The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy. Ernst Haeckel
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is hardly three hundred years old, was very strongly aided by the inventions which enable the human eye to penetrate into the farthest abysses of space and the profoundest depths of smaller bodies—the telescope and microscope. The great improvement in these instruments during the nineteenth century, and the support given by other recent inventions, have led to triumphs of observation in this "century of science" that surpassed all anticipation. However, this very refinement of the technique of observation has its drawbacks, and has led to many an error. The effort to obtain the utmost accuracy in objective observation has often led to a neglect of the part which is played by the subjective mental action of the observer; his judgment and reason have been depreciated in comparison with the acuteness and clearness of his vision. Frequently the means has been turned into the end of knowledge. In the reproduction of the thing observed the objective photograph, presenting all parts of the object with equal plainness, has been more valued than the subjective design that reproduces only what is essential and leaves out what is superfluous; yet the latter is in many cases (for instance, in histological observation) much more important and correct than the former. But the greatest fault has been that many of these "exact" observers have refrained altogether from reflection and judgment on the phenomena observed, and have neglected subjective criticism; hence it is that so often a number of observers of the same phenomenon contradict each other, while each one boasts of the "exactness" of his observations.
Like observation, experimentation has been wonderfully improved of late years. The experimental sciences which make most use of it—experimental physics, chemistry, physiology, pathology, etc.—have made astounding progress. But it is just as important in the case of experiment—or observation under artificial conditions—as of simple observation that it be undertaken and carried out with a sound and clear judgment. Nature can only give a correct and unambiguous answer to the question you put it when it is clearly and distinctly proposed. This is very often not the case, and the experimenter loses himself in meaningless efforts, with the foolish hope that "something may come of it." The modern province of experimental or mechanical embryology is especially marred by these useless and perverse experiments. Equally foolish is the conduct of those biologists who would transfer the experiment that is valuable in physiology to the field of anatomy, where it is rarely profitable. In the modern controversy about evolution the attempt is frequently made to prove or refute experimentally the origin of species. It is quite forgotten that the idea of species is only relative, and that no man of science can give an absolute definition of it. Nor is it less perverse to attempt to apply experimentation to historical problems where all the conditions for a successful application are lacking.
The knowledge which we obtain directly by observation and experiment is only sound when it refers to present events. We have to turn to other methods for the investigation of the past—to history and traditions; and these are less easily accessible. This branch of science has been investigated for thousands of years, as far as the history of man and civilization, of peoples and states, and their customs, laws, languages, and migrations, is concerned. In this, the oral and written tradition from generation to generation, the ancient monuments, and documents, and weapons, etc., furnish an abounding empirical material from which critical judgment can draw a host of conclusions. However, the door to error lies wide open here, as the documents are usually imperfect, and the subjective interpretation of them is often no clearer than their objective validity.
Natural history, properly so called, or the study of the origin and past history of the universe, the earth, and its organic population, is much more recent than the history of mankind. Immanuel Kant was the first to lay the foundations of a mechanical cosmogony in his remarkable Natural History of the Heavens (1755), and Laplace gave mathematical shape to his ideas in 1796. Geology, also, or the story of the evolution of the earth, was not founded until the beginning of the eighteenth century, and did not assume a definite shape until the time of Hoff and Lyell (1830). Later still (1866) were laid the foundations of the science of organic evolution, when Darwin provided a sound foundation, in his theory of selection, for the theory of descent which Lamarck had proposed fifty years before.
In sharp contrast to this purely empirical method, which is favored by most men of science in our day, we have the purely speculative tendency which is current among our academic philosophers. The great regard which the critical philosophy of Immanuel Kant obtained during the nineteenth century has recently been increased in the various schools of philosophy. As is known, Kant affirmed that only a part of our knowledge is empirical, or a posteriori—that is, derived from experience; and that the rest of our knowledge (as, for instance, mathematical axioms) is a priori—that is to say, reached by the deductions of pure reason, independently of experience. This error led to the further statement that the foundations of science are metaphysical, and that, though man can attain a certain knowledge of phenomena by the innate forms of space and time, he cannot grasp the "thing in itself" that lies behind them. The purely speculative metaphysics which was built up on Kant's apriorism, and which found its extreme representative in Hegel, came at length to reject the empirical method altogether, and insisted that all knowledge is obtained by pure reason, independently of experience.
Kant's chief error, which proved so injurious to the whole of subsequent philosophy, lay in the absence of any physiological and phylogenetic base to his theory of knowledge; this was only provided sixty years after his death by Darwin's reform of the science of evolution, and by the discoveries of cerebral physiologists. He regarded the human mind, with its innate quality of reason, as a completely formed entity from the first, and made no inquiry into its historical development. Hence, he defended its immortality as a practical postulate, incapable of proof; he had no suspicion of the evolution of man's soul from that of the nearest related mammals. The curious predisposition to a priori knowledge is really the effect of the inheritance of certain structures of the brain, which have been formed in man's vertebrate ancestors slowly and gradually, by adaptation to an association of experiences, and therefore of a posteriori knowledge. Even the absolutely certain truths of mathematics and physics, which Kant described as synthetic judgments a priori, were originally attained by the phyletic development of the judgment, and may be reduced to constantly repeated experiences and a priori conclusions derived therefrom. The "necessity" which Kant considered to be a special feature of these a priori propositions would be found in all other judgments if we were fully acquainted with the phenomena and their conditions.
Among the censures which the academic metaphysicians, especially in Germany, have passed on my Riddle of the Universe, the heaviest is perhaps the charge that I know nothing whatever about the theory of knowledge. The charge is correct to this extent, that I do not understand the current dualistic theory of knowledge which is based on Kant's metaphysics; I cannot understand how their introspective psychological methods—disdaining all physiological, histological, or phylogenetic foundations—can satisfy the demands of "pure reason." My monistic theory of knowledge is assuredly very different from this. It is firmly and thoroughly based on the splendid advances of modern physiology, histology, and phytogeny—on the remarkable results of these empirical sciences in the last forty years, which are entirely ignored by the prevailing system of metaphysics. It is on the ground of these experiences that I have adopted the views on the nature of the human mind which are expounded in the second part of The Riddle of the Universe (chapters vi.-xi.). The following are the chief points:
1. The soul of man is—objectively considered—essentially similar to that of all other vertebrates; it is the physiological action or function of the brain.
2. Like the functions of all other organs, those of the brain are effected by the cells, which make up the organ.
3. These brain-cells, which are also known as soul-cells, ganglionic cells, or neurona, are real nucleated cells of a very elaborate structure.
4. The arrangement and grouping of these psychic cells, the number of which runs into millions in the brain of man and the other mammals, is strictly regulated by law, and is distinguished within this highest class of the vertebrates by several characteristics, which can only be explained by the common origin of the mammals from one primitive mammal (or pro-mammal of the Triassic period).
5. Those groups of psychic cells which we must regard as the agents of the higher mental functions have