552 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



plained from mechanical principles, but that no such explanation could 

 be given of the origin and the characters of living beings. Such was the 

 position taken by the author of the introduction to the " Universal His- 

 tory," whom we have already seen Kant quoting. 



The manner of the original formation of plants and animals, in which the 

 wisdom of the Creator principally appears, has never been accounted for by any 

 philosopher with any tolerable success; matter and the laws of motion having 

 nothing at all to do in these things, whatever they have in the inanimate parts 

 of the world. 18 



And this was substantially the attitude which Kant adopted, in the 

 one passage of the " Allgemeine Naturgeschichte " in which he definitely 

 discusses the matter. 



We are in a position to say : " Give me matter and I will construct a 

 world." For given matter endued with the essential force of attraction, and 

 [all astronomical phenomena] . . . can be traced back to the simplest mechanical 

 causes, which causes we may confidently hope to discover. . . . But can we boast 

 of any such advantage with respect to the meanest plant or insect? Are we in 

 a position to say : " Give me matter and I will show you how a caterpillar is 

 generated " ? Do we not in this case, from the very first step in our quest, 

 remain in ignorance of the true inner constitution of the object in question and 

 of the complexity of the manifold parts composing it? It should surprise no 

 one, therefore, when I venture to say that the formation of all the heavenly 

 bodies, the cause of their motions, in short, the origin of the entire present 

 constitution of the universe, will become completely intelligible, before the gen- 

 eration of a single herb or caterpillar can be made wholly clear from mechanical 

 principles. 



This passage is, perhaps, capable of being construed as expressing 

 rather an ignoramus than an ignorabimus. But considering it in con- 

 junction with the uniform tenor of Kant's subsequent writings, we are 

 justified, I think, in saying that he at no time admitted the possibility 

 of bringing organisms within the compass of a scheme of cosmic evolu- 

 tion based upon mechanistic principles. He was, in short, throughout 

 his career a vitalist, though in later life a curiously inconsistent one. 

 The notion of an original " spontaneous generation " of life out of the 

 inorganic always roused his aversion. Yet, as I have remarked, a vital- 

 ist may without inconsistency be a transf ormist ; living beings, once 

 produced by non-mechanical causes, may still conceivably change their 

 forms in the course of natural descent. But Kant throughout most of 

 his life looked upon the theories of spontaneous generation and of the 

 transformation of species with so blinding a hostility that he could 

 scarcely tell them apart. We shall find that some thirty-five years of 

 reflection were required before he was able to make so simple a dis- 

 crimination as to recognize that, from the point of view of his own 

 biological philosophy, the two stood upon & different, even though both 

 stood upon an unsound, footing. 



2. The Review of Moscati on Man's Upright Posture. — In 1771 



19 Op. cit., 1736, I., p. 43. 



