408 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



and Du Bois-Eeymond ^ did not do away with this very 

 evident property of living things, but only maintained 



mann {' Die Metaphysik iu der 

 Physiologie,' 1894, p. 7): '^How- 

 ever convincingly Lotze destroyed 

 the conception of a vital force, he 

 had no desire to criticise in a sim- 

 ilarly destructive manner the prin- 

 ciple of a soul, though both have 

 grown up in the same climate, in 

 the fertile country where sub- 

 stances blossom, &c. . . . And 

 although he emphatically, and in 

 many ways, urged that all organism 

 is a definite form and arrangement 

 of mechanism, he nevertheless 

 accorded to the principle of in- 

 herent disturbances (soul, will) a 

 partial control over the functions 

 of the animal body," &c. Accord- 

 ingly this view set only the physi- 

 ology of plant-life quite free for a 

 purely mechanical treatment, which 

 it received — after the suggestive 

 beginnings made by Schleiden — 

 mainly at the hands of Julius 

 Sachs, from whose ' Lectures on 

 Plant Physiology' (1887) Kauf- 

 mann gives the following very char- 

 acteristic extract : " The organism 

 is only a machine put together 

 out of different parts ; ... in a 

 machine, even if only made by 

 human hands, there lies the result 

 of deepest and most careful thought, 

 and of high intelligence, so far as 

 its structure is concerned," &c. (p. 

 623). 



^ The two great facts which stare 

 every unbiassed student of nature 

 in the widest sense in the face, 

 and which always upset a purely 

 mechanical view, are Purpose and 

 "Will. Lotze recognises both, and 

 in all his writings never forgets or 

 ignores them. Naturalists, who 

 for the nonce are deeply interested 

 and fully absorbed in the analysis 

 of some definite organ, or some 

 special chemical power in the 

 organism, may usefully ignore 



these two facts, of which the first 

 only intrudes itself if we rise to a 

 general, a comprehensive aspect ; 

 the second is a result of individual 

 experience. Nor did Du Bois- 

 Reymond ignore these facts. It 

 is interesting to see how he deals 

 with them in his earlier and later 

 writings. In the earlier period 

 he eliminates the problem of free 

 will as not a scientific problem 

 at all, and gets over the question 

 of purpose bj' a reference to the 

 evident existence of purpose in in- 

 animate nature also, — an idea which 

 really comes ultimately back to an 

 assumj)tion of a general animation 

 of the whole of nature, such as 

 has been maintained by many phil- 

 osophers and naturalists iu very 

 various forms. See, for instance, 

 the further remarks of Julius Sachs 

 in the passage quoted above. But 

 there is no doubt that this method 

 of viewing the teleology of nature did 

 not really satisfy Du Bois-Reymond, 

 for in the reprint of his paper on vital 

 force he refers to it as superficial 

 (' Reden,' vol. ii. p. 26), having in 

 the meantime adopted the explana- 

 tion of Darwin, whose " highest 

 title to glory " will, " so long as 

 philosophy of nature exists," be 

 this, that he to " some extent 

 allayed the agony of the intellect 

 that ponders over the problems of 

 existence" ('Reden,' vol. i. p. 216). 

 In 1887 he holds that what he 

 wrote as late as 1859, before the 

 appearance of the ' Origin of 

 Species', — for instance his cele- 

 brated Eloge of Johannes Miiller — 

 is antiquated, though it still gives a 

 valuable picture of the " tormenting 

 confusion of those who could not 

 free themselves from the emban-ass- 

 ing fetters of the fixity of species, 

 the incompleteness of the paheonto- 

 logical records, and, more than all, 



