existence." Kirchhoff concluded Wolff's critique of Bluraenbach 

 by citing Goethe's words: "Where comprehension is lacking, 

 there a word fills in at the right time." 4 E. Haeckel 

 similarly praised Wolff's methodology, labelling him a "great 

 natural -philosophy scientist in the best and highest under- 

 standing of this word. "5 



Kirchhoff evaluated Wolff's ideology as materialistic, 

 naturally identifying it with the "mechanical" understanding 

 of nature. This conclusion is not understandable, if we 

 remember how definitely Wolff, as early as 1759, had objected 

 to the principles of "the mechanical medicine," which he 

 called an "imagined system." Contrary to Kirchhoff, the 

 majority of authors who have written about Wolff and who were 

 interested in his ideology have characterized him as a 

 vitalist. This was manifest when (Emile) Radl, in his first 

 edition of HISTORY OF BIOLOGICAL THEORIES, 6 wrote that 

 Wolff, following J(ohn) T(urberville) Needham, had borrowed 

 Leibnitz's idea of the monad which, by the effect of a 

 specially developed force, is turned into an organism. Hence, 

 Radl concluded, Wolff had added this conception to Stahl's 

 idea about the soul as a continuing superphysical power in 

 nature. And although Radl, in the second edition of his 

 book, considered Wolff's evaluation as incorrect, such an 

 opinion has appeared in recent literature without any reserva- 

 tion, for example by J. Needham in HISTORY OF EMBRYOLOGY 

 (p. 256). It is entirely natural, of course, that (Hans) 

 Driesch^ considered Wolff to be a complete vitalist because 

 in his HISTORY OF VITALISM Driesch had joined the 

 vitalists, and for the most part, although without sufficient 

 basis, so had almost all the leading biologists. 



4. "Faust," fourth scene, translation of N. A. Kholdokovskogo . 



5. E(rnst) Haeckel, ANTHROPOGENIE ; ODER ENTWICKLUNGS- 

 GESCHICHTE DES MENSCHEN. (Leipzig: Engelman, 1874), 

 p. 36. 



6. E(mile) Radl, GESCHICHTE DER BIOLOGISCHEN THEORIEN, 

 v. I, 1905. 



7. Ibid ., 2nd ed., 1913, p. 243. 



8. [Ed.: Joseph Needham, A HISTORY OF EMBRYOLOGY (2nd ed., 

 • 1959), pp. 207 - 208. This claim represents a misreading of 



Needham. ) 



9. H. Driesch, DER VITALISM ALS GESCHICHTE UND ALS LEHRE 

 (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1905), pp. 50 - 55. 



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