THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPTION OF LIFE 21 



force is not entirely abolished. It will, however, be necessary to ascer- 

 tain by direct measurements to what extent these phenomena in ani- 

 mals are the expression of Bunsen-Eoscoe's law. But we may already 

 safely state that the apparent will or instinct of these animals resolves 

 itself into a modification of the action of the muscles through the in- 

 fluence of light ; and for the metaphysical term " will " we may in 

 these instances safely substitute the chemical term " photochemical 

 action of light.'' 



Our wishes and hopes, disappointments and sufferings have their 

 source in instincts which are comparable to the light instinct of the 

 heliotropic animals. The need of and the struggle for food, the sexual 

 instinct with its poetry and its chain of consequences, the maternal 

 instincts with the felicity and the suffering caused by them, the instinct 

 of workmanship and some other instincts are the roots from which our 

 inner life develops. For some of these instincts the chemical basis is 

 at least sufficiently indicated to arouse the hope that their analysis, 

 from the mechanistic point of view, is only a question of time. 



9. Ethics 



If our existence is based on the play of blind forces and only a matter 

 of chance ; if we ourselves are only chemical mechanisms — how can there 

 be an ethics for us ? The answer is, that our instincts are the root of 

 our ethics and that the instincts are just as hereditary as is the form 

 of our body. We eat, drink and reproduce not because mankind has 

 reached an agreement that this is desirable, but because, machine-like, 

 we are compelled to do so. We are active, because we are compelled 

 to be so by processes in our central nervous system; and as long as 

 human beings are not economic slaves the instinct of successful work 

 or of workmanship determines the direction of their action. The 

 mother loves and cares for her children not because metaphysicians 

 had the idea that this was desirable, but because the instinct of taking 

 care of the young is inherited just as distinctly as the morphological 

 characters of the female body. We seek and enjoy the fellowship of 

 human beings because hereditary conditions compel us to do so. We 

 struggle for justice and truth since we are instinctively compelled to 

 see our fellow beings happy. Economic, social and political conditions 

 or ignorance and superstition may warp and inhibit the inherited 

 instincts and thus create a civilization with a faulty or low development 

 of ethics. Individual mutants may arise in which one or the other 

 desirable instinct is lost, just as individual mutants without pigment 

 may arise in animals ; and the offspring of such mutants may, if numer- 

 ous enough, lower the ethical status of a community. Not only is the 

 mechanistic conception of life compatible with ethics ; it seems the only 

 conception of life which can lead to an understanding of the source 

 of ethics. 



