ON THE GENETIC VIEW OF NATURE. 



323 



which liad been fullv dcuionstiaLed to the educated and 

 reading public. There lias always existed in this country 

 a class of literature which is almost entirely wanting, or 

 has died out, on tlie Coiitinenl. The value of this class 

 of literature has been difTerently gauged, but it never- 



tilled the columns of the foremost 

 British periuilicivls, we lincl in 

 Germany a similar agitation origin- 

 ating through the publication of 

 several works whicli have since 

 been generally considered as the 

 purest expression of Materialism. 

 The controversy begins in 1852 

 with tlie publication of Rudolf 

 Wagner's ' Physiological Letters,' 

 Moleschott's ' Kreislauf des Le- 

 bens,' and Carl Vogt's ' Bilder aus 

 dem Thierleben ' ; it came to its 

 height, after the appearance (in 

 18.5.5) of L. Biichner's 'Kraft und 

 Stoff,' and occupied the meeting of 

 scientific and medical men which 

 was held in Giittingen in 1854. 

 The subject belongs essentially to 

 the history of philosophical thought, 

 and can be studied in the very fair 

 and exhaustive ' History of Materi- 

 alism ' written by F. A. Lange, with 

 a distinctly' idealistic tendency 

 (English translation, three vols., by 

 Thomas, 1880). I mention the sub- 

 ject in this connection, because in 

 Germany and England attempts 

 were made about the same time to 

 found a general philosophy of life 

 ui>nn the teachings of science. This 

 had b<_'en done about two generations 

 earlier in France by the " Sensu- 

 alistes " and the " Ideologues." For 

 a French public neither the English 

 nor the German controver.sy pre- 

 sented any essentially new feature, 

 or disclosed any novel aigument. 

 The older orthodox conceptions had 

 been abandoned very largely in 

 France in the eighteenth century, 

 and at once replaced by concep- 

 tions derived from science. In 

 'Germany a similar movement took 



l>lace, likewise during the eight- 

 eenth century ; but, instead of 

 exact science, it was the prevailing 

 idealistic philosophy wiiich was 

 apjiealed to for the purpose of 

 gaining new foundations, and 

 science only came in when the 

 speculative restoration was gener- 

 ally considered to have failed. In 

 England, which had really supplied 

 the beginnings both for the French 

 sensualistic philosophy thiough 

 Locke, and for German criticism 

 through Locke and Hume, the 

 older orthodox foundations were 

 not materially shaken before the 

 middle of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. Tiie author of the ' Ve.s- 

 tiges ' distinctly ai)peals to science, 

 though, in a religious spirit, de- 

 siring to make it helpful for a 

 general philosophical, and not 

 merely an industrial, jiurjiose. 

 Again, the English movement, 

 which really culminated in Herbert 

 Spencer, differs from the German, 

 being more influenced by biological 

 conceptions, whereas in Germany 

 the extreme system of Biichner 

 took ])urely mechanical, though 

 ill-defined, ideas — force and matter 

 — as the shibboleth. It is signif- 

 icant, as showing the great general 

 importance of Darwinism, that 

 through it both the controversy 

 over the ' Vestiges ' in England 

 and that over ' Materialismus ' in 

 Germany were soon cast into 

 oblivion, though they had both to 

 some extent prepared the way (see 

 Lange, ' Gesch. des Mat.,' p. 570, 

 Ausg. 1867; and Haeckel, 'Schop- 

 fungsgeschichte,' vol. i. p. 98, 9 

 .\utl.) 



