is looked 
 upon in that light by the Chinese. The philosophers 
 Diogenes and Chrysippos shared this opinion, while other 
 Greek philosophers considered the peculiar seat of the soul 
 to be, some in the blood, others in the breast. So far as 
 that goes, it may be said that many arbitrary notions were 
 current among the ancients on this matter, for most of 
 their philosophers distinguished several specific kinds of 
 souls, and were therefore obliged to find for them different 
 seats in different parts of the body. 
 
 During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more 
 accurate views became prevalent, in consequence of the 
 progress of anatomy and physiology. Thus, Thomas Willis 
 (1664), recognizing at that early date the importance of 
 the gray matter and of the convolutions, looked upon 
 the whole brain, and more particularly upon the corpora 
 striata , as the organ of the intellect. But the firmly estab- 
 lished opinions of philosophers and theologians on the 
 nature of the soul prevented this more correct view from 
 making its way, and great, though nugatory, efforts were 
 made to discover the peculiar seat of the soul, now in this, 
 now in that individual part of the brain, losing sight all the 
 while of the fact that it could only be based on the activity 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 257 
 
 of the whole organ. Most acceptance fell to the view of the 
 French philosopher Descartes or Cartesius, who pointed to 
 the pineal gland as the peculiar seat of the soul, an organ 
 about as large as a pea, situated in the interior of the brain 
 and filled with the so-called brain-sand. This body seemed 
 specially designed as the bearer of a single and indivisible 
 soul-being, partly because it is the only unpaired organ of 
 the brain, partly because of its connection with the ven- 
 tricles, which are the accepted gathering-places of the 
 nerve-spirits. 
 
 Even down to the times of the great philosopher Kant 
 (1724-1804) — the man who is at this day extolled by the 
 whole number of hired old-world philosophers as the last 
 deliverer from the distress wrought for them by the materi- 
 alistic and monistic views of the age, and at whose sight, 
 as at that of Medusa’s head, all opponents are to be turned 
 into stone — people were so puzzled or so ignorant about 
 the matter that Kant, supported by the famous Frankfort 
 anatomist, Sommering, sought the peculiar seat of the soul 
 in the small quantity of water or watery serum which is 
 found in the interior of the above-named ventricles. 
 
 Among moderns, Ennemoser made by speculative means 
 the ingenious discovery that the soul resides m the whole 
 body , while the philosopher Fischer of Basle feels no doubt 
 that it is immanent in the whole nervous system. 
 
 Philosophers are wonderful people. The less they un- 
 derstand of a thing, the more words they make over it. 
 They seek to explain the mystery of the world ‘ ‘ as though 
 they were God’s spies ” (King Lear.) They have as many 
 opinions as they have heads, and as Bacon very forcibly 
 says, they become through their speculations “like owls 
 that only see their dreams in the darkness, but become 
 blind in the light of experience, and are least able to per- 
 ceive that which is clearest.’’ As Spiller remarks, they 
 possess the most extraordinary talent for bringing the 
 simplest things into the most boundless confusion, and they 
 water and plaster over the simplest ideas and opinions 
 
258 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 with such a mass of high-sounding, apparently learned, but 
 in reality empty and unintelligible words and phrases, that 
 a rational man loses his senses over it. But the moment 
 we go to the root of the matter, we, as a rule, are very 
 soon convinced that the whole tirade is, as Helvetius says, 
 “a deluge of words, poured out over a desert of ideas,” 
 and that the ‘ 1 hollow verbiage about being and not-being ” 
 (Suhle) and similar philosophical technicalities can have no 
 other object but that of hiding the utter scantiness of real 
 ideas and thoughts from the uncritical reader or listener. 
 Most of the intellectual products of these gentlemen may 
 be aptly described by the beautiful Arabic proverb, already 
 applied to them by Schopenhauer : ” I hear the mill clat- 
 tering right enough, but I do not see the meal.” 
 
 In order to save themselves from the straits to which 
 they had been put by the enormous progress of realistic 
 science, resulting in materialistic and monistic pressure on 
 them, they have, as we remarked just now, fallen back on 
 the old philosophical school-master Kant and his well- 
 known theory of perception, and in doing so have sacrificed 
 whatever has been achieved in philosophicis for the last 
 hundred years. The future will show whether they will 
 derive any benefit from falling back upon a thinker who 
 was utterly unacquainted with the whole vast material 
 of present science and knowledge, more especially the ap- 
 plication of the fruitful thought of the evolutional theory to 
 the origin of the human mind. At all events they have, 
 in so doing, borne witness to their own intellectual poverty. 
 Yet they do not hesitate to abuse as “ incapable of philo- 
 sophic thought ” those who are not imposed upon by their 
 gibberish, but who see the poverty-stricken nakedness be- 
 neath the threadbare covering ; an argumentatio ad hom- 
 inem which might much more pertinently be rolled back 
 on themselves by the empiricists. For heedless of the 
 progress of empiric or natural science, they go on tilling 
 their old philosophic soil and behaving as though there 
 were no science in existence whenever they are threatened 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 259 
 
 by it with a destructive interference in their metaphysical 
 speculations. 
 
 The philosopher Fischer of Basle says : “ That the soul 
 is immanent in the whole nervous system is proved by the 
 fact that in all parts of it it sensates, perceives and acts. I 
 do not feel pain in a central point of the brain, but in the 
 affected spot itself.” 
 
 And yet what Fischer contends against is undoubtedly 
 true. The nerves themselves do not feel, but they produce 
 sensation only by conducting the impressions they receive 
 to the brain. We do not feel the pain in the spot in which 
 we are struck or injured, but in the brain. If a sensory 
 nerve be divided anywhere in its course between periphery 
 and brain, the sensibility of those parts of the body to 
 which that nerve was distributed ceases at the same 
 moment. This can have no other reason but that the 
 conduction of each impression to the brain is no longer 
 possible by the mediation of that nerve. We do not see 
 with the eye nor with the optic nerve, but with the brain. 
 Divide the optic nerves, thereby destroying their conductive 
 power, and seeing is at an end. The same thing happens 
 if the tubercula quadrigemina , which are a part of the brain, 
 are cut out or destroyed in a living animal, although his 
 eyes may be perfectly well preserved. 
 
 Nothing but custom and outward appearance have led 
 us to the false belief that we feel in those parts of our bodies 
 which are incited from without. Physiological science 
 terms this remarkable relation the “ law of eccentric phe- 
 nomena.” According to this law we erroneously trace the 
 sensation that has been brought to the brain to the place 
 in which we saw the stimulus applied. It is therefore very 
 immaterial in what part of its course a nerve is stimulated ; 
 we always feel the impression in the peripheral extremity 
 of the nerve only. If we strike the elbow nerve, we feel 
 the pain in the fingers, not in the elbow. If an exostosis 
 presses on the facial nerve at its exit from the cranium, the 
 patient suffers from intolerable pain in the face, although 
 
26 o 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the peripheral nerves of the face are perfectly sound. If a 
 piece of skin be cut off the forehead and transplanted to 
 the nose, the person on whom the operation has been per- 
 formed fancies, if his new nose is touched, that he has been 
 touched on the forehead. If the optic nerve is stimulated 
 after the eye has been removed, the patient has the sensa- 
 tion of light and fire, although his eye can see no longer. 
 Persons who have suffered amputation have felt pains in 
 their amputated arm or foot, upon recurring changes in the 
 weather, during the rest of their lives, although the limb 
 itself is gone ; without thinking of this enforced absence, 
 they often try to touch it, because they have experienced a 
 sensation therein. If a man had all his limbs cut off, he 
 would none the less imagine that he felt them all. But this 
 could not and would not be the case with a person born 
 without them, because he has never had the experience 
 which refers the eccentric position of the sensation in the 
 absent limbs to the outside. 
 
 The whole of these facts go to show that a definite 
 topographical plan must exist in the interior of the brain, 
 by the help of which the different sensations from the 
 thousand different parts of the body are distributed each in 
 a separate fashion. Each spot in the body which can 
 
 separately feel, must have within the brain an exactly 
 corresponding spot which brings it, as it were, before the 
 forum of consciousness. It may easily happen that a 
 vibration brought to such a central point by the nerves 
 connected with it may not be limited to that point, but 
 may also affect the neighboring centres of sensation. In 
 this fashion the so-called sympathetic sensations arise. If 
 anyone is suffering from a hollow tooth, it is usually not 
 only the tooth which aches, but the whole cheek too. 
 
 What is true of sensations is equally true of the impulses 
 of the human will. It is not in the muscles but in the brain 
 that the will to make a move is excited, and only in the 
 brain can the volitional act be brought about. The nerves 
 are the conductors of this impulse, the messengers, as it 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 26l 
 
 were, who carry to the muscles the commands of the brain. 
 If the conduction be destroyed, every volitional activity 
 ceases. Persons suffering from spinal disease are lame 
 on their feet, because this disease interrupts the nerve- 
 communications between the feet and the brain. Apoplexy 
 is the exudation of a quantity of blood from its vessels into 
 the interior of the brain. At the same moment in which 
 this exudation takes place to a sufficient extent to suspend 
 the functions of the brain in that spot, every kind of sen- 
 sation and movement completely ceases in the whole 
 corresponding half of the body. Who has not observed 
 the pitiable condition of a person struck with apoplexy? 
 Just the same condition is induced in living animals by an 
 artificial scission of the spinal cord in all the parts of the 
 body below the division. 
 
 Like the sensory nerves, the beginnings of the motor 
 nerves must be distributed in some topographical manner, in 
 order that they may severally be set in motion by a volitional 
 impulse. This relationship has been very felicitously com- 
 pared to the keys of a piano, on which the will performs 
 its play, as it were. Like the piano player, the will requires 
 long practice and habit to acquire this skill, so as to produce 
 special movements by striking special keys. Very often it 
 does not succeed, but strikes several keys simultaneously, 
 thus producing sympathetic movements. We want to move 
 one finger, and instead of that we move several, perhaps 
 all of them. Grimaces or gestures in speaking depend on 
 this principle of sympathy. Sympathetic movements are 
 most frequently observed in young children, who have not 
 yet learned to isolate their volitional activity. If a child 
 wants to make the simplest movement it moves its whole 
 body. 
 
 The more recent investigations and experiments, made 
 by Broca, Ferrier, Munck, Fritzsch, Hitzig, Nodnagel and 
 others, on the localization of the functions of the brain, 
 have shown beyond all doubt that a division of labor exists 
 in the brain similar to that which obtains in the body 
 
262 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 generally, and that each bodily division, nay each single 
 muscle has corresponding to it a certain spot in the central 
 organ. In complicated or co-ordinated movements a 
 number of central elements work together, as e. g. in the 
 faculty of speech, for which a definite centre has been dis- 
 covered, situated in the fore-part of the brain-envelope of 
 the left side in the cortex of the Island of Reil and the con- 
 volutions surrounding it. If these parts lose their functional 
 activity by injury or disease, aphasia or speechlessness 
 supervenes. This much is certain, that by these and many 
 other experiments which we could not very well particular- 
 ize here, the erroneousness of the old view has been fully 
 proved, according to which all mental functions were dis- 
 tributed over the whole cerebral gray layer, an error first 
 suggested by Flour ens, a French savant, to which a great 
 many people still adhere. The soul is not a sort of aggre- 
 gate functional activity of the cerebrum, but each individual 
 part of the cerebrum has its own work to do. Thus we 
 must assume that other parts serve the memory, others 
 again represent the faculties of imagination, reasoning and 
 judgment, others the impulse of voluntary movement, and 
 others diverse descriptions of impetus, feeling, sensation, 
 etc. It appears also to be beyond doubt that our higher 
 and lower psychical lives are entirely divided anatomically 
 within the brain itself, and that while imagination, reason, 
 judgment, thought, conscious feeling, desire and volition 
 only go on in the gray substance of the outer layer of the 
 brain, the lower sensorial and motor acts (including re- 
 flective or unconscious nerve-actions) have their centre in 
 the central gray ganglia or the gray nuclei of the mesen- 
 cephalon. This gray central mass is connected on one 
 hand only by the nervous system with the whole body, and 
 on the other hand is united by connecting fibres, in the 
 most intimate and direct manner, with the gray cerebral 
 layer, and reflects all the impulses reaching it from the 
 body on to the special seat of the Psyche and of conscious- 
 ness. These impressions or messages coming from without 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 263 
 
 are delivered up to the sensory cells and thence proceed to 
 the imagination cells, in which they are translated into 
 ideas and thought, and by radiation on the motor cells 
 where they are turned to movements or volitional acts. 
 
 Now let us see what another philosopher has to say on 
 the same subject. 
 
 Professor Erdmann of Halle remarks in his psychological 
 letters : ‘ ‘ The view that the soul resides in the brain, 
 
 consistently carried out, must lead to the conclusion that 
 if the remainder of the body should be taken from the head 
 the soul might continue to exist therein ! ’ ’ 
 
 This, in point of fact, would doubtless be the case if we 
 were able to artificially supply to a severed head the nutri- 
 tion and the maintenance of the metabolism of the brain by 
 infusing the blood necessarily associated therewith.* But 
 when the severance takes place, the blood supply from the 
 heart at once comes to an end, and with it all conscious- 
 ness, — every function of the brain, every psychical activity, 
 and all life ceases. 
 
 A few instances have occurred of men having the upper 
 part of the spinal marrow so compressed by the dislocation 
 of one of the cervical vertebra, that the communication be- 
 tween the body and the head was completely cut off. 
 Respiration and circulation and along with these the nutri- 
 tion of the brain continued, though imperfectly. Such 
 
 ’Since the above statement was first written, it has been thoroughly borne out 
 by physiological experiments. If the head of an animal, such as a dog or cat, is 
 cut off, the severed head gradually loses its irritability ; the eyelids close, the eyes 
 become dull, the nostrils motionless. But if at this moment arterial defibrinated 
 blood is injected into the arteries, the previously dead head gradually revives ; 
 the eyelids open, the nostrils expand, heat and sensation return, the eyes grow 
 bright again, and looking at the bystanders, turn in their orbits. Ifthe animal is 
 called by its name, the eyes turn to the place from whence the call proceeds. 
 These signs of returning vitality last as long as the injection continues, and 
 disappear and return again as the operation ceases and is resumed. This inter- 
 esting experiment has not yet been made with any decapitated men. but it may 
 be inferred that exactly the same result would follow. Brown-Sequard, to whom 
 we are principally indebted for the above experiments, has tried the same plan 
 with a newly amputated human arm, which had become cold and senseless. After 
 a few moments heat, irritability, contractility, in fact all the normal activities 
 returned to the dead limb, and Dr Brown-Sequard was able to continue the 
 experiment with the same result until fatigue compelled him to stop. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 264 
 
 unfortunates are dead while living. The whole body is 
 entirely bereft of sensation and motion ; it is a corpse; life 
 continues only in the head and in the immediately adjacent 
 parts to which nerves are distributed from it. The 
 psychical existe?ice, however, of such i?ijured persons re- 
 mains perfectly unimp aired, at least for a ti?ne; they are 
 as it were, living corpses. 
 
 The thesis that the brain is the seat of the soul is so 
 firmly established, that for a long time past the legal en- 
 actments relating to monstrosities have been founded upon 
 it. A monstrosity with one body and two heads counts as 
 two persons, whilst such a creature with one head and two 
 bodies counts only as one. Monstrosities without a brain, 
 the so-called acephali, have no personal status in law. 
 Lastly, Herr Enneinoser has discovered that the soul re- 
 sides in the whole body. If Herr Ennemoser had been 
 unfortunate enough during his life to lose a leg by amputa- 
 tion, he would have found by experience, to his no small 
 surprise, that his soul-life and his psychical existence had 
 thereby experienced no essential injury or alteration. 
 
 Quite recently an attempt, based on experiments on ani- 
 mals, has been made among physiological scientists to 
 weaken the hitherto unimpeached view that the only seat 
 of the soul is in the brain, by attributing to the spinal cord 
 a share in sensation and voluntary movement, and founding 
 thereupon the well-known theory of the so called spinal- 
 cord-soul. These experiments prove nothing, at least for 
 men and all the higher vertebrates, while the reasons mili- 
 tating against it are so strong and so general that science, 
 at any rate up to the present time, has not been able in any 
 way to accept such a limitation. 
 
 There is one additional thing that must not be lost sight 
 of, and this is that those who look upon the soul, not as a 
 resultant of the brain-substance, but as an ens per se or a 
 self-existent being, have frequently contended that the soul, 
 under certain circumstances and for a brief spell of time, 
 might leave its seat in the brain and take up its residence 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 265 
 
 in some other part of the nervous system. Such a part has 
 been especially mentioned as the solar plexus — a plexus or 
 network of the sympathetic or vegetative , sometimes terrnecl 
 ganglionic or visceral nervous system, — situated in the up- 
 per part of the abdominal cavity. This nervous system, 
 running down each side of the vertebral column, with nu- 
 merous ganglia and outgoing nerves, and regulating the 
 visceral movements connected with nutrition, generation, 
 and secretion, is closely united by numerous fibres, both 
 anatomically and physiologically, with the brain and spinal 
 cord ; it nevertheless maintains a certain independence, re- 
 calling the conditions of the lower animal world, by means 
 of the numerous ganglia or nerve-knots containing gray 
 matter ; and by its separation from the so-called animal 
 nervous system, that is to say from that which relates to 
 sensation and motion, it represents one of the most im- 
 portant advances brought about in the perfecting of the 
 animal economy by division of labor. Without this division 
 of labor the animal life or psychical life embracing the 
 province of higher nervous activity, could not possibly 
 attain to that high degree of perfection and capacity for 
 work which it reaches in man and in the higher mammalia, 
 whilst the life of the lower and lowest animals exhausts itself 
 more or less in the lower activities of the sympathetic sys- 
 tem. Therefore, however great may be the part played in 
 these lower activities and in the whole process of nutrition 
 of the body by this sympathetic system, it is yet in no way 
 concerned with the duties of the central organs of the 
 animal nervous system, or with psychical actions proper. 
 Notwithstanding this, people have not hesitated in setting 
 this harmless nerve down as an accessory to the mystical 
 and speculative sins of our time, and charging it with a 
 share in the phenomena which are generally designated as 
 the night-life of the soul. Thus, for instance, this nerve is 
 stated to enable somnambulists, or persons under the in- 
 fluence of animal magnetism, to read sealed letters or to 
 tell the hour on watches held, while their eyes are closed, 
 
266 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 on the pit of then stomachs, and lots more of the same 
 kind. 
 
 We deem it our duty to go more thoroughly into the 
 most important of these phenomena, partly to vindicate 
 our opinion that the peculiar seat of the soul is in the 
 brain, partly and still more so for yet another reason. An 
 attempt has been made to take advantage of some of the 
 phenomena alluded to, especially those of clairvoyance , 
 second sight, presentiments, dreams, and lately even the 
 gross deceptions of spiritualistic jugglers, in order to prove 
 the existence of supernatural and supersensual powers and 
 manifestations. Within them has been sought the certain, 
 though obscure point in which the spiritual and human 
 worlds are thought to meet ; people have even gone so far 
 as to point to these phenomena as the door through which 
 might some day be seen the dawn and the sure and certain 
 promise of a transcendent existence, of the realm of spirits 
 and of God, and of future life. It was hoped also that by 
 this method we might come on the track of those unknown 
 and mysterious “things in themselves,” which, according 
 to the philosophers, are hidden behind the phenomenal 
 world which is alone accessible to our methods of observa- 
 tion, although the simplest reflection would have shown 
 that, if understood but approximately, they would no 
 longer be “ things in themselves.” Even so great a thinker 
 as Schopenhauer was so far misled by his philosophical 
 doctrines as to believe with enthusiastic faith in the artifices 
 of a peripatetic magnetizer called Regazzoni. 
 
 All these things, so far as they relate to life outside of or 
 above nature, appear as mere idle fancies before the clear 
 eye of science and experimental investigation ; fancies to 
 which human nature has at all times resorted, in order to 
 appease its longing for the miraculous and the supersen- 
 sual, handed down to it from ancient reminiscences. This 
 longing appears now in one, now in another form, accord- 
 ing to the changing conditions of the age. The selfsame 
 superstition which in former centuries was represented by 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 267 
 
 belief in witches, wizards and evil spirits, by the notions of 
 diablerie and of people being possessed of demons, by 
 vampyrism and similar delusions, appears in a modern 
 garb as table-turning, spirit-rapping, and spiritualism, as 
 psychography, somnambulism, and so on. No doubt, 
 educated people often consider that belief in miraculous 
 and supersensual things is a special characteristic of the 
 uneducated classes ; but the contrary has been strikingly 
 shown by the “ fluid-mania,” and by the success which, 
 in the best classes of society, has attended the legerde- 
 main and clap-trap of magnetizers, clairvoyants, thauma- 
 turgists, spiritists, hypnotists, and other jugglers. 
 
 Among the phenomena constituting the night-life of the 
 soul are usually reckoned : The startling of pregnant 
 women, animal magnetism with its accompanying phe- 
 nomena of clairvoyance, the conditions of sleep, sleep- 
 walking, and somnolency, presentiments, second sight, 
 ghostly apparitions, and sympathetic or miraculous cures. 
 
 The startling of pregnant women has no particular bear- 
 ing on the subject we are dealing with, being as a rule rele- 
 gated at this day by the best authorities to the realm of 
 fables. 
 
 Magnetic sleep, sometimes caused by continued stroking 
 of the body, and sometimes called forth without such con- 
 tact and without any definite external reason — as in idioso- 
 somnambulism — is alleged to result in a state of uncon- 
 scious spiritual ecstasy, which occasionally, and in the case 
 of some specially endowed persons, chiefly women, rises 
 into veritable clairvoyance. While in a state of ecstasy, 
 the patients are said to reveal greater intellectual power 
 than is habitual with them ; they speak fluently in foreign 
 tongues and in other and more complex dialects than their 
 own, and on matters of which, while awake, they are per- 
 fectly ignorant. The magnetized are said to have some- 
 thing ethereal or illuminated about their whole person, re- 
 minding us of their direct relation with the supernatural ; 
 their voices are clear and solemn. If this condition reaches 
 
268 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 actual clairvoyance , they are stated to be able to give ac- 
 curate information of things lying outside the natural 
 purview of our faculties, to read sealed letters, tell the time 
 marked by a watch laid on the pits of their stomachs, read 
 the thoughts of others, see into the future and at a distance, 
 and so on. Lastly, such persons give revelations about 
 heavenly things and things of another world, about the 
 goings-on in heaven and hell, the condition of things after 
 death, about spirits and the souls of departed persons, etc. 
 etc. ; but it has been noticed these revelations always agree 
 in the most remarkable manner with the views of the 
 churches or clergy under whose influence the somnambu- 
 list happens to be. 
 
 Clairvoya?ice, in its present form , but not in its essence, 
 is an invention of modern times. Among the ancient 
 Greeks, the soothsaying Pythoness on her tripod was a 
 clairvoyayite of an antique kind, who was prompted by the 
 hierophant to give her answers, the same as the answers of 
 our modern somnambulists bespeak prompting. During 
 the middle ages, the various outbreaks of religious insanity 
 brought similar manifestations of inspiration in their wake. 
 An interesting example of this sort is yielded by the often- 
 repeated stories of the exaltes in Languedoc. An instance 
 of modern inspiration, almost more remarkable than the 
 foregoing, is offered by the “mediums” in America, who 
 pretend that they are employed by spirits hovering between 
 heaven and earth to make writings, oftentimes very volumin- 
 ous, known to the public. Mediums receive their inspiration 
 in a half unconscious condition, and write down things which 
 far transcend their knowledge and ability. One of the most 
 notable and most celebrated of those mediums, A. J. 
 Davis, living near New York, and writing in a theosophi- 
 cal sense, had made so close an acquaintance with the 
 spirits that he could give their weight within three or four 
 ounces ! 
 
 There can be no scientific doubt that all alleged cases of 
 clairvoyance or supernatural inspiration rest on fraud or 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 269 
 
 illusion. Clairvoyance , that is, perception beyond the 
 
 natural reach of the senses, is, on physical grounds, an im- 
 possibility. It is a natural law, which can be denied by none, 
 that man requires eyes to see and ears to hear, and that 
 the senses are subject to a certain limit in space, which they 
 are unable to exceed. No one can read an opaque sealed 
 letter, nor see from Europe to America, nor look into the 
 future, nor read the thoughts of others, nor perceive with 
 closed eyes what passes around him, nor perform intel- 
 lectual work which transcends his knowledge or ability. 
 Those truths rest on natural laws which are immutable, and 
 of which, by analogy with natural laws generally, it may 
 be said that they admit of no exception ; none the less 
 there are philosophers who hold that in the somnambulist 
 the subject is relieved of the non-real but merely subjective 
 limits of time and space, and that therefore an insight into 
 the future and into distance is conceivable and possible. 
 
 In reality it has never been possible to substantiate such 
 a deviation from the regular course of nature ; or in other 
 words, no reasonable and unprejudiced person has ever 
 observed such a deviation. Spirits, ghosts and miracles 
 have, until now, been seen only by children or by imbecile 
 and superstitious people. Whenever such pretended super- 
 sensual manifestations have been closely looked into, they 
 have come to nothing. All the twaddle about the intrusion 
 of a higher or spiritual world into ours, or of the existence 
 of departed spirits, has been found to be unmitigated non- 
 sense. No dead man has ever yet returned to the 
 earth. There are neither table-turning nor other spirits. 
 “Science,” says F. A. Lange, “knows but one kind of 
 spirit, the human." All this admits of no doubt in the 
 eyes of the scientist who has trained himself by observation 
 and experience of Nature ; constant contact with Nature 
 and her laws has imparted to him a deep conviction that 
 these laws admit of no exception whatsoever. No doubt 
 the majority of people, that is to say the great multitude, 
 think otherwise, for they are always inclined to give more 
 
270 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 credence to one fool than to the sayings of seven wise men. 
 There is no help for them but education. 
 
 The absolute impossibility of the existence of such a thing 
 as clairvoyance having been conclusively proved by science, 
 each alleged instance of such second sight has been shown 
 by sober and trustworthy observers to rest on mere decep- 
 tion or delusion. As far back as the year 1783, when the 
 famous magnetizer Anton Mesmer happened to be in Paris, 
 a scientific commission, headed by the famous Bailly , 
 made a full report on the subject, in which, as the result of 
 a careful examination, it was stated that the whole matter 
 was a downright swindle, resting upon hallucination, de- 
 ception of the senses, excitement of the imagination and 
 tendency to imitation. The Paris Academy of Medicine 
 arrived at the same result by numerous and searching ex- 
 periments. In the year 1837 this Academy offered a prize of 
 3000 francs to any one who would, within three years from 
 date, read through a board. No one obtained the prize. 
 In the year 1853 a scientific commission appointed ad hoc 
 at Geneva went through a number of experiments with M. 
 Lassaigne and Madame Prudence Bernard , a celebrated 
 Paris clairvoyante, but the result was purely negative. 
 Clairvoyance has been nowhere, whenever proper rules 
 have been made to exclude fraud and deception. In the 
 same year, 1853, Louise Braun, of Berlin, the well-known 
 miracle-working maiden of the Schifferstrasse, who, for 
 four years, had deceived thousands of people and had 
 actually been asked by the highest authority in the land to 
 restore sight to a blind king, was convicted by a jury as a 
 common swindler. In the year 1857, Prof. Pefiton of Bos- 
 ton offered a prize of 500 dollars for clairvoyance or for the 
 exercise of supernatural powers, as for instance playing a 
 piano or tilting a chair without touching the object. No 
 less than fourteen of the most famous American mediums 
 tried for it, but without result. One of the four professors 
 of the commission presided over by the famous Agassiz 
 declared on June 29, 1857, that the whole was deception 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 27I 
 
 and fraud, and cautioned the public against such practices. 
 It is nevertheless true that among the clear-headed Yan- 
 kees spiritualism flourishes to a large extent and that year 
 by year it supplies hundreds of inmates to the lunatic 
 asylums. The contagious nature of this description of 
 mental disease has been lately (1878) shown in an Italian 
 town in the province of Udine, where one person who pro- 
 fessed to be possessed with “ evil spirits” gradually made 
 a large number of possessed people (mostly women), of 
 whom some claimed to be prophetesses and clairvoyantes. 
 The district was finally put under martial law, and seven- 
 teen of the ‘ ‘ possessed ” were conveyed to the asylum at 
 Udine. (Compare the report of Dr. Colin in the Annales 
 d’ hygiene.) 
 
 The author has had an opportunity of carefully watching 
 a clairvoyante, of whom remarkable stories were related, 
 under circumstances in which fraud or any idea of personal 
 gain on the part of her magnetizer was hardly to be thought 
 of. In this instance, the clairvoyance of the lady provedsuch 
 a dead failure that all the revelations she made were either 
 false or else expressed in such general terms that there was 
 really no meaning in them. During the clairvoyant state 
 she gave the most ludicrous reasons for her blunders. Her 
 clairvoyance having turned out an egregious failure, she 
 passed into a state of celestial ecstasy, in which she con- 
 versed with her Ange or guardian angel, and repeated 
 religious verses. In doing so, she once came to a dead stop, 
 and to assist her memory, had to begin the stanza over again. 
 No such thing as a condition bespeaking higher intel- 
 lectual faculties was revealed during her ecstasy ; her 
 diction was quite commonplace, and her expression awk- 
 ward and uncultured. The author left her with the con- 
 viction that she was an impostor, who deceived her pro- 
 tector. Yet there were gentlemen in the company who 
 would not believe that there was any fraud. 
 
 After all that has been said, it cannot be doubtful that such 
 supersensual and supernatural powers do not exist and can 
 
272 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 never have existed, and that there is no sense in the state- 
 ment that the soul under such circumstances flies from the 
 brain to the sympathetic system and there unconsciously 
 achieves unnatural things. 
 
 Sympathetic or miraculous cures all rest either on fraud 
 or on imagination, except so far as the psychological power 
 of faith or imagination may come into play. Their range 
 is as wide as the world and as old as history. Homer’s 
 great hero, Achilles, possessed wonderful powers of heal- 
 ing in his right toe, and Plutarch relates that king Pyrrhus 
 healed hypochondriasis by rubbing with his right toe. In 
 Egypt, the emperor Vespasian performed miraculous 
 cures with his foot. To say anything further on the physi- 
 cal impossibility of such cures would be an insult to the 
 understanding of our readers. 
 
 The same remark applies to the appearance of spirits in 
 whatever form they may come, whether as regular ghosts, 
 or as table and furniture spirits, or as Weinsberg demons, 
 or as Davenport’s press, bell or trumpet spirits. Such 
 astounding aberrations of the human mind can only be met 
 with the soothing words of Vitale , “that even the most 
 ludicrous follies find heads that are made to believe in 
 them.” 
 
 As regards forebodings and second sight by which things 
 or circumstances are seen or known that have happened, 
 are happening, or shall happen at other times or in other 
 places, and in which the prescience of death forms the 
 principal part, all that has already been said of claivoyance 
 holds good for them as well. It is a sad sign of the times 
 and of philosophic error that we find even excellent writers 
 and learned men, prompted by the pressure of philosophical 
 prejudice, who advocate such notions, and periodicals of 
 high standing that are not above imbuing the public with 
 such horrible nonsense. 
 
 The wide range of dreams has lately been turned to 
 account in exactly the same way. Their psychological 
 significance — or rather non-significance — has long been 
 
SEAT OF THE SOUL. 273 
 
 recognized by the common proverb : “ Traume sind 
 Schdume ! ’ ’ (Dreams are mere froth.) 
 
 Somnambulism (sleep-walking, lunacy, and somnambu- 
 lism proper) is a condition of which, unfortunately, very 
 little is known by exact and trustworthy observations. Yet, 
 even without possessing an accurate knowledge of them, we 
 are able to designate as fables and accordingly reject the 
 mythical and absurd stories related about somnambulists. 
 No somnambulist can run up walls, or speak in languages 
 unknown to him, or achieve intellectual tasks which are 
 above the reach of his faculties. Apparently there is 
 nothing more than the mere outcome of memory in all that 
 seems mysterious in the whole matter. 
 
 A certain form of artificially induced night or sleep-walk- 
 ing or artificial somnolency is termed hypnotis77i (from the 
 Greek word vnvo<r, sleep) ; this had been known for a length 
 of time, but only of late has it been brought under general 
 observation by the exhibitions of the Danish magnetizer, 
 Hansen. It is a condition of sleep or stupefaction, arti- 
 ficially induced by external influences on the nerves of the 
 senses or of the skin, and generally accompanied by a loss 
 of sensation, muscular rigidity and partial palsy of the 
 nerves and senses ; it apparently consists in a functional 
 disturbance or suspension of activity in certain parts of the 
 cortex of the cerebrum. It therefore belongs rather to the 
 province of pathology than of physiology, for there are but 
 few persons who, having a leaning that way owing to a 
 certain irregularity in the condition ot their nervous or 
 blood system, can be thrown into hypnotism. In this case 
 there can be no peculiar nor special power of the mag- 
 netizer or experimenter, nor can the phenomenon be traced 
 to the development of supernatural capabilities, for all the 
 experiments tried in this direction have completely failed ; 
 the whole effect is brought about by strictly natural causes. It 
 is probable that hypnotism accounts for much that occurs 
 at exhibitions of animal magnetism, which the public are 
 unable to understand, e. g. the loss of sensation or a start- 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 274 
 
 ling magnetization from a distance ; and it is not likely 
 that a long time will pass before we shall find out the true 
 nature of this highly interesting condition by accurate 
 observations. 
 
 From all that has been said in this and in the previous 
 chapters, we are led to endorse the words of O. Ule, who 
 says : “It cannot be denied that perception by the senses 
 
 is the source of all truth and of all error, and that the 
 human mind is a product of metabolism.’’ 
 
Innate ideas. 
 
 Nihil est in intellect!!, quod non fuerit in sensu. 
 
 There is in our mind nothing that has not been in our senses. — Moleschott. 
 The secret of direct knowledge is sensation. — L. Feuerbach. 
 
 T HE question whether there are such things as what 
 Voltaire calls ide'es innees and Locke designates as 
 innate ideas , is one of the oldest, and in our opinion 
 one of the most important items of research in Nature. By 
 answering this question we satisfy ourselves also as to 
 whether man, the product of a higher world, has received 
 the form and environment of this existence as something 
 alien and foreign to his own essence, with the tendency to 
 shake off the earthly veil and to return to his spiritual 
 origin ; or whether he is in a necessary and indissoluble 
 connection, in his spiritual as well as in his bodily nature, 
 with the world that has produced and conceived him, and 
 whether he has received his own essence from this world 
 in such a way that he cannot be separated from it without 
 perishing himself — as the plant cannot exist and live 
 without the maternal soil. The question is not one shrouded 
 in an impenetrable mist, but it has, as it were, flesh and bone 
 to it and can be understood without that philosophic clatter 
 of words, which too many people, unfortunately, still re- 
 gard as the true language of wisdom. Happily, that philo- 
 sophical labor of Sisyphus to which, in Germany, during 
 the first half of our century, so many eminent men devoted 
 their lives and their efforts to no purpose, has met with a 
 
 stout barrier in our own time in the appearance of empiri- 
 cs) 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 276 
 
 cal or experimenal science and the vast success achieved 
 by it. The mere philosophical phraseologists with their 
 obscure and prolix language are getting fewer and fewer 
 every day, and the tendency of the age is an honest 
 striving after philosophic truth and clearness, and after the 
 revival of a philosophy based upon the criticism of actual 
 facts. 
 
 The French philosopher Descartes , or Cartesius, taught 
 that the soul entered the body, armed with every possible 
 knowledge, and having only forgotten it when leaving the 
 mother’s womb, gradually came to remember it again 
 later on. The English philosopher Locke , the founder of 
 Sensationalism (born 1632), argued against this view with 
 great force and contended against the theory of innate 
 ideas. According to him, all ideas spring on the one hand 
 from experience and observation, on the other from in- 
 ward reflection on that which has been acquired by ex- 
 perience or observation. In this he followed his famous 
 countryman Thomas Hobbes (born 1588), who had taught 
 even more plainly that all knowledge originated in ex- 
 ternal experience and that reason and understanding 
 were nothing but reckoning with impressions arising from 
 sensations and conveyed by the nerves. According to both, 
 the course of knowledge is not from the general to the 
 special or individual, but the reverse ; the latter precedes 
 the former. 
 
 Upon the strength of actual and incontrovertible facts we 
 have no hesitation in declaring ourselves opposed to 
 the theory of innate ideas, opinions, or truths, as set forth 
 by Plato or Descartes. There are no prepared conceptions 
 in our thoughts, neither are there any innate ideas or moral 
 truths which remain unchanged at all times, under all cli- 
 mates, and among all individuals and nations. On the 
 contrary, daily experience clearly proves that exactly the 
 opposite is the case, and that in these things the greatest 
 possible variety may be found everywhere. It further 
 teaches us most conclusively that thought in man, as 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 277 
 
 Virchow remarks, “develops but gradually, ” keeping pace, 
 in doing so, with the number and importance of the im- 
 pressions received, and in the working-out of these by 
 the organ of thought. Man, the same as any animal, is de- 
 veloped gradually in the maternal womb scarcely to be 
 distinguished in form and size from an insignificant plasm, 
 by the eye, even with the help of the microscope. At a 
 certain stage of this developement, the embryo becomes 
 capable of movement within the womb, but these move- 
 ments are not spontaneous ; they are induced by what is 
 called reflex. The embryo does not think, it is not 
 self-conscious, and when, as Prof. Kussmaul assumes, 
 intelligence begins to develop in its lowest form, this takes 
 place only by means of the obscure sensations which may 
 be caused by touching the sides of the womb and by the 
 absorption of the amniotic fluid. No trace of remembrance 
 of this embryonic condition is ever found in man’s after-life. 
 
 In connection with this it is important to glance at the 
 somewhat ludicrous scientific discussion which has taken 
 place as to the exact period of the quickening of the human 
 embryo , a controversy which became of practical value 
 directly the killing of the embryo began to be considered 
 a moral and legal offence. Seeing that such a crime can 
 only be committed against a living being, it was of the 
 greatest importance to know at what period the personal 
 soul assumed its seat or place in the embryo during the 
 progress of gestation. The scientific and logical impossi- 
 bility of fixing a date proves the absurdity of the whole 
 theory according to which a higher power breathes into 
 the foetus or unborn being a ready-made soul, equipped 
 with certain ideas. Accordingly, the Roman jurists put 
 forth the view that the embryo should not be regarded as 
 a distinct being, but only as a part of the maternal body, 
 belonging to the mother and being within her power. The 
 destruction of the embryo was therefore permitted by law 
 and custom among the Roman women, and the Greek 
 philosophers Plato and Aristotle declared themselves in 
 
278 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 favor of this custom. The Stoics considered that the child 
 only received a soul when it first began to breathe. In the 
 time of the Roman jurist Ulpianus (A. D. 200), the de- 
 struction of the foetus was first prohibited, and this indeed 
 was owing to the influence of Christianity, which regarded 
 the fcetus as an immortal being, partaking of Adam’s fall, 
 and therefore doomed to everlasting damnation if it was 
 killed unbaptised. The Corpus Juris fixed the fortieth day 
 after conception as the period of the soul entering into the 
 foetus ! The later jurists were of opinion that conception, 
 quickening and psychical life all occurred simultaneously — 
 a view which is not consonant with scientific experience. 
 Any one who has ever seen a human or animal ovum 
 under the microscope, with the spermatozoa that have 
 penetrated within it, can only smile at this idea of an egg- 
 soul. No doubt, this germinal matter must be imbued with 
 the physical and material tendencies and dispositions that 
 are inherited from the parents, and on the basis of which 
 its psychical or intellectual faculties are developed later on 
 in the same way as its physical characteristics ; but it 
 would be utterly preposterous to speak of such a thing as a 
 real psychical or spiritual stock existing therein, or of its 
 innate notions, knowledge or ideas. 
 
 In earlier ages we meet with no such religious and philo- 
 sophical exuberance as is inherent to ours and which often 
 causes the simplest things to be looked upon in a false 
 light. Moses and the Egyptians held the deliberate opinion 
 that the child in the mother’s womb has no soul. Ac- 
 cording to the morality of the Talmud, the unborn child is 
 only a part of the mother, and artificial abortion is per- 
 missible. This was also the case throughout all antiquity, 
 and continues the same now among a large number of non- 
 Christian nations. In Arabia, the Islam was the first to 
 put an end to this pernicious offence against public morals. 
 
 Neither is it possible or conceivable that at the birth, or 
 at the moment when the severance takes place between 
 mother and child, a ready-made soul, that has been espy- 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 279 
 
 ing that very instant, suddenly makes its appearance and 
 takes possession of the new dwelling, in the same way as 
 the evil spirit entered the possessed. The psychical or 
 spiritual existence of the individual develops gradually and 
 very slowly as a result of the interaction that takes place 
 between the individual and the external world by means of 
 the awakening senses. It is, as we have seen already, 
 quite possible, nay, it seems certain, that in the womb, 
 chiefly by hereditary transmission, the bodily organization 
 of the new individual acquires certain tendencies and pre- 
 dispositions which, at a subsequent period, when impres- 
 sions from without arrive, will develop into intellectual 
 properties and characteristics. Both among animals and 
 men there may be transmitted, from parents to their young, 
 gradually developed tendencies, mental habits, or disposi- 
 tions of the nerve-system or the thought-organ, acquired 
 during life, and tending in a definite direction ; but a con- 
 scious conception, idea or clear intellectual knowledge can 
 never be inborn as such .* 
 
 The theory put forward by Rudolf Wagner, one of our 
 most distinguished physiologists, in conjunction with the 
 philosopher// Lotze, as though the existence of an im- 
 materal, divisible and transmissible soul-substance were 
 proved by the physiology of generation and the trans- 
 mission of mental peculiarities from parents to children, is 
 utterly untenable and rests on the false notion that the 
 
 "The sucking of the newly-born child at the mother's breast is not the result of 
 a conscious thought or a voluntary act, but is purely reflex ; in other words, it is 
 brought about mechanically by the aid of a well-known process in the nerves, in- 
 dependently of volition and consciousness. The child therefore not only sucks at 
 the breast, but at anything put into its mouth. There are also children who have 
 to be taught with much trouble to suck properly. Here again inherited tendency 
 or impulse may come into play. See Schneider’s Der thi.rische Wille, (Leipzig, 
 1880) Altogether, if in the life of men or still more of animals there are often 
 found phenomena which have the appearance of innate ideas, these are always 
 to be explained by the laws of “ heredity,” first set in the right light by the influ- 
 ence of the Darwinian theory. On this question full and complete details may be 
 found in the Author’s pamphlet on Die Macht der Vererbung , (Leipzig, 1882), as 
 well as in the work by Th. Riblot on Heredity, (Leipzig, 1876), which deals with 
 the matter treated of here. 
 
280 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 germinal matter of animals has actual psychical contents. 
 Such cannot be divided, nor transmitted, nor inherited. 
 
 The further development of the childish mind, proceed- 
 ing by sensational paths and in conformity to the teaching, 
 training, and example received, always within the deter- 
 minate limits of its bodily organization and conditions, 
 militates so clearly and irrefutably in favor of the objective 
 origin of the soul that no theoretical argument is capable 
 of shaking it. While the mind grows in strength and 
 practice, while external impressions cumulate and are re- 
 peated, an internal picture of the external world forms 
 itself slowly and gradually on the maternal basis of the ex- 
 isting organ of thought, and views, ideas and conceptions are 
 created. A long and toilsome period must elapse before 
 man reaches full self-consciousness and learns to gradually 
 turn his organs and limbs to certain uses, and before he 
 distinguishes himself as a person from the All. An illus- 
 tration of this is that children never speak of themselves at 
 the outset in the first person. This gradual, unbroken, and 
 partly unconscious mental growth, causes man, in the 
 sequel, when in full possession of his mental faculties, to 
 forget his origin, to despise his mother, the world, and to 
 regard himself as the direct son of heaven, from which he 
 imagines that knowledge, or his whole conceptual world, 
 has come as a spiritual gift. 
 
 But he is taught better by an unprejudiced survey of his 
 past and a glance at those unfortunate ones to whom 
 Nature has denied the possession of one or more of the 
 senses, and who, such as deaf and dumb persons, can only 
 be educated partially into a condition worthy of humanity. 
 The same holds good of those unhappy creatures who, by 
 avarice or cruelty, have been shut up as children in dark 
 isolated places, and there held sequestrated of all human 
 fellowship and kept without any mental impulse ; or again 
 of men who, from their earliest childhood, have grown up 
 far away from human society, in woods, among animals, 
 and so on. They live and feed like animals, they have no 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 281 
 
 psychical sensation, save the craving for food, and show no 
 trace of that godly inspiration or “ divine spark ” which 
 in the spiritualistic view should be “ innate” in man. 
 
 The animal world also affords clear proofs in opposition 
 to the theory of innate ideas, although the so-called in- 
 stinct of animals has been put forward as strikingly sup- 
 porting this theory. In a future chapter we will try to show 
 that nowhere is there to be found an instinct, in the generally 
 accepted sense of an unconscious, immutable, irresistible, 
 never-erring natural impulse, directed to the achievement 
 of definite objects, and whose origin can only be explained 
 by divine or supernatural intuition ; but that animals, like 
 men, think, learn, perceive, experience and reflect, al- 
 though in a less developed proportion or degree. More 
 particularly are animals taught, like men, and they do learn 
 by the influences of their surroundings, of parents, experi- 
 ence, age, example, etc. , even though they may be moulded 
 more than are men, to one or another mode of thinking, 
 acting, or feeling, by the tendencies and dispositions of the 
 nervous system inherited from their parents and ancestors. 
 Thus, the well-known proficiency exhibited by song-birds in 
 singing is by no means innate as such, but the innate ten- 
 dency must be called forth and developed by teaching 
 and example. Therefore the identical kind of birds, such 
 as goldfinches, have quite different songs in different 
 countries ; many songsters imitate alien songs ; and single 
 birds, especially those that are reared in solitary confine- 
 ment, always remain clumsy singers and sing strange notes ; 
 in some places there are no good singers, because the best 
 have constantly been caught and can give no instruction ; 
 the yellow-hammer of Germany has a cadence quite dif- 
 ferent from that of the Alps ; no two singers are found to 
 be quite identical ; and individual birds are often heard to 
 regularly rehearse their songs. 
 
 An attempt has also been made to use animals as living 
 advocates of the theory of innate ideas, by arguing thus : 
 Animals possess senses just the same as man does, and 
 
282 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 often much keener ones, yet they remain but animals. But 
 those who adduce this as evidence overlook the general 
 differences that exists between man and animal, especially 
 the difference in the size and organization of the thought- 
 organ, as well as the difference of physical structure and of 
 the conditions of life. The senses are not the producers, 
 but only the mediators of intellectual qualities. They 
 transmit impressions from without to the brain and nervous 
 system, which elaborate them in conformity with their 
 material nature and energy. Without the senses this 
 whole process cannot go on, and therefore the senses are 
 the source from which all knowledge arises directly. But 
 even with the senses, however keen they may be, the pro- 
 cess can only go on to a limited extent, when the thought- 
 apparatus is not well formed or developed. In a former 
 chapter we spoke at some length on the relationship that 
 exists between the animal and the human brain. The 
 brain possesses innate talents or dispositions to be active in 
 one direction or another, but it possesses no innate ideas, 
 views, conceptions or knowledge. Nay, all these talents 
 and dispositions will ever remain without reality and with- 
 out development, if impressions from without are wanting ; 
 these are just as necessary for the evolution of a real men- 
 tal or psychical capacity as one chemical body is necessary 
 to form a chemical compound with another. 
 
 The existence of certain general ideas or mental con- 
 ceptions has been brought forward in refutation of the 
 sensational theory ; these, it is alleged, rule so largely and 
 with such power, definiteness and generality in the life of 
 the individual and of nations, that it is impossible to regard 
 them as originating empirically or through experience ; 
 therefore, it is said, they must have originated in human 
 nature as such, and be indelibly stamped thereon by a 
 higher power. Among these are to be reckoned above all 
 metaphysical, aesthetic and moral conceptions, such as the 
 ideas embodied in the words true, beautiful and good. 
 
 These objections are easily met. First of all it must be 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 283 
 
 remembered that what is called the ideal is not the work 
 of a single individual, but is the intellectual blossom or 
 fruit won by the whole race and by the united toil of many 
 centuries and countless generations. The idea thus gradu- 
 ally acquires a certain historical right and objective form, 
 so that in time the individual is no longer obliged to per- 
 sonally go through the whole process from the beginning, 
 but only needs to take in that which exists already ; and 
 in doing so he is powerfully assisted by the disposition of 
 his organs of thought toward this special form of activity, 
 inherited from his parents and ancestors. Only slowly and 
 gradually the aboriginal primal man, tossed about wildly 
 by the storm of his animal desires, rose from mental in- 
 anity to the idea or ideal. 
 
 “Art, poetry, science, morality, all these highest mani- 
 festations of the human mind,” says Ribot, “are like a 
 fragile and costly plant, that has come up late and been 
 fertilized by the long toil of countless generations. The 
 idea has not revealed itself once and for all ; it unveiled it- 
 self gradually.” 
 
 Without this necessary retrospect at the historical evolu- 
 tion of the ideal, it may appear to the individual — who 
 has acquired it from the first moment of his existence by a 
 thousand invisible threads, and who suddenly finds it in his 
 consciousness — as though that ideal must necessarily be 
 innate. But it could never have been evolved in historical 
 time without that definite relation of the objective world to 
 the perceptive faculty of the individual. It therefore be- 
 speaks a very limited range of ideas to be so much bound 
 up in supernatural notions as to say, like Liebig , that we 
 do not know “ whence the ideal originated.” 
 
 The same argument holds good for “a priori" ideas 
 relating to certain forms of thought or perception, such as 
 time , space and causality , with regard to which many 
 philosophers maintain that they were originally implanted 
 in our minds prior to and independently of all experience, 
 and that we are therefore only able to think according to 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 284 
 
 these forms. This latter remark is doubtless true, but not 
 because the human spirit was originally so formed by a 
 Higher Power, but because the ceaseless interaction that 
 has been kept up from time immemorial between the 
 human mind and the external world has not had and could 
 not have had any other result. Perhaps also the extension 
 in space of our organ of thought, and the succession in 
 time of brain-processes, are sufficient in themselves to ex- 
 plain this apparent innateness of the conceptions of time 
 and space. 
 
 Another thing must also be noted, which reduces to 
 nothing the divine or supernatural, and therefore innate 
 origin of ideas, as set forth by the ideal philosophers : If 
 sesthetic, moral and metaphysical ideas were innate, direct 
 and supernatural, it is obvious that they would have to 
 show a perfect similarity everywhere and under all circum- 
 stances ; they would require to have an absolute value, and 
 an absolute worth. But in reality we find that they are in 
 the highest degree relative and changing, that they exhibit 
 the greatest and widest divergencies at different times 
 and among different nations and individuals — which di- 
 vergencies are so great that the very opposite takes place. 
 
 As far as aesthetic conceptions are concerned, no stronger 
 proof can be given of the unstable and changing, relative 
 and undecided character of these than what is called fashion , 
 which is often pleased with the most marvellous and repul- 
 sive things and not unfrequently with the most incon- 
 ceivable monstrosities. The ideas of beauty are like the 
 ideas of suitability. A thing appears suitable or beautiful 
 to us, because we are accustomed to or acquainted with its 
 existence or appearance, because it has become suited to 
 our eye, or because the sensation of the eye-movement oreye- 
 stimulus has gradually adapted itself to it. On the same 
 ground, we should in all probability find it no less beauti- 
 ful and suitable if it had gradually attained this agreement 
 with our want or sensation under some very different shape. 
 Therefore, as a rule, all those sights appear beautiful to 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 285 
 
 man which most frequently come before him and excite his 
 perceptive apparatus in an accustomed fashion, while all 
 unacustomed or anomalous impressions produce the con- 
 trary effect. Things which at other times and amongst 
 other people aroused, or still arouse, the greatest admira- 
 tion or delight, appear to us repulsive or revolting, while 
 on the other hand we are charmed with that to which 
 others are indifferent. Thus, classical antiquity, despite its 
 high aesthetic culture, had scarcely a conception of the 
 beauties of Nature which we admire so highly, and it min- 
 gled in its works of art human and animal forms in a 
 manner that seems to us unbeautiful and undignified. South- 
 ern people admire only clear bright colors, because their 
 eyes are accustomed to a brilliant light-stimulus, while 
 Nothern folk, less accustomed to this, give the preference to 
 softer darker shades. 
 
 It is impossible, as Darwin very accurately remarks, that 
 there should be in the human mind any general standard 
 of beauty in relation to what lies immediately around us, 
 or in relation to our own bodies, seeing that in this we 
 meet the strangest varieties or antitheses. A Chinaman 
 considers a woman charming who is as fat as possible, has 
 stunted feet, oblique eyes and large ears, whereas all these 
 are to our taste repulsively ugly. The Japanese admire 
 only a yellow skin and stain their teeth black, because to 
 them it seems hideous to have white teeth like a dog ; 
 while our poets find nothing they praise more highly than 
 the dazzling pearls of their fair ladies’ teeth. The inhabit- 
 ants of the island of Ceylon, by chewing betel-nut, have be- 
 come so accustomed to the sight of black teeth, that white 
 teeth appear ugly to them ; and the long slightly curved 
 noses of the Cinghalese met with so little favor in the eyes 
 of the Chinese conquerors of their island, in comparison 
 with their own flattened ones, as to make them send home 
 an official report, saying that the dwellers in Ceylon were 
 an ugly race, with beaks in their faces instead of noses. 
 The Batokas of South Africa knock out the two upper 
 
286 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 incisors, when persons of either sex come to the age of pu- 
 berty ; in consequence of this the lower incisors grow to an 
 unusual length, and the whole face acquires an unpleasant 
 and aged appearance. Yet every girl who has not under- 
 gone this horrible operation considers herself as ugly. At 
 all times and in all countries, generally speaking, people of 
 the most diverse races and nations have endeavored to im- 
 prove or beautify their bodies by disfiguring or cutting 
 about different parts of it, so as to suit the general or indi- 
 vidual taste. Striking out or pulling out teeth or filing 
 them short or to a point — the very teeth which are neces- 
 sary for use and beauty and the loss of which is artificially 
 repaired by civilized men — pulling out the hair of the 
 head and beard, which we regard as the most beautiful or- 
 nament of a male or female head, or the eye-brows, 
 without which we cannot imagine a handsome human face ; 
 piercing the nose, lips or ears, and putting in wooden plugs 
 or other foreign bodies into the openings ; bringing about 
 artificial malformations of the skull ; fancifully painting or 
 pricking the skin in the most disgusting fashion — all these 
 and similar arts are the practical results of the conception 
 of beauty among most savage tribes, among whom, as 
 Darwin remarks, the human face only appears to exist for 
 the purpose of being changed and disfigured in the most 
 variegated and extraordinary manner. 
 
 Lady Baker, the wife of Sir Samuel Baker, was advised 
 by the wife of a chief in Latoaka to pull out the teeth of the 
 lower jaw and to wear a long, pointed crystal in the under- 
 lip, in order, as she thought, to strikingly improve her 
 appearance ! A hollow or bowl-shaped ring, called a pe- 
 lele, worn in the lower lip, gives a hideous appearance to 
 the women of some South African negro tribes. Living- 
 stone asked a chief what was the good of this custom. The 
 chief, quite astonished at this question, replied : “ For the 
 sake of beauty, of course. That is the only beauty women 
 have. Men have beards, women have not. Where would 
 they be without pelele ? ” 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 287 
 
 The last anecdote reminds us of the pride taken by men 
 of bearded races in their beards, while those of beardless 
 races take the greatest pains to pull every single hair off 
 their faces, as something decidedly repulsive. The beard- 
 less New Zealanders have a proverb that there is no wife 
 for a hairy man, while the bearded Turks regard the beard 
 as so important that they swear by that of their prophet. 
 Our European women, too, no doubt regard a beard as 
 beautiful ; for they have a proverb that a kiss without a 
 beard is like soup without salt. Hearne, a trustworthy ob- 
 server, who lived for years among the North American In- 
 dians, says : “ Ask a Northern Indian what constitutes 
 female beauty, and he will answer : ‘ A broad flat face, 
 small eyes, high cheek-bones, three or four oblique black 
 lines on each cheek, a low forehead, a large broad chin, a 
 knotty hooked nose, a yellow brown skin, and breasts 
 hanging down to the waist.’ ” 
 
 These examples of fundamental differences of aesthetic 
 conceptions might easily be multiplied. If these concep- 
 tions have anything in common, it is due to the community 
 of race, surroundings, and general conditions of life, and in 
 a narrower sphere to the force of custom, of education, ex- 
 ample and heredity. It may easily be shown that no form 
 of art has ever succeeded in creating an ideal, severed en- 
 tirely from reality, and not having borrowed or rather 
 gathered together the whole of its parts from the external 
 world. The task of art is to unite the scattered lovelinesses 
 of units into one harmonious, though but mentally con- 
 ceived, ensemble. For the rest it must not be forgotten 
 that in the world of art and thought of each individual na- 
 tion the influence of its own interior and exterior idiosyn- 
 crasy or peculiarity may readily be recognized. 
 
 In exactly the same way, moral conceptions are to be 
 properly looked upon as the result of gradual learning and 
 training. Nations in a state of Nature lack almost all moral 
 qualities, and commit cruelties and follies of which civilized 
 peoples have no conception ; nay, both friend and foe con- 
 
288 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 sider that such actions are the right thing. The moral 
 conception of property , for instance, is as a rule either ab- 
 sent entirely, or present only in the most limited degree ; 
 hence the great tendency of all savage nations towards 
 thieving. Among the Indians, a well executed theft is con- 
 sidered a most meritorious act ; even the ancient Lacede- 
 monians looked upon a theft carried out with great dexterity 
 as worthy of the highest commendation. To the ever poor 
 and hungry gypsies, larceny does not appear as a crime, 
 but simply as a necessity. According to Captain Mon- 
 travel’s report, the Kanak’s of New Caledonia divide what 
 they possess with every one who is in need, and are so ready 
 to give away whatever they receive to the first-comer, that 
 among them an object of great value often passes rapidly 
 through a thousand hands. Even among nations of a 
 higher degree of development the sense of property is often 
 very weak, and the Chinese and Slavs scruples as to pro- 
 perty are well known not to rank among points of honor. 
 
 What applies to theft, applies likewise to lying, cheating, 
 murder and incest, which are customary and licit, nay, 
 even commended, among tribes in a state of nature and 
 among half-civilized nations. Thus, with the aborigines of 
 Further India, Dr. J. Heifer ( Asiatische Reisen ) tells us, it 
 is a regularly followed maxim of worldly wisdom never to 
 speak the truth, even when there is no occasion for lying ; 
 and according to the same author, this fault is shared in by 
 almost all Asiatic nations. According to Stone’s report 
 (Journ. of the Anthrog. Jnstii.), love of truth and common 
 honesty are quite unknown among the Motus, a race of 
 New Guinea. They are inclined only to lying, cheating 
 and stealing, and do not regard theft as a crime. The 
 feeling of gratitude is unknown to them. They believe in 
 no God and practice no religious observances. Brehm 
 ( Reiseskizzen aus Nordost-Afrika, 1855) relates that “ the 
 negroes of East Soudan (Nile-country) not only palliate 
 cheating, theft and murder, but regard them as acts quite 
 in keeping with man’s dignity.” Lying and deceit are re- 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 289 
 
 gatded by them as a triumph of intellectual superiority 
 over stupidity. The reports of the experienced African 
 traveller Burton tell us even worse things of the negroes of 
 Eastern Africa. Their reason is not like ours ; it gropes 
 without logic in nothing but contradictions. Compassion, 
 uprightness, gratitude, prudence, family affection, modesty, 
 conscientiousness and remorse, are unknown things to the 
 East African ; he has no history, no traditions, no poetry, 
 no morality, no imagination, no memory, no thought be- 
 yond the most limited range of mental perceptions, no idea 
 of the great mysteries of life and death, no religion and no 
 faith beyond the crudest fetishism. He knows of no grief 
 nor mourning over the death of relatives, no attachment 
 between parent and child ; on the contrary, in his case, 
 as among wild beasts, a natural hostility prevails between 
 father and son. He murders,' robs, steals, lies, gambles, 
 drinks and begs, to almost any extent. Captain Speke re- 
 lates of the Somalis, the inhabitants of a district lying to 
 the south of Aden, and separated from the Arabian coast 
 by the gulf of Aden, that a successful fraud pleases them 
 better than any other way of getting their livelihood, and 
 that the narration of such deeds is the chief topic of their 
 social gatherings {Blackwood’ s Edinburgh Magazine). 
 Among the Fiji Islanders the shedding of blood is a virtue 
 and not a crime. Whoever the victim may be, whether 
 man, woman or child, whether slain in battle or murdered 
 by treachery, to be in any way a recognized murderer is 
 the condition most eagerly coveted by every Fiji Islander ! 
 Children murder their parents, and parents their children 
 without compunction. Gratitude is so little known to them 
 that when the captain of a foreign ship had for two months 
 nursed a native who had injured his hand on board of his 
 ship, and had eventually cured him, this native being de- 
 nied a gun for which he had asked on leaving, set fire to 
 the captain’s drying house, containing goods to the value 
 of 300 dollars. Among the savages generally, murder is 
 considered as quite worthy of commendation, and the 
 
2 go 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 more skulls of murdered men any one has to show, in 
 whatever method he may have come by them, the more he 
 is honored. With them, to forgive an enemy is a great 
 mistake ; the highest virtue is revenge. In Hindustan 
 there actually exists a terrible league of professional mur- 
 derers, called Thugs, who practice secret murder as a re- 
 ligious rite.* 
 
 Werner Munzinger ( Ueber die Sitten und das Recht der 
 Bogos, Winterthur) relates of the Bogos, a tribe of North- 
 ern Abyssinia, that among them the ideas of good and evil 
 are perfectly confused and signify nothing more than use- 
 ful and useless. Virtuous are to them the fearless, the 
 avengers of blood, the silent ones who hide their hatred 
 within themselves, until a good opportunity arises ; the 
 courteous, the proud, the indolent who despise menial 
 work ; the magnanimous, the hospitable, the ostentatious, 
 the prudent. Robbery brings honor, larceny only is des- 
 pised. In the same way, Waitz relates ( A?ithropologie 
 der Naiurvolker , 1859) that such a savage, on being asked 
 about the difference between good and evil, at first con- 
 fessed his ignorance, but after some reflection said that it 
 was good when one took other people’s wives, but bad 
 when one’s own were taken ! A similar story is told by 
 Sir John Lubbock of the natives of Polynesia, who in their 
 language are not able to express the moral difference be- 
 tween good and bad. Upon a missionary trying to make 
 them understand that it was bad and wicked to consume 
 their fellow-creatures, they answered with great composure : 
 “ But we assure thee that it is very good.” Another sav- 
 age, to whom a missionary was trying to convey the idea 
 of the pangs of an evil conscience, could, according to E. 
 Tylor, form a conception of it only by likening it to a se- 
 vere stomach-ache. Up to this very day, the Albanians 
 have no expression in their language for the ideas of good 
 and bad. 
 
 * It is related of such an Indian Thug that he felt remorse, because he had not 
 strangled and robbed as many travelers as his father had done before him. 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 29I 
 
 According to the report of the Russian traveler N. von 
 Nidducho-Maclay, the savage Papuans in the interior of 
 the Malay Peninsula have no idea of incest, and the fathers 
 exercise the jus primce noctis on their marriageable 
 daughters — a custom prevalent also in other places, e. g., 
 in the Eastern Moluccas. Among the Damaras, a South 
 African tribe, who practice polygamy and have no idea of 
 incest, Anderson found ( Explor . in South- Western Africa , 
 London, 1856) mother and daughter together in the harem 
 of a chief. Unions by marriage between brothers and sis- 
 ters are an abomination to us, but in antiquity, especially 
 in Persia and Egypt, they were frequent and were thought 
 quite honorable and commendable. 
 
 Suicide also was regarded among the ancients as an 
 honorable death, worthy of a great and good man, whilst 
 at the present day it is branded as a sin by the religious 
 feeling of civilized nations. 
 
 Infanticide is rightly regarded by civilized nations as 
 one of the most odious of crimes, and as an abominable 
 sin. But it is a fact that almost all civilized nations went 
 in former ages through a period in which it was regarded 
 as perfectly natural and permissible. This was the case 
 even down to Christian times, for infanticide was first pro- 
 hibited by Constantine in the Roman Empire, throughout 
 which it was quite general in the first century after Christ. 
 Even at this very day, child-murder is a customary thing 
 among almost all savage tribes, probably owing to the dif- 
 ficulty of procuring means of subsistence, or of conveying 
 the children while migrating from place to place. It is a 
 fact that custom and habit gradually stunt even the power- 
 ful feeling of motherly love to such an extent as to make 
 mothers help to devour their own infants. Infanticide 
 it most generally practiced in the South Sea Islands, where 
 two-thirds of the infants born are killed, and half the un- 
 born are destroyed by abortion. Babies at the breast are 
 always killed at the mother’s death, and buried with her. 
 In Australia also, in Central Africa, in India, among the 
 
292 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Indians of North America and among various nomadic 
 tribes, such as the Kamtskatkans, infanticide is still 
 practised, while in China the murder of female infants is 
 quite common. Among many savages, especially the 
 nomadic, those effete with old age, the same as children, 
 are put to death and eaten. This, according to Captain 
 Wilkes’ report, is the principal reason why among the 
 Fiji Islanders there are but few people living above the age 
 of forty.* 
 
 But not only among savages, but also among civilized na- 
 tions, and among individuals belonging to such, are moral 
 conceptions often undeveloped or contradictory to a remark- 
 able extent. These conceptions vary very much and are mere 
 questions of degree, or in other words, they depend in 
 each instance on the actual circumstances of the case or on 
 individual views. This is true in such a measure that it al- 
 ways seems an impossibility, and will continue to be 
 impossible, to obtain anywhere an absolute and specific 
 definition of what is meant by good.f Thousands upon 
 thousands of examples taken from daily life, may easily be 
 quoted in support of this. If at the first blush there ap- 
 pears to be something constant and immutable in the prin- 
 cipal laws of morality, the reason lies chiefly in the settled 
 form of legal enactments and social customs which human 
 society has thought necessary and has gradually established 
 for its own preservation. But since the formation of 
 human communities must, on the whole, have required the 
 same conditions everywhere for its maintenance, it is not 
 surprising that such enactments and customs should exhibit 
 a certain similarity everywhere, which is to be accounted 
 for by strictly natural facts. Nevertheless they vary a 
 great deal individually according to changing external cir- 
 
 * Compare the admirable paper on Infanticide as a national custom, by C. 
 Haberland, in the Globus , 1880. 
 
 t That the conception of good cannot be defined is generally admitted. Theo- 
 logians have thought that they could supply the definition in saying : “ That is 
 good, which is enjoined by the commandments of God.” But the commandments 
 of God are, as a matter of course, made up by the theologians themselves. Any 
 one can easily draw his own inference from this. 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 293 
 
 cumstances and according to the variations of times and 
 opinions. The killing of an unborn foetus did not appear 
 to the Romans, as we have already remarked, as an action 
 contrary to good morals ; at this day, on the contrary, it is 
 severely punished, while the Chinese still practice infanti- 
 cide and look upon it as the right thing. Paganism re- 
 garded the hatred of an enemy as the highest virtue ; 
 Christianity on the other hand demands love even for an 
 enemy. Now which of the two things is moral ? A 
 number of things now branded by custom as abominable 
 crimes were at one time thought perfectly proper. Train- 
 ing, teaching, example, make us acquainted with these 
 precepts day by day, and lead us on to believe in an in- 
 nate moral law or “conscience,” the component parts of 
 which are found, on closer inspection, to be either sections 
 of the criminal code, or incarnate expressions of the cus- 
 toms of social life. When a Mohammetan woman feels 
 remorse for having unveiled her face, or a Hindu in sup- 
 posing that he has eaten something unclean or lost caste, 
 no one is likely to ascribe such a feeling to anything more 
 than a social prejudice.* At the same time, there is a 
 great difference between the laws of the state and those of 
 morality ; a yet greater discrepancy exists between those 
 
 ♦The innate moral law, or “conscience,” or the “ categorical imperative,” as 
 Kant calls it, is now relegated to the realm of fancies by most philosophers. 
 Schopenhauer terms it an "infant-school morality.” A characteristic item, ac- 
 counting for the origin of it, is the observation made among savage races, that 
 the moral precepts current among them are always limited to their own tribe and 
 observed within it, because non-observance would endanger the existence of the 
 tribe; whereas in dealing with a strange tribe every moral or rightful theory is 
 cast aside, and every form of cruelty and license is not only allowed, but is 
 actually enjoined. The conception of a common "humanity,” or a human right 
 prevalent throughout the race, is an achievement of civilized modern historical 
 progress. But even at the present day, national antipathy or chauvinism breaks 
 out anew, whenever opportunity offers, thus showing that the race-hatred in 
 man’s heart, having, as it were, an atavistic tendency, is yet far from being ex- 
 tinguished, and only requires a spark to make it burst once more into flame. In 
 reality, conscience and the moral sense are nothing more than the expression of 
 social instincts that have grown strong by long habit, and depend on the knowl- 
 edge of the laws of civilized social life and on custom. It is therefore not 
 surprising that we sometimes find in degraded criminals, who have grown up in 
 the midst of brutality and coarseness, an entire absence of remorse and moral 
 
294 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 of the State, of custom and of religion, and those pre- 
 scribed to each individual in each special case by his own 
 nature and reflection. These differences afforded of yore 
 the greatest tragic motifs both in history and poetry, and 
 will continue to do so. The State and Society often brand 
 as a crime what is morally a noble deed. The whole deep- 
 seated difference between the ideas of “juridical” and 
 “moral” springs but from outward conditions, which is 
 the best proof of the fact that the idea of good has no ab- 
 solute standard. Most crimes are committed by persons 
 belonging to the lower classes, and are almost invariably 
 the demonstrable results of bad training and education, or 
 of an innate weakness of the intellectual faculties. The 
 whole moral nature of man is most intimately connected 
 with his outward conditions. The higher our degree of 
 civilization, the higher must also be the standard of morality 
 and the greater the diminution of crime. And as regards such 
 a thing as an inborn idea of right, the very notion of it is sim- 
 ply preposterous. “All jurists, ’ ’ says Czolbe (loc. cit.),“ base 
 right upon an empirical or effective contract between men, 
 without which it is as inconceivable as the theorems of geom- 
 etry are without the conceptions of lines, angles, figures, or 
 limited bodies.’ ’ Ifthere were really an objective right, would 
 it be possible for a difference between right and law to exist ? 
 
 The idea embodied in the word true owes its origin and 
 gradual development in even a greater degree to the pro- 
 gress of science and of human knowledge, and so little can 
 it lay claim to stability that men have at all times been, and 
 probably will always be found breaking each other’s heads 
 and necks over its correct interpretation. If, notwithstand- 
 ing this, the laws of thought or logic exhibit a certain un- 
 changeable necessity or stability, this proceeds from the 
 causes given on page ioi, and also from the fact of the law of 
 
 feeling. The moral law itself, however, rests neither on a contract, as jurists will 
 have it, nor on an innate idea, as moralists contend, but it is a pure natural law, 
 enacted, as it were, by the pressure of necessity, without which the existence of 
 human society would be, and would ever have been, a matter of impossibility. 
 Without morality no society, and without society no human being can be 
 imagined. 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 295 
 
 thought, like the moral law, having first arisen from a natural 
 or organic evolution, and being a law of nature determined 
 by the unchangeable laws of the Universe. Human reason 
 as we have shown, is but the mirrorthat reflects the universe, 
 and logic and mechanics are the same thing. 
 
 Thus the most exact of all sciences, mathematics, on the 
 empiric or a priori character of which so much has been 
 said and written, rests on purely objective conditions, 
 without the existence of which the mathematical laws 
 themselves would be impossible ; for this reason most 
 mathematicians are now of opinion that mathematics be- 
 long to the physical, and not to the philosophical or specu- 
 lative sciences. The ideas of space, size, dimension, of 
 height, breadth and depth are all taken from sensative ex- 
 perience and from observation, and would never have 
 existed without. Numbers represent no absolute, but only 
 relative ideas, which have no reality apart from the things 
 denoted by them ; they only represent the form under 
 which we contemplate the reality. Therefore, a number 
 per se and without reference to an object is a mere ab- 
 straction. The formation of the numerals, as we are taught 
 by etymological records, did not take place till very late, 
 and seems to have cost a great deal of labor to each of the 
 nations. To this day there exists many savage races who 
 are very backward in this respect, and to whom the ex- 
 pression of large numbers is a total impossibility. The 
 savage negroes of Surinam cannot count beyond twenty, 
 and in doing so, they take their fingers and toes as sym- 
 bols, and use even the names of these to designate the 
 figures. Whatever exceeds the twenty fingers and toes 
 they do not know how to count, and therefore call it “wiri- 
 wiri,” which means : much. According to Sir John Lub- 
 bock ( Prehistoric no Australian language has words 
 
 beyond the number four ; the Demaras and Abepoinas 
 count only up to three ; some Brazilian tribes no further 
 than two. Whatever exceeds three, the Abepoinas call 
 ‘ ‘ Pop,” or much. Many American and African tribes, ac- 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 296 
 
 cording to Tylor, denote the number Jive by the expression 
 “a whole hand”; for six they say, ‘‘one of the other 
 hand”; for ten, ‘‘both hands”; for eleven, ‘‘one of the 
 foot”; for twe?ity, “an Indian”; for one -and- twenty , “one of 
 the hand of another Indian ” ; and more briefly, for eleven, 
 ‘‘foot one”; for twelve, ‘‘foot two”; for twenty, ‘‘the 
 whole person,” or ‘‘a man.” The number one hundred 
 is designated as “ five men.” The Arfakis of New Guinea, 
 as Dr. A. E. Meyer was able to prove conclusively, can 
 only count accurately up to Jive , and have a definite ex- 
 pression for this number only. In counting from five to 
 ten they are apt to blunder ; but the use of their fingers 
 helps them out of the difficulty. They express twenty by 
 holding out fingers and toes together, and beyond this their 
 notions of numbers do not extend. Yet they are in other 
 respects by no means unintelligent. 
 
 Many savage tribes entirely lack expressions for general 
 notions, or properties, which are common to different 
 bodies, as “color,” ‘‘tone,” ‘‘tree,” etc.; they have a 
 separate word for each kind of color and each kind of tree, 
 but no general expression. According to the Catholic 
 missionary, Father Baegert, who lived for a long time 
 among the natives of lower California, these people have 
 no words for general notions or abstractions, such as life, 
 death, weather, heat, cold, friendship, truth, illness, mas- 
 ter, servant, judgment, rich, poor, pious, old, young, etc.; 
 they have only expressions for material things, which can 
 be seen or felt, or for individual persons, such as a young 
 woman, an old man, etc. ( Rep . of Smithsonian Insti. 1864.) 
 
 Above all, there is no such thing as metaphysical or 
 transcendental knowledge, properly speaking, and all sys- 
 tems of metaphysics, however ingeniously devised, have 
 broken down in course of time. “ Metaphysics,” says A. 
 Lefevre very strikingly, “ rise above that which is, in order 
 to attain that which is not.” All philosophical reasonings 
 which leave the ground of facts and objects, soon become 
 incomprehensible and untenable, and are mostly arbitrary 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 297 
 
 and subjective radiations of a judgment formerly obtained 
 empirically ; they are a fantastic play upon words and 
 notions. Let any one try if he can to conceive of himself 
 a general notion or so-called abstraction, without neces- 
 sarily falling back on external objects as examples ! “Even 
 the highest ideas,” says Virchow, ( Die Einheits-Bestre- 
 bungen in der wissenschaftlichen Medicin , neue Ausgabe, 
 1885), “are evolved slowly and gradually from the in- 
 creasing wealth of sensative experience, and their truth is 
 only guaranteed by the possibility of bringing forward con- 
 crete examples of them in the real world.” 
 
 As to the often repeated assertion of the sudden appear- 
 ance of general notions in childhood, it must be wholly 
 denied that such an appearance ever takes place under 
 circumstances in which the influences of education, sur- 
 roundings, example, etc., are entirely missing. The sense 
 of justice can only develop in a boy when association with 
 others enables him to institute comparisons and to grasp 
 the limits of the various spheres of the rights of others, 
 while the absence of such conditions as a rule produces 
 selfishness, arrogance and impatience. Not until after a 
 tolerably advanced age has been reached does Society re- 
 cognize personal responsibility — and this proves clearly 
 enough that no innate idea of right is admitted to exist in 
 the child. Neither do the moral or aesthetic ideas of a 
 child show the least trace of an innate perception. On the 
 contrary, children often have very odd, and to adults ludi- 
 crous tastes. They do not distinguish, or distinguish only 
 with difficulty, between meum and tuum ; they have no 
 conception of the wrongfulness of lying and stealing ; they 
 are great egotists ; they show clear tendencies in the di- 
 rection of fraud and cruelty, thus resembling in many 
 respects savage nations, which, from want of education and 
 training, are very much like big children. The resem- 
 blance is most striking, owing to the absence of a psychical 
 quality which, among civilized nations, shows itself power- 
 fully but at the age of puberty, viz., that of modesty ; 
 
298 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 in this respect there is no doubt that an inherited ten- 
 dency or disposition comes into play in the case of civilized 
 races. On the other hand, if we are to believe the reports 
 of Diibok, Orton, Schiele and others, an entire absence of 
 modesty is found among the Australians, Melanese, South 
 Africans, Andaman Islanders, etc. Some go about per- 
 fectly naked, or only cover their sexual organs to defend 
 them against external injury, and carry on sexual inter- 
 course publicly, like animals. The sculptures on ancient 
 Indian temples prove, as Lubbock remarks, ( Prehistoric 
 Afa?i, vol. II., page 262) that a nation may rise to a state 
 of considerable culture, without recognizing the slightest 
 necessity for clothing ; and even at the present day, the 
 ideas of decency and modesty prevalent in India and in the 
 Island of Ceylon are as wide apart from ours as are the 
 two poles from one another.* Even the ancient Greeks, 
 the classic models of our higher education, had scarcely a 
 conception of what we now understand by modesty and 
 propriety in connection with sexual relations. Adultery 
 and every form of promiscuous intercourse were quite cus- 
 tomary among them, and were practiced without the least 
 fear of blame or publicity, while in their theatres the 
 grossest obscenities were shown on the stage. The Ish- 
 maelites , an Oriental religious sect, are perfectly destitute 
 of any feeling of modesty ; atrocious beliefs and extra- 
 ordinarily cynical customs are the chief features of the 
 Ishmaelitish form of worship. The conceptions of decency 
 and propriety current among the Japanese, a. people far 
 advanced in civilization, differ so fundamentally from our 
 own, and appear so indecent to us, that it is impossible to 
 draw any parallel between their notions and ours. What 
 we contemptuously designate by “ prostitution ” is in Japan 
 the usual custom, and is ordered and regulated by the laws 
 and under the superintendence of the state ; and this view, 
 so strange to us, extends to the whole public and private 
 
 ♦See the interesting writings of A. Jacoillot : Voyage au pays des Bajaderes , 
 and Voyage an pays des perles. 
 
Innate ideas. 
 
 299 
 
 life. Secret non-licensed prostitution alone is not counte- 
 nanced. “It is difficult,’’ says Reinhold very strikingly, 
 “to find any explanation of this difference, if we do not 
 admit that morality is a mere relative idea.’’ He who 
 maintains, as Liebig does, “that the moral nature of 
 man remains eternally the same,’’ can have no conception 
 of the almost innumerable facts connected with this which 
 go to prove the very opposite. 
 
 Although the sense of truth, of beauty, and of right, 
 must to a certain extent be aroused by the influence of the 
 surroundings in every fairly educated person, that lives 
 under normal social conditions, it can and must yet be 
 carried into practice in order to attain strength and value. 
 How differently does a learned man, accustomed to think 
 and enlightened by reason, judge and argue, from one who 
 devotes his whole energy to manual labor only ! How 
 very differently does the man trained in life and in the 
 school of history enter the lists for right and justice, from 
 the unfledged youth, who still follows mere purblind in- 
 ward impulses ! How differently do the artist and the 
 outsider judge of beauty ! As a plant takes its root in 
 the soil, so do we, along with our knowledge, thought and 
 feeling, take root in the objective world, bearing aloft the 
 blossom of the ideal ; but, when snatched away from that 
 soil, we must, like the plant, wither and die. 
 
 The inference we derive from all this and which stands in 
 the closest connection with it, is that we can have no 
 knowledge and no idea of the Absolute , that is to say of 
 anything which is beyond the sensational world around us. 
 Let the metaphysicians seek, as they may, to define the 
 absolute ; let religion endeavor, as it may, to arouse be- 
 lief in the absolute by the theory of direct revelation — 
 nothing can hide this internal defect. All our knowledge 
 and perception is but relative and arises only from an anti- 
 thetical comparison of the sensational things surrounding 
 us. We have no conception of darkness without light ; 
 none of high without low, of heat without cold ; absolute 
 
3 °° 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ideas we possess none. We are not able to conceive other- 
 wise than vaguely, an idea of “ everlasting ” or “ endless,” 
 because our reason, limited sensationally by time and space, 
 finds in these words an insuperable boundary to that idea. 
 Since we are accustomed in the sensational world to find a 
 cause wherever we meet an effect, we have erroneously hit 
 upon the existence of a First Cause for all things, although 
 no such cause is perceptible to the range of our present 
 faculties, and although it is at war with scientific experience. 
 “ In countless groups of natural phenomena,” says Czolbe 
 ( loc . cit .) ‘ ‘ it is certain that they originate in, or are the 
 effects of causes. From this springs the mistaken inference 
 that Nature itself, or the Universe, has a primary cause. 
 But there is not only no experimental ground for the idea that 
 Matter and Space have originated and can be changed and 
 destroyed, but not even a conception can be formed of this. 
 We must therefore look on Matter and Space as co-eternal.” 
 From all this it appears that there are to be found in no 
 direction clear scientific facts which compel us to believe in 
 the existence of innate ideas, conceptions, views, knowl- 
 edge, or thoughts, implanted in our minds from without 
 by a higher power. Nature knows neither views nor objects, 
 neither psychical nor material conditions imposed upon her 
 from without or from above. From the beginning to the 
 end she has evolved organically out of herself, and keeps 
 evolving without ceasing. We close this chapter with the 
 words of Moleschott, which every one ought to lay to 
 heart: — ‘‘In the school instruction on thought, sharp 
 boys are often much hampered in their intellectual pro- 
 gress, because the instructors won’t teach them to form 
 their judgment, conception and inferences from plain ex- 
 isting facts. Despite the utter failure to which they lay 
 themselves open, they continue seeking to impart in their 
 scholar the notion that he must withdraw his eyes from the 
 green tree, and must turn his thoughts from matter, in 
 order to attain to regular abstract ideas, with which the 
 lortured brain moves in a world of shadows 
 
The Idea of God. 
 
 God is a blank tablet, on which there is nothing save that which thou thyself 
 hast written.— L uther. 
 
 God is a thing intangible, that has no connection with time or space. The more 
 thou graspeth at him, the more he escapes thee. — Angelus Silesius (1624-1677). 
 
 Man paints himself in his gods. — Schiller. 
 
 Whenever knowledge takes a step forward, God recedes a step backwards. — 
 Naquet. 
 
 I F it is true that there are no such things as innate views 
 or ideas, it stands to reason that the contention of 
 those must be mistaken who assert that the idea of 
 God , or conception of a supreme personal being who has 
 created the world and who rules and maintains it, is natur- 
 ally innate, necessary or instinctive in the human mind, 
 and therefore irrefutable by any arguments drawn from 
 reason. If we believe the adherents of this view, it is 
 proved by experience that there are no nations nor indi- 
 viduals, however savage or uneducated, in whom there is not 
 found the idea of God and the belief in a supreme personal 
 being, and that this universal consensus gentium is the best 
 proof of the truth and accuracy of the said idea itself. As 
 a matter of fact the exact opposite is proved by an intimate 
 knowledge and unprejudiced observation both of indi- 
 viduals and of nations in a savage and undeveloped 
 condition ; for, according to the unanimous testimony of 
 traders, philosophers, navigators and missionaries, there 
 exists a by no means small number of peoples, who have 
 either no trace of religious belief, or who have it in so 
 strange and imperfect a form that it scarcely deserves the 
 
302 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 name of religion. If there are, therefore, many philos- 
 ophers and naturalists who look to “ religiosity,” and 
 more particularly to the idea of God as the distinctive 
 feature of humanity, the contention referred to must either 
 be false, or we must make up our minds to deny human 
 character to by no means a small number of actual and un- 
 doubted specimens of mankind. 
 
 “ I cannot entertain the slightest doubt in my mind,” 
 says the famous anthropologist, Broca, ‘‘that there are 
 among the lower races people without worship, without 
 dogmas, without metaphysical conceptions, without gen- 
 eral creeds, and consequently without religion.” The 
 traveler de Lauture writes : “ It is a remarkable error to 
 suppose that all nations believe in a God ; I have found 
 many savages who had no such idea.” Sir John Lubbock 
 (. Prehistoric Time , vol. II., page 277) says : ‘‘Those who 
 hold that even the lowest savages believe in a supernatural 
 being, are maintaining a theory which is in most complete 
 conflict with fact ; ’ ’ and Darwin ( Descent of Man , page 93) 
 writes: ‘‘There is ample evidence, adduced not by mere 
 visitors, but by men who have long resided among savages, 
 that numerous races have existed, and still exist, which 
 have no idea of one or more Gods, and which have no 
 words in their languages to express such an idea.” 
 
 Darwin himself (ibidem page 95) states that in his famous 
 voyage on board the Beagle , he as well as his companions 
 found that the Fuegans (who inhabit the archipelago at the 
 extreme south of the American continent) believed in 
 nothing which we should call God, nor practiced any kind 
 of religious worship. According to R. Elcho ( Wester- 
 mann’s Monatshefte , July, 1881, and a report in thejournal, 
 Globus , vol. XXIX, No. 21), the Californian Indians gen- 
 erally have no idea or conception of a supreme or 
 supernatural being, or of a world-preserving and world- 
 governing power. Some tribes hold that death is the end 
 of everything, while others dream of a better life in a land 
 lying west. When they speak of a “ great Man,” or of an 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 3°3 
 
 “ old Man above,” or the like, this is only a modern form 
 in which their ancient views are couched ; for this being 
 never plays any part in their affairs, nor appears in their 
 popular mythology ; it creates nothing and preserves 
 nothing. Nature is their only God, and her servant is the 
 coyote , a kind of dog or jackal, who, in their theory, made 
 the world and all that therein is. Father Baegert, who 
 spent seven years as a missionary among the Californian 
 Indians, states that idols, temples, religious ceremonies, or 
 divine service, are perfectly unknown among them, and 
 that they neither believe in the one true God, nor worship 
 false Gods. ( Smithson . Contrib. 1863 — 64, page 390). The 
 same or similar statements are made by de la Perouse, 
 Golden, and Hearne, with respect to different tribes of 
 American Indians (compare Lubbock, loc. cit ,, vol. II. page 
 274). The famous English traveler Bates, too (7 he Na- 
 turalist on the Amazon , London, 1863), relates of the 
 otherwise more polished Brazilian Indians on the banks of 
 the Tapajos and Cupari : 11 They have neither an idea nor 
 a conception of a supreme being, and do not trouble 
 themselves about the causes of the natural phenomena 
 surrounding them. They only know one sort of evil, co- 
 bold, who is the cause of their misfortunes.” Nor have any 
 of the Indian tribes dwelling on the banks of the Upper 
 Amazon any word in their language to express'the idea of 
 God ; and the Caishanas Indians who dwell in the same 
 district, do not even practice the ceremonies in honor of 
 the evil demon usual among the other tribes. The same 
 holds good for many of the South American tribes, visited 
 by Azara ( Voyages dans l ’ Amer. merid ., vol II, page 3 — 
 166). Father Dobritzhoffer relates of the nation of the 
 Abepoinas that to his great surprise he did not find in the 
 language of these savages a single word which signified 
 God, or a divine being (quoted by Lubbock, vol. II, page 
 276). Of the Indian tribes of the Payaguas, living on the 
 Paraguay, near Asuncion, M. A. Baguet reports {Bull, de 
 la Soc. Geogr. d' Anvers, 1878, vol. II, page 63), that they 
 
304 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 have no idea of a higher being, and that all the attempts of 
 the Jesuits to convert them have egregiously failed. Ac- 
 cording to Lubbock (page 273) it is stated in the missionary- 
 reports on the South American Indians of Gran-Chaco, 
 that they ‘ ‘ have no religion, perform no divine service, and 
 do not possess the smallest idea of God or of a supreme 
 being. They do not distinguish between right and wrong ; 
 they have no hope of present or future rewards, and no 
 fear of punishment, nor secret dread of a supernatural 
 power, which they can propitiate by offerings or idolatry.” 
 Africa, the dark quarter of the globe, yields examples 
 equally striking of a total absence of religion and belief in 
 God. Among the negroes of Oukanyama, one of the many 
 stations of South Africa, Ladislas Magyar could find no 
 trace of any religion. They appear to reverence their 
 king or chief as a supreme being, and seek to propitiate 
 him by human or animal sacrifices. The Lakutas, who in- 
 habit the district of the sources of the Nile, were found by 
 S. W. Baker ( The Albert-Nyanza , 1867) to be without any 
 trace of a religion or belief in God ; even the fetishism so 
 common among negroes was perfectly unknown to them. 
 According to the reports of the celebrated Livingstone, the 
 Betjuanas, or Bechuanas, one of the most intelligent tribes 
 of Inner Africa, as well as all the mid-African tribes, have 
 no trace of worship, no kind of idols, and no single re- 
 ligious idea, ( Bull . de la Soc. d' Anthrop. de Paris , 1864, 
 page 227). Andersson ( Travels in South Africa , London, 
 1856) reports similarly that the language of the Bechuanas 
 lacks a word for the conception of a Creator ; and the 
 missionary Moffat relates of them in his characteristic way : 
 “ I have often wished to find something whereby I might 
 reach the natives’ hearts ; I have sought among them for 
 ‘ an altar to the unknown God,’ for some hint on the creed 
 of their ancestors, of the immortality of the soul, or any 
 other religious idea. But they have never thought of 
 anything of the kind. When I spoke to the best among 
 them of a Creator, who ruled heaven and earth, of the fall 
 
3°5 
 
 THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 of man and the redemption of the world, of the resurrection 
 of the dead and of everlasting life, it appeared to them that 
 I was talking about things that were more fabulous, absurd 
 and ludicrous than their nonsensical stories of lions, hyenas 
 and jackals. When I told them it was necessary to know 
 and believe such and such teachings of religion, I drew 
 from them nothing but shouts of the greatest astonish- 
 ment, just as though it were too foolish for even the most 
 stupid people to listen to it.” Of the Kaffirs, a race 
 known to be well-developed, both physically and men- 
 tally, Oppermann says : “ They have not the most remote 
 conception of a supreme being ; their chief is their God.” 
 The harmless race of Hottentots believe in a good and a 
 bad spirit, but know neither temple nor divine service, 
 except some festive dances in honor of the full moon, and 
 the veneration for a little shining beetle, which is almost 
 regarded as a God. Le Vaillant, who lived a length of 
 time with them, says that he found among them no trace 
 of religion nor of belief in God, ( Voyages dans T Afrique, 
 vol. I, page 93). The Bushmen, a dwarfish species of 
 these, know of no kind of divine worship. In the rolling of 
 the thunder they think they descry the voices of evil 
 spirits, and they answer with curses and oaths. According 
 to Gustav Fritsch {Die Eingebornen Siidafrika's, Breslau, 
 1872) the Ovaherero or Vieh-Damaras of South Africa 
 have no religion, but only external superstitious customs, 
 connected with witchcraft, amulets, spirits of animals, ven- 
 eration of trees, and the like. Burton {Trans. Ethnol. 
 Soc. New Ser., vol. I, page 323) says of some of the tribes 
 living around the lakes of Central Africa, that they “ be- 
 lieve neither in God, nor in angels, nor in devils.” 
 
 If we glance at Australia and at the islands of the South 
 Sea and the Pacific Ocean, we find the following: “The 
 native Australians,” says Hasskarl {Austr alien und seine 
 Colonien, 1849), “ lack the idea of a Creator, and a moral 
 Governor of the world, and all attempts at instructing 
 them on this point result in non-comprehension, or a sud- 
 
306 force and matter. 
 
 den breaking off of the conversation.” The French cast- 
 away, Narcisse Pelletier, who lived seve?iteen years among 
 these savages at Red Rock Point, to the south of Cape 
 Direction, relates that they have no idea of a supreme 
 being and no kind of religious ceremonies. Latham says 
 of the Australians that they have not yet succeeded in 
 forming even the roughest outlines of a religion, and that 
 their mind seems too indolent even to be superstitious. 
 “ What can be done with a people,” a missionary remarks 
 about them, “ whose language has no words for ‘justice,’ 
 
 ‘ sin,’ and the like, and to whose mind the ideas expressed 
 by these words are wholly foreign and incomprehensible ? ” 
 Sir M. Bradley says of an Australian tribe : “ The mono- 
 syllabic language of these savages consists of more or less 
 animal sounds. They have no sort of superstitious ideas, 
 and do not show the slightest trace of a belief in a future 
 life,” (Revue scient. 1873, page 473). The MotusofNew 
 Guinea, according to the report in the Journal of the An- 
 thropological Institute, believe in no God, and practice no 
 religious rites. The spirits of the dead, they believe, go to 
 ‘‘Taulu,”a word which apparently signifies empty space. 
 In the Damood Island, between Australia and New Guinea, 
 Jukes found ( Voyage of the Fly, I, page 164), “ no trace of 
 religious belief nor of divine worship.” The Samoan Is- 
 landers have neither temples, nor altars, nor sacrifices, 
 (. Mission Enterpr., page 464). Dr. Monnat says of the 
 Mincopis, the inhabitants of the Andaman Islands : “ They 
 smear themselves with clay and paint, but wear no clothes. 
 They seem in fact to be devoid of all modesty, and re- 
 semble wild animals in their habits. They have no idea of 
 a Supreme Being, no religion, no belief in a future state.” 
 ( Trans. Etlmol. Soc., II, page 45). The inhabitants of New 
 Britannia (Melanesia) in the Pacific are, according to Dr. O. 
 Finsch, ( Gartenlaube , 1882, page 606), very good-natured 
 indeed, but they have no trace of a religion or of any kind 
 of worship ; the belief in the existence of man after death is 
 also quite unknown to them. The Negritos, or black 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 307 
 
 aborigines of the Philippine and Molucca Archipelago, 
 have, according to Dr. Th. Mundt-Lauff of London, no 
 kind of religion beyond slight traces of fire and sun-worship ; 
 they have neither idols nor temples. Corpses are turned 
 with their faces towards the sun. 
 
 Similar phenomena are found even in the ancient cradle 
 of civilization, Asia ; several famous and wide-spread re- 
 ligious systems have arisen here, in which belief in God, or 
 the idea of God, is utterly unknown. An English officer 
 reports that the Karens of the kingdom of Pegu (India) be- 
 lieve in no God, and only recognize the action of two evil 
 spirits. The inhabitants of the Pasummah Labar, in the 
 island of Sumatra, pray to no idols nor to any other ex- 
 ternal object ; they have no priestly caste, and no idea of a 
 Supreme Being who created all things. 
 
 The Briti:h Colonel Dalton relates of the Dschuangas, 
 a primitive savage race of India, who regard themselves as 
 the direct descendants of the first man, that they do not 
 believe in witchcraft ; their language has no expression for 
 God, heaven or hell, and so far as is known, they have no 
 conception of a future state. In misfortune they offer 
 fowls to the sun and the earth, that they may obtain a 
 good harvest ; beyond this there is no trace of any kind of 
 worship. The Khasias, or Khasiates, also an Indian tribe, 
 content themselves under such circumstances with the 
 breaking of hens’ eggs ; beyond this they have no religion, 
 so Dr. Hooker (quoted by Lubbock, Prehistoric A/an, vol. 
 II, page 227) tells us. Of the happy dwellers in the Liu- 
 Kiu island of Amami Oshima, near Japan, Dr. Doderlein, 
 who stayed there sixteen days, and who wrote of them in 
 the Mittheil. der deutschen Gcscllschaft fur Natur-und 
 Volkerkunde Ost-Asiens — informs us that they have 
 neither God nor Gods, nor prayers, nor temples, nor 
 priests. The only objects of their religious reverence are 
 their ancestors. Perhaps this worship, Dr. Doderlein con- 
 siders, represents the original form of the Japanese Sintho 
 or Sintu religion, which is no longer to be found in Japan 
 
3°8 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 itself. The Japanese, a nation of thirty-four millions, who, 
 according to the testimony of all travelers, stand very high 
 in morality and in social and political customs, believe 
 neither in God nor in immortality ; they are, to use the 
 expression of Burrows, the American traveler, “a nation 
 of atheists, ’ ’ or, according to others, a race of skeptics or 
 materialists. Yet Alcock, the English traveler, asserts 
 that national education has made greater strides among no 
 race on earth than it has among the Japanese. 
 
 In connection with the atheistic religious systems of Asia, 
 we must note that the famous religion of Buddha, which 
 will be more fully dealt with in a subsequent chapter, knows 
 nothing of God or of the immortality of the soul, and 
 preaches non-existence as the highest goal of freedom. 
 Equally atheistic with Buddhism are the two religious 
 systems of the Chinese, so that, according to Schopenhauer 
 ( Ueber die vierfache Wurzel dcs Saizes vom zureichenden 
 Grunde , 2d edition, 1847) the Chinese language has no 
 word for “God” and “creation.” According to the 
 reports of travelers, an entire moiety of the Chinese popu- 
 lation, indeed the more cultured and educated moiety, 
 consists at this day purely and simply of atheists, and 
 practices no religious worship of any kind. In the whole 
 of Sanskrit, too, the original language of the pantheistic 
 Aryans, there is no vocable which signifies to “ create” in 
 the Christian sense of the word. Altogether, Schopen- 
 hauer holds that the idea and revelation of a personal God 
 originated in but one nation, viz., the Jews, being subse- 
 quently propagated in the two religious systems which 
 proceed from Judaism, viz., Christianity and Mahomme- 
 tanism. 
 
 Even Europe is not entirely without Godless races. In 
 the course of the last journey which the Emperor of 
 Austria made through his dominions, he came, so the 
 newspapers state, to a town named Kolomea in Galicia, in 
 the neighborhood of which lives a fine, well-knit race, 
 called the Huzules. Although they are good-natured 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 309 
 
 people enough, they have scarcely any religion, and within 
 a circle many miles in diameter, no churches are to be seen. 
 Once a year only the “ pope,” whom they scarcely know, 
 rides through the town and baptises the new-born children. 
 Yet these people live well and peacefully, they die without 
 the consolations of the church, and go to heaven, if there 
 is one, just as well as those who go to confession four times 
 a year. The Gypsies also, who are scattered over Europe 
 and over half the world, are, according to the close investi- 
 gations of G. Leland, ( The E?iglish Gypsies and their 
 Language , London, 1873), absolute atheists, and have no 
 trace of religious belief, although they have lived for hun- 
 dreds of years among nations with religious creeds.* 
 
 We find the same absence of religious conceptions, in our 
 sense of the word, as among the nations above-named, so 
 within our own midst, in individuals who, by education, 
 teaching, or example, have had no opportunity of becoming 
 aware of the idea of God. We frequently read of men 
 appearing in the police-courts of great cities, such as Paris 
 and London, who have not the least idea of the concep- 
 tions implied by the words God, immortality, religion, 
 etc. The British census has shown that there are millions of 
 people living in England who have never crossed the 
 threshold of a church, and who do not know to what sect 
 or religious creed they belong, f The blind deaf-mute, 
 Edward Meystre, of whom Hirzel gives a full account, had 
 no idea of God, and could not be brought to form such an 
 idea, despite every effort that was made, and although he 
 had very good intellectual abilities. The same was the 
 case with the famous blind deaf-mute Laura Bridgeman, 
 of whom her governess, M. S. Lamson, published a cir- 
 
 * Sir John Lubbock has collected a number of additional well-ascertained ex- 
 amples of tribes absolutely without religion. See his Prehistoric Time , etc. See 
 also the Rev. F. W. Farrar’s Essay on the Universality of Belief in God and Im- 
 mortality, in the Anthropol. Review, London, 1864, August, p. ccxvii, et seq. 
 
 t At the present time there are in England a million persons who are unbap- 
 tised and who belong to no church. “What can you tell me of Jesus Christ?’’ 
 enquired a clergyman of a man in a street of London. “ Never heard of the gen- 
 tleman,” was the answer. 
 
3io 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 cumstantial report (London, Triiber, 1878), and with a 
 second blind deaf-mute, named in the same work, called 
 Julia Bruce.* We referred in a former chapter to the ani- 
 mal and irrational nature of such human beings, who have 
 remained without intercourse with their fellow-creatures, and 
 lack every higher intellectual quality. If Nature is not able 
 to make herself felt with greater power, without teaching 
 and training, it must be assumed that she knows nothing 
 at all of any such innate ideas bespeaking a supernatural 
 origin. All these ideas are implanted by education ; they 
 proceed from the reflection of others or of ourselves, and 
 are not innate. 
 
 Anyone who, regardless of all this, persists in contending 
 that the idea of God is innate, cannot but be led to the 
 conclusion that we are likewise born with a belief in the 
 devil, or the idea of an evil spirit endowed with supreme 
 power, devil, Satan, one or more demons or whatever else 
 it may be called. For it is in evidence that the belief in 
 supernatural powers hostile to man has held in all ages and 
 among all peoples, a sway of scarcely less, and among 
 savages one of far greater extension and importance than 
 the belief in a beneficent God. ‘ ‘ The belief in such terri- 
 ble and malevolent spirits,” says Darwin, ( Descent of 
 Man, page 95), “ is far more universal than that in a good 
 God.” There are many savage tribes which only honor 
 evil spirits, and sacrifice to them in order to win their 
 favor, while they are indifferent to the good spirits. f Be- 
 lief in devils also forms an essential part of the Christian 
 religion, and very properly too, for without him the pres- 
 
 * See the Revue Philos. 1879, No. 3, page 316 et seq. 
 
 fThe Negroes of Gaboon (South Africa) honor the evil spirit ATbuiri, who is, 
 in their opinion, the ruler of this world ; they seek to turn away his wrath, while 
 they do not trouble themselves much about the good Ndschambi. The inhabit- 
 ants of Madagascar worship only the evil spirit Niang ; they are indifferent to 
 their good God, Zamhor. The Patagonians pray only to a devilish being, named 
 Qualitschu, and the same is true of many other savage tribes. The theocracy of 
 the Congo Negroes is entirely based on the worship of the snake, which is the 
 symbol of the devil. Thus the ancient Egyptians paid divine honors to the 
 crocodile, also as a symbol of the devil. 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 3 ” 
 
 ence of evil in the world would be perfectly inexplicable 
 from the Christian point of view ; it is an inevitable conse- 
 quence of thorough belief in God.* 
 
 No one has demonstrated and explained the purely 
 human origin of the idea of God better than Ludwig Feuer- 
 bach. He calls all representations of God and of the 
 Divine existence Anthropomorphisms, that is to say, the 
 production of human fancy and human theories, coined on 
 the model of the human individuality, and he seeks the 
 origin of this anthropomorphism in the feeling of depen- 
 dence and slavishness, which belongs to human nature. “ A 
 God existing independent of and above man,” says Feuer- 
 bach, ‘ ‘ is nothing more than the external and supernatural 
 Ego, freed from its limitations, and considered objectively 
 by the subjective human mind.” ‘ ‘ God is the self-conscious- 
 ness of man. Man created God in his own image.” The 
 history of every nation is an unbroken chain of evidence 
 for this contention, and how could it be otherwise ? With- 
 out knowledge or conception of the Absolute, without a 
 direct revelation — the existence of which is alleged, but 
 not proved, by all religious sects — all representations of 
 God, of whatever religion, could but be human ; and since 
 man finds in animated nature no higher intellectual being 
 than himself, his ideas of a Supreme Being could only be ab- 
 stracted from his own Ipse ; they must be a self -idealization. 
 Therefore do we find reflected in the religious ideas of every 
 nation, most faithfully and characteristically, the conditions, 
 wishes, hopes, nay even the intellectual development and 
 special intellectual tendency that obtained among that 
 nation at the time ; and we are wont to judge of the intel- 
 lectual individuality and degree of culture of a nation by 
 its religion. Take, for example the poetical heaven of the 
 Greeks , peopled with ideal artistic forms, in which the 
 Gods, flourishing in eternal youth and beauty, enjoyed, 
 laughed, fought, and intrigued like men, and found the 
 
 *For further information on this, and on the idea of !God generally, see the 
 author’s pamphlet, Der Gottesbegriff und dessert Bedeutung in der Gegenwart. 
 
3 12 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 peculiar charm of their existence in a personal interference 
 in human affairs — that heaven into which Schiller breathed 
 life in his exquisite poem on the Gods of Greece. Or take 
 the wrathful, gloomy Jahu or Jehovah of the Jews, who 
 punishes to the third and fourth generation ; or the Chris- 
 tian heaven, in which God shares his infinite power with 
 his son, and ranges the celestial orders of the blessed quite 
 in a human fashion ; or the heaven of the Catholics, in 
 which the Virgin Mary, in the bosom of the Saviour, uses 
 her soft womanly power of persuasion in favor of the sin- 
 ners ; or the heaven of the Orientals, in which crowds of 
 blooming houris, splashing cascades, eternal coolness and 
 eternal sensual enjoyment are promised ; or the heaven of 
 the Greenlanders, in which their greatest wish is expressed 
 in the rich superabundance of blubber, fish and seals ; or the 
 heaven of the sporting Indians, in which an eternal suc- 
 cessful hunt rewards the blessed ; or that of the New 
 Caledonians, who hope to fill their future life with the 
 eating of ripe bananas and with similar pleasures ; or the 
 heaven of the Teutons, who dreamed of drinking mead in 
 Walhalla out of the skulls of their defeated foes ; and so on. 
 
 Nay, more than this. Each individual person really pic- 
 tures his own God according to the standard of his own 
 special and personal idiosyncrasy. “Every one,’’ says 
 the priest Meslier in his famous “Testament,’’* in which he 
 so ruthlessly tears the mask off the faces of the bigots and 
 believers in God, “makes his own God in his own way. 
 Your cheerful man cannot believe that God could ever be 
 severe and morose ; the stern, irascible individual requires 
 a God of terror, and looks on all those as heretics who be- 
 lieve in a gentle and indulgent one.” 
 
 *This remarkable work of the honest curate first appeared in Holland in 1762, 
 and was afterwards republished in Paris under the following imprint : Guillaumin, 
 Libraire, Rue Neuve des Petits Champs, No. 61. Its full title is, Le Son Sens du 
 cure y. Meslier , suivi de son Testament. In 1878 it was translated from the 
 French edition of 1830 into both the English and German languages by Miss 
 Anna Knoop, who published it in New York — the English version under the title 
 of Superstition in All Ages, and the German edition under that of Glaube und 
 Vernunft. — Pub, 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 3*3 
 
 Feuerbach also clearly shows the purely human char- 
 acter of the idea of God as seen in the fashion of religious 
 worship and the outward form of reverence to God. The 
 Greek offered meat and wine to his Gods ; the Negro spits 
 chewed food into his idol’s face as an offering ; the Ostiac 
 smears his Gods with blood and fat, and stops up their 
 nostrils with snuff ; the Christian, the Mahometan, the Jew, 
 and the Indian think they can propitiate their God by per- 
 sonal entreaties and by prayers, and that they can even 
 influence his actions. Everywhere human weakness, 
 human sorrows, human desire for happiness ! All nations 
 and religions share in the habit of placing remarkable men 
 among the Gods or the Saints — a striking proof of the 
 human substratum of the idea of God ! How ingenious 
 and true is Feuerbach’s remark, that the cultured man is a 
 very much more refined being than the God of the savage, 
 that God whose intellectual and physical nature must 
 naturally be exactly proportionate to the stage of civiliza- 
 tion of his worshipers. This necessary connection between 
 the human and the divine, and the dependence of the lat- 
 ter on the former, must have occurred with overwhelming 
 clearness to Luther, when he said : “If God sat alone in 
 heaven like a log, he would not be God.” The Greek 
 philosopher Xenophanes of Kolophon (572 B. C.) argued 
 against the superstition of his countrymen as follows : “It 
 appears to mortals that the Gods are like them in form, ap- 
 parel and language. The negroes serve black Gods with 
 flat noses ; the Thracians, Gods with blue eyes and red 
 hair. If the oxen and lions had hands to fashion images, 
 they would give the Gods a bovine or leonine shape.’’ 
 
 The influence of Nature and of the surroundings may 
 also be easily recognized in the ideas that various nations 
 form of the Deity. The exuberant fancy of the Hindus, 
 who live in a land full of tropical wonders and terrors, and 
 who suffer from oriental tyranny, represents their God 
 Siva as a terrible three-eyed monster, wrapped in snakes, 
 clothed in a tiger-skin, holding in his hand a human skull, 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 3M 
 
 wearing a necklace of human bones, and raging like mad. 
 His equally terrible wife Doorga, or Kali, has a dark-blue 
 skin ; but the palms of her hands are red, to denote her in- 
 satiable blood-thirstiness. She has four arms, one of which 
 carries the skull of a giant ; her tongue projects far from 
 her mouth ; round her body and neck are suspended the 
 heads and hands of her human victims. 
 
 If constrained human reason has not been able to divest 
 the idea of God of its anthropomorphic character, or to at- 
 tain a pure abstract idea of the Absolute, the reason of 
 philosophers has been, if anything, even less successful in 
 this respect. If anyone would take the trouble to collect 
 all the philosophic definitions that have been offered of 
 God, the Absolute, the Spirit of the Universe, the Uni- 
 versal Spirit, the pure essence, or the so-called soul of the 
 world, he would get at an awful jumble in which, from the 
 beginning of historical times down to this day, nothing 
 new and nothing better has been brought to light, despite the 
 alleged progress of philosophic science. No doubt there 
 would be no lack of fine words and resonant phrases, but 
 these cannot make up for the want of internal truth. “ Have 
 we,” asked Czolbe, “got one step more ahead in the 
 still accepted ideas of things supersensual than we were 
 thousands of years ago ? What else do we possess of it 
 now but mere words and names devoid of meaning? ” ‘‘It 
 follows,” says Virchow, “that man can conceive nothing 
 outside himself, and that everything lying beyond him is 
 transcendental, as far as he is concerned.” 
 
 There are philosophers who imagine that they can get 
 out of all difficulties by unifying the notions of ‘‘God” 
 and “ Universe,” and who hold that God is neither without 
 nor above the world, but is himself within it, and he has, 
 as it were, changed himself into the universe and has 
 thereby imparted to it all the perfections of his own essence. 
 Thus, the philosophical naturalist Fechner says in his Zend- 
 Avesta : “ God, the aggregation of being and action, has 
 no universe external to himself and no existence external 
 
THE IDEA OF GOD. 
 
 315 
 
 and opposite to himself; he is the One and the All ; all 
 spirits move within his spirit, and all bodies within his 
 body ; he rotates wholly within himself, and is influenced 
 by nothing from without ; nay he is influenced wholly by 
 himself, and in himself, since he embraces the basis of the 
 influence of all existing within himself.” 
 
 That sounds very beautiful, but nevertheless, if we look 
 at it more closely, we find that it is stupendous non- 
 sense. If all spirits move within the spirit, and all bodies 
 within the body of God, if there be no external universe 
 otitside himself, how can he still be God ? Would he not 
 in that case rather represent the substance of all corporeal 
 and spiritual existence, or the sum total of the universe, 
 which has been personified by the definers, whereas the 
 universe in its endless extent and multifariousness is the 
 negation of every personification ? Well may Schopen- 
 hauer remark, as against the Pantheistic theory : ‘‘A God 
 who has allowed himself to be changed into such a bad or 
 imperfect world, must verily have been plagued by the 
 devil ! ” If God is in us all and is the soul of the world, 
 then he must directly partake of all our wickedness and 
 imperfections. He suffers in us toothache and bodily 
 pain ; he denies or insults himself in the mouth of one, 
 while he reveres and worships himself in the mouth of 
 another. In one man he does good, while in another he 
 works evil and contends against his own laws. He worries 
 himself with insoluble riddles, he dies in each individual in 
 doubt and pain, he rewards or punishes himself in a future 
 life, and so on. 
 
 But enough of all this nonsense ! The Pantheistic or 
 universal God is not one hair’s breadth better than the per- 
 sonal God of the Theist. Neither is he a modern discovery. 
 But our modern philosophers love to season old dishes 
 with new sauces, and serve them up as the latest chefs 
 d' oeuvre of the philosophic cuisine. 
 
Personal Continuance. 
 
 From the moment of death onwards, both the soul and body feel as little as they 
 did before birth— P liny. 
 
 — Thy best of rest is sleep, 
 
 And that thou oft provok’st, yet grossly fear’st 
 Thy death, which is no more. — Shakspeare. 
 
 Memento quod pulvis es et in pulverem reverteri9. 
 
 (Remember that thou art dust, and shalt return to dust.) 
 
 Man’s body is dust, 
 
 But his soul lives in his works. — R. Voss. 
 
 I N an earlier chapter we showed by what we consider as 
 irrefutable facts that what is called soul or spirit, stands 
 in an indissoluble relation to its corporeal substratum, 
 especially to the brain ; we have seen that psychical phe- 
 nomena arise, grow, decrease and become diseased with this 
 substratum. Even though we may not be in a position to 
 distinctly show the internal connection of this state of 
 things, or to say how and in what way psychical action is 
 rendered possible by material combinations and activities, 
 we yet find that these facts force upon us the conclusion 
 that the connection is such as not to admit of the thought 
 of a permanent separation. Just as no thought is possible 
 without a brain or a corporeal equivalent thereof, so a nor- 
 mally constructed and nourished brain cannot exist with- 
 out thinking ; and if we want to imagine a thinking universal 
 spirit, it can only be on the basis of a universal brain 
 nourished with oxygenated blood. In this microcosmic 
 phenomenon we behold only the repetition of the principal 
 axiom of our philosophic naturalism, that force without 
 
 (316) 
 
personal continuance. 
 
 317 
 
 matter is no more imaginable or possible than matter with- 
 out force. A soul without a body, a spirit without 
 physique, and a thought without substance, can no more 
 be realized or exist than electricity, magnetism, undula- 
 tions of heat, gravity, etc., can exist without those bodies 
 or materials by the activity of which the phenomena desig- 
 nated by those names are produced. 
 
 In consonance with this, we have shown in a preceding 
 chapter, that the animal and the human soul does not enter 
 the world with innate ideas or thoughts, that it has no in- 
 dependent existence and is no ens per se, but that its 
 development proceeds on parallel lines with the develop- 
 ment and formation of the organs subserving it, and with 
 the number, kind, and variety of the impressions received 
 and the experiences undergone. 
 
 In presence of such an array of facts we have no hesita- 
 tion in declaring ourselves fully as much opposed to all 
 views which are connected with belief in individual immor- 
 tality or with personal continuance after death. By the 
 destruction and breaking-up of its material substratum, and 
 the dissolution of the combination by which alone it at- 
 tained conscious existence and became a person, a period 
 is also put to the existence of the intellectual being which 
 we have seen grow up only upon this double ground and 
 in closest dependence thereon. All knowledge which has 
 become a part of this being is related to things terrestrial ; 
 it has recognized and become conscious of itself only in, 
 with, and through these things ; it has become a person 
 only by its separation from other earthly limited individu- 
 alities ; how can it be possible or imaginable that this being 
 could exist self-consciously and as the same person, torn 
 away from all these necessary conditions, which are the 
 very breath of life for it ? The idea of personal immor- 
 tality is not supported by reflection, but by obstinate willful- 
 ness — not by science, but by faith only. “ Physiology,” 
 says Carl Vogt, “ declares itself decidedly and categori- 
 cally against individual immortality, as against all theories 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 318 
 
 in general which include the special existence of a soul. 
 The soul does not enter into the foetus, as the evil spirit 
 does into the possessed, but it is produced by the develop- 
 ment of the brain, just the same as muscular activity is 
 produced by the development of the muscles, or secretion 
 is produced by a development of the glands. The 
 psychical activities begin to develop after birth ; but it is 
 also after birth that the brain gradually attains the material 
 structure peculiar to it In the course of life the psychical 
 activities undergo decided changes, and cease altogether 
 with the death of the organ ! ’ ’ 
 
 Indeed, the simplest experience and observation of every- 
 day life teaches us that psychical activity ceases with the 
 destruction of its material substratum, or — that man dies. 
 ‘ ‘ The times have been, ’ ’ says Macbeth, ‘ ‘ that when the 
 brains were out, the man would die.” There is no real 
 proof, and none has ever been found, which should induce 
 us to believe that the soul of a dead person lives on in one 
 shape or in another. “That the soul of a dead person,” 
 says Burmeister, “ ceases to exist at the moment of death, 
 cannot be contradicted by sensible people. Spirits and 
 spirit-manifestations have only been seen by sick or super- 
 stitious persons.” 
 
 Having thus broadly laid down our view, we cannot re- 
 frain from going into some of the chief arguments which 
 have been urged in favor of individual immortality, from 
 the standpoint of a natural and moral study, based on sober 
 and experimental science. 
 
 First of all, natural philosophers have attempted to de- 
 duce the immortality of the soul from the imperishable 
 character of Nature and the indestructibility of matter and 
 force. Inasmuch, it is urged, as there exists no absolute 
 annihilation anywhere, it cannot be imagined or conceived 
 that the human spirit, once in existence, can be brought to 
 nought again ; such an idea is contrary to reason and to 
 the natural law. In opposition to this it should be re- 
 marked that a transitory manifestation of the “ matter-and- 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 3*9 
 
 force ’ ’ principle must not be confounded with the princi- 
 ple itself. No doubt, in the eternal cycle of matters and 
 forces, nothing is mortal ; but this only holds good col- 
 lectively, and for the whole, while the individual is subject 
 to unceasing changes of genesis and decay. While force 
 and matter as such manifest their indestructibility in an in- 
 controvertible manner, which rests upon experiments, the 
 same cannot be said of the soul, which is only the effect or 
 product of a definite combination of materials and forces 
 subject to disassociation. With the breaking-up of this 
 combination, its working must necessarily come to an end. 
 If we break a watch to pieces, it will no longer tell the 
 time of the day ; if we kill the nightingale, its song sub- 
 sides. We have nothing left before us but a heap of 
 apparently dead materials, which must enter or be brought 
 into new compounds or combinations, in order to bring 
 about results similar to those previously obtained. 
 
 In perfect accord with this is the fact that the personal 
 soul, despite its alleged indestructibility, never existed for 
 a whole eternity, that is to say during the time when the 
 body to which it belongs, was not yet formed. But that 
 which once did not exist, can perish and be destroyed 
 again. Nay, it is in the very essence of everything that is 
 brought into being, that it should also come to an end 
 again. 
 
 There is actually a condition which enables us to pro- 
 duce a perfectly direct and experimental proof of the 
 destructibility of the individual soul ; it is the well- 
 known condition of sleep. Owing to a retardation in 
 the circulation of the blood and a diminution in the supply 
 of blood to the brain, the function or activity of the organ 
 of thought, which required that a very brisk reciprocal 
 action should go on between the oxygen of the blood and 
 the brain-matter, is disturbed or suspended in such a way 
 that psychical or conscious phenomena cease for a time 
 — just as the circulation ceases when the heart ceases to 
 beat, or the oxidation of the blood is checked, if the lungs 
 
320 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 cease to act. The body alone lives on, in a condition simi- 
 lar to that of the animals from which Flourens had cut 
 away the cerebral hemispheres. On waking, that is to 
 say, upon the return of the normal circulation and of oxi- 
 dation to the brain, the soul, which had been, as it were, 
 bereaved of existence, continues its work at exactly the 
 same point at which it had come to an end when sleep set 
 in ; the long interval had no existence for it ; the soul was 
 practically in a condition of spiritual death. 
 
 This peculiar analogy is so plain and obvious that sleep and 
 death have always been compared with each other and been 
 styled brothers. “ Death is like sleep,” says Byron, “ and 
 sleep closes our eyelids.” In the course of the first French 
 revolution, the celebrated Chaumette* had statues of Sleep 
 erected in the cemeteries and the following inscription put 
 over the gates : “ Death is an eternal sleep.” Andrea, 
 the Author of an old Descriptio republic ce christiano- 
 politance , from the year 1619, says: ‘‘This Republic 
 
 knows nothing of death, and yet indeed is it present with 
 them ; but they call it sleep.” 
 
 Now in opposition to this argument it has been con- 
 tended that the phenomena of dreams afford a complete 
 proof of the psychical powers being active in sleep, though 
 in a subordinate degree only. This argument is based on 
 an error of fact, for the dreaming condition is not that of 
 real sleep, but is a transition state between sleeping and 
 waking, a sort of half-sleep. Persons in a perfect state of 
 health do not even experience this transition ; it is well 
 known that they do not dream at all. Dreaming is con- 
 
 * Chaumette, public prosecutor of the commune of Paris during the Revolution 
 of 1792, and one of the leaders of the Hebertists, who had assumed the name of 
 the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, preached morality, industry, the patriotic 
 virtues and reason ; he suppressed houses of ill fame, turned all beggars and 
 prostitutes out, opened an office for the poor to find employment, and closed the 
 female club, to which women resorted to mix in politics to the detriment of their 
 domestic duties. He issued a communal order that no religious practices should 
 be carried on outside the churches ; he prohibited the trade in relics and put a 
 stop to public religious funerals ; he planted the cemeteries with beautiful and 
 fragrant flowers. He and his followers were overthrown by the fanatical doc- 
 trinaire and theist, Robespierre, and were guillotined on April 12th, 1794. 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 321 
 
 sidered at this day by medical authorities as a pathologi- 
 cal or mor'nid condition.* A deep or thoroughly healthy 
 sleep knows ef no dream, and a man suddenly aroused from 
 such sleep is, lor a brief period, so entirely destitute of his 
 psychical powers that whilst in this condition of being half 
 awake and half asleep, he is considered as irresponsible in 
 law. A. Maury, having made some interesting experiments 
 on hinself, was brought to the conclusion, that dreaming 
 results in almost all instances from some disturbance or 
 change in some part of our organism, such disturbance re- 
 acting on the brain. According to him, a man, while 
 dreaming, is like an insane person. 
 
 Certain morbid conditions are even more instructive 
 than sleep in illustrating this temporary destructibility of 
 our intellectual psychical existence. There are disturb- 
 ances arising in the activity of the brain from wounds, 
 shocks, flashes of lightning, catalepsy, etc., which result in 
 an entire loss of consciousness, or a complete cessation of 
 all psychical phenomena. Such a condition may last for 
 weeks and months. If the patient recovers, it is found that 
 he has not the slightest remembrance of the condition 
 through which he has passed, and that he continues his 
 psychical life exactly at the point in which consciousness 
 left him ; he has, as it were, been dead and come to life 
 again. If, on the other hand, actual death ensues instead 
 of recovery, the moment of this catastrophe is a matter of 
 perfect indifference to the injured person ; for as a person 
 and as a psychically animated being, he had died at the 
 moment when the disease put an end to the activity of his 
 brain. It must be difficult, nay, quite impossible, for those 
 who believe in the existence of an independent immortal 
 soul, to explain the connection of such phenomena, and to 
 give any reasonable theory as to how and where the soul, 
 or the conscious Ego or Self which the philosophers talk 
 so much about, has lived or continued its existence during 
 such periods. No such theory can be produced, unless, 
 
 * See Binz, Ueber den Traum. Bonn, 1878. 
 
3 22 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 in consonance with the superstitious ideas of firmer cen- 
 turies, we assume that the soul leaves at times the body, 
 somewhat in the form of a small animal, to travel about in 
 unknown regions, in heaven, in hell, and so on, and event- 
 ually to return to its previous abode. 
 
 We also feel compelled to declare wa? upon those who, 
 in contradistinction to the personal soul, hold to the ex- 
 istence of a universal spiritual matter, or fundamental 
 soul, from which it is contended that the individual souls 
 derive their origin, and into which they return subsequent 
 to the destruction of the bodies to which they belonged. 
 Such theories are as hypothetical as they are devoid of 
 foundation. The expression “spiritual (z. e. immaterial) 
 matter ” is in itself a contradiction, like the ancient notions 
 of imponderables, or matters that could not be weighed ; 
 it is a logical and empirical monstrosity. Neither would 
 such an assumption improve the case of the advocates of 
 personal immortality very much. For the return into the 
 universal primal soul, with a surrender of individuality and 
 personal continuance and of the memory of a former life, 
 means very little less than annihilation ; and it would be 
 just the same for the individual whether his so-called 
 psychical materials found further employment and use in 
 the building-up of other souls, or not 
 
 Attempts have of late years been made to utilize the 
 “ spiritual matter” or “ soul-substance,” to which we re- 
 ferred in the chapter on innate ideas, as a basis for in- 
 dividual or personal immortality. Prof. R. Wagner of 
 Gottingen first spoke of an immaterial and individual soul- 
 substance, temporarily united with the body, which upon 
 the dissolution of the latter might travel to remote realms 
 of space perhaps in the same way and with equal swiftness 
 as light, and thence might occasionally revisit the earth. 
 Such a theory is so utterly untenable, and the analogy be- 
 tween the ether of light and the pretended soul-substance 
 is so hopelessly preposterous, as to make it an easy thing for 
 Prof. Wagner’s antagonist, Carl Vogt, to consign the 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 323 
 
 whole of this discovery, made in the interest of the cause 
 of personal continuance, to the realm of mere speculative 
 fancies. (See his work : Kohlerglaube und Wissenschaft, 
 
 1855-) 
 
 No greater value can be assigned to some further in- 
 ventions in the province of natural philosophy made in 
 support of personal immortality, than to the theory of soul- 
 substance. Thus, Herr Drossbach, among others, thinks 
 he has discovered that each body contains an infinite 
 number of monads, capable of self-consciousness, which 
 gradually attain by development to consciousness, or, when 
 death ensues, fall to pieces again. These monads combine 
 again at some very remote period, or in other worlds, and 
 form a new man with a reminiscence of his former life ! 
 Really, these monads are too intangible for any one to 
 have anything further to say about them. 
 
 While the destructibility of the human soul after death 
 has been impugned from the standpoint of natural philoso- 
 phy, a similar attempt has been made with the same ob- 
 ject from a moral point of view — and it seems to us, with 
 exactly the same success. First, it has been contended 
 that the idea of everlasting annihilation is so repugnant to 
 all human sensation and so revoltant against human feeling, 
 that on this ground alone, it must necessarily be fallacious. 
 Now quite apart from the fact that such an appeal to 
 feeling cannot supply the want of scientific reasons, it must 
 be urged that the thought of an everlasting life, or the im- 
 possibility of dying, is far more terrible and much more 
 revolting to human feeling than that of everlasting anni- 
 hilation. Even in the province of legends, this horror has 
 been expressed in the ingenious story of the undying 
 Ahasuerus — the Wandering Jew. To ask for eternal life 
 would, as Galilei remarked, be tantamount to clamoring 
 for petrifaction. 
 
 On the contrary, the idea of the annihilation and cessa- 
 tion of individual life has nothing terrible in it for the mind 
 of a man with a philosophic thought about him. Not to 
 
/ 
 
 324 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 exist, as the profound religion of Buddha has so clearly- 
 recognized, amounts to perfect rest, painlessness, freedom 
 from all impressions that rack and torment the corporeal 
 or mental being, and it is therefore not to be apprehended, 
 but rather to be ardently desired after the completion of 
 a normal life, and upon the appearance of the unavoidable 
 infirmities of old age. There can be nopain in annihilation, 
 any more than in the repose of sleep ; the sense of death is 
 most in apprehension (Shakspeare). ‘ ‘ The fear of death 
 naturally felt by all men,” says Kant, “ even by the most 
 unfortunate and also the wisest, is not a dread of dying, 
 but as Montaigne rightly remarks, of a horror of the 
 thought of being dead ; the subject of death imagines he 
 will preserve this thought after death, because he thinks of 
 the corpse which is no longer himself ; he imagines that 
 his own self will come to lie in some dark tomb or else- 
 where.” With equal cogency Fichte says: ‘‘It is quite 
 clear that he who does not exist can feel no sort of pain. 
 Upon this ground, annihilation, if it occurs, is no evil at 
 all.” The clear-headed Roman Catholic priest, Jean Mes- 
 lier, writes to the same effect ; — ‘ ‘ Is the fear of not lasting 
 forever, more sad than that of not having existed from 
 time immemorial ? The fear of losing consciousness is in 
 reality but a sentimental grievance to which alone is due 
 the dogma of a future life.” And Socrates says in Plato 
 (. Apologia Socratis) that death, even if it deprives us for- 
 ever of consciousness, is a wondrous gain, just as a deep 
 dreamless sleep is preferable any day to the happiest life. 
 It would be easy to glean from the Greek tragedians a 
 whole anthology of similar expressions and sayings. 
 
 Has anybody ever grieved because he was not in exist- 
 ence when the Greeks besieged Troy? Neither need we 
 grieve because we shall not be in existence when events of 
 the future stir up the world and mankind. Rather should 
 those who require comfort, rejoice in the thought that 
 these things of the future are the fruit of the present, and 
 that they cannot come about without his co-operation. He 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 325 
 
 who wishes for immortality must not desire it for himself or 
 his own poor individuality, which is but a single ripple in 
 the vast ocean of existence, but for the share which he, 
 as an individual, has contributed to the existence of the 
 ensemble. Be this contribution large or small, it cannot 
 perish in the life of the whole, but works on to all eternity, 
 just as in the eternal cycle of forces not even the smallest 
 movement can be lost, without breaking the irrefragable 
 law of cause and effect. How truly does Schiller say : 
 
 “ Vor dem T ode erschrickst Du ? Du wtinschest unsterblich 
 zu leben ? 
 
 “ Leb’ im Ganzen ! Wenn Du lange dahin bist, es bleibt ! ” 
 
 (“Art thou afraid of death? Wilt thou live forever ? 
 Then live in the whole. Whep thou shalt have long been 
 gone, it still remains ! ”) 
 
 Ruckert expresses the same thought in the words : 
 
 “ Vernichtung weht Dich an, so lang Du Einzler bist, 
 
 “O, filhl’ im Ganzen Dich, das unvernichtbar ist ! ” 
 
 (“ Annihilation breathes on thee while thou art a solitary. 
 Oh feel thyself part of the All, which is indestructible ! ”) 
 
 The scholastic philosophers, who feel the untenability 
 of the ground on which they stand with regard to this 
 question of immortality, but who are determined to yoke 
 together philosophy and faith, have tried to extricate them- 
 selves from the difficulty in a very extraordinary and 
 unphilosophic manner. “The longings of our nature,’’ 
 says M. Carriere, for instance, “ the endeavors of knowl- 
 edge to solve so many problems, demand immortality, and 
 the many sorrows of this earth would form a horrible dis- 
 cord in the harmony of the universe, if these problems did 
 not find their solution in a superior harmony, by the fact 
 of those longings and yearnings producing their fruit in 
 the purification and development of the individual. These 
 and other considerations make immortality, in our estima- 
 tion, a subjective certainty and a conviction of the heart.” 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 326 
 
 Every one, indeed, may have ‘ ‘ convictions of the heart.” 
 But such convictions should not presume to come forward 
 in a philosophic garb. It may be that we are surrounded 
 by many problems, the solving of which would give great 
 pleasure to thoughtful minds. But we come no nearer to 
 their solution by ‘‘convictions of the heart,” or by the mad 
 mental gymnastics of schoolmasters, but by sober re- 
 flection, based on reason and experience ; and the conclusion 
 to which we must necessarily be led by such reflection, is 
 the finality of the person or of the individual as a transitory 
 phenomenon in the general life of Nature. A real un- 
 veiling of the enigmatic character of the universe, such as 
 Herr Carriere seems to ask for, that is to say, the acquire- 
 ment of a perfect knowledge by the human mind, must, on 
 internal grounds, be regarded as an absolute impossibility. 
 Without strife there can be no life ; absolute truth would 
 be death to him who should grasp it, and he would perish 
 in apathy and indolence. Lessing associated with this idea 
 such a conception of weariness that it caused him ‘‘woe 
 and anguish.” 
 
 If, however, it be suggested that we should be content 
 with an everlasting and ever more perfect strife in another 
 world, nothing would be gained by this in regard to the 
 question of the finality or endlessness of the human spirit ; 
 the decision would only be carried a little further back. 
 The second life would be an enlarged and improved 
 edition of the first, with the same fundamental defects, the 
 same contradictions, the same final absence of results. But 
 like candidates for government offices, who prefer an ap- 
 pointment at some indefinite date to none at all, thousands 
 upon thousands cling in their mental agony to the un- 
 certain prospect of an everlasting or temporary continu- 
 ance of life. 
 
 The philosophers who, in regard to this question of 
 immortality, do not hesitate in making short work of the 
 philosophic method by which, at other times, they set so 
 much store, and to appeal to an indefinite super-sensa- 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 327 
 
 tionalism, scarcely deserve to be answered. The famous 
 philosopher Fichte lays down the law as follows : ‘ ‘ Eter- 
 nal continuance cannot be explained on mere natural 
 conditions, nor need it be, since it is far above Nature. If, 
 from a sensational and empirical standpoint, we cannot see 
 how eternal continuance is possible, it must yet be possible, 
 seeing that it lies in that which is above all nature.” It 
 stands to reason that decrees of this kind can be binding 
 only on those who believe and will believe, and who, there- 
 fore, do not heed them ; all others will find it natural to 
 put the standard of human intellectual knowledge to a con- 
 troversial question, and will look for a solution of it to 
 experience, reason and natural science. In this investi- 
 gation they will find that Fichte was right when he asked 
 that natural and sensational intelligence should be forsaken 
 in order to grasp the possibility of personal immortality. 
 
 We should like to point out quite cursorily and in a few 
 words the difficulties and absurdities which, if personal im- 
 mortality were a truth, must result from the continued and 
 simultaneous existence of the countless troops and hosts of 
 souls, that had belonged to the living men or rational in- 
 habitants of other worlds. From the results arrived at in 
 earlier chapters (on the construction of the heavens and the 
 universality of natural laws) it is seen to be impossible and 
 inconceivable from the naturalistic standpoint, that any 
 place can exist outside the earth in which the departed 
 souls could gather when freed from the ties of the law of 
 gravitation. Even if this difficulty about dwelling places 
 did not exist, there would still be the excessive disparity 
 between the departed, in their moral and intellectual de- 
 grees of civilization, that must necessarily stand in the 
 way of their living together after leaving the earth. Life in 
 eternity, according to the tolerably unanimous opinions of 
 theologians and philosophers, is to be a continuation of or 
 improvement upon the life in this world. It must therefore 
 seem to be indispensable that each individual soul should 
 at least have reached on earth a certain stage of formation 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 328 
 
 as a groundwork for its further development to proceed 
 upon. But now only think of the souls of children dying 
 in infancy, of old people who have lapsed into second 
 childhood, of insane persons, of idiots, of badly trained in- 
 dividuals, of irresponsible beings, of savage nations, or of 
 those standing on the lowest rungs of the ladder of our 
 European Society. Are the defects in civilization and edu- 
 cation to be continued in the other world on the same or 
 on a higher scale? “I am sick and tired of sitting on 
 school-forms,” says Danton in Georg Biichner’s famous 
 drama, Danton' s Tod. This shows clearly the reason why 
 human fancy has been far less fertile in painting the hoped- 
 for joys of heaven than in depicting the everlasting tor- 
 ments of hell. People found it impossible to form a tenable 
 conception of the pleasures of a condition in which, ac- 
 cording to the Christian view, they would have nothing to 
 do except to glorify God forever. On the contrary, the 
 numerous sufferings and terrors of earthly existence have 
 yielded materials enough and to spare for artists to picture 
 the reverse of the medal. 
 
 And, lastly, let us ask, — If the doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul be true, what is to become of the souls 
 of animals ? Human pride has only considered this matter 
 with regard to mankind, and has refused to see that 
 animals, to whom the possession of a soul (though it be but 
 an animal soul) can no more be denied than it can to man, 
 have exactly the same right as man himself. The difference 
 existing between human and animal souls is not a funda- 
 mental one, but only a question of degree ; and that the 
 roots and beginnings of the highest mental and psychical 
 capabilities of mankind find their counterpart in the animal 
 world, will be shown in a subsequent chapter ; it is a dif- 
 ference of grade or development, not of kind. Burmeister 
 has therefore a perfect right to say : — ‘‘If the human soul 
 be immortal, the animal soul must be so too. Both must 
 have similar claims to immortality by virtue of the simi- 
 larity to their fundamental qualities.” If this inference be 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 329 
 
 followed out down to the lowest animal types — to which a 
 soul, in the most general sense, can no more be denied 
 than it can to the highest — and if we proceed right down 
 to the monera or simplest primal organisms, then all the 
 moral grounds on which the arguments for individual im- 
 mortality have been based, tumble to pieces, and absurdi- 
 ties result which must destroy the whole fabric of foolish 
 hopes.* 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that the soul of an intelligent 
 animal, like that of a dog, ape or elephant, stands beyond 
 all doubt much higher in the intellectual scale than that of 
 a human idiot, cretin or maniac. Would it not be an unwar- 
 rantable contradiction to admit immortality for the latter, 
 and not for the former? 
 
 Lastly, it has been, and is still asserted, that the idea of 
 immortality, like the idea of God, is innate in the inner- 
 most intellectual being of man, and is therefore undeniable 
 on all rational grounds. For the same reason, it is further 
 alleged, there is no religion which does not cling to per- 
 sonal immortality as one of its first and chief axioms. As 
 to innate ideas, we have already spoken of them at suf- 
 ficient length ; and as regards nations or religions and 
 religious sects, within which there exists no such thing as 
 an idea of immortality, there are no end to them, and it 
 would be more accurate to say that only a comparatively 
 small portion of mankind are found adhering to that idea. 
 Although the Jews may be regarded as harbingers of 
 Christianity, their chief sects recognized no personal im- 
 mortality. The enlightened sect of the Sadducees taught, 
 as against their opponents the Pharisees or “Jesuits” of 
 Judaism, that the human soul does not outlive the body, 
 but is dissolved with it into planetary atoms and undergoes 
 
 •The missionary Moffat tells an interesting anecdote, which shows very plainly 
 the view taken by savage peoples unfettered by dogmas. A member of the 
 Bechuana tribe (in the interior of South Africa) came to him one day and asked, 
 pointing to his dog: "What difference is there between me and this creature? 
 You say, I am immortal ; why not my ox and my dog? They die, and do you 
 notice anything of their souls ? What is the difference between man and animal ? 
 None, save that man is the greater rascal of the two." (See Ausland, 1856, No 33. ( 
 
FORCE AND MATTER, 
 
 330 
 
 many other transmissions. According to them, there is no 
 resurrection of the dead ; the fate of man lies in his own 
 hand. Men must serve God from pure love, not from 
 self-interest or fear. This doctrine in no way deteriorated 
 the morality of its adherents, who would yet partake of 
 the enjoyments of life without any compunction. Ac- 
 cording to Richter ( Vortrage ilber personlichc Fortdaner), 
 by far the largest number of our theologians are agreed in 
 that there are, in the books of the Old Testament written 
 before the Babylonian captivity, no clear traces of the doc- 
 trine of individual life beyond the grave. The Mosaic law 
 never points to a reward in heaven and after death. 
 
 The famous Buddhism, *one of the oldest, and atthesame 
 
 • This remarkable atheistic and materialistic religion was founded on a purely 
 natural basis 600 B. C. by an Indian prince named Gautama or Buddha (the En- 
 lightener, the Wise) or Sakjamuni (hermit of the tribe of Sakja). Rejecting the 
 hateful system of castes, he taught the equality and brotherhood of all men ; he 
 abolished sacrifices ; he denied the existence of God and of an innate conscience, 
 and sought all his principles in man only and in the love of one’s neighbor. This 
 religion possessed so thoroughly the faculty of speaking to the minds and winning 
 the hearts of the people that in a comparatively short time it spread over nearly 
 a third of the then existing human race, without wading, like Christianity, 
 through an ocean of blood and atrocities, In the year 800 after Christ it was 
 again uprooted in India by the reaction of the priests and Brahmins, who had 
 waged most bloody religious wars upon it. It was then diffused all the more 
 rapidly and effectually over the neighboring countries, and at this day it is the 
 most widely disseminated religious system of the East, mustering a great many 
 more adherents than Christianity. The cosmology of Buddha, like modern sci- 
 ence, teaches as the beginning of things the existence of infinite and infinitely 
 rare matter, out of which the individual worlds originated gradually by condensa- 
 tion. These, however, were again volatilized, and again new forms arose, and 
 so forth. The government of the universe consists in an irrefragable necessity, 
 flowing from the supreme law of cause and effect. The worlds follow one after 
 another in gradation and become more and more perfect ; the same holds good 
 for organized beings, until at last all return to the original state of rest and re- 
 demption — the so-called Nirvana or nothingness. Buddha held with the most 
 complete freedom and toleration towards other opinions, which he regarded only 
 as lower stages of knowledge. In order to prepare worthily for his great mis- 
 sion he spent, not forty davs like Christ, but several years in the wilderness and 
 in solitude, where he, according to the Buddhist legend, was like Christ tempted 
 in vain of the devil. The same legend relates that, like the founder of Christian- 
 ity, he was born by supernatural means of Maya, a king’s daughter, rendered 
 pregnant by a ray of sunshine. With a view of destroying the misery of the whole 
 world, the Buddhists also sent out missionaries like the Christians, and like them 
 held councils or assemblies of the Church. Their object was the good of man- 
 kind, in opposition to Brahminism, which aimed at nought but personal advance- 
 ment The zenith of Buddhism was attained under the two kings Asoka, the 
 first of whom raised Buddhism to a state religion in 250 B. C , without however 
 persecuting any other creeds. Under their rule Brahmins and Buddhists lived 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE, 
 
 331 
 
 time the most widely spread, of all religious systems of 
 the world, embracing, as it does, thirty-one per cent, of 
 the entire human race, knows nothing of personal immor- 
 tality, and preaches (like our modern pessimists Leopardi, 
 Hartmann, etc.) non-existence , or the definite cessation of 
 personal existence, in the famous Nirvana or nothingness, 
 as the highest aim of deliverance. 
 
 peacefully side by side. Fifty years after Christ, King Kanischka called the 
 fourth Council together. Max Muller describes the Buddhist moral code as one 
 of the most perfect the world has ever seen, although Buddha not only rejected 
 the theory of souls, but regarded it as injurious and as tending to superstition. 
 In the place of theological legends and tales, the great sage taught wisdom, be- 
 nevolence, and the comfort of final rest ; it was he — not Christ — who first raised 
 universal love for man to the rank of the highest virtue. The traditions which 
 surround the life of Buddha bear the most striking resemblance to the Christian. 
 (Compare the National Rtformtr, 1882, No. 20.) Unfortunately Buddhism (like 
 Christianity) degenerated later on in various directions in those countries over 
 which it ruled and became imbued with all imaginable follies and insane fancies, 
 while its chief principle, the Nirvana, was changed into a paradise, full of miracles 
 and saints. For while the Buddhist philosophers and thinkers logically devel- 
 oped the doctrine of the founder into ever clearer Atheism, it was turned by the 
 uneducated people into partly monotheistic, partly polytheistic systems, and mix- 
 ing with Brahministic elements it departed from its original purity ; on the other 
 hand, Brahminism also embodied within itself a number of Buddhistic elements. 
 Christian ideas and institutions also became mingled with it (especially in Thibet) 
 as Nestorian Christianity invaded Central Asia, and it was chiefly owing to them 
 that the Thibetan church has now, like Catholicism, its pope and cardinals, its 
 bishops, priests and nuns, its masses for the dead, its paternosters and rosaries, 
 its holy candles and holy water, its processions, feast-days and fast-days, etc., 
 and that divine honor is paid to the Dalai-Llama, or high-priest of Thibet, the 
 earthly representative of the now deified Buddha. (See further details in 
 Radenhausen’s Christ fnthum ist Heidcnthum , p. 80.) Despite all this, the prin- 
 ciples of Buddhism remain so powerful in some of its adherents, that according 
 to Dr J. W. Heifer’s report of the provinces ofTenasserim, the Buddhists do not, 
 like the adherents of other religions, seek for converts, and show themselves 
 equally. tolerant of all creeds. They do not assert that their religion is the best 
 or only true one, but only that it is the most suitable to themselves. Nor do they 
 hesitate to adopt certain features of other religions which seem good to them. It 
 is easy to understand that the Buddhists oppose an energetic resistance to the 
 attempts at conversion made by Christian missionaries. When English parsons 
 tell them that they should adopt the religion of love to man and to enemies as 
 their own, they very properly reply : “ What? we are to forgive enemies who in- 
 vade our country ? You never forgive your enemies. While you preach peace, 
 you are blowing trumpets of war. Your peaceable voice is the voice of powder 
 and shot. You preach self-denial, but your priests live in wealth and luxury. In 
 your worship of God you light candles, as though God dwelt in darkness. Go 
 home and teach your own people to be peaceable, honorable and temperate.” 
 Some Brahmins, strongly objecting to the fanatical religious and proselytizing zeal 
 of Christianity, said to Dr. Haug, professor of Sanscrit in the British College of 
 Puma (Bombay Presidency): “ This fanaticism is a clear sign of mental weakness 
 ■ufA narrowness. A wise man persecutes no one on account of his religious views.” 
 
332 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 The original religion of the great Confutsee or Confucius 
 knew just as little of a future celestial world, of a deity ex- 
 ternal to the universe, of dogmas and priests, as did the 
 ancient popular Chinese religion which it supplanted. Both 
 are nothing but colorable or cultured Atheism and Ma- 
 terialism, and rest on a thoroughly realistic conception of 
 the world. Confucius, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, 
 never speaks of a Creator nor of a higher order of the 
 world, and a pious regard for one’s ancestors is the only 
 precept of his religion which goes beyond the individual life. 
 
 The noble Greek nation, whose civilization stood in 
 many respects high above that of our conceited age, be- 
 lieved only in a realm of shadows as the abode of the 
 departed. This so-called Hades, however, was for them 
 no place of blessedness, but only a lurid reflex of real life, 
 or the grave poetically conceived. Their great poet 
 Homer painted it in the gloomiest colors, and makes 
 Achilles, as the ruler of the dead, say to Odysseus 
 (Odyssey, XI, 14 — 19) : — 
 
 “Rather I’d choose laboriously to bear 
 A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, 
 
 A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, 
 
 Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead.” 
 
 which sentiments are found in a highly different garb in 
 Shakspeare’s Measure for Measure , III, 1 : — 
 
 “ The weariest and most loathed worldly life 
 That age, ache, penury and imprisonment 
 Can lay on nature, is a paradise 
 To what we fear of death.” 
 
 The famous Book of the Dead of the ancient Egyptians 
 also understands the judgment which awaits each soul after 
 death, not in the Christian sense, but only in relation to 
 the safest mode of burial. It was not until the school of 
 Plato became more powerful that the dogma of the immor- 
 tality of the soul began to spread among the Greeks, 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 333 
 
 causing, in doing so, the greatest disturbances (as is re- 
 lated on page 281 of the Systeme de la Nature , vol. I, note 
 78, on the Argument du dialogue de Phe'don de la tra- 
 duction the Dacier ) ; for men, discontented with their lot, 
 proceeded to take away their own lives. Ptolemy Phila- 
 delphus, king of Egypt (so the story proceeds), on seeing 
 what results this dogma, now thought to be so full of 
 blessing, wrought on the brains of his subjects, forbade the 
 teaching of it under penalty of death.* 
 
 Travelers tell us of a good many savage tribes among 
 whom the belief in the personal continuance after death 
 does not exist at all, or, if it does, only in combination with 
 ideas that make it meaningless or subvert it. (See Meiners’ 
 Kritische Geschichte der Religionen, 1806 and 1807.) 
 Bates relates of the Indians of the Upper Amazon (vol. II, 
 page 214) that no trace can be found among them of any 
 belief in a future state, that only those who have had inter- 
 course with white men speak of it, and even then only 
 without evincing the least interest in the matter. Dr. J. 
 W. Heifer relates of the Seelongs of India that they know 
 nothing of a life after death, and that their invariable 
 answer to questions on such matters is : “ We do not think 
 about it.” A good many similar examples have already 
 been given. 
 
 Among all nations and in all ages, the belief in immor- 
 tality has never had many adherents in the ranks of cultured 
 and enlightened people, although for reasons easily to be 
 understood, these have not always brought their opinions 
 and ideas forward with as much energy as those holding 
 opposite views. What an amount of abuse had not the 
 famous Voltaire to endure, because he had ventured to an- 
 nounce his belief in the perishable character of the human 
 soul ! And even in our time, which boasts so loudly of its 
 
 * Similar results have even come to light within our own time. At the begin- 
 ning of this century a deistical sect arose in Buddhist Burmah, which believed in 
 an omnipotent and omniscient Nat (spirit) as the creator of the world, and taught 
 a species of immortality. The present king had fourteen of these “ heretics ” 
 brought to the gallows, and cruelly persecuted the sect. (See Ausland, 1858.) 
 
334 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 enlightenment, the great David Friedrich Strauss fared not 
 a whit better. “ I go into nothingness,” said Mirabeau on 
 his deathbed ; and the mighty Danton, on being asked be- 
 fore the revolutionary tribunal about his calling and abode, 
 answered: ‘‘My abode will soon be in nothingness!” 
 One of our greatest German thinkers, Frederick the Great, 
 confessed that he did not believe in personal immortality. 
 
 How very much, in the present century, despite all the 
 allegations and assurances of theologians to the contrary, 
 the general views both of the educated and uneducated 
 classes are in this matter opposed to the dogmas of the 
 Church, can be denied by no one who has opportunities of 
 observing people in positions of life in which hypocrisy and 
 dissembling are out of the question. “ Who with eyes in 
 his head,” says Feuerbach very correctly, “ can deny that 
 belief in individual immortality has long since vanished 
 from ordmary life, and only exists in the subjective fancy 
 of individuals, however numerous these may be?” Else, 
 how could the fear of death be explained which still pre- 
 vails among mankind, despite all the comforts of religion ? 
 How would it be possible that the majority of men should 
 regard death as the greatest evil, in that it puts a sudden 
 end to the brief joys of their existence ? or because it only 
 leads to that state so terrible in the fancy of the living. 
 
 Wo Sonn’ und Mond nicht gliinzen 
 Und keiner Sterne Licht, 
 
 Wo keines Aethers Scheinen 
 Die ew’ge Nacht durchbricht. 
 
 Wo Witlder nicht, noch Wiesen 
 Ergltih’n in grtiner Pracht, 
 
 Wo keiner Quelle Rauschen 
 Die Lutt ertonen macht. 
 
 Wo keines Vogels Singen, 
 
 Kein Klang, kein Ton der Lust, 
 
 Kein Lied, kein Wort der Liebe 
 Bewegt die Menschenbrust- 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 335 
 
 Wo nur ein ewig Schlafen 
 In ewig dunkler Nacht 
 Der kurzen Lust des Lebens 
 Ein ewig Ende macht. 
 
 (When there is no light of sun, moon or stars, when 
 no eternal radiance pierces through the eternal night ; 
 when neither woods nor meadows smile in emerald glory, 
 when no murmuring of rivulets makes the air resound ; 
 when man’s heart is never moved by the melody of birds, 
 by sound or note of gladness, by song, or by word of love ; 
 when only an eternal sleep in an eternal night puts an 
 eternal end to the brief joys of life.) 
 
 This same emotion, united to the thought of the transi- 
 tory nature of all earthly things, is expressed in the beau- 
 tiful lines of Platen, our great poet : — 
 
 “ Warum erfreun wir uns am Klang der Leyer, 
 
 Am holden Spiel, an tausend sussen Trieben, 
 
 Wenn stets im Hintergrund die Furie lauert 
 Und unser Leben zwo Sekunden dauert ? ” 
 
 (Why do we rejoice in the sound of the lyre, in the 
 sweet tunes, in a thousand joyful delights, if the Fury is 
 ever lurking in the background, and we have but two 
 seconds to live ?) 
 
 Lastly, let us listen to the beautiful and striking words 
 uttered on the subject by an Italian philosopher, Petrus 
 Pomponatius, who lived at the beginning of the sixteenth 
 century : “ If we assume the continued existence of the in- 
 dividual, we must first of all prove that the soul can live 
 without requiring the body as subject or object of its 
 activity. We cannot think without sensations ; but these 
 depend on corporeality of its organs. Thought is in itself 
 eternal and immaterial, but human thought is bound up 
 with the senses ; it can recognize the general only in the 
 special, it is never free from the rule of space and time, for 
 
336 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 its ideas come and go one after the other. Our soul is 
 therefore really mortal, since neither consciousness nor 
 memory can endure.” And again : — “ Virtue is far purer 
 when practised for its own sake, than for a reward. Yet 
 must those politicians not be blamed who desire that the 
 immortality of the soul should be taught for the sake of 
 the public good, in order that the weak and the bad might 
 at least go the right way under the impulse of hope or fear, 
 while noble free spirits choose that path of their own ac- 
 cord. For it is utterly untrue that only base scholars have 
 denied immortality , and that all noble sages have adopted 
 it. Homer , Pliny, Simonides and Seneca , who did not 
 
 cherish this hope , were not vile on that account ; they only 
 managed to get along without mercenary servility P 
 
Vital Force. 
 
 If we seriously believe that natural laws could once be arbitrarily set aside by life, 
 then all investigation of nature as well as of souls must cease. — U le. 
 
 Many people imagine that they have expressed and explained everything with 
 the words “vital force ” ; yet they have only made an idle use of a hidden and 
 indefinite cause, which explains nothing, and is but a confession of ignorance. 
 — Onimus. 
 
 No physiologist thinks nowadays of looking upon any phenomena of life as the 
 result of a marvelous vital force, or a special purposively active force, existing 
 apart from outside matter, and only taking the physico-chemical forces into 
 its service so to speak. — Haeckel. 
 
 The theory of a special vital force leads necessarily to such absurdities, that at 
 this day no naturalist thinks thereof, who has any serious claim to that title. 
 — Pivany. 
 
 A MONG the mystical notions, so destructive of all clear- 
 ness of idea in natural philosophy, which were put 
 forward at a time deficient in knowledge of nature, 
 and which modern research has entirely thrown over- 
 board, we may reckon more particularly the idea of a so- 
 called vital force. There is scarcely any theory that has at 
 any time more deeply injured the cause of science than the 
 idea of a special organized force, which has been set up as 
 a sort of antagonist of the inorganic forces, such as weight, 
 affinity, light, heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., or as in- 
 dependent of them, and which should serve as an ex- 
 ceptional natural law for living things, rendering it possible 
 to withdraw them from the influence and action of the uni- 
 versal laws of nature, and to form, so to speak, a law on its 
 own account and a state within the state. If science were 
 
 compelled to recognize such a law our axiom of the uni- 
 versality of physical laws and of the invariability or the 
 
 (337) 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 338 
 
 very existence of an order in nature would collapse al- 
 together. Fortunately, science, instead of being in this 
 matter compelled to retreat before the irrational onset of 
 dynamists or believers in force, has gained a brilliant vic- 
 tory over them all along the line ; she has gathered 
 together such a mass of striking facts that the theory of a 
 special vital force as the cause and foundation of vital 
 phenomena has now nothing left to it but to haunt the 
 borders of exact science like a ghost, to wander about in 
 the heads of conceited philosophers or of those who have 
 remained far behind their age in scientific thought. * 
 “ For,” as Virchow very pertinently remarks {Archtv f Hr 
 path. Anat. utid Physiol., IX, vol. 1856, part 1 and 2), 
 
 ‘ ‘ this old doctrine of a vital force is not an erroneous 
 teaching, but a mere superstition, the relationship of which 
 to the doctrine of the devil and to the search for the phil- 
 osopher’s stone cannot be denied.” And as far back as 
 eight years previously, Prof. Dubois-Reymond felt justified 
 in saying in his famous Untersuchutigen iiber thierische 
 Elektricit'dt : “ Those who try to maintain and to preach 
 the erroneous doctrine of vital force, under whatever form,, 
 and in ever so deceptive a garb, are men who cannot 
 possibly have ever attained the limits of their faculty of 
 thought.” 
 
 There can at this day be no scientific doubt that life obeys 
 no special or exceptional laws, and that it does not stand 
 outside the influence of inorganic forces, but must rather 
 be regarded as the result of a definite interaction of chemi- 
 cal and physical forces or a peculiarly complicated 
 mechanical group of motions, for the explanation of which 
 none but the usual and known forces of nature can and 
 need be called in. He who thinks it necessary to conceive 
 a theory of special ‘ ‘ vital force ’ ’ in order to explain life, 
 argues as rationally as one who tries to make out that the 
 
 * Even a thinker of such high standing as Schopenhauer could not, owing to 
 his philosophic prejudices and his pet theories, free himself from the idea of a 
 vital force, and styled attacks on it simply as “ stupid.” See the author’s Aut 
 Natur and IVissenschaft, p. 129. 
 
Vital force. 
 
 339 
 
 movements of a watch are traceable to the working of some 
 special “watch-force,” and not to its mechanical organi- 
 zation. But just as the movement of a watch is nought 
 but the result of materials and forces working together in 
 a particular manner, so life also is no force , but a resultant 
 or movement of particles grouped in a definite order. 
 
 With a view to prove this more fully and with more pre- 
 cision, we need but refer to chemistry, which was able to 
 place the fact beyond doubt that the chemical elements or 
 fundamental materials are identically the same in the 
 organic and in the inorganic world, and that not a 
 single atom in the physical groundwork of life occurs 
 which is not equally present in the inorganic world, and 
 active in the cycle of material changes. Chemists have 
 succeeded in decomposing organic bodies and compounds 
 into their elements, and in separating these severally from 
 each other, exactly in the same way that they had long be- 
 fore done in the case of inorganic bodies ; they have thus 
 proved, as we have said, that these elements are the same 
 in both departments, and that it is only the method of 
 grouping which varies. For example, a living being can 
 be reduced into a lot of inorganic compounds by a process 
 of complete combustion, so that nothing remains except 
 the non-volatile ashes, and this without a single atom being 
 lost in the process. 
 
 This one fact alone should suffice to relegate every idea of 
 a special vital force from science, since that force, as shown 
 in an earlier chapter, cannot be separated from matter, 
 and each movement occurring on such a basis must result 
 from the conditions, capacities or forces inherent in the 
 atoms. The properties of the atoms are, as it has been 
 more scientifically expressed, indestructible, and no edu- 
 cated person can admit that the merest particle of oxygen 
 can change its essential and indestructible nature within an 
 organism ; that, for instance, an atom of oxygen within an 
 organism can be influenced by an adjoining atom of hydro- 
 gen otherwise or by other natural laws, and vice versa, 
 
34° FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 than it would be if placed outside that organism. Life 
 creates neither new matter nor new force ; it only delights 
 in countless changes, which proceed without exception ac- 
 cording to the great law of the conservation of energy or 
 the equivalency of all dynamic forces. Each contraction of 
 a muscle, each kind of work performed by an organism, 
 involves the disappearance of a perfectly definite and equiva- 
 lent amount of heat. If organic or living bodies manifest 
 properties differing from those of the inorganic, it is not 
 from the working of a special force present within them, 
 but only from the peculiarity of their chemical composition, 
 which makes the effect appear as a transitory manifestation 
 of universal matter. Vital force is therefore no principle, 
 but, as remarked heretofore, a result. When an organic 
 compound appropriates and assimilates inorganic matter 
 that exists in its proximity, it does not do so by virtue of a 
 special power, but only by a process of contagion, whereby 
 it transmits to the other molecular arrangements of its own 
 particles of matter, just in the same way as the inorganic 
 world energies are transmitted from particle to particle. 
 In this way, the genesis of the whole organic world from one 
 or more beginnings, however small, may easily be ex- 
 plained, without resorting to the notion of vital force. In 
 the chapter on primeval generation we have already shown 
 how such a beginning may and must have occurred. 
 
 It is generally known that manifestations of life occur 
 habitually only when albuminous compounds are present. 
 When these are absent, there are no phenomena of life. 
 To this it may doubtless be answered that these compounds 
 are also present in death. But in death they are obviously 
 in a state of transition towards quite a different chemical or 
 physical condition, which supervenes not suddenly, but 
 gradually. For even death, which is erroneously looked 
 upon as the opposite of life, cannot possibly extinguish 
 vital functions all at once. The isolated muscular fibre, 
 removed from the body, contracts when under the influence 
 of electricity ; and even hearts, when removed from the 
 
VITAL FORCE. 
 
 341 
 
 body and thrown out of all normal connections, continue 
 to beat or to move for hours or days together. Nay, 
 severed pieces continue to move or pulsate, offering to the 
 observer quite a peculiar and weird aspect. In men who 
 have been executed, movements of the heart have been ob- 
 served for many hours after death. Blood-corpuscles can 
 be poisoned with carbonic oxide in the re-agent tube quite 
 as well as in the blood-vessel itself. The hair-bulb con- 
 tinues to form its peculiar products in the corpse, and the 
 liver keeps to producing glycogen. After death by cholera 
 the temperature of the tissues rises instead of falling. The 
 severed heads of beasts, as mentioned in the chapter on the 
 seat of the soul, may be recalled to life and consciousness 
 by the injection of oxygenated blood, and so on. 
 
 If, after this general exposition, we glance at individual 
 instances, we find that not only simple elementary sub- 
 stances, such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc., 
 enter into the chemical composition of the living body in 
 the most varied ways, without in any manner changing 
 their nature, but that this is also the case in regard to com- 
 posite bodies. Water, which must be regarded as the 
 chief, and in many instances by far the greatest part of all 
 organized beings, and without which no animal or vege- 
 table life is possible, penetrates, softens, dissolves, flows, 
 falls by the law of gravity, evaporates, condenses, and con- 
 ducts itself within the organism in a manner that differs not 
 even by a hair’s breadth from the way it does outside. The 
 salts of calcium which it contains in solution, are deposited 
 by it in the bones of animals or the tissues of plants, where 
 they show the same solidity as in inorganic nature. The 
 oxygen of the air, which acts on the dark venous blood in 
 the lungs, follows exactly the universal natural law of the 
 diffusion of gases, and imparts to the blood the same 
 bright-red color which is likewise obtained by shaking up 
 air and blood in any vessel. The carbon contained in the 
 blood forms carbonic acid by combustion through this 
 union, which takes place not only in the lungs, but also in 
 
342 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 every part and tissue of the body, just as in every com- 
 bustion of a carboniferous compound, thus producing the 
 remarkable phenomenon of animal heat which is not there- 
 fore, as was thought formerly, a product of vital force, but 
 is brought about in exactly the same or in a similar way as 
 the heat of an oven in which wood or coal is burnt. 
 
 In point of fact, every activity of an organ is connected 
 with a chemical change, which proceeds inside the living 
 body according to exactly the same laws as outside. The 
 animal stomach may correctly be described as a chemical 
 retort, in which the substances brought into contact with 
 one another dissociate and re-combine themselves in per- 
 fect accord with the laws of chemical affinity. A poison 
 introduced into the stomach can be neutralized by a chemi- 
 cal antidote, just in the same way as though the proceeding 
 had taken place outside ; a morbid substance present 
 therein can also be neutralized and destroyed by chemical 
 substances introduced in it, just the same as in any in- 
 organic vessel. The chemical changes undergone by food 
 during its stay in the stomach and the intestines have been 
 ascertained in modern times almost down to their most 
 minute details, and so has been the way in which they are 
 changed into the tissues and compounds of the body. We 
 know equally well that their elementary materials leave the 
 body again by various roads to the same amount as they 
 entered it ; partly unchanged, partly in other forms and 
 conditions. Not a single atom is lost in this way or 
 changed into another. Digestion is a purely chemical pro- 
 cess. We learn the same from the action of medicines 
 which is purely chemical, except where mechanical forces 
 come also into play. All medicines which are insoluble in 
 the fluids of the animal organism and can therefore pro- 
 duce no chemical reactions, must necessarily be regarded 
 as perfectly ineffective. 
 
 What applies to the chemical , applies likewise to the 
 physical processes going on within the living body. The 
 circulation of the blood is as perfectly mechanical as can 
 
VITAL FORCE. 
 
 343 
 
 possibly be imagined, and the anatomical arrangements 
 which have that circulation for their object, bear a most re- 
 markable resemblance to the mechanical works of the human 
 hand. The heart is furnished with valves like a steam-engine, 
 and the closing of these valves produces a loud, audible 
 noise. The air, on entering the lungs, undergoes friction 
 against the sides of the air-tubes, and causes the respira- 
 tory sound. Its ingress and egress are induced by purely 
 physical forces. The rising of the blood from the lower 
 limbs to the heart, in opposition to the law of gravity, is 
 rendered possible only by purely mechanical arrangements. 
 The intestine propels its contents mechanically by peris- 
 taltic activity ; all muscular actions are mechanical, and to 
 them are to be traced the movements performed by both 
 men and animals in walking. The construction of the eye 
 rests on the same laws as does the construction of a camera 
 obscura, and the ear receives the waves of sound like any 
 other cavity. 
 
 If, as must be acknowledged, many of the processes 
 going on in the living organism are not as yet explicable 
 by physical or chemical phenomena, and if we are still met 
 by problem upon problem, we ought not to hold Nature 
 responsible for this, but only the imperfection of our 
 knowledge. However, as time goes on and Science makes 
 more and more headway, there is a gradual subsidence of 
 the obstacles that are still to be found in the path of a 
 mechanical explanation of vital phenomena. Let us think 
 of our latest acquirements, and remember how, within a 
 comparatively small number of years, so many phenomena 
 have been conclusively explained which in their obscurity 
 appeared heretofore as the most powerful advocates of the 
 case of those who held with miraculous vital energies. How 
 long is it since the chemistry of respiration or digestion 
 first became known ; how long since the processes of 
 generation and fertilization emerged from their mystic dark- 
 ness, to be classed among the simplest mechanical actions 
 of the inorganic world ? The seed is no longer regarded 
 
344 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 as a living fluid, giving out an enlivening vapor, but as a 
 matter moving mechanically through the instrumentality 
 of the spermatozoa ; and what was heretofore looked upon 
 as the mysterious action of that enlivening vapor, re- 
 solves itself directly and mechanically into the contact of 
 ovum and sperm. How many processes going on within 
 the animal body, such as the rising of small particles on 
 the mucous membrane and towards the exterior, contrary 
 to the law of gravitation, seemed inexplicable and appeared 
 to call for the theory of a vital force, until the interesting 
 phenomenon of ciliate motion, a process resting on purely 
 mechanical principles, was brought to light. This re- 
 markable movement is independent of vital energies, and 
 continues long after death ; it is brought to an end only 
 with the complete softening of the organized parts through 
 putrefaction. In a turtle, as late as fifteen days after death, 
 while the flesh was falling away into putrid slime, the 
 ciliated cells were still engaged in their peculiar motion. 
 What an amount of light was thrown on the wonder- 
 ful processes going on within the blood by the discovery of 
 blood-corpuscles, and on the processes of absorption and 
 resorption by the discovery of the laws of endosmosis and 
 exosmosis ! That marvelous and apparently incompre- 
 hensible physiological activity of the animal body, the 
 nervous , is now having quite a new light thrown upon it 
 by natural philosophy ; and every day it is becoming more 
 obvious that electricity , a well-known natural force, plays 
 a most important part in these organic phenomena. 
 
 “Life,” says Virchow, “is only a particular kind of 
 mechanics ; it is, in point of fact, the most complicated 
 form thereof, it is that in which the ordinary mechanical 
 laws are brought into play under the most unusual and 
 varied conditions ; hence, the final results are separated 
 from the beginnings of the change by so great a number 
 of swiftly subsiding, intermediate links, that we can find 
 the connection only with the very greatest difficulty.” — 
 “The living organism,” says Professor Matteucci, “ is a 
 
VITAL FORCE. 
 
 345 
 
 machine, like the steam-engine or the electro-magnetic 
 machine ; that is to say, a system in which chemical af- 
 finities, especially the union of the oxygen of the air with 
 the materials of alimentation, produce heat, electricity and 
 muscular work.” He might have added, “ and mental 
 work too,” for we know that without chemical, mechanical 
 and physical changes, not only no movement can exist, 
 but no feeling, no thought, and no volition either. Sen- 
 sation is only a special mode of motion of organized 
 matter ; and since, as we have shown already, all psychical 
 activity may be traced, in the last instance, to the elements 
 of sensation (just as all bodily organization is formed by 
 groupings of the “ cells ”), the highest activity of the living 
 organism forms no exception to the general rule. All 
 matter is capable of sensation, and every living body 
 sensates. 
 
 To the chemists, who deny the necessity of the theory 
 of vital force, it has been retorted that Chemistry itself 
 is unable to form organized compounds, that is to say, to 
 make those special groupings of chemical elements in 
 ternary or quaternary compounds, the realization of which 
 implies in each instance that of an organic being endowed 
 with life and vital power ; and those who make this retort 
 courteous, added thereto this funny remark that if there 
 were no such thing as vital force, and if life were only a 
 product of chemical action, then chemists would be able to 
 produce organized beings in their retorts and perhaps 
 actually to make men ! * This suggestion has not been 
 left unanswered by the chemists. They have shown that 
 
 * This insinuation is funny, because our opponents forget that in order to pro- 
 duce organic beings it is not enough to have the chemical materials in hand, out 
 of which these are formed, but that, in order to produce such bodies, it is neces- 
 sary that a number of difficult and complicated conditions should be complied 
 with, which conditions we are quite unable to bring about artificially, and among 
 which the indispensable influence of protracted periods of time plays a principal 
 part. But there are also a number of inorganic bodies which we cannot produce 
 artificially, and yet no one supposes that these owe their origin to anything but 
 phsysico-chemical processes. Among these may be mentioned the diamond, 
 precious stones, quartz, granite, topaz, malachite, lava, etc. The reader can 
 consult on this point the close of the first essay in the author’s Die Darwin' sche 
 Theorie in seeks Vorlesungen. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 346 
 
 Chemistry is perfectly able to build up the fundamental 
 constituents of organic life. Thus the French chemist 
 Berthelot succeeded in making ethane , the fundamental 
 binary compound of organic chemistry, out of nothing but 
 its elements, carbon and hydrogen, and by the help only of 
 the forces working in inorganic nature ; he thus produced 
 for synthesis or the artificial composition of organic bodies, 
 a starting-point that could not possibly be dependent on 
 organic nature.* “We must therefore conclude,’’ as 
 Berthelot says, “ that organic chemistry now rests on the 
 same experimental principles as inorganic. In both 
 sciences, synthesis, as well as analysis, has only the action 
 of the same forces on the same elements to go by. . . . 
 The task of synthesis is to determine the precise com- 
 position of bodies and to yield the proof that the 
 fundamental laws of inorganic and organic chemistry are 
 identical.” For this reason it has become impossible at 
 this day to speak of a special organic chemistry, except 
 for the sake of convenience, and the line formerly drawn 
 between organic and inorganic chemistry (the first of which 
 is now usually called the chemistry of carbon or of the com- 
 pounds of carbon) is at present but “ a conventional aid for 
 classification, which in no wise corresponds to the nature 
 of the phenomena, but which we only preserve for con- 
 venience.” — (Dr. Schiel.) Synthetical chemistry has of late 
 years made such rapid strides, and still goes on progressing 
 at such a rate, that it is impossible as yet to see where her 
 bold advances, which have already produced such great re- 
 sults, are to stop.f 
 
 * Berthelot first united carbon and nitrogen into acetylene with the aid of elec- 
 tricity, and then formed olefiant gas, or ethane, by the addition of hydrogen. All 
 the other hydrocarbons can be built up from acetylene. Berthelot made methyl- 
 alcohol out of marsh-gas and oxygen ; out of the same and the elements of water 
 he made ordinary alcohol ; out of alcohol and hydrocarbons he formed the organic 
 acids ; and out of alcohol and ammoniac he made the amide and organic basis. 
 
 t In the year 1828 Wohler, in artificially making urea, a pre-eminently organic 
 substance, from ammonium cyanate, destroyed the theory that organic compounds 
 could only be produced by organized bodies. In 1856 Berthelot performed the 
 synthesis of formic acid from inorganic materials, that is to say from carbon ox- 
 
VITAL FORCE. 
 
 347 
 
 If the view mentioned hereinbefore, viz. that ternary and 
 quaternary compounds can only be originated by vital 
 force, were carried to its legitimate conclusions, it would 
 become necessary to deny vital force precisely to those 
 organized beings in whom the principle of life is most 
 highly developed ; for it is well known that animals lack 
 the power to form organic compounds out of inorganic, and 
 that they are therefore absolutely dependent for their sub- 
 sistence on the vegetable world, which alone is able to turn 
 inorganic into organic substances. 
 
 From all this no one, who values facts and is acquainted 
 with the method of scientific induction, can have the least 
 doubt that the conception of a special organic force, which 
 produces phenomena of life independently and apart from the 
 universal laws of nature, must be banished from the pro- 
 vince of life and science ; that nature with its matter and 
 force is one single indivisible whole, without limits or 
 exceptions ; again, that the hard and fast line of division, 
 which some have sought to draw between organic and in- 
 organic, can only be a forced one, and that a difference 
 between the two exists only in the outward form and in the 
 grouping of the material atoms, but by no means in the 
 
 ide and water, heated with caustic potash, without the co-operation of either 
 plant or animal Soon afterwards, the synthesis of alcohol, or spirit of wine, was 
 successfully accomplished directly from its elements, carbon, hydrogen and 
 oxygen. With the help of alcohol thus obtained, a whole series of other organic 
 bodies and a number of new compounds were produced, such as the various kinds 
 of ether, many vegetable oils and perfumes, many organic acids, such as racemic, 
 lactic, acetic, oxalic acid, and so on. Even fat can now be artificially made from 
 fatty acids and glycerine, both of which can be formed by purely chemical means, 
 and it is hoped that ere long it will have become possible to perform the synthesis 
 of sugar and albumen, that is to say of absolutely organic articles of nourishment. 
 “ We may hope,” says Berthelot, at the end of his admirable work on chemical 
 synthesis, “ to form anew all substances which have been developed since the 
 beginning of things, and to do this under the same conditions and the same laws 
 and by the aid of the same forces, which Nature has used in their formation.” 
 The method employed by Berthelot to bring about his remarkable results (sealing 
 up inorganic substances hermetically in glass globes, and subjecting them for 
 months to a high temperature) strikingly recalls the chemical and physical con- 
 ditions of what used to be primal ocean, at the bottom of which must have ap- 
 peared the earliest organic compounds.— Compare on this question the essay : 
 Kiinstliche Darstellung der or ganischen Verbindungen aus ihren Elcmenten, in 
 Unsere Tage, part 78, 1865, p. 779. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 348 
 
 intrinsic character. The difference between organic and 
 inorganic forms arises in reality but from the fact that the 
 first grouping of the molecules is different, and being so, 
 includes the germ of those forms. But the structure of the 
 crystal and the remarkable phenomena of the reparation of 
 injured crystals prove that there exist in the inorganic 
 world certain laws of form that cannot be infringed, and 
 which come very close to those of the organic world. 
 Modern research has shown that the crystal , being the in- 
 organic primal form, stands in a much nearer relation and 
 analogy to the cell, or organic primal form, than was for- 
 merly supposed to be the case. Both use selection as to 
 that which they take up from their surroundings ; both 
 are subject to definite external influences in their formation ; 
 both can evolve themselves out of the same compounds of 
 materials. As we noted heretofore on page 71, certain 
 microscopic crystals (named crystalloids by Nageli), which 
 have been found in the interior of plant and animal cells, 
 are capable of imbibing, that is to say, they take in fluid 
 matters from outside and swell up just like cells. They 
 thus show all the essential properties of protoplasms or the 
 albuminous contents of the cell, wherefore they were named 
 “protein crystals ’’ by Reichert, who first discovered them 
 in the interior of the animal body, in 1849. Crystalloids 
 have been produced by crystalizing artificially-formed car- 
 bon-compounds. Their curved sides obviously yield a transi- 
 tional form from the true crystals proper to the forms of 
 living nature, and the cause of these appears to reside in 
 the peculiar character of carbon, which lies at the root of 
 the organic world ; of this we have a proof of the diamond 
 with its curved sides, which consists of pure carbon. “ The 
 wide gulf,’’ says Prof. Cohn, of Breslau, at the close of a 
 circumstantial work on these remarkable bodies, “which 
 has hitherto separated the crystals of the inorganic world 
 from the organized cellular forms of the plant and animal 
 worlds, is filled up by the protein crystals.’’ 
 
 Those who still cling to the theory of a vital force are 
 
VITAL FORCE. 
 
 349 
 
 fighting a hopeless battle. Let individual mystics among 
 naturalists try, as they may. to instill fresh life into the 
 corpse ; let any number of philosophers mourn the loss 
 of this favorite child of the spiritualistic confusion of 
 thoughts ; how forcibly soever some may go on pointing 
 to the inexplicability and obscurity of many processes of 
 life, — — the doom of the theory alluded to must neverthe- 
 less be looked upon as sealed. “The appeal to so 
 mysterious a force is, ’ ’ as Karl Vogt remarks, ‘ ‘ but a para- 
 phrase of ignorance ; it is but one out of a number of 
 back-doors of which there are not a few in science, and 
 which are always the refuges of those indolent minds that 
 will not take the trouble to investigate anything they do not 
 understand, but are satisfied to marvel at the seeming 
 miracle.’’ Vital force is well compared by Prof. O. 
 Schmidt (. Descendenz-Lehre und D arwinismus) to “a 
 ghost, which scarcely knows where to play its pranks.” 
 Ideas on vital force have, in the course of history, passed 
 through the same phases as those of force and matter in 
 natural philosophy, described in the first chapter. While 
 the theory of life in its first phase was completely, and in 
 its second incompletely separated from the conceptions of 
 force and matter, the third or last phase of modern 
 thought has made it clear that there exists an absolute 
 unity or indivisibility of the bodily substance and its vital 
 properties. Life can neither create a new material or a 
 new force, nor destroy an existing one ; and if all the con- 
 ditions were known under which chemical manifestations 
 of life proceed, it would be seen that there is no difference 
 between these activities and those which can be performed 
 outside the body. Each force which the body evolves or 
 loses, comes and goes with the ponderable substance taken 
 in or extruded ; the universally recognized eternal princi- 
 ples of the indestructibility of matter and the conservation 
 of energy are absolutely opposed to the notion of peculiar 
 organic force. Here, as everywhere, matter and force are 
 eternal and indestructible. 
 
350 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 We close this chapter with some words, which are as 
 forcible as they are well-founded. They are taken from 
 Prof. Haeckel on vital force, in his work on the Entwick- 
 lungsga. 7 ig und Aufgabe der Zoologie (Jena, 1869) : “ This 
 much at least has been won, that the metaphysical ghost of 
 a so-called zdtal force is banished wholly and for ever not 
 only from the province of human, but also from that of all 
 animal physiology. No truly scientific investigation and 
 explanation of vital phenomena can at this day admit this 
 mystic product of dualistic confusion which, now as a de- 
 signing vital principle, now as a designing final cause, now 
 as an organic creative force, has worked so much error 
 and mischief.” 
 
The Soul of Brutes. 
 
 The Intelligence of the brute shows itself in just the same way as that of man. — 
 It is impossible to prove the existence of an essential difference between instinct 
 and reason ; whatever difference exists is but one of degree. — Krahmer. 
 
 The human body is a modified animal form ; the soul of man is but an animal 
 soul, raised by involution to a certain power. — Burmeister. 
 
 Instinct is a mere empty word, a mere cloak for our ignorance or intellectual 
 indolence. — F. E. Noll. 
 
 The notion that animals are incapable of forming ideas, opinions or inferences, 
 runs counter to all teaching derived from experience.— Czolbe. 
 
 T HE best authorities on physiology and on the subject 
 of animal intelligence are at the present time fairly 
 agreed in that the soul of brutes is not distinguishable 
 in quality, but only in quantity or degree from that of 
 human beings. Man has no absolute superiority over the 
 brute ; all his advantages are more or less of a mere com- 
 parative nature. There is no intellectual capacity which 
 belongs solely and exclusively to man ; it is only the 
 greater strength and the higher development of these capa- 
 cities, aided by their more perfect co-operation, which give 
 him his great and marvelous superiority over the brute. 
 But the reason why these capacities are greater and more 
 developed in man is to be sought partly in the higher and 
 more perfect development of his organ of thought, and 
 partly in the absolute change wrought in the conditions of 
 life by his erect posture, in the different way in which he 
 uses his fore-limbs and in the fact of his possessing articu- 
 late speech. But just as it is possible to show in the physi- 
 cal development of the organ of thought an uninterrupted 
 scale of gradual development from the lowest animal to 
 
 (351) 
 
352 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the highest human being, so a similar ascent of psychical 
 and mental properties in ever rising development may be 
 found in him. Neither morphology, nor chemistry, nor 
 macroscopy, nor microscopy is capable of discovering an 
 essential difference between human and animal brains ; 
 great though the differences may be, they are after all but 
 differences of degree. This accounts for the absolute 
 failure that has attended all the attempts made by some 
 scientists even down to our own time, to discover any 
 such characteristic or essential differences, and on the 
 strength of these to assign to man a special place and 
 classification in natural history. 
 
 In keeping with this, all the well-known physiological or 
 psychological differences, which in all ages have been 
 brought forward as proofs of the existence of an insuper- 
 able gulf between men and animals, have appeared on 
 closer investigation to be either non-existent, or else to 
 have but a relative instead of an absolute value. It has be- 
 come an axiom among all empirical psychologists and all 
 students of human nature who judge by experience, that 
 the highest mental capabilities of man began to germinate 
 in very inferior regions, and that the mental activities, 
 abilities, feelings and tendencies of man appear in their 
 primary forms in the animal soul to an almost incredible 
 extent. Love, faithfulness, gratitude, .the sense of duty, 
 piety, conscientiousness, friendship and love of one’s 
 neighbor, compassion and self-abnegation, the feeling of 
 right and wrong, nay even pride, jealousy, hatred, crafti- 
 ness, treachery, vindictiveness and inquisitiveness are as 
 well to be found among animals as premeditation, sagacity, 
 the highest degree of cunning, foresight, thought for the 
 future, and so on ; nay, the animal shares with man even 
 the gourmandise and capacity for progress which are 
 thought to belong to man only. It knows and practices 
 even the institutes or principles of political and social life, 
 of slavery and precedence, of domestic and rural economy, 
 of education, nursing of the sick and medicine ; it puts up 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 353 
 
 the most wonderful fabrics in the shape of houses, caves, 
 nests, roads and bridges ; animals hold even meetings and 
 joint deliberations, and initiate trials of criminals and cul- 
 prits ; they consult on definite plans and projects by the 
 aid of a well-developed language, consisting of sounds, 
 signs and gestures ; they fully remember the past ; they are 
 taught by experience and are, in a word, as much and 
 even more highly endowed beings than most men know or 
 even dream of.* 
 
 Nought but absolute ignorance and inconceivable super- 
 erogation have taught man to designate the undeniable 
 psychical phenomena of animal life as mere “ instinct 
 a word derived from the Latin instingucre , which means 
 “to incite” or “spur on,” and therefore presupposes of 
 necessity the existence of a supernatural inciter or in- 
 stigator. But just the same as there exists neither a vital 
 force, nor a self-contained psychical being, nor an innate 
 idea, so there is no such thing as instinct in the generally 
 accepted meaning of an unconscious, irresistible, unerring, 
 unchangeable impulse of nature or natural tendency, im- 
 planted within the souls of animals for their welfare or 
 conservation. All unprejudiced investigators declare them- 
 selves most emphatically opposed to such a senseless 
 theory, which would make every kind of scientific animal 
 psychology a matter of impossibility. The word “in- 
 stinct” is, as Dr. Weinland says, “ obviously nothing more 
 than a makeshift invented by indolence, to relieve us of 
 the difficult task of studyingthe animal soul ; ” or, as Lewes 
 remarks, it is “one of those words by which men hide 
 their own ignorance from themselves.” The animal is led 
 and guided in its daily life neither by a blind, involuntary 
 impulse, nor by the influence of a higher power, but by re- 
 flection, arising from comparison, judgment and con- 
 clusions, in all of which an essential part is played by the 
 
 * The detailed experimental proof of the above statement may be found in the 
 author’s two works on animal physiology, (i,) Mind in Animals , (and 2) Liebe und 
 Liebeslcben in der Thierwelt. 
 
354 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 organization and mental tendency inherited from parents. 
 Even the process of thought through which this is done, is 
 essentially the same as in the case of men, although the 
 power of judgment is very much weaker, and the inherited 
 mental tendency, owing to this lesser power of judgment, 
 comes forward more conspicuously than it does in man. 
 We might therefore with just as good a right contend that 
 man works only by the impulse of instinct, as trace the 
 actions of animals to that source. But the one is as much 
 a mistake as the other. Both act by understanding or 
 reason and by what maybe termed instinct, if it be desired 
 to preserve this word as the equivalent of the inherited 
 mental tendencies of faculties of the nervous system ; the 
 only difference is that the animal acts more by instinct, and 
 man more by reflection. The difference is not one of 
 principle, but of degree. There is moreover the sense of 
 smell, which, being so much more highly developed in 
 animals than in man, enables the former to perform achieve- 
 ments which seem inexplicable at the first glance, and 
 apparently go to justify the theory of a special innate in- 
 stinct, whereas a well -instructed person perceives in all 
 this nothing but a simple and natural connection. 
 
 “ It is the height of folly,” says the famous Systeme de 
 la Nature , “ to deny intellectual capacities to animals ; they 
 feel, think, judge and compare ; they choose and deliber- 
 ate, they have memories, they evince love and hatred, and 
 their senses are often more delicate than our own.” 
 
 It is not by instinct, but by reflection, that the fox makes 
 a hole which has two outlets, or has a so-called escape to 
 it, and steals fowls at an hour when he knows that master 
 and servants are away or at meals. It is not instinct, but 
 experience that makes older animals more sagacious and 
 prudent than younger ones ; and if, in places where foxes 
 are much hunted, it is found that the young animals, on 
 first coming out, show gi'eater prudence than in other 
 parts, this is the result of a special tendency to watchful- 
 ness inherited from their parents and ancestors. Why do 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 355 
 
 birds that are shot at, such as crows and sparrows, show 
 no fear of people who carry no guns ? and how is it that no 
 fear of a man is shown by animals living in uninhabited 
 islands and having never seen any men nor never been 
 chased by them ? 
 
 Woldemar Schultz, in the account of his Brazilian 
 travels, (. Ansland , 1866, No. 24), relates that old mules, 
 who have grown grey in the service of man, often get 
 quite beside themselves at the sight of a packing-case, and 
 kick out at the object of their torture. Others, more cun- 
 ning than these, allow themselves to be loaded, and then 
 begin to run and jump about, till they have thrown every- 
 thing off. “It is wonderful,’’ says Schultz, “how the 
 older loaded mules during their journeys only choose such 
 paths between rocks and trunks of trees that are far enough 
 apart to let them and their loads through ; with this ob- 
 ject they will often make considerable detours. On the 
 other hand, the younger animals are not so particular about 
 it and make no end of trouble in trying to get their loads 
 through narrow passes.’’ Examples illustrating the in- 
 telligence and reflective ability of animals are as striking as 
 they are well-known ; in fact they are so numerous that 
 whole books might be filled with them. Everyone who is 
 in the habit of being with dogs, can tell the most extra- 
 ordinary and almost incredible facts, showing their cal- 
 culating perception and craft.* It is enough to read the 
 
 * Prof. Hinrichs ( Das Lcben in der Natur ) thinks that this animal possesses no 
 imagination or perception, because if it did, it would be able to run about without 
 its master and might possibly put up at an inn. Herr Hinrichs can have had no 
 opportunity of observing dogs. Almost every day dogs may be seen running 
 out for walks on their own account, and turning into inns with which they are 
 acquainted. In reality, there is scarcely any question of natural philosophy in 
 which the unlucky tendency of the philosophic theorist is seen more clearly than 
 in this question of the intellectual life of animals. Facts, however cogent, are 
 thrown on one side, and then the time-honored philosophical categories are 
 brought out with the conceit imparted by that little knowledge which is a dan- 
 gerous thing, and used to settle the question by applying them to individual cases. 
 Fortunately, Nature knows nothing of the subjective fancies of these learned 
 gentlemen, and in all matters of fact takes no heed 1 whatever of theoretical con- 
 structions. Let any one read, for instance, the philosophical disquisitions on the 
 difference between men and animals, in the universally praised and most suc- 
 cessful work on Leib und Seele, first published in 1855 by Herr Julius Schaller, 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 356 
 
 accounts given by Dujardin of the intelligence of bees, by 
 Burdach of the sagacity of crows, by Vogt of dolphins and of 
 the remarkable way in which a young dog was educated by 
 an older one. Or we may remember the curious anecdote 
 of a swallow returning in the spring and finding its nest 
 taken possession of by a sparrow, the swallow then seeking 
 to turn the tables on the recalcitrant usurper by beginning 
 to stop up the outlet with mud, other swallows assisting it 
 in doing so, until the occupant, thoroughly understanding 
 the fate that awaits it, knocks its beak against and thereby 
 shatters the wall that they are building up ! Who is not 
 acquainted with the wonderful economy existing among the 
 communities of ants, bees and termites, to which the present 
 author has devoted the greater part of his book on Mind 
 in animals ? Who has not read about the canine com- 
 munities in the North American prairies ? or about those 
 political and social habits of the ants which sound so fabulous, 
 but none the less exist in reality — how the ants fight regu- 
 lar battles, undertake marauding expeditions, bring home 
 slaves and train them in their service, keep milchcows in 
 their extensive and well-appointed dwellings, how they 
 practice agriculture, and so on ? 
 
 Hooker writes of the elephant, an animal that occupies 
 the highest stage of mental development: “ The docility 
 of these animals has been known from old, but it loses so 
 much by mere description that their good-nature, obedience 
 and intelligence appeared to me as surprising as if I had 
 never heard or read anything about it. Our elephant was ad- 
 mirable, when not in a willful humor, and was so docile 
 that at the word of command he would take up a stone and 
 give it to his rider with his trunk over his head, the rider 
 being thus spared the trouble of alighting on his geological 
 excursions.” 
 
 a man, by the way, whose handling of the subject contrasts favorably with the 
 method that obtains among scholastic philosophers. In this work the animal is 
 regarded by Herr Schaller as the mere specimen of its kind ; man, on the other 
 hand, as an individual and an Ego. What answer could he give, if the whole 
 idea were reversed and it were said : The animal has only a value as a single 
 individual, but man as man and as the representative of his race? 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 357 
 
 So well known is the stupendous sagacity of the ape — 
 the animal that stands next to man, although man is not 
 directly descended from, but only collaterally related to, the 
 present races of apes — that whole volumes might be filled 
 with the most wonderful and best substantiated accounts of 
 it. The author of this book saw in the Zoological Gardens 
 of Antwerp an ape, who had a perfect bed in his cage, and 
 who would lie down in it at night and cover himself over 
 like a human being. He used to play tricks with hoops 
 and balls that had been given him, and when. playing 
 would turn towards the spectators, as though he wanted to 
 talk to them and show to them what he could do. This 
 same ape had been observed to trace with his finger the 
 outline of his shadow on the wall. The whole phenomenon 
 produced a painful expression, as though a human-like, 
 reflecting and sensitive being were shut up there in a cage. 
 On the other hand, the negro, according to the excellent 
 description given by Burmeister, strikingly resembles the 
 ape both intellectually and physically. There is the same 
 imitativeness and the same cowardice, there are, in point 
 of fact, the same characteristic peculiarities. Historically, 
 as in Haiti, the negro appears, to borrow a phrase from a 
 writer in the Allgemeine Zeitung , “ half tiger, and half 
 ape.” The aborigines of Brazil are described by Bur- 
 meister as animals in their ways and habits and as lacking 
 every higher mental capacity. “ In the deserts of the in- 
 terior of Borneo and Sumatra and in the Polynesian is- 
 lands,” says Hope, ( Essay on the Origin of 1831) 
 
 ‘‘hordes of savages wander about, whose resemblance to 
 the baboon is unmistakable, and whose superiority in mind 
 and body over the irrational animal is scarcely perceptible. 
 They have little memory, and still less power of imagina- 
 tion. They seem incapable of reflecting on the past and 
 of providing for the future. Nothing stirs them up from 
 their apathy except hunger. There is no mental faculty 
 discoverable in them except the low animal cunning 
 usually ascribed to apes.” 
 
/ 
 
 358 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 It is often alleged that the possession of speech implies so 
 characteristic a difference between man and brute, as to 
 leave no doubt about the existence of a deep and impass- 
 able gulf between them. Those who urge this plea must 
 necessarily be ignorant of the fact that animals can speak, 
 and that they possess in a high degree the power of 
 mutual communication, even about concrete matters. 
 “ How is it possible to pretend,” says Broca, ‘‘that man 
 only possesses the faculty of speech, and that it is wanting 
 in animals? People must be blind not to see that animals 
 are able to communicate their thoughts to each other, by 
 means which, though they may differ ever so much from 
 those employed by men, represent none the less speech in 
 its various forms.” 
 
 Dujardin placed a saucer with some sugar in it in a hole 
 in a wall, at some distance from a bee-hive. One bee having 
 discovered this treasure, impressed the nature of the 
 locality on its memory by flying around the edges of the 
 hole and pushing against them with its head ; it then flew 
 away, and after a little time returned in company with a 
 number of its friends, who quickly made off with the sugar. 
 Had not these animals spoken to each other ? How many 
 examples prove that birds especially make very circum- 
 stantial communications to each other ; they agree on cer- 
 tain plans, hold councils, and put criminals on their trial? 
 The way in which the chamois set their watches and ap- 
 prise one another of an approaching danger, is a very 
 plain illustration of this power of communication. And 
 can this prudence have been acquired by instinct, seeing 
 that chamois-hunters are not as old as chamois? Many 
 gregarious animals choose for themselves a leader and 
 willingly place themselves under his orders. Can this be 
 done without mutual communication ? The way in which 
 dogs, wolves and foxes carry on their prowling expeditions on 
 a premeditated plan, clearly proves that a very definite con- 
 versation, which is possible only by an interchange of 
 speech, must have previously taken place between the in- 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 359 
 
 dividual members of the pack. But as man does not under- 
 stand the language of animals, he prefers to deny the ex- 
 istence of it altogether. 
 
 Parkyns, an English traveler in Abyssinia, devoted his 
 leisure for a long time to the observation of the habits of 
 apes and thence concluded ‘ ‘ that they have a language as 
 intelligible to them as ours is to us.” {Revue Britannique .) 
 ‘‘The apes,” says Parkyns, ‘‘have leaders, whom they 
 obey more faithfully than men usually do theirs, and they 
 have also a regular system of depredation. When a tribe 
 leaves the rocky clefts and descends into the plains to rob 
 a corn-field, it carries along with it all its members, old and 
 young, male and female. The elders of the tribe who are 
 easily recognizable by their hirsute appearance, are chosen 
 as outposts. Prior to descending, they carefully explore 
 every ravine and climb up all the rocks to obtain a good 
 survey of the district. Sentinels are also placed on the 
 flanks and in the rear ; and the watchfulness of these is 
 most remarkable. From time to time they call and reply 
 to each other, to announce whether any danger threatens, 
 or whether all’s right. Their cries are so strident, so 
 varied and so distinct, that in course of time they may 
 be understood by listeners. At the least shout of alarm 
 the whole tribe comes to a standstill and harkens, until a 
 second cry, differently intoned, bids them march on.” 
 
 According to the observations made by what are called 
 puntsmen in England, wild ducks hold regular parliaments 
 and go in regular divisions. The ordinary puntsman does 
 not understand much more of their language than the 
 cries of warning and of safety, whereas they, like all ani- 
 mals, have special expressions for pleasure, pain, hunger, 
 love, anguish and jealousy. The experienced puntsman, 
 on the other hand, knows when the birds are talking of de- 
 parture, rest, danger, security, love, anger, and so on. 
 Each kind, again, has its own tongue. Prior to the usual 
 morning flight there is always a very loud and lively dis- 
 cussion, lasting from ten to twenty minutes, at the end of 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 360 
 
 which they all fly off. — It has been told of a brooding 
 goose, who was ill, that she went to another and cackled to 
 her, whereupon the other went with her and undertook the 
 work of hatching. The sick one sat down near and died 
 an hour later. 
 
 F. W. Gruner reports that the fox has very decided in- 
 flections and tones in his voice. The dog barks differently 
 in joy from what he does in anger and gives a special ex- 
 pression of his voice to each of his feelings. This is true 
 of almost all our domestic animals, who know how to make 
 themselves very well understood to those around them by 
 the tone of their voices. Each animal has its own language, 
 with a number of definite sounds to express its wishes, 
 needs and emotions. The gesture and vocal language of 
 insects (bees, ants, beetles, etc.), consisting in touch and 
 pressure with the antennae, in tapping, chirping, rubbing 
 of the wing-cases, and so on, is known to be a very com- 
 prehensive and well-developed one. 
 
 An observer has lately recorded that he was present once 
 in springtime at a remarkable council, held by swallows. 
 A pair of swallows had begun to build their nest under the 
 roof of a house. One day a number of other swallows 
 came, and a long discussion took place between them and 
 the builders of the nest. They all sat together on the 
 roof near the nest in course of construction, twittering 
 and vociferating as loud as ever they could. After this 
 consultation had lasted for some time, and the nest had 
 repeatedly been inspected by several of the flight, the 
 meeting broke up. The result was that the couple de- 
 serted the nest they had commenced, and began building 
 a new one in another part of the rafters situated more 
 favorably. 
 
 In Bodenstedt’s Tagliche Rundschau , Dr. Julius Hensel 
 relates a very similar anecdote. In September, 1864, he 
 saw in the Hanoverian town of Osterode a young swallow 
 hanging on the weathercock of the church tower, having 
 been wedged in on attempting rather too bold a flight. 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 361 
 
 Flocks of swallows were vainly endeavoring to succor 
 their comrade, whose life hung on a thread. On the fol- 
 lowing morning, when the little thing had long been dead, 
 such numbers of swallows circled around the dangerous 
 pinnacle that the air was black with them. The news had 
 been communicated from one to another, and they had come 
 to take stock of the case, in order to avoid the danger for 
 the future. Two hours later the whole assemblage had 
 dispersed. 
 
 Nearly every one has noticed the remarkable gatherings 
 which birds of passage are in the habit of holding in cer- 
 tain places, one or more days before setting out on their 
 journey ; at these meetings the plan and arrangements for 
 the journey are decided on by joint deliberations. Far 
 more complicated must be the consultations held by many 
 birds, as for instance by storks, in connection with the 
 trial of culprits, especially of those who have been guilty of 
 infringing the law of monogamy, which is very strictly 
 enforced among many birds. The author in his work on 
 Leben der Liebe in der Thierwelt ( Erotic Life in the Ani- 
 mal World), page 69 et seq. has given full details of these 
 “ trials at law,” as well as of the marriages of birds. 
 
 No doubt, some will say, animals have a language, but 
 it is not capable of development. This is one more of those 
 contentions which are entirely disproved by reality. Apart 
 from the fact that we neither know nor can know anything 
 definite as to the possible or actual development of animal 
 language, since we do not understand it, there are a 
 number of facts and observations extant which go a long 
 way to show that the language of birds, as represented by 
 the voice, the same as that embodied in gestures and 
 mimics, is undoubtedly capable of a certain development 
 and improvement. According to Fuchs ( Das Seelenlebe?i 
 der Thiere , 1854) there is an essential difference between 
 the sounds uttered by wild and those uttered by domesti- 
 cated animals. The development of the language of birds 
 artificially trained to or imitating speech, such as parrots, 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 362 
 
 is so well known that it need only be cursorily referred to 
 in this place. And if, in this connection, we glance at 
 man, we must ask the question, What development is the 
 language of those savage races capable of, of whom 
 travelers tell us, that they speak more by signs and ges- 
 tures than by sounds, and that even their sounds resemble 
 rather the rough cries and croakings of animals than human 
 articulate speech ? 
 
 We know further that the mental capacities of the ani- 
 mal can be formed and brought out like those of men, as 
 is sufficiently proved by the olten marvelous results of 
 training. That the education of animals proceeds slowly 
 and painfully is owing less to their want of ability than to 
 the difficulty of communicating with them. In this the 
 same means have to be employed — and in fact are em- 
 ployed — as are called for in the troublesome education of 
 the deaf and dumb. But even without special training all 
 domestic and tame animals, by continual intercourse with 
 man, are well known to be more highly trained intellectu- 
 ally and to show more capacity than in their state of 
 nature. Thus our house-dogs are evolved from wolves and 
 jackals, and have not only improved most remarkably in 
 intelligence, but have also acquired moral characteristics, 
 such as affection, conscientiousness, fidelity, sympathy, 
 dutifulness, temper, etc. Even in the state of nature most 
 animals change and improve in proportion to the change 
 in their surroundings, needs, habits, the fashion of their 
 dwellings, etc. It must be admitted that as a rule these 
 changes proceed so slowly, that they more or less escape 
 our notice. An exception to this rule is made by the nidi- 
 fication of the common house-swallow, as to which F. A. 
 Pouchet ( Acte s du Museum d' histoire naturelle de Rouen, 
 tome III, 1872) has proved by direct comparison that in 
 the course of the last forty or fifty years it has undergone a 
 marked improvement, whereby more room has been ac- 
 quired for the young, as well as a better protection against 
 rain and enemies. The same observer states that the 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 363 
 
 European yellow-hammer hangs its nest under the boughs 
 of trees by the help of gathered pieces of twine and thread ; 
 the utilization of these materials has only become possible 
 since the existence of the manufacturing activity of man. 
 “ He who says,” proceeds M. Pouchet, “ that animals are 
 mere unchangeable machines, shows that he has never ob- 
 served any of them. If they are only machines, the most 
 superficial observation of the smallest among them proves 
 that these machines observe, compare and judge, or, in 
 other words, they possess all the faculties of reason.” 
 
 That the reason of man alone is capable of training and 
 progress by virtue of an interior or spontaneous tendency, 
 while the intelligence of animals would forever remain 
 stationary without the stimulus imparted to it by man, is a 
 contention (as proved by the examples already mentioned) 
 which is neither perfectly accurate, nor in any way fitted to 
 form an essential difference between the minds of animals 
 and men. For it is well known that the reason of the lowest 
 races of mankind does not manifest this internal tendency, 
 and that there is no personal or independent history of the 
 civilization of those races ; even the human race, considered 
 as a whole, has as we have already shown, needed immeasur- 
 able spaces of time in comparison with the historic period, 
 in order to acquire this tendency. 
 
 That a gradual transition, passing through countless in- 
 termediate gradations, exists between man and animals, 
 both in mental and corporeal characteristics, can only be 
 denied by those who insist upon setting their own opinion 
 above facts. All the well-known marks of distinction which 
 have been put forward with the view of establishing a 
 sharp line of demarcation, are, as we have repeatedly re- 
 marked, but relative and not absolute in their nature.* 
 
 * In the comparison so often instituted between men and animals the blunder is 
 always made of placing the civilized European and some wild and barely known 
 animal in juxtaposition ; the correct way of drawing a parallel would be by ex- 
 amining the extreme borders of humanity and the transitional stages. Professor 
 Kolliker, in the above-mentioned work on the Darwinian theory, makes the fol- 
 lowing strictures on this fallacious method : “ If the civilized Indo-European is 
 
force and matter. 
 
 364 
 
 And how could it be otherwise? Nature is one whole 
 thing, spreading in every direction in an unbroken inter- 
 dependence and knowing of no absolute boundaries and 
 divisions ; for lines of demarcations have only been set up 
 by the systematizing human intellect. Man has, therefore, 
 no right to set himself above the rest of the organic world, 
 and to consider himself as a being of a distinct and higher 
 nature : on the contrary, he should recognize the firm and 
 indissoluble couplings, which tie him to nature. His be- 
 ginnings and his endings are identical to those of everything 
 else that lives and grows. 
 
 “The old view,” says the author of Menschen und 
 Dinge , Mittheilungen aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden 
 Naturforschers , 1855, “ that man alone is endowed with 
 reason and intellect, and that between him and the animals 
 there exists an impassable gulf, has not a little contributed 
 to hiding from us for such a long time and so completely 
 the psychological aspect of the animal world. . . When 
 this error has once been cast aside. . . and when the idea 
 shall once have prevailed that not only from a physical, but 
 also from a moral and intellectual point of view, the ani- 
 mal world is a man in fragments , then a comparative 
 psychology will arise as a parallel to the comparative 
 anatomy which we have gradually formed.” 
 
 Fr. Friedrich remarks very forcibly and cogently:-- 
 “ Not to recognize the position which animals occupy 
 towards man and in the great whole of Nature is at the 
 present day a sign of injustice and obtuseness. He who 
 
 compared with the highest mammalian brute, 'the gap is found great not only intel- 
 lectually, but also physically, and a horror is then felt at the idea that man and 
 certain animals, such as the higher apes, should stand in any' genetic relationship. 
 But if we take the red prognathous New-Hollander or Bushman, whose body may 
 almost be termed brute-like, and whose intellectual life is of the lowest grade, the 
 gap appears by no means so great, and the comparison and juxtaposition of such 
 a creature with ourselves is by no means flattering. And who can assure us that 
 the anthropoid apes now known, such as the gorilla, chimpanzee and ourang, 
 were really the mammals most like the human race which have existed, or that in 
 earlier times there were not men more savage and lower than are known at this 
 day? ” 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 
 
 365 
 
 denies their intellectual and psychical qualities, shows that 
 his understanding of nature reaches no further than the 
 range of his physical vision, and that he is unqualified to 
 give a judgment on intellectual powers.” 
 
 Professor B. Cotta relates a remarkable incident, first ob- 
 served by Darwin, about a species of crabs inhabiting the 
 Keeling Islands. These crabs open cocoanuts in a pe- 
 culiar fashion with their curiously formed claws, and having 
 done so, eat the kernels. This proceeding is urged in 
 favor of the theory of a special innate instinct, and the 
 teller of the story seems inclined to perceive in the method 
 referred to a particular proof of the supreme wisdom of the 
 creator, who must have formed for this special object an 
 animal fitted for it ! It is difficult to conceive how a natu- 
 ralist can come to such a conclusion, and the irrationality 
 of this way of looking at things has already been partly 
 exposed. It cannot be doubted that the animal had tried 
 experiments in the matter and specially in cocoanuts, 
 before it arrived at the idea of using its claws in that 
 fashion, and that the complete evolution of the now existing 
 conditions came about finally by natural selection. To see 
 anything else in it, and to imagine that that crab was made 
 a present of its peculiar claw apparatus in order that it 
 might crack cocoanuts, is a manifest absurdity. We 
 might as well say that noses existed for the sake of spec- 
 tacles, or that man being created in order that he might 
 travel on railways, built locomotives by instinct and re- 
 ceived legs in order that he might step into carriages. 
 
Free Will 
 
 Man is as free as a bird in a cage ; he can move within certain limits.— Lav ater. 
 
 There is no such thing as a free will or voluntary act, independent of the totality 
 of the influences which in each individual moment guide men and keep even 
 the strongest within bounds.— M oleschott. 
 
 How foolish is the idle conceit of an absolute freedom of the human will, seeing 
 that it is completely ruled by the tendencies to self-preservation which Nature 
 has implanted in the human bosom.— A. H. Schneider. 
 
 To understand all is to pardon all.— Mme. de Stael. 
 
 S INCE man, as we have proved in the foregoing 
 chapters, is a product of all-creating Nature, both in 
 his physical and his psychical being, there can be no 
 doubt that not only what he is, but also what he wants, 
 does, feels and thinks, depends on purely natural inter- 
 connections and on necessities of nature, like the whole 
 fabric of the universe. None but a superficial and ignorant 
 contemplation of man and of human existence, superadded 
 to spiritualistic and metaphysical prejudices, could ever in- 
 duce the idea that the actions either of an individual or of 
 nations are the outcome and expression of a perfectly free 
 and self-conscious will. On the contrary, if we go to 
 greater depths in our searches, we are taught that the con- 
 nection of the general definiteness of nature and of natural 
 influences with individual idiosyncrasy is so close and in- 
 frangible that we can only speak of volition and free 
 decision in a very limited sense ; we are taught of settled 
 laws and rules in all the phenomena which we have hitherto 
 looked upon as the products of mere chance or of self- 
 acting spontaneity. “The human freedom, of which all 
 
 (366) 
 
FREE WILL. 
 
 367 
 
 boast, ’ ’ says the great thinker Spinoza, ‘ ‘ consists in nought 
 but that men are conscious of their own will, while ignorant 
 of the causes which have induced it.” 
 
 The science of statistics, which has only been turned to 
 proper account in modern times, has the great honor of 
 having proved the existence of definite rules in a number 
 of phenomena, which had hitherto been looked upon as 
 purely accidental or as owing their origin to an arbitrary 
 power. If, for instance, statistics prove that under identi- 
 cally the same circumstances almost the same number of 
 murders, of suicides, of thefts, or of marriages, take place 
 within a certain time, we cannot but feel compelled to sub- 
 stitute a rule of some kind of natural predetermination for 
 the apparently accidental or arbitrary nature of such acts. 
 
 It is only in concentrating our attention upon individual 
 and minor facts that we are apt to lose our hold on the 
 major ones by which we may recognize this rule, while only 
 an aggregate survey of Nature and its phenomena enables 
 us to understand the order of things which, in a measure, 
 inexorably sways humanity and man. And thus it may be 
 said without exaggeration that in the perennial contention 
 about the freedom of the human will, the vast majority of 
 doctors and practical psychologists lean to the side of those 
 who recognize that all human actions are everywhere de- 
 pendent in the last resort on the fixed necessities of nature 
 or on external and internal influences, and that in each in- 
 dividual instance there remains only a very small scope, and 
 oftentimes no scope at all, for free volition. 
 
 It is impossible for us to deal in this place exhaustively 
 with the great truth just referred to, which is so necessary 
 to the recognition of the existence of a natural order of 
 things in the Universe ; for if we wanted to do so, we 
 should have to take in almost the whole range of human 
 knowledge and thought. We must, therefore, confine 
 ourselves to referring to certain leading points by which 
 the possibility of such demonstration may be readily per- 
 ceived. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 368 
 
 There are three main groups of influences which more or 
 less control the will of man, and which set certain definite 
 limits to his actions. 
 
 The first and most powerful of these influences resides in 
 the individual organization of each person, and in his 
 physical and moral tendencies, impulses, inclinations and 
 characteristics which are mostly inherited from parents and 
 ancestors ; these are forces which, according to experience, 
 work so powerfully on man’s actions that little or no room 
 is left for free choice. 
 
 The second influence is the force of training, education 
 and example, acting upon the innate character, and pro- 
 ducing thereon sometimes a beneficial, and sometimes a 
 deleterious effect, but in each instance reducing man’s free 
 choice to its narrowest limits. 
 
 The third influence lies in the external circumstances ol 
 life and in the action of the surroundings or media within 
 which each individual man does and must move. In the 
 most superficial sense we reckon among these media : 
 country, climate, natural conditions in general, also manners 
 and customs, social and political circumstances, stages of 
 civilization and knowledge, peculiarities of character, the 
 style of feeding and living in use among the people, nation 
 or race to which the individual belongs ; lastly, the special 
 personal circumstances by which everyone living in the 
 midst of a community is effected in the same way as he is 
 by general circumstances. These are : health, nutrition, 
 wealth or poverty, abundance or privation, social position, 
 happiness or misery, and so on. 
 
 Galton (. London Journal of the Royttl Geogr. Soc., vol. 
 XXII) relates : “ The difference of the moral character and 
 the physical constitution of the various tribes of South 
 Africa is connected with the nature, soil and vegetation of 
 their dwelling places. The arid inland steppes, that are 
 covered only with thick jungles and low brushwood, breed 
 dwarfish sinewy Bushmen ; in the open, hilly, undulating 
 pasture land we fine the Dammaras, a nation of independent 
 
FREE WILL. 
 
 3^9 
 
 shepherds, amongst whom each head of a family is lord 
 paramount within his own circle ; on the rich crown-land 
 of the north, on the contrary, we meet with the most 
 civilized and progressive race, theOvampos.” According 
 to Desor, the histories, customs, and manners of the 
 American Indian tribes, whom he distinguishes as Prairie 
 and Forest Indians, may be easily traced back to the dif- 
 ferences existing between the various descriptions of soil 
 they inhabit. The desert, to quote Karl Muller’s ex- 
 pression, has changed the Bedouin who inhabits it, to a 
 “cat,” and according to General Daumas, the motto of 
 those faithless dwellers of the desert is : ‘ ‘ Kiss the dog on 
 his mouth, till you have got what you want of him.” In 
 their arid and sandy home, which never yielded them any- 
 thing but a bare existence, the Arabs have ever remained 
 a crude, uncivilized people, no better than migratory 
 savages. But look at the change that was wrought in 
 them, when they had conquered Persia, Spain and India ! 
 and what a difference in breeding and national character is 
 perceptible between the rich lands of the Nile, the seat of 
 a civilization as ancient as it is wonderful, and the desert 
 immediately adjacent thereto ! Again, some two or three 
 hundred years ago, the first colonists reached New Eng- 
 land, true Englishmen in every respect ; but what a change 
 has come over them since then, by the mere influence of 
 changed soil and climate ! Spareness of body, and dry 
 yellow skin, long straight hair, long necks and elongation 
 of all long bones, especially of those of the upper extremi- 
 ties, together with less development of the glandular 
 system, deep-set eyes, and so on, make the Yankee as a 
 rule distinguishable at a glance from the natural born 
 Englishman. Perhaps the restless and almost feverish 
 excitability of his character and habits, which partially ac- 
 counts for the rapid and gigantic growth of the American 
 commonwealth, is in some way connected with the ex- 
 cessive dryness of the air ; and it has also been noticed 
 that during the prevalence of the north-westerly winds, 
 
370 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 which lose all their dampness on their passage through the 
 vast American continent, the irritability of the inhabitants 
 of America is strikingly on the increase. But even more 
 striking than the changes just mentioned are those under- 
 gone by the English in Australia, more particularly in 
 New South Wales. The character of the native Britain 
 bears impressed upon it his damp, cloudy sky, the heavy 
 atmosphere and insularity of his home, while on the other 
 hand the very character of the Italian beams, as it were, 
 with the rays of his glowing sun and is marked with the 
 impress of his ever blue sky. The Oriental’s world of 
 fantastic thoughts and fables is in a measure the outcome 
 of the luxuriant and exuberant fullness of the nature that 
 surrounds him. In countries in which earthquakes, wild 
 beasts, hurricanes, storms, insecurity of life, of health and 
 of wealth and like circumstances react upon the character 
 of the inhabitants, superstition and want of courage are 
 rife, and the imagination is developed to an excess at the 
 cost of the intellect. Conversely, in the Far North, in 
 which all nature seems congealed by cold blasts adding to 
 the chill and torpor of an icy atmosphere, which seems 
 more fit to destroy than to create life, we find but scanty 
 bushes, dwarfed trees, and a diminutive race of men barely 
 adapted for civilization. Only where climate, soil, and the 
 external conditions of the earth’s surface keep up a certain 
 medium or equilibrium, as they do in Europe, can man 
 rise to that stage of intellectual and moral civilization, 
 which gives to the European so great a superiority over 
 all the other races of the globe. 
 
 The French scientist Tremaux ( Revue contemp. 1864, 
 pages 381 — 384) quotes numerous examples taken from 
 popular traditions, and going to show that apart from the 
 influence of climate, quite a definite relation exists between 
 the geological formation of the soil and the character and 
 mental type of the nations dwelling thereon. The inferior 
 race, says M. Tremaux, always belongs to the older forma- 
 tions and the less favored climate, whereas the superior 
 
FREE WILL, 
 
 37 1 
 
 face always inhabits a land which has undergone a greater 
 change in a comparatively narrow space and consequently 
 belongs to the more recent formations. If a people (or an 
 animal) come to live in another country and under other 
 conditions of life, it changes for the better if the new soil be 
 more recent, and for the worse if it be more ancient, than 
 the one they originally lived on. A new soil breeds a new 
 being or a new species — that is the ratio?iale of M. Trem- 
 aux’s investigations.* 
 
 No less than soil and climate, do political and social con- 
 ditions exert a powerful influence on the character, and 
 thence on the actions, of nations as well as individuals ; of 
 this, history and popular traditions afford us countless ex- 
 amples. When ruled by despotism, as in so many Eastern 
 countries, men become hypocritical, submissive slaves, desti- 
 tute of a sense of honor and dignity, who do everything to 
 please their rulers ; while in a Republic or a free State they 
 learn to respect themselves, and develop virtues to which they 
 were previously strangers. The same Romans who, in the 
 days of the Republic, exhibited such great Republican 
 virtues and such an exemplary sense of modesty and de- 
 corum, actually gloried, in the days of the Empire, in being 
 permitted to offer their wives and daughters to the lusts of 
 their ruler and of his creatures, and Rome became a place 
 full of nauseous vice and fetid depravity. Great and stirring 
 times breed numbers of great men and wonderful characters 
 who fill history with their fame ; whilst in petty, stagnant 
 periods every spirit seems dead, and every noble action 
 impossible. 
 
 Now just as nations as a whole are dependent for their 
 history and characteristics on the external conditions of 
 Nature and the internal ones of Society under which they 
 have grown up, thus is the individual man no less a pro- 
 
 * For further information on the influence of the environment (soil, climate, etc.) 
 on Man see A. von Humboldt, Ansichten der Natur O. Uhle in the journal 
 Natur } 1874 ; Buckle, History of Civilization in England , Introduction ; Cabanis, 
 Sur les supports du physique et du moral de Vhomme, 1798 till 1815. 
 
37 2 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 duct and a sum total of external and internal natural forces, 
 not merely in his entire physical and moral being, but also 
 in each single department of his activity. This activity de- 
 pends first and foremost on his whole mental individuality 
 and special characteristics. But what is this individuality 
 which acts so decisively on man, and in each single instance, 
 quite apart from additional external forces, fixes his line of 
 conduct within such narrow bounds as only to leave an ex- 
 ceedingly small scope for the exercise of his free will ? what 
 is this individuality but the necessary product of innate 
 physical and mental qualities, in connection with training, 
 teaching, example, custom, rank, fortune, sex, nationality, 
 climate, soil, conditions of time and of living, and so on? 
 Man is subject to the same law as every plant and every 
 animal — a law, with the clearly defined features of which 
 we have already met in the primitive world. As the plant 
 depends for its existence, its size, form and beauty upon 
 the ground in which it is rooted ; as the animal, great or 
 small or large, wild or domesticated, beautiful or hideous, 
 is the creature of the external conditions under which it 
 has grown up ; as an entozoon ever changes as it passes 
 into the interior of another animal ; thus each man is no less 
 a product of similar external circumstances, accidents, 
 and arrangements, and can therefore by no means be set 
 down as such a mentally independent being endowed with 
 a free will, as moralists and philosophers are in the habit 
 of presenting him. He who brings with him into the world 
 an innate tendency to benevolence, compassion, con- 
 scientiousness, love of justice, and so on, is in most 
 instances cut out for a good moralist, supposing that bad 
 training or adverse conditions of life do not forcibly subdue 
 that tendency ; whilst on the other hand a congenital pro- 
 clivity to melancholy, or indolence, or frivolity, or vanity, 
 or arrogance, or avarice, or sensuality, or intemperance, 
 or gambling, or violence, can, as a rule, be neither con- 
 trolled nor checked by any kind of will or imagination. In 
 point of fact, daily experience proves conclusively that 
 
FREE WILL. 
 
 373 
 
 each person generally acts in the manner most suited to his 
 nature and individual character ; these inborn or inherited 
 tendencies and leanings of our nature mostly exercise over 
 our resolutions and actions an influence in comparison with 
 which all other motives, especially those of reflection or re- 
 ligious belief, recede more or less into the background. 
 “The actions of men,” says Auerbach’s Baumann, “are 
 independent of what they believe about God ; they are 
 only prompted by inward inspirations or habits.” 
 
 How often does it happen that a man knows himself and 
 his mental and peculiar characteristics sufficiently well to 
 see what faults he is likely to commit, and yet is unable to 
 successfully resist this internal pressure. He repeats the 
 same faults over and over again and gets again and again 
 into the same scrapes ; for it is quite an exception for the 
 powers of imagination and thought to gain the victory over 
 a man’s perceptive faculties and appetites. The youthful 
 man or the sensualist, as a rule, sacrifices everything to his 
 erotic passion, the older man or the covetous and avari- 
 cious character panders only to his acquisitiveness ; the 
 sluggard is only prompted by his inertia and his dislike of 
 work, the ambitious man by his desire for honor and dis- 
 tinction ; a mother by the love for her children, and so on. 
 The miser who has already amassed millions, still goes no 
 hoarding to his dying day, knowing all the while that his 
 heaped-up wealth will benefit neither himself nor others. 
 Innate passion is deaf to all reasoning ; it listens to no 
 rational arguments, and forgets every danger and every 
 consideration. No man can master inborn timidity or 
 nervousness by the mere power of his will, and inherited 
 irresoluteness or weakness of decision may become the 
 grave of the most promising resolutions and actions. A 
 man of violent temper, while in a rage, commits acts of 
 which he would deem himself incapable in quieter moments. 
 A compassionate and good-natured man sacrifices himself 
 and his own interests for the good of others, while no im- 
 passioned pleadings, no scenes of misery, and no horrors of 
 
374 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 hell can move the spirit of the hard-hearted. Vanity, love 
 of approbation or desire of fame may become the cause of 
 the greatest crimes or the most preposterous actions, but 
 according to circumstances they may also lead to the 
 noblest fruits of life. 
 
 All these qualities, tendencies or propensities, which are 
 sometimes inherited and sometimes acquired, are so power- 
 ful in human nature, that, as we remarked heretofore, re- 
 flection can form but a small check upon them, and religion 
 scarcely any. We always notice that man delights most 
 and encounters least difficulty in following his nature, or 
 the path which to him seems the pleasantest. We help a suf- 
 ferer, not because the laws of morality command it, but be- 
 cause we are prompted to do so by compassion or because 
 we instinctively put ourselves in the place of the sufferer, 
 and do to him what in a parallel case we would ask or expect 
 others to do for us. “Good,” says L. Feuerbach, “is 
 that which is agreeable and suited to man ; bad or evil is 
 that which clashes with his nature.” 
 
 But not only does man’s intrinsic nature, as a rule, tell 
 him how he is to act, not only are his actions the neces- 
 sary outcome of his whole individuality, but in every single 
 moment, and in each individual act, powerful influences of 
 nature are at play which shorten, as it were, the tether of 
 his free-will. Who does not know how powerfully atmos- 
 pheric influences act on our ordinary mental disposition, 
 and thence on our resolves, and where is the man who has 
 not made such an observation on himself? Our resolves 
 vary with the barometer, and a number of things which we 
 think we have done by free will, were perhaps only the re- 
 sult of accidental or transitory influences. Personal physical 
 conditions also exercise an almost irresistible influence on 
 our mental disposition and resolutions. ‘ ‘ The young man, ’ ’ 
 says Krahmer, “ has other ideas than the old ; a man in a 
 recumbent position thinks differently from one standing up ; 
 the hungry man looks at things in a different light from the 
 well-fed one, and the man in a happy frame of mind takes 
 
FREE WILL. 
 
 375 
 
 very different views from one who is irritated and sulky.” 
 The vast influences which may be, and in fact are, exercised 
 on human thoughts and actions by the manifold sufferings of 
 the various bodily organs are too generally known to re- 
 quire mentioning in this place, especially as they have been 
 to some extent dealt with in an earlier chapter. Times out 
 of number have the most horrible crimes been called forth 
 by such abnormal bodily conditions, and without the will 
 of the perpetrator. Not until our own days has science 
 commenced to cast a piercing glance into the hidden re- 
 cesses of these remarkable conditions, and looked for a 
 state of disease in cases in which heretofore no doubt had 
 been entertained of the presence of free-will. 
 
 Thus, no one who looks deeper into things can deny 
 that if there be a free will in man, it can, both in theory 
 and in practice, exist only in very narrow limits, and that 
 as the anonymous author of the admirable work on the 
 idea of God (Nordlingen, 1856) remarks, “our whole life, 
 like our whole organism, is a compound of necessity and 
 freedom.” Man is free, but his hands are bound. He 
 cannot go beyond a definite boundary set by Nature, while 
 within this boundary represented by natural laws, he 
 doubtless enjoys sufficient free scope so long as more sen- 
 sible views get the better of less sensible ones, or reason 
 and reflection gain the day in their struggle with innate or 
 accustomed tendencies and appetites, or mere impulses of 
 the moment. The more highly a man is intellectually de- 
 veloped and trained, the stronger is his will and the greater 
 his responsibility. On the contrary, his responsibility be- 
 comes less in proportion as the power of reason and 
 reflection is less able to contend against the base or invol- 
 untary tendencies of the human soul. Hence the vast 
 majority of those who offend against the laws of the State 
 and of Society ought to be looked upon rather as unfortu- 
 nates who deserve pity than as objects of execration. It is 
 in evidence that by far the greatest number of all crimes 
 against the State or against Society may be traced to pas- 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 376 
 
 sion or ignorance, being the outcome of want of education 
 or of weakness of the reflective faculties. The educated 
 man finds means and ways of meeting an unendurable con- 
 dition and of getting out of its way, without coming into 
 conflict with the existing law ; the uneducated knows not 
 how to help himself except by crime ; he is the victim of 
 the circumstances in which he is placed. What is the good 
 of free will to him who, from necessity or acting under the 
 impulse of the irresistible tendency of self-preservation, 
 lies, steals, robs, and murders ? To what extent can a man 
 be held accountable for his actions whose destructiveness 
 and whose leaning towards cruelty are great, while his 
 powers of reason are small? Want of understanding, 
 poverty, and want of education, these are the three princi- 
 pal sources from which crime springs. The philosopher 
 Plato was in his time keen -sighted enough to say : “ Crime 
 has its foundation in the want of education, and in the bad 
 ♦raining and arrangements of the State.” And the able 
 author of the Principles of Social Science quoted hereto- 
 fore remarks : — " Neither in crime nor in madness is there 
 anything strange or extraordinary. Both arise from settled 
 and definite causes, which are just as accessible to our in- 
 vestigation as the laws of natural philosophy, except that 
 the human mind is harder to understand, on account of its 
 greater complexity .... It is a truth that each one of us 
 would become criminal or mad, if he were placed in con- 
 ditions favorable thereto.” 
 
 That the juxtaposition ol crime and madness implied in 
 these words rests on no exaggeration, is proved by many 
 recent medical researches. These researches have proved 
 in the case of many criminals, if not of all, that from the 
 very first they have been, as it were, doomed or predes- 
 tined to crime by a faulty or imperfect organization of mind 
 and body. The researches of Saure (Ami. med. psychl) on 
 the causes of mental derangements in prisons, show that 
 there exists the greatest analogy between insane persons 
 and a certain class of prisoners, consisting of persons of 
 
FREE WILL. 
 
 377 
 
 imperfect organization ; according to him a portion of the 
 inmates of prisons ought rather to be placed in lunatic 
 asylums ! According to the same authority, the number 
 of lunatics convicted by criminal courts is very large, even 
 in this nineteenth century of ours. Professor Benedikt of 
 Vienna has arrived at a similar result ; having had an op- 
 portunity of studying the formation of the brain of a 
 number of persons convicted of very serious crimes, he 
 pronounces it to have been defective in every one of them. 
 More especially were the important convolutions of the sur- 
 face of the brain developed to a strikingly diminutive de- 
 gree, and the posterior cerebral lobes, the seat of emotion 
 and of moral sensitiveness, were so deficient in development 
 and so dwarfed as actually to leave part of the cerebellum 
 bare. Professor Benedikt holds madness and crime to be 
 twins, and is of opinion that no criminal acts to more than 
 a very limited extent from his own moral freedom and self- 
 control. ( Bericht liber die Naturforscher- Versammlung 
 in Graz , 1875.) 
 
 The same conclusion has been arrived at by Dr. Bordier 
 of Paris. Having examined the brains of thirty-six executed 
 criminals, he found that in almost all of them the parietal 
 lobes were excessively developed at the cost of the frontal, a 
 fact which points to a low grade of intelligence together with 
 a stronger tendency to violence. This is also the general con- 
 dition of the brains of pre-historic men, so that its occur- 
 rence at the present day may be regarded in each instance as 
 a case of atavism or individual reversion to the state of former 
 barbarism. Perfectly normal brains, according to the ob- 
 server referred to, are very rare among criminals. In most 
 of them are found asymmetry, prematurely ossified sutures, 
 remains of old inflammation of the cerebral envelopes, an 
 excessive fullness of blood in the vessels of the vertexrof the 
 cranium, and so on. 
 
 Among the recent researches of this subject are those of 
 Dr. Flesch ( Untersuchungen iiber Verbrecher- Gehirne, 
 Wurzburg, 1882), who has come to conclusions which make 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 378 
 
 the behavior of these unfortunates appear to us in a light 
 very different from that in which it is usual to regard crimi- 
 nal actions. All the facts brought to light go to show that 
 many criminals are simply unfortunates, afflicted with in- 
 sanity, partly in an incipient and partly in an acute state 
 of development. 
 
 “Hence,” says G. Forster, “we should do best in 
 neither judging nor condemning anyone.” And hence also 
 in a few centuries, when men shall have grown better, wiser 
 and happier than they are at present, will they look back 
 on the criminal trials of the present time with feelings akin 
 to those with which we regard the trials for witchcraft and 
 the inquisition of the Middle Ages. 
 
Morality. 
 
 The death of dogmas is the birth of morality.— Kant. 
 
 When will the time come that men shall learn to see that the sources of the noblest 
 and most elevated actions of which we are capable, have nothing to do with the 
 ideas we may hold about God. about life after death, and about the realm of 
 spirits ? — G. Forster. 
 
 Loving man is the only true way of loving God.— L. Feuerbach. 
 
 A ND how about morality ? This is the cry that is al- 
 ready dinned into our mental ears by an army of 
 moralists, who, after trying to follow our argument 
 up to the last point referred to, are now ready to swoop 
 down with all the theological and philosophical appliances 
 and means supplied by their well appointed arsenal, upon 
 our position which, in their estimation, must, upon higher 
 grounds, be considered untenable. Aye, how about 
 morality indeed? What is the meaning of the ideas of 
 virtue and vice if there be no supreme and supernatural 
 powers, no heavenly judge and avenger, no God, no re- 
 demption and no future life, but only a blind, inexorable 
 necessity of nature ? What is henceforth to control the 
 actions of men ? Do not such principles and theories lead 
 to a dissolution of all political and social order and to a 
 bellum omnium contra omnes, a war of all against all, in 
 which none but wanton egotism or self-interest will be ap- 
 pealed to in the last resort ? And along with these, a 
 whole array of other similar stereotyped phrases has al- 
 ways been thrown in the teeth of those who ventured upon 
 attacking time- honored prejudices, which by their very age 
 had gained an iron grasp upon mankind at large. 
 
 (379) 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 380 
 
 The author of this work might well save himself the 
 trouble or the duty of answering such questions, and might 
 declare himself unable to see what moral consequences can 
 or must be entailed by a theory of the life of the world, which 
 is based on the existence of a natural order of things. If 
 his theories be right and consonant with truth, they must 
 be admitted, no matter what results may ensue therefrom ; 
 for truth stands, as no one can seriously dispute high above 
 all considerations of morality or utility, and cannot be 
 denied, be the consequences as fatal as ever they may. 
 
 Again, in speaking to those who contend that he destroys 
 everything by his criticism but offers no compensation, 
 the author might confine himself to repeating the admirable 
 answer made by Voltaire to those who found fault with him 
 on a similar occasion : “What? I have delivered you from 
 the jaws of a wild beast that was devouring you, and you 
 ask me what I will give you in its place ! ” In just the 
 same way might the author reply to his critics : “ What ? 
 
 I have delivered you, so far as the present state of science 
 and the weakness of human knowledge permit me to do, 
 from the two greatest and most dangerous enemies of hu- 
 manity, viz., ignorance and superstition ; and you ask me 
 what I mean to put in their place ? Do not trouble your- 
 selves about that, but leave truth and science to take care of 
 themselves ; both, as has been shown by experience thou- 
 sands of times, have never done man any harm, but only 
 good. What they destroy or break down on the one hand, 
 they restore on the other a hundred-fold. Besides, it is in 
 no wise conceivable how a fictitious happiness should in 
 the long run give man peace, whilst truth, though at times 
 painful, carries her own remedy with her.” 
 
 Such an answer would embrace everything that requires 
 to be said, looking at things from the standpoint of the 
 author and of his work. Nevertheless, he does not mean 
 to cast the onus probandi from his shoulders altogether, 
 but is fully prepared to substantiate the theory propounded 
 by him, according to which morality and the moral law 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 381 
 
 have nothing to do with the ideas that men are in the habit 
 of forming of things supernatural, but that, on the contrary, 
 the moral law can pitch its tents quite as well, if not better, 
 on the new territory of a natural order of the universe left 
 open by science, than on the old one of religion and of be- 
 lief in spirits. If morality, or the ethical customs and 
 precepts by which we are guided, be such as could not 
 exist without religious or ecclesiastical coercion, then all 
 we can say is that they are worthless and ought to make 
 room for better ones. But in reality it is a fact that has long 
 been placed beyond all doubt, that morality and the church, 
 nay morality and religion, are things perfectly independent 
 of each other, and that the most efficient agencies of 
 morality in the world are education, training, prosperity 
 and freedom. 
 
 For morality, as it has been shown in a previous chapter, 
 is not innate or implanted by a higher power in the mind 
 of each individual in the form of definite moral precepts, 
 but it is acquired by long practice and experience. If it 
 had been implanted, or in other words, if man, as an out- 
 come of the Godhead, possessed an innate knowledge of 
 good and were impelled towards it, as idealists and theolo- 
 gians want to make us believe, then we might dispense 
 entirely or to a very large extent with all other premiums 
 that are held out for being moral — such as the prospect 
 of future rewards and punishments, as well as the arrange- 
 ments made by Society for the prevention and punishment 
 of crimes. 
 
 Nor is morality the outcome of religion or of definite 
 precepts derived from faith ; for experience has proved that 
 the most religious ages and nations have not always been 
 the most moral. On the contrary, religious fanaticism has 
 such an array of sins of commission and of omission to 
 answer for, that all other offences that history tells us of, 
 are a mere nothing in comparison with them. Is it not a 
 fact that in the very countries in which the Church holds an 
 undisputed sway and no freedom of thought is tolerated, a 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 382 
 
 very much lower standard of morality prevails to this day 
 than in those in which enlightenment has raised its victorious 
 banner ? We know moreover that in the atheistic religious 
 systems of a Buddha or a Confucius the purest and most 
 unalloyed morality was preached, despite their atheism, and 
 that unbelief is by no means synonymous with immorality. 
 On the contrary, often enough religion and immorality go 
 hand in hand, particularly in countries in which the priest’s 
 absolution lightens the criminal’s offence, while atheists 
 and unbelievers are oftentimes the most moral of men ! 
 How many philosophers of antiquity believed in no reward 
 after death, and yet evolved from their teachings such 
 maxims of morality as called forth the admiration of their 
 contemporaries and of posterity alike ! 
 
 So far from morality being incompatible with unbelief, it 
 is like everything that man possesses, the outcome of a 
 long series of acquirements handed down from generation to 
 generation, and depends on definite natural and social con- 
 ditions ; it is therefore by no means the same throughout, 
 or semper eadem as the Church of Rome calls itself, but by 
 its very nature it is a product of growth and a thing that 
 changes, — an expression of human knowledge, which pro- 
 ceeds and progresses with that knowledge itself. What we 
 call “ moral feeling” has it origin in the social instincts or 
 habits which each human (or animal) society develops, and 
 must develop within itself, if it is not to perish by its own 
 incapacity. Morality, therefore, is evolved from socia- 
 bility, or the faculty for living in a community, and it 
 changes according as the particular ideas or necessities of 
 any given society change. Thus, the nomadic savage 
 thinks it is a very praiseworthy action to kill his father 
 when effete with age, whereas in the eyes of the cultured 
 European, parricide is the most horrible of all crimes. 
 
 Now seeing that man is essentially a social being, and 
 can, without society, either not exist at all or only be 
 thought of as a predatory animal, it becomes easy to under- 
 stand that his living in social communion with others must 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 383 
 
 have saddled him with duties of reciprocity which in course 
 of time developed into definite moral axioms. The begin- 
 nings of this are to be found in family life, which in the 
 sequel developed into tribal and national life. Morality is 
 therefore, much older than religion, the latter being only a 
 requirement of the individual, while the former is a re- 
 quirement of society and had its germ in the earliest 
 beginnings of social co-existence. Thus, it stands to reason 
 that morality cannot have originated in religion, but is en- 
 tirely independent of it. 
 
 It was not until a comparatively recent period of civili- 
 zation that the two became connected with each other, and 
 by no means to the advantage of the former. For it may 
 be averred without fear of contradiction that religion is in- 
 jurious to morality, in so far as it assigns to it an aim based 
 upon egotism and self-seeking, whereas pure morality finds, 
 and ought to find, its reward in itself, so that it may 
 subserve the objects of Society at large and be at the same 
 time a blessing to the individual, as a member thereof. 
 The original object of religious institutions was not, as has 
 been admirably shown by E. Bournouf in the History of 
 Creeds , to make moral or virtuous men, but merely to 
 afford a simple corroboration of the metaphysical or super- 
 natural theories invented by the ancestors. Many ages 
 had elapsed before the different churches laid down defi- 
 nite rules of conduct for their members. In keeping with 
 this, the ethnological researches of E. B. Tylor have shown 
 that the moral ideas of savages never and nowhere originate 
 in religion, and that among them the touch existing be- 
 tween religion and morality is, as a rule, but very slight 
 and only of secondary importance. Wherever morality 
 and religion have existed, each has held originally its own 
 independent ground ; and the inculcation of duties towards 
 one’s neighbor occupies in the history of creeds a very 
 much later stage than the regard for the wishes or com- 
 mands of a deity. According to Tylor, recognized customs 
 and rules respecting the relation between man and man, 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 384 
 
 being the systematic result of social forces, represented the 
 earliest beginnings of an independent morality, and only 
 at a higher stage of civilization did the influence of religion 
 on morals become possible and perceptible. 
 
 From all this it appears very plainly that customs, and 
 not religion, first created morality. It would appear, in- 
 deed, that the former have at all times rather impeded than 
 promoted the latter, and that customs become the more 
 firmly rooted and the more powerful, the more religion is 
 cast into the background and the less the individual can 
 hope to be relieved of his sins by propitiating the church 
 and its ministers. Besides, religion counteracts morality 
 and universal philanthropy in so far as it sets men against 
 each other by the diversity of doctrines and theories of be- 
 lief, thus fostering and nourishing the worst impulses of 
 human nature. Lastly, it must not be forgotten that the 
 moral precepts laid down by religion are mostly antag- 
 onistic to human nature and therefore wholly impracticable. 
 
 It is obvious, as Pere Meslier has shown with great plausi- 
 bility and acumen, that a strict observance of the moral 
 precepts taught by any, say for instance by the Christian, re- 
 ligion, must involve the ruin of nations and destroy all the 
 bonds of society, since we are told that every pursuit of 
 earthly objects is incompatible with a Christian’s care for the 
 salvation of his soul. Besides, as a matter of fact, no one 
 ever takes these precepts au serieux. “ It is not an easy 
 thing to find a courtier who dreads the anger of God more 
 than he does his master’s displeasure. A pension, a title, 
 a ribbon, are sufficient to cause the pains of hell and the 
 joys of the heavenly court to be forgotten. The caresses 
 of a woman outweigh in every age the comminutions of 
 the Lord. A joke, a scoff, a bon mot , make a deeper im- 
 pression on a man of the world, than all the most serious 
 conceptions of his religion.” 
 
 It is plain, therefore, that the fountain-head of all good 
 actions is not to be sought in the belief in God or in mor- 
 tality or in whatever is connected with them, but in the con- 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 385 
 
 viction that it is the duty of the individual to act in the 
 manner which is recognized and defined as good or useful 
 by Society, that is to say by the joint union of all for mutual 
 welfare. Furthermore, the individual does the right thing 
 out of regard for his own good, his own advantage, his 
 own fair fame, and his social position, or having the fear of 
 the law and of punishment before his eyes. The better or- 
 dained and regulated the social order in which the 
 individual lives, the keener will be his own desire to lead a 
 virtuous and moral life. To this may be added the moral 
 instinct or the spontaneous disposition towards a moral be- 
 havior, a sort of moral organization which each individual 
 receives from those parents and ancestors who have lived 
 for long ages in more or less orderly social or political con- 
 ditions. If to all this be added the powerful influence of 
 education, habit and example, we are in possession of all 
 that is necessary for moral behavior, without being obliged 
 to have recourse either to an innate moral law or to the 
 means of grace or the hope of glory held out by the 
 church or religion. This being so, what is the good of 
 those everlasting hypocritical confessions of faith and pro- 
 fessions of religious dogmas, which are opposed to reason, 
 and neither required by, nor conducive to, virtue and 
 morality? It is not the fear of God that has a moralizing 
 effect, as is most clearly shown by that period, replete with 
 the fear of God on the one hand and of moral horrors of 
 every kind on the other, which we call the middle ages ; 
 on the contrary, moralization must be looked for in the 
 general refinement of customs and of social habits and of 
 views of life in general. For this reason we must, at the 
 present time, look for a basis of morality very different from 
 the fantastical and unpractical, out-of-the-way belief in 
 things supernatural and independent of Nature. Science 
 must take the place of religion ; and belief in a natural and 
 infrangible universal order must be substituted for a belief 
 in spirits and ghosts, and the factitious morals of dogmas 
 make room for a morality suited to Nature. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 386 
 
 As regards this morality suited to Nature, it must be 
 clear from what has already been said that it can only be 
 based permanently and durably on the principle which gave 
 it birth, viz., the principle of reciprocity . There is therefore 
 no better standard for moral conduct than the old rule laid 
 down by Confucius : “ Don’t do to others what you would 
 not have others do to you.” If this negative rule be sup- 
 plemented by the positive one, ‘‘Do to others as you 
 would that they should do to you,” we get a whole code of 
 natural morals and ethics in hand which is certainly better 
 and simpler than can be found in the bulkiest treatises of 
 morality or in the quintessence of all the religious systems 
 of the world. All further moral directions which may be 
 drawn from conscience, from religion, or from philosophy, 
 are entirely superseded by these simple and practical rules ; 
 all fears of the contrary become groundless. Of course 
 these rules must become the more efficient the more highly 
 the feeling of reciprocity is developed by the cultivation of 
 social conditions and of the sense of right, and the more 
 the individual is enabled by natural talent, education, ex- 
 ample and habit, to contribute to the objects of society and 
 perform his duties towards his fellow-men. It is therefore 
 a fact recognized everywhere and demonstrated by history, 
 that the moral idea is developed and becomes more 
 powerful in every respect in proportion as the social organ- 
 ism progresses ; and accordingly enhanced public order 
 goes hand in hand with a proportionate alleviation and 
 toning-down of the harshness of the criminal code. For 
 since the institutions of the State and of Society compel 
 the control of the crude passions and impulses inherited 
 from the condition of the brute, the individual is rendered 
 by inheritance and habit ever more capable of living ac- 
 cording to the rules of moral behavior laid down for him 
 by custom and habit. 
 
 While in the state of insolation or savagery, man pos- 
 sesses no other moral impulses but those inherited from 
 animal sociability and as a rule follows blindly, like the 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 387 
 
 animal itself, the promptings of hunger, passion, cruelty, 
 self-interest, and so on ; his moral faculties first develop 
 by his being brought into communication with others, 
 within a society ruled by certain principles of reciprocity, and 
 by the recognition of laws which are necessary for the ex- 
 istence of such a society. Hence, as we have shown in a 
 previous chapter — the conceptions of good and evil have 
 nothing absolute about them ; they show on the contrary 
 the most marked differences, according to the diversity of 
 time, place, nation, race, stages of civilization, climate, and 
 so on. After all, as Hamlet says, nothing is in itself good 
 or evil, “thinking makes it so that is to say, the con- 
 sciousness of the individual has of himself and his behavior 
 according to his idiosyncrasy, which is ruled by internal 
 and external conditions. 
 
 Morality may therefore be defined as the law of an 
 equal mutual respect for general as well as private human 
 rights, which law itself has for its object to provide the 
 largest amount of human happiness. Whatever disturbs 
 or undermines this happiness and this respect is evil : what- 
 ever promotes them is good. Evil, according to this 
 definition, is confined to the degeneracy or the excesses of 
 private human egotism or self-will, detracting from or over- 
 riding this universal happiness, as well as the interests 
 of the fellow-man. A human society attains a higher 
 grade of morality, the more it succeeds in reconciling the 
 egotistic or self-willed tendency of human nature wfith the 
 interests of the common weal or the collective will. The 
 greatest sinners, therefore, are the egotists, that is to say 
 those who place their own ego above the interests and laws 
 of the common weal, and who endeavor to unduly satisfy 
 this ego at the expense and to the detriment of those whose 
 rights are equal to their own. Of course there is nothing 
 essentially wrong in egotism or self-love or in the care for 
 personal welfare, which, being properly directed, may act 
 most beneficially for the individual and for the community 
 at large. For, after all, self-love is the last and most 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 388 
 
 powerful motive of all our actions, even of the good ones, 
 for most good actions arise from compassion, which is a re- 
 fined description of self-love, and our general moral 
 conduct is determined by considerations of individual wel- 
 fare and has individual advancement for its goal. It will, 
 in point of fact, never be possible to completely eliminate 
 or suppress the egotism of human nature ; therefore, the 
 one thing needful is to lead it into the right path and 
 render it rational and human, by seeking to bring its sat- 
 isfaction into unison with the good of the individuals and 
 with the interests of the community. Society must be so 
 organized that the welfare of one shall no longer be con- 
 ducive to the detriment of others, as is now but too often 
 the case ; every one ought to find his own interest in- 
 dissolubly connected with that of all, and on the other 
 hand the welfare of the community should be like a mathe- 
 matical function of the welfare of the individual. As soon 
 as we have reached this goal the attainment of which is by 
 no means so difficult as it is usually represented to be, 
 every conflict between the interests of the individual and 
 of society, that had previously sprung from motives of 
 self-interest, must needs come to an end, and the chief 
 causes of crime, sin, vice, and wickedness must be removed 
 at the same time. The individual will then find it much 
 easier than at present to seek personal happiness and 
 pleasant emotions, or in other words to satisfy his ego with- 
 out injuring the interests of the community. He will only 
 promote his own welfare by advancing that of all, and the 
 general interest will be subserved by the fact of his own 
 not being disregarded. 
 
 In this reconciliation of the interests of individuals with 
 those of all others, that is to say, of society, we behold the 
 great moral principle of the future. If we succeed in 
 bringing about such a conciliation, we shall have no lack 
 of morality, virtue and generous impulses. If we do not 
 succeed, we shall be deficient in them in the precise pro- 
 portion in which the distance performed falls short of this 
 
MORALITY. 
 
 389 
 
 goal ; and no impact brought to bear upon us from within 
 or from without, no conscience, no religion, no moral 
 preaching, and no penal enactment, will be able to supply that 
 want. The public conscience is also the conscience of the 
 individual, and that public conscience can only be the re- 
 sult of wise political and social conditions, satisfying the 
 want of man, and of a system of education and training of 
 all founded on the principles of universal philanthropy. 
 The age best fitted for the formation of that conscience, and 
 consequently of all morality, is youth, which is so well 
 adapted for education and training and so easily influenced 
 by impressions from within and from without. The chief 
 task of public and general education must therefore be to 
 awake and strengthen in the youthful mind the tendencies 
 and dispositions which are good and useful to human 
 society, and to counteract and suppress those which are in- 
 jurious and deleterious. In this way a new race will 
 gradually be evolved, whose faculties and organization 
 will be of a higher type ; and in proportion as such a new 
 race grows up, crimes, sin, vice and every evil disposition 
 will disappear in the ratio in which the only ground suit- 
 able for them grows narrower and is rendered more barren. 
 
 If, despite of all this, men are still to be found who be- 
 hold a danger to morality and propriety, and thence to the 
 State and to Society, in the sacrifice of religious or meta- 
 physical dogmas and in the diffusion of a belief in the 
 existence of a natural order of the world, directed neither 
 from above nor from without, we can only look down with 
 compassion on such ignorance and obtuseness. Man can 
 only be a gainer and not a loser both intellectually and 
 morally by the spread of knowledge and education and by 
 the disappearance of superstitious ideas. To refuse to rec- 
 ognize this is to run counter to all reason and all history. 
 Popular theories about the government of the world and 
 immortality may change or take whatever forms they like ; 
 human society will not be changed for all that, and will 
 not come to grief. 
 
390 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 But if our view should not be wholly accurate, and if in 
 reality it should not be possible for the human race to ex- 
 tricate itself from the errors and prejudices of centuries 
 without thereby coming to grief, then all that science, and 
 the philosophy of nature or cosmogony that is built upon 
 it, can say is that Truth (as we stated at the beginning of 
 this chapter) towers high above all things divine and 
 human, and that there can be no arguments strong enough 
 for dispensing with it. “Truth,” said the great Voltaire, 
 “ has inalienable rights. Just as it is never out of season 
 to search for it, so it can never be out of season to 
 defend it.” 
 
Concluding Observations. 
 
 Men will always deceive themselves, while they abandon experience for systems 
 hatched up by superstition. Man is the work of Nature, he exists in Nature, 
 he is subject to its laws, he cannot free himself, he can never even rid himself of 
 them in thought ; vainly does his spirit seek to penetrate beyond the boundaries 
 of the visible world ; he must ever return to it.— Systeme de la Nature. 
 
 ,( IT is now nearly twenty years,” said Goethe in his pos- 
 8 thumous writings, “since all the Germans became 
 Transcendentalists. On the day when they become 
 aware of it, they will certainly appear very strange in their 
 own eyes.” This prophecy has been fulfilled ; and more 
 rapidly than could have been expected from the slow pro- 
 gress of human knowledge, the systems of ideal-philosophy 
 of the post-Kantian period, which had been ushered in with 
 such flourishes of trumpets, have outlived themselves or have 
 fallen into oblivion. No one now speaks about them, and 
 the philosophical characteristic of the age consists in the 
 whole host fleeing in wild confusion and seeking a refuge 
 behind the safe walls of the old Kantian theory of knowl- 
 edge, or rather non-knowledge. 
 
 If we look for the reasons that have brought about this 
 remarkable phenomenon — - doubly remarkable in a country 
 like Germany — we find that one of the most powerful 
 agencies of this great change lies in the gigantic strides 
 that natural science has taken within the last half century, 
 not only in connection with material but also with intellectual 
 life. New regions have been opened up and new points of 
 vision been given to thought, not only by the vast dis- 
 coveries and inventions made, but also by the mode and 
 
 (391) 
 
392 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 method of investigation brought to bear upon them. 
 Thought has thus been compelled to quit the misty and 
 barren regions of speculative reverie for life and reality, or, 
 in other words, to adopt a philosophy of facts instead of a 
 philosophy of words. 
 
 “If philosophy,” says Virchow, “aspires to being the 
 science of the real, it must walk on the path of natural 
 science only, and seek in experience the objects of its study 
 and knowledge. It will then become the science of 
 Nature, not only in essence but also in method, so as to 
 become distinguishable from it in nought but its aim ; 
 inasmuch as nearly all philosophical schools have a tran- 
 scendental object, viz., the investigation of the design of the 
 universe or the fathoming of the absolute, whereas true natu- 
 ral investigation pursues concrete objects and regards the 
 knowledge of the character of the individual as its leading 
 task. For it has learned by the example of the past how 
 fruitless was the premature striving after things universal, 
 and how hopeless is the striving after the absolute. 
 
 From what has been said, every one may answer the 
 question whether natural science has the much contested 
 right of taking part in the solution of philosophical problems. 
 From all quarters of the province of letters we now hear 
 the cry of the so-called limits of natural science , and are 
 told that science as such ought only to attend to the sen- 
 sual, tangible world, and has no business to dabble with 
 the metaphysical or super-sensual world of theologians 
 and philosophers, wherefore all attacks on theological or 
 philosophical dogmas are in limine inadmissible. Those 
 who utter these cries are only repeating the dualistic view 
 of nature and of the universe that is based on a forcible 
 separation of the conceptions of force and matter, of God 
 and the world, and of thinking and being, and against 
 which we have been contending on every page of this work. 
 He who is determined, despite all experience, to cling to 
 this view, can no doubt easily overstep the boundaries re- 
 ferred to and allow his imagination to invade regions which 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 393 
 
 either do not exist or else are inaccessible to our intellect. 
 He can fill up all the gaps in the universe or in our 
 knowledge with gods and spirits, demons and devils ; 
 he can imagine a heaven and a hell ; he can get millions 
 of angels to dance on the point of a needle ; he can invent 
 a spiritual matter and let it fly on waves of ether from 
 star to star ; he can believe in the existence of beings 
 with four dimensions, in speaking tables, in every kind of 
 spirits and in the haunting of ghosts. For behind that 
 which is closed against the perceptions of our senses or 
 our means of knowledge, any conceivable thing may exist 
 for those who do not shrink from the transcendental, or 
 who prefer faith to knowledge. But they can only perform 
 these feats in thought, in fancy, and in that which is tran- 
 scendental, that is to say, above nature, not in that which 
 is immanent or inherent in her. He who rejects empiri- 
 cism, that is to say experimental thought, rejects all human 
 comprehension and fails to see that human knowledge and 
 thought, without real results drawn from experience, must 
 be looked upon as a non e?is, or nonsense. Thinking and 
 Being are as inseparable as force and matter, or spirit and 
 body, and the idea of thought without being, or of an im- 
 material spirit, rests on a mere arbitrary theory which has 
 not an inch of reality to stand on ; it is a hypothesis 
 floating in the air. Were the human mind endowed with 
 a metaphysical knowledge, independent of the real world, 
 then we should be justified in expecting from metaphysicians 
 the same conformity and certainty of views as exist among 
 natural philosophers on the law of gravitation, or among 
 physiologists on the function of a muscle. Instead of this 
 we find among them nothing but doubts, and contra- 
 dictions, and theories of the most widely divergent and 
 often diametrically opposite natures. One says this, another 
 says that ; each calls his opponent an ass, and if bare- 
 faced assertions were proofs, we should be compelled to 
 accept the most contradictory and preposterous statements 
 as demonstrated. 
 
394 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 “Everyone can see,” forcibly remarks Vignoli ( Die 
 Intelligenz irn Thierreich , page 25), “how far philosophy 
 has attained to certainty up to the present time with regard 
 to its ontological speculations. System destroys system, 
 one theory contradicts another, and doubt, possibility, and 
 at most probability rule the roast ; there are as many 
 philosophies as there are speculative heads ! ” 
 
 The audacity of philosophers in metaphysical matters 
 contrasts most strikingly with their affected modesty and 
 reticence in empirical matters or in any explanation of ex- 
 istence based on scientifically proven facts. Those who 
 were in the habit of taking the most extravagant flights of 
 imagination in a supersensual world, suddenly turn to 
 worms creeping in the dust, whose spheres of sight and 
 knowledge cannot reach beyond their most immediate sur- 
 roundings, and are not even sure that what is represented 
 to them by their limited sensual world is certain or real. 
 Hence, what man understands, is confined within the sub- 
 jective perceptions of the senses or an appearance behind 
 which the ever hidden nature of things, the famous “ thing 
 in itself” remains unknown and can never be solved ; the 
 old Socratic axiom is once more adhered to, that the last 
 word of wisdom is to know that we know nothing. 
 
 This pride of the “ know-nothings ” is as unjustified and 
 unwarranted as the pride of the “ omniscients.” It takes 
 all inward delight in scientific search away from thinking 
 men. Who has ever doubted that human knowledge is 
 limited by certain insurmountable barriers ? But does it 
 follow from this that we must leave off carrying on any 
 search into existence by the aid of our senses ? — for other 
 means we have none. Empiricism or experimental philoso- 
 phy has, as Lefevre remarks, as good a right as Idealism 
 to appeal to the famous axiom of Protagoras, that man is 
 the measure of all things ; but the experimentalist remains 
 more faithful to this axiom than his opponent, since he 
 does not go beyond this measure, and attends neither to 
 “things in themselves,” nor to the “absolute,” anymore 
 
Concluding observations. 
 
 395 
 
 than to the ever insoluble question of the Why ? He con- 
 fines himself to the question of the How ? or Whereby ? 
 and collating the results of experience and observation he 
 limits himself to derive the necessary universal conclusions 
 therefrom, while the metaphysician attends to hypotheses 
 and theories of existence which are incapable of proof by ex- 
 perience. 
 
 In this sense and from this point of view ought to be judged 
 the attempt at narrowing the province of natural science 
 spoken of at the beginning of this chapter. Those who would 
 make such a limitation are either ignorant of the utter inad- 
 missibility of such a claim, or they follow an impulse of 
 instinctive dread lest those sciences might effect a ruthless 
 destruction of certain opinions that had hitherto been clung 
 to ; it is even possible that they deliberately place science be- 
 neath faith. According to our views no philosophy that 
 lays claim to being true or clear can exist without those 
 sciences ; they are the essential and bitter foe of ignorance, 
 fanaticism and inanity of thought. Any discussion of 
 philosophic problems which cannot be brought into unison 
 with the results obtained by science, is worthless and 
 senseless. All human knowledge, in whatever direction it 
 may tend, is so necessarily and indissolubly interwoven with 
 science, that it is prima facie impossible thus to break off 
 a single branch from the general trunk ; and according to 
 the views of distinguished authors all philosophy has its 
 basis in the consciousness which empirical science gradually 
 acquires of itself. 
 
 The boundaries which individual naturalists of note have 
 lately thought themselves obliged to draw around science, 
 are equally inadmissible. Science knows of no limits save 
 those which lie in its own subject, and there can be nothing 
 more foolish, than to try and set ab initio permanent in- 
 superable bounds to human investigation — provided it 
 does not stray into the province of transcendentalism. For 
 he who tries to do this can never pass beyond the limits of 
 his own age and knowledge, and must possess the super- 
 
396 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 natural gifts of a prophet or seer, in order to be able thus 
 to lay down the law of the progress of knowledge in days 
 yet to come. If a thousand years ago a savdnt had main- 
 tained that it would never be possible to fathom the nature 
 of the sea-serpent or of demons, or to discover anything 
 definite about the philosopher’s stone, or perpetual motion, 
 or the nature and movements of the stars, or the creation of 
 the earth, or the descent of men and of the organized 
 world, there would have been just as much sense in this as 
 in the talk about the insolubility of many ‘ ‘ problems of the 
 universe” with which some people try to give themselves 
 airs at the present day. Only as far as the final cause of 
 things, the ultimate Why ? is concerned, can such a position, 
 as stated heretofore, be upheld ; but it never can in regard 
 to our investigations on the intrinsic connection of things, 
 in accordance with the infrangible law of cause and effect, 
 the How ? and the Whereby ? The only actual limit to 
 our knowledge, as Virchow forcibly observes, is ignorance; 
 and Wieland lays down the rule that whatever we can 
 know we may know. The enthusiasts or fanatics of know- 
 nothingism are in their way as intolerant as those of faith, 
 and are the more dangerous in that they know how to 
 spread around them the deceptive veil of objectivity, whilst 
 in reality their pretension at trimming is merely based upon 
 a contemptible fear of being taxed with atheism and upon 
 want of the moral courage required for consistent thought. 
 If in the matter of religion and of all that goes beyond our 
 sensitive knowledge, nothing remains to us but to kneel 
 submissively before the shadow cast by our own ignorance, 
 we must, as an English writer remarks, despair of knowl- 
 edge and deem the dead hippier than the living. But in 
 reality, if we look at things in open daylight, we find that 
 the “ Unknowable ” of modern Agnostics is nothing more 
 than the good old God of the theologians, who has already 
 made his appearance in so many deceptive disguises in the 
 history of philosophy. It makes no essential difference 
 whether he answers to the name of “Will,” or “ Un- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 397 
 
 known, ”or “Thing perse," or “ Universal Soul,” or “Uni- 
 versal reason,” or “ Unknowable ; ” at the bottom of it we 
 always find the same anthropomorphic disfigurement, the 
 same asylum igyioranticz and the same vague being which, 
 being begotten of the fear of the unknown, ruled of yore 
 over the crude primeval man and will continue to rule over 
 the civilized man, until the sun of knowledge and the 
 recognition of a natural and self-contained order of the 
 world shall have made a reality of the Fiat lux / 
 
 Appendix. — In the earlier editions of this work the place 
 of these concluding remarks was occupied by a polemical 
 dissertation directed against an attack on the theory of the 
 world herein explained, which attack having been pub- 
 lished by a distinguished naturalist, a short time prior to 
 the appearance of the first edition of the work, had much 
 attracted the attention of the educated world and called 
 forth many replies. This dissertation in question ran as 
 follows : ‘ ‘ Every one who knows the circumstances of the 
 case, must regret that a man to whom exact science is so 
 much indebted should, under the instigation of morbid sen- 
 sitiveness, have thought proper to publicly throw down the 
 gauntlet, to the mechanical and material theory of nature, 
 without any provocation whatsoever. No doubt it was 
 done after such a method as is usually followed by the 
 courage of despair ; for being fully qualified by positive 
 knowledge to perceive the impotent nature of idealism, he 
 himself began with the confession, that all resistance would 
 be useless in the face of the ever more closely approaching 
 and more threatening foe. But he did not attempt to con- 
 tend against his invisible and yet so much dreaded foe with 
 facts — for he could not but be aware that no facts were at 
 the command of idealism — but by a device which in or- 
 dinary life is usually called a ‘ ‘ false charge ; ” he tried to 
 impugn 7iatural truths with moral consequences , a device 
 which must be set down as so utterly unscientific that it is 
 hard to understand how any one could venture to bring it 
 forward before a meeting of men possessed of scientific 
 training. To be sure, its inventor at once received his re- 
 ward, for the disapproval of the meeting was clearly 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 398 
 
 betokened after the lecture had been delivered. “The 
 doctrine,” exclaimed Professor Rudolf Wagner, at the last 
 meeting of German naturalists and physicians held at Got- 
 tingen, “ which follows from the materialistic theory of the 
 universe is : let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall 
 be dead. All great and earnest thoughts are idle dreams, 
 phantasms, games of mechanical contrivances running 
 about on two legs and with two arms, which are dissolved 
 into chemical atoms, and get joined together again, . . . . 
 like the dance of madmen in a lunatic asylum, without a 
 moral basis ” 
 
 The idea which lies at the root of this outburst of wrath, 
 so thoroughly coincides with the views which we have had 
 occasion to controvert in the preceding chapter, that we 
 may well spare ourselves the trouble of criticising this false 
 and unfair charge. To decide that a principle is untrue, 
 because of the consequences which foolish people may 
 eventually think themselves entitled to deduce from it, al- 
 though in itself it is proven and accurate, is certainly both a 
 perverse and a mischievious strategem. “If Herr Wag- 
 ner,” says Reclam ( Deutsches Museum ), “is going to 
 accept this principle as a general rule, then the use of 
 matches should be prohibited, because they may give rise 
 to a conflagration ; warrants of apprehension must be issued 
 against locomotives, because people have before this been 
 run over by them ; houses should have no upper stories, 
 for fear of people falling out of the windows.” 
 
 But the idea that all great and earnest thoughts will be- 
 come empty dreams because of the adoption of a natural 
 theory of the universe, and that on that account the future 
 and the basis of morality will perish, is so utterly rash that 
 it has no claim to serious refutation. In all ages great 
 philosophers have held such or similar views and yet have 
 not become fools, or robbers, or murderers, or despera- 
 does. At the present day, our most earnest workers and 
 most indefatigable students in the province of natural 
 science hold the same views, but no one has ever heard 
 that they have verified Dr. Wagner’s apprehensions. The 
 striving after knowledge and truth and the conviction of 
 the necessity of social and moral order are for them an ef- 
 ficient substitute for all that is meant by religion and the 
 future in the popular belief. And if such knowledge, 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 399 
 
 having become general, should involve an increase of that 
 striving after transitory pleasure which has always been, 
 and still is, sufficiently prominent in man, we must com- 
 fort ourselves with the words of Moleschott : ‘ 1 The erro- 
 neous theory of seeking after pleasure will scarcely find 
 half as many disciples, as the rule of priests of all shades 
 has claimed unfortunate victims.”* As a last resort we have 
 the right to cast aside all such questions of morality or utility. 
 The highest and sole ground we stand on in our researches 
 is truth. Nature exists for her own sake, not for the sake 
 of religion, of morality, or of man. What can we do ex- 
 cept take her as she is P Should we not lay ourselves open 
 to just derision, if we were to shed tears like children, 
 because our bread is not buttered enough ! ‘‘Empirical 
 investigation of nature,” says Cotta, “ has no other aim 
 but that of discovering truth, whether it appear to human 
 thought re-assuring or alarming, beautiful or ugly, logical 
 or inconsistent, wise or foolish, necessary or miraculous.” 
 Could a man of sense really wish to forbid the progress 
 of natural science and seek to debar it from taking its due 
 share in the solution of philosophical problems, on no other 
 ground but that the final results of such investigations are 
 not agreeable to himself and to others ? That truth is not 
 always pleasant, not always comforting, not always religious, 
 not always attractive — all this is as well known as is the old 
 experience of the almost entire want of external or internal 
 reward that she bestows on her followers. At least, this 
 reward stands in no proportion to the difficulties which 
 have to be surmounted on the road. Externally it has 
 ever consisted of personal danger and persecution, wher- 
 ever truth has come into contact with old-world opinions ; 
 how uncertain its internal reward is, has been well expressed 
 by an ingenious Persian in the following words : 
 
 “ And yet no ; cast away the mind, break its fetters I 
 Be a fool! for the fool alone is happy. 
 
 Like the nightingale near the rose such a heart rejoices eternally, 
 
 For it has escaped thy thorn, the torture of knowledge. 
 
 Therefore, blessing his God, let him thank fate 
 Who, blessed in error, can still be happy.” 
 
 * As far a, the enjoyment of life is concerned, we only differ from the ancient 
 world, which managed very felicitously to bring its principles and its actions into 
 harmonious concord, in so far as we have within ourselves a contradiction be- 
 tween our actions and our philosophical theory of the world. “ The hypocrisy of 
 self-deception,” says Ludwig Feuerbach, “is the besettingsin of the present day.” 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 400 
 
 To the poet the nature of things appeared in its last sim- 
 plicity, and unshrouded by the mass of external additions 
 \'ith which the clear voice of truth has been rendered unin- 
 telligible by error or calculation to the greater part of 
 mankind : but he could not therefore escape from the 
 mental unrest, the mental pain, which is only conceivable 
 by those who have passed along certain paths of knowl- 
 edge. He rightly accounts him happy who is “ blessed in 
 error,” but he is wrong to tell him to thank his God for it. 
 Only the man who possesses knowledge can regard the 
 ignorant as happy in his limitations, because only for him 
 can the pain of knowledge exist, whereas the very 
 essence of error consists above everything else in neither 
 understanding nor conceiving the error. In the deepest con- 
 sciousness of this curious fact, and perhaps thinking of the 
 soft, dreamy enjoyment of life in the East, the Persian 
 actually claims that such happiness is to be preferred to the 
 restless chase after knowledge. Very differently does the 
 Western world feel and think ; life without struggle and 
 activity has no charm for it. Truth hides within herself an 
 intrinsic charm of attraction, by the side of which all other 
 human considerations vanish ; and among Western civil- 
 ized nations there will never be a lack of enthusiastic 
 disciples and followers, regardless of consequences. No 
 prohibition, no external difficulty, can for any length of time, 
 block up the path of truth ; it grows stronger under the 
 pressure of obstacles. The whole history of the human 
 race, despite the huge mass of follies which crowd upon 
 each other and form, as it were, an unbroken chain, is a 
 continuous proof of this contention. Even while in the 
 hands of the Inquisition, Galileo uttered his famous words, 
 which have been repeated and reverberated a thousand 
 times over : 
 
 “ E pur si muove ! ” 
 
 (And yet it moves ! ) 
 

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