112 



NATURE 



{Dec, 6, 1877 



order. But we must not extend this arrangement beyond what 

 is a^^solutely necessary. 



This is a reproach which I cannot help making against Prof. 

 Nageli as well. Prof. Nageli has discussed, certainly in the most 

 measured way and — you will notice this if you read his address — 

 in a thoroughly philosophical manner, the difficu't qiustions 

 which he has chosen as subjects for his address. Nevertheless he 

 has taken a step which I consider extremely dangerous. He has 

 indeed done in another direction what is in one way done by 

 generatto aquivoca. He asks that the mental domain ^hall be 

 extended not only from animals to plants, but that finally we 

 shall actually pass from the organic world into the inorganic with 

 o ir conceptions of the nature of mental phenomena. This method 

 of thinking, which is represented by great philosophers, is natural 

 in itself. If anyone wants by any means to connect mental 

 phenomena with those of the rest of the universe, then he will 

 necessarily come to transfer the mental processes, as they occur 

 in man and the animals of highest organisation, to the lower and 

 lowest animals ; afterwards a soul is even ascribed to plants ; 

 further on the cell thinks and feels, and finally he finds a 

 passage down to chemical a^oms, which hate or love one 

 another, seek one another, or flee from one ano'her. All 

 this is very fine and excellent, and may after all be quite true. 

 It may be. But then, do we really want, is there some positive 

 scientific necessity, to extend the domain of mental phenomena 

 beyond the circle of those bodies, in which and by which we see 

 them really happening? I have no objection if carbon atoms 

 have a mind as well, or that they obtain a mind in thfir union 

 with the pla«tidule association, but / do not knno in n'hat I am 

 to rerognise this. It is simply playing with words. If I declare 

 attrac'ion and repulsion to be mental occu-rences, to be mental 

 phenomena, then I simplv throw the mind (ftie Psych'') out of 

 the window'; then the mind ceases to be mind. The phenomena 

 of the human mind may eventually be explainei in a chemical 

 way, ^ut for the present, I t^ink, it is not our task to mix up 

 the-e donnains. On the contrary, it is our duty to keep tt-em 

 stric'ly where we understand th^m to be. And as I have always 

 laid stress upon thi=, that we should not in the first line try to 

 find the trinntion fmm the inoi'ganic into the organic, but that 

 we should first of all determine the contrast b^tween the inor- 

 gani'- and the oreanic, and carry on our investigations among 

 those contracts in the same way, I now rraintain that the only 

 way to progress — and I hold the firmest conviction that we shall 

 not advance at all otVierwise — is to limit the domain of mental 

 phenomena where we reallv perceive ment^al phenomena, and 

 not to suppose mental phenomena, where perhaps thev may be, 

 but where we do not notice any visible, audiSle, sensible, in one 

 word, perceptible phenomena, which we might call mental ones. 

 There is no doubt that for us the whole sum of mental pheno- 

 mena is attached to certain animals, not to the totality of all 

 organic beings, not even to all animals generally, and I maintain 

 this without hesitation. We have no reason yet to say that the 

 lowest animals possess mental characteristics ; we find them only 

 with the higher animals, and with perfect certainty only with the 

 highest. 



Now I will admit with pleasure that certain gradations, cer- 

 tain gradual transitions, certain points can be found, where from 

 mental phenomena one gets to phenomena of simply material or 

 physical nature. I certainly do not declare that it will never be 

 possible to bring psychical phenomena into immediate connection 

 with physical ones. All I say is, that at present we are not 

 justified in setting down this possible connection as a scientific 

 doctrine, and I must distinctly oppose the attempts to enlarge 

 cur doctrines prematurely in this manner, and to bring again 

 and again into the foreground as a po-iitive statement what we so 

 often proved a useless problem. We must distinguish strictly 

 between what we want to teach and what we want to investigate. 

 What we investigate are problems. We need not keep them to 

 ourselves ; we may communicate them to the whole world and 

 say. There is the problem, this is what we are trying to find ; 

 like Columbus, who, when he started to discover India, made 

 no absolute secret of it, but who eventually did not find India, 

 but America. And the same happens to us not rarely. We 

 start to prove certain problems which we suppose to be perfectly 

 correct, and in the end we find something quite different, which 

 we never expected. The investigation of such problems, in 

 wh'ch the whole nation may be interested, must be open to 

 everybody. That is the liberty of research. But the problem is 

 not at once to be the object of ins'tuction. When we teach we 

 must confine ourselves to those smaller domains which are 

 already so large, and wh'ch yre have ac'ually mastered. 



Gentlemen, I am convinced that only with a resignation oi 

 this kind, which we impose on ourselves, which we exercise 

 towards the rest of the world, shall we be enabled to conduct 

 the fight aga'nst our enemies with a victorious result. All 

 attempts to transform our problems into doctrines, to introduce 

 our theories as the basis of a plan of education, particularly the 

 attempt simply to depose the church, and to replace its dogma 

 by a religion of descent without further trr uble, these attempts, 

 I say, must fail, and their failure would at the same time br ng 

 the greatest dangers upon the position of science generally. 



Therefore let us be moderate, let us exercis* resignation, so 

 that we give even the most treasured problems which we put 

 forth, always as problems only, and that we say it a hundred and 

 again a hundred times : " Do not take this for confirmed truth, 

 be prepared that this may perhaps be changed j only for the 

 moment we are of opinion that it may be true. " 



By way of illustration I will add another example. At this 

 moment there are probably few naturalists who are not of 

 opinion that man is allied to the rest of the animal world, and 

 that a connection will possibly be found, if indeed not with apes, 

 then perhaps in some other direction, as is now the opinioii of 

 Prof. Vogt. 



I acknowledge openly that this is a desideratum of science. 

 I am quite prepared for it, and I would not for a moment 

 wonder nor be alarmed if the proof were found that the ancestors 

 of man were vertebrate animals. You know that just at present 

 I work by preference in the field of anthropology, but yet I must 

 declare that every step of positive progress which we have made 

 in the domain of prehistoric anthropology, has really moved us 

 further away from the proof of this connection. At this moment 

 anthropology studies the question of fossil man. From man in 

 the present "period of creation" we have descended to the 

 quaternary period, to that period when, as Cuvier maintained with 

 the greatest confidence, man never existed at all. Nowadays 

 quaternary man is a generally accepted fact. Quaternary man 

 is no longer a problem, but a real doctrine. Bat tertiary man is 

 a problem — of course a problem which is ahcdy in a stace of 

 material discussion. There are objects already about which discus- 

 sions are going on as to whether they may be admitted as proofs 

 for the existence of man during the tertiary period. We do not 

 merely speculate on the subject, bat we discuss certain objects, 

 whether they may be r^coi^nised as witnesses for the activity of 

 man during the tertiary period. The question raised is answered 

 differently according to whether these objective material elements 

 of proof are considered sufficient or not. Even men who, like 

 Abbe Bourgeo's, are decided ecclesiastics, are convinced that 

 man has lived during the tertiary period ; for them tertiary man 

 is already a doctrine. For us, who are of a more critical na'ure, 

 tertiary min is still a problem, but, as we must acknowledge, a 

 problem worthy of discussion. Let us therefore for the present 

 remain at quaternary man, whom we really find. If we stu ^y 

 this quaternary, fossil man, who ought after all to stand nearer to 

 our ancestors in the series of descent, or rather of ascent, we find 

 a man just the same as we are ourselves. 



Only ten years ago, when a skull was found, perhaps in peat 

 or in lake dwellings, or in some old cave, it was believed that 

 wonderful marks of a wild and quite undeveloped state were seen 

 in it. Indeed we v/ere then scenting monkey air. But this has 

 died out more and more. The old troglodytes, lake inhabitants, 

 and peat people turn out to be quite a respectable society. They 

 have heads of such a size that many a person living would feel 

 happy to possess one like them. Our French neighbours have 

 certainly warned us not to conclude too much from these big 

 heads ; it may be possible that they were not filled only with 

 nerve- substance, but that the old brains had more intermediary 

 tissues than is the case now-a-days, and that their nerve-sub- 

 stance in spite of the size of the brain, remained at a low state of 

 development. However this is only a friendly conversation 

 which to some extent is held as a support of weak minds. On 

 the whole we must really acknowledge that all fossil type of a 

 lower human development is absolutely wanting. Indeed if we 

 lake the total of all fossil men that have betn found hitherto and 

 compare them with what the present offers, then we can maia- 

 tain with certainty that amongst the present generation there is a 

 much larger number of relatively low-type individuals than amongst 

 the fossils hitherto known. That only the highest geniuses of 

 the quaternary period enjoyed the gool fortune of being pre- 

 served for us I do not dare to suppose. As a rule we draw con- 

 clusions from the condition of a single fossil object with respect 

 to the majority of others which have not been found. But I will 

 not do this. J will not maintain that tlip whole race was as 



