54C 



NATURE 



[Sept. 28, 1882 



insufficiency of the stock of observations and experiments he 

 brought forward in prouf of his far-reaching principles. For 

 then, as now, the great majority of naturalists want, above 

 everything, to have palpable facts in the hand. Then as now 

 we find the paradoxical.phenomenon, that the great majority of 

 people accept without any misgiving and trample under foot the 

 most absurd hypothe-es and dogmas, while on the other hand 

 they encounter well-founded scientific theories with the more 

 suspicion and opposition the more they approach the truth. 

 Among the experimental proofs of theories, moreover, to most 

 people those are not the most welcome which are furnished by 

 a continuous series of phenomena and a whole large class of facts. 

 What they most desire is the particular observation, the single 

 experiment. A large part of Darwin's immense success is clue 

 to the fact that he brought into the field to a truly overwhelming 

 amount exactly such particular pertinent observations and ex- 

 periments. Poor Lamarck on the contrary, trusting to the logical 

 conclusion-drawing faculty of naturalists, for the most part 

 neglected the business of palpable particulars. 



The comparison of these three great natural philosophers in 

 whom the foundation-laying development theory of our current 

 natural science was most powerfully and comprehensively 

 revealed is of high interest, for all three are very different 

 among themselves both in respect of their general genius and 

 the fortunes of their life outwardly and inwardly, as also, very 

 especially, in respect of their courses of study and the ways by 

 which they pursued their high aims. Lamarck starts from the 

 most careful special studies of individual animal and vegetable 

 forms, and by his many years' systematic examination and com- 

 parison of them is brought to the conviction that all living and 

 fossil species have developed themselves out of a few simple 

 common geneological forms. Goethe arrives at the same con- 

 clusion on the ground of his general studies in comparative 

 morphology, directed by the conviction that the unity of the 

 common type or the hereditary protoform can be traced out, 

 everywhere in all the different organic forms, however manifoldly 

 they may be transformed in individuals through adaptation to 

 outward circumstances. Darwin, finally, first answers to his own 

 satisfaction the question by what causes the new culture-forms of 

 animals and plants reared by men come into being, and then 

 demonstrates that the struggle for existence is the same cause 

 which in like manner by the inter-action of adaptation and 

 inheritance constantly produces new organic species in the free 

 state of nature. 



In these wholly different ways and by application of wholly 

 different methods of investigation, all these three naturalists 

 arrive ultimately at the same conclusion — to the acceptance, 

 Tamely, of a monistic and continuous development of the whole 

 of organic nature, through the operation alone of natural causes, 

 to the exclusion of all supernatural creative miracles. All three, 

 however, being at the same time deep-thinking philosophers and 

 keeping constantly in their eye the unity of the whole world of 

 phenomena, their idea of development expands to a grand 

 pantheistic conception of the world, to that doctrine of 01 eness 

 which forms the essence of our current monistic theory of 

 nature. 



The immeasurable effect which the decided triumph of this 

 monistic view of nature already in this day exercises on all pro- 

 vinces of human knowledge, an effect increa-ing in geome- 

 trical progression from year to year, opens to us the happiest 

 prospect regarding the further intellectual and moral develop- 

 ment of mankind. I repeat here my firm personal conviction 

 that in future this progress of scientific knowledge will be 

 esteemed the greatest turning-point in the intellectual history of 

 man. 



We would in a quite especial manner emphasise this reconciling 

 and compensating influence of our genetic theory of nature, all 

 the more that our opponents are constantly endeavouring to 

 obtrude disruptive and decomposing tendencies on it. These 

 destructive tendencies are said to be directed not merely against 

 science, but against religion and so against the most important 

 foundations, in general, of our civilised life. Such grievous 

 charges, so far as they really rest on conviction and not merely on 

 sophistic fallacies, can be explained only by the fact of a mis- 

 chievous misunderstanding of what forms the genuine kernel of 

 true religion. This kernel does not consist in the special form of 

 one's confession of faith, but rather in the critical conviction of 

 an unknowable, common, ultimate ground of all things and in 

 practical ethics springing immediately from the purified theory 

 of nature. 



In this confession, that with the present organisation of our 

 brain the last ultimate ground of all phenomena is unknowable, 

 the critical philosophy of nature comes athwart dogmatic religion. 

 This faith in God, however, of course, assumes, endlessly 

 different forms of confession according to the endlessly different 

 degrees of the know ledge of nature. The further advances we 

 make in the latter — the more we approach that unattainable 

 ultimate ground — the purer will be our idea of God. 



The purified knowledge of the world in the present day knows 

 that natural revelation alone which in the book of nature lies 

 open to every one and which every unprejudiced man with sound 

 senses and sound reason can learn out of it. From this is derived 

 that purest monistic form of faith w hich attains its climax in the 

 conviction of the unity of God and Nature and which has long 

 ago found its most complete expression in the confessions of our 

 greatest poets and thinkers, Goethe and Lessing at their head. 

 That Charles Darwin, too, was penetrated by this religion of 

 nature, and did not acknowledge a particular church-confession 

 is patent to every man who knows his works. . . . 



Only in law-regulated society can man acquire the true and 

 full culture of the higher human life. That, however, is only 

 possible when the natural instinct of self-preservation, Egoism, 

 is restricted and corrected by consideration for society, by 

 Altruism. The higher man raises himself on the ladder of 

 culture, the greater are the sacrifices which he must make to 

 society, for the interests of the latter shape themselves evermore 

 to the advantage of the individual at the same time ; just as, 

 reversely, the regulated community thrives the better the more 

 the wants of its members are satisfied. It is therefore quite a 

 simple necessity which elevates a sound equilibrium between 

 Egoism and Altruism into the first requirement of natural 

 ethics. 



The greatest enemies of mankind have ever been, down to 

 the present day, ignorance and superstition ; their greatest bene- 

 factors, on the other hand, the lofty intellectual heroes who with 

 the sword of their free spirit have valiantly contended with 

 those enemies. Among these venerable intellectual warriors 

 stand at the head, Darwin, Goethe, and Lamarck, in a line with 

 Newton, Keppler, and Copernicus. These great thinkers of 

 nature by devoting their rich intellectual gifts, in the teeth of all 

 opposition, to the discovery of the most sublime natural truths, 

 have become true saviours of needy mankind, and possess a far 

 higher degree of Christian love than the Scribes and Phari-ees 

 who are always bearing this phrase in their mouth and the 

 opposite in their heart. 



How little, on the other hand, blind belief in miracles and 

 the domination of orthodoxy is in a position to manifest true 

 philanthropy is sufficiently testified not only by the whole history 

 of the middle ages but also by the intolerant and fanatic 

 procedure of the militant church in our days. Or must we 

 not look with deep shame on those orthodox Christians who, in 

 our day, again express their Christian love by the persecution of 

 those of other faith and by blind hatred of race ? And here in 

 Eisenach, the sacred place where 'Martin Luther delivered us 

 from the gloomy ban of adherence to the letter, did not a troop 

 of so-called Lutherans venture some years ago to try anew to 

 bend science under that yoke? 



Against this presumption on the part of a tyrannical and 

 selfish priesthood it will today be permitted us to protest on the 

 same spot where 360 years ago the great Reformer of the church 

 kindled the light of free inquiry. As true Piotestants we shall 

 rise up against every attempt to force independent reason again 

 under the yoke of superstition, no matter whether the attempt 

 be made by a church sect or a pathologic spiritism. 



Happily we are entitled to regard these medieval relapses as 

 but transitory abenations which will have no abiding effect. 

 The immeasurable practical importance of the natural sciences 

 for our modern culture-life is now so generally recognised that 

 no section of it can any longer dispense with it. No power in 

 the world is able again to roll backwards the immense progress 

 to which we owe our railways and steamers, telegraphy and 

 photography, and the thousand indispensable discoveries of 

 physics and chemistry. 



Just as little, too, will any power in the world succeed in 

 destroying the theoretic achievements which are inseparably 

 bound up with those practical successes of modern science. 

 Among those theories w e must assign the first place to the deve- 

 lopment doctrine of Lamarck, Goethe, and Darwin. F'or by it 

 alone are we authorised firmly to establish that comprehensive 

 outness of our theory of Natuie in which every phenomenon 



