GKOWTH OF BIOLOGY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 477 



''Nature in her .simpler inorganic phenomena presented the .same dif- 

 iicultie.s for research as in the question of the occurrence of sensation 

 and consciousness from material causes/' 



The simpler is by no means alwaj-s the best known, and, indeed, the 

 ordinary course of science is that from the study of the more complex 

 we come to be acquainted with the simpler. In chemistry, analysis, 

 for the most part, precedes synthesis. We have learned what a won- 

 derful sort of element carbon is by having found analytically that it is 

 the base of the carbohydrates, fats, albumens, and now develops in 

 them properties which certainly nobody would have suspected in 

 advance of the carbon in a piece of anthracite. What part the albu- 

 minous bodies play in the vital process we know, not by the chemical 

 study of albumen, which can teach us nothing at all about it, but by 

 the study of vegetable and animal cells. Thus science is built not 

 merely from below upward, but quite as much, or even more, from 

 above downward; there penetrating from the simple to the more com- 

 pound, here from the compound to the simpler. 



We have referred above to this s^dlogism: '"If the atoms develop 

 no other forces in the cell than what they have outside of it, then every- 

 thing of a chemo-physical kind that happens in the cell takes place as 

 it would in a test tube." In the same way and with equal justice we 

 can contrapose this syllogism and so get something like the following: 

 Man feels, remembers, and is conscious; he thinks and builds a world 

 of thought. Since, now, man consists of cells, cells of molecules of 

 albumen, and these, again, of atoms; since every higher stage of oi-gan- 

 ization is naturally developed from the stage next below it, and since the 

 conservation of energy allows no room for Thought to be introduced 

 at any step of the process, it follows that the cell, the molecide, and 

 the atom must feel, remember, be conscious, and think, each after its 

 kind. 



Indeed, just such views have already been put forth: and according 

 to them, upon the most important questions, not only of the doctrine 

 of cells but of chemistry and physics, the psychologist would lia\e to 

 be consulted for information. 



But by such general reasonings, whether of the progressive or the 

 regressive variety, which leave the solid eai-th of natural science to 

 float, as it were, in the air, the man of science can reach no useful 

 result. He ought to avoid them ])oth. 



The physicist and chemist refuse to recognize atoms that feel, have 

 memory, or think, because they perceive no sign of such properties 

 and their methods can not detect them. With the same justice the 

 biologist must enter a protest against his science being regarded from 

 the restricted standpoint of the chemist and physicist, since its prob- 

 lems and methods for the most part are quite of another sort (ganz 

 anders geartete). and are at any rate much more comprehensive and 

 are not near to being exhausted by physics and chemistry. 



