556 



PHILOSOPHICAL THOUGHT. 



the insufficiency of the statical view of nature as a great 

 panorama was already beginning to make itself felt. 1 

 Schelling's view of Nature as a development of the 

 counterpart of Mind, as a series of stepping-stones to 

 Life and Consciousness, proved to be both premature 

 and incomplete : it was a prospect rather than an 

 achievement. The realisation of it demanded volumes 



1 This statical view of nature 

 a belief in the regular recurrence 

 not only of the fundamental pro- 

 cesses or laws of nature, but also 

 of the types and forms of existing 

 things showed itself likewise in 

 the birth and development of stat- 

 istics, as I have shown in the twelfth 

 chapter of the first section of this 

 History. This one-sided faith in 

 recurrent types and forms has been 

 severely shaken during the second 

 half of the century by a belief in 

 continuous and slow variation, and 

 threatens, at the end of the 

 century, under the sway of 

 pragmatism, to move into the op- 

 posite extreme, denying even the 

 highest standards of truth and 

 morality. As a matter of fact, the 

 recognition of statical sameness and 

 similarity in natural things and 

 processes has always preceded and 

 led to the search for similar under- 

 lying causes. Tims, before the 

 nebular hypothesis was propounded, 

 such regularities as the revolution 

 of the planets in the same direc- 

 tion, the small eccentricity of 

 their orbits and the small inclina- 

 tion of the latter to a common 

 plane, the plane of the ecliptic, 

 suggested to Herschel and others 

 the existence of some common plan 

 or scheme in the constitution, and 

 consequently in the genesis pf the 

 planetary system. Again, the 

 sameness in the types of organic 

 beings, especially in their embryonic 

 stage, suggested first the existence 

 of a common plan or scheme, and 



later on, of a common cause in 

 their origin and development. It 

 was the peculiarity of the philo- 

 sophy of nature to rely too much 

 upon the ideal sameness and suc- 

 cession of the types of existence, 

 and to put forward only tentatively 

 and in a limited sense the genetic 

 view which relies upon a continu- 

 ously acting force, an immanent 

 causality. It is interesting to see 

 how Lotze, in 1855, before the 

 modern theory of evolution, pointed 

 out how the philosophy of Schel- 

 ling and Hegel stopped half-way in 

 its explanation of nature: "Only 

 the One out of which the whole 

 of nature arises has for these 

 opinions a full and independent 

 reality ; all single and finite pheno- 

 mena, standing in their importance 

 beneath the Absolute, are apt to 

 lose that solidity of genuine exist- 

 ence through which they themselves 

 become again new and consistent, 

 though secondary, starting - points 

 of a living activity. Thus in their 

 view of nature the wealth of pheno- 

 mena which surrounds us is prefer- 

 ably traced immediately to the 

 Highest and the Infinite as its 

 only true source and support ; dis- 

 inclination to explain the finite 

 through the finite leads to a neglect 

 of the succession of mediating 

 causes. This direction of inves- 

 tigation is doubtless not a neces- 

 sary consequence to which the 

 starting - point of these views was 

 bound to lead ; it is only an error 

 to which the temptation lay on the 



