A NEW PHASE OF GERMAN THOUGHT. 317 



the more there may exist between them that equality of vitality which 

 is merely the negation of competition. This explains why we oftener 

 remark equal vitality between different species than between varieties 

 of the same species. Certain species even suggest each other, and 

 have mutual need each of the other for their existence. If, for in- 

 stance, the quantity of vegetables, or of certain animal species which 

 we require for our nourishment, were to decrease, it would necessarily 

 follow that population would diminish proportionately ; but that dim- 

 inution would allow the other species to resume their former develop- 

 ment ; therefore the equilibrium is maintained of necessity. 



As to the possibility of morphological alterations, by the accumu- 

 lation of individual modifications, Hartmann himself admits that Dar- 

 win has cited more than one instance of it, and a marked one in the 

 skeleton of pigeons : he objects, it is true, that there was some aid 

 from art in these different cases. Very true ! but that proves that 

 analogous changes are at least possible through natural selection. 

 Hartmann adds, that a pair of teeth, or vertebrae, or fingers, more or less, 

 or a vertebra shaped in such or such a way, are exactly the marks by 

 which zoologists oftenest distinguish species, and yet he says such 

 marks are of no importance in the struggle for life. This seems to us 

 an oversight ; for they are precisely those scarcely appreciable modifi- 

 cations which have the greatest importance from the point of view of 

 selection and competition. 



Darwin and Hartmann stand at the opposite poles of modern 

 thought. To Darwin belongs the most fertile idea of the age, an idea 

 which upsets all the ancient ways of conceiving the world, and in- 

 cludes the first natural explanation yet given of order, of organization, 

 and of intelligence itself. Hartmann, on the contrary, takes us back 

 to the ancient labyrinths of teleology; between two explanations, one 

 natural and the other supernatural, we have always found him, thus 

 far, pronouncing for the latter. We detect a new instance of this pre- 

 dilection in his way of regarding instinct. Darwinism explains it ad- 

 mirably as an hereditary habit resulting from natural selection ; a habit 

 can only become formed and inveterate on condition of its aiming at 

 a result useful for the preservation of the individual and the species ; 

 that which is not useful cannot become habitual, or at least not heredi- 

 tary. Vices can be only individual accidents, or else the race is tend- 

 ing toward extinction ; all that flows from the force of things, and 

 there is no call for the supposition that the utility of fact grown into 

 habit must have been foreseen, and willed by a supernatural being. 

 But Hartmann prefers to define instinct as "the conscious will (choice) 

 of a means in view of an end unconsciously willed ; " and this he does 

 to raise a necessity for the supposition of an intelligent principle, dis- 

 tinct from conscious intelligence, in the bosom of which he may lodge 

 the seat of these unconscious volitions. 



Hartmann's love of the supernatural goes so far as to make him 



