The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the last few months, we have seen an event unfold that has brought to the surface of the literary struggle opposites deeply rooted in the intellectual life of our time in their harshest form. The man who, almost four decades ago, developed Darwin's momentous ideas on the origin of living beings into a comprehensive world view with rare courage of thought, has come to the fore with a book entitled "Die Welträtsel, Gemeinverständliche Studien über monistische Philosophie" (The Enigma of the World, Studies in Monistic Philosophy). In this book, Ernst Haeckel wanted to provide a "critical illumination" of the scientific knowledge of our time for other educated circles and, on the basis of his rich research work, answer the question: "What stage in the knowledge of truth have we really reached at the end of the nineteenth century? And what progress towards our infinitely distant goal have we really made in the course of it?" ¹ A battle has now arisen over the explanations of the pioneer of Darwin's way of thinking, the most striking characteristic of which is that it is not conducted in a tone of calm, passionless debate, but in a bitter, stormy manner. It is not logical aberrations, not unproven assertions, not errors of knowledge alone that Ernst Haeckel has been accused of, but his scientific conscience, his moral sense, his capacity for scientific research in general. Darwin said of Haeckel's "Natural History of Creation": "Had this book appeared before my work (on the "Descent of Man") was written, I would probably never have finished it; I find almost all the conclusions I have arrived at confirmed by this researcher, whose knowledge is in many points much richer than mine" (introduction to the work "Descent of Man"). And now, as this researcher, once honored in this way by the great reformer of natural science, draws the sum of his life's work in a concluding work, we see him presented in the most exaggerated manner from many sides as the type of thinker that he should not be. For the direction in which the whole battle is being waged is characterized by the words used by one of his opponents, the widely respected philosopher Friedrich Paulsen, in the July issue of the "Preußische Jahrbücher". "It was not pleasure in the content, it was rather indignation that drove me ... indignation at the frivolity with which serious matters were dealt with here. The fact that it was a man of renown who was speaking here, a man whom thousands admire as a leader, who himself proudly claims to lead the way and show the way for the new century, increased the indignation, and it was not lessened but sharpened by the fact that I often saw thoughts worthy of me recurring here in all kinds of distortions... I read this book with burning shame, with shame at the state of general education and the philosophical education of our people. That such a book was possible, that it could be written, printed, bought, read, admired, believed by the people who possess a Kant, a Goethe, a Schopenhauer, is painful."

One wonders: what has the man done who has such accusations hurled in his face? Anyone who reads through the "Welträtsel" calmly and dispassionately, allowing their judgment to be determined solely by the scientific results of the last forty years, must say to themselves: Haeckel has, admittedly with unreserved sharpness, but appropriately presented the confession that he has formed from his tireless research work. He has made a clear distinction between the ideas of those who form their "faith" on the basis of the laws of nature and those who recognize other sources for this. He himself becomes passionate when it comes to disputing centuries-old prejudices against the view he holds, but his passion is that of a personality who clings wholeheartedly, with a deep and comfortable attachment, to what he believes to be correct. Everything that Haeckel presents in the "Welträtseln" is nothing other than the result of what he had done five years earlier in a strictly scientific manner in his "Systematic Phylogeny", in a work for which he received one of the most important scientific awards of the present day, the "Bressa Prize", which was to be awarded to the scholar by the Turin Academy of Sciences, who "during the quadrennium 1895-1898 made the most important and useful invention or published the most sophisticated work in the field of physical and experimental sciences, natural history, pure and applied mathematics, chemistry, physiology and pathology, without excluding geology, history, geography and statistics". In the wide range of all these intellectual fields, the Academy of Sciences in Turin was therefore unable to find a more "solid" work, or indeed an invention, for the years 1895 to 1898 that was more important and useful than Haeckel's "Phylogeny". - If Ernst Haeckel could content himself with presenting his insights, which encompass all the phenomena of life from the point of view of contemporary science, in a way that is recognized by the "strict science" of our time as an "exact" and "objective" method, one would probably limit oneself to making the verdict of the Turin Academy a general one and calling him the most important biologist after Darwin. But Haeckel's intellectual character does not tolerate half measures. Like so many of his naturalist contemporaries, he was unable to say: here scientific thinking - here religious faith. He demands strict harmony between the two. What his reason recognized as the fundamental nature of the world, his mind also wanted to worship religiously. For him, science has been transformed in the most natural way into a religious creed. He cannot admit that one can "believe" what is not thought in terms of science. That is why he wages a ruthless battle against beliefs that he sees as contradictory to science. He has no sympathy for those who, in Kant's sense, only want to assign a limited, this-worldly area to knowledge so that faith can establish itself all the more securely in the field of the unknowable.

Ernst Haeckel is a natural scientist, not a specialist philosopher. It cannot be denied that he sometimes does violence to philosophical concepts when he uses them. Of course, it is easy for a well-trained person well versed in the history of philosophy to prove Haeckel's errors with regard to the ideas of philosophers whom he agrees with - like Spinoza - or whom he opposes - like Kant. Paulsen then chides him for his misunderstandings with regard to Kant. Another philosophical thinker, Richard Hönigswald, has tried to prove in his book "Ernst Haeckel, the monistic philosopher" how little the terms "monism", "dualism", "substance" and so on used by Haeckel can pass the test of the usual philosophical disciplines. It is completely superfluous to get involved with such opposing arguments. All these gentlemen are right in a certain sense from their point of view. They have spun themselves into a certain conceptual web, and what Haeckel says is not correct. And he often does not exactly capture the meaning of philosophical ideas when he talks about them. But can it be the task of philosophical criticism at all to school a researcher who adheres strictly to observation from the point of view of traditional ideas? In all cases where Haeckel combats such ideas, he has a sure feeling that they are useless with regard to the real laws of nature. His attacks are not always logically correct. In such cases, however, the philosophers would have the task of understanding the naturalist in his sense, of showing how he uses the terms. Then they would sometimes find that one can say some things philosophically more sharply, more logically in the strict sense of the word than he can, but not that he is factually wrong.

One does not get a favorable idea of the official representatives of philosophy today when one sees how they misjudge their task. Haeckel calls his world view "monism". Would it not be a more worthy task to show in what sense Haeckel understands this word than to insist again and again that he assumes substance and force, i.e. a duality, and is therefore not a "monist"? Haeckel does not want any other methods of explanation for the organic world and for spiritual life than those which we apply to inorganic nature. He is of the opinion that with the same necessity with which hydrogen and oxygen combine under certain conditions to form water, carbon, nitrogen and other elements also become a living being under certain circumstances; and furthermore, that by the same kind of lawfulness by which the material world is governed, the "spirit" is also conditioned. If someone comes to him with a concept such as "raw, inanimate matter, which can never ever become spirit", Haeckel will reply: look at this matter, bring substances together under certain conditions in the retort and think logically, then you will no longer say: matter cannot become spirit, but your concept of "raw, inanimate matter" is precisely a false one, one that has no relation to reality. Unity in the whole explanation of the world: that is what Haeckel demands. And he calls this unity monistic. In view of the struggle we have witnessed in recent months, we can say that anyone who wants to understand the natural scientist must go to the natural scientist's country. It is not important that Paulsen, as he assures us, does not believe in any "special, immortal soul substance" or that "the world was once produced by a human-like individual being in a similar way to a product of human art". Rather, it is important to form such ideas about natural processes that the contradictory "special, immortal soul substance" and the "human-like being" really become dispensable within the explanation of nature.

And Haeckel presents such ideas in his book of confessions. He found himself compelled to settle accounts mercilessly with everything that belongs to other, contradictory ideas. Anyone who judges impartially must feel uplifted by the courageous consistency with which he carries out this reckoning in the chapter on "Science and Christianity". Perhaps one will not find everything in this section of the book tasteful, one will be able to admit that a different tone could have been found for many things, even that some things need not have been said at all in order to strengthen the monistic world view. But is there no longer any psychological sense in our contemporary philosophers? Is it so incomprehensible that one of the first proclaimers of a world view becomes too passionate in his explanations, that he is more than "objective", enthusiastic about a world of ideas that he has fought for step by step in tireless research and thinking? Anyone who does not find this incomprehensible will not be able to agree with Paulsen's outburst of anger at the "extremely embarrassing tendency (of Haeckel) to drag down what has been sacred for centuries into the dirt of ugly anecdotes and low jokes". However, such a person would be even less likely to have any sympathy for a writing such as that of the church historian Loofs in Halle: "Anti-Haeckel. A Replica and Supplements." Loofs takes a standpoint that has nothing whatsoever to do with Haeckel's world view, but which is as suitable as possible to divert attention from the main issue and, under the pretense that Haeckel had committed a serious injustice in a minor matter, to evoke the idea that he was a completely unscientific spirit that contradicted all true method. In his remarks on Christian church history, Haeckel relies on the work of an English thinker (Stewart Roß), which was published under the pseudonym Saladin and is available in German translation under the title "Jehovas gesammelte Werke, eine kritische Untersuchung des jüdisch-christlichen Religionsgebäudes auf Grund der Bibelforschung". Loofs presents the matter as if it were a desolate pamphlet against Christianity written by a complete ignoramus and dirty fellow, written to the exclusion of all knowledge of recent Bible research and church history. And what Loofs brings forward from the book and what he says about it is, however, only too apt to mislead those who do not take the Englishman's book to hand. They must believe that Haeckel, in his ignorance and recklessness, would really have gone so far as to refer to a diatribe of which Loofs assures us that it would be easier to "pick the fleas off a neglected dog than to collect the scientific follies contained in the book". But only those who do not know Saladın's work can make such a judgment. Anyone who reads only a little of it will soon find that he is dealing with an honest seeker of truth, even if he is not completely unimpeachable from the point of view of the opinions of church history that happen to be considered correct at the time, to whom everything else is closer than speaking in a frivolous manner about something that is sacred to people. Even if one might wish the book a more tasteful form of expression, one must nevertheless feel the deepest sympathy with the author, who wages a bold battle, which everywhere testifies to a deep mind, against ideas and institutions which he considers wrong, harmful and detrimental to human welfare. - One cannot be surprised enough that an opponent of Haeckel has been found who completely ignores the actual points of contention and who does not consider it inappropriate to attack a natural scientist in a way that would only make sense for a scholar who wanted to appear as a church historian.

At any rate, this whole battle has brought us full clarity about one thing. It has shown that our entire intellectual life is permeated far and wide with ideas that are incompatible with the honest and unreserved conclusions of the natural sciences. The lack of objectivity and passion with which the bearers of such ideas have fought this time is at the same time proof that their reasons have become weak. Even if it is to be expected that the future will correct Haeckel's thoughts in some respects, this correction will not come from those who are fighting him today. Even if he did not get it right everywhere, he has undoubtedly entered the path on which the education of the mind will continue to progress.

• 1. The author of this essay has already described the significance of Haeckel's world view and its position in contemporary intellectual life once before the publication of "Welträtsel" according to the state of affairs at that time in this journal. Compare my "Ernst Haeckel und seine Gegner" in L. Jacobowski's "Freier Warte", Vol. I (J.C. C. Bruns' Verlag, Minden i.W. 1900).

What would become of the moral order of the world if the conviction were to gain ground in the widest circles that man had gradually evolved from ape-like animals through purely natural forces? This question arose disturbingly in many minds when, after the publication of Charles Darwin's great scientific reform work "On the Origin of Species in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdoms by Means of Natural Breeding", bold thinkers drew the necessary conclusion that the great scientist's conception should not stop at man, but that the idea of the animal origin of the most perfect living being should henceforth be regarded as a certain component of the world view. The number of far-sighted personalities who, in the course of the last four decades, have opposed the opinion that Darwinism is dangerous for the moral and social development of mankind with apt reasons is not small. However, the first person in German intellectual life to take a comprehensive view of the ethical world of thought on the basis of the new scientific insights was the Austrian thinker Bartholomäus Carneri.

Eleven years after Darwin's appearance, he presented the world with his book "Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus. Three Books of Ethics" (Vienna 1871). Since then, he has constantly endeavored to expand his basic ideas in all directions.¹ Today, when we have forty years of Darwinism behind us, we must confess to ourselves in an unbiased survey of the literature under consideration that no one has treated the field of ethics in the sense of the new school of thought so thoroughly, so flawlessly and so perfectly. If this is not yet sufficiently appreciated everywhere where it should be, it is for no other reason than that the minds are still too busy expanding the insights of Darwinism in the purely scientific field and securing them against attacks. They are therefore not yet able to give Darwinian ethics the full attention it deserves. However, there can be no doubt that in the not too distant future, when we no longer speak of the natural theory of Darwinism, but of its comprehensive world view, Carneri's achievements will be described as those which played an outstanding part in the foundation of this world view.

What enabled Carneri to place moral concepts on such a new foundation was the impartiality with which he confronted Darwinism and the intellectual acuity that immediately allowed him to recognize the full implications of the new views for human life. He did not allow any objections to deter him from his conviction that Darwinism was the direction in which thinking would have to move in the future. "Of course, everyone will always be free to behave like an ostrich towards Darwinism; if, apart from the head, he also has the stomach in common with his role model and can digest the food that is served to him daily from the kitchen of the so-called good old days, then we wish him luck with his position. But as long as we cannot think that man has rallied himself to walk upright, to bend down, we look the newest time full in the face; and the firmer our image becomes, the brighter its eye appears to us, the milder its smile. According to the same laws that man rose out of the animal world in the "battle for Daseim", we see the concept of morality rising on the horizon of humanity as a sun, before whose rays many a gaze too accustomed to darkness may shrink back, the brightest pride of vain selfishness may fade away as pale tinsel, but which announces the day to this earth, the fulfillment of the promise of that morning on which first an eye, in the elation of awakened self-consciousness, stripping off the painful rigidity that never leaves the face of the animal, - looked out laughing into the changing life" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,. 14). Thus Carneri himself speaks about the way of thinking that led him to derive Darwinism from the field of natural science into that of the moral conduct of human life. - This impartiality was combined with a high degree of familiarity in Carneri's mind with the philosophical ideas of idealistic thinkers. Such a person was a rarity at the time in which his views matured - in the sixties. The "conceptual poetry" of Hegel and Spinoza was looked down upon with disdain and it was believed that one-sided observation of sensory facts alone could lead to certain knowledge. For Carneri, it is a firm basis of thought that matter contains within itself all the forces that produce all world events, from simple spatial movement to the most highly developed achievements of the spirit. But he is also perfectly clear about the fact that the laws of nature, which relate to physical, material processes, cannot explain spiritual processes. He is completely convinced that all life is a chemical process. "Digestion in man is such a process as the nourishment of the plant" (Morality and Darwinism, p.46). At the same time, however, he emphasizes that the chemical process must rise to a higher level if it is to become life. "Life is a chemical process of its own kind, it is the individual or chemical process that has become an individual. For the chemical process can reach a point at which it can dispense with certain conditions which it has hitherto required ... (Morality and Darwinism, p.14). "We conceive of matter insofar as the phenomena resulting from its divisibility and movement act physically, that is, as mass, on our senses. If the division or differentiation goes so far that the resulting phenomena are no longer perceptible to the senses, but only to the mind, then the effect of matter is a spiritual one" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.30). The "inseparability of the spirit from corporeality" is thus fully recognized, but at the same time the spiritual, despite its origin from the corporeal, is assured of its independent significance beyond the material. Carneri thus preserves the right of the idealistic approach to the spiritual phenomena of matter alongside the materialistic approach, which is to be limited to that which is accessible to the senses alone. Only a thinker who drew his education from the idealistic view of the world, and who could therefore leave the ground of materialism in his contemplation even at the moment when the material process ascends to the spiritual, was called upon to develop the ethics of Darwinism. Carneri's conception of moral forces is an idealistic one, even though he does not seek the original root of morality anywhere other than where the origin of physical and chemical processes is to be found. "With the assumption of the inseparability of force and substance, spirit and matter, all free forces in the narrower sense are given up, hence also the spirit as something existing independently of the body; with this, however, the spirit is as little given up as force. Spiritualism is finished, but not yet idealism; this remains the field of philosophy, while natural science is at home in realism alone" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,.8).

As a thinker, Carneri is an artist of the highest order. He has a rare ability to present the content of his concepts in a vividly perfect way. The way he rises from the simple natural phenomena that we perceive with our senses to the ideas of morality is a masterly achievement of this kind. We see the chemical processes individualize themselves in a conceptual and descriptive form on the basis of his arguments, becoming a living individual, which then no longer receives an effect from outside as an inorganic movement, but allows it to become a sensation. "The most important characteristic of all living things and unique to them is sensation. It is the form in which that which we call reaction in the rest of nature occurs in all living things. Sensation is actually only the ability to react, but to a higher kind of reaction... Sensation is to life in the narrower sense what divisibility is to matter" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p. 43). In an equally vivid manner, Carneri ascends to the further ideas that enable us to grasp the idea of life. "Sensation... is presented to the individual as a whole in the brain, as the organ in which the whole individual is centrally summarized. By thereby communicating a sensation to the individual, the sensation of the part is elevated to a sensation of the whole. This is why we call the conception a sensation of a higher kind. The individual feels it, it is a felt sensation or a feeling" (Grundliegung der Ethik, p.102). One sees the material gradually becoming spiritual along the lines of Carnerian concepts; one sees the material unfolding the spiritual phenomena out of itself. "Only with the awakening of consciousness does sensation become feeling, and only from then on does... the unfavorable become displeasure, the favorable becomes pleasure. Thus begins the life of the soul in its higher meaning" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.123). The processes of nature reach the highest degree of individualization in human self-consciousness. The processes of nature have torn themselves away from their mother earth; they no longer look at an external process through the imagination; they look at themselves. This creates the appearance that the individualized natural process is an independent spiritual entity with a completely different origin than the other material processes. "What creates the appearance in mental activity as if man were a double being, as if the earthly body were glowing and illuminated by a supernatural spark, is a deception" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.136). What we perceive within ourselves is a natural process like any other material process. And it is here - within this natural process that has been heightened to self-consciousness - that the world of the moral is born. The moral is only the continuation of purely natural processes. It can therefore not be a question of what man should recognize as moral. Such morality would have to be given to him from somewhere; and only then would the question arise: Can man obey moral commandments that come to him from outside by virtue of his natural powers? The question can only be this: What concepts of morality are born when the general natural process rises to the level of human self-consciousness? As little sense as it makes to say that a flower should be this way or that way, as little sense does it make to assert that man should do this or that. Carneri sharply contrasts his concept of ethics with that of other thinkers. "While moral philosophy lays down certain moral laws and commands them to be observed so that man may be what he ought to be, ethics develops man as he is, limiting itself to showing him what he can still become: there are duties, the observance of which penalties seek to enforce, here there is an ideal from which all compulsion would distract, because the approach is only by way of knowledge and freedom" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus,.1). That which man strives for when he rises above the level of animality, that on which everything else depends, is happiness. "The ideal of happiness is changeable and capable of continual refinement; but under all circumstances the pursuit of happiness is the basic impulse of all human endeavors. And nothing is more erroneous than the opinion that this instinct is unworthy of man, which places him on an equal footing with the animal. This instinct is alien to the animal: it knows only the instinct of self-preservation, and to elevate it to the instinct of happiness is the basic condition of human self-consciousness" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.147). Where the bliss instinct awakens on the ladder of living becoming, the formerly indifferent natural process begins to be a moral action. All higher moral ideas have their origin in the striving for happiness. "The martyr who lays down his life here for his scientific convictions, there for his faith in God, has nothing else in mind but his happiness: the former finds it in his loyalty to his convictions, the latter seeks it in a better world. Bliss is the ultimate goal for all of them, and however different the image that the individual forms of it may be, from the crudest times to the most educated, it is the beginning and end of the sentient being's thinking and feeling. It is the instinct of self-preservation, whose innumerable emanations gather at this one point to reflect as many desires as there are individuals" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p. 146).

By breaking away from the mother earth of nature, man becomes an independent, a free being. It is proof of how deeply Carneri has settled into the spirit of Darwinism that he has given the concept of freedom a version that is compatible with scientific ideas. Is there still a place for freedom within the Darwinian worldview? Carneri answers "yes". It is true that everything that happens, including every human action, is subject to the eternal, iron laws of nature. But from the point at which man detaches himself from the rest of nature, the laws of nature become the laws of his own being. "His further development is his own work, and what kept him on the path of progress was the power and gradual clarification of his desires" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.143). And the laws of nature, which man has made the content of his being, are his thoughts and ideas. They are nothing other than the highly heightened, fully developed processes of nature. Man is not free by the fact that he can or cannot obey arbitrary moral commandments taken from an unknown place, but by the fact that he continues the development of nature as his own work. Carneri expresses this view with perfect clarity: "Man is indeed bound by the laws of nature; but nature knows nothing of man and his laws. Only in man does she bring it to thought. It does not even care about man; and only because man is bound to the means he finds in nature to achieve his ends, and he paves his way to his goal accordingly, do some means look as if they had been brought to him by nature for this or that purpose" (Der Mensch als Selbstzweck,.89). If the laws of nature are to be effective in man, he must permeate himself with them, they must become the content of his thinking. Man can only continue the work of nature in his moral actions if he penetrates into the meaning of natural existence, if he strives for knowledge of natural phenomena. Carneri therefore seeks the basis of morality in knowledge. It is not some moral commandments hanging in the air, but only the truth that can lead man to act morally. Only thinking that agrees with "the truth, that recognizes things in their necessity and thereby makes the general law its own, elevates the intellect to reason, the will to freedom. Man wills only insofar as he knows. Hence the infinite value of true intelligence. We do not fail to recognize the greatness of the sacrifices which the new teaching demands of the human heart; but these sacrifices are no longer sacrifices as soon as we become aware of the greatness of the task with which the new teaching approaches the human spirit. The barrier that commanded thought like no other has fallen, and it is indeed a great bias to want to see in it an impairment of the demands of thought" (Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus, p. 13f.). The human being who sets himself goals and ideals for his actions cannot, however, stop at mere natural principles in his thinking. Otherwise his morality would not be a continuation, but a mere copy of natural events. As a moral thinker, man is at the same time a creator. Moral ideas arise from his thinking as new creations. In order for his thinking to become a moral force, it undergoes an enhancement. It becomes a fantasy that provides action with its goals. In the ethical imagination Carneri finds the new concept that must take the place of the old moral commandments. It is the imagination that "breathes living warmth into our thinking" and which "interacting with ideas, creates the ideal" (Grundlegung der Ethik, p.370f.).

In this way, Carneri reaches the highest human concepts, even though he takes the simplest scientific ideas as his starting point. He endeavors to preserve the character of the spiritual, the ideality of the moral, despite his strict adherence to Darwinism. He is an enemy of any ambiguity in concepts. This is why, in his essay "Sensation and Consciousness" (1893), he energetically protested against the vagueness of a world view that seeks to do justice to the connection between spirit and nature by saying: "No spirit without matter, but also no matter without spirit." Carneri counters the many erroneous interpretations of Goethe's sentence: "The conviction that there is no spirit without matter, that is, that all spiritual activity is bound to a material activity, with the end of which it also reaches its end, is based on experience; while nothing in this experience suggests that spirit is connected to matter at all." According to Carneri's view, spirit does not belong to matter as such, but to the substance organized into higher levels of activity. It is not matter that has spirit, but the organization that matter has assumed is the basis for the appearance of spirit. If one wanted to call matter animated, one would be misleading, like someone who ascribed the ability to tell time not to the mechanism of the clock, but to the metals that are worked into it. Even if one has to admit that Haeckel's writings contain an expression of the scientific way of thinking that should not be misunderstood in the way Carneri suggests, one may nevertheless describe the aforementioned short work as one of the most valuable contributions to Darwinism because of its exemplary formulation of important concepts. The height to which Carneri's view of life rose through his work on ethics can be seen in his writings "Der Mensch als Selbstzweck" (1877) and "Der moderne Mensch. Attempts at a way of life" (1891). The fruits of a conviction drawn from Darwinism appear here as the noblest ideas about the world and man. And anyone who listened to Carneri back then, when he was a member of the Austrian House of Representatives, giving his speeches full of content and imbued with a high ethos, will never forget the impression he must have made. The image of a fighter for the truth, which he had before him at the moment when the fighter wanted to introduce the truth into life, must remain unforgettable.

• 1. He has also published: Feeling, Consciousness, Will. Eine psychologische Studie (Vienna 1876); Der Mensch als Selbstzweck (1877); Grundlegung der Ethik (Vienna 1881); Entwicklung und Glückseligkeit (Stuttgart 1886); Der moderne Mensch. Versuche einer Lebensführung (Bonn 1891); Empfindung und Bewußtsein (1893).

The development of science in the last century could not wrongly be called a conquest of the scientific spirit over almost all areas of human cognition. The triumphant power of this procession can be seen nowhere better than in the character that research into the human soul has assumed in scientific circles over the last few decades. The modern psychologist, who tries to get to grips with the rising and falling phenomena of our inner being with his counting and measuring apparatus, bears little resemblance to the earlier soul researcher who merely wanted to look at his own soul with his mind's eye; he looks all the more like the physical or chemical experimenter. If one wants to characterize the nature of modern soul research, one will always have to refer to a word coined by the great thinker and writer Friedrich Albert Lange, the author of the "History of Materialism": "Psychology without a soul." It is a word that can easily be misunderstood. It had a good meaning as a battle cry. It was intended to say that anyone who wants to explore the soul must not have a preconceived notion of this "soul". And Lange made such an accusation against the older psychologists. They had certain dogmatic ideas about the soul. They imagined it to be a being with very specific characteristics. And when they then set about investigating the real phenomena of the soul, their view was clouded by these preconceived dogmas. For example, those who believe that the human will is absolutely free do not see the processes of the will impartially. They take on such an involuntary character in his observation that the opinion of "free will" can exist. Lange now demands that the soul-searchers give up all such opinions. Examine, he tells them, the processes of the will as they present themselves to you, and at first leave it completely undetermined whether the will is free or unfree. Whether it is, you cannot say beforehand, but that must first be the result of your investigation. A comparison with a historical fact suggests itself when you think about the term "soul science without a soul". Columbus once sailed westward with the intention of finding a known land. He found an unknown one. Psychologists should be aware that the right concept of the soul cannot be known before the investigation, but that it can only become apparent to them at the end of their voyages of discovery. Modern psychologists proceed accordingly. They seek ways and means of getting to know the phenomena of the soul in their context and are convinced that they will arrive at a concept of the "soul" at the end of their journey. Lange's word has the same meaning in relation to the question of the soul that one could associate with the similar one, "natural science without nature". The natural scientist, too, does not base his research on any preconceived notion of "nature". He investigates the phenomena of light, electricity and life and is convinced that a comprehensive concept of nature will only emerge from the totality of his research.

The researcher and thinker who brought completely new perspectives to the study of the soul was completely dominated by this way of thinking: Gustav Theodor Fechner. Using a method that Goethe, with his far-sighted scientific view, demanded for all natural research, Fechner showed the extent to which it can be applied in psychology. "When we deliberately repeat the experiences - these are Goethe's words - which have been made before us, which we ourselves or others make with us at the same time, and represent again the phenomena which have arisen partly by chance, partly artificially, we call this an experiment. The value of an experiment consists chiefly in the fact that, whether simple or compound, it can be produced again at any time under certain conditions with a known apparatus and with the necessary skill, as often as the conditional circumstances can be combined." To have given the experiment its right in psychology is the merit that Fechner has earned through the explanations of his work "Elements of Psychophysics" (1860). A problem that has occupied the human mind as long as it has been concerned with questions of knowledge, the relationship of the physical to the spiritual, appeared here for the first time in a sense that Goethe also characterized perfectly accurately with the words: "We have to learn from the mathematicians the thoughtfulness of only stringing together the next to the next, or rather to deduce the next from the next, and even where we do not make use of any calculation, we must always go about our work as if we were accountable to the strictest geormeter." This is how Fechner thought and acted in the area where the physical and the spiritual meet. A weight presses on my hand. I feel the pressure. A physical phenomenon - the pressure - causes a mental phenomenon, the sensation. I increase the pressure. My sensation also increases. Fechner asks: How can I use numbers to express the extent to which the sensation increases when the pressure increases? The dependence of the mental on the physical is determined as if one were accountable to the strictest geometer. Wilhelm Wundt, who continued to work in Fechner's spirit in this field, says of the founder of "Psychophysics": "Perhaps in none of his other scientific achievements does the rare combination of gifts that Fechner possessed emerge so brilliantly as in his psychophysical works. A work such as the "Elements of Psychophysics" required a familiarity with the principles of exact physical-mathematical methodology and at the same time a tendency to delve into the deepest problems of being, which only he possessed in this combination. And for this he needed that originality of thought which knew how to freely reshape the traditional tools according to its own needs and had no qualms about taking new and unfamiliar paths. E.H. Weber's observations, admirable for their ingenious simplicity but limited in scope, the isolated, often more accidental than systematic experiments and results of other physiologists - they formed the modest material from which he built a new science." Since Fechner's ingenious idea, a mathematical formula has told us how sensation increases with an increasing external stimulus, just as since Galileo's fundamental ideas a mathematical formula has told us how the speed increases when a ball rolls down an inclined plane. Psychology has become an experimental science. Its new character is clearly expressed in Wundt's "Lectures on the Human and Animal Soul" (1863). We read there: "In the following investigations I shall show that experiment is the main aid in psychology which leads us from the facts of consciousness to those processes which prepare conscious life in the dark background of the soul. Self-observation, like observation in general, provides us only with the composite appearance. Only in the experiment do we strip the phenomenon of all the accidental circumstances to which it is bound in nature. Through the experiment we create the phenomenon artificially out of the conditions that we hold in our hands. We change these conditions and thereby also change the appearance in a measurable way. Thus it is always and everywhere the experiment that leads us to the laws of nature, because only in the experiment are we able to see both the causes and the results." Simply immersing oneself in one's own inner self, self-observation, has lost much of its trust among specialist psychologists. Wundt turned against them in the sharpest possible terms. He asked: What has psychology gained from introspection? If an inhabitant of another world descended to our earth and wanted to deduce the nature of the human soul from the textbooks of psychology, he would probably come to the conclusion that the various descriptions of the psychologists, who all claim to have gained their views from self-observation, refer to beings of quite different worlds. "There is nothing special about imagining a person who observes some external object attentively. But the idea of such a person absorbed in self-observation is almost irresistibly comical. His situation is exactly like that of a Munchausen trying to pull himself out of the swamp by his own pigtail." This judgment is undoubtedly one-sided. But it is quite understandable in the case of the leader of experimental psychology. Kraepelin, the editor of "Psychologische Arbeiten", certainly characterizes Wundt's merits correctly when he says: "We are inclined to take the existence of physiological psychology as something so self-evident that in places it is already beginning to be forgotten what a tremendous influence Wundt's summarizing and stimulating work has had on the expansion of old and the emergence of new fields of psychological research." It is absolutely true that introspection is a rich source of errors. But it is equally undoubted that nothing is known to us more intimately and directly than our own inner self. Whatever else we may observe: it remains an exterior to us. We cannot penetrate into its core. In the circle of our psychic phenomena we stand in the middle. They are therefore closer to us than anything else in the world. Should this not also be the reason why we are exposed to so many errors when observing these phenomena? Objectivity and impartiality are certainly more difficult towards what is close to us than towards what is far away. Because self-observation is something so immediate, it is likely to be difficult. And it is possible that only those who are well trained in other fields of observation could practise sufficient self-observation. What Goethe said of nature in general: "And what it may not reveal to your spirit, you do not force from it with levers and screws", this saying must apply especially to the nature of the soul. But there are wide areas of the soul's life from which so much can be extracted with "levers and screws" that their laws confront us in strict mathematical formulas. - A sound impression acts on my ear. I feel it. My sensation sets my will in motion. I feel prompted by the perceived sound to perform an action. The psychological experimenter takes possession of this fact. He switches a clock into an electric circuit, the hands of which move as long as pressure is exerted on some device. Let two such devices be connected to the circuit. Then the hand only moves as long as pressure is exerted on both devices. An observer now does the following. He presses on one device until he perceives a certain sound. Then he lets go and presses on the second device at the same time. While he does this, the pointer moves. So there is a time when he presses on both devices. This is the time that has elapsed between the reception of the sensory impression and the action that follows this impression. It is found that one-eighth to one-sixth of a second elapses from the perception of a sensation to the moment when man can execute a movement in response to that sensation. By similarly ingenious precautions one can investigate the diminution of the strength of a memory with the time that has elapsed since an impression has been committed to memory; one can recognize how quickly a new conception attaches itself to an old one; one can also judge the influence of fatigue, of exercise on our mental life, and similar phenomena in inexhaustible abundance and variety. In an impressive series of volumes, Wundt published the results of such research as "Philosophical Studies", which he and his students carried out in the mother institute of experimental psychology, his Leipzig laboratory. A number of German and foreign universities have set up similar institutions based on the Leipzig model. Students from all parts of the educated world came to Leipzig to learn the new methods under Wundt's guidance. And they carried modern psychological research methods everywhere. In Copenhagen and Jassy, in Italy and America, experimental psychology is taught in the spirit of the Leipzig researcher. A number of important scholars can be named who have more or less independently pursued their psychological laboratory work and achieved fine results. Carl Stumpf in particular has made valuable contributions in the field of sound psychology, Hermann Ebbinghaus in the field of memory phenomena. Ernst Mach is particularly successful in combining experiment with intellectual explanation. Hugo Münsterberg, who worked in Zurich for a long time, was called to Cambridge to cultivate the new science.

It is impossible in a brief overview to mention all the perspectives opened up by experimental psychology. Among many things, the most important thing that pedagogy has to learn from this young branch of research will certainly not be the least important. The teacher, who has to direct the laws of the adolescent's mental life, will in future have to be guided by the experimentally established laws of this mental life. He will have to trust memory and practice only as much as these mental faculties can achieve according to the psychological results. - And Kraepelin makes the decisive demand on psychiatry to make use of the results of experimental psychology. For many years, this researcher has endeavored to answer the question of "in what way and to what extent" this is possible. He is of the opinion that the time has come when psychiatry can make no further progress with the observation methods in use up to now. These methods must be supplemented by those of the newly blossoming experimental psychology. - It is precisely Kraepelin's testimony that one likes to refer to when it comes to appreciating the new science. For this level-headed and intellectual researcher is not blind to the dark sides of this science, which some of its proponents are guilty of. "We must admit that among the flood of experimental work that the last decade has brought us, some of it does not meet the justified requirements, that the weeds have often sprouted abundantly along with the wheat." But Kraepelin's other words are just as true: "Nevertheless, we can expect with certainty today that the young science will survive this developmental disease without damage and will be able to permanently assert its independent place alongside the other branches of natural science and physiology in particular."

Herman Grimm died on June 16. Those who appreciated the nature of his spirit were overcome with the feeling at the news of his passing that with him one of the personalities has departed from us to whom those who have traveled their educational path in the last third of the past century owe unspeakable things. For us, he was a living link to the age of Goethe. Those who follow us will have no contemporaries who know how to talk about Goethe like Herman Grimm. Even though he was only four years old when Goethe himself died, Herman Grimm can be spoken of as a contemporary of Goethe. He was Bettina's son-in-law, who was completely absorbed in Goethe's world of ideas and of whom we have the beautiful book "Goethe's Correspondence with a Child". And Herman Grimm himself was completely at home within a world of ideas that drew its nourishment from a direct personal relationship with Goethe. He judged all things from this world of ideas, not just Goethe himself. The way he wrote his books about Michelangelo and Raphael could only be written by a man who stood by Goethe like Herman Grimm. One will also be able to judge these geniuses differently, and one will have to judge them differently from other perspectives on art and other needs of the time. But hardly any age will be able to come closer to them in their way of understanding than that of Goethe. The fact that they are written in the spirit of Goethe's age will forever give Herman Grimm's works an incomparable value.

Those who knew Herman Grimm personally felt to the highest degree as if Goethe himself were still speaking to them indirectly through this man. - This impression was also shared by those whose personal contact with Herman Grimm was as brief as that of the writer of these lines. I often think of the wonderful hours I was able to spend with him in Weimar. I have a particularly vivid memory of a conversation I had with him alone when he once asked me to join him for lunch in a Weimar hotel. He spoke of his History of the German Imagination as a work in which he summarized what he had thought about the development of the German people. How well he knew how to point to the characteristic passages in which the cultural content of an age was concentrated as if in focal points. One might think more or less differently about something than he did: the feeling that his point of view was in some way justified and highly significant and fruitful struck one in a flash with each of his remarks. I am of the opinion that nothing could make one see the true nature of German culture in the second third of the nineteenth century as clearly as hearing personalities like Herman Grimm speak. I got to know another man for whom something similar was true, my highly esteemed teacher Karl Julius Schröer. He died a few months ago in Vienna. It is my heartfelt wish to soon paint a picture of this misunderstood personality as it lives in my soul. In a somewhat different way from Herman Grimm, he too lived entirely in Goethe's way of thinking. It is in the nature of our age that those who are only eight or ten years younger than my contemporaries have to form a completely different picture of such personalities than we do. In a certain sense, Herman Grimm was far removed from the basic needs of our time. The social disturbances of our day were beyond his understanding, and the views of Darwin and Haeckel must have always made him feel shivery. But precisely for this reason - as paradoxical as it may seem at first glance to say so - his book on Goethe is a historical document like no other. No one will be able to write about Goethe like this again. Not our contemporary culture and no future culture will make that possible. Goethe's generation had to be followed by a generation that still had so much of Goethe that it was able to hold on to his image unperturbed by everything that followed. Herman Grimm belonged to this generation. Whatever else is said about Goethe, Grimm's "Goethe" cannot be overtaken. No one will ever be able to feel about Goethe the way he did; but it was in these feelings about Goethe that the age of Goethe was fully realized.

Those who call themselves scholars in the "true sense" did not want to count Herman Grimm among their number. They denied him the "strict method". He was allowed to smile about it. He did not want to be compared with these "scholars" and did not want to be counted among them. He knew too well what the "method" was all about. It is mostly a crutch for all those who cannot walk on their own two feet due to a lack of personal strength and who get nowhere by their own efforts. He knew that only those who "have nothing but method" can deny him method. His conviction was: "The personality of the individual within his limited circle will always remain the valuable thing."

Physiological-psychological study. Vienna 1884

This work is one of those philosophical publications that are becoming increasingly rare in our time, which attempt to solve a specific scientific problem not from the point of view of any school of thought, but independently and without presuppositions. The author sets himself the task of explaining the significance of physiological research into the brain mechanism for the understanding of the phenomena of consciousness. First of all, he refutes the view generally held in scientific circles today that the world given to us directly through the senses, this complex of colors, sounds, shapes, differences in warmth and so on, is nothing more than the effect of objective material processes on our subjective organization. The world of appearances is therefore basically a subjective appearance that only lasts as long as we keep our senses open to the impressions of material processes, whereas these processes themselves are saturated with a reality of their own that is completely independent of us and are thus the true cause of all natural phenomena. Wahle now shows that the processes in matter have no higher degree of reality than the subjective world supposedly caused by them. We must regard both as occurrences present to us, which confront us as belonging together (coordinated), without our being entitled to assume that one is the true cause of the other. It is just as we must regard day and night, for instance, as coordinated without one of them being regarded as the effect of the other. Just as here the necessary succession is due to the structure and processes of our solar system, so also the coordination of a material process and a quality of sensation, for example, sound, color, and so on, will be conditioned by some true fact; but at any rate not by the fact that the former causes the latter. Now, the interrelation of brain mechanism and consciousness is only a special case of such coordination. According to Wahle, we are only in a position to perceive that both are parallel occurrences; but we are not entitled to regard consciousness as a real consequence of the brain mechanism. Physiology is right when it seeks the material correlates of mental phenomena; but the materialistic fantasy that wants to make the mind the true product of the brain is given the farewell letter. Indeed, Wahle even works against it by showing that the phenomena hitherto regarded in psychology as independent acts of consciousness, such as recognizing, rejecting, loving, desiring, willing and so on, are nothing other than occurrences coordinated with each other or with others, which do not at all necessitate the assumption of a special subjective activity, which would be unfavourable to physiology. The author traces the phenomena of consciousness back to a general law, whereby a conception can be recalled into consciousness by one that is not wholly but partially identical with it. Thus it would only be the task of physiology to find the corresponding mechanical fact in the brain for this psychological finding, which is certainly easier than if this had to be done for each of the above-mentioned alleged acts of consciousness.

The main significance of this little work lies in having shown in clear contours what experience actually gives us and what is often only added to it. All that the individual sciences can find consists only in the statement of related occurrences, whereby we must presuppose that the affiliation itself is founded in some true fact. We consider the author's argument to be quite convincing, but we believe that he has not drawn the final conclusion of his views. Otherwise he would probably have found that those true facts themselves are given to us as experiential occurrences - namely the ideal ones - and that the negation of materialism leads logically to scientific idealism. If, therefore, we actually see the right thing in the progression from the absolutely solid foundation laid by Wahle to a higher level of knowledge, then we unreservedly admit that we see in this work an outstanding achievement that will have a decisive effect on the branch of science to which it belongs and that will certainly occupy a place in the history of philosophy.

From the recently published book: "Erinnerungen an Moritz Seebeck" by Kuno Fischer (Heidelberg 1886), we would like to cite a few points that shed a clear light on the attitude that the excellent physicist Thomas Seebeck (Moritz's father) observed towards Goethe's Theory of Colors. Just a few words may precede this. Seebeck, to whom we owe the epoch-making discovery of entoptic colors, was regarded by Goethe as an enthusiastic supporter of his color theory. The two spent a great deal of time together in Jena, particularly from 1802 to 1810, where they carried out joint experiments in the field of this science. In 1818 Seebeck was appointed a member of the Berlin Academy. There seem to have been quite a few obstacles in the way. After Seebeck's death, Zelter reported to Goethe: "how the minister had to work to get this important man into the academy, who had been devoted to the theory of colors, but who later proved to be a moderate in the office itself, if not an apostate, because he did not find himself strong in mathematics" (see Fischer, p. 11). Goethe also regarded him as an apostate after his appointment. He had done him an injustice. Seebeck had remained faithful until his death, as Fischer shows in his book. On page 19 he says: "As far as Seebeck's attitude to color theory is concerned, Goethe did not judge it correctly. Even as an academic, Seebeck neither changed nor concealed his opinion. We hear the full testimony of the academic memorial speech: "A common interest in the phenomena of color caused him and Goethe to often carry out experiments together, in which some differences were discussed in detail, but in the main relationships there was agreement in their views of the nature of color.... In the theory of color he was on Goethe's side and, like the latter, maintained the simplicity of white light." On page 13 ff., Fischer quotes the letter that Moritz Seebeck addressed to Goethe on the death of his father (December 20, 1831). It reads: "Your Excellency's writings of any content did not come from his (Seebeck's) desk, they were his favorite reading; he often said: "Among all living naturalists, Goethe is the greatest, the only one who knows what is important." We would like to see in Seebeck's relationship to Goethe's Theory of Colors the proof that there can no longer be any question of abandoning Goethe's deep understanding in someone who has really penetrated it to such an extent that he has found the point on which everything depends.

A contribution to the history of the philosophy of our poet heroes Neisse 1884

It is no coincidence that at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, philosophy and poetry experienced a tremendous upswing in Germany at the same time. There was a deepening of the whole essence of the nation, and it was one and the same message that was proclaimed by both philosophers and poets. German philosophy and German poetry of the classical period flowed from one spiritual direction. This explains why our greatest poets: Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, also felt the urge to deal with the deepest questions of science. They are not merely accomplished artists, they are perfect human beings in the highest sense of the word. This explains why, in addition to the writings devoted to the contemplation of the artistic creations of our classics, the writings devoted to their philosophical thoughts are constantly increasing. The above-mentioned book deals with Goethe's philosophical development.

The spirit in whose work the various forms of the German national spirit have united to form the most beautiful harmony is Goethe. Artistic creative power and scientific insight into the driving forces of nature and the human spirit are the elements that have flowed into the essence of this spirit, but in such a way that they have given up their separate existence and become a unified whole, an individuality that both broadens and deepens our world view. Only when viewed in this way does the role that philosophy plays in the organism of Goethe's spirit become clear. A treatise on Goethe's philosophical development would have to show the extent to which philosophy is, firstly, an active force in his artistic work and, secondly, a foundation supporting his scientific experiments. From the aphoristic statements about his world view alone we cannot gain a picture of it, even if they are often clarifying and complementary to it. If we apply what has been said to Melzer's book, we must admit that the author has not recognized the crucial points of the matter. We do not want to overlook some of the good points of his book. These include, above all, the basic tendency of the book to recognize Goethe not from individual statements but from the course of his development (8.3). But if, despite this tendency (p. 36), the author finds, for example, that Goethe's philosophical-religious view at the end of his youthful period was a kind of middle ground between rationalism and orthodoxy, this shows how little he sees what is actually important. Buzzwords such as naturalism, rationalism and pantheism do not lead us into Goethe's mind; they only obstruct our access to the depths of his being. For Melzer, this is why the fully determined, individual aspect of Goethe's world view is lost. Thus he sees the quintessence of the essay "Nature" (p.24) in the sentence: "it (nature) is everything" and consequently defines Goethe's view as naturalism. But while naturalism sees nature only in its finished products, as dead, self-contained, and in this form identifies the spirit with it, Goethe goes back to it as producer, as creative, and thus advances beyond contingency to necessity. He thus reaches that source from which spirit and nature flow simultaneously and can truly say of it: "it is everything." Goethe had something to proclaim to the world that could not be encompassed by any traditional system of thought, still less expressed in traditional philosophical terms. There was in him a world of original ideas, and when one speaks of the influence of older or newer philosophers on him, this cannot be done in the sense - as Melzer does - as if he had formed his views on the basis of their teachings. He was looking for formulas, a scientific language to express the spiritual wealth that lay within him. He found these in the philosophers, above all in Spinoza. Melzer shares the mistake of wanting to portray Goethe's world of ideas as the result of various teachings he had absorbed with many others who have studied the philosophy underlying Goethe's work. This overlooks the fact that anyone who wants to portray Goethe's philosophical development must have gained a belief in the originality of his mission and the genius of his being primarily from his work.

"Goethe - and still no end! Kritische Würdigung der Lehre Goethes von der Metamorphose der Pflanzen" is the title of a recently published work by K. Fr. Jordan (Hamburg 1888, Verlagsanstalt und Druckerei AG), which once again attempts to prove that Goethe's world view lacked any scientific value, that the great poet lacked the "right scientific sense" in general. The reason given by the author for this assertion is that Goethe took a completely different intellectual direction from the mechanical view of nature. For Jordan, however, science ends where the mechanical view ends; "science must be mechanical, because mechanical processes are the most comprehensible to the human mind", he claims. It is of course impossible to rise to Goethe's intellectual level with such intellectual presuppositions. It should not be denied: Goethe was an opponent of the way of thinking advocated by Jordan. But he was so because it was clear to his mind, which penetrated deep into the essence of things, that this way of thinking was only sufficient for recognizing the lower levels of natural existence and that we would be denied an insight into the actual laws of organic life if we could not rise above the thinking of mechanical lawfulness. Goethe's idea of plant metamorphosis is proof that our cognitive faculty does not fail us even when we approach life, the essence of which will never be grasped by mechanics. This idea has opened up new paths for organic science, just as Galileo's fundamental laws of mechanics did. Those who ignore this fact will not only never come to a just appreciation of Goethe's scientific position, but will also cause considerable damage to science itself, for they will deprive it of a field of fruitful ideas that has already been opened up.

For a number of years now, the writer of these lines has been trying to represent a point of view towards Goethe, the researcher, that does justice to his quite unique position within the history of science. history of science. Given the often aphoristic, often fragmentary way in which Goethe's scientific ideas are presented to us in his works, it was often necessary to go beyond the mere study and interpretation of the existing material and to search for the connecting thoughts that lay in Goethe's mind and which perhaps had not been recorded at all, perhaps for some reason had been left behind in the desk. In this way a whole of Goethe's world view emerged, which admittedly differed greatly from the usual views. The insight I recently gained into the papers left behind by the poet filled me with the deepest satisfaction. - Entrusted with the publication of a part of Goethe's scientific writings for the Weimar Goethe Edition, I was allowed to examine the rich, unprinted material. This examination resulted throughout in a complete confirmation of what one must have recognized from a thorough, loving immersion in the poet's scholarly works, but with which one nevertheless had to be prepared for such contradictions as those of Jordan, because those unifying thoughts of which we spoke above bore too much of the character of the hypothetical for many people. We do not mean that the whole of Goethe's conception did not have full scholarly value for us, but this is a conviction that can ultimately only be won by those who have the will to delve into Goethe's spirit with such affection - and that is not everyone's cup of tea, at least it seems so. - The new Weimar edition will now provide a twofold benefit: firstly, any doubt as to how Goethe thought about certain points in natural science will have to be silenced, because his own explanations clearly and unambiguously determine his point of view; secondly, the high scientific seriousness that speaks from these explanations will finally make the judgment that would portray the poet as a scientific dilettante simply appear superficial. Goethe a dilettante! He, who had direct relations with the majority of Germany's intellectual aspirants in his time and who personally contributed to so many world-shaking ideas! We see the greatest scholars of his time exchanging thoughts with him about their discoveries, we see his supportive participation in the entire development of his time.

An attempt has been made to portray Goethe as a forerunner of Darwin. This was the benevolent conviction of those who saw Darwinism as the "be-all and end-all" of the science of living beings and who wanted to "save" Goethe's scientific explanations. This view provoked objections from natural scientists who were more inclined towards the Du Bois-Reymond school, because countless passages in Goethe's writings could not be reconciled with today's conventional view of Darwin's teachings. It could not be denied that these two parties were able to come up with seemingly weighty reasons for their assertions. It was, of course, clear to those who looked deeper that Goethe could never be a Darwinian in the common sense. It did not escape his gaze that all natural beings are intimately connected with one another, that there is nothing unmediated in nature, but that transitions between the different living beings in their formation must make the whole of nature appear as a continuous sequence of stages. But he looked deeper than the Darwinism of today. While Darwinism only examines the relationships between organic beings and their environment in order to obtain as complete a family tree of all life on earth as possible, Goethe focused on the idea of the organic, on its inner nature. He wanted to investigate what an organic being is in order to see how it can appear in so many different forms. Today's Darwinism seeks the various forms of eternal change. Goethe sought the permanent in this change. The naturalist of the present day asks: what influence of the climate, of the way of life, has taken place so that this living being has developed from that one? Goethe asked: what inner organic laws of formation are at work in this development? Goethe relates to the modern natural scientist as the astronomer, who explains the phenomena in the sky by summarizing cosmic laws, relates to the observer who determines the various positions of the stars through the telescope according to experience. Goethe's scientific explanations are not only a prophetic anticipation of Darwinism, but they are the ideal prerequisite for it. Modern natural science will have to be supplemented by them, otherwise it will not rise from mere experience to theory. The Weimar Edition, however, will provide irrefutable proof of this assertion through the publication of Goethe's estate. It will show us those mediating thoughts through which Goethe's position on Darwinism will become clear in the sense indicated. The views that have been greatly shaken by this will be considerably strengthened. Goethe's idealism in science will be just as unquestionable as the significance and depth of his scientific ideas. If one can convince oneself of the struggle for true knowledge, for scientific thoroughness, which his thoughts bear witness to right from their inception, then one will no longer be able to claim that the "great poet" had no scientific sense.

In the introduction to the second volume of my edition of Goethe's scientific writings (Kürschner's "Deutsche National-Literatur", Goethes Werke, Vol. XXXIV, p.XXXVIIL£.) I have already pointed out that Goethe wrote an essay on scientific method, which he sent to Schiller on January 17, 1798, but which is unfortunately not included in the works. At that time I tried to reconstruct the views on scientific research contained in the essay. The essay seemed to me to contain Goethe's most important scientific arguments. - It has now been preserved! - It follows on from the one on the "Experiment as Mediator of Object and Subject" (see above, Goethe's Works, Volume XXXIV, pp. 10f.), but is the incomparably more important of the two. It contains a program for all scientific research; it shows how it must develop if it is to do justice to the demands of our reason as well as to the objective course of nature. All this in ingenious strokes, which at once raise us to that spiritual height where our gaze penetrates unwaveringly into the secrets of nature. In this essay we have the most direct expression of Goethe's scientific spirit. Anyone who wants to argue against this spirit in the future may first try his hand at this essay. From there, light will shine on all of Goethe's other writings, insofar as they concern science.

From all this one can see that the new edition will gain one thing above all others: We will be in a better position than was previously possible to view each individual intellectual act of Goethe in the context of his nature. And it will be the task of the edition in this respect to facilitate this as much as possible by arranging and selecting what is to be included. It is precisely in scholarly terms that Goethe research, which the Grand Duchess of Weimar has taken into her protection with loving devotion that cannot be praised enough, will gain from the publications of the Goethe Archive.

There is no doubt that some fragments will also have to be published, that many an essay that has been started and then left lying around will come before the eyes of the reader. But this stylistic completeness is not the point. The main thing is that we have all of Goethe's intellectual products before our eyes in such a form that we are able to form an intellectual picture of his world view. And in this respect Riemer and Eckermann cannot be absolved of some of the mistakes they made in editing the works they left behind. They have omitted some things that are necessary for understanding and have not followed the only correct principle in the arrangement, which brings the individual writings in such a sequence that they serve each other as a commentary.

But the realization of the sketchy, fragmentary has yet another advantage. By often seeing the thought shoot up in Goethe's mind, we will recognize its actual scope and meaning precisely from this first form, and we will experience the whole tendency of Goethe's striving from this. We will wrestle with him by looking into how his mind, which always goes into the depths, gradually rises to clarity. It will be possible for us to follow him on his paths and thus to become more and more familiar with his way of thinking.

We will see how Goethe was clearly aware that, wherever we enter the world of experience, we must finally encounter the idea through constant, unrelenting willing. He never sets out for an idea. He naively seeks only to grasp the phenomena, but he always finds the idea in the end. Every line of his work is full proof of this.

In summary, we would like to say that Goethe's scientific individuality will soon emerge in its full significance so clearly before our eyes that a writing like the one by Jordan mentioned at the beginning will be regarded by the educated world of Germany as a lamentable but essentially harmless aberration.

Leipzig 1890

A few weeks ago, German philosophy was enriched by a valuable book written in Weimar. The fact that the author of the work is the archdeacon Dr. Eduard Grimm, and the scholarly importance attached to it, justify it sufficiently if we express at this point the deep satisfaction that reading it has given us. We found one of the most interesting epochs in the development of science discussed in a truly exemplary manner. The book sets itself the task of explaining the teachings of the five English philosophers: Francis Bacon (1561 to 1626), Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1709), George Berkeley (1685-1753), David Hume (1711-1776) for epistemology, that is for that science which is concerned with answering the question: to what extent is man capable of solving the riddles of the world and investigating the laws of nature and life through his thinking?

The scientific period to which these five thinkers belong is so extraordinarily significant because it marks one of the most important turning points in scientific life. The wisdom of the Middle Ages had contented itself with continuing along the paths trodden by Aristotle, the great teacher of Alexander the Great. The way in which he approached the tasks of the sciences, the goals he set, were still considered incontestable even when new observations and experiences could no longer be properly reconciled with them. This, however, hindered all progress and made the free development of the free and independent thinking demanded by discoveries in the field of science impossible. Then Francis Bacon appeared on the scene. His aim was to purify science of all traditional prejudices and to completely rebuild it on the basis of the new achievements of the time. Grimm is a master at capturing Bacon precisely at the point where his great significance for the development of European thought is most evident. By clinging to principles that belonged to a time long past and could only have validity and value for the life of that time, science had become alienated from the life of the immediate present, indeed had become completely useless for it. But "all science has emerged from life and takes from it the right and the basis of its existence. If it departs too far from its origin, life itself cannot fail to oppose it with its own direct force and urge a new formation of science. Francis Bacon of Verulam confronts the science of his time in this way. He reproaches it with resembling a plant which, torn from its stem, no longer has any connection with the body of nature and therefore no longer receives any nourishment from it." (Cf. Grimm, Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnisproblems, pp. 5-6.) Grimm explains with as much thoroughness as truly philosophical superiority how Bacon, by establishing an infallible method of observation and experimentation, wants to put science on the right track, how he, by ruthlessly combating all prejudices and errors among scholars as well as all other educated people, wants to provide access only to absolutely certain knowledge. To this, as to the whole book in general, we must praise the only historically correct method, which does full justice to the thinkers under consideration by letting them speak for themselves wherever it seems necessary. The beneficial effect produced by the book is due in no small part to the fact that the author does not, as so many recent historians of science do, emphasize his own scientific views in assessing the thought of others, but places his personal ability, which is visible to the discerning reader everywhere, at the service of an all-round objective development of the systems of thought dealt with.

The Baconian school of thought, for all its great importance, was guilty of a one-sided overestimation of the mere observation of things at the expense of independent thinking that draws from man's own breast. This deficiency became even greater with Thomas Hobbes, who saw thinking as nothing more than a faculty mediated by language. "Understanding is the understanding of words." (Grimm, p.87.) Hobbes denies that thinking can come to knowledge by itself and through itself. "Sensual perception, imagination, and the succession of our ideas, which we call experience, is what is given to us by nature." (Grimm,.85-86.) "Hobbes calls reason that activity by which we compose ideas and words." (Grimm, p. 87.) Thus, according to Hobbes, science is not based on a thinking comprehension of the world, but merely on the rational use and correct understanding of words. The fact that words convey ideas and that our knowledge is based on them is a proposition that does not exist for Hobbes. It is understandable that under such circumstances knowledge can no longer have an independent purpose. Therefore Hobbes finds: "Knowledge is there for the sake of skill, mathematics for the sake of mechanics, all speculation for the sake of some work, some action." (Grimm,. 99.) Certainly, knowledge that consists only of words can have no independent value. However, Hobbes believed that he could only achieve what he wanted by giving science this twist. What we observe and experience in individual cases has only a limited truth. We can never know whether it is true in all the cases we have not observed. Words, on the other hand, we determine arbitrarily, so we know exactly how far what they claim is valid. This view proved fatal to Hobbes in his foundation of the doctrine of morals and the state. For if everything that has objective validity is based only on the arbitrariness of words, then any real distinction between "good" and "evil" ceases to exist. These concepts, too, become arbitrary creations of man. "There is no general rule about good and evil taken from the nature of things themselves." (Grimm,. 135-136.) And in the state, order cannot be maintained by people controlling their instincts through reason, through free insight, but only by a despotic ruler enforcing the observation of arbitrarily established moral laws.

John Locke is at the center of Grimm's work. After all, he is "the first philosopher to place the question of knowledge at the center of research as a completely independent and independent task". (Grimm, 5.173.) On the continent, Ren& Descartes (Cartesius 1596-1650) is the founder of a new philosophy that frees itself from the bonds of Aristotle. He sees the reason why we can arrive at unconditional and unquestionable knowledge in the fact that certain ideas are innate to us. We need only raise them from the hidden depths of our soul and place them in the full light of consciousness. Locke now opposed this view with the proposition that we have no innate, but only acquired knowledge. According to Locke, we do not bring any knowledge into the world with us, but only the ability to acquire it. Starting from this insight, he seeks to investigate the sources and validity of our knowledge. In doing so, he arrives at a proposition that is now a part of modern consciousness, namely that only mass, shape, number and motion are properties that really exist in bodies, while color, sound, heat, taste and so on are only effects of the bodies on our senses, but not something in the bodies themselves.

George Berkeley now claims that the first-mentioned qualities also have no existence independent of our imagination, but that they only exist insofar as we imagine them. There are no things at all that correspond to our ideas. Berkeley denies the existence of a corporeal world and allows only spirits to exist in which the divine being, through its all-dominant power, evokes the ideas. "What I perceive, I must also imagine; something of which I have no conception at all cannot be the object of my perception or experience, it does not exist for me at all." "Therefore, there is no perception, no existence, no experience beyond the limit of imagination." (Grimm, p. 385.)

Finally, David Hume takes up Locke's view that we can only gain all our knowledge through observation. But as we can only ever obtain information about individual cases by observation, we have only such knowledge as relates to particulars and no generally valid knowledge. When I see that one thing always follows another, I call the latter cause, the former effect. I expect that in similar cases the same cause will produce the same effect. That this must be so, I can never know. All our conviction rests on the habit of always presupposing what we have often found to be true. Thus Hume arrives at a complete doubt of all actual knowledge.

This doubt, by his own admission, roused Kant from his scientific slumber and inspired him to write his great work, the Critique of Pure Reason, which stirred the scientific world in all its depths. As a result, Hume, and insofar as he was based on his predecessors, also exerted a decisive influence on German science.

Knowing the development of thought and the significance of the scholars treated by Grimm is an absolute necessity for understanding modern philosophy. The author has therefore earned a lasting merit through his book. With penetrating clarity, he shows us the threads that link the five men together, and with admirable acuity he always points to the aspect in which each of them has developed one and the same basic idea. It is actually a question that they all deal with, but the different light they shed on it always leads to different conclusions. They are all inspired by the striving for satisfactory knowledge, and they are likewise imbued with the conviction that only observation and experience provide us with true knowledge. No less excellent than the presentation of the interdependence of the individual explanations is Grimm's illumination of the course of development they have undergone. This is particularly characteristic of Berkeley and Hume. In clarifying these relationships, Grimm also proves himself to be a master of psychological analysis.

We do not think we are saying too much when we culminate our judgment of Grimm's book in these words: For the specialist, it is a work that he must not pass by if he wants to approach the epoch in question; for the educated, it is an interesting lectern that will orient him on countless questions.

Introduction to the work "Philosophy in Outline". Newly edited and annotated by Max Schneidewin. Friedrich Stahn. Berlin 1891

This book belongs to the group of the many unnecessary ones produced by contemporary literature. As a philosopher, Steudel was on that shallow point of view which believes that the knowledge material gathered from everywhere can be deepened to philosophical results by mere intellectual considerations made about the individual facts of experience. Steudel had no idea that philosophy needs an object that does not lie in the sphere of the "sensually and intellectually" given. This is why he completely lacks the organ to appreciate the great advances in philosophy made by Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, and he would like to see all deeper intuition replaced by the rational raison d'être arising from Nicolaitan sentiments, which those luminaries of science, despite their great errors, brought to the ground in such mighty intellectual battles. He wants to assert the absolute judgment of reason as opposed to the absolute judgment of understanding. The only difference is that the absolute of reason is deep, while that of understanding is superficial. In all of this, Steudel's honest endeavors must be acknowledged, and for the philosophical expert it is of interest to read Steudel's "Philosophy in Outline" as the most consistent work of shallow common sense, which many still - or rather today even more so - consider to be the only sound one. However, we are unable to see who is to be served by a special reprint of the introduction, which has no independent value at all, but only acquires such value in connection with the work as a whole.