CHAPTER XIV 



NATURAL-PHILOSOPHICAL BIOLOGY 



I. Germany and Scandinavia 



Character of the natural philosophy of the time 



THE DIRECTION taken by natural-philosophical thought that has been 

 described in the foregoing has played a very important part in the 

 cultural development of the world and not least in the science of 

 biology. There were, of course, during the natural-philosophical period a 

 large number of scientists who were not at all, or only very slightly, affected 

 by the speculative tendencies of natural philosophy, while others, it is true, 

 embraced its tenets either temporarily or permanently, but at the same time 

 carried out research work in exact natural science with lasting results. The 

 work of these scientists will be recorded later on; in the present chapter we 

 shall devote our attention to a group of scientists who applied themselves 

 entirely to a speculative explanation of nature and sought to incorporate in 

 it all the known facts about nature that they considered necessary and attain- 

 able, or who, at any rate, in a more or less pronounced way gave themselves 

 out as champions of such views. It was in Germany and Scandinavia in 

 particular that these faithful disciples of Schelling and the other idealist 

 philosophers won for a time extraordinary success and managed to present 

 to the public, and particularly to the universities, their master's theory, with 

 amendments of their own, as the only true natural science. The causes of this 

 phenomenon, which must seem strange to us, as it was to earlier generations, 

 were manifold. The universal cultural tendencies that favoured romanticism 

 in general — disappointment at the failure of the efforts to win liberty under 

 the revolution and weariness after the great wars of independence — natu- 

 rally also played an important part in the development now under discussion; 

 again, the interest in mysticism that spread far and wide at the close of the 

 eighteenth century and was cultivated by the numerous brotherhoods, un- 

 doubtedly had a great influence. The possession of some form of knowledge 

 that is unattainable for the majority has always been an attractive prospect 

 for human egotism — now it was possible for the professor of philosophy or 

 natural science at the university to present to his hearers a theory which at 

 any rate had the advantage of being incomprehensible to the uninitiated; 



i86 



