568 



SCIENCE 



[N. 8. Vol. XXXVIII. No. 982 



teenth century, in Germany, had done 

 medicine a good deal of harm. The evil 

 influence continued in some sense, although 

 in much diminished degree, into the next 

 decade or so. Yet I am now asked to tell you 

 something about what this movement of 

 thought called the Naturphilosophie was, 

 and about what its relations to the natural 

 sciences were up to, say, 1840. But what 

 interest can you take to-day in the story of 

 the evil influence of an enemy that is said 

 indeed to have threatened the cradle of 

 your infant science of modern pathology, 

 but that very early lost all its power to 

 harm. As a fact, the Naturphilosophie, 

 viewed as an officially recognized tendency 

 that could possess any strong direct influ- 

 ence in Germany, was very nearly dead 

 before the great days of 1848 came. Since 

 its death, the Naturphilosophie has seldom 

 been mentioned by anybody except with 

 contempt. Its later direct and overt influ- 

 ence upon the course of scientific discovery 

 has been nothing. Nothing then that is of 

 any critical importance to the later devel- 

 opment of your science seems to be involved 

 in the story that I have been asked to 

 rehearse. 



In fact, to speak in a figure, your science 

 of modern pathology, as Virchow nourished 

 it, proved to be a sort of Hercules. In his 

 infancy this Hercules strangled various 

 serpents. One of these is understood to 

 have been so much of the Naturphilosophie 

 as a hostile metaphysical power had sent 

 forth to vex medicine, and as still survived 

 to be strangled. Now the original Greek 

 Hercules and his friends were no doubt 

 always fond of telling over, in later years, 

 the story about the strangling of the ser- 

 pents by the infant. But I have not heard 

 that Hercules and his friends ever put any- 

 body into my present position by asking 

 him to read them a paper on the natural 

 history of snakes. I doubt whether either 



Hercules or his companions would have 

 found such a paper interesting. Snakes, 

 they would have said, are to be strangled, 

 not studied. The difficulty of my own posi- 

 tion in your presence to-night is of course 

 further increased by the fact that I, who 

 study philosophy, doubtless must seem to 

 some of you to be myself a representative, 

 in some sense, of the very generation of 

 vipers in question. My task is therefore 

 hard indeed. 



One thing alone has given me the cour- 

 age to attempt the enterprise. This is the 

 fact that if the direct and easily visible 

 influence of the Naturphilosophie upon the 

 later growth of modern science was indeed 

 small, its indirect and relatively invisible 

 influence was probably large, while this 

 latter influence was of a sort which not 

 only may interest you, when I point it out, 

 but which also probably determines some 

 of your own scientific interests even at the 

 present day. I can not show you then that 

 the literal teachings of the Naturphilosophie 

 accomplished much of direct moment or of 

 critical importance for the science of that 

 time. But I think that as a fact the spirit 

 of the Naturphilosophie did enter, more or 

 less unconsciously, and in ways which were 

 not always evil, into the life of later scien- 

 tific thinking. I do find that this spirit 

 tends at the present time to be revived, and 

 by some scientific men too, — to be revived, I 

 say, in forms which, as I hope, will prove to 

 be far nobler and more stable than were 

 those which grew up in the first two decades 

 of the nineteenth century. I see moreover 

 that when we try to estimate what this 

 more immortal part of the Naturphilosophie 

 meant, we are led to certain considerations 

 about the true spirit and methods of natu- 

 ral science, — to certain questions in which 

 I, as a student of logic, am much interested, 

 and in which, as I believe, you too may 

 take some interest. And so, doubtful as 



