A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 



315 



plied to physiological facts exclusively. This distinction is opposed 

 to the tendencies of contemporaneous science, whose analyses reduce 

 all morphological facts to physiological facts. Selection, Hartmann 

 says, explains the progress in perfection of an already existing type, 

 within its own degree of organization ; but it cannot explain the pas- 

 sage from an inferior degree of organization to a superior one, a pas- 

 sage which always consists in an augmentation of the morphological 

 type ; and he gives, as a reason for his argument, that there is no more 

 vitality in one morphological type than in another, and that selection 

 is applicable only to facts that increase the vitality of the organism. 

 All the degrees of organization possessing equal vitality, it is only, 

 Hartmann insists, within the limits of a particular degree that different 

 species or varieties are distinguished by more or less important advan- 

 tages in the struggle for existence : if Darwinism were true of all sjie- 

 cies without restriction, there could only subsist one single morpholo- 

 gical type in each locality, and, in the millions of years that the vital 

 competition has lasted, all the inferior classes of animals and plants 

 must have been extinguished by the superior classes ; there are, in a 

 word, a great number of facts which form part of the plan of the 

 world, and yet are of no service in giving more vitality; such facts, in 

 order to keep themselves in existence, need some other support than 

 that of natural selection and the struggle for life. 



We understand how many minds feel a certain repugnance in ac- 

 cepting the daring views of Darwin, so contrary to old associations of 

 ideas. It is as yet nothing more than an hypothetic induction, which is 

 waiting for its experimental verification. But it is no less true that 

 this is the most probable of all the theories hitherto put forth upon 

 the forms of life, and in default of that palpable and decisive demon- 

 stration that time only can furnish, we shall at least maintain that this 

 opinion deserves to be preferred to all those still far more hypothetic 

 doctrines which cannot dispense with a supernatural principle. 



No doubt Darwinism does not succeed in explaining every thing. 

 It has never assumed to account for the existence of forces, for the 

 origin of those movements which are the source, and as it were the 

 substance of life ; it takes into view only their direction and the pro- 

 cedure of their organization. Putting aside the mysterious problem 

 of being, it takes cognizance only of the methods of being. Is this 

 saying that selection is only one of the means employed by a superior 

 intelligence to govern the other forces of the world toward its ends ? 

 Nothing permits us to suppose that, for, on the contrary, the peculiar- 

 ity of selection, in all the cases to which it applies, is to explain order 

 without calling in the aid of intelligence, and as a necessary resultant 

 of the reciprocal action of forces. 



We think, with Hartmann, that Darwinism can explain only those 

 facts that relate to the vitality of beings. But what fact is there in 

 living Nature which can be regarded as indifferent from the point of 



