368 LUDWIG AND MODERN PHYSIOLOGY. 



discourse — that given at Leipzig when he entered on his professorship 

 in 1865 — he remarks that when in our researches into the finer mech- 

 anism of an organ we at last come to understand it, we are humbled 

 by the recognition "that the human inventor is but a blunderer as 

 compared with the unknown Master of the animal creation." 1 



Some readers will perhaps remember how one of the most brilliant of 

 philosophical writers, in a discourse to the British Association delivered 

 a quarter of a century ago, averred on the authority of a great physi- 

 ologist that the eye, regarded as an optical instrument, was so inferior 

 a production that if it were the work of a mechanician it would be unsal- 

 able. Without criticising or endeavoring to explain this paradox, I 

 may refer to it as having given the countenance of a distinguished 

 name to a misconception which I know exists in the minds of many 

 persons, to the effect that the scientific physiologist is more or less 

 blind to the evidence of design in creation. On the contrary, the view 

 taken by Ludwig, as expressed in the words I have quoted, is that of 

 all physiologists. The disuse of the teleological expressions which 

 were formerly current does not imply that the indications of contrivance 

 are less appreciated, for, on the contrary, we regard them as more 

 characteristic of organism as it presents itself to our observation than 

 any other of its endowments. But, if I may be permitted to repeat 

 what has been already said, we use the evidences of adaptation differ- 

 ently. We found no explanation on this or any other biological prin- 

 ciple, but refer all the phenomena by which these manifest themselves 

 to the simpler and more certain physical laws of the universe. 



Why must we take this position % First, because it is a general rule 

 in investigations of all kinds to explain the more complex by the more 

 simple. The material universe is manifestly divided into two parts, 

 the living and the nonliving. We may, if we like, take the living as our 

 Norma, and say to the physicist: "You must come to us for laws; you 

 must account for the play of energies in universal nature by referring 

 them to evolution, descent, adaptation." Or we may take these words 

 as true expressions of the mutual relations between the phenomena and 

 processes peculiar to living beings, using for the explanation of the 

 processes themselves the same methods which we should employ if we 

 were engaged in the investigation of analogous processes going on 

 independently of life. Between these two courses there seems to me to 

 be no third alternative, unless we suppose that there are two material 

 universes, one to which the material of our bodies belongs, the other 

 comprising everything that is not either x>lant or animal. 



The second reason is a practical one. We should have to go back to 

 the time which I have ventured to call prescientific, when the world of 



1 The words translated in the above sentence are as follows: "Wenn uns endlich 

 die Palme gereicht wird, wenn wir ein Organ in seineni Zuzamrnenhang begreifeu, 

 so wird unser stolzes Gattungsbewusstsein (lurch die Erkenntniss niedergedruckt, 

 dass dei- menschlicher Erfinder ein Stumper gegen den unbekannten Meister der 

 thierischcn Schopfung sei." 



