October 24, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



573 



their relations to natural science to need 

 consideration from his point of view as 

 representatives of the NaturpJiilosophie. 

 On the other hand, F. C. Miiller, in his 

 ■■ ' Geschichte d. organischen Wissenschaf ten 

 im 19ten Jahrhundert, ' ' beginning his men- 

 tion of the Natiirphilosophen who influ- 

 enced the organic sciences with Schelling 

 and Oken, adds thereupon the names of 

 fifteen others whom he classes as "Bedeut- 

 endste medicinische Naturpliilosophen." 

 Of these Steffens and Marcus have already 

 been mentioned. The rest are described as 

 men of various caliber — some of them medi- 

 cal authors, most of them professors — 

 some of them contributors of important 

 special researches in medicine— others less 

 fruitful. To the most important belong 

 Kielmeyer, who greatly influenced some 

 portions of the work of his contemporary 

 Cuvier, and Ignatius Dollinger, who was a 

 center of great importance in medical teach- 

 ing at Wiirzburg. Hirsch, in his "History 

 of Medicine in Germany," enumerates a 

 still somewhat larger list of more or less 

 pronounced Naturpliilosophen who deserve 

 mention from the medical point of view — 

 altogether more than a score. Hirsch, J. C. 

 Miiller and Haeser, in his ' ' Geschichte der 

 Medicin," agree in giving much the same 

 impression of the activities of these men — 

 several of them special investigators of 

 much industry and productivity, several of 

 them persons who gradually worked them- 

 selves free from the formulas of their phi- 

 losophy — all of them injured, in the eyes of 

 later science, by a tendency to constructive 

 formulas of an unjustifiable type. Where 

 they did good work, in the general biolog- 

 ical sciences, their work was usually, as I 

 gather, in relation to some aspect of the 

 study of the evolution and the comparative 

 morphology of living forms. 



It is customary to say that these Natur- 

 philosophen stood altogether in the way of 



the new awakening of the natural sciences 

 in Germany. But as I have already said, 

 while philosophy no doubt did medicine 

 mischief in those days, it is still at least 

 partly true that these Naturpliilosophen 

 constituted a transition from a time of 

 scientific stagnation to one of great activity. 

 They must be judged, accordingly, as begin- 

 ners rather than as mere mischief makers. 

 Their most characteristic work falls before 

 1820. Before 1830 the school had been led, 

 in their relations to pure philosophy, by the 

 official success of Hegel's doctrine at Ber- 

 lin, to occupy a less notable place as a sub- 

 ordinate part of a philosophical movement 

 in which, for Hegel himself, religious, polit- 

 ical, and ethical issues were more important 

 than were those of the interpretation of 

 nature. After Hegel's death, in 1831, the 

 movement of the Nattirphilosophie ere long 

 began to lose the sort of moral support 

 that his type of constructive idealism could 

 give to it. For the Hegelian school became 

 absorbed in religious and in political con- 

 flicts, split up into parties, and soon lost 

 whatever touch it had possessed with the 

 progress of natural science. The conse- 

 quence was that after 1830, the Naturphilo- 

 sophie, neglected by the philosophers them- 

 selves, generally denounced by the academic 

 leaders of natural science, and little de- 

 fended by its own now aging followers, 

 rapidly lost its hold upon the public. Vir- 

 chow still regarded it as a danger until 

 1848. After 1848 he too speaks of it as 

 altogether dead. 



So much for the external history of the 

 movement. But now for some words as to 

 its leading ideas and as to its indirect 

 influence. 



An idea may be advanced by a man who 

 has no sufficient logical right to hold it. 

 That idea may later become fruitful in the 



