THE INFLUENCE OF SCIENCE UPON GERMAN LITERA- 
TURE, BASED ON HAECKEL’S WELTRAETHSEL 
AND NIETZSCHKE’S PHILOSOPHIE. 
Dr. Sylvester Primer.* 
The nineteenth century solved problems, which, at its beginning, 
seemed insoluble. Not only the surprising theoretical progress in 
the real knowledge of nature, but also its astonishingly fruitful and 
practical application in technique, industry, commerce, etc., have 
completely changed our whole modern culture and given it a new 
cast. Therefore, the literature, which reflects actual life, has made 
corresponding changes both in its methods of presenting life and in 
the views it takes of the same. For since Charles Darwin, in his 
epoch-making books, opened up nature and nature’s mysteries to 
the investigator as no other before him had done, old thoughts, old 
oeliefs have yielded to new ones. All this demands and has pro- 
duced a new literature to reflect the new ideas of life. 
Not all mysteries of nature, however, have been cleared up. 
Enough enigmas still remain to keep the investigator occupied for 
ages to come.- The uninitiated sit in the midst of innumerable 
world- enigmas and turn appealingly to scientists for their 
explanation. Progressive science is making rapid progress towards 
their solution, and already monistic philosophy claims that only 
one single, all-comprehensive world-problem is left, viz., the prob- 
lem of matter, or substance. 
At the beginning of the century not much had been done along 
the lines of investigation which proved so successful in the latter 
half. The microscope and the telescope enlarged the horizon of 
our knowledge and finally lead to a more perfect understanding 
of the cell-theory, which first established the true relations of the 
physical, chemical and psychological processes of life, those subtle 
phenomena which had hitherto remained a profound mystery. The 
unity of natural forces in the whole universe has now been proved. 
The most important discovery, however, is the theory of develop- 
ment, due to the efforts of Charles Darwin, in his Descent of Man 
(1857) Origin of the Species, etc., which Jean Larmarck had al- 
ready outlined in 1809 in his Philosophic Zoologique, and whose 
fundamental idea the great poet, Goethe, in 1799 had prophetically 
conceived in his “Gott und Welt,” ‘ 1 Prometheus, ” “Faust,” but 
more especially in his “Metamorphose der Pflanzen.” 
The remarkable progress made in the knowledge of nature’s laws 
♦Associate Professor of Germanic Lang-uages, University of Texas. 
