J 
 
 
 
 
 
 %^ 
 
 
 r 2 W ^ 
 
 i w 
 
 ^ , 
 
 * h <&■ 
 
 
 
 # ^ 
 
 
 fr 
 
 
 
 ^.0 
 
 o° ,*:* %^e 
 
 rP v < 
 
 v „ ■< • » < 
 
 ° ■ ^ °^ * Air* ^ °* 
 
 r0 v o^*o 
 
 W 
 
 -H>. 
 
 ■r. 
 
 %■<& 
 
 # ^ 
 
 & .* 
 
 \^ 
 
 n> ♦'--.%' 
 
 * ^ '* v G r ^ ■, 
 
 
 
<= *> 
 & % 
 
 
 \*- : -% 
 
 
 %s 
 
 
 
 *w 
 
 
 % # *>" 
 
 
 %> 
 
 
 
 

/ 
 
 
S~m& te 
 
 I 
 
 iU 
 
FORCE AND MATTER: 
 
 EMPIEICO-PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 
 INTELLIGIBLY RENDERED. 
 
 WITH AN ADDITIONAL INTRODUCTION EXPRESSLY WRITTEN 
 FOR THE ENGLISH EDITION. 
 
 }r. fonts |itcl)nfr, 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE MEDICAL ASSOCIATION OF HESSEN-DARMSTADT, 
 ETC., ETC. 
 
 EDITED, 
 
 FROM THE LAST EDITION OF "KRAFT UND STOFF", 
 
 BY 
 
 J. FREDERICK COLLINGWOOD, 
 
 F.R.S.L., F.Q.S. 
 
 Bnonti ©nglutfj, complete» from tfjc EentJj ©ermatt, ffi&itum. 
 
 WITH 
 
 A PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 LONDON : 
 TRÜBNER & CO., 60, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
 1870. 
 
^t 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 T. RICHARDS, PRINTER, 37, GREAT QUEEN STREET. 
 
CONTENT« 
 
 ft 
 
 <tf 
 
 Advertisement by the Editor 
 
 Letter to the Editor (Preface to the Eighth Ger 
 
 man Edition) 
 
 Preface to the First Edition 
 Preface to the Third Edition 
 Preface to the Fourth Edition 
 Preface to the Ninth Edition 
 Preface to the Tenth Edition 
 
 PAGE 
 V 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 i. Force and Matter 
 
 ii. Immortality of Matter 
 
 in. Immortality of Force... 
 
 iv. Infinity of Matter 
 
 v. Dignity of Matter 
 
 vi. Immutability of the Laws of Nature . 
 
 vii. Universality of the Laws of Nature . 
 
 viii. The Heavens 
 
 ix. Periods of the Creation of the Earth. 
 
 vii 
 
 xvii 
 
 xxi 
 
 xliii 
 
 . . . lxvii 
 
 . . . lxxxiii 
 
 1 
 
 9 
 
 16 
 
 23 
 
 33 
 
 44 
 51 
 56 
 
IV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 x. Primeval Generation 
 
 xi. Design in Nature 
 
 xii. Brain and Soul 
 
 xiii. Thought 
 
 xiv. The Seat of the Soul 
 
 xv. Innate Ideas ... 
 
 xvi. The Idea op a God ... 
 
 xvii. Personal Continuance 
 
 xviii. Vital Force 
 
 xix. The Soul of Brutes 
 
 xx. Free Will 
 
 xxi. Concluding Observations ... 
 
 Appendix 
 
 PiGE 
 
 63 
 89 
 106 
 135 
 141 
 157 
 184 
 195 
 215 
 226 
 239 
 251 
 
 ERRATA. 
 
 Page 39 line 1 for " natual" read natural. 
 
 76 „ 5 „ " Pesherais" „ Pescheraes. 
 
 86 in note „ "facial" „ cranial. 
 
 110 line 7 „ " Huscke" „ Huschke. 
 241 ,, 8 ,, "Dammares" „ Damaras. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 De. Louis Büchner's Kraft und Stoff, of 
 which the following pages are a complete 
 translation from the last (eighth now pub- 
 lishing) edition, has attracted so much atten- 
 tion in Germany, and also in France, Russia, 
 America, Denmark, and Holland, where it 
 has been re-produced, that, in the opinion of 
 the Editor, it should be admitted to the 
 rolls of English literature. Its subject-matter 
 may not be new to well informed persons, 
 as it does not aim at original scientific in- 
 vestigation ; but the manner of treatment 
 adopted by its accomplished author will be 
 highly appreciated by those who wish for the 
 advancement of mankind through the free 
 exercise of thought. The Editor does not 
 bring out this volume as one entirely in ac- 
 
IV ADVEETISEMENT. 
 
 cordance with his opinions, for he cannot 
 always subscribe to the alleged facts con- 
 tained therein, nor does he agree in all the 
 inferences drawn from these facts ; never- 
 theless, he finds much pleasure in introducing 
 to the English Header a work, whose great 
 merit is an attempt to elicit truth and to 
 overthrow prejudice, and whose chief attrac- 
 tion will be found in the clear, vigorous, 
 earnest, and often eloquent language in which 
 its arguments are conveyed. 
 
 The Author, in the following letter, written 
 expressly for this edition, addresses the 
 English public at some length, and thereby 
 renders further comments of the Editor 
 superfluous. 
 
 J. F. C. 
 
 London, April 1864. 
 
LETTER TO THE EDITOR 
 
 Darmstadt, October 2S, 1863. 
 
 SlE, 
 
 Your communication, informing me of your 
 intention to edit an English version of my 
 work Kraft und Stoff, lias afforded me greater 
 pleasure than similar offers from other countries, 
 chiefly for the subjoined reasons, which may 
 serve as a preliminary to the Introduction which 
 you request me to write. In the first place, I 
 entertain the hope that the fusion of philosophy 
 with actual observation which pervades my work, 
 Will be more acceptable to your countrymen than 
 to my own compatriots, among whom the belief 
 in the wonders of a supersensual speculation still 
 appears to be stronger than the faith in reality, 
 and that consequently my work may not in Eng- 
 land have to struggle against such gross misin- 
 terpretations as was the case in Grermany — at 
 least as far as the facts are concerned. Se- 
 condly, because it is just the works of eminent 
 Englishmen which have, within the last few 
 
Vlll INTßODUCTOEY LETTEE. 
 
 years, given an unhoped for support to my mode 
 of viewing natural phenomena,, so that we may 
 expect a reformation of the greater part of the 
 hitherto prevalent theories about nature and the 
 world. In writing this work I was, like your 
 own authors, not merely influenced by the simple 
 love for truth, but, in addition, by that philoso- 
 phical principle in human nature, which does not 
 rest satisfied with accepting the phenomena of 
 nature as individual and incomprehensible facts, 
 but endeavours to comprehend them in their in- 
 timate connection and their philosophical unity. 
 I certainly soon perceived, that, in the then con- 
 dition of science, such an attempt was too bold, 
 perhaps too much for an individual, and that I 
 should have to sustain a fierce struggle with the 
 prejudices of the age, which might, moreover, 
 compromise my social position. In spite of all 
 this I made the attempt, without anticipating 
 (what has since happened) that the progressive 
 knowledge of the laws of nature would, within 
 so short of time, confirm some of the most im- 
 portant fundamental principles of my work, then 
 deemed so presumptuous. 
 
 When, nine years ago, I wrote Kraft und Stoff, 
 I could not know that what I called "the im- 
 mortality of matter," would soon find a necessary 
 correlate in the now undoubted " conservation or 
 immortality of force ;" I could not know that the 
 dogmata concerning the non-existence of prim- 
 eval (spontaneous) generation, and the immuta- 
 
INTRODUCTORY LETTER. IX 
 
 bility of species, winch were then considered 
 almost too sacred for attack, would soon ex- 
 perience such severe shocks, and that the cele- 
 brated theory of Darwin would reduce the whole 
 organic world, past and present, to one great 
 fundamental conception; I could not know that 
 the necessary scientific basis for either of these 
 theories, or the cellular theory, would, within the 
 same time, receive such a development as to be 
 as applicable both to the animal and to the veget- 
 able world ; I could not know that the old and 
 apparently unshakeable dogma of man's recent ap- 
 pearance on the earth would break down at once, 
 and remove the age of man to such remote pe- 
 riods, that my assertion as regards the slow 
 evolution of man from an animal form to his ac- 
 tual condition would thus become conceivable ; 
 I could not know that, on the one hand, species 
 of apes would be discovered resembling man still 
 more than the then known anthropoid apes, and 
 that, on the other hand, fossil skulls and bones 
 would be found which partly fill up the apparent 
 gulf between man and brute ; I could not know 
 that the beautiful discovery of the analysis of the 
 spectrum would confirm my assertion of the ce- 
 lestial bodies being composed of the same mate- 
 rial elements, and that the geology which I de- 
 fended would carry the day over the old geology 
 with its catastrophes and revolutions ; I could 
 not foresee that the doctrine of the brain being 
 the organ of the mind, which was then contested, 
 
X , INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 
 
 would by the progress of physiology and psy- 
 chiatry be so soon placed beyond any doubt; 
 or that my opinion in relation to the silly theory 
 of vital force would be well supported and con- 
 firmed by the results obtained by synthetic che- 
 mistry ; I could not know that my views regard- 
 ing the doctrine of design in nature would be 
 supported by Darwin's theory; finally, I could 
 not anticipate that the boldness with which I 
 condemned the German speculative or scholastic 
 philosophy, at a time when it possessed great 
 authority, and was by the great majority looked 
 upon as containing the highest product of the 
 human mind, a mystery accessible only to the 
 select few, would so soon find its justification in 
 the works of authors who possessed a greater 
 knowledge of that philosophy than I lay claim 
 to. A philosophy which searches out the truth 
 for its own sake, and not, according to the axiom 
 Primum vivere, delude fliiloso'plicuri, to obtain a 
 chair, will search for and find its nourishment 
 upon the soil of experience and of facts, as all 
 our knowledge grows up from this soil, and as 
 all the wealth of the human mind is but an ac- 
 cumulation of the treasures so obtained. Infi- 
 nitely slow has been the evolution of the human 
 mind from its primitive state, oppressed, as it 
 were, by the natural forces, until it arrived at an 
 independent condition. With the growth of this 
 independence, the fear of and the dependence on 
 nature must give way, and the knowledge of the 
 
INTRODUCTORY LETTER. XI 
 
 laws immanent and immutable in nature must 
 displace the superstition which torments the ig- 
 norant, and prevents the free development of his 
 powers. With every step in advance, science 
 conquers fresh soil for law and order, and re- 
 moves superstition. That it must have taken a 
 long time before the mind could shake off the 
 fetters of the natural forces, so as to feel the 
 desire of inquiring into the laws of nature, and 
 finding a clue in the immense chaos of natural 
 phenomena, will surprise no one acquainted with 
 the history of science. The greatest difficulty 
 which the human mind seems to have to contend 
 with, is to find the link which connects man with 
 nature in general, because mam's pride of his 
 self-consciousness, combined with the profound 
 ignorance as regards this origin, tends to veil the 
 truth from him. But, despite all obstructions, 
 human knowledge appears to have reached a 
 point, beyond which the human mind enters a 
 region of light and truth. Well does your 
 learned countryman, Professor Huxley, in his 
 excellent work on "Man's Place in Nature," 
 liken the mental development of humanity to 
 the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into the 
 butterfly, by the periodical castings of its skin ; 
 and that by the stimulating influences of the 
 progress of physical science during the last fifty 
 years, the human mind has entered another sta- 
 dium, which renders a new ecdysis requisite. 
 " Such a process/'' he adds, " is usually accom- 
 
XU INTBODUCTOBY LETTEE. 
 
 panied by pain and sickness ; and that it was 
 consequently the duty of every good citizen to 
 facilitate this process, and to ease the cracking 
 of the old integument.-" 
 
 It may, with truth, be said that, in the history 
 of human development, no ecdysis can be found 
 equal in magnitude and importance to that which 
 now seems imminent. What mental progress 
 can be compared to the knowledge that man is 
 not, as hitherto erroneously assumed, physically 
 and mentally separated from and opposed to 
 nature • but that he is the product of nature's 
 gradually developed forces; and further, that 
 this nature is not a chaos of incomprehensible 
 lawless forces, but a connected whole, subject to 
 eternal laws in a constant state of progressive 
 development, so that, in the lapse of time, the 
 most stupendous effects are produced by appa- 
 rently insignificant causes ; and further, that the 
 universe, the suns and planets, the wonderful 
 organisms, from the minutest infusorium up to 
 the antediluvian giants, and even the human 
 mind in its grandest manifestations, are com- 
 posed of and produced by the same materials 
 and forces ! This is a stand-point which, in 
 magnitude and sublimity, yields to no other; 
 and, could it be occupied by all (many years 
 must elapse ere this may happen), a spirit of 
 repose, serenity, and kindness would be infused 
 into the minds of men, and genuine humanity 
 would obtain the victory over the gloomy spirit 
 
INTE0DUCT0EY LETTEE. Xlll 
 
 of the past. The silly disputes about religious 
 things, which have done so much injury to hu- 
 manity and prevented its progress, will cease; and 
 the horrors and persecutions to which they gave 
 rise will be superseded by universal philanthropy. 
 Man, no longer deeming himself a stranger to 
 nature which has formed and given him all he 
 possesses, will now consider himself to be nature's 
 noblest and best son ; no childish fear of spirits 
 or supernatural influences will frighten his mind 
 or impede his free progress ; nay, religion itself 
 will become more spiritualised by the elimination 
 of the crude and senseless imaginings of past 
 times, inasmuch as the supreme government of 
 the world will no longer be considered as the 
 attribute of a personal arbitrary power, giving 
 and interrupting its own laws, but as the highest 
 law itself, the source of all phenomena. From 
 this purification of our conceptions science will 
 derive the greatest advantages, since nothing has 
 so much impeded its progress as senseless na- 
 tural and supernatural explanations. If this 
 couch for mental laziness be removed, science 
 will acquire a fixed character in the search for 
 objective truth, and no appeal to supernatural 
 influence or interference will blunt the stimulus 
 which incites men of science to search out the 
 truth. What cannot be traced in its connec- 
 tions, is on that account neither unnatural nor 
 supernatural, but is simply a problem the solu- 
 tion of which is reserved for the future. That 
 
X 
 
 XiV INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 
 
 our knowledge as regards the universe is con- 
 fined within narrow limits, does not justify arbi- 
 trary and unscientific assumptions, which render 
 real knowledge to a certain extent impossible. 
 
 You will, respected sir, thus perceive that our 
 so-called materialism in Germany is neither so 
 senseless nor baseless as our numerous oppo- 
 nents, in their multifarious polemical pamphlets, 
 try to persuade the public ; and that, in ideal 
 value, it excels the majority of opposite theories. 
 There can scarcely be a more ideal conception 
 than the unity of all physical and mental exist- 
 ence in the same fundamental laws and causes ! 
 To conceive this unity may, perhaps, be easier 
 for the unlearned than for the majority of our 
 scholars, who, occupied with details, are less able 
 to perceive the connection of the whole; many 
 of whom, therefore, are the bitter opponents of 
 our views of nature. This opposition is, how- 
 ever, of but small importance ; as those only can 
 claim the right of passing judgment who, having 
 surveyed the facts ascertained by science, draw 
 their inferences from the philosophical combina- 
 tion of all details. 
 
 "It is only the survey of the whole" — thus 
 lately wrote to me a distinguished German 
 scholar (whose fault is not to lose himself in de- 
 tails) — "which could point out the right path \" 
 
 iC Comparative, assisted by microscopic, ana- 
 tomy, broke down the old barriers; palaeonto- 
 logy filled up the gaps by intermediate forms ; 
 
INTRODUCTORY LETTER. XV 
 
 geology taught that the natural forces had never 
 been different from what they are at present ; 
 physiology showed the dependence of the intel- 
 lectual capacities and their development on or- 
 ganisation ; psychology teaches that reason is an 
 acquired faculty ; anthropology finally points out 
 the development of the races ; history and phi- 
 lology exhibit the rude beginnings. All our 
 civilisation, the basis of humanity, is not nature, 
 but art — the toilsome education of the race and 
 of individuals, effected in thousands of years : 
 and the physical development, from the first 
 moment of generation, is in every individual 
 merely a repetition of the same laws of develop- 
 ment to which the organic world owes its exist- 
 ence ! How simple does all this appear to us, 
 how forcible the inferences, were not the f ifs' 
 and the ' buts' rendering the minds of so many 
 men inaccessible to the truth ! That this mode 
 of viewing nature will ultimately prevail, I enter- 
 tain no doubt whatever." 
 
 This much, sir, I felt urged to write, by way 
 of introduction to your English edition of my so 
 vehemently attacked work. You and your 
 readers will find it but natural that, during the 
 eight years which have elapsed since the first 
 edition of this work was issued, my views should 
 in their expansion have partly changed, or been 
 confirmed, an account of which is contained in 
 my, since then, published works, Physiologische 
 Bilder (Leipzig, Thomas, 1861), and Aus Natur 
 
XVI INTRODUCTORY LETTER. 
 
 und Wissenschaft; Studien, Kritiken und Ab- 
 handlungen (ibid., 1862). 
 
 I would request those of your critics who feel 
 it their duty to pass judgment on my philosophy, 
 to refrain doing so until they have perused the 
 above two works. 
 
 Accept, sir, the assurance of my high esteem. 
 
 Dr. Louis Büchner. 
 
 To J. F. COLLINGWOOD, ESQ., F.R.S.L., F.G.S., ETC. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIEST EDITION.* 
 
 " Now, wliat I want is— facts." 
 
 Boz. 
 
 The following pages pretend neither to establish 
 a system nor to be exhaustive-. They are merely 
 scattered, though necessarily connected, thoughts 
 and observations, which, on account of the diffi- 
 culty of mastering all the facts of empirical and 
 natural science, may perhaps meet with some 
 indulgence on the part of the scientific critic. 
 If we may, at the outset, claim any credit, it is 
 for our determination to speak the truth, regard- 
 less of the unavoidable consequences of our mode 
 of viewing nature. Things cannot be repre- 
 sented different from what they are; and nothing 
 appears to us more perverse than the efforts of 
 respectable naturalists to introduce orthodoxy in 
 the natural sciences. We do not boast of having 
 produced anything new. Similar ideas have 
 been promulgated at all- times, partly by old 
 Greek and Indian philosophers ; but the neces- 
 sary empirical basis furnished by modern science 
 was then wanting. Hence the present views 
 are, in respect to their clearness, a conquest of 
 modern empirical science. The scholastic phi- 
 * Written at Tübingen in the year 1855. 
 
 b 
 
A 
 
 XV111 PEEEACE TO FIEST EDITION. 
 
 losophy, still riding upon its high, though ter- 
 ribly emaciated horse, conceives that it has long 
 ago done with such theories, and has consigned 
 them, ticketed " materialism", u sensualism", 
 " determinism", to the scientific lumber-room, 
 or, as the phrase goes, has assigned them their 
 "historical value". But this philosophy sinks 
 daily in the estimation of the public, and loses 
 its ground opposed to natural science, which 
 gradually establishes the fact that macrocosmic 
 and microcosmic existence obeys in its origin, 
 life, and decay, mechanical laws inherent in the 
 things themselves. 
 
 Proceeding from the fixed relation between 
 matter and force as an indestructible basis, empi- 
 rical philosophy must arrive at results which dis- 
 card every kind of supranaturalism and idealism 
 in the explanation of natural events, considering 
 the latter as perfectly independent of any ex- 
 ternal power. The final victory of this kind of 
 philosophical cognition cannot be doubted. The 
 strength of its proofs lies in facts, not in unintel- 
 ligible and empty phrases. There is, in the end, 
 no fighting against facts; it is like kicking 
 against the pricks. 
 
 It is needless to observe that our expositions 
 have nought in common with the conceptions of 
 the old "natural-philosophical" school. The 
 singular attempts to construe nature out of 
 thought instead of from observation have failed, 
 and brought the adherents to that school into 
 
PREFACE TO FIEST EDITION. XIX 
 
 such, discredit, that the name i( natural-philoso- 
 pher" has become a byword and a nickname. It 
 is clear that the reproach does only attach to a 
 certain school, not to the philosophy of nature. 
 Nature and observation is the watchword of our 
 time. The failure of the attempts of the old 
 school, clearly proves that the world is not the 
 realisation of an individual creative intelligence, 
 but a complex of things and facts, which, we 
 must examine as it is, not as our fancy imagines 
 it. " We must take things as they really are," 
 says Yirchow, " not as we imagine them to be." 
 We shall endeavour to support our views by 
 plain facts, and avoid as much as possible that 
 philosophical technical language which has 
 brought theoretical philosophy, especially the 
 German, into bad repute. It lies in .the nature 
 of philosophy that it should be common pro- 
 perty. Expositions which are not intelligible to 
 an educated man, are scarcely worth the ink 
 they are printed with. Whatever is clearly con- 
 ceived can be clearly expressed. The philoso- 
 phical mists which envelope the writings of 
 scholars, appear intended more to conceal than 
 to exhibit their thoughts. 
 
 The times of scholastic bombast, of philoso- 
 phical charlatanism, or, as Cotta says, of intel- 
 lectual jugglery, are passing away. May our 
 German philosophy soon perceive that words are 
 not facts, and that, to be understood, we must 
 use intelligible language. 
 
 % 
 
XX PREFACE TO FIEST EDITION. 
 
 We shall not be in want of opponents ; but 
 we shall only notice those who speak from expe- 
 rience, and combat us with facts. Speculative 
 philosophers may fight among themselves from 
 their own points of view; but they should not 
 delude themselves into the belief that they alone 
 are in possession of philosophical truth. c( Spe- 
 culation/'' says Ludwig Feuerbach, " is philoso- 
 phy intoxicated ; let philosophy get sober again ; 
 it will then be to the mind what pure spring 
 water is to the body." 
 
 
PEEFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. 
 
 " Nothing is so irresistible as truth, as nature." 
 
 George Förster. 
 
 Two editions having been exhausted within a 
 few months, the author, in taking* up his pen to 
 write a preface to this third edition, feels himself 
 seized by conflicting emotions, of the nature of 
 which he vainly endeavours to give a faithful 
 representation. It is not vanity, though that 
 might be excusable in an author who meets with 
 so much success in his first work ; it is a feeling 
 superior to all selfish considerations. He ascribes 
 his success rather to the remarkable intellectual 
 direction of the time in which we live. Appa- 
 rently sunk into a torpid and relaxed state, and 
 seemingly incapable of taking any lively interest 
 in progress, there is nevertheless a deep intel- 
 lectual undercurrent not visible to the superficial 
 observer. 
 
 On investigating the causes of this intellectual 
 commotion, we believe they are to be found in the 
 influence which the development of the natural 
 sciences has for some years past exercised on 
 mental activity. This influence proceeds slowly 
 and noiselessly, but irresistibly. The great dis- 
 coveries in these sciences have opened to nations 
 
XX11 PEEPACE TO THIBD EDITION. 
 
 and to individuals new and vast prospects. By 
 directing investigation to facts, they have com- 
 pelled thought to leave the misty and sterile 
 regions of speculative dreams, and to descend to 
 real life. There has thus been given to thought 
 a direction opposed to a blind belief in authori- 
 ties, or mental slavery, which has produced 
 an agitation that finally will lead to good results. 
 
 Having premised this much, the author hopes 
 that the reader will excuse him if he now under- 
 takes to reply to some criticisms and some public 
 attacks, of which this work, since its appearance, 
 has been the object. 
 
 Seizing upon some defects of style, expres- 
 sions, and apparent contradictions, these oppo- 
 nents thought that they could refute views and 
 inferences, the gist of which was, from want of 
 scientific research, perfectly unintelligible to 
 them. We were the less bound to break silence, 
 from having, in our preface to the first edition, 
 expressly declared that we should only notice 
 such critics as meet us with facts. None of our 
 opponents have attempted to do so ; we merely 
 hear the well-known phrases of philosophical 
 intolerance, of religious fanaticism, and of gross 
 ignorance. If, then, despite of our principle, we 
 defend ourselves, we are induced to do so by the 
 urgent desire of our publisher, and still more on 
 account of the large number of our readers 
 whose avocations may not enable them at first 
 sight to detect the sophistry of our opponents. 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. XX111 
 
 An author, it is true, should not be very sensi- 
 tive ; and, however severe and lacerating- a 
 criticism may be, he must needs submit to it. 
 But the tone which some of our critics have 
 assumed transgresses the limits of legitimate 
 censure, and is more adapted to that pothouse of 
 which Carl Gutzkow speaks in his Domestic Dia- 
 logues; self-defence becomes then a necessity. 
 
 The attacks made upon the author and his 
 work are too numerous to enable him to reply to 
 all of them. We shall, therefore, confine our- 
 selves to a few of the principal. 
 
 We shall pass over the fierce denunciations of 
 the Frankfurter Katholische Kirchenblatt (vol. xxvi, 
 page 55), conducted by parish priest Beda Weber. 
 The melancholy notoriety which that individual 
 has acquired, as one of the most eccentric of the 
 Ultramontane party, permits us simply to dis- 
 miss him. We shall only tell the reader that 
 the Frankfurter Kirchenblatt carries its hatred 
 against the modern direction of science so far as 
 to recommend the application of the criminal law 
 against its representatives. The public may thus 
 learn what these gentlemen are capable of, 
 should they ever become possessed of power. 
 The same bloody hatred with which science was 
 once persecuted by religious fanaticism would 
 revive anew, and with it the inquisition and auto 
 daf4s, and all the horrors with which a refined 
 zealotism has tortured humanity, would be re- 
 ported to, to satisfy the wishes of these theolo- 
 
XXIV PEEEACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 gical cut-throats. We must turn from these 
 enemies, quite unworthy of a serious refutation, 
 to another opponent. 
 
 The Allgemeine Zeitung, it is well known, is 
 better informed of everything which passes in 
 heaven and upon earth than- God himself. We 
 were, therefore, not surprised to find in the sup- 
 plement of the 21st August, 1855, an article 
 entitled " Philosophy and Materialism", in which 
 a learned Munich critic enlightens us and the 
 public concerning the weakness of our position, 
 and the wrong done to. speculative philosophy. 
 This critic considers our work perfectly insignifi- 
 cant, yet noteworthy as a sign of the times. The 
 tone, however, shows that our metaphysician is 
 somewhat doubtful whether the realistic ten- 
 dency represented by us may not diminish the 
 value of his philosophical lectures, to be deli- 
 vered in the ensuing university terms. The 
 little wooden thrones, from which these gentle- 
 men were hitherto in the habit of exhibiting to 
 the public their philosophical dissolving views, 
 begin to totter and threaten to fall to pieces. 
 It is not astonishing, then, that a cry of lamenta- 
 tion arises, which is always heard when life or 
 property is in danger. 
 
 Our critic, as may "Be easily conceived, is not 
 only wiser and better informed than we are, but 
 is even superior to revelation, religion, and all 
 philosophical systems, which he considers as 
 views already estimated according to their value, 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. XXV 
 
 and which have only been subservient to prepare 
 the ground for the last discovery of speculative 
 philosophy. This mighty discovery — let the 
 reader listen and be astonished, and let him not 
 hesitate to take off his hat and bow in humble 
 submission — consists in a " self-conscious, all- 
 penetrating God", in whom the critic finds " the 
 basis for the effects in nature and history." 
 Modern philosophy has, according to him, 
 proved that time and space are the forms in 
 which the ideal being of spirit manifests and 
 realises itself; so that God is not beyond, but 
 fills and penetrates, time and space. If this be 
 the quintessence of the new philosophy, certainly 
 no one whom the sublime nonsense of this phi- 
 losophical hypothesis cannot render happy, can 
 entertain a doubt as to the justice of our remarks 
 on the speculative absurdities of our philoso- 
 phers. " Self-consciousness — all-penetrating — 
 realisation of the ideal being of spirit — space and 
 time filling" — truly a great deal for one God, 
 who, as it seems, is not merely to satisfy the 
 philosopher, but also the theologian ! let, then, 
 philosophy continue to find in this manner the 
 basis of all the facts in nature and the events 
 in history ; natural science will never be tempted 
 to follow it in its erratic flights. 
 
 The first principle, according to our critic, is 
 our self-consciousness — the cogito ergo sum. It 
 is a pity that the representatives of the latest 
 philosophical theory were obliged to resort to an 
 
XXVI PEEEACE TO THIED EDITION. 
 
 antiquated logical petitio prindpii like the cogito 
 ergo sum (I think, and therefore I exist). The 
 Ci I think" pre-supposes the " I am", for he who 
 is not, thinks not. We might as well say, the 
 dog barks, therefore the dog exists. The plainest 
 intellect must perceive that nothing is gained 
 and nothing refuted by such a play upon words. 
 That self-consciousness, or the cognition of the 
 ego is nothing absolute, nothing supernatural, as 
 spiritual philosophy asserts, but a purely rela- 
 tive notion, acquired in a sensual and objective 
 way, may be inferred from the development of 
 the child's mind, which only gradually and from 
 experience arrives at the cognition of his person- 
 ality (see the chapter on ( ' Innate Ideas") . The 
 animal also possesses an ego and self- conscious- 
 ness; but nobody is inclined to consider this 
 consciousness as something absolute or divine. 
 
 With regard to the relation of spirit and mat- 
 ter, our critic thinks he can refute us in pointing 
 out the impossibility of explaining the mode of 
 their connection. He must only have skimmed 
 over what we stated on this subject. We have 
 nowhere asserted that we are able to give any 
 explanation. Here and there we only attempted 
 to indicate the possibility of understanding the 
 connection. The gist of our assertion lies in the 
 regularity and necessity of the connection be- 
 tween matter and mind, and in their insepara- 
 bility, assertions which we believe to have 
 proved. He cannot be helped, who is wilfully 
 
PEEFACE TO THIRD EDITION. XXV11 
 
 "blind to facts. Our critic fights against wind- 
 mills in bringing to his aid the passage of Vogt 
 on the connection of brain and soul, inasmuch as 
 we have written a separate chapter against 
 Yogt's comparison. 
 
 This critic has, also, his peculiar views respect- 
 ing the forces and causes producing the living 
 organism. No naturalist, he contends, has yet 
 been able to explain how, by merely mechanical, 
 physical, or chemical forces, an eye, for instance, 
 might be formed. Indeed, no naturalist has 
 yet attempted such an unprofitable task. The 
 naturalist merely proves that there are no 
 other forces in nature beside the physical, 
 chemical, and mechanical ; and infers irresistibly 
 that the organisms must also have been produced 
 by these forces. As to the how, it must be ad- 
 mitted that our knowledge is but scanty, and 
 perhaps can never be complete ; but that it is so 
 cannot be doubted. But to return to our critic, 
 who believes that it is incogitable or impossible 
 that the mechanical, physical, or chemical forces 
 should have formed an eye : we might ask him, if 
 not these,, what else ? Yital force cannot be 
 appealed to; that is scientifically dead. The 
 critic can only reply, (( Self-conscious, all-pene- 
 trating divinity has formed it." We reply with 
 a second question, " What has formed that God?" 
 Answer : "He has either created himself, or he 
 is eternal." But, if so perfect a being like Grod 
 has created itself, why should not so imperfect 
 
XXVL11 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 a being as the world, an organism, an eye, have 
 been formed by its own forces ? But if God is 
 called eternal, the world is also eternal, and thus 
 excludes the idea of a causal principle, or renders 
 it unnecessary. Therefore — quod erat demon- 
 strandum — nature, with its mechanical, chemical, 
 and physical forces, is the producer of the organ- 
 isms. The search of philosophers after a first 
 cause is like ascending an endless ladder. 
 
 What our critic further says on the relation of 
 modern philosophy to spiritualism on the one 
 hand, and to materialism on the other, we con- 
 fess it without shame, is perfectly unintelligible 
 to us. The " thought filter" (to use his own 
 expression) of our critic is, no doubt, more finely 
 organised than ours, so that it can retain an 
 obscure adage of mystical philosophy which 
 escapes through the coarse loops of our cere- 
 bral fibres. 
 
 And because, finally, we have proved by facts 
 that there subsists no qualitative but only a 
 quantitative difference between the human and the 
 animal soul, a subject easily to be understood, and 
 about which there exists scarcely any difference of 
 opinion among educated people, our critic main- 
 tains that we proclaim the brutalisation of hu- 
 manity. If some one were to say, l( the ass is a 
 stupid animal because the oven is black", the 
 assertion would indicate as much acuteness as that 
 of our opponent. In struggling with such pen- 
 heroes, it seems to us that we are acting like 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. XXIX 
 
 Don Quixote. We must, then, give in, and 
 allow the Allgemeine Zeitung to spread its privi- 
 leged old professorial and ex-cathedra wisdom 
 over all Germany. 
 
 Another man now throws from his "domestic" 
 hearth" his blunt lance in our face. No one 
 who has read our work can doubt that it is not 
 adapted for conversation at the fire- side. Yet 
 Mr. Karl Gutzkow could not deny himself the 
 pleasure of bringing our (C Titanic Force and Mat- 
 ter", as he is pleased to call it, before the forum 
 of coffee-pots and frying-pans.* In such com- 
 pany he attacks the tendency of a philosophy 
 which must certainly from such a stand-point 
 appear e< Titanic". Mr. Gutzkow, as is well 
 known, has never impeded the daring flight of 
 his genius by the ballast of science ; and no one 
 would have felt hurt if he had confined his ob- 
 servations within the modest sphere of his intel- 
 lectuality, and had kept his thoughts concerning 
 " Force and Matter" to himself. But his cou- 
 rageous ambition impelled him to attack the 
 Titanic work on its strongest side. The author 
 has no idea of instructing Mr. Gutzkow ; and, to 
 show to him how utterly untenable are his argu- 
 ments in favour of poor, expiring vital force, he 
 would only remind him, in his own interest, that 
 the noble valour with which the " Domestic 
 Hearth" defends the oppressed vitality is this 
 
 * See Karl Gutzkow, Unterhaltungen aus häuslichen 
 Herd, No. 51, 1855, "Anregungen". 
 
XXX PREFACE TO THIED EDITION. 
 
 time not allied to discretion. When, therefore, 
 Mr. Gutzkow observes that candour is praise- 
 worthy, but that courage and discretion should 
 be united, we cannot conceive why he did not 
 follow the precept himself. If he would take the 
 trouble of being for one or two terms a pupil of 
 the philosopher of the Allgemeine Zeitung, to 
 learn some speculative sophisms in regard to 
 time and space, and an all-penetrating divinity, 
 then he would, in case he should again attack 
 our Titanic work, know bow to unite domestic 
 nonsense with undomestic unintelligibility. But 
 let him, until he has done so, remain in the 
 harmless sphere of his " Erwägungen", and let 
 him apply his popular efforts to learning some- 
 thing from popular books, instead of showing a 
 want of discretion in criticising them. In this 
 manner the author of the Ritter vom Geiste may 
 gradually succeed in acquiring some notions 
 of the spirit which animates modern natural 
 science. 
 
 Frorn Mr. Gutzkow we pass to his quondam 
 friend and fellow-labourer in the literary vine- 
 yard, Mr. Wolfgang Menzel in Stuttgardt, whose 
 very old and recently resuscitated Literaturblatt 
 (No. 25, Jan. 1855) opened a similar crusade 
 against us and the hydra of materialism. " Old 
 love," says the proverb, " does not become rusty." 
 We find, therefore, after a long enmity, the 
 former demagogue and devourer of the French, 
 and the quondam leader of Young Germany, 
 
PREFACE TO THIED EDITION. XXXI 
 
 standing before the walls of materialism and 
 attacking it with the same weapons. May this 
 new harmony between them never again be 
 disturbed ! 
 
 Despite the change of his convictions, Men- 
 zels manner has always remained the same as it 
 was thirty years ago. He finds a singular plea- 
 sure in coarse epithets, such as " the most vulgar 
 blasphemy/ ' " man the son of a monkey, a 
 bestial machine, a brute automaton, the meanest 
 empiricism, contamination of youth/' etc. How- 
 ever little such expressions are worthy of an 
 educated man, they do not surprise us in Menzel, 
 having been long accustomed to find them in his 
 writings. Almost in every branch of literature 
 there are some persons who, by a long-continued 
 vulgarity, have acquired a license which they use 
 at every opportunity. 
 
 We can the less conceive why Mr. Menzel 
 should be so angry with us, inasmuch as he de- 
 clares that we do not produce " a single new and 
 original idea", but have merely copied " the well 
 known principles of old and modern materialists." 
 The same reproach has been made to us in seve- 
 ral quarters. Thus the Spenersche Zeitung re- 
 proaches us for having appropriated other per- 
 sons' thoughts, being deficient in original ideas. 
 If this really be so — and we are not bold enough 
 to say we could produce a thought which has 
 not already been expressed before our time — if 
 this be so, whence- that violent anger which 
 
XXXll PREFACE TO THIED EDITION. 
 
 Menzel and many others have exhibited against 
 us? Have these terrible enemies, from whom 
 we have copied, not been long exterminated by 
 Menzel and his companions ? The feeling of 
 their own weakness in contending against our 
 facts has blinded our opponents, so that they 
 strike in the dark. They feel vexed that we 
 were not so imprudent to venture alone upon the 
 battle-field, but took the precaution of support- 
 ing our views by the opinions of noted scientific 
 and philosophical writers of ancient and modern 
 times. With regard to these facts, it is self- 
 evident that they could not have been established 
 by the author; for they are the results of the 
 laborious investigations of a vast number of in- 
 quirers. Our opponents should, besides, con- 
 sider that ive are not the inventors of the world, 
 and are therefore not responsible for the deduc- 
 tions which the contemplation of nature may 
 impress upon the human mind. If Mr. Menzel 
 is not pleased with the facts, which he is neither 
 willing nor able to deny, he must quarrel with 
 his creator, not with us. 
 
 But, though we may not be able to find any 
 justification for Mr. Menzel' s wrath with regard 
 to the facts, we still think there is some other 
 ground for it. In the introduction of Mr. Men- 
 zels review of our work occurs the following pas- 
 sage : " This book, written with much apparent 
 calmness, nay, with a certain unction and im- 
 mense self-sufficiency, conceals yet beneath its 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. XXX111 
 
 phlegmatic physiognomy the most virulent hatred 
 of Christianity." 
 
 It is, then, our calmness which so excites 
 MenzeFs bile. He finds it revolting that other 
 persons do not write with such passionate coarse- 
 ness as he does. The fact is, that every one 
 who is solely intent in search of truth deduced 
 from actual facts, will always write with calm- 
 ness in treating of difficult problems. With re- 
 gard to our presumed hatred of Christianity, we 
 merely reply that it is never mentioned. 
 
 Galloping upon a higher steed than those al- 
 ready mentioned, we find a Mr. T., the corre- 
 spondent of the Berlin National Zeitung (No. 
 401, 1855). Mr. T., a philosopher by his marks, 
 commences his polemic by citing the old Grecian 
 myth of Ixion, who, sitting at the table of the 
 gods, fell in love with Juno, and was for his pre- 
 sumption cast straightway into the infernal re- 
 gions. If, then, we have understood him rightly, 
 he means to say that the attempt to solve the 
 last problems of the world and of existence is 
 pure presumption. The critic greatly overvalues 
 our humble investigations, in attributing to us 
 the pretension of solving these problems. In a 
 passage (see the chapter on " Personal Continu- 
 ance") we expressly state the problem to be in- 
 soluble. No philosophy pretends less than ours 
 to have grasped " the highest truth," to use the 
 expression of the critic. But, granting that the 
 last problem is insoluble, how can any rational 
 
 G 
 
XXXIV PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 man deduce from this admission that the philo- 
 sophical investigation of actual existence from 
 experience should be abandoned ? 
 
 Like the critic of the Allgemeine Zeitung, Mr. 
 T. passes over the main parts of our investiga- 
 tions, and attacks us immediately by pointing 
 out the inexplicability of the relation of mind 
 and matter, of brain and soul. We do not assert 
 that we can give any explanation ; we have merely 
 endeavoured to prove by facts, which no one can 
 deny, that matter and mind are inseparable, and 
 necessarily determine each other, just as matter 
 and force. 
 
 That we are able mentally to separate, and 
 even to oppose, matter and mind, proves nothing 
 in favour of the reality of their separate existence. 
 The comparison of organic with mechanical ac- 
 tivity, which Mr. T. considers as " frivolous," was 
 expressly stated to be merely approximative. 
 In consideration of such misconception, we re- 
 gret even to have, in some passages, given some 
 indications as to the possibility of understanding 
 the relations of matter to mind. We should 
 have taken the matter easy, and have said it is 
 so, explain it in your own way. If Mr. T. has 
 better words for expressing the inexplicable in- 
 ternal relations than we can command, let him 
 give them to the thirsty world ; we shall then 
 see whether " confusion and want of clearness, 
 awkwardness and obscurity of definitions/'' are 
 more frequent among materialists than among 
 the dialectic philosophers. 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION". XXXV 
 
 This " practised dialectician" is angry with us 
 for using the expressions " ideal/' " immaterial/' 
 etc., and calls us " Saul among the prophets." 
 Mr. T. has, in spite of his philosophical educa- 
 tion, not understood us. Let him point out a 
 single passage in which we deny "the idea". 
 We merely deny its origin from any source but 
 the sensual world — a theory, it is true, which 
 partly removes the ground upon which our school 
 philosophy rests. We have as little thought 
 of sitting in judgment on the ideal or rational 
 qualities of the human mind — and we are unable 
 to conceive how we can be accused of denying 
 the existence of mind — which, with its laws of/; 
 operation, is as much a natural fact as any other ; 
 in existence. Whether man be considered as a 
 product of nature or of a creative power — whether 
 the human mind be the product of material com- 
 binations or self-existent, is of little importance 
 to the investigations of the qualities it possesses, 
 and the laws to which this mind is subject. 
 
 We have not, as Mr. T. reproaches us, dili- 
 gently avoided giving a notion of organism, but 
 we have treated of it at length in the chapter 
 "Vital Force," which Mr. T. has very likely 
 passed over. It was there — as well as in the 
 chapters " Design" and " Primary Generation" 
 — shown, that the organic types did not, to ex- 
 plain them, require the assumption of a super- 
 natural scheme, but that they are the products 
 of a gradual, slow, and unconscious action of na- 
 
XXXVI PEEFACE TO THIED EDITION". 
 
 ture. Such a process seems, in the presence of 
 the wonderful organic forms which surround us, 
 miraculous to the uninitiated eye. But the eye 
 of the investigator penetrates through countless 
 periods backwards, and observes how one or- 
 ganic part has been slowly developed from ano- 
 ther. 
 
 The reproach that we know philosophy only 
 by hearsay does not hurt us, as we were prepared 
 for it. It is not the author who combats the ab- 
 stract philosophers ; it is the time and a general 
 disgust against every kind of philosophy not 
 practical, which has seized all sober minds. 
 Every mental strength is now directed towards 
 the empirical sciences of nature and history, and 
 philosophical phraseology is despised. That phi- 
 losophical idealism is equally desirous to obtain 
 facts we never doubted ; but the difference be- 
 tween Mr. T. and empirical philosophy consists 
 in the mode in which the facts are applied. 
 There the facts are constrained in an ä priori 
 system, as in a Procrustean bed, and serve merely 
 to set off the imaginative thoughts of the sys- 
 temisers; here we reverse the process. Ab- 
 stract philosophy avails herself of a general 
 notion, obtained only empirically, to found upon 
 it a philosophical structure of thoughts instead 
 of facts ; empirical philosophy, on the contrary, 
 draws every deduction from the facts themselves. 
 This contrast between empirical and abstract 
 philosophy is as old as human thought, and the 
 
PREFACE TO THIED EDITION. XXXV11 
 
 history, especially of the natural sciences, ex- 
 hibits the various phases of the struggle, the 
 progress of every period being marked by the 
 revival of experimental inquiries and the neglect 
 of speculation. How the National Zeitung, which 
 some years ago had not a little contributed to 
 shake the faith in Hegel's theory of the construc- 
 tion of the world, now again defends Hegel's 
 philosophy, is not easily explained. That we 
 have taken the field against every kind of philo- 
 sophy which is neither empirical nor abstract, 
 but conceals its want of ideas behind a learned 
 jargon, will be approved of by every rational 
 person. The National Zeitung finally appeals 
 again to the "last problem/' which no scalpel, 
 no microscope, etc., can solve. This constant 
 appeal is flattering to us, showing how far our 
 opponents have retreated. 
 
 The Allgemeine Kirchen Zeitung (No. 130, 
 1855) meets us with theological eccentricity. 
 We shall leave untouched what it says, a la R. 
 Wagner, in the introduction to a long-winded 
 article on the general and moral consequences of 
 our philosophy, as such rhodomontades as those 
 of Wagner refute themselves. We are, moreover, 
 not inclined to render ourselves morally respon- 
 sible for the inference which by individuals or 
 schools may be drawn from our empirical inves- 
 tigations. That the Kirchen Zeitung has mis- 
 conceived our meaning with regard to the de- 
 struction of the embryo has been shown in our 
 second edition. 
 
XXXV111 PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 . If the Kirchen Zeitung thinks to beat us with 
 our own expression " eternal/' which is incon- 
 ceivable by our limited faculties, we may ask 
 whether the notions of a beginning, or a crea- 
 tion, upon which the religious theory rests, can 
 be better conceived ? One is as inconceivable as 
 the other. Our thought is in time and space, 
 without any absolute notions, hence we cannot 
 emancipate ourselves from these limits. It de- 
 serves the more to be acknowledged, that empi- 
 rical science necessarily leads to the recognition 
 of an eternal world, by establishing that our finite 
 thought only gave rise to the assumption of a 
 primary cause of the world. 
 
 This critic, like many others, lays hold of se- 
 veral obscure or apparently contradictory expres- 
 sions, as if their detection could effectually refute 
 our positions. Where is the man from whose 
 head there can spring forth an exposition of the 
 relations of natural existence, which should be 
 clear and perfect in every part? We have in 
 our studies — of which we never thought that they 
 would create such a sensation, and which were 
 expressly stated to lay no claim to a system — 
 simply endeavoured to expound some general 
 philosophical results, based upon modern and 
 unprejudiced investigations of natural science. 
 Let those who may attempt to form a system fill 
 up the existing gaps and defects. But the critic 
 exhibits such a strange ignorance of natural sci- 
 ence, that the misconceptions are his own. We 
 
PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. XXXIX 
 
 are by no means surprised that he finds our 
 assertion, that man originated from the animal 
 world, " whimsical.-" That the origin of man 
 could not have proceeded otherwise than from an 
 animal being standing next him can, on general 
 grounds, be scarcely doubted, although the mode 
 of the process may be unknown to us. 
 
 The National Zeitung lays particular stress 
 upon the relation of modern science to religion 
 and faith. "We are not inclined to enlarge here 
 upon the theme of knowing and believing. We 
 have already in the first, and still more in the 
 second, edition of this work declared that we re- 
 main perfectly indifferent and neutral in this 
 respect. Let each individual believe as much 
 or as little as he chooses. " We cannot," says 
 Virchow, " scientifically contend with belief, for 
 science and faith exclude each other." Our the- 
 ologians are, however, in error in assuming that 
 religion is incompatible with a philosophical con- 
 viction based upon a knowledge of nature, upon 
 no other ground than because they are accus- 
 tomed to look upon their religion and church as 
 identical with religion and church in general. 
 . That a religion is possible without the as- 
 sumption of a supernatural being is shown by 
 Buddhism (see the chapter on " Personal Con- 
 tinuance") and all natural religions. It is pos- 
 sible that the Religion of the Future, of which so 
 much is spoken, may be a naturalistic system, in 
 which the principle of humanity may supersede 
 that of fear and self-interest. " When," ex- 
 
■ 
 xl PREFACE TO THIED EDITION. 
 
 claims George Forster, " will the time come that 
 men will learn, that the spring of the noblest 
 and most sublime actions has nothing to do with 
 our notions of Grod and of a life after death I" 
 
 In our observations on design in nature the 
 Kirchen Zeitung finds contradictions, in pointing 
 out that we sometimes speak of necessity and 
 sometimes of accident, which cannot be recon- 
 ciled. But it is very easy to show that, during 
 the origin of natural bodies, these momenta acted 
 simultaneously. The mode of their action will 
 ever remain recondite, but the fact is evident. 
 
 When the Kirchen Zeitung thinks that modern 
 philosophy has explained the antithesis between 
 " natural" and <( supernatural," it may be con- 
 vinced of its error on reading the lucubrations of 
 the philosopher of the Allgemeine Zeitung. Whilst 
 the latter finds the explanation of existence in a 
 philosophical, self-conscious, all-penetrating Grod, 
 the Kirchen Zeitung finds it in the " belief in a 
 living Grod, who became man in Jesus Christ 
 who redeemed the world." This, indeed, is not 
 philosophical but theological ; and the Kirchen 
 Zeitung has the merit of having, for all who 
 adopt this belief, overcome the antithesis be- 
 tween natural and supernatural. 
 
 The Kirchen Zeitung finishes with some pious 
 ejaculations and heart-rending groans, which ap- 
 pear somewhat ludicrous after the triumphant 
 manner in which it thinks to have refuted our 
 views, reminding us of the French proverb, II n'y 
 a que la verite qui blesse. 
 
PREFACE TO THIED EDITION. xli 
 
 Not unlike the Berlin National Zeitung, the 
 Aachener Zeitung (July 19, 1855) harps on the 
 last problem, or " the last truth/' It maintains 
 that our views can never be adopted as truths, 
 " as the supersensual cannot be conceived." But, 
 according to this, the whole gist of our theory is 
 adopted and admitted. Our opponents, philoso- 
 phers and theologians, assert the comprehension 
 of the supersensual, some by reasoning, others 
 by faith and revelation. We, on the contrary, 
 maintain that human thought and human know- 
 ledge are incapable of discovering, or knowing 
 anything supersensual. This is the necessary 
 general result of modern investigations. What 
 more is required ? Some arrived at this stage 
 may exclaim, " There is no supersensual world ;" 
 others may say, " We begin to believe where our 
 knowledge ends :" we do not feel bound to advise 
 in this matter; let each one satisfy his con- 
 science the best way he can. 
 
 To prove the existence of supersensual things, 
 the Aachener Zeitung appeals to "conscience," 
 and again to " life." But life is in relation to its 
 final cause, like all existence, unfathomable ; and 
 what concerns conscience we believe we have, in 
 the chapter " On Innate Ideas," proved the sen- 
 sual origin of moral ideas. 
 
 The pious poet of the Frankfurter Anzeiger, 
 who, on our account, paid for two insertions of 
 his verses, is hereby informed that we have 
 hitherto not yet been favoured by a visit from 
 his little angel. 
 
xlÜ PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION. 
 
 With regard to the alterations in the second 
 and third edition of this work, we observe that 
 the chapter u Man" has been omitted, as it did 
 not appear to ns to be in the right place, and 
 gave rise to inferences representing that which 
 was not exactly within the scope of onr investi- 
 gations. The chapter on " Free Will" was for 
 the same reasons altered. On the other hand, the 
 new editions have been considerably augmented 
 and improved by additional quotations from re- 
 cent works, treating of subjects pertinent to our 
 inquiries. 
 
 We shall in self-defence conclude with the 
 following remarks. We have been reproached, 
 even by individuals approving of our views, for 
 the popular tendency of our work. We should 
 not consider this reproach as ill founded, if our 
 work were really intended to be generally po- 
 pular j but that it is only intended for an edu- 
 cated public, must be admitted by every one who 
 merely glances at it. The expression u generally 
 intelligible" was, on our part, merely intended 
 to convey the idea that our mode of exposition 
 will be in contrast to that philosophical jargon, 
 so unintelligible to any one who is not himself a 
 philosophical haruspicy. That we had no desire 
 to write for this philosophical priesthood, but ad- 
 dressed ourselves to all whose education renders 
 them capable of considering the questions discussed 
 by us, is, we should think, perfectly legitimate. 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Darmstadt, October 1855. 
 
PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 "The ignorant call him a heretic whom they cannot refute." 
 
 CampanellAj Discorsi. 
 
 When the author some months since concluded 
 his preface to the third edition of this work, he 
 entertained the hope that he would now have 
 some rest from the attacks which his love for 
 truth had excited. The number of his critics, 
 and the open or concealed attacks on his per- 
 son, and the tendency of his unpretending 
 volume, has, however, increased, and is still 
 increasing. The literature concerning force and 
 matter, spirit and body, knowledge and faith, 
 nature and revelation, accumulates ; and the 
 table of the author groans under the weight of 
 replies, pamphlets, and criticisms of his work. 
 Under the protection of rusty traditions, all who 
 can wield a pen rival each other in turning their 
 weapons against the theories of the author and 
 their tendencies ; and there is scarcely anything 
 printed, in which there is not found some 
 thundering denunciation of the presumptuous 
 materialistic philosophy. Enthusiastic writers, 
 with flashing eyes, come armed with spear and 
 club, to save the state and society, morals and 
 manners, faith and religion, heaven and eternity, 
 
xliv 
 
 PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 from the dread grasp of philosophical disbelief. 
 A general agitation has seized all timid minds, 
 giving vent to strange ejaculations ; and official 
 science, in cap and gown, seems to have ordered 
 a general day of humiliation, from which the 
 modern revolutionists and atheists are to be ex- 
 cluded. The author must even submit, being in 
 his immediate vicinity taken to task, commented 
 upon, and refuted from the pulpit. 
 
 However deafening such a noise may be for 
 many, it is little apt to affect and to confuse a 
 man in advance of his age. He beholds the 
 struggle of the contending parties from a higher 
 point of view, and sees in the eccentricities of 
 this contest merely the natural and necessary 
 expression of the opposing elements which agi- 
 tate our time, the character of which cannot be 
 hidden from any one who looks merely at the 
 surface of the social and political relations of the 
 present time. From this struggle of extreme 
 opinions, no rational man can doubt truth will 
 finally emerge the victor. 
 
 It would be a futile attempt on the part of the 
 author to repel all attacks directed against his 
 person, or to ward off the whole pack which bark 
 at him from every printing office. The gentle 
 reader must, therefore, not consider it a sign of 
 timidity on the part of the author, if in this pre- 
 face he meets only a few of his opponents, chiefly 
 one of them, who from his eminent position en- 
 joys a wide-spread reputation, and who, though 
 
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. xlv 
 
 he has not attacked the author personally, has 
 assailed the tendency of his theories. It was 
 not advisable to leave strictures coming from 
 such a quarter unnoticed. 
 
 Our opponents, it seems, fight less against 
 our expositions and views than against their 
 own conceits and false inferences, which they 
 draw from our positions — tactics which are as 
 contemptible as they 'are used up — but which, 
 among the multitude who neither read nor ex- 
 amine, fail not in their effects. The educated' 
 public, fortunately, takes sufficient interest in 
 this discussion that the author may hope not to 
 be condemned unheard, and to be in their eyes 
 justified with regard to the scientific and logical 
 consistency of his views. 
 
 The Allgemeine Zeitung of the 24th and 25th 
 of January, J. 856, contains a lecture " On In- 
 organic Nature and Organic Life", which Liebig, 
 one of our first scientific chemists, delivered in 
 the chemical laboratory of Munich, and in which, 
 according to the reporter of the Allgemeine Zei- 
 tung, he had " broken the staff" over the pre- 
 sumptions of materialism. We are unable to 
 say whether the reporter has rightly understood 
 Baron von Liebig ■ we merely know it from the 
 published report, which has never been impugned 
 by the Baron. This silence justifies us in as- 
 suming the correctness of the report, and in con- 
 sidering the opinions expressed therein as those 
 of the lecturer. The public at large, and the lite- 
 
xlvi PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 rary world, have, indeed, not delayed to draw 
 from the words of this celebrity all the inferences 
 which suited them, and to use them as weapons 
 against all philosophical tendencies resembling 
 those of the author. As in all similar cases, they 
 overshot the mark ; so that the greater part of 
 the inferences lost all their value on close ex- 
 amination. In the shape in which the address 
 lies before us, it does not contain a tithe of what 
 orthodox bigots inferred from it; it does not 
 even contain what the sanguine reporter thinks he 
 finds, viz. -an attack against scientific material- 
 ism and kindred views. What the address really 
 contains is, first an apology for " vital force"; 
 and secondly, some short and by no means 
 searching remarks on the relation of body and 
 soul, and which, as we shall presently show, 
 afford not a shadow of proof against our asser- 
 tions. Let him, who can in these two exposi- 
 tions find a vindication of theological or philo- 
 sophical prejudices, rejoice ; the remaining por- 
 tion of the public will not infer more from the 
 words of the celebrated chemist than can ration- 
 ally be inferred. 
 
 Proceeding from a chemical point of view, 
 Liebig appears as the defender of what we er- 
 roneously had considered as sufficiently cri- 
 ticised, viz. " vital force", or u a peculiar, 
 higher organic power acting in the living body", 
 through which the phenomena of life are pro- 
 duced partly independent of the general laws of 
 
PEEEACE TO POUETH EDITION. xlvÜ 
 
 nature. Baron Liebig commences the polemical 
 part of his address in calling the dissenters from 
 this doctrine " dilettanti and promenaders in the 
 provinces of natural science." We are justified 
 in raising our voice against such a kind of po- 
 lemics; it being known that nothing is easier, 
 and consequently more frequently resorted to, 
 than to reproach opponents with ignorance or 
 dilettantism. Such a convenient and personal 
 argument cuts off at once any serious discussion. 
 Science has nought to do with persons, but with 
 objects ; and whoever makes such reproaches, 
 lays himself open to the suspicion that he is un- 
 able to meet his opponents on any other than 
 personal grounds, and also to the danger that 
 they will retort in a similar manner. The higher 
 the position which a person occupies in the sci- 
 entific world, the more is he called upon to be 
 cautious in using such means, as his assertions 
 carry great weight. He should despise casting 
 a weight in the balance which, in the eyes of the 
 uninitiated, seems heavier than it actually is. 
 
 With regard to the persons against whom 
 these reproaches seem directed, the author is not 
 vain enough to include himself ; but against such 
 men as Carl Yogt, Jacob Moleschott, and other 
 authorities in science who dissent from Liebig in 
 both the above views, the expressions used sim- 
 ply show that an excessive self-esteem may take 
 prisoner the reason of even the most meritorious. 
 
 In what concerns " vital force", the author 
 
Xlvüi PEEEACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 would willingly, if space permitted, for the bene- 
 fit of Baron Liebig and the " ignorant and cre- 
 dulous public" (the Baron's words), insert here a 
 condensed anthology from the writings of our 
 most esteemed physiologists and physicians, from 
 which he and the public will perceive how unan- 
 imous is the judgment which these {C children 
 in the knowledge of nature" pass on the notion 
 of " vital force". 
 
 " Old vitalism," says the celebrated Yirchow 
 (at present our most esteemed medical writer), 
 in an essay just published, " Old and New Vital- 
 ism,* finds its centre in the theory of vital force. 
 This doctrine has in Germany passed through so 
 many critical ordeals, that it has almost disap- 
 peared from the mouth of the scholar, unless 
 some one takes pleasure in giving it the coujp de 
 grace." Dubois Reymond declared already, in 
 1848, in his great work on animal electricity, 
 1 ' Those who preach the error of a vital power, 
 under any form or delusive disguise, are, they 
 may rest assured, heads which have never pene- 
 trated the gates of science." Yirchow says, in 
 another part of the essay cited above, " The old 
 doctrine of a vital power is not merely erroneous 
 but a pure superstition, which cannot conceal its 
 relationship with the doctrine of the devil, and 
 the search after the philosopher's stone." f 
 
 * Archiv fur Pathol. Anatomie und Physiologie, ix Band. 
 
 f Professor Virchow, it is true, defends the retention of 
 
 the words vital force as an imparted motion not inherent 
 
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. xlix 
 
 Baron Liebig thinks that lie can support his 
 vote in favour of vital force from a chemical 
 point of view. He overlooks the circumstance 
 that chemistry alone is not competent to decide 
 this question, but that physics and mechanics 
 have also something to say, and that the final 
 decision rests with physiology and medicine. 
 Liebig is a great chemist, no doubt. Who can 
 contest this ? His reputation is general over the. 
 globe, and his fatherland is proud of him. But 
 as one man cannot be everything, nobody will be 
 surprised to hear that Liebig is not equally great 
 as a physiologist; and that there are even well- 
 informed individuals who consider Liebig, in 
 spite of his great merit in the explanation of the 
 phase of matter in plants and animals, even in 
 this part of the inquiry as a mere "amateur 
 and promenader." We are sorry to mention 
 this, but there was no other way of enabling 
 "the ignorant and credulous in ob" to under- 
 
 in the materials. But lie does so in a sense quite opposed 
 to that hitherto attached to the expression. Thus he ob- 
 serves, page 23 : " Of vital force, in the mechanical sense in 
 which I take it, I have no doubt that it must be considered 
 as the result of a definite joint action of physical and che- 
 mical forces." When the author, incited by Moleschott's 
 expositions, formed the plan of this work, without antici- 
 pating 1 its fate, he reluctantly introduced the chapter " Vital 
 Force", as he then thought the subject had been sufficiently 
 discussed and settled, so that there was no necessity to 
 touch upon it. To his astonishment, the author found that 
 he had misjudged the scientific attainments of his contem- 
 poraries. 
 
 d 
 
1 PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 stand and to estimate the personal and scien- 
 tific position of Baron Liebig in relation to 
 the question of vital force. We should be led 
 too far, nor would it possess sufficient interest 
 for our readers, were we, in this place specially, 
 to discuss this important and complicated ques- 
 tion, and to show ab ovo why this notion has 
 been rejected. We must not, however, neglect 
 to draw the attention of the reader to some 
 patent misconceptions and contradictions in 
 Liebig' s views relative to vital force. "It is 
 clear as the sun/' says Liebig, "that chemical 
 agents are active in the body." But then we 
 find, in the introduction of the lecture, that the 
 process in the plant is " a contrast to inorganic 
 processes ;" again, " air, water, oxygen, and 
 carbon lose their chemical character in the or- 
 ganism of the plant ;" again, ' { there is in the 
 living body a cause which dominates the che- 
 mical and physical forces of matter •" ag*ain, 
 " deficiency of knowledge in relation to inorganic 
 forces, is the reason why many deny the exist- 
 ence of a peculiar force in organic beings, and 
 why powers are ascribed to inorganic forces op- 
 posed to their nature and laws •" and, finally, 
 " chemical forces act in the organism under the 
 influence of a non-chemical force." How these 
 assertions can be rationally reconciled is not 
 easy to conceive. There are chemical forces 
 acting in the living body, then again they are 
 not acting, and an unknown " organic higher 
 
PREFACE TO POURTH EDITION. H 
 
 power" is represented as the overseer and fore- 
 man of the subordinate inorganic forces ! A 
 strong faith is indeed required to adhere to such 
 a doctrine, and it might be interesting to learn 
 how Liebig expounds such an impossible rela- 
 tion. The organism either obeys or does not 
 obey the chemical laws ; but that it obeys them 
 here and not there — that it serves them here and 
 opposes them there, is impossible. That many 
 chemical processes, within the organism, differ 
 in mode from those out of the organism is un- 
 deniable ; but are these processes on that ac- 
 count other than chemical processes determined 
 by a non-chemical force ? Why, then, is the 
 science of organic decomposition and combina- 
 tion called organic chemistry ? It is clear as 
 the sun : the same elementary materials enter 
 the organism as in inorganic bodies, and no real 
 naturalist doubts that forces are but qualities or 
 motions of matter, and that, consequently, no 
 other forces can act in organic beings but such 
 as pertaiu to such matter, i.e., the general forces 
 of nature. That the chief constituents of or- 
 ganic bodies exhibit different relations, because 
 they are so infinitely complicated that the least 
 variation in the arrangement of the atoms ex- 
 hibits a variety of motions not observable in 
 their inorganic combinations, and presents thus 
 an impenetrable mystery with regard to their 
 mode of action, all this cannot justify us in in- 
 ferring that these materials are within the or- 
 
1Ü PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 ganism withdrawn from their immanent physical 
 and chemical motions, and that they obey a pe- 
 culiar, separate, designing, higher organic force. 
 From not knowing* the essential laws which re- 
 gulate this action, mental indolence helped itself 
 by reposing upon the easy chair of an unknown 
 and incalculable higher power, and by admiring 
 miracle — a proceeding which stops all further in- 
 quiry. Liebig's error consists in this : that he 
 does not distinguish between life and vital force. 
 Life in its inmost relations is certainly a book 
 with seven seals — riddle upon riddle. It is true 
 that, with all our knowledge, we skim only at 
 the surface of life ; it is true that life is some- 
 thing peculiar ; that the elements are not in im- 
 mediate relation, as in inorganic nature, but by 
 the mediation of a peculiar organic formation — 
 the cell; but, in spite of all this, we decidedly 
 deny the existence of an independent force domi- 
 nating the physical and chemical forces, which 
 Baron Liebig assumes. As far as science has pe- 
 netrated, life was ever seen to obey the direction 
 given to it by chemical, physical, and mechanical 
 laws. The term " vital force - ''' is an improper de- 
 signation of natural effects as yet unknown to us 
 in their relations, and, according to Vogt, it is a 
 mere periphrase for ignorance. " We cannot 
 say," observes Yirchow, '"''that cell-formation is 
 not mechanical, because we cannot reduce it to 
 its mechanical value ; for, with the same right, 
 the aboriginal of New Holland might contend 
 
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. liii 
 
 that steam engines cannot be reduced to me- 
 chanical laws." And Baron Liebig seems to 
 have forgotten that he once wrote in his Che- 
 mical Letters (page 18) : "Therefore they (igno- 
 rant physicians) present us with impossible the- 
 ories, and furnish themselves, in the word vital 
 ■power, with a wonderful thing, by which they ex- 
 plain all those phenomena which they do not 
 understand. With a certain inconceivable, in- 
 definite something, everything may be explained 
 that is incomprehensible." 
 
 What right has now Baron Liebig to accuse 
 these deniers of vital force that they wish " to 
 expound to the ignorant and credulous public 
 the origin of the world and of life" ? That the 
 world has not c< originated", the deniers of vital 
 force are very much agreed in. As to the how life 
 originated, nothing but presumptions and hypo- 
 theses can be offered; but these hypotheses all 
 agree that this origin proceeded from natural 
 laws and forces, inherent in the things them- 
 selves, and determined by external nature. If 
 Baron Liebig wishes to obtain some idea how we 
 may conceive the first origin of an organic body 
 from inorganic nature, we would recommend 
 him to read the Physiologische Vorträge by Be- 
 nehe (Oldenburg, 1856). 
 
 The question of the first origin of organic 
 beings upon the earth contains, in fact, the gist 
 of the whole matter in dispute in regard to vital 
 force. Baron Liebig must have felt this, for he 
 
liv 
 
 PEEFACE TO POUETH EDITION. 
 
 immediately passes from his disquisition on vital 
 force on to the question of spontaneous genera- 
 tion. Cells are, under our own eyes, developed 
 from cells in the most natural way; and, pre- 
 supposing the existence of a first organic ele- 
 ment, there is not much difficulty in believing 
 that the whole organic world was developed out 
 of itself, without the assistance of a peculiar 
 organic force. It is certainly unknown in what 
 way the spontaneous generation of the first or- 
 ganic form was established, but it seems clear to 
 us that this generation was natural, and arose 
 under peculiar external circumstances. " It 
 appears to me," says Virchow, " that every ra- 
 tional physiologist, who assumes an origin of life, 
 cannot but deduce it from a conjoint action of 
 chemical and physical forces." Nay, the cir- 
 cumstance which Baron Liebig mentions, that 
 geological investigations have established the 
 fact of a beginning of organic life upon the earth, 
 leaves no doubt that it can only have arisen na- 
 turally and from inorganic forces, and it is per- 
 fectly indifferent whether or not we observe such 
 a process now. " Chemistry," says Yirchow, 
 " has not yet succeeded in forming a blastema, 
 nor physics in forming a cell : what does it 
 matter ? If the history of our earth shows us 
 that there was a time when no blastema existed 
 or could have existed — when we see that pe- 
 riods arrived in which these bodies combined 
 and became organic forms, what else can we infer 
 
PEE PACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 lv 
 
 but that this wonder, i.e., this momentary mani- 
 festation of a latent law, happened under unusual 
 conditions ?"* In another place he says : " We 
 can only imagine, that at certain periods of the 
 development of the earth unusual conditions ex- 
 isted, under which the elements, entering into 
 new combinations, acquired in statu nascent e 
 vital motions, so that the usual mechanical con- 
 ditions were transformed into vital conditions." 
 And again : " The law of their formation (or- 
 ganic generation, cells) must necessarily be an 
 eternal law, so that every time when, in the 
 course of natural processes, the conditions are 
 favourable for its manifestation, organic forma- 
 tion is realised."/ The causes of this realisation 
 can only be found in a peculiar arrangement of 
 natural relations, in an unusual conjoint action 
 of the common elements, which occurs only at 
 certain moments, and the vital process must, at 
 its first origin, and in its repetitions, be owing 
 to a peculiar mode of mechanical force." 
 
 When Baron Liebig, moreover, thinks that all 
 theories respecting spontaneous generation rest 
 "upon false and superficial observations," it 
 proves very little for his physiological knowledge. 
 Notwithstanding all that has been said against 
 generatio cequivoca, the question is still an open 
 one, and the observations and experiments made 
 to elucidate it are not superficial, but the most 
 
 * Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur wissenschaftlichen Me- 
 dicin, 1856. 
 
 
 tfk> 
 
Ivi • PKEFACE TO FOUETH EDITION. 
 
 difficult and delicate of natural science, concern- 
 ing which " the ignorant and credulous public" 
 should be instructed in a more conscientious 
 manner. 
 
 When, finally, Baron Liebig thinks that he 
 sees in plants and animals " a formative idea," 
 and thus refutes the deniers of a vital force, 
 he does not seem to have considered that 
 the notion may be differently applied. On the 
 part of the author, at least, the existence of a 
 formative principle in the organic and inorganic 
 world was never denied : it was merely shown 
 that the principle is not a personal being acting 
 from design, but intimately connected with the 
 objects in which alone it is manifested. 
 
 So much for vital force ! In the second part 
 of his discourse, Baron Liebig treats chiefly of 
 the relation of brain and soul, of matter and 
 thought, although these subjects have very little 
 to do with chemistry. We must, therefore, not 
 feel surprised at finding, in his very first re- 
 marks, errors as to fact. " The brain," he says, 
 ' ' is the only internal organ upon which the will 
 has a direct power, whilst the will has no direct 
 influence on the stomach or the motions of the 
 heart." Physiology knows as little of the im- 
 mediate influence of the will upon the brain, as 
 of a voluntary motion without muscular fibres. 
 Baron Liebig, moreover, appears not to have 
 heard, that, in some rare instances, individuals 
 have possessed a voluntary power over the action 
 of the heart. 
 
PEEEACE TO FOUETH EDITION. lvÜ 
 
 Passing from physiology to philosophy, Liebig 
 singularly neglects that exact reasoning which 
 he so imperatively demands of natural science. 
 " The spiritual man/' he maintains, ' ( is not the 
 product of his senses, but the performances 
 of the senses are the products of the intelligent 
 will of man." There is no need of discussing 
 the latter part of this assertion. We can only 
 explain it by assuming that Baron Liebig has 
 become a disciple of Schopenhauer, who main- 
 tains that the will produces the whole world. 
 Should Schopenhauer and Liebig be in the right, 
 then we hope that the intelligent will may enrich 
 us with a sixth sense, which would better en- 
 lighten us with regard to a supernatural exist- 
 ence than can be effected by our five senses. 
 
 Concerning the relation of brain and soul, 
 Liebig observes, that all that we know concern- 
 ing this relation is " the trivial fact that a head 
 without a brain neither thinks nor feels." This 
 is sufficient to prove that Baron Liebig is not at 
 home in physiology. If, indeed, physiology, de- 
 spite all efforts, had not succeeded in teaching us 
 more of the functions of the brain than the above 
 trivial fact, which is patent to every man in his 
 senses, it would deserve to be pitied, and spirit- 
 ualism would be in the right. Physiology and 
 pathology fortunately know more than Baron 
 Liebig ; they have by experiments established 
 facts which we need not here recapitulate, but 
 which furnish foundations to build upon, and 
 
lvüi PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 which cannot be undermined by the gossip of 
 philosophical psychologists. 
 
 We might here have concluded our strictures, 
 but that we find in an earlier number of the Allge- 
 meine Zeitung (No. 22, 1856), that Baron Liebig 
 made some further remarks, not contained in our 
 report, and which it seems did not fail to be 
 received with great applause by "the ignorant 
 and credulous public". These remarks refer 
 again to the dispute between Moleschott and 
 Liebig respecting the quantity of phosphorus 
 contained in the brain, and are supported by 
 arguments which can only have any value in the 
 eyes of those who know nothing of the details of 
 the dispute. Proceeding from the false assump- 
 tion that Moleschott and his adherents deduce 
 thought from the " phosphorescence of the 
 brain", Baron Liebig makes merry at his oppo- 
 nents, by showing that, according to that view, 
 the bones should produce more thought than the 
 brain, as they contain four hundred times as 
 much phosphorus as the brain ! The author 
 searches in vain for an adequate expression to 
 designate such a mode of argumentation, which 
 can only impose upon c ' an ignorant and credu- 
 lous public" . Why has not Baron Liebig rendered 
 the contrast more striking, by showing that, as 
 lucifers, from their quantity of phosphorus, contain 
 four hundred times more thought than the brain, 
 the match manufacturers could now sell thought 
 at wholesale prices. Such as are desirous of 
 
PEEFACE TO FOUBTH EDITION. llX 
 
 knowing more of the complete failure of Liebig's 
 attack, we refer to Moleschott'' s Kreislauf des 
 Lebens. The assertions and objections of Liebig 
 are, in the second chapter of that work, entitled 
 " Thought", so clearly refuted that every one 
 who reads it must agree with the author. Pro- 
 ceeding from the fact that phosphorus, as a che- 
 mical constituent of the brain, must, like every 
 other chemical constituent, have a definite func- 
 tion, Moleschott repeats in that work his axiom 
 " no thought without phosphorus"; a proposition 
 to which the author (see the chapter (C Brain and 
 Soul") assents from conviction, and which, as 
 regards the visible world and the higher animals, 
 will not be dissented from by any rational natu- 
 ralist or physician. 
 
 The author regrets sincerely being obliged to 
 speak once more of Karl Gutzkow. He will con- 
 fine himself to quoting the following passage 
 from the letter of a friend, whose indignation at 
 Gutzkow's attacks induces him to write. " If 
 to justify his (Gutzkow's) animosity he re- 
 proaches you for the exultation which you feel 
 at the fact 'that we are but dust and ashes', 
 ' manure for future manure', it is a mere fiction, 
 refuted by your dignified and serious remarks on 
 this subject. And when he pathetically quotes 
 the example of regicide executioners who, kneel- 
 ing, kiss the sword which is to decapitate their 
 master, it is a ridiculous absurdity, at which we 
 can only shrug our shoulders. It is as if science, 
 
lx PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 which proceeds according to inward necessity, 
 without looking to the right or the left, were 
 obliged to speak words of comfort, and to con- 
 sole all old women, whose illusions are unfortu- 
 nately destroyed." We may also ask what op- 
 portunity Gutzkow has had of learning» anything 
 of the genias-mania which distinguishes the 
 sphere in which we move. The author does not 
 recollect to have seen or spoken to Mr. Grutzkow 
 more than twice, and that but for a short time, 
 and has for the last five or six years moved in a 
 sphere quite inaccessible to him. Mr. Gutzkow, 
 moreover, contradicts himself in saying that we 
 have a rage for being considered a genius, while 
 he considers our work as a mere compilation. We 
 have too much self-respect to repeat here the 
 concluding paragraph of Mr. Gutzkow' s attack ; 
 it simply proves again that he writes from the 
 " pothouse" he cites. 
 
 Mr. Gutzkow seems to dislike that other 
 authors should meet with much success, espe- 
 cially in their first attempts. On our parts, we 
 do not envy Mr. Gutzkow his reputation, and we 
 acknowledge his talents more than those who 
 praise him to his face, always excepting that he 
 do not meddle with questions of science. 
 
 The witticisms in which Dr. Wilhelm Schulz- 
 Bodmer of Zurich* indulges in relation to the 
 views of the author, simply prove how little Mr. 
 
 * Froschmäusekrieg zwischen den Pedanten des Glaubens 
 und Unglaubens. Brockhaus, 1856. 
 
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. lxi 
 
 Schulz can prevail on himself to hold his tongue 
 concerning things which are beyond his sphere 
 of vision. He who conceives that the intellectual 
 struggle which agitates the literary and scientific 
 world is merely a war between frogs and mice, 
 which he attempts to render ridiculous by miser- 
 able jokes, proves sufficiently his unfitness to 
 judge of such questions. Mr. Schulz } s remarks 
 may produce stupendous effects among frogs and 
 mice. The impression which they produce upon 
 ourselves we prefer not to mention.* In order 
 that the public, who have not read Schulz, may 
 be able to judge how he treats his subject, we 
 may by way of sample just state, that Mr. Schulz 
 combats our assertion regarding the greater 
 weight of the male brain in relation to the 
 female, with the remark that, being a bachelor, 
 we could know nothing " empirically" of such a 
 relation. What can be said of such a mode of 
 argumentation in relation to serious facts, esta- 
 blished by ample experiments ? That there are 
 women who have more intellect than their hus- 
 bands, the author doubts as little as Mr. Schulz. 
 But, as exceptions prove nothing against a rule, 
 the personal experience of Mr. Schulz may prove 
 
 * A reporter of the Illustrirten Zeitung, No. 653., says in an 
 article entitled " Die Neue Weltanschauung und ihre Be- 
 kenner": " It is for the impartial observer more than usually 
 interesting to contemplate the fight carried on by a small 
 number of scholars against the most mighty existing powers, 
 a struggle which concerns the highest goods of the human 
 race." 
 
lxii PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 sufficient for him, but not for science. The 
 author of the Frosch-mäusehriegs uses everywhere 
 similar arguments, and excites the laughter of 
 his readers at his own expense. 
 
 A little anonymous libel against us, half prose, 
 half poetry, appeared in Darmstadt, entitled 
 "Dr. L. Büchner' s Kraft und Stoff, or the Art 
 of Making Gold out of Nothing." The author is 
 said to be a pensioned captain, well known in 
 his native place for his eccentricities. We should 
 not have mentioned this catch-penny publication, 
 had not the chief article which it contains been 
 inserted in the Allgemeine Zeitung (Nos. 5 and 
 6, 1856) even before it was published. Although 
 we experienced but an indifferent treatment from 
 that journal, we might have expected that a 
 paper, which pretends to be at the head of Ger- 
 man journals, should have sufficient self-respect 
 to exclude such aid. We cannot abstain from 
 observing that, in our case, the Allgemeine Zei- 
 tung has been worse served than any other journal 
 which has opposed our views. 
 
 To a category not much better than " the art 
 of making gold from nothing" belongs a pam- 
 phlet just published by the grand-ducal physician 
 Dr. A. Weber of Ulrichstein (Oberhessen), enti- 
 tled " Die neueste Vergötterung des Stoffs/' Gies- 
 sen, 1856. A total unacquaintance with the 
 rules of literary decency, is here combined with 
 the most ingenuous ignorance of the results of 
 modern science, in order to enlighten the world 
 
PREFACE TO- FOURTH EDITION. lxiii 
 
 of Ulriclistein concerning the most difficult and 
 complicated questions of natural science and phi- 
 losophy — a mode of enlightening which chiefly 
 consists of old-fashioned and ill-digested reminis- 
 cences, which the aged author has carried away 
 from Professor Wilbrand, during his studies at 
 Giessen. For the purpose of writing a book, 
 Mr. Weber attributes to materialism theories 
 unknown to it, and places himself in contradic- 
 tion to the plainest principles of natural science. 
 He illustrates a terribly confused exposition of 
 the problem of organic life, which nearly fills 
 half the work, with the ingenuous remark that 
 "we know nothing whatever of it." When, 
 under these circumstances, Mr. Weber calls his 
 opponents unscientific, uneducated minds, idle 
 talkers, and uses the expressions "nonsense, 
 fatuity, monstrous abortions, reason run mad," 
 etc., and considers himself particularly called 
 upon to serve as a guide, and to enlighten the 
 educated world with regard to their highest in- 
 terest, we realty know not whether we should 
 laugh or grieve at such simplicity ; and we must 
 console ourself with the thought that such a pro- 
 duction may be indeed printed at Darmstadt, 
 but can only have been written at such a place 
 as Ulrichstein. 
 
 The short observations which Mr. Julius 
 Schaller makes in the preface of his work, Leib 
 und Seele, evince an erroneous conception, which 
 is, perhaps, partly owing to a want of precision 
 
lxiv 
 
 PEEFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 in expression on our part. We are the more in- 
 clined to think so, as it prevails in most of the 
 attacks directed against ns. The error consists 
 in asserting that we proclaim the relation of 
 brain and soul, or matter and mind, to be eon- 
 gruent or identic with matter and force. We do 
 not recollect to have used expressions justifying 
 such an inference. In the introduction to the 
 chapter on " Personal Continuance", it is only 
 said that in the law of nature, according to which 
 there is no thought without a brain, and no brain 
 without thought, the first principle of our em- 
 pirical contemplation of nature — no matter with- 
 out force, no force without matter — is repeated. 
 However similar and essentially corresponding 
 these two relations may be, the author cannot 
 but acknowledge that, in the relation of brain 
 and soul, phenomena occur which cannot be ex- 
 plained from the simple physical relation of force 
 and matter. The author begs here, for the 
 second time, to observe that he never had the 
 intention of discussing the essence of the rela- 
 tion of spirit and matter by the aid of a useless 
 hypothesis, but to prove merely by facts their 
 necessary and intimate connection. 
 
 With regard to parsons and ecclesiastics, who 
 never cease to enlighten and to assail us with 
 their eloquence, we beg to repeat that we cannot 
 discuss with them. (These good people have 
 from the beginning of the world had the privi- 
 lege of using their zeal and ignorance in crying 
 
PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. lxv 
 
 f down everything that does not suit their busi- 
 ness.) We shall not disturb them in their voca- 
 tion. No rational man doubts the total incapacity 
 of these gentlemen to enter upon such questions. 
 There is no theological or ecclesiastical natural 
 science; and there will be none,, so long as the 
 telescope does not reach the regions where angels 
 dwell ! 
 
 In conclusion, the author is reluctantly obliged 
 to say a word to those who, unable to refute their 
 opponents by arguments of reason, think to 
 damage them in public opinion by casting suspi- 
 cions on their moral character. Science has no 
 concern with morals ; and all free inquiry would 
 be at an end if it were made dependent on them. 
 The person of the investigator, and his moral 
 convictions, have nought to do with his investi- 
 gations, and such tactics merely prove the immo- 
 rality of those who use them. Since the world 
 began experience has shown, that those who 
 always talk of morality have little in their hearts, 
 and that virtue does not always dwell where it is 
 used as a sign-board. Scientific materialism and 
 the materialism of life are widely distinct, and 
 can only be confounded hj malice and ignorance. 
 The most fruitful ideas have been spread by in- 
 dividuals, against whom in their lifetime accusa- 
 tions were raised similar to those in the present 
 discussion. Not those who by study and sacri- 
 fices endeavour to fathom the laws of matter, 
 
lxvi PREFACE TO FOURTH EDITION. 
 
 but those who prefer enjoyments, and banish 
 the spirit from these laws, are the genuine ma- 
 terialists. 
 
 The Author. 
 
 Darmstadt, May 1856. 
 
PEEFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION. 
 
 To Mr. Stefanoni Luigi, Editor of the "Free- 
 thinker", published at Parma (Italy). 
 
 Eespected Sir, — You inform me that you are on 
 the point of introducing, by an Italian transla- 
 tion, to your countrymen also, my book on " Force 
 and Matter", a work criticised and assailed in so 
 many quarters, now condemned to the lowermost 
 pit of hell, now praised as the height of wisdom, 
 now vilified as the produce of a madman's brain — 
 a work wnich, to the unspeakable wrath of all op- 
 ponents of free thought in theology, philosophy, 
 or science,* from year to year passes through new 
 
 * One of the latest and most fierce outbreaks of this wrath 
 is contained in a short treatise, by H. Langenbeck (Göt- 
 tingen), bearing the extraordinary title : Shall Dr. Louis 
 Büchner's Force and Matter appear in a Ninth Edition ? A 
 Brief Question to the Author, Publisher, and Reader of the 
 Eighth Edition, with Annotations. The treatise, as is indi- 
 cated on the title-page, was written " for the benefit Of in- 
 digent Hanoverian physicians ;" but it would more fittingly 
 have been written for the benefit of an asylum for idiots, 
 since the contents prove the almost childish imbecility of 
 the author, the inside of whose head must somewhat re- 
 semble the cabbage-mart of Göttingen after market-day. He 
 has spread a dust-heap of philosophical absurdities over 
 twenty-three pages of type, declaring on the last page that 
 he would now leave off, " as he wished not any further to be 
 vexed with my physics/' O, you man of logic^ who " grow 
 
 / 
 
lxviii PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 editions ; and, b} r translations into almost all the 
 living languages of Europe, has acquired a reputa- 
 tion, extending far "beyond the boundaries of my 
 
 dizzy at the abysses of philosophy" (p. 16), and are unneces- 
 sarily afraid that your brain might hereafter be eaten by 
 "beasts" (p. 18), seeing that even beasts would find it too 
 insipid — pray why did you inflict on yourself the pain of 
 being vexed with my physics ? Surely this was very illogi- 
 cal for a philosopher — and such you consider yourself ! We 
 have neither time nor inclination to examine further the 
 contents of the pamphlet, absurd and foolish both in form 
 and matter; and the best answer to the silly question "form- 
 ing the title, is supplied by this present ninth edition. We 
 will merely mention to our readers, as a matter of curiosity, 
 and to show to what a state our corporate science and philo- 
 sophy in G-ermany have been reduced, that Mr. Langenbeck, 
 hitherto Professor of Philosophy at Göttingen, in consequence 
 of this most lame of all pamphlets, and to the horror and 
 against the will of the whole University, was appointed Pro- 
 fessor at Marbourg by the G-overnment of Hesse, now for- 
 tunately sent adrift. All Marbourg was indignant at 
 this appointment, attributed to the then ministerial ad- 
 viser, a pietistical Vilmarian, who had himself stayed at 
 Göttingen, and been Langenbeck's guest. The Univer- 
 sity remonstrated, but in vain ; and the only persons who 
 can derive any amusement from these pitiable proceed- 
 ings are the students of Marbourg, who, after having learnt 
 that the glutosus maximus and the ouccinalorius are situate 
 on opposite cheeks of the human countenance, may now, in 
 listening to the lectures of Mr. L., have an opportunity of 
 satisfying themselves that this rule does not apply in every 
 case. As to the rest, we recommend the unknown writings 
 and lectures of this gentleman, who arranges everything in 
 ABC order, to all A B C scribblers. But not to restrict 
 the readers to our own opinion of Mr. L , we annex a pas- 
 sage from a review, which the Publicist (Berlin) of December 
 29th, 1865, has devoted to the lucubrations of Langenbeck : 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lxix 
 
 own country. And, in furtherance of your object, 
 you ask me for a brief Introduction to the work, 
 in the shape of a letter addressed to you, a request 
 with which I cheerfully comply. Nay, I am 
 proud of the opportunity thus afforded to me of 
 publicly addressing the inhabitants of a country 
 which claims the sympathy of every cultivated 
 mind, not only by the grand historical recollec- 
 tions evoked by its name, but also, and even in a 
 higher degree, by the events of the last few years. 
 Italy, the mother of Eome, once mistress of the 
 world, and for ages the chief sustainer of all the 
 intellectual development of mankind, the native 
 country of so many heroes, poets, and savans, who 
 have for ever immortalised their names ; and the 
 constant aim of the wishes of all who, from a 
 love for art or nature, long to behold its classic 
 soil, its glorious treasures of art, or its eternally 
 bright skies ! Italy, for so long groaning under 
 the yoke of foreign and domestic tyranny, and 
 now at last emerging into a new life, has acquired 
 just claims to the respect of all Europe, by the re- 
 
 " Büchner did not descend from the Professor's chair to be 
 taught from the Professor's chair. Professor Langenbeck's 
 jejune pamphlet will gain nothing for him but what he has 
 already gained ; viz., a call as Professor Extraordinary to 
 Marbourg. We would indeed readily undertake to show the 
 Professor, even from the stand-point of ex cathedra teaching, 
 the absurdity of his puerile deductions, were this the place 
 for it, or did his pamphlet not belong to that ' boggy' litera- 
 ture which, in the interest of science, is best treated with 
 contempt," etc. 
 
lxx PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 solution with which, since the day of its regener- 
 ation, under the leadership of an enlightened and 
 liberal-minded government, it progresses on the 
 path of political and religions liberation. Far from 
 feeling envy or anger at this victory, the truly 
 cultivated minds of my own country, in the name 
 of that great principle of the deliverance and uni- 
 fication of nationalities agitating the present age, 
 have hailed with joy the regeneration of Italy, 
 beholding therein an encouraging example of their 
 own hopes and aspirations. And therewith we 
 trust that the ancient political and clerical rivalry 
 between Germany and Italy, the chronic and fu- 
 rious strife between German emperor and Eoman 
 pope, which has uselessly shed so much precious 
 blood, has now for ever reached its termination, 
 and will for the future give place to a peaceful 
 and mutually profitable emulation on the path of 
 mental and material progress. There remains but 
 one more task to be accomplished by Italy, united 
 and free, for the crowning of its work : the re- 
 moval of the effete and gradually decaying 
 Eomish papacy ; that irreconcilable contradiction 
 with the advanced philosophic spirit of the times 
 and the interests of the country. Strange dissen- 
 sion ! Extraordinary spectacle ! The very coun- 
 try or nation that harbours in its own bosom 
 God's pretended vicar on earth, the ruler of con- 
 science, the great Infallible, whose imposing 
 aspect past centuries seem for ever to have sanc- 
 tified, and which country or nation thereby seems 
 
 n 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lxxi 
 
 to exercise a certain spiritual authority over the 
 whole Catholic world, is not only prepared volun- 
 tarily to surrender such authority, but feels it to 
 be a cancerous corrosion of its own body, a 
 weight hindering its intellectual and political de- 
 velopment, which it is striving with all its might 
 to shake off — whilst a foreign Catholic state is 
 upholding the rotten throne by force of arms, pro- 
 fessedly in the name of sanctified tradition and the 
 great interests of religion and morality ! But even 
 the most powerful arms and the most consummate 
 hypocrisy cannot, for any length of time, sustain 
 what has lost its hold upon the minds of nations, 
 and vainly exhausts itself in the unequal conten- 
 tion with the spirit of the age and progressive 
 science. How frequently has the latter been per- 
 secuted, mutilated, disfigured, and even annihi- 
 lated by all the craft, violence, and most unheard- 
 of cruelty, at the command of the papacy and its 
 servitors, to set up in its place blind faith and 
 irresisting submission to clerical intolerance. 
 Yet from every persecution and defeat this sci- 
 ence, phoenix-like, has arisen again, more vigorous 
 and in greater beauty ; and neither the flames that 
 stifled a Giordano Bruno, nor the compulsory re- 
 tractation of Galileo, could for one instant arrest its 
 onward progress. Fortunately, the fires of the 
 Inquisition have ceased to be kindled ; and the 
 anathemas and canonisations of the head of the 
 Christian Church — for ages what was most feared 
 and most desired in the world — have lost their 
 
lxxü PEEFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 ancient charm. Wooden images of saints, indeed, 
 even at this day, at the command of ambitions 
 priests, sweat blood or shed tears at the sinful 
 corruption of the world; even now, wonders and 
 signs are wrought in majorem ecclesice gloriam ; 
 still every year appears the notorious Index li- 
 hrorum prohibitorum, and but a little while ago 
 the still more notorious Encyclical Letter of the 
 Pope declared war against everything intellec- 
 tually valuable to the present age ; every year, 
 indeed, messengers are sent unto all the world, 
 who, under the protection of the church, in the 
 most shameless manner, and speculating on the 
 basest side of human nature, preach a crusade 
 against whatever may be called freedom of mind 
 or thought, enlightenment, culture, etc. Yet all 
 these are only the last convulsive movements of 
 an antiquated colossus, whose blows even in its 
 death-struggles may, indeed, be dangerous, but 
 can never gain the victory. And if we ask who 
 was the bold Knight George that bruised the 
 dragon's head, there can, I think, be but one 
 answer, viz., science. It, the poor persecuted and 
 tortured martyr, despised and thrust into a corner, 
 has finally, in league with free thought, overcome 
 its mighty foe, and exalted itself to a height 
 where the arrows of its enemies will not be able 
 to reach it ! 
 
 To render this victory of science over obsolete 
 faith and superstition complete and enduring, all 
 that remains to be done is to withdraw it from its 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lxxiii 
 
 monastic and corporate seclusion, so that its great 
 results may become the common property of 
 peoples. As soon as this is done, and thus some 
 philosophic light shall have entered the heads of 
 the masses, all spiritual and clerical tyranny must 
 for ever cease, since it only reigns by taking judg- 
 ment captive, deceiving men's consciences and 
 confusing their minds. 
 
 Yet for what end, honoured sir, do T say all this 
 to you, since, by your literary activity as the edi- 
 tor of a journal devoted to the propagation of free 
 thought, you fully prove how well you know the 
 right point of attack. As you tell me, popular 
 education is what your country and people most 
 stand in need of, and what is, consequently, most 
 to be aimed at. I can only reply, that such is the 
 case not only with you, but everywhere, and that 
 popular education is not only merely the sole se- 
 cure basis, but the necessary preliminary condition 
 of freedom, and the best guarantee against the 
 stultifying policy of the clergy. The well known 
 watchword, " through education to freedom", must 
 in all countries be the shibboleth and war-cry of 
 the true friends of the people, For' whoso once, 
 and were it but in the most general manner, has 
 apprehended the results of modern science and 
 the natural and necessary correlations of the 
 eternal mundane system, can no longer submit to 
 the rule of the church and the discipline of fa- 
 bulous tradition : he has outgrown school, the 
 child is become a man. Nature has endowed us 
 
lxxiv PEEFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 with reason, not that we should tamely submit it 
 to the dominion of authority, but to use it, and by 
 its use to become better and wiser. 
 
 You, respected sir, know indeed as well as I do, 
 that there are many who assert that man, and 
 especially the uneducated, ought never to with- 
 draw himself from under the rule of authority, or 
 that without religion and faith in the dogmas of the 
 church he cannot exist. Sad testimonial of pau- 
 perism, which, alas ! human pride puts forth in 
 its own behalf ! On the one side, man clamours 
 for Heaven, and considers himself, by virtue of his 
 spiritual endowments, as something far above all 
 nature ; whilst, on the other, he degrades himself 
 so far as to deny the power of independent 
 thought, and to place reason, his noblest posses- 
 sion, under the government of absurd dogmas, 
 which are as opposed to experience as to morality ! 
 If it be objected to philosophy that it plunges man 
 into doubt and uncertainty, whilst religion by 
 faith furnishes him with a firm hold, we reply, it 
 is better, at the point where experience leaves us, 
 to confess our ignorance, than to cling to ima- 
 ginary dreams, which the first gust of reality must 
 disperse for ever. If morality, or the moral cus- 
 toms and precepts according to which we live, be 
 such as cannot exist without religious or ecclesias- 
 tical compulsion, then they are worth nothing, 
 and others ought to be substituted for them. But, 
 in truth, it is a fact long since placed beyond all 
 doubt, that morality and church, or morality and 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lxXV 
 
 religion, have ever been independent of each 
 other, and are so at the present day more than 
 ever. The best preachers of morality, in my 
 estimation, are education, mental culture, scien- 
 tific enlightenment, and spread of knowledge; and 
 experience, the only teacher of truth, shows that 
 crimes against the state and morality decrease in 
 proportion to the increase of mental culture and 
 knowledge. Whence crime may be said to be 
 synonymous with ignorance and rudeness or want 
 of culture. 
 
 And, granting even that philosophy, and the 
 knowledge gained by it, destroy many a long-che- 
 rished hope, and set things before us in the rough 
 garment of reality, rather than bedizened with the 
 showy tinsel of imagination, yet they offer us 
 abundant compensation by the very fact of being 
 reality itself, and transplanting us from an ima- 
 ginary heaven into an actual earth. Thus, what 
 they deprive us of on the one side, they amply 
 restore on the other. Hence, positive philosophy 
 is no enemy to idealism, as is so often falsely 
 asserted ; but carries it into another region, where 
 it is destined to bring other and better fruit than 
 hitherto. It takes it from heaven to earth, out of 
 the region of dreams and nebulous supersensuality 
 into the fresh blooming reality of life, compelling 
 it even here to attempt the realisation of its ideal 
 wishes, which erst appeared to it attainable in the 
 Hereafter only. Thus are explained the apposite 
 words of Feuerbach, to which I fully subscribe, 
 
lxxvi PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 and which, indeed, characterise the whole progress 
 of the philosophy of the present day : " In prac- 
 tical philosophy I am an idealist, but a realist in 
 the speculative." Speculative philosophy, which, 
 in spite of its puffed-up air and boastful swagger, 
 has, after all, produced nothing but an empty ver- 
 bosity, or, as has more frequently been the case, 
 performed menial offices for theology, by the ir- 
 ruption of realism into its domain, has undergone 
 a total change ; whilst, on the other hand, practi- 
 cal or positive philosophy has approached the 
 grand ideal of the conception of mundane unity 
 in and by its manifestations. At the same time, 
 life itself assumes a more and more ideal form, 
 borne up on the one side by the mighty advances 
 of the human mind in understanding and subdu- 
 ing the powers of nature, and, on the other, by the 
 consciousness that a nebulous and uncertain 
 yonder cannot compensate for the lost ideals of 
 the here. 
 
 It is so self-evident that this subduing of the 
 forces of nature, in which especially our time has 
 accomplished the formerly incredible, and will yet 
 achieve greater things, can only be performed by 
 natural means, and through the powers of science, 
 that I should not have alluded to it here, did I 
 not gather from your communication, that the 
 pitiful tricks of sympathetic quacks, magnetisers, 
 clairvoyants, etc., still meet with approbation and 
 faith in your own country. But this can, of 
 course, only be the case with such as are deficient 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lXXVÜ 
 
 in scientific culture, and, therefore, do not yet 
 understand that the human mind itself, the finest 
 product of nature, never has possessed, and never 
 can possess, supernatural faculties or knowledge. 
 Not scientific theory alone, but experience, many 
 and convincing instances of which you will find 
 recorded in my book, place it beyond all doubt 
 that all such tricks, pretences, and shows, are 
 based on illusion or delusion, which the slightest 
 investigation easily proves to be so. In most 
 cases, the simple logic of common sense suffices 
 to reveal the deceit of such exhibitions, which 
 usually meet with credence from such only as, for 
 some reason or other, are predetermined to be- 
 lieve, or from the ignorant crowd, unable to dis- 
 tinguish appearance from reality. The spread of 
 useful knowledge, which you, respected sir, have 
 made your life's task, will eventually put an end 
 to this nuisance also, as well as to the belief in 
 ghosts, apparitions, and miracles. 
 
 In fact, as it seems to me, the belief in animal 
 magnetism, spirits, and miracles, is founded on no 
 other psychological basis than the faith in heaven, 
 revelation, and saints, or the belief of philosophers 
 in the wonders of their supersensual speculation 
 They all arise from that false view of the nature 
 of man, which modern science may be said to 
 have for ever set aside. This false view was, in- 
 deed, the natural result of the profound ignorance 
 hitherto prevailing concerning man, his origin and 
 place in nature. Now all this is altered, and the 
 
lxxviii PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 researches and discoveries of modern times can 
 no longer allow ns to doubt, that man, with all he 
 has and possesses, be it mental or corporeal, is a 
 natural 'product like all other organic beings, and 
 that all his properties, powers, and faculties, are 
 not undeserved gifts from above, but were ac- 
 quired on the toilsome path of experience and 
 sensual perception, gradual development, inherit- 
 ance, and education. From this dogma, wherein 
 in a certain . sense is comprehended the quintes- 
 sence of all the philosophical consciousness of our 
 age, we naturally derive a very different idea of 
 man's real being and destination than the one 
 hitherto entertained. For whilst religious tradi- 
 tion asserts man to be an exile from Paradise, and 
 a degenerate descendant of his first father, created 
 perfect by God, science, on the contrary, teaches 
 that this Paradise is not behind, but before us, and 
 can only be reached by constant and slow advances 
 amidst toil and labour ; it farther teaches that we 
 did not begin great and end little, but that we be- 
 gan little, to become greater and greater ; it finally 
 teaches that in this way nothing is unattainable, 
 and that it is as foolish as it is criminal in theo- 
 logians and philosophers to attempt setting limits 
 to human nature, which it is not to overstep. Do 
 we not at the present day perform by natural means 
 things which to our ancestors would have appeared 
 miracles and acts of a supernatural power? and 
 have we, with our investigations, not penetrated 
 into regions and secrets which the philosophers of 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lxxix 
 
 yore considered transcendental, i.e., surpassing the 
 powers of human understanding ? A fool, there- 
 fore, is he who waits for the never-appearing help 
 and illumination from above, and neglects to employ 
 his own strength ! Nothing but his own labour and 
 research, corporeal and mental, can advance and 
 bring him nearer to the great aims of humanity. 
 Super sensualism, on the other hand, is altogether 
 false and of evil, whether it assert itself in religion, 
 philosophy, science, or the doings of every day life. 
 As regards the past, this supersensualism can only 
 be explained or excused as indicating a state of 
 childhood or inexperience in the mental existence 
 of mankind, which now has reached its close. In 
 this sense we may, as was done by the French 
 philosopher Comte, designate these past periods as 
 the stadia of theological and metaphysical science, 
 which are only to be considered preliminary and 
 introductory to the positive philosophy of our own 
 day. This latter, while laying supersensualism 
 into its tomb, does not attempt to strive after 
 absolute or superhuman truth, but aims only at re- 
 lative truth, or the knowledge of the inward con- 
 nection of actual manifestations. In accordance 
 with this tendency, we can know nothing about 
 the Why? all we can ascertain is the How J of 
 things, and the laws discovered in this manner are 
 final solutions. 
 
 From all this, respected sir, you may gather how 
 erroneous and superficial is the judgment of those 
 who designate the present tendency of science and 
 
1XXX PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 philosophy as " materialism," and think, when they 
 have applied to them this contemptuous epithet, 
 whose unsettled meaning admits of the most oppo- 
 site definitions, and to which, in fact, every anti- 
 materialistic writer attaches a different sense, that 
 they have said all that can be said. Science or 
 positive philosophy per se is neither idealistic nor 
 materialistic, but realistic ; all it aims at is to ap- 
 prehend facts and their rational connection, with- 
 out first adopting some particular system. Systems, 
 in fact, can never embrace the whole truth, but 
 only half, and are detrimental to research by set- 
 ting limits to it. But the realism of science looks 
 upon such limits or boundaries as temporary and 
 movable, since the progress of knowledge is con- 
 tinually shifting them further from the centre. Is 
 not the nature of man himself, which, as we have 
 shown, is and must be the basis of the speculations 
 of modern philosophical empiricism, changeable 
 and ever progressing ? how, then, can a science 
 founded thereon be stationary ? And so it appears 
 to me that the dispute carried on of late concerning 
 materialism and idealism, is perfectly vain and 
 fruitless. The new view of things does not banish 
 idealism from the world, but merely carries it from 
 the region of theological or philosophic supersen- 
 sualism into the domain of life and reality. And 
 materialism has already fulfilled its mission by 
 having proved the unity, of force and matter, of 
 spirit and materiality, and thus for ever having 
 set aside the ancient dualism. Both now resign the 
 
PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. lxxxi 
 
 field to scientific and philosophic realism, and all 
 three agree that the future basis of science and 
 philosophy, and therewith — which is of greater 
 moment — of the state and society, can no longer 
 be theological or metaphysical, but simply anthro- 
 pological, i.e., the nature of man, proved to be unity. 
 Great and beneficial changes and advances in sci- 
 ence and life must be the inevitable results. 
 
 But if men will persist in designating the ten- 
 dency or mode of viewing nature here sketched, by 
 the name of materialism, there can, I think, be no 
 doubt that to this materialism belongs the future^ 
 and that all the tirades and invectives against it 
 must prove but empty sounds. And even if old 
 official science and cosmology, sustained by the 
 powers of habit, usage, ignorance, indolence, and 
 might, should yet for a while assert their dominion, 
 still the time must come when they will have to 
 submit to deep reaching changes towards freedom, 
 positivism, and sound natural truth ; and then, also, 
 will dawn the day that shall bring to man not only 
 spiritual and moral, but likewise political and social 
 deliverance. 
 
 Herewith, respected sir, I believe I have touched 
 on all the essential points necessary to be referred 
 to on the present occasion ; and as to the rest I beg 
 to refer you to the book itself, and to the various 
 prefaces of successive editions, especially to the 
 Letter addressed to the editor of the English trans- 
 lation, and which forms the preface to the eighth 
 edition. Allow me to conclude with the apposite 
 
Ixxxii PREFACE TO NINTH EDITION. 
 
 words of De la Mettrie : "Experience and ob- 
 servation must be our only guides ; we meet with 
 them in physicians that were philosophers, and 
 not in philosophers that were not physicians"; 
 and accept, sir, the assurance of my high esteem. 
 
 Dr. Louis Büchner 
 
 Darmstadt, March 3rd, 1867. 
 
PEEFACE, OE ADDEESS, TO THE' TENTH 
 EDITION* 
 
 "I am sick of the dry stuff." — Mephistopheles. 
 
 What, a fresh renewal of our old acquaintance, 
 my little book, when scarcely eighteen months 
 ago I had so snugly stowed thee away with thy 
 eight elder brothers, and all thy progeny from 
 England, France, Italy, Spain, etc., upon the 
 uppermost shelf of my bookcase, fondly hoping 
 that now, at last, thou wouldst have a little peace 
 and the needful leisure, in silence and repentance, 
 to meditate on thy many sins against God and 
 man ! And dost thou really already think again 
 of saying farewell to the modest cell of thy au- 
 thor, to plunge with renewed strength into the 
 wild turmoil of the world, to disturb the peace of 
 the contented, and again to call down upon thee 
 the wrath and hatred of the hostile and envious ? 
 And again thou callest on thy author to " revise", 
 
 * The author having, in a series of Prefaces, which, 
 taken together, occupy almost too much space, endeavoured 
 to meet the claims of the public, at whose hands his efforts 
 have been so well received, he thinks he may for once be 
 permitted, instead of a Preface, to offer an " Address", and 
 that to his book itself, which, by its wide diffusion, almost 
 without example in a philosophical work, has acquired a 
 significance with regard to the mental development of the 
 age, which the author himself did not anticipate. 
 
 9 
 
lxxxiv PKEFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 " correct", "enlarge", and "improve" thee ; and for 
 the tenth time openest unto him the prospect of 
 twenty or more proof-sheets, which are all " to be 
 sent back as quickly as possible", as " the supply 
 is exhausted", and "the press cannot be kept 
 waiting." Pray, wilt thou, in thy restless ambi- 
 tion, allow neither to thyself nor the public and 
 me any rest or breathing time, and finally succeed, 
 by making me read thee over and over again, in 
 impressing thyself against my will upon my mind 
 till I can repeat thee by heart ? Why wilt thou 
 not leave to thy numerous learned and unlearned 
 opponents time to be heard and appreciated ? 
 Eemember that it ill becomes a slight little body 
 like thee, only fourteen years of age, so obtru- 
 sively and pertly to force thyself upon the vene- 
 rable company of thy corpulent colleagues of the 
 firm of " Pigskin and Co.," and their bewigged and 
 stern looking authors, who officially, and therefore 
 de jure, are appointed to teach philosophy. Hast 
 thou not considered that philosophising requires 
 something beyond common sense and a little 
 mother wit ? and that it is necessary, before one 
 is allowed to join in the discourse, to have 
 breathed for a number of years the invigorating 
 air of an university, or " centre of culture," as it 
 is called ; to have sat upon a lecturer's chair ; yea, 
 which is the chief thing, first to have drawn a 
 salary, or, as Schopenhauer says, " passed through 
 the stall-feeding of professorship"? Setting aside 
 that thou hast not even succeeded yet so far as to 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. lxxxv 
 
 speak the dim language of science, sanctified by 
 age, and to deal in phrases from Kant, Fichte, 
 Schelling, Hegel, and Herbart. Hast thou already 
 forgotten how dashingly the real philosopher, Mr 
 Langenbeck, dispatched thee in his clever pamph- 
 let, proving to thee, with true philosophical acu- 
 men, that it was an unjustifiable and fantastic 
 idea on thy part to want to appear in a ninth edi- 
 tion, after having already passed through eight ? 
 And now thou hast the boundless assurance to 
 appear even in a tenth, and thus to render the 
 great thinker and logician — in the meanwhile pro- 
 moted to a professorship by the banks of the 
 Lahn — for ever ridiculous in the eyes of the 
 world ! And hast thou forgotten with what choice 
 humour thy own countryman, Mr. Maurer, si- 
 lenced thee, half in prose and half in rhyme 
 making, at the same time, the remarkable disco- 
 very that thy author possessed an art, certainly 
 highly useful in these our money-craving times ; 
 viz., that of " making gold out of nothing"? and 
 how, in spite of that, since then not one of the 
 European governments, always in want of cash 
 for maintaining their "glorious armies", has 
 thought of securing the services of this man ? 
 And hast thou forgotten Albert von Kloss, or 
 Gloss (I forget which), who proclaimed the no less 
 remarkable fact (without foundation, alas! as far 
 as the gold is concerned), that thy author had 
 been bribed by Eussian gold — probably because 
 Eussia thereby wished to show — I cannot explain 
 
lxxxvi PEEFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 it in any other way — that with the needful 
 "force" she also possessed the "matter" to keep 
 all revolutionary Europe in order ? And, again, 
 art thou not deterred by all the many other hooks 
 and authors which, from thy cradle to this thy 
 tenth birthday, have ever been at thy heels, try- 
 ing, in every language and by every kind of pro- 
 cess, to extinguish thy weak spark of life, and 
 which, like the ghosts of Banquo, glide on before 
 my mental eye, now threatening and warning, now 
 teaching and admonishing, now angry and raging, 
 now abusive and insolent, now cutting and slash- 
 ing — down to the latest production of Dr. Nau- 
 mann, The Natural Sciences and Materialism 
 (1869), which thy kind publisher sent me only a 
 few days ago, and which, for the present, closes 
 the series of Banquo-ghosts. Careless of, and un- 
 terrified by, the howling of this pack, thou little 
 book of mine art ever hastening on, according to 
 the words of the poet : 
 
 " Let the yelping- curs 
 Follow at our side ; 
 From their barking- one infers 
 That we briskly onward ride ! " 
 
 Certainly, to justify thyself, thou mayest say 
 that all those yelpers and barkers have as yet, 
 with all their noise, done thee very little harm ; 
 and that, in spite of their opposition and united 
 attacks, thou art grown stouter and more self-re- 
 liant every birthday, and hast on every fresh ap- 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. lxxxvii 
 
 pearance met with a kinder reception from the 
 public. And thou canst further say, that all thy 
 opponents have gradually " lost flesh", whilst thine 
 own strength has increased with every "new skin". 
 In fact, when sometimes, in the still hour of twi- 
 light, I send a hasty glance to the spot where thou 
 standest with all thy sisters and brothers, and 
 then again look at another part of my bookcase, 
 where a small portion, and yet one requiring not 
 a little space, of thy hostile brethren, drags on its 
 dreary existence, I often ask myself: What is be- 
 come of you, ye " Eeplies", " Eefutations", " Anni- 
 hilations", "Elucidations", etc., which at last as- 
 sailed me with such impetuosity and in such num- 
 bers, that, for want of time and inclination, I had 
 to give up reading any of these bungling perform- 
 ances ? Why, you have disappeared from the 
 windows of booksellers and the advertisement 
 columns of newspapers ; the everlasting (mer- 
 cenary) praises of your contents are no longer 
 seen in the chief reviews of the "independent 
 press", and no one inquires any longer for you or 
 your contents ; whilst Force and Matter, in spite 
 of your united attacks, enjoys more and more fa- 
 vour, and is read more than ever. Where are ye, 
 companions of my youth ? Have you, like crabs, 
 travelled back to the place of your birth, looking 
 at your publishers with weeping and reproachful 
 eyes, or have you already entered upon your last 
 journey to the trunkmaker's ? And how many of 
 you were yet so young, and had scarcely beheld 
 
lxxxvüi PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 the rosy light of the world, or felt the sweetness 
 of existence, and nevertheless had to die ? And, 
 what is saddest, with all these sacrifices of time, 
 labour, and money, nay, with all these pangs of 
 death, and in spite of your oppressive number, 
 you were not able to obstruct thy way, my brave 
 little book, that hast so boldly and victoriously 
 fought thy way through all obstacles, like the 
 Prussians over the battle-fields of Bohemia ; nor 
 could you convince the public that it foolishly 
 throws away its money in purchasing Force, and 
 Matter. mad age ! Foolish mankind ! Deluded 
 century ! 
 
 But now I perceive a suppressed, somewhat 
 wicked smile stealing over thy features, my brave 
 book, and I know what that means. Thou 
 wishest .to intimate that thy opponents and re- 
 viewers, whether they were philosophers, theolo- 
 gians, physiologists, or so-called litterateurs a la 
 Julian Schmidt and others, were not very formid- 
 able, but such as, in case of need, might have 
 been silenced. And it is a fact that in their mad 
 doings they broke each others' necks, and cannot, 
 therefore, do thee much harm. For, while some 
 maintained that thou wast nothing but a compila- 
 tion — i.e., a medley of thoughts and sentences, 
 stolen from other and well-known authors — and 
 didst, therefore, not present either original thoughts 
 or investigations, others declared thee to be ori- 
 ginal even to madness ; that thy author had under- 
 taken a Titanic work, trying to take Heaven by 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. lxxxix 
 
 storm, but had, like Icarus, sunk to the earth with 
 burnt wings, or, like the Titans, been cast down 
 into the infernal regions. Then others, again, 
 assuming a haughty air of patronage, said that, 
 indeed, all adduced in Force and Matter was cor- 
 rect and true, but, so far from being new, all it 
 contained had been said, and said much better. 
 thousands of years ago ; whilst others, again, would 
 only allow the latter part of this assertion, adding 
 that Force and Matter contained very ancient but 
 long-exploded philosophical errors. Then, again, 
 there were such as found the chief characteristic 
 of this book to be its trivialness, saying the author 
 ought to be ashamed of combating ideas which all 
 educated men had long ago abandoned ; whilst, in 
 opposition to these strong minds, another and 
 much stronger party could not find words ex- 
 pressive enough to condemn the horrible unbelief, 
 unbounded infidelity, and contempt for all sacred 
 things, and the incredible audacity of the asser- 
 tions made in Force and Matter. Then, again, 
 others discovered that thy author allowed his rea- 
 son only to speak, banishing all feeling ; whilst 
 others, again, asserted him to be deficient in acute 
 and logical thought, and guided by indistinct phi- 
 losophical feeling. Then there were such as saw 
 in thy contents nothing but gross empiricism, 
 deification of the senses and matter, and a gradual 
 deadening of all higher philosophic requirements ; 
 whilst others found therein an excess of specula- 
 tion, hypothesis, and hallucination. Finally, to 
 
XC PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 render the contrast still more glaring, very many 
 pronounced the hook from heginning to end a pro- 
 duct, not only of the most consummate folly, hut 
 also of the greatest immorality; whilst, on the 
 other hand, not a few looked upon it as upon a 
 Bible, containing the highest and most consum- 
 mate truths, of which not one word was to be set 
 aside. 
 
 I might go on adducing additional instances of 
 such critical contradictions, were I not apprehen- 
 sive of exhausting thy readers' patience and my 
 own. At all events, these contradictions are evi- 
 dences of a peculiar state of philosophical cri^ 
 ticism at the present day, and of what, on a for- 
 mer occasion, I called the "philosophical inco- 
 herence and instability of our time." This cri- 
 ticism possesses neither sufficient character, dis- 
 cernment, nor knowledge, with the rapid growth 
 of science, to do justice to its noble task, whence 
 it could not but happen that, in face of a new and 
 unusual phenomenon which, like Force and Matter, 
 did not fit into the accustomed philosophical 
 forms, it lost its senses, and thus brought forth 
 such monstrous births as those referred to above. 
 And as it did not succeed with its " Eefutations", 
 it finally had recourse to vituperation, which, 
 however, produced a result exactly the opposite to 
 what was expected. Scarcely any one now knows 
 aught of, or reads, those countless ephemeral pub- 
 lications which Force and Matter left behind, like 
 the tail of a comet; their places are known no 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. XC1 
 
 more, while the book they assailed pursues its way- 
 more vigorously than ever. 
 
 At the present moment, it is only here and 
 there that some publication directed against 
 Force and Matter makes its appearance, like a 
 straggler from that great army of aggressors ; but 
 its language is essentially cooler, toned down ; and 
 reflection has to some extent taken the place of 
 the former wild capers. To this category belongs 
 the work already referred to, The Natural Sciences 
 and Materialism, by Dr. E. A. Naumann (Bonn, 
 1869), which even in its preface admits that 
 "materialism at present has acquired paramount 
 influence", whilst " spiritualism is less authorita- 
 tive and less appreciated." For, as the preface 
 continues, " materialism now more than at any 
 former time can rest upon a series of facts, which 
 are the results of sensual perception." And the 
 preface further, in a really unprejudiced manner, 
 confesses that " material and spiritual things are 
 not essentially opposed, and cannot be kept apart 
 as strangers to one another." 
 
 In spite of these sentiments, the writer, distin- 
 guished both as a physician and author, attempts 
 to produce a strict critical analysis of what he 
 calls my " system of materialism", though he must 
 have known that I have allowed no opportunity 
 to pass without protesting against the application 
 of the term " system" to my philosophy — yea, 
 that I did so in the opening words of the preface 
 to the first edition of Force and Matter. But, as 
 
XC11 PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 to so many others before him, it, no doubt, ap- 
 peared to him more convenient to let me appear 
 in the artificial blaze of a " system", since he in- 
 tended to replace what he chooses to call my 
 " system" by a system of his own — of course, su- 
 perior to mine. We shall presently see what this 
 new system does, or fails to do, for cosmology ; 
 but, at all events,. Dr. N., as reviewer, has no right 
 to want to know everything from me. For, since I, 
 as already mentioned, did not, nor did intend to, 
 lay down a system, I am not bound to tell him 
 everything. To ask of me, as Dr. N". does, and as 
 many others before him have done, a cosmology 
 that shall be exhaustive, and leave nothing ob- 
 scure, is exceedingly foolish. Had I supplied, or 
 been able to supply, such an explanation, I should 
 have performed the greatest mental feat ever per- 
 formed on this earth. I am content here and 
 there to have opened up new paths or novel views 
 to such a goal. But Dr. N. has entirely over- 
 looked the difficulties and prejudices I had to 
 struggle with, since he presupposes in the majority 
 of readers an amount of scientific culture and a 
 sum of well-digested principles which they are 
 far from possessing. The character of my work is 
 essentially popular, and it is not written for savans 
 and physicists only, but for the educated classes in 
 general. 
 
 Now whoso, according to a title which promises 
 so much, should expect to find in Dr. K's book 
 a fundamental review of materialism according to 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. XC111 
 
 scientific principles, would find himself greatly 
 disappointed. The whole, from beginning to end, 
 is scarcely anything more than a timid and pe- 
 dantic picking of words and thoughts, detached 
 sentences, and chapters of Force and Matter, the 
 writer being just as frequently obliged to express 
 his assent as his dissent. Nevertheless, an objec- 
 tive or really scientific examination is entirely out 
 of the question, since from the very outset the 
 author so thoroughly misapprehends the opposite 
 tendency, as to charge it (Preface, p. vi) with 
 "fancying it can exclude the spiritual life"; and 
 at the same time fixing his own spiritual stand- 
 point by the assertion that "development and 
 life are perceivable exclusively in the domain of 
 spiritual activity"; and also that an (unknown) 
 " spiritual power" is the sole cause of all mani- 
 festations of life. In the Introduction following 
 the prefaces, Dr. N., in defence of spiritualistic 
 opinions, adduces the so-called historical proof, 
 and relies on the '■ feeling of the millions", which 
 ought to be spared by the intolerant materialists. 
 But we may be allowed to remind him, that with 
 this trite proof every kind of mischief and super- 
 stition that ever rendered men miserable, may be 
 defended. In the middle ages, " millions" be- 
 lieved in witches and sorcerers, and in their 
 " feeling" found sufficient justification, to condemn 
 countless miserable wretches and innocent people 
 to a horrible death, and violently to suppress 
 every attempt towards mental elevation. If the 
 
XC1V PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 bold intellectual champions of the seventeenth 
 and eighteenth centuries had so "spared" the 
 " feelings of the million", as Dr. N, expects the 
 materialists of the present day to do, possibly not 
 I only, but even Dr. !NT. himself, might, even in 
 this our age, have had the pleasure to serve as 
 torches for the fanaticism of the millions whose 
 mad folly had been " spared". 
 
 Fortunately, now-a-days, we are at least so far 
 advanced as to be at liberty freely and openly to 
 discuss such topics, though the hatred and perse- 
 cuting rage manifested on the part of the dying 
 tendencies remind us vividly enough of the times 
 of the Inquisition, and its dungeons and stakes. 
 
 In the course of his work, on the whole very 
 fairly written, Dr. N". is very anxious to discover 
 and drag to light certain imagined weak points, 
 deficiencies, or contradictions, in my own work. I 
 am ready to admit that, in consequence of the 
 difficulty and novelty of the subject and its ten- 
 dency, and as nearly the whole mental field which 
 Force and Matter occupies had to be discovered 
 anew and tilled afresh by me, without my finding 
 any direct support in any predecessor or contem- 
 porary — in consequence of all this, I say, I admit 
 that many points were not so thoroughly worked 
 out and harmonised with one another as this 
 might have been, or as most certainly it will be, 
 done hereafter. But Dr. 1ST. is scarcely justified 
 in reproaching me with this, since his own theory, 
 with which he expects to supplant materialism, 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. XCV 
 
 forms a confused medley of contradictions, obscu- 
 rities, and groundless or wholly hypothetical asser- 
 tions. Besides the " human soul's inborn need of 
 faith", he quite arbitrarily assumes the existence 
 of the " absolute", which he defines in various 
 ways as to its relations to man and the world — 
 though, at the same time, he seizes every oppor- 
 tunity of telling us that " the absolute cannot be 
 apprehended" (pp. 103, 151); that "man will 
 never be able to form an adequate conception 
 thereof"; that " God is the absolute, excluding all 
 finite and comprehensible things" (p. 272) ; and 
 that, therefore, "all human definitions resolve them- 
 selves into nothing"; that " He is inapprehensible, 
 inaccessible to every conception", and that " the 
 spiritual and material world finally meet in God, 
 though in an absolutely incomprehensible manner." 
 With such a mass of incomprehensibilities, the 
 author is naturally at last reduced to appealing 
 to blind faith, which he does in a highly energetic 
 manner, scarcely conceivable in a physician and 
 naturalist. God, or the Eternal, cannot be opened 
 in the soul by "logical apprehension" (p. 175), but 
 only from the depth of the mind or feeling, and 
 from His revelation. The striving after satisfac- 
 tion and happiness is said to be the root of the 
 so-called divine idea (p. 145) ; and every man is 
 declared to have the first perception of God with 
 the acquisition of consciousness (p. 146). We 
 need not be surprised that, with such sentiments, 
 the most arbitrary dictates of Kant concerning 
 
XCV1 PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 the highest Being — nay, even the philosophical 
 " opinions of the heart", which I thought proper 
 to ridicule in Force and Matter — are defended and 
 advocated (p. 175) ; yea, Dr. N. deems it even 
 necessary in scientific investigations to lay great 
 stress upon "the voice of the mind". Finally, 
 "wherever ideas are wanting", the "right faith" 
 must do all (p. 114) ; and that by means of a 
 very strong faith in faith (p. 147), which is defined 
 as the feeling of an " Universal Being filling the 
 mind." " Only when faith has attained the su- 
 premacy in the mind, thought endeavours to 
 translate into conceptions and ideas that which, 
 according to its essential import, cannot be ex- 
 plained, but may only be felt as a ' something' "(!) 
 (p. 146). Such a faith can, indeed, transpose 
 mountains ; but what connexion it has with sci- 
 ence and philosophy will probably ever remain a 
 mystery to us and the majority of our readers. 
 With all this, Dr. 1ST., strangely enough — though 
 here he may again be influenced by his scientific 
 education — seems to lean towards pantheism, since 
 (p. 67) he distinctly denies the " extra-mundane 
 existence" of the "absolute", discovering the em- 
 piric justification of pantheism in the " striving 
 after the supersensual, which cannot be extirpated 
 from the human breast" (p. 169). As regards the 
 origin of living beings, according to Dr. ~N., it 
 cannot be referred to an immediate act of creation, 
 though the absolute (certainly in a totally incom- 
 prehensible manner, which the author does not 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. XCV11 
 
 attempt to describe) " is its sole and exclusive sine 
 qua non" To this is attached a very contradictory 
 definition of the organism, " whose beginning can 
 incontrovertibly be ascribed to the activity of a 
 spiritual power only", in which, however, all that 
 has arisen and maintained its existence is never- 
 theless "both a mechanical apparatus and che- 
 mical product" (p. 238). 
 
 But still more obscure, contradictory, hypothe- 
 tical, and impossible of proof, than the " divine 
 theory" just sketched, is the author's soulish theory, 
 in which his whole system, so to speak, culminates. 
 The old " soulish substance", already reduced by 
 Vogt to such a minute atom, as well as the tragi- 
 comic pianoforte theory, according to which the 
 mind plays on the brain, like an organist on his 
 instrument, are here restored to their former dig- 
 nity. If the latter theory be true, it is greatly to 
 be regretted that there should be so many brain- 
 pianofortes out of tune in the world, and that those 
 who attempt to tune them are not, as in social 
 life, rewarded, but have to submit to calumny and 
 persecution. According to Dr. 1ST., the soul is in 
 some way or other " shown into the brain" (p. 
 122), and incorporated with the human egg even 
 at the time of impregnation" (p. 161) ; or co-em- 
 bodied (p. 130) in the instant of generation with 
 the animal matter or " organic germ-substance" (p. 
 134). At the moment of death, the soul becomes 
 " suddenly unconscious" (p. 173) ; the departed 
 soul "is entirely cut off from its past" (p. 173), 
 
XCV111 PEEFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 and lias "no recollection of what occurred to it 
 before its birth". But that the poor good soul, 
 after having passed through such misery in life, 
 should not be left unrewarded, Dr. N. allows it, 
 after the manner of the ancient metempsychosis, 
 to pass into other men — yea, into animals — and 
 thus to continue its life ; for, according to him, it 
 consists of spiritual substances which are ever 
 born anew, and incorporated with new men or 
 beasts (p. 128). Of course, as to the manner in 
 which this spiritual matter, capable of vivification, 
 which is the cause of the animation of the just 
 impregnated germ, enters into this, and into or- 
 ganic germs in general, Dr. N". cannot give us any 
 information thereof; for here "we stand at the 
 threshold of a higher order of things" — i.e., in other 
 words, where spiritualism begins and common 
 sense ceases, the world is nailed up with boards ! 
 Dr. 1ST., to be consistent in his theory, is compelled 
 to allow even to plants a soul ; and, according to 
 him, it may be assumed that " the gentle rustling 
 of the tree-tops on a fine summer's morning may 
 indicate a feeling of comfort in the soul of the 
 plant, while the crashing and groaning of the 
 boughs shaken by the storm may be a sign of dis- 
 comfort" (p. 286). Highly poetical, indeed; but, 
 philosophically — very uncomfortable. 
 
 Since Dr. K, in spite of his spiritual tenden- 
 cies, is yet sufficiently free from prejudice to see 
 that a purely spiritual being cannot enter into any 
 sort of connection with matter, nor act upon it, 
 
PKEFACE TO TENTH ED LT ION. XC1X 
 
 yea, is not cogitable, he, as already mentioned, 
 conceives his sonlish principle as a spiritual sub- 
 stance. Nay, in pursuing this thought he even 
 ventures upon the assertion that matter must have 
 a "spiritual origin", and upon the assumption of 
 the possibility that the chymical elements are 
 spiritual principles (p. 291) ! Here we have a 
 spiritualism, violently engrafted upon matter or 
 materialism, whose burden the latter will not be 
 able Ion» to sustain. But must it on such occa- 
 sions not appear to every sound understanding 
 more simple and natural to allow to matter exist- 
 ing from all eternity those soulish powers, which 
 it undoubtedly possesses, and which only a totally 
 false or oblique idea of nature can groundlesslv^ 
 deny to it. For matter is not, as the countless J 
 followers and adherents of that idea assert, dead, I 
 unquickened, and lifeless, but, on the contrary, full 
 of the most stirring life, and not an atom of it is 
 without motion, but in constant uninterrupted 
 movement and activity, Nor is matter, as so many 
 assert, amorphous ; but, on the contrary, form no 
 less than motion is its eternal, inalienable attribute. 
 Nor is matter gross, as simple philosophers often 
 call it, but on the contrary, so infinitely fine and 
 complicated in its composition as to surpass all our 
 conceptions. Nor is it worthless or vile, but rather 
 the most precious thing we know of; it is not 
 without feeling, but is full of the most acute sensi- 
 bility in the creatures it brings forth ; nor, lastly, 
 is it devoid of spirit or thought, but, on the contrary, 
 
 h 
 
^ 
 
 \ 
 
 C PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 develops in the organs destined thereto by the 
 peculiar kind and delicacy of their composition, 
 the highest mental potencies known to us. What 
 we call life, sensibility, organisation, and thought 
 are only the peculiar and higher tendencies and 
 activities of matter, acquired in the course of many 
 millions of years by well-known natural processes, 
 and which in certain organisms or combinations 
 result in the self-consciousness of matter. Where- 
 fore also matter is not unconscious, as is often 
 proclaimed with false spiritualistic pathos, but in 
 its gradual earthly and organic process of develop- 
 ment it exhibits all the cogitable degrees of con- 
 sciousness from the lowest to the highest ! Closely 
 connected herewith is the fact that matter is not 
 unprogressive, and has not, as Dr. N. strangely and 
 contrary to all experience does assume, remained 
 essentially the same during ages and ages, but in 
 the course of the organic development on earth has 
 in its chymical and morphological composition 
 infinitely refined and perfected itself, and will 
 probably continue to do so in the future in 
 ever increasing ratio. It will surprise no one 
 acquainted with natural processes, that this refined 
 and perfected organisation should be accompanied 
 by higher previously unknown powers of life and 
 mind. How deeply did Schopenhauer, the philo- 
 sopher, in spite of his assuredly anti-materialistic 
 convictions, feel all the importance of matter as the 
 first and chief cause of existence, when full of in- 
 dignation he called out to the speculative idiots : 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. CI 
 
 " If you absolutely want an absolute, I will tell 
 you of one which fulfils all conditions much better 
 than all your misty forms, viz., matter." 
 
 While Dr. N. rejects this simple and uniform 
 materialistic view, endeavouring to replace it by 
 his forced and often totally absurd theory of soul 
 and soul-infusion, he finds himself irresistibly 
 drawn on to a scientifically untenable severation 
 of animate and inanimate nature into two totally 
 distinct parts, though he must certainly be aware, 
 that with every onward step of science this separa- 
 tion is proved to be more apparent and artificial 
 than real. The difference lies solely and only in 
 the different conditions of matter, which every- 
 where must necessarily de velope life, and will do 
 so wherever the conditions necessary or favourable 
 to it occur, without for that purpose requiring the 
 dem ex machind of Dr. Naumann's "soulish sub- 
 stance". 
 
 Before taking leave of Dr. N., I must direct at- 
 tention to the fact that he in an unjustifiable 
 manner conceives "Force" and "Spirit" tobe iden- 
 tical, and thus attributes to me various errors, 
 whilst evidently "Force" is a more general, while 
 " Spirit" is a more special conception. Nor have I 
 anywhere attempted to "explain" the secret rela- 
 tionship between brain and soul ; on the contrary, 
 both in the preface and text of my work I have so 
 frequently pointed out the inexplicability of this 
 connexion with the scientific means at present at 
 our command, that I need not now revert to it. 
 
Cll PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. 
 
 Dr. N. takes leave of me by expressing the wish 
 that our paths may lead each of us to the wished- 
 for goal (p. 278) ! Me it has already conducted to 
 that goal: truth, enlightenment, and deliverance 
 of my fellow-men from obsolete and pernicious 
 prejudices. Whither Dr. N.'s "sourish substance" 
 will lead him I know not, but am convinced 
 beforehand that this discovery, certainly not quite 
 new, will pass away and leave as little trace as 
 countless similar recipes from the spiritual kitchen. 
 
 But such failures as that of Dr. Naumann, pro- 
 ceeding from learned and thoughtful men, not 
 deficient in scientific knowledge, prove how little 
 science is able to cope with the ever farther 
 spreading materialistic view, or to set up something 
 better in its place. However justly the latter is 
 charged with imperfections and obscurities not yet 
 cleared up, every unprejudiced person must feel, 
 that with it he lias reached the firm ground of 
 reality and honest striving after truth, whilst the 
 opposite tendencies labour under the common 
 blemish of attempting to cover their inward failings 
 and defects, necessarily inherent in all human 
 knowledge, with many, many, very many "words". 
 Let philosophy be divided into the "philosophy of 
 words" and the "philosophy of facts," and it will 
 be seen where the truth lies ! 
 
 And now, my little book, T must ask thy for- 
 giveness and that of the reader, for having, on 
 account of the apotheosis of Dr. Naumann's 
 Ci soulish substance", left thee unnoticed for such a 
 
PREFACE TO TENTH EDITION. Clll 
 
 time. However, in face of thy unalterable resolve 
 and the ultimatum of thy publisher, I have nothing- 
 more to say than : Be brave and let this preface 
 be thy friendly and helping companion on the way. 
 I no longer fear for thy future ; thou hast on all 
 sides so thoroughly passed through the baptism of 
 fire, that nothing now can terrify or hurt thee. 
 Well, success to thy tenth voyage round the world, 
 in spite of and without Mr. Lagenbeck ! 
 
 Thy Author. 
 
 Darmstadt, February, 1869. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 I 
 
 " The universe, containing all that exists, has been created 
 neither by a God nor by a man ; but has always existed 
 and will ever remain a vivifying fire, being kindled and 
 extinguished according to definite laws." 
 
 Hebaclitus of Ephesus. 
 
 " Foece is not an impelling God, not an essence 
 separate from the material substratum of things. 
 A force not united to matter, but floating freely 
 above it, is an idle conception. Nitrogen, car- 
 bon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulphur, and phosphorus, 
 possess their inherent qualities from eternity." — 
 Moleschott. 
 
 " Fundamentally considered, there are neither 
 forces nor matter. Both are merely abstractions, 
 assumed from different points of view, of things 
 as they are. They supplement and presuppose 
 each other. Separately they do not exist. Matter 
 is not like a carriage, to which the forces, like 
 horses, can be put or again removed from. A 
 particle of iron is, and remains, the same, whether 
 it crosses the horizon in the meteoric stone, 
 
 B 
 
Z FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 rushes along in the wheel of the steam-engine, 
 or circulates in the blood through the temples of 
 the poet. These qualities are eternal, inalien- 
 able, and untransferable.'''' — Dubois-Keymond. 
 
 " No force can arise from nothing." — Liebig. 
 
 " Nothing in the world justifies us in assuming 
 the existence per se of forces, independent of the 
 bodies from which they proceed, and upon which 
 they act.''-' — Ootta. 
 
 These words of known naturalists may serve as 
 an introduction to a chapter which is to remind 
 us of one of the most simple and most pregnant, 
 but, even on that account, least known and ac- 
 knowledged truths. No force without matter — 
 no matter without force ! Neither can be thought 
 of per se; separated, they become empty abstrac- 
 tions. Imagine matter without force, and the 
 minute particles of which a body consists, with- 
 out that system of mutual attraction and repul- 
 sion which holds them together, and gives form 
 and shape to the body; imagine the molecular 
 forces of cohesion and affinity removed, what 
 then would be the consequence ? The matter 
 must instantly break up into a shapeless nothing. 
 We know in the physical world of no instance of 
 any particle of matter which is not endowed with 
 forces, by means of which it plays its appointed 
 part in some form or another, sometimes in con- 
 nection with similar or with dissimilar particles. 
 Nor are we in imagination capable of forming a 
 conception of matter without force. In whatever 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. d 
 
 way we may think of an original substance, there 
 must always exist in it a system of mutual repul- 
 sion and attraction between its minutest parts, 
 without which they would dissolve and trace- 
 lessly disappear in universal space. " A thing 
 without properties is a nonentity, neither ration- 
 ally cogitable, nor empirically existing in nature" 
 (Drossbach) . Force without matter is equally an 
 idle notion. It being a law admitting of no ex- 
 ception that force can only be manifested in 
 matter, it follows that force can as little possess 
 a separate existence as matter without force. 
 Hence, as Mulder justly observes, forces cannot 
 be communicated, but merely called into action. 
 Magnetism can therefore not, as it may appear, 
 be transferred, but merely called forth by chang- 
 ing the aggregate state of its medium. The 
 magnetic forces are inherent in the molecules of 
 iron, and are most perceptible externally, and 
 least so in the centre of a magnetic rod. Imagine 
 an electricity, a magnetism, without the iron or 
 such bodies as exhibit these phenomena, and 
 without the particles of matter the mutual rela- 
 tion of which is just the cause of these pheno- 
 mena; nothing would then remain but a confused 
 idea, an empty abstraction, to which we have 
 given a name in order to form a better concep- 
 tion. If the material jp articles capable of an elec- 
 trical condition had never existed, there would 
 have been no electricity, and we should never have 
 been able by mere abstraction to acauire the least 
 
 l; 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 knowledge or conception of electricity. Indeed, we 
 may say electricity would never have existed 
 without these particles ! 
 
 All the so-called imponderables, such as light, 
 heat, electricity, magnetism, etc., are neither more 
 nor less than changes in the aggregate state of 
 matter — changes which, almost like contagion, 
 are transmitted from body to body. Heat is a 
 separation, cold an approximation of the material 
 atoms. Light and sound are vibrating, undulat- 
 ing bodies. " Electrical and magnetic pheno- 
 mena," says Czolbe* iC arise, as experience shows, 
 like light and heat, from the reciprocal relations 
 of molecules and atoms. " 
 
 For the above reasons, the authors quoted de- 
 fine force as a mere property of the matter. Force 
 can as little exist without a substance, as seeing 
 without a visual apparatus, or thinking without 
 an organ of thought. "No one," says Vogt, 
 " has ever ventured to maintain that a power of 
 secretion can exist independent of a gland, or 
 contractility independent of muscular fibre." 
 
 Nothing but the changes which we perceive in 
 matter by means of our senses could ever give us 
 any notion as to the existence of power which 
 we qualify by the name of force. Any know- 
 ledge of them by other means is impossible. 
 
 What are the philosophical consequences of 
 this simple and natural truth ? 
 
 That those who talk of a creative power, which 
 * Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus, 1855. 
 
FORCE AND MATTER. 5 
 
 is said to have produced the world out of itself, 
 or out of nothing, are ignorant of the first and 
 most simple principle, founded upon experience 
 and the contemplation of nature. How could a 
 power have existed not manifested in material 
 substance, but governing it arbitrarily according 
 to individual views ? Neither could separately 
 existing forces be transferred to chaotic matter, 
 and produce the world in this manner; for we 
 have seen that a separate existence of either is 
 an impossibility. It will be shown in the chapter 
 which treats of the imperishability of matter, that 
 the world could not have originated out of nothing. 
 A nothing is not merely a logical, but also an 
 empirical nonentity. The world, or matter 
 with its properties, which we term forces, must 
 have existed from eternity, and must last for 
 ever — in one word, the world cannot have been 
 created. The notion (l eternal" is certainly one 
 which, with our limited faculties, is difficult of 
 conception. The facts, nevertheless, leave no 
 doubt as to the eternity of the world. The ab- 
 surdities attending the belief in an individual 
 creative power will appear from some subsequent 
 considerations. That the world is not governed 
 as is frequently expressed, but that the changes 
 and motions of matter obey a necessity inherent in 
 it, which admits of no exception, cannot be denied 
 by any person who is but superficially acquainted 
 with the natural sciences. But that a power — 
 taken for the once in its abstract sense — could 
 
6 
 
 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 only exist so long as it is active, is not less clear. 
 In assuming, therefore, a creative absolute power, 
 a primeval soul, an unknown x, — it matters 
 not what name we give it — as the cause of the 
 world, we must, in applying to it the notion of 
 time, say that it could not have existed either 
 before or after the creation. It could not have 
 existed before, as the notion of power is not re- 
 concilable with the idea of nothing or inactivity. 
 It could not have been a creative power without 
 creating something. We must, therefore, sup- 
 pose that this power has for a time been inert in 
 the presence of chaotic and motionless matter — a 
 conception we have already shown to be absurd. 
 It could not have existed after the creation, as 
 rest and inactivity are again incompatible with 
 the notion of force. The motion of matter obeys 
 only those laws which are inherently active ; and 
 their manifestations are nothing but the product 
 of the various and manifold accidental or neces- 
 sary combinations of material movements. At 
 no time and nowhere, even in the most distant 
 space reached by our telescope, could a single 
 fact be established, forming an exception to this 
 law, which would render the assumption of a 
 force external and independent of matter neces- 
 sary. But a force which is not manifested does 
 not exist, and cannot be taken into account in our 
 reasoning. To consider the power in eternal rest, 
 and sunk in self- contemplation, is again an empty 
 arbitrary abstraction, without any empirical basis. 
 
FOECE AND MATTER. 7 
 
 There remains but a third possibility, the equally- 
 singular and unnecessary notion, that the creative 
 power had suddenly and without any occasion 
 arisen out of nothing, had created the world (out 
 of what ?), and had again in the moment of com- 
 pletion collapsed within itself and, so to say, dis- 
 solved itself in the universe. Philosophers and 
 others have ever cherished this latter notion, be- 
 lieving that they could, by this mode of reason- 
 ing, reconcile the indisputable fact of a fixed and 
 unchangable law in the economy of the universe 
 with the belief in an individual creative power. 
 All religious conceptions lean more or less to- 
 wards this idea, with this difference — that they 
 conceive the spirit of the world reposing after 
 the creation, but yet, as an individual, capable of 
 again suspending his own laws. Conceptions of 
 this kind cannot concern us, not being the result 
 of philosophical reasoning. Individual human 
 qualities and imperfections^ are transferred to 
 philosophical notions, and belief is made to oc- 
 cupy the place of actual knowledge. 
 
 With regard, therefore, to the philosophical 
 aspect of this last idea, it would be like carrying 
 owls to Athens, if we were to take the trouble of 
 showing its inconsistency and uselessness. The 
 mere application of a limited notion of time to 
 creative power involves an absurdity ; its origin 
 out of nothing a still greater one. "No force 
 can originate from nothing" (Liebig) . " An 
 absolute nothing is not cogitable" (Czolbe). 
 
8 EOKCE AND MATTER. 
 
 But, if it be inconceivable that a creative power 
 existed either before or after the creation of 
 things ; if, further, we cannot imagine that it 
 has only a momentary existence; if matter be 
 imperishable ; if there be no matter without 
 force, nor force without matter ;— then there can 
 be no doubt that the world is not created, but 
 existed from eternity. That which cannot be 
 separated can never subsist separately ! What 
 cannot be destroyed could not have been cre- 
 ated ! " Matter is uncreatable, as it is inde- 
 structible" (Vogt). 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 IMMORTALITY OF MATTER. 
 
 " Imperial Csesar, dead and turn'd to clay, 
 Might stop a hole to keep the wind away. 
 O that that earth which kept the world in awe, 
 Should patch a wall t' expel the winter's flaw I" 
 
 It is three hundred years since the great Briton 
 enunciated in these words of deep import a truth 
 which, in spite of its clearness and simplicity, is 
 even to this day not generally acknowledged by 
 our naturalists. Matter is immortal, indestruct- 
 ible. There is not an atom in the universe which 
 can be lost. We cannot, even in thought, remove 
 or add an atom without admitting that the world 
 would thereby be disturbed, and the laws of gra- 
 vitation and the equilibrium of matter interfered 
 with. It is the great merit of modern chemistry 
 to have proved in the most convincing manner 
 that the uninterrupted change of matter which 
 we daily witness, the origin and decay of organic 
 and inorganic forms and tissues, do not arise, as 
 was hitherto believed, from new materials, but 
 that this change consists in nothing else but the 
 constant and continuous metamorphosis of the 
 same elementary principles, the quantity and 
 quality of which ever is, and ever remains, the 
 
10 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 same. Matter has, by means of the scales, been 
 followed in all its various and complicated transi- 
 tions, and everywhere has it been found to 
 emerge from any combination in the same quan- 
 tity as it has entered. The calculations founded 
 upon this law have everywhere proved to be per- 
 fectly correct. We burn a piece of wood, and at 
 first sight it appears as if its constituents had 
 been consumed in fire and smoke. The balance 
 of the chemist, on the other hand, teaches us 
 that not only has nothing been lost of the wood 
 in weight, but, on the contrary, the weight has 
 been increased. It shows that the collected 
 and weighed products not merely contain all 
 the constituents of the wood, though in a 
 different shape and combination, but in addi- 
 tion such materials as the constituents of the 
 wood have attracted from the air during com- 
 bustion. 
 
 (C The carbon," says Vogt, u which was in the 
 wood is imperishable, it is eternal, and as inde- 
 structible as the hydrogen and oxygen with which 
 it was combined in the wood. This combination, 
 and the form in which it appeared, is destruct- 
 ible ; the matter never." 
 
 1 ( The carbon we meet with in the spar crystal, 
 in the woody fibre, or in muscle, may, after the 
 destruction of these bodies, assume a different 
 form in other groupings, but the elementary 
 principle can neither be changed nor destroyed." 
 (Czolbe.) 
 
IMMOETALITY OP MATTER. 11 
 
 With, every breath, which, issues from our 
 mouth, we expire a portion of the food we eat, 
 and of the water we drink. We change so rapidly, 
 that we may be said, after the lapse of four weeks, 
 to be different and new beings ; the atoms are 
 exchanged, but the mode of their combination 
 remains the same. The atoms are in themselves 
 unchangeable and indestructible ; to-day in this, 
 to-morrow in another form, they present by the 
 variety of their combinations the innumerable 
 forms in which matter appears to our senses. 
 All this while the number of atoms in any ele- 
 ment remains on the whole the same ; not a 
 single particle is formed anew ; nor can it, when 
 formed, disappear from existence. Proofs innu- 
 merable can be adduced to this effect. Dissolu- 
 tion and generation, growth and decay, proceed 
 everywhere hand in hand — an eternal chain. 
 With the bread which we eat, the air we respire, 
 we attract the matter which has formed the 
 bodies of our ancestors thousands of years ago ; 
 and we return a portion of our bodies to the ex- 
 ternal world, in order shortly after to receive it 
 again. 
 
 Scholars call the eternal and continuous cycle 
 of the minute particles of substance the phase of 
 matter ) and the bold fancy of the British poet 
 has followed the matter which once formed the 
 body of the great Csesar to the phase where it' 
 stops a hole in the wall. 
 
 How a fact so simple and a truth so clear can 
 
12 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 still be denied or not acknowledged, even by- 
 naturalists and physicians, seems scarcely con- 
 ceivable, and proves bow little tbe great disco- 
 veries in natural science bave broken ground in 
 some circles. Thus Scbubert speaks of a spon- 
 taneous origin of water in sudden accumulations 
 of clouds; Eöbbelen tbinks tbat tbe animal organ- 
 ism produces nitrogen ; and even tbe celebrated 
 Ebrenberg appears yet doubtful wbetber tbe 
 organisms create, or merely transform, tbe mate- 
 rials tbey contain.* How can any one deny tbe 
 axiom, tbat out of notbing, notbing can arise ? 
 Tbe matter must be in existence, tbougb pre- 
 viously in anotber form and combination, to pro- 
 duce or to share in any new formation. An atom 
 of oxygen, of nitrogen, or of iron, is everywhere 
 and under all circumstances the same thing, en- 
 dowed with the same immanent qualities, and can 
 never in all eternity become anything else. Be it 
 wheresoever it will, it must remain the same ; 
 from every combination, however heterogeneous, 
 must it emerge the self-same atom. But never 
 can an atom arise anew or disappear : it can only 
 change its combinations. For these reasons is 
 matter immortal : and for this reason is it, as 
 already shown, impossible that the world can 
 have been created. How could anything be 
 created tbat cannot be annihilated ? Matter 
 must have existed from eternity, and must last 
 
 * Zeise : Vorträge über das Endlose der grossen und der 
 kleinen materiellen Welt, 1855, seite 50. 
 
IMMORTALITY OF MATTEE. 13 
 
 for ever. "The matter is eternal, its forms 
 merely change" (Rossmässler) . \^ 
 
 There exists a phrase, repeated ad nauseam, of 
 " mortal body and immortal spirit". A closer 
 examination causes ns with more truth to reverse 
 the sentence. The body is certainly mortal in its 
 individual form, but not in its constituents. It 
 changes not merely in death, but, as we have 
 seen, also during life : however, in a higher sense 
 it is immortal, since the smallest particle of which 
 it is composed cannot be destroyed. On the con- 
 trary, that which we call " spirit" disappears 
 with the dissolution of the individual material 
 combination ; and it must appear to any unpre- 
 judiced intellect as if the concurrent action of 
 many particles of matter had produced an effect 
 which ceases ivith the cause. " Though," says 
 Fechner, "we are not annihilated by death, still 
 we cannot save from death our previous mode of 
 existence. "We return visibly to the earth from 
 which we were taken. But, whilst we change, 
 the earth endures and is more and more deve- 
 loped ; it is an immortal being, and all the stars 
 are so likewise." 
 
 The immortality of matter is now a fact scien- 
 tifically established, and can no longer be denied. 
 It is interesting to know, also, that the earlier 
 philosophers possessed a knowledge of this preg- 
 nant truth, though not so clearly established 
 then, as the actual proofs could only be given by 
 our scales and retorts. 
 
14 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Sebastian Frank, a German who lived in 1528, 
 says : " Matter was in the beginning in God, and 
 is on that account eternal and infinite. The earth 
 and everything created may pass away ; but we 
 cannot say that that will perish out of which mat- 
 ter is created. The substance remains for ever. 
 A thing crumbles into dust, but from the dust 
 comes forth something new. The earth is, as 
 Plinius says, a phoenix, and lasts for ever. When 
 it grows old, it burns itself; a new phoenix rises 
 from the ashes, still the same, but younger/-' 
 
 The Italian philosophers of the middle ages 
 express this idea still more plainly. Bernhard 
 Telesius (1568) says : "The corporeal matter is 
 the same in all things, and ever remains the 
 same; the inert matter can be neither increased 
 nor diminished." And, finally, Giordano Bruno 
 (who was burnt in Rome 1 600) says : ? What 
 first was seed, becomes grass, then an ear, then 
 bread, chyle, blood, semen, embryo, man, a 
 corpse; then again earth, stone, or some other 
 mass, and so forth. , Here we perceive something 
 which changes in all these things, and ever re- 
 mains the same. Thus there really seems nothing 
 constant, eternal, and worthy of the name of a 
 principle but matter alone. Matter considered 
 absolutely, comprises all forms and dimensions. 
 But the variety of forms which it assumes is not 
 received from without, but is produced and en- 
 gendered from within. When we say something 
 dies, it is merely a transition to a new life, a dis- 
 
IMMORTALITY OP MATTEE. 15 
 
 solution of one combination and the commence- 
 ment of another." 
 
 But even at a much earlier period were already 
 known the outlines of this truth, likely to become 
 the basis of every exact philosophy. Empe- 
 docles, a Greek philosopher (450 b.c.), says ; 
 " Those are children or persons with a narrow 
 sphere of vision, who imagine that anything 
 arises that has not existed before, or that any- 
 thing can entirely die and perish.-''' 
 
16 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 IMMOETALITY OF FOECE. 
 
 " Wliat disappears in one place, must reappear in another." 
 
 Faraday — Hess. 
 
 " There is no breath of air so gentle, no wave breaking on 
 the sands, but the vibrations of these movements run 
 through all space." H. Tuttle. 
 
 Indestructible, imperishable, and immortal as 
 matter } is also its immanent force. Intimately 
 united to matter, force revolves in the same 
 never ending cycle, and emerges from any form 
 in the same quantity as it entered. If it be an 
 undoubted fact, that matter can neither be pro- 
 duced nor destroyed, but merely transformed, 
 then it must also be assumed as an established 
 principle, that there is not a single case in which 
 force can be produced out of, or can pass into, 
 nothing; or, in other words, can be born or 
 annihilated. In all cases, where force is mani- 
 fested, it may be reduced to its sources ; that is 
 to say, it can be ascertained from what other 
 forces a definite amount of force has been ob- 
 tained, either directly or by conversion. This 
 convertibility is not arbitrary, but takes place 
 according to definite equivalents, so that not the 
 smallest quantity of force can be lost. 
 
IMMORTALITY OF FORCE. 17 
 
 Although, the immortality of matter is now an 
 established truth, the same cannot be said, in 
 regard to force, a truth which in spite of its sim- 
 plicity has only recently engaged the attention of 
 men of science. We call the truth simple and 
 self-evident, because it results from a simple con- 
 sideration of the relation of cause and effect. 
 Logic and our daily experience teach us, that no 
 natural motion or change, consequently no mani- 
 festation of force, can take place without producing 
 an endless chain of successive motions and 
 changes, as every effect becomes immediately the 
 cause of succeeding effects. There is no repose 
 of any kind in nature ; its whole existence is a 
 constant cycle, in which every motion, the conse- 
 quence of a preceding motion, becomes immedi- 
 ately the cause of an equivalent succeeding one ; 
 so that there is nowhere a gap, nowhere either loss 
 or gain. No motion in nature proceeds from or 
 passes into nothing -, and as in the material world 
 every individual form can only realise its exist- 
 ence by drawing its materials from the immense 
 storehouse of matter, so does every motion ori- 
 ginate from the equally immense storehouse of 
 forces to which sooner or later the borrowed 
 quantity of force is again returned. 
 
 The motion may become latent, i.e. apparently 
 concealed ; but nevertheless it is not lost, having 
 merely been converted into equivalent states from 
 which it will escape again in some shape. During 
 this process force has changed its mode, for force 
 
 c 
 
\ 
 
 18 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 may, though essentially the same, assume in the 
 universe a variety of modes. The various forms 
 may, as already stated, be converted into others 
 without loss, so that the sum total of existing 
 forces can neither be increased nor diminished, 
 the forms only changing.* The science of the 
 change and convertibility of forces is called 
 Physics. 
 
 'This science makes us acquainted with eight 
 different forces — gravitation, mechanical force, 
 heat, light, electricity, magnetism, affinity, cohe- 
 sion, which, inseparably united to matter, ic form 
 and give shape to the world." These forces are, 
 with few exceptions, mutually convertible, so 
 that nothing is lost in the process of conversion. 
 In the universe, from which we derive an inex- 
 haustible quantity, the forces are inherent: in the 
 heavenly bodies in the form of light and heat ; in 
 the form of mechanical power, in the revolutions 
 of planets round their central bodies ; or as che- 
 mical difference, cohesion, and magnetism in 
 ponderable substances. 
 
 We may cite a few instances of transformation 
 or convertibility of forces. Heat and light are 
 produced by combustion. Heat again is con- 
 verted into mechanical power in steam, and me- 
 chanical force can again by friction be reconverted 
 
 * " The existing' quantity of force/' says the author of an 
 essay on the conservation of force, in the periodical Unsere 
 Zeit, "is invariably the same. We may at pleasure change 
 its effects, but only as regards quality; the quantity can 
 neither be diminished nor increased." 
 
IMMOETALITY OF FOECE. 19 
 
 into heat, and as in the electro-magnetical ma- 
 chine, into heat, electricity, magnetism, and light. 
 One of the most frequent conversions of force is 
 that of heat into mechanical force, and vice versa. 
 Two pieces of wood produce by friction heat and 
 light ; heat is again, in the steam engine, recon- 
 verted into motion. Whilst during the combus- 
 tion of coal, chemical difference is converted 
 into heat, and that again into mechanical force, 
 we can again convert mechanical power into heat 
 by means of a wheel, which makes a massive 
 wooden cylinder revolve in a closely adhering 
 metal tube. The latter becomes heated to such 
 an extent, that we are in this manner enabled, by 
 means of a stream or a windmill, &c, to warm a 
 room. Chemical affinities remain latent in gun- 
 powder under ordinary circumstances. The spark 
 equalises their chemical difference, and heat, 
 light, and mechanical force are manifested. The 
 chemical difference between zinc and oxygen is 
 in the voltaic pile converted into an electric cur- 
 rent, which can again, by the conducting wire, 
 appear as light and heat, or as chemical difference, 
 in the cells of decomposition. 
 
 The mechanical force of the arm turning the 
 disc of an electrical machine, itself the produce 
 of the equalisation of chemical difference (respi- 
 ration), is converted into an electrical current, 
 which may again, according to circumstances, 
 become manifest as attraction (mechanical force), 
 or as light, heat and chemical difference. 
 
20 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Mechanical force is, in the mutual shock of 
 bodies, converted into heat, as may be observed 
 in two inelastic balls (e.g. of lead), which be- 
 come heated by concussion, whilst elastic bodies 
 (e.g. billiard balls) do not become heated, the me- 
 chanical force being expended in repulsion. It 
 is not improbable that all light and heat in 
 the universe proceed from this source. The 
 most common form in which force manifests 
 itself is derived from the light and heat of tlw 
 central bodies in the universe. All the forces 
 manifested in the earth may be deduced from the 
 sun. The flowing water, the current wind, the 
 heat of the animal body, the combustibility of 
 wood or coal, &c, may be directly ascribed to 
 the sun. By the combustion of wood or coal, 
 the whole quantity of heat which has disappeared 
 and was deposited in these materials can be 
 made to re-appear. The force with which the 
 locomotive engine rushes along, is a minim of 
 solar heat converted by a machine into labour, in 
 the same manner as the labour which produces 
 thoughts in the brain of the thinker, or forges 
 nails under the arm of the forger. " The heat 
 that warms our habitations," says Liebig, " is the 
 heat of the sun; the light which dispels the dark- 
 ness of the nights is borrowed from the sun." 
 The light transmitted by the suns to celestial 
 bodies does not disappear in them, but is con- 
 verted into heat, while an increased degree of 
 heat appears in these bodies as light. 
 
IMMORTALITY OP FORCE. 21 
 
 Magnetism may, in the magneto-electrical 
 machine, appear as an electrical current, and this 
 may again re-appear under a variety of different 
 forms. 
 
 Gravitation appears immediately as a mecha- 
 nical force, and can be converted into all the 
 forms already mentioned. The pendulum of 
 every clock shows the conversion of gravitation 
 into motion. 
 
 During these processes, a given quantity of 
 force is rarely altogether converted, a portion 
 passes into other forces, or is not converted at 
 all. In the steam-engine, for instance, there is 
 a large amount of the heat produced which is not 
 converted into mechanical force, but escapes as 
 heat with the steam or the water which condenses 
 it. In the firing of a gun it seems as if a por- 
 tion of the mechanical force were lost ; but it is 
 only lost in appearance and as concerning the im- 
 mediate object, inasmuch as the force was ex- 
 pended in heating the barrel, and in the pro- 
 duction of the sound. 
 
 The word " lost" is therefore an incorrect ex- 
 pression, for in all these and similar cases there 
 is not a minim of power lost as regards the uni- 
 verse, but merely as regards the immediate ob- 
 ject. The expended force has in reality only 
 assumed different forms, the sum total of which 
 is equivalent to the original force. Innumerable 
 examples may be adduced to establish this law, 
 which is expressed in the axiom that force can 
 
-I 
 
 22 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 neither he created, nor destroyed — an axiom from 
 which results the immortality of force, and the 
 impossibility of its having a beginning or an end. 
 The consequence of this recently discovered 
 natural truth is the same as that deduced from 
 the immortality of matter, and both form and 
 manifest from eternity the sum of phenomena 
 which we term world. The cycle of matter sides, 
 as a necessary correlate, with the cycle of force, 
 and teaches that nothing is generated anew, 
 that nothing disappears, and that the secret of 
 nature lies in an eternal and immanent cycle in 
 which cause and effect are connected without be- 
 ginning or end. That only can be immortal 
 which has existed from eternity, and what is im- 
 mortal cannot have been created. 
 
23 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 INFINITY OF MATTEE. 
 " The world is unlimited, infinite." 
 
 COTTA. 
 
 If matter be infinite in time, i.e. immortal, it is 
 also without beginning or end in space ; our 
 usual notions of time and space cannot be ap- 
 plied to it. Whether we investigate the exten- 
 sion of matter in its magnitude or minuteness, 
 we never come to an end or to an ultimate form 
 of it. When the invention of the microscope 
 disclosed unknown worlds, and exhibited to the 
 eye of the investigator the infinite minuteness of 
 organic elements, the hope was raised that we 
 might discover the ultimate organic atom, per- 
 haps the mode of its origin. This hope vanished 
 with the improvement of our instruments. The 
 microscope showed that in the hundredth part of 
 a drop of water there existed a world of animal- 
 cules, of the most delicate and definite forms, 
 which move and digest like other animals, and 
 are endowed with organs, the structure of which 
 we have little conception of. Their internal 
 structure is still less known. " Shall we," asks 
 Cotta, "with instruments still more improved, 
 
24 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 have to consider the monads as giants among 
 the pigmies of minuter organisms V 3 The wheel 
 animalcule, which occupies the tenth or twentieth 
 part of a line, possesses jaws with teeth, an oeso- 
 phagus, a stomach, an alimentary canal, glands, 
 vessels, and nerves. The monad measures the 
 2,000th part of a line ; a drop of liquid contains 
 millions of them. The vibriones, microscopic ani- 
 malcules of the smallest kind, appear as a cluster 
 of scarcely perceptible dots or lines — a cubic line 
 has been calculated to contain 4,000 millions of 
 them. These animalcules must have organs of 
 locomotion, the mode of which leaves no doubt 
 that they also possess sensation and will, and 
 that consequently they must have organs and 
 tissues accordingly. But no clue has yet been 
 obtained as to the quality of these organs. The 
 seed grains of a grape fungus in Italy are so 
 minute, that a human bio od- corpus cule is a giant 
 compared to them ; yet these blood-corpuscules 
 are so minute, that a single drop contains above 
 five millions of them. In that seed-grain there ex- 
 ists the organic force of propagation, a peculiarly 
 complicated grouping of material elements, of 
 which we can have no conception from our limited 
 visual power. We term the most minute par- 
 ticle of matter, which we imagine to be no longer 
 capable of division, an atom, and consider matter 
 to be composed of such atoms, acquiring from 
 them its qualities, and existing by their reci- 
 procal attraction and repulsion. 
 
INFINITY OF MATTER. 25 
 
 But the word atom is merely an expression 
 for a necessary conception, required for certain 
 purposes. We have no real notion of the thing 
 we term atom; we know nothing of its size, 
 form, composition, etc. No one has seen it. 
 The speculative philosophers deny its existence, 
 as they do not admit that a thing can exist which 
 is no longer divisible. Thus neither observation 
 nor thought lead us, in regard to the minuteness 
 of matter, to a point where we can stop ; nor 
 have we any hope that we shall ever reach that 
 point. 
 
 " The most powerful microscopes," says 
 Valentin,* " will never enable us to behold the 
 form and position of the molecules, not even the 
 minuter groups of atoms." "A grain of salt, 
 which we can scarcely taste, contains myriads of 
 groups of atoms, which no eye will ever see." 
 We can, then, only say that matter and the world 
 are infinite in minuteness ; and it is of little con- 
 sequence if our intellect, which is always accus- 
 tomed to find a limit, is offended at the idea. 
 
 Like the microscope in respect to minuteness, 
 so does the telescope conduct us to the universe 
 at large. Astronomers boldly thought to pene- 
 trate into the inmost recesses of the world ; but 
 the more their instruments were improved, the 
 more worlds expanded before their astonished 
 eyes. The telescope resolved the whitish nebulaB 
 in the sky into myriads of stars, worlds, solar 
 
 * Lehrbuch, der Physiologie. 
 
26 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 and planetary systems ; and the earth with its 
 inhabitants, hitherto imagined to be the crown 
 and centre of existence, was degraded from its 
 imaginary height to be a mere atom moving in 
 universal space. The distances of the celestial 
 bodies are so immense, that our intellect wan- 
 ders at the contemplation of them, and becomes 
 confused. Light, moving with a velocity of 
 millions of miles in a minute, required no less 
 than two thousand years to reach the earth from 
 the galaxy ! And the large telescope of Lord 
 Rosse has disclosed stars so distant from 
 us that their light must have travelled thirty 
 millions of years before it reached the earth. 
 But a simple observation must convince us that 
 these stars are not at the limit of space. All 
 bodies obey the law of gravitation, and attract 
 each other. In assuming now a limitation, the 
 attraction must tend towards an imagined centre 
 of gravity, and the consequence would be the 
 conglomeration of all matter in one celestial body. 
 However great the distances may be, such an 
 union must happen ; but as it does not happen, 
 although the world exists from eternity, there 
 can be no attraction towards a common centre. 
 And this gravitation towards a centre can only 
 be prevented by there being, beyond the bodies 
 visible to us, others still farther which attract 
 from without — and so forth ad infinitum. Every 
 imagined limitation would render the existence 
 of the world impossible. 
 
INFINITY OF MATTEE. 27 
 
 If, then, we can find no limit to minuteness, 
 and are still less able to reach it in respect to 
 • magnitude, we must declare matter to be infinite 
 in either direction, and incapable of limitation in 
 cr, time or space. If the laws of thought demon- 
 strate an infinite divisibility of matter, and if it 
 be further impossible to imagine a limited space 
 or a nothing, it must be admitted that there is 
 here a remarkable concordance of logical laws 
 with the results of our scientific investigations. 
 
 We shall have another opportunity of establish- 
 ing the identity of the laws of thought with the 
 mechanical laws of external nature, of which the 
 former are merely the necessary products. 
 
28 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 DIGNITY OF MATTEE. 
 
 " The times are past when spirit was assumed to exist in- 
 dependently of matter. But the times are also passing 
 away, in which it is contended that spirit is degraded 
 because it manifests itself only in matter." 
 
 Moleschott. 
 
 To despise matter and our own body, because it 
 is material — to consider nature and the world as 
 dust which we must endeavour to shake off — 
 nay, to torment our own body, can only arise 
 from a confusion of notions, the result of igno- 
 rance or fanaticism. Different feelings animate 
 him who has, with the eyes of an observer, fol- 
 lowed matter in its recondite gyrations ; who has 
 marked its various and manifold phenomena. 
 ■•& He has learned that matter is not inferior to, but 
 the peer of, spirit ; that one cannot exist without 
 the other ; and that matter is the vehicle of all 
 mental power, of all human and earthly great- 
 ness. We may, perhaps, share with one of our 
 greatest naturalists his enthusiasm for matter, 
 "the veneration of which formerly called forth 
 an accusation." Whoever degrades matter, de- 
 grades himself; who abuses his body, abuses his 
 mind and injures himself to the same degree as, 
 
DIGNITY OF MATTER. 29 
 
 in his foolish imagination, lie believed to have 
 profited his soul. We frequently hear those per- 
 sons contemptuously called Materialists, who do 
 not share the fashionable contempt for matter, 
 but endeavour to fathom by its means the powers 
 and laws of existence ; who have discerned that 
 spirit could not have built the world out of itself, 
 and that it is impossible to arrive at a just con- 
 ception of the world without an exact knowledge 
 of matter and its laws. In this sense, the name 
 of materialist can now-a-days be only a title of 
 honour. It is to materialists that we owe the 
 conquest over matter and a knowledge of its 
 laws, so that, almost released from the chains of 
 gravitation, we fly with the swiftness of the 
 wind across the plain, and are enabled to com-, 
 municate, with the celerity of thought, "with the 
 most distant parts of the globe v Malevolence is 
 silenced by such facts ; and the times are past 
 in which a world, produced by a deceitful fancy, 
 was considered of more value than the reality. 
 
 Pretended worshippers of God have, in the 
 middle ages, carried their contempt for matter so 
 far as to nail their own bodies, the noble works 
 of nature, to the pillory. Some tormented, others 
 crucified themselves ; crowds of flagellants tra- 
 velled through the country exhibiting their lace- 
 rated backs. Strength and health were under- 
 mined in the most refined manner, in order to 
 render to the spirit — considered as independent 
 of the body — its superiority over the sinful flesh. 
 
1/ 
 
 
 30 FOECE AND MATTES. 
 
 Feuerbach relates that St. Bernhard had, by his 
 exaggerated asceticism, lost his sense of taste, so 
 that he took grease for butter, oil for water ; and 
 Rostan reports that in many cloisters the supe- 
 riors were in the habit of frequently bleeding 
 their monks, in order to repress their passions. 
 He further states, that injured nature avenged 
 itself, and that rebellion, the use of poison and 
 the dagger against the superiors, were, by no 
 means rare in these living tombs. 
 
 Such aberrations are comparatively rare in our 
 times. Increased knowledge has taught us to 
 have more respect for the matter without and 
 within us. Let us, then, cultivate our body no 
 less than our mind ; and let us not forget that 
 they are inseparable, so that which profits the 
 one, profits the other ! Mens sana in corpore sano. 
 
 On the other hand, we must not forget that we 
 are but a vanishing, though necessary, part of 
 the whole, which sooner or later must again be 
 absorbed in the universe. Matter in its totality 
 is the mother, engendering and receiving again 
 all that exists. 
 
 No people knew better how to honour what is 
 purely human than the Greeks, and none knew 
 better how to estimate the contrast between life 
 and death. Hufeland relates, il When Demonax, 
 the Greek philosopher, then nearly one hundred 
 years old, was asked how he wished to be buried, 
 he replied : Let not that concern you, the smell 
 will bury the body. But would you, objected his 
 
DIGNITY OF MATTEE. 31 
 
 friends, serve as food to dogs and birds ? And 
 why not, he replied : I have endeavoured to be 
 useful to man during my life, and why should I 
 not, after my death, give something- to the 
 beasts V 
 
 Our modern society certainly does not share 
 these views. To barricade their miserable corpses 
 with flagstones, or to be shut up in family vaults, 
 some with rings on their fingers, appears to them 
 more dignified than to render to nature what 
 they have received from it, and what in due time 
 they must return to it. 
 
 A medical theologian, Professor Leupoldt of 
 Erlangen, the alter ego of the celebrated M. 
 Binseis, maintains, that those who start from 
 matter instead of from Grod, must renounce any 
 scientific conception, inasmuch as they them- 
 selves, but insignificant particles of matter, are 
 incapable of conceiving, or of penetrating into, 
 nature and matter. A reasoning more worthy of 
 the theologian than of the physician ! Have 
 those who start from Grod and not from matter 
 ever given us any clue as to the quality of mat- 
 ter and its laws after which they say the world 
 is governed ? Could they tell us whether the 
 sun moves or is at rest ? whether the earth is a 
 globe or a plain ? what was God's design ? No ! 
 that would be an impossibility. "To start 
 from Grod in the investigation of nature", is a 
 phrase without meaning. The unfortunate ten- 
 dency to proceed in the investigation of nature 
 
32 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 from theoretical premises, and to construe the 
 world and natural truths by way of speculation, is 
 long abandoned : and it is by pursuing an opposite 
 course of scientific investigation that the great ad- 
 vance of our knowledge of nature in recent times 
 must be ascribed. Why should those who pro- 
 ceed from matter be incapable of forming a con- 
 ception of it ? All natural and mental forces are 
 inherent in it ; in matter alone can they mani- 
 fest themselves ; matter is the origin of all that 
 exists. What else but matter could be our sub- 
 ject in the investigation of the world and of ex- 
 istence ? All persons deserving the name of 
 naturalists have ever proceeded in this manner ; 
 and no person aspiring to such a title can act 
 differently. M. Leupoldt, though a physician, 
 has never been a naturalist, otherwise such a 
 droll idea would never have entered his brain. 
 
33 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAWS OF NATTJEE. 
 
 " The government of the world must not be considered as 
 determined by an extramundane intelligence, but by 
 one immanent in the cosmical forces and their relations." 
 
 Strauss. 
 
 "We find in the constant harmony of nature a sufficient 
 proof in favour of the immutability of its laws. Every 
 miracle would involve their infraction; a process to 
 which nature would submit as little as to any other in- 
 tervention in its empire ; in which every thing, from 
 the gnat which dances in the sunbeam up to the human 
 mind, which issues from the brain, is governed by fixed 
 principles/' Tuttle. 
 
 The laws according to which nature acts, and 
 matter moves, now destroying, now rebuilding, 
 and thus producing the most varied organic 
 and inorganic forms, are eternal and unalterable. 
 An unbending, inexorable necessity, governs the 
 mass. " The law of nature," observes Moleschott, 
 " is a stringent expression of necessity." There 
 exists in it neither exception nor limitation ; and 
 no imaginable power can disregard this necessity. 
 A stone not supported will in all eternity fall 
 towards the centre of the earth ; and there never 
 was, and never will be, a command for the sun 
 to stand still. The experience of thousands of, 
 
 D 
 
34 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 years lias impressed upon the investigator the 
 firmest conviction of the immutability of the laws 
 of nature, so that there cannot remain the least 
 doubt in respect to this great truth. 
 
 Science has gradually taken all the positions 
 of the childish belief of the peoples; it has 
 snatched thunder and lightning from the hands 
 of the gods ; the eclipse of the stars, and the 
 stupendous powers of the Titans of the olden 
 time, have been grasped by the fingers of man. 
 That which appeared inexplicable, miraculous, 
 and the work of a supernatural power, has, by 
 the torch of science, proved to be the effect of 
 hitherto unknown natural forces. The power of 
 spirits and gods dissolved in the hands of science. 
 Superstition declined among cultivated nations, 
 and knowledge took its place. We have the 
 fullest right, and are scientifically correct, in 
 asserting there is no such thing as a miracle; 
 everything that happens, does so in a natural 
 way; i.e. in a mode determined only by acci- 
 dental or necessary coalition of existing mate- 
 rials, and their immanent natural forces. No 
 revolution on earth or in heaven, however stu- 
 pendous, could occur in any other manner. 
 r It was no mighty arm reaching down from the 
 ether which raised the mountains, limited the 
 seas, and created man and beast according to 
 pleasure, but it was effected by the same forces 
 which to this day produce hill and dale, and 
 living beings ; and all this happened according to 
 the strictest necessity. 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAWS OF NATUEE. 35 
 
 Wherever fire and water meet, vapours must 
 arise and exert their irresistible power. Where 
 the seed falls in the ground, there it will grow ; 
 where the thunderbolt is attracted, there it will 
 strike. Can there exist any doubt as to these 
 truths ? No one who has only superficially ob- 
 served the phenomena by which he is surrounded, 
 who knows only superficially the results of science, 
 can fail to be convinced of the necessity and un- 
 changeableness of the laws of nature. 
 
 The fate of man resembles the fate of nature. 
 It is similarly dependent on natural laws, and it 
 obeys without exception the same stringent and 
 inexorable necessity which governs all that exists. 
 It lies in the nature of every living being, that 
 it should be born and die ; none has ever escaped 
 that law ; death is the surest calculatipn that can 
 be made, and the unavoidable key- stone of every 
 individual existence. The supplications of the 
 mother, the tears of the wife, the despair of the 
 husband, cannot stay his hands. " The natural 
 laws," says Vogt, " are rude unbending powers, 
 which have neither morals nor heart." No call 
 can awaken from the sleep of death ; no angel can 
 deliver the prisoner from the dungeon ; no hand 
 from the clouds reaches bread to the hungry. 
 
 " Nature," says Feuerbach, "returns no answer 
 to the questions and lamentations of man ; inex- 
 orably it refers him to himself :" and Luther art- 
 lessly says, "for we observe from experience 
 that God takes no interest in this temporal 
 
36 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 life." A spirit independent of nature cannot 
 exist ; for never has an unprejudiced mind, culti- 
 vated by science, perceived its manifestations. 
 
 And how could it be otherwise ? How is it 
 possible that the unalterable order in which 
 things move should ever be disturbed without 
 producing an irremediable gap in the world, 
 without delivering us and everything up to arbi- 
 trary power, without reducing all science, every 
 earthly endeavour, to a vain and childish effort. 
 
 Apparent exceptions from the natural order 
 have been called miracles, of which there have 
 been many at all times. Their origin must be 
 ascribed partly to superstition, and partly to that 
 strange longing after what is wonderful and 
 supernatural, peculiar to human nature. It is 
 somewhat difficult for man, however evident the 
 facts, to convince himself of the conformity which 
 surrounds him ; it creates in him an oppressive 
 feeling, and the desire never leaves him to dis- 
 cover something which runs counter to this con- 
 formity. This desire must have had a larger 
 sphere among primitive and uncultivated races : 
 hence the number of their miracles. Even to this 
 day there is no deficiency of miracles and power- 
 ful spirits among savage and ignorant tribes. 
 We should only waste words in our endeavour 
 to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. 
 ~No educated, much less a scientific person, who 
 is convinced of the immutable order of things, 
 can now-a-days believe in miracles. We find it 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAWS OF NATUEE. 37 
 
 rather wonderful that so clear and acute a thinker 
 as Ludwig Feuerbach, should have expended so 
 much logic in refuting the Christian miracles. 
 What founder of any religion did not deem it 
 necessary, in order to introduce himself to the 
 world, to perform miracles ? And has not his 
 success proved that he was right ? What pro- 
 phet, what saint is there, who has not performed 
 miracles ? The miracle- seeker sees them daily 
 and hourly. Do not the table-spirits belong to 
 the order of miracles ? All such miracles are 
 equal in the eye of science — they are the results 
 of a diseased fancy. " Miracles," says the cele- 
 brated Systeme de la Nature, " exist only for him 
 who has not studied them." 
 
 Is it possible that, at a period when the natural 
 sciences have made such progress, the clergy of 
 so enlightened a people as the English should 
 parade before the whole civilised world their 
 gross superstition, in their famous quarrel with 
 Lord Palmerston. The clergy demanded that 
 Government should appoint a general fast for the 
 removal of the cholera. The noble Lord replied 
 that the propagation of the cholera rested on 
 natural conditions partly known, but that its pro- 
 gress was more likely to be arrested by sanitary 
 measures than by prayers. This reply was con- 
 sidered to smack of atheism ; and the clergy de- 
 clared it to be a mortal sin not to believe that 
 Providence might, from personal considerations, 
 at any time transgress the laws of nature. What 
 
38 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 a droll idea these people entertain of the God 
 which they have created for themselves ! A 
 sujoreme legislator,, who allows himself to be 
 moved by prayers and sobs, to reverse the im- 
 mutable order which he himself has created, to 
 violate his own laws, and with his own hand to 
 destroy the action of the natural forces ! If these 
 people had possessed the smallest notion of the 
 natural conditions under which diseases are pro- 
 pagated, they would have perceived the absurdity 
 of their demand. 
 
 " Every miracle, if it existed," observes Gotta, 
 " would lead to the conviction that the creation 
 is not deserving the respect which all pay to it, 
 and the mystics would necessarily be obliged to 
 deduce from the imperfection of the created world 
 the imperfection of the creator." 
 
 "Miracles," says Giebel, "are great horrors 
 'in the domain of science, where not blind faith, 
 but conviction derived from knowledge, is of any 
 value." 
 
 And the Frenchman Jouvencel observes : 
 u There is neither chance nor miracle ; there 
 exist but phenomena governed by laws." 
 
 Dogmatic writers call it an unworthy view of 
 God, to regard the world as clockwork going 
 by itself; and to consider God as the constant 
 regulator. Thus Humboldt has been blamed for 
 having described his Cosmos as an assemblage of 
 natural laws, and not as the product of creative 
 will. We might as well blame the natural 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAWS OF NATUEE. 39 
 
 sciences, that they exist ; for not natual history, 
 but nature itself, has made known to us Cosmos as 
 a system of unalterable laws. Anything that may 
 be objected by theology or imperfect knowledge 
 is refuted by the power of facts, which clearly de- 
 cide for our view. The opponents of natural 
 science no doubt have their own facts : God dried 
 up the Red Sea in order that the Jews might pass 
 over. By comets and eclipses he frightens 
 humanity at all times; he clothes the lilies, and 
 feeds the birds. But what rational person can 
 in these cases perceive any thing else but the 
 eternal unalterable action of natural forces ? And 
 is it a view more worthy of God to represent 
 him as a power which now and then gives a new 
 impulse to the world in its course, and puts on a 
 screw, etc., like the regulator of a watch ? If the 
 world has been created by God perfect, how can 
 it require any repairs ? 
 
 The conviction of the immutability of the 
 natural laws is general among naturalists ; 
 they only differ in the mode by which they 
 reconcile this fact with the existence of a so- 
 called absolute or individual creative power. 
 Naturalists, as well as philosophers, have in 
 a variety of ways pursued this subject, 
 and apparently with the same want of success. 
 The attempts could not succeed by a scientific 
 method. They either were opposed to the facts, 
 or touched upon the province of faith, or took 
 refuge under ambiguous phrases. 
 
40 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Thus the celebrated Oersted says, u The world 
 is governed by an eternal reason, which makes 
 known to ns its actions by unalterable laws." 
 But no one can comprehend how an eternal and 
 governing reason can accord with unalterable 
 laws of nature. Either the laws of nature govern, 
 or eternal reason governs ; if both govern to- 
 gether, they must be in continual conflict ; the 
 government of the latter would render that of 
 the former unnecessary, whilst the action of un- 
 alterable laws admits of no personal interference, 
 and can on that account scarcely be called go- 
 verning. On the other hand, we must quote a 
 passage of the same Oersted, in opposition to 
 those who experience a degrading and oppressive 
 feeling from acknowledging the immutability of 
 nature's laws. " By this knowledge," observes 
 Oersted, "the soul acquires repose, is brought 
 into harmony with all nature, and is delivered 
 from every superstitious fear that powers beyond 
 the domain of reason should interfere with the 
 eternal course of nature." * 
 
 * Since the results of modern natural science have by- 
 popular writings spread in wider, not exactly scientific, 
 circles, there is from innumerable places and corners heard 
 a cry of lamentation about the disconsolate nature of these 
 results ; which lamentations have been rather increased since 
 the first edition of our book. The unexceptionable order 
 which reigns in nature and the world, and the limits of 
 which cannot be passed; the consciousness that nothing 
 within and beyond him is arbitrary, but everything neces- 
 sary, is, on the contrary, apt to produce in the mind of a 
 rational man, besides a feeling of modesty, also that of con- 
 
IMMUTABILITY OP THE LAWS OF NATURE. 41 
 
 Still worse have those theorists fared, who as- 
 sumed that the highest or absolute power is so 
 intimately connected with the objects in nature, 
 that everything happens through its immediate 
 influence, though according to fixed laws ; in 
 other words, that the world is a monarchy go- 
 verned by laws, in some sense a constitutional 
 state. But the immutability of the laws of na- 
 ture is of a kind that admits of no exception,- 
 that under no circumstances is the action of a 
 compensating hand perceptible, and that its ac- 
 tion is frequently quite independent of the rules 
 of a higher reason, now constructing, now de- 
 stroying, now full of design, then again perfectly 
 blind and in contradiction with all moral and ra- 
 tional laws. That in the formation of organic 
 and inorganic bodies, which are constantly being 
 renewed, there can be no direct governing rea- 
 son at work is proved by the most striking 
 facts. The nisus formativus inherent in nature 
 is so blind and so dependent on external cir- 
 cumstances, that the most senseless forms are 
 
 tentment and self-esteem, giving him a certain hold not 
 resting upon fancies, but upon the knowledge of truth. 
 Every other view, which deduces the destination of man 
 from his relation to an unknown arbitrarily ruling and 
 producing something, degrades him to the state of a puppet 
 in the hands of unknown powers, and makes him the impo- 
 tent and ignorant slave of an invisible master. " Are we 
 sucking-pigs, which are whipped to death for princely tables, 
 in order that their flesh should be more savoury ?" (He- 
 rault, in George Büchner's Danton' s Tod.) 
 
42 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 frequently engendered, that it is often incapable 
 of obviating or overcoming the slightest obstruc- 
 tions, and that frequently the contrary of what 
 according to reason should happen, is effected. 
 We shall have occasion to adduce examples of 
 this kind in a subsequent chapter on teleology. 
 This theory could, therefore, find but few adhe- 
 rents among naturalists, who have daily and 
 hourly the most ample opportunities of con- 
 vincing themselves of the purely mechanical 
 mode of action of the natural laws. 
 
 A great number of adherents that theory found 
 which admits that the laws of nature act mecha- 
 nically, independent of any external influence, 
 but that we must assume that it has not been so 
 from eternity, and that a creative power, gifted 
 with the highest reason, has created the matter 
 and given it laws now inseparably united with 
 it ; that this creative power had then given the 
 world the first impulse to set it in motion, after 
 which that being had retired to rest. 
 
 " There are many naturalists/'' says Rudolph 
 Wagner,* " who assume a primitive creation, 
 but maintain that after the creation the world 
 had been left to itself, and is preserved by 
 the excellence of its mechanism." We have al- 
 ready expressed our objection to this view, and 
 shall recur to it in the sequel when speaking of 
 creation. It will be shown that a direct creation 
 cannot be proved from the facts at our command, 
 * Ueber Wissen und Glauben, 1854. 
 
IMMUTABILITY OF THE LAWS OP NATURE. 43 
 
 that on the contrary every thing induces us to 
 reject such an idea, and to consider the ever- 
 changing action of the natural forces as the 
 fundamental cause of all that arises and perishes. 
 
 It is not within our province to concern our- 
 selves with those, who in their attempts to ex- 
 plain the secret of existence, turn to faith. We 
 are occupied with the tangible sensible world, 
 and not with that which every individual may 
 imagine to exist. 
 
 What this or that man may understand by a 
 governing reason, an absolute power, a universal 
 soul, a personal Grod, etc., is his own affair. The 
 theologians, with their articles of faith, must be 
 left to themselves ; so the naturalists with their 
 science : they both proceed by different routes. 
 The province of faith rests in human dispositions, 
 which are not accessible to science; and even 
 for the conscience of the individual, it does not 
 appear impossible to keep faith and science sepa- 
 rate. A respectable naturalist recently gave the 
 ingenuous advice that we should keep two con- 
 sciences,- a scientific, and a religious conscience, 
 which for the peace of our mind we should 
 keep perfectly separate, as they cannot be re- 
 conciled. This process is now known by the tech- 
 nical expression of "book-keeping by double 
 entry." We said the advice was ingenuous, be- 
 cause he whose conviction permits him to keep 
 such a conscience by double entry, stands in no 
 need of advice. 
 
44 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 UNIVERSALITY OF THE LAWS OF NATTIEE. 
 
 " Who suspends one law of nature suspends them all." 
 
 L. Feuerbach. 
 
 "When it was perceived that the sun, moon and 
 stars were not exactly candles fixed in the 
 heavenly vault intended to illuminate by day and 
 night the dwelling-places of the human race ; 
 nor that the earth was the footstool of Grod, but 
 a mere speck in the universe, — then the human 
 mind, deprived of a comparatively near field for 
 its speculations, did not hesitate to search for 
 one in the distance. Remote regions of worlds 
 sparkled now in the marvellous splendour of the 
 paradise. Distant planets were imagined to be 
 peopled with races possessing ethereal bodies 
 released from the burden of matter, and those 
 who had taught that life was merely a preparatory 
 school for a beyond, hastened to exhibit to their 
 pupils the glorious and infinite prospect of a con- 
 stantly ascending school-career from planet to 
 planet, and from sun to sun, in which the indus- 
 trious and well-conducted should always occupy 
 the front, and the lazy always the back seats. 
 However charming such a prospect may appear to 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF THE LAWS OF NATURE. 45 
 
 minds habituated to a school discipline, a sober 
 contemplation of nature must reject these extra- 
 vagant fancies. According to our present know- 
 ledge of the bodies which surround our globe, 
 we cannot but conclude, that the same materials 
 and. the same laws govern the visible universe, 
 and that they everywhere act in the same man- 
 ner as in our proximity. Astronomy and natural 
 philosophy afford a sufficient number of proofs. 
 The laws of gravitation, i.e. the laws of motion 
 and attraction, are in all space reached by the 
 telescope, invariably the same. The motions of 
 all and the most remote bodies take place ac- 
 cording to the same laws by which on our earth 
 a stone falls, or the pendulum vibrates, etc. All 
 astronomical calculations regarding the motions 
 of distant bodies, and which are based upon these 
 known laws, have proved perfectly correct. 
 Astronomers have pointed out the existence of 
 stars, which were only discoveredafterbeingsought 
 for in the spots indicated ; they predict solar and 
 lunar eclipses, and calculate the reappearance of 
 comets in centuries to come. The form of Ju- 
 piter was deduced from the laws of rotation, and 
 was verified by direct observation. We know 
 that the planets have their seasons, days, and 
 nights like the earth, though they differ in length. 
 The laws of light through all space are the 
 same as on our earth. Everywhere has it the 
 same velocity, and composition; and its refraction 
 takes place in a similar manner. The light which 
 
46 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 the most remote fixed stars transmit to us 
 through a space of billions of miles, differs in no- 
 thing from the light of our sun ; it acts according 
 to the same laws, and has the same composition. 
 We possess not less sufficient grounds proving 
 that the bodies in the universe possess two of the 
 same properties as our earth, and the objects 
 upon it, namely, impenetrability and divisibility. 
 The laws of heat are like those of fight, every- 
 where the same. The heat emanating from the 
 sun acts according to the same principles as 
 that radiating from the earth. But it is upon 
 the relation of heat, that the solid, liquid, 
 and aeriform states of bodies depend; these 
 states must therefore everywhere exist under 
 the same conditions. Again — electricity, mag- 
 netism, etc., are so intimately connected with 
 the evolution of heat, that they cannot be 
 separated; consequently, wherever heat is, that 
 is to say, everywhere, there must also be these 
 forces. The same may be asserted of the 
 relation of heat to the mode of chemical com- 
 bination and decomposition, which must every- 
 where take place in a similar manner. Meteoric 
 stones, visible messengers from another world, 
 afford a more direct proof. In these remarkable 
 bodies which are projected from other heavenly 
 bodies, or from the primordial ether, there has as 
 yet no element been discovered, which is not 
 already existing upon the earth ; nor is the form 
 of those crystals different from those known to 
 
UNIVERSALITY OF THE LAWS OF NATURE. 47 
 
 us. The history of the origin and development 
 of our earth is analogous to that of other heavenly- 
 bodies. The spheroidal forms of the planets 
 prove that they, like the earth, were once in a 
 fluid state, and the gradual development of the 
 earth to its present form must, in a similar man- 
 ner, have taken place in all other planets. 
 
 All these facts evidently prove the universality 
 of the laws of nature, and that they are not con- 
 fined to our earth, but pervade all space. No- 
 where in this space is there a loophole for the 
 imagination to engender its marvellous fancies, 
 and to dream of an existence emancipated from 
 the limits of these common laws. 
 
 It is not necessary for us to possess the means 
 of tracing every natural force in its universality. 
 The circumstance that this has been effected for 
 some is quite sufficient to protect us from error. 
 Where one law prevails, there prevail all the rest; 
 their connection being* so intimate as to be inse- 
 parable. Every exception, every deviation would 
 immediately result in an irreparable confusion ; 
 for the equilibrium of forces is the fundamental 
 condition of all existence. The world surround- 
 ing us is an infinite whole, composed of the same 
 materials, and moved by the same forces. Oersted 
 argues correctly when he maintains that, assum- 
 ing the identity of the laws of nature and those 
 of reason, we must also suppose a substantial 
 equality of the perceptive power in the whole 
 universe. If there be thinking beings upon 
 
48 POECE AND MATTER . 
 
 other planets — and this is probable, for why- 
 should not similar causes produce similar effects? 
 — then their powers of thought must be similar 
 to ours, though there may be a difference in de- 
 gree. The corporeal structure of their organs 
 must also be substantially the same, though 
 varied in form according to the influence of ex- 
 ternal circumstances. It cannot, however, be 
 denied, that even within the limits of existing 
 materials and forces there are so many modifica- 
 tions and combinations possible, that our conclu- 
 sions touch upon the province of theories and 
 suppositions. However, there can be no doubt 
 that the fundamental principles of corporeal and 
 mental development, of organic and inorganic 
 life, must everywhere be the same. Similar 
 materials and forces produce in their combina- 
 tions similar effects, though in an immense variety 
 of colours and shades. Our direct investigation, 
 however, ends here ; whether with the improve- 
 ment of our instruments, our knowledge may be 
 enlarged, we cannot tell. 
 
 " And if," says Zeise,* " what can scarcely be 
 doubted, there exist higher organic beings upon 
 distant worlds, they must in their higher deve- 
 lopment of thinking beings resemble man in his 
 intellectual capacity, inasmuch as there is in the 
 whole universe but one reason which can only be- 
 thought of as the same, and to which all the laws 
 
 * Das Endlose der grossen und der kleinen materiellen 
 Welt. Altona, 1S55. 
 
UNIVEESALITY OF THE LAWS OF NATURE. 49 
 
 of nature appear as the laws of reason." That 
 spirit and nature are the same, that reason 
 and the laws of nature are identical, must al- 
 ready have appeared from what we have stated 
 on the relation of matter and force. What we 
 term mind, thought, conception, is the result of 
 natural, though peculiarly combined, forces, 
 which, like every other force of nature, can only 
 be manifested in certain materials. These mate- 
 rials are in organic life combined in an infinitely 
 complicated mode, and produce on that account 
 effects which at first appear wonderful and inex- 
 plicable, whilst in the inorganic world the pro- 
 cesses and effects are more simple, and therefore 
 more comprehensible. But in their essence they 
 are both the same, and experience teaches us in 
 every step that the laws of thought are the laws 
 of the world. 
 
 " A main point of the proof," observes Oer- 
 sted, u that the laws of nature are those of rea- 
 son, is, that by thought we are able to deduce 
 other laws of nature from those known to us, so 
 that we find them in experience, and if this does 
 not happen, we naturally conclude that we have 
 formed erroneous conclusions." 
 
 This notion perfectly and necessarily agrees 
 with the empirical results we shall obtain in the 
 chapter treating of innate ideas, and the origin 
 of the human soul. As the soul knows nothing 
 of so-called absolute, supersensual, immediate, 
 or transcendental ideas, but acquires all its 
 
 E 
 
50 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 thoughts and knowledge from the observation of 
 the surrounding objective world, and is conse- 
 quently merely a product of this world and of 
 nature, it cannot be but that the laws of them 
 should be reflected or repeated in the human 
 mind. Though it may be difficult, nay impos- 
 sible, to trace in detail the recondite processes of 
 this relation, still it appears to us that on em- 
 pirical grounds there can be no doubt as to the 
 fact itself. 
 
51 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE HEAVENS. 
 
 " The world governs itself according to eternal laws." 
 
 COTTA. 
 
 Eveey schoolboy knows that the sky is not a 
 glass shade covering the earth, but that, in con- 
 templating it, we behold an immense space inter- 
 rupted by infinitely distant and scattered groups 
 of worlds. These individual worlds, or solar 
 systems, must have been formed from a shape- 
 less mass of vapours by the rotary motion of 
 specks, so as gradually to have become condensed 
 into compact globular masses. These masses in 
 space are in constant motion, a motion singularly 
 combined and complicated, yet in all its modi- 
 fications merely the result of a single universal 
 law of nature — the law of attraction. This law, 
 inherent in matter, and visibly manifested in 
 every atom, is irresistibly obeyed by every body, 
 however large or small, without the least devia- 
 tion. All these motions may be determined and 
 predicted with mathematical exactness. As far 
 as the telescope of man reaches, the same law, 
 the same mechanical arrangement, according to 
 the same calculated mechanical formula, is found. 
 
52 FORCE AND HATTER. 
 
 Nowhere is there a trace of an arbitrary finger, 
 which has ordered the heavens, or pointed 
 out the paths of comets. " I have searched 
 the heavens," said Lalande, "but have no- 
 where found the traces of a God." And when 
 the emperor Napoleon asked the celebrated 
 astronomer Laplace why there was no mention 
 of Grod in his Mechanique Celeste, he replied, 
 (< Sire, je n y avals pas besoin de cette hypothese." 
 The more astronomy progressed in its knowledge 
 of the laws and motions in the heavens, the more 
 it repudiated the idea of a supernatural influence, 
 and the easier it became to deduce the origin, 
 grouping, and motions of the heavenly bodies, 
 from the properties inherent in matter itself. 
 The attraction of atoms rendered the bodies com- 
 pact ; whilst the law of attraction, in combination 
 with their primary motion, produced the mode of 
 their reciprocal rotation which we now observe. 
 
 True it is, that many, arrived at this point, 
 seek for the first impulse not in matter itself, 
 but in an extraneous cause which has imparted 
 motion to the matter. But even in this remote 
 position a personal creative power cannot hold 
 its ground. Eternal matter must have been 
 capable of eternal motion. Absolute rest in 
 nature is as little cogitable, and as little in exist- 
 ence as an absolute nothing. There can be no 
 material substance without a reciprocal manifest- 
 ation of its inherent forces, which in themselves 
 are nothing but various modes of material mo- 
 
THE HEAVEXS. 53 
 
 tions. Therefore the motion of matter is as 
 eternal as matter itself. Why matter assumed a 
 definite motion at a definite time is as yet un- 
 known to us ; but the investigations of science 
 are as yet incomplete, nor is it impossible that 
 we may get some clue as to the period of the 
 first origin of individual worlds. Even at this 
 day, astronomers give cogent reasons that some 
 of the nebular spots are worlds in embryo, which, 
 by gradual condensation and rotation, will be- 
 come worlds and solar systems. We have, there- 
 fore, concluding from analogy, a right to say that 
 those processes through which the existing- solar 
 systems have arisen, can have formed no excep- 
 tion to the general laws inherent in matter, 
 and that the cause of the first definite motion 
 must have existed in the matter itself. We are 
 the more justified in asserting this, as the many 
 irregularities, contingencies, etc., in the economy 
 of the universe and individual bodies, exclude 
 the thought of an external personal activity. If 
 it were the object of a personal creative power to 
 create worlds and dwelling places for men and 
 animals, why, we may ask, these enormous, 
 waste, useless spaces, in which but here and 
 there suns and planets swim, floating about as 
 imperceptible points ?* Why are not all planets 
 
 * The celebrated astronomer Tycho de Brahe (160S) 
 placed the fixed stars not far beyond the orbit of Saturn, 
 then deemed the last planet ; he could not reconcile starless 
 ethereal spaces with his idea of an all-penetrating deity. 
 (F. Nobbe.) 
 
54 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 of our system so formed as to be inhabited by 
 man ? Why is the moon without water and 
 atmosphere, and consequently adverse to every 
 organic development ? Wherefore the irregu- 
 larities and enormous differences in the size and 
 distances of the planets of our solar system? 
 Why the deficiency in order, symmetry, and 
 beauty ? Why have all comparisons, analogies, 
 speculations in regard to the number and forms 
 of the planets proved idle fancies ? " Why," 
 asks Hudson Tuttle,* ' c did the creator give rings 
 to Saturn, which, surrounded by its eight moons, 
 can have little need of them, while Mars is left 
 in total darkness ? If there was any special de- 
 sign in the plan of the solar system, the rings 
 should be given to a moonless planet : that 
 they were not, teaches the reverse.'''' And again, 
 " The moon's rotation round its axis is, in rela- 
 tion to that of the earth, such that it always pre- 
 sents to it the same surface. What is the reason 
 of this ? If there be design in this arrangement, 
 it must be admitted that it is very imperfect. 
 Why did the creator not impart to the celestial 
 bodies that order from which the intention and the 
 design could irresistibly be inferred V Because 
 the accidental concurrence of the elements knows 
 of no higher order, and because a crushed stone 
 does not separate in pieces regular in number 
 and shape. Why did not creative power arrange 
 the systems of worlds so that there may be no 
 # History and Laws of the Creation, 1860. 
 
THE HEAVENS. 55 
 
 doubt as to its object. Some perceive in the 
 position and relations of the earth to the sun, 
 moon, and stars, a designing providence; but 
 they do not consider that they confound cause 
 and effect, and that we should be differently 
 organised if the inclination of the ecliptic were 
 different or not existing. 
 
 These questions might be multiplied at plea- 
 sure ; but their number would not change the 
 result — that empirical philosophy, wherever it 
 may search for it, is nowhere able to find a trace 
 of a supernatural influence either in time or 
 space. 
 
56 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PEEIODS OF THE CEEATION OF THE EARTH. 
 
 " One generation passeth away, and another cometh, but the 
 earth endureth for ever." Bible. 
 
 " Thousands of years are, in the chronometer of nature, one 
 stroke of the pendulum — a moment." 
 
 Tuttle. 
 
 The investigations of geology have thrown a 
 highly interesting and important light on the 
 history of the origin and gradual development of 
 the earth. It was in the rocks and strata of the 
 crust of the earth, and in the organic remains, 
 that geologists read, as in an old chronicle, the 
 history of the earth. In this history they found 
 the plainest indications of several stupendous 
 successive revolutions, now produced by fire, 
 now by water, now by their combined action. 
 These revolutions afforded, by the apparent sud- 
 denness and violence of their occurrence, a wel- 
 come pretext to orthodoxy to appeal to the exist- 
 ence of supernatural powers, which were to have 
 caused these revolutions in order to render, by 
 gradual transitions, the earth fit for certain pur- 
 poses. This successive periodical creation is 
 said to have been attended with a successive 
 creation of new organic beings and species. The 
 
PERIODS OP THE CREATION OP THE EARTH. 57 
 
 Bible,, then, was right in relating that God had 
 sent a deluge over the world to destroy a sinful 
 generation. God with His own hands is said to 
 have piled up mountains, planed the sea, created 
 organisms, etc. 
 
 All these notions concerning a direct influence 
 of supernatural or inexplicable forces have melted 
 away before the age of modern science. Like 
 astronomy, which with mathematical certainty 
 has measured the spaces of the heavens, so does 
 modern geology, by taking a retrospective view 
 of the millions of years which have passed, lift 
 the veil which has so long concealed the history 
 of the earth and has given rise to all kinds of reli- 
 gious and mysterious dreams. It is now known 
 that there can be no discussion about those 
 periodic creations of the earth of which so much 
 was said, and which to this day an erroneous 
 conception of nature tries to identify with the 
 so-called days of creation of the Bible ; but that 
 the whole past of the earth is nothing but an un- 
 folded present. 
 
 However probable it may at first sight appear 
 that the changes, the traces of which we find in 
 the crust of the earth, must have resulted from 
 sudden and violent convulsions, closer observa- 
 tion teaches, on the contrary, that the greater 
 portion of these changes is merely the result of a 
 gradual, slow action, continued through immea- 
 surably long periods of time; and that this action 
 may still be observed going on, though on so 
 
58 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 reduced a scale that the effects do not parti- 
 cularly strike us. " For the earth/' says Bur- 
 meister, "is solely produced by forces which, 
 with corresponding intensity, are still acting ; it 
 has never essentially been subjected to more 
 violent catastrophies ; on the other hand, the 
 period of time in which the change was effected 
 is immense, etc. What is really surprising and 
 stupendous in the process of development, is the 
 immeasurable time within which it was effected. - " 
 As a drop of water may excavate a stone, so 
 may apparently weak and scarcely perceptible 
 forces produce in length of time ' incredible and 
 surprising effects. It is known how the cataracts 
 of the Niagara have broken up the bed of the 
 river for many miles, and that they have pierced 
 the firmest rocks. The earth changes continu- 
 ally, as it did formerly ; strata are formed ; vol- 
 canos burn ; earthquakes tear up the ground ; 
 islands rise and sink ; the sea leaves one part of 
 the land and swallows up another.* We see at 
 present all these slow and local effects, which 
 millions of years have produced in their entirety, 
 and cannot, therefore, divest ourselves of the 
 idea of a direct creative power, whilst we are 
 merely surrounded by the natural effects of na- 
 tural forces. The whole science of the conditions 
 of development of the earth is, however, the 
 
 * A detailed account of these facts will be found in the 
 popular work of Kossmässler, Geschichte der Erde, Frank- 
 furt bei Meidinger, 1856. 
 
PEEIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EARTH. 59 
 
 greatest victory over every kind of faith in an 
 extramundane authority. This science, sup- 
 ported by the knowledge of surrounding nature 
 and its governing forces, is enabled to trace the 
 history of what has happened in infinite periods 
 of time with approximating exactness, frequently 
 with certainty. It has proved that everywhere, 
 and at all times, only those materials and natural 
 forces were in activity by which we are at present 
 surrounded. Nowhere was a point reached, when 
 it was necessary to stop scientific investigation and 
 to substitute the influence of unknown forces. 
 Everywhere it was possible to indicate or to con- 
 ceive the possibility of visible effects from the 
 combination of natural conditions; everywhere 
 existed the same law, and the same matter. " The 
 historical investigation of the development of the 
 earth has proved that now and then rest upon the 
 same base ; that the past has been developed in 
 the same manner as the present rolls on; and 
 that the forces which were in action, ever re- 
 mained the same/'' (Burmeister.) 
 
 " This eternal conformity in the essence of 
 phenomena renders it certain that fire and water 
 possessed at all times the same powers, and ever 
 will possess them ; that attraction, consequently 
 the phenomena of gravitation, electricity, mag- 
 netism, the volcanic action of the interior of the 
 earth, have never been different from what they 
 are now. (Eossmässler.) 
 
 " Nature always works silently ; convulsions 
 
60 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 and revolutions form the exceptions. The cata- 
 strophies which the fancy of some authors has de- 
 picted with such a gloomy colouring, are either 
 exaggerated or have never occurred. There have 
 been great changes, terrible convulsions; but 
 most of them have taken place with much less 
 tumult than described, and in all cases they have 
 been produced by ordinary and known physical 
 forces." (Tuttle.) 
 
 An enlightened intellect no longer requires the 
 aid of that powerful hand which, acting from 
 without, excites the burning spirits of the inte- 
 rior of the earth to a sudden rebellion, which 
 pours the waters as a deluge over the earth, and 
 shapes for its designs the whole structure like 
 soft clay. How curious and whimsical is not the 
 conception of a creative power, which conducts 
 the earth and its inhabitants through various 
 transitions and immense periods of time to a 
 more developed form, in order to make it finally 
 a fit dwelling-place for the most organised animal 
 — man. Can an arbitrary and almighty power 
 require such efforts to attain its object ? Can it 
 hot immediately and without delay do and create 
 what seems good to it? Why these roundabouts? 
 The natural difficulties alone which matter meets 
 with in the gradual combinations and formations 
 of its parts, can explain to us the peculiarity of 
 the origin of the organic and inorganic world. 
 
 Of the immensity of time which the earth re- 
 quired to attain its present form, an approximat- 
 
PERIODS OF THE CREATION OF THE EAETH. 61 
 
 ing notion may be formed from the calculations 
 of geologists in regard to individual phases, or 
 the formation of certain strata. The so-called 
 coal formation alone required, according to Bis- 
 chof, 1,004,177, according to Chevandier's cal- 
 culation, 672,788 years. The tertiary strata, 
 about 1000 feet in thickness, required for their 
 development about 350,000 years ; and before 
 the originally incandescent earth could cool down 
 from a temperature of 2000 degrees to 200, there 
 must, according to BischoFs calculation, have 
 elapsed a period of 350 millions of years. Volger 
 finally calculates, that the time requisite for the 
 deposit of the strata known to us must at least 
 have amounted to 648 millions of years ! From 
 these numbers, we may form some notion as to 
 the extent of these periods of time. They give 
 us, moreover, another hint. The enormous dis- 
 tances in the universe, which stagger our imagin- 
 ation, in combination with these almost unlimited 
 periods of time, lead us to acknowledge that both 
 time and space are infinite and eternal. " The 
 earth as a material existence is, indeed, infinite -, 
 the changes only which it has undergone can be 
 determined by finite periods of time." (Burmeis- 
 ter.) " We must therefore assume, that the 
 starry heaven is not merely in space, what no 
 astronomer doubts, but also in time without be- 
 ginning or end ; that it never was created, and 
 is imperishable." (Czolbe.) 
 
 Should religious ideas, which always represent 
 
62 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 (rod as everlasting and infinite, have any advan- 
 tage above the conceptions of science ? Should 
 the gloomy rage of the priest, which invented the 
 eternity of hell- punishments, excel natural science 
 in boldness of thought ? " Whatever may be 
 said of the end of the world, everything is as 
 vague as the tradition of a beginning, which the 
 childish intellect of the peoples has invented: 
 the earth and the world are eternal, for this 
 quality belongs to the essence of matter. But it 
 is not unchangeable j and just because it is 
 changeable does the shortsighted man, not yet 
 enlightened by the investigations of science, con- 
 sider it as finite and perishable." (Burmeister.) 
 That which modern science, by the aid of in- 
 struments, has nearly established as an incontro- 
 vertible fact, was already taught thousands of 
 years ago, when logical thought was uninflu- 
 enced by the religious and philosophical preju- 
 dices of our time ; and it seems incomprehen- 
 sible how so simple and necessary a conception 
 as that of the eternity of the world could ever 
 have been lost to the mind. ({ Almost all the old 
 philosophers agree in considering the world eter- 
 nal. Ocellus Lucanus says expressly, in speaking 
 of the universe, that the same had ever existed, 
 and will ever exist. All unprejudiced individuals 
 will ever feel the force of the axiom that, out of 
 nothing, nothing can come. Creation, in the 
 sense of the moderns, is a theological sophism." 
 (Systeme de la Nature, premiere partie, note 7.) 
 
63 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PEIMEVAL GENEKATION. 
 
 "It is certain that the appearance of animal bodies upon 
 the surface of the earth is an expression of such forces, 
 a function which results with mathematical certainty 
 from existing relations." 
 
 BUBMEISTEB. 
 
 There was a time when the earth — a fiery globe 
 — was not merely incapable of producing living 
 beings, but was hostile to the existence of vege- 
 table and animal organisms. It was only after 
 having gradually cooled down, and, after the pre- 
 cipitation of the watery vapours which surrounded 
 it, that the crust of the earth assumed a form 
 which, in its further development, rendered the 
 existence of various organic beings possible. 
 With the appearance of water, and as soon as the 
 temperature permitted it, organic life developed 
 itself. In consequence of the reciprocal action 
 of air, water, and stone, there was formed in 
 th.e course of an immense number of years, a 
 series of superincumbent strata, the examination 
 of which has, within a comparatively short time, 
 given the most important results concerning the 
 history of the earth, and the organisms which 
 existed, and still exist, upon it j as each indivi- 
 
64 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 dual stratum contains well preserved remains 
 and traces of these organisms, both of vegetable 
 and animal origin. They are found even in the 
 lowest deposits in which a diminished tempera- 
 ture and the existence of soil rendered the origin 
 of organic beings possible. Pari passu with the 
 development of the different strata is seen a gra- 
 dually ascending development of vegetable and 
 animal organisms which lived in them. The 
 older such a stratum, the lower and more imper- 
 fect ; the more recent, the more developed are 
 its organic forms. There is exhibited at the 
 same time, a constant relation of the external 
 conditions of the surface of the earth to the exist- 
 ence of organic beings, and a necessary depend- 
 ence of the latter on the condition of the earth. 
 When the sea still occupied the greater portion of 
 the surface, aquatic animals and plants only could 
 preserve their existence. With the spread of 
 land there arose endless forests, which attracted 
 from the atmosphere its superabundant carbonic 
 acid, an element indispensable to the existence 
 of vegetable life. Only after the atmosphere had 
 been purified from this element, detrimental to 
 the life of air-breathing animals, was it possible 
 for higher animal life to exist in it. The appear- 
 ance of enormous vegetable feeders was in har- 
 mony with a gigantic vegetation. Carnivorous 
 animals appeared later, when there was food suf- 
 ficient for their existence. Thus every stratum 
 exhibits its peculiar organic world ; organic 
 
PEIMEVAL GENEEATION. 65 
 
 forms disappear with the change of external con- 
 ditions ; new organisms appear, and are added 
 to the old. With the degree of development of 
 the earth itself, rises also its organic population 
 from the simplest to the most complicated forms. 
 This constantly increasing variety is the result of 
 the now vivifying alteration of clouds and winds, 
 of light and heat. 
 
 In the Jurassic period, the surface of the earth 
 again changed its character; and in harmony 
 with this change we find in that period peculiar 
 intermediate organisms, those remarkable am- 
 phibial forms now perfectly extinct. But it was 
 only with the present existing differences of 
 climate, that the endless variety of organic forms 
 appeared which we now behold. In the tertiary 
 group, we meet with numerous mammals of sin- 
 gular shape, which are either extinct or exist 
 only in feeble analogues, , as the dinotherium, 
 numerous pachydermata, mastodons, etc. Of 
 man, the highest organic being of creation, not 
 a trace was found in the primary strata : only in 
 the uppermost, the so-called alluvial layer, in 
 which human life could exist, he appears on the 
 stage — the climax of gradual development.* 
 
 These palseontological characteristic relations 
 of the condition of the earth and external influ- 
 
 * It is said that in Belgium there have been recently dis- 
 covered in the diluvium, fragments of human bones which 
 approach the African type ; so that man may not, after all, 
 be the last member of creation. 
 
66 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 ences to the origin, growth, and propagation of 
 organic beings, are partly still existing ; and we 
 are surrounded by proofs of this kind. A nu- 
 merous class of animals, such as intestinal worms, 
 are only developed in definite places, and exhibit 
 the greatest variety in form and mode of life, 
 accordingly as they exist in various animals and 
 various organs. Upon the spot where a forest 
 is burned down, certain species of plants appear ; 
 oaks and beeches grow where pines stood. cc In 
 places ravaged by fire, in spots rendered arable 
 by clearing the forests, at the bottom of dried-up 
 ponds, there frequently shoots up a vigorous 
 vegetation, containing species not to be found in 
 the vicinity. Where a saline spring gushes forth, 
 there soon appear well-marked kalophites and 
 salt-water creatures, no trace of which is to be 
 found for many miles around." (Giebel.) Since 
 the increase of* pine plantations in the environs 
 of Paris, there is met with the lamia (lamia 
 cedilis), an insect belonging to Northern Europe, 
 which had never been seen in the above region. 
 Where air, heat, and moisture combine, there 
 appears sometimes in a few moments an innu- 
 merable world of singularly shaped animals, 
 which we term infusoria. 
 
 These examples might be multiplied; and it 
 can be shewn how external influences produce 
 within various species of plants and animals the 
 most important modifications. 
 
 In spite of the enormous and almost irrecon- 
 
PEIMEVAL GENEEATION. 67 
 
 cilable difference between individual races, the 
 majority of naturalists are still of opinion that 
 the assumption of the origin of the human race 
 from one pair is not opposed to science, and that 
 the differences which human beings exhibit may 
 be considered as the results of external and 
 gradual influences. " I believe," says Hufeland, 
 "the differences of the dog species are greater 
 than those of the human race. A greyhound 
 differs more from a bulldog than a negro from 
 an European. Are we now to believe that God 
 has created each of these varieties, or rather 
 that they have all descended from an original 
 stock, and have gradually degenerated ?"* 
 
 * The frequently discussed question in regard to the 
 descent of the human race from one or several pairs, is un- 
 important for the object of our investigation. If nature 
 was able to produce man by its innate forces in any one 
 place, it could do so in several places. The results of scien- 
 tific investigations leave scarcely any doubt that the human 
 race has descended, not merely from several, but from very 
 many pairs. The characteristic peculiarities of the so-called 
 botanic and zoological provinces of the earth, both of the 
 present and the past, and to which Agassiz first drew 
 our attention, indicate unmistakably the existence of as 
 many (to use the expression) centres of creation, from which 
 plants, animals, and man must have taken their origin. 
 The results of philology are still more in favour of this 
 view. The roots of the various languages exhibit such 
 decided differences, that a common origin is not to be 
 thought of. From these results it may be fairly concluded, that 
 not even the same variety descends from one pair, but that e.g. 
 the Caucasian race has originated in different spots. A. W. 
 Schlegel divides the various languages of the earth into 
 three classes — the analytical, organic, and synthetic Ian- 
 
DÖ FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 However important and powerful these influ- 
 ences may still be, it is certain that no perma- 
 nent transmutation of one species of animals into 
 another has as yet been observed, nor that any of 
 the higher organisms was produced by the union 
 of inorganic substances and forces without a pre- 
 viously existing germ produced by homogeneous 
 parents. The general law at present seems to 
 be omne vivum ex ovo, i.e. all living beings derive 
 their origin from existing germs produced from 
 homogeneous parents, or by direct generation, 
 as from an egg, a seed, or by division, bud- 
 ding, etc. There must have existed individuals 
 of the same species, to produce others of the 
 same kind. This truth is allegorically expressed 
 
 guages ; each, of these groups having arisen in a different 
 manner. The Chinese language belongs to the analytical. 
 The organic languages again form two distinct subdivisions, 
 between which there subsists no relationship whatever. 
 These are the Indo-Germanic, and the Semitic languages. 
 The Indo- Germanic family had their original dwelling place 
 in Asia (Affghanistan). They subsequently separated: one 
 part went to the East — these were the Indians; others went to 
 Western Asia; — the Persians and Armenians ; others, again, 
 took possession of Europe — the Celts, Romans, Greeks, Ger- 
 mans, Slaves. All these formed originally one family. The 
 Semitic race, however, differs from them entirely with regard 
 to their language. To this family belong the Arabs, He- 
 brews, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Syrians, and Assyrians. 
 Among the synthetic languages may be enumerated those 
 of the old Egyptians, or Copts, the Finns and Laplanders, 
 several nations in the interior of Eussia, and the Hun- 
 garians. Whether those of the Turks, Tartars, and Mongols 
 belong to it is questionable. 
 
 
PEIMEVAL GENERATION. 69 
 
 in the Old Testament, in the tradition that a pair 
 of each living species of animals was received in 
 the ark of Noah, to save them from the Deluge. 
 Those who are not satisfied with the traditions of 
 the Bible, necessarily raise the questions whence ? 
 and hoiv ? i.e. the question of the first origin of 
 organic beings. If every organism is produced 
 by parents, whence came the parents ? Could 
 they have arisen from the merely accidental or 
 necessary concurrence of external circumstances 
 and conditions, or were they created by an ex- 
 ternal power ? And if the first supposition be 
 true, why does it not happen to-day ? 
 
 This question has ever occupied philosophers 
 and naturalists, and has given rise to a variety of 
 conflicting opinions. Before entering upon this 
 question, we must limit the axiom omne vivum ex 
 ovo to that extent, that, though applicable to the 
 infinite majority of organisms, it does not appear 
 to be universally valid. At any rate, the ques- 
 tion of a generatio oequivoca, or spontaneous ge- 
 neration, is not yet settled. Generatio cequivoca 
 signifies the production of organic beings without 
 previously existing homogeneous parents or 
 germs, merely by the accidental or necessary 
 concurrence of inorganic elements and natural 
 forces, or also from organic substances not pro- 
 duced by homogeneous parents. Although modern 
 investigations tend to show that this kind of 
 generation, to which formerly was ascribed an 
 extended sphere of action, does not exactly pos- 
 
70 
 
 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 sess a scientific basis, it is still not improbable 
 that it exists even now, in the production of 
 minute and imperfect organisms.* 
 
 But, granting the applicability of this law to 
 
 * According to the observations of Dr. Cohn of Breslau 
 (Hedwigia, Notizblatt für Kryptagamische Studien, 1855), the 
 death of the common house-fly in autumn is the consequence 
 of a fungous development within the body. Numerous 
 minute free cells appear in the blood of the animal, which, 
 rapidly increasing, are transformed into a microscopic 
 fungus, empusa muscce. There are various grounds for be- 
 lieving that these empusa cells arise from a free cell forma- 
 tion in the morbidly changed blood of the fly. The so-called 
 muscardine of the silkworm, an epidemic fungous disease of 
 these animals, possibly arises in a similar manner, The 
 author entertains from his point of view, and on general 
 grounds, no doubt as to the actual existence of a generatio 
 cequivoca, and that earlier or later it will be scientifically 
 established. M. Eossmaessler reports that Professor Cien- 
 kowsky of St. Petersburgh has observed the spontaneous 
 origin of independent organisms from a single cell, starch 
 granules in the tubercles of putrid potatoes ; which pheno- 
 menon has, however, recently been differently interpreted 
 by Professor Cienkowsky himself. Prom more recent expe- 
 riments by M. Flach (Archive Pliarmaceutique, 1860), and 
 from a notice in the Journal for Natural Science (1860), it 
 seems to result that the inferior plants, such as fungi, algse, 
 lichens, may be spontaneously produced and metamor- 
 phosed into each other under particular conditions. Cells, 
 spores, tubular cells, are changed into monads. M. Pouchet 
 has also recently performed experiments for the purpose of 
 proving spontaneous generation. Prom his stand-point, 
 that author seems to entertain no doubt on the subject, and 
 insists that sooner or later science will be able to demon- 
 strate it. Professor Giebel of Halle, also, has very recently, 
 in his Questions on Natural History, expressed himself in 
 favour of the theory of spontaneous generation. 
 
PRIMEVAL GENERATION. 71 
 
 all highly organised plants and animals, the 
 question of their first origin remains yet open, 
 and appears at first sight incapable of solution 
 without the assumption of a higher power, which 
 has created the first organisms, and endowed 
 them with the faculty of propagation. Believing 
 naturalists point to this fact with satisfaction j 
 they remind us, at the same time, of the wonder- 
 ful structure of the organic world, and recognise 
 in it the prevalence of an immediate and personal 
 creative power, which, full of design, has pro- 
 duced this world. " The origin of organic beings," 
 says B. Cotta, " is, like that of the earth, an in- 
 soluble problem, leaving us only the appeal to an 
 unfathomable power of a creator." 
 
 We might answer these believers, that the 
 germs of all living beings had from eternity ex- 
 isted in universal space, or in the chaotic vapours 
 from which the earth was formed ; and these 
 germs, deposited upon the earth, have there and 
 then become developed, according to external 
 necessary conditions. The facts of these succes- 
 sive organic generations would thus be suffi- 
 ciently explained ; and such an explanation is at 
 least less odd and far-fetched than the assump- 
 tion of a creative power, which amused itself in 
 producing, in every particular period, genera of 
 plants and animals, as preliminary studies for 
 the creation of man— a thought quite unworthy 
 of the conception of a perfect creator.* But we 
 
 * A scientific attempt to prove, not merely the eternity 
 
\ 
 
 72 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 stand in need of no such arguments. The facts 
 of science prove, with considerable certainty, 
 that the organic beings which people the earth 
 owe their origin and propagation solely to the 
 conjoined action of natural forces and materials; 
 and that the gradual change and development of 
 the surface of the earth is the sole, or at least 
 the chief, cause of the gradual increase of the 
 living world. 
 
 It is impossible at present to demonstrate with 
 scientific exactness this gradual development, 
 though we may hope that future investigations 
 will throw more light on the subject. Our pre- 
 sent knowledge is, however, sufficient to render 
 it highly probable, nay, perhaps morally certain, 
 that a spontaneous generation exists, and that 
 higher forms have gradually and slowly become 
 developed from previously existing lower forms, 
 always determined by the state of the earth, but 
 without the immediate influence of a higher 
 power. This gradual development of the lowest 
 organic forms into higher and more perfect or- 
 ganisms may, in spite of individual exceptions, 
 be considered a fact established by palaeontolo- 
 gical investigations — a fact which indicates a 
 fundamental law of nature mediating the origin 
 of organic beings. In proportion as the earth 
 
 of all organisms,, of man and his varieties, but also of the 
 earth and of the present existing order of the heavenly- 
 bodies — a theory opposed to the present state of cosmogony 
 — will be found in a recently published work of Dr. Czolbe 
 (Neue Darstellung des Sensualismus, 1855). 
 
PEIMEVAL GENEKATION. 73 
 
 became more developed, the more varied became 
 the structure of individual animals — proof suffi- 
 cient for the dependence of animal forms in con- 
 crete upon external circumstances. The fossil 
 relics of plants and animals are the gradually 
 extinct immature parts of a progressive series of 
 developments ; and we find in them the most 
 wonderful and harmonising types of succeeding 
 organisms. The older such relics are, the more 
 numerous are the forms of later organisms which 
 they contain. Some simple fossil forms exhibit 
 the fundamental types of succeeding, and partly 
 in still living different modifications. Sao hir- 
 suta } a trilobite in the Bohemian slates, is in its 
 first state of development so unlike that of suc- 
 ceeding generations, that one would not take it 
 to be the same animal, had not its various trans- 
 itions been accurately determined. In the fossil 
 Ccelacanthus lies the skeleton of all vertebrated 
 animals. The Labyrinthodonts are, according to 
 Burmeister, the true and most beautiful proto- 
 types of the idea of an amphibium in its* 
 totality, which, in the course of millions of years, 
 has been developed in a variety of forms. They 
 exhibit a mixture of the most heterogeneous 
 groups, which originated from them. The Ple- 
 siosaurus is in some respects the first attempt of 
 nature to emerge from the period of reptiles and 
 fishes. It has the body of a whale, the neck of a 
 bird, the head of an alligator. The type is re- 
 produced successively in varieties, and differently 
 
74 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 modified. The Megalosaurus combines the anatomy 
 of reptiles and mammalia. It shows itself a degree 
 nearer to mammals in the shape of the Iguano- 
 don — a gigantic lizard, ' ( with which the creative 
 power of nature appeared inclined to terminate 
 the gigantic species of amphibia.-" {Buch der 
 Geologie.) The Pterodactylus, a remarkable and 
 enigmatical animal of the Jurassic period, is a sin- 
 gularly shaped creature, half bat and reptile, half 
 amphibious and bird, so that it has been num- 
 bered among all classes of animals. In the ter- 
 tiary period, we find the Megatheria assuming 
 the form of the mammalia, reminding us at the 
 same time of reptiles. As the first representative of 
 the higher class of mammalia, the Palasotherium 
 appears, an interesting animal found in numerous 
 examples, from the size of a hare to that of a 
 horse, as varieties of this genus. It may be con- 
 sidered as the prototype of the class of mammalia, 
 the forms of their varieties being concealed in it.* 
 These examples might be easily multiplied ; 
 but the whole science of palaeontology is a con- 
 tinuous example. The lowest forms always ap- 
 peared first ; and from them proceeded an ascend- 
 
 * These transitions or intermediary forms have, in some 
 few examples, been preserved, so that they might be termed 
 \i "living fossils". That singular creature in New Holland 
 
 known by the name of ornithorhynchus, partakes of the 
 nature of the quadruped, bird, and an amphibious animal. 
 The scaly salamander (lepidosiren paradoxa) of South Ame- 
 rica and Africa, seems both an amphibian and a fish, 
 breathing partly by branchiae and partly by lungs. 
 
PEIMEVAL GENEKATION. 75 
 
 ing scale of development, both in relation to 
 genera and individuals. " The relics found in 
 the earth," says Oersted, " exhibit a series of 
 more or less developed forms, which succeeded 
 each other until the conditions were prepared in 
 which man, and an animal and vegetable world 
 adapted to his existence, could subsist " 
 
 This law of a gradual development of primeval 
 times is impressed upon the present living or- 
 ganic world. The whole science of comparative 
 anatomy has for its main object to trace the con- 
 formity of anatomical forms through the whole 
 animal series, and scientifically to establish the 
 existence of a fundamental plan common to all 
 animal forms, and only individually modified. 
 An uninterrupted chain of transitions and simili- 
 tudes connects the whole animal world, from the 
 lowest to the highest types. Even man, who in his 
 presumption deems himself so far superior to the 
 animal world, forms no exception to this law. 
 The Ethiopian race connects him by a number of 
 the most striking similitudes with the animal 
 world. The long arm, the shape of the foot, the 
 thin calves, the long and narrow hands, the flat- 
 tened nose, the projecting jaws, the depressed 
 receding forehead, the elongated head, the short 
 neck, the narrow pelvis,the pendulous belly, the 
 beardless chin, the colour of the skin, the dis- 
 agreeable odour, the sharp and piercing voice, 
 are all characteristic marks which approach the 
 negro to the ape. That his mind corresponds to 
 
76 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 his physique, has been established by the best 
 observers. (See the chapter "Brain and Soul"). 
 
 But not merely the Negro, but a number of 
 other savage tribes, such as Bushmen, Hotten- 
 tots, Pesherais, Australians, exhibit in body and 
 mind the distinct characters of the superior ani- 
 mals, from which they must have originated.* 
 
 The law of a gradual transition is thirdly mani- 
 fested in the development of the animal taken 
 individually. All animal forms are originally so 
 much alike, that it is often impossible to distin- 
 guish the embryo of a sheep from that of a man, 
 whose future genius may perhaps revolutionise the 
 world. Successful attempts have been made to 
 show how, in the history of development of every 
 animal or of man, the embryo in its various 
 degrees of bodily development represents and 
 repeats the chief types of an inferior series of 
 animals, thus constituting, in a measure, a series 
 of creatures in miniature. " It is a general law," 
 observes Vogt, "prevalent through the whole 
 animal world, that the resemblance of a common 
 plan of structure which connects various animals 
 is more striking the nearer they are to their 
 origin, and that these resemblances become 
 fainter in proportion to the progress of their de- 
 velopment, and their subjection to the elements 
 from which they draw their nourishment." Yogt 
 indicates in this sentence the important and de- 
 
 * See Reiclienbach, über Enstehung des Menschen, 1854. 
 

 PKIMEVAL GENEKATION. 77 
 
 finite influence of external circumstances and 
 conditions of life upon the development aud for- 
 mation of organisms. The younger the earth 
 was, the more definite and powerful must these 
 influences have been ; and it is, as we shall see, 
 by no means impossible to imagine that the same 
 germs might, by very different external circum- 
 stances, have conduced to very heterogeneous 
 developments. A number of primeval forms 
 perished, as we know, with the disappearance of 
 external conditions ; essentially changed relations 
 destroyed a former organisation, and produced a 
 new one. 
 
 What intelligent person can deny that these in- 
 fluences must, in primeval times, have been more 
 powerful than to-day ; that they were capable of 
 producing effects, which are not generally ob- 
 served at present ? We possess scientific rea- 
 sons for such an assumption. The temperature, 
 in the first place, was much higher than now. 
 Siberia, which now produces only miserable 
 shrubs, and animals accustomed to a cold climate, 
 was formerly populated by numbers of elephants, 
 which required for their existence an abundant 
 vegetation. Remarkable plants, of strange and 
 unknown forms, which could not resist the 
 cold, and could only live in very hot and moist 
 climates, were in the coal period spread nearly 
 over the whole surface of the earth. Palms and 
 cinnamon trees blossomed once on the declivities 
 of the mountains of Saxony and Bohemia. 
 
78 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 The comparatively greater force of nature in 
 former periods is equally manifested in the sin- 
 gular forms of antediluvian animals, as well as in 
 their enormous size. We know of no existing 
 animal exhibiting such differences in size as the 
 Palseotheriuni, already mentioned. 
 
 Under these circumstances, it does not appear 
 to us that naturalists are justified in rejecting the 
 theory of the gradual transmutation and unfold- 
 ing of the organic world, upon the ground that, 
 under existing conditions, it is constantly ob- 
 served that similar parents produce similar young. 
 "What right have we, as regards this point, con- 
 sidering the insignificant span of time of which 
 we have any experience, to conclude from the 
 present conditions of the earth those of the end- 
 less past, in which nature was undoubtedly younger 
 and more powerful in the production of organic 
 forms ? Under then existing conditions, it must 
 have been possible that an organic germ, in essen- 
 tially changed external relations, either acci- 
 dental or necessary, may have developed in a 
 form, species, or genus different from its pro- 
 genitor. Carl Vogt, an opponent of the trans- 
 mutation theory, says himself, "We have no 
 grounds for denying the possibility that in prime- 
 val times animals produced young differing in 
 many respects from their parents." 
 
 If, as we observe at present, the change which 
 climate, mode of living, and external influences 
 effect in animals, are, though considerable, yet 
 
PKIMEVAL GENEEATION. 79 
 
 insufficient to change their specific form, we 
 must also, besides the more powerful action of 
 natural forces in former epochs, take into con- 
 sideration the conjoined action of endless spaces 
 of time during which apparently trifling causes 
 may have produced great effects, and in which 
 contingencies and combinations may have oc- 
 curred of which we cannot in our short expe- 
 rience show an instance. 
 
 But we are wrong to say so, for we are not 
 altogether without examples. We have the right 
 to adduce in our favour the remarkable pheno- 
 mena of the so-called alternation of generations, 
 in which there takes place a transmutation of 
 several low animal forms in an ascending line, 
 with a perfectly deviating form, organisation, 
 and mode of life — not a transmutation of the 
 same individual, as in the metamorphoses of 
 butterflies or frogs — and each individual form re- 
 maining the same during life ; so that the pheno- 
 menon represents a real change of the species. 
 This alternation has been observed in several in- 
 testinal worms ; further, in the salpadce, medusce, 
 polyps, aphides, etc. This alternation, it is true, 
 is not unlimited — which it must be if it is to over- 
 throw the law of a fixed species — but returns after 
 several generations to the original type. How- 
 ever, we cannot but observe in these interesting 
 phenomena an approach to the transmutation 
 theory of animals; nor can we deem it impos- 
 sible that this alternation of generation was 
 
80 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 at earlier epochs less restricted than at pre- 
 sent. Finally, we are in possession of a most 
 important and pregnant discovery, made by one 
 of onr most distingnished physiologists, Johannes 
 Müller, and which removes any doubt as to the 
 possibility of a permanent development of one 
 species from a different one. We mean the 
 known discovery of the generation of snails in 
 Jiolothurice — a discovery which staggered its 
 orthodox discoverer. Holothurice and snails be- 
 long to different divisions of the animal kingdom, 
 of which the latter are much higher in the series; 
 so that they neither resemble nor have any rela- 
 tion to each other. Müller himself confesses, 
 somewhat reluctantly, that these phenomena 
 have nothing to do with alternation of genera- 
 tion. This discovery proves that direct genera- 
 tion of one genus of animals from a different one, 
 the possibility of which was hitherto denied, sub- 
 sists even within the historical period ; it ex- 
 hibits a rare instance of a neiu creation, and of a 
 law of transmutation which, in primeval times, 
 manifested itself with greater force than at pre- 
 sent ; it demonstrates, also, that to this day ex- 
 ceptions to the law of homogeneous generation 
 exist. " The appearance of various genera of 
 animals in creation, is a fact in palasontology 
 which must be considered as supernatural until 
 this phenomenon is perceived in the act, or sub- 
 mitted to observation. Should this become pos- 
 sible, the phenomenon would be no longer super- 
 
PRIMEVAL GENERATION. 81 
 
 natural, but must be classed among the pheno- 
 mena for which we must, by way of experience, 
 find out the laws." (Müller.) Who can say that 
 such metamorphoses do not frequently occur at 
 the present time, and that, along with homoge- 
 neous generation, they do not possess an import- 
 ance of which as yet we have no conception ! 
 
 But if, under subsisting conditions, such an ex- 
 traordinary process is possible that a holothuria 
 should produce a snail, what naturalist can deny 
 that conditions may once have subsisted, in which 
 similar phenomena occurred ; so that an ape, nay, 
 any other animal, may have given birth to 
 man ? In the face of the above fact, and of what 
 we have learned of the condition of the earth in 
 the primeval epoch, it is no longer possible to 
 ask the believer in a gradual transmutation of 
 organic creation, — Why does it not occur at pre- 
 sent ? Nor is it any longer necessary to trace, 
 as Oken did, the origin of man to the mud of the 
 sea. " The soil/'' says Reichenbach,* ' ' in which 
 the first man originated was an animal, his first 
 mother was an animal, and his first nourishment 
 was the milk of an animal." 
 
 With the acknowledgment of a law of trans- 
 mutation in this sense, in which the transmutation 
 was not, as the old school would have it, very 
 gradual, but rather fer solium, and must have 
 already existed in the embryo, we have obtained 
 a starting point in regard to the question, — 
 * lieber die Entstehung des Menschen, 1854. 
 
 G 
 
82 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Whence came the organic beings, the rich and 
 infinitely modified organic world by which we are 
 at present surrounded ? It is from the simplest 
 organic element, produced in the way of spon- 
 taneous generation by the combination of inor- 
 ganic elements, and from the simplest vegetable 
 and animal cells, that, by the aid of intense 
 natural forces and endless periods of time, there 
 has progressively arisen that rich and infinitely 
 modified organic world by which we are at present 
 surrounded.* 
 
 "It is probable," observed Professor Jaeger 
 
 * "The germs for the liiglier animals," says Professor 
 Baumgärtner (Anfänge zu einer Physiologischen Schoepfungs 
 geschichte der Pflanzen und Thierwelt, 1855), " could only be 
 the eggs of lower animals. The most highly developed 
 animals proceeded probably from the eggs of lower animals 
 of the same class ; and these, again, from a class beneath. 
 This may have even occurred in mammalia. Extra-uterine 
 impregnation and successful transplantation of the ovaria 
 have demonstrated that the eggs may in these animals be 
 developed in places not originally intended for them, etc. 
 There occurred, therefore, alternations of generation during 
 the periods of creation in the whole series of animals, and 
 likewise in plants." 
 
 " Besides the advance of the vegetable and animal world 
 in development, there occurred in that period the formation 
 of new original germs, which formed the basis of new meta- 
 morphoses," etc. 
 
 Baumgärtner further explains the transmutations of or- 
 ganic germs, and their nmltiplication by division during the 
 periods of creation. The first men proceeded, according to 
 him, from the germs of animals immediately beneath them, 
 but lived first in a larva state. He further considers that 
 the human race have not descended from one pair, but 
 appeared immediately in numerous races. 
 
PRIMEVAL GENERATION. 83 
 
 of Vienna, in his course of lectures, " that primi- 
 tive creatures, which owed their existence to 
 primeval generation, were zoophytes resembling 
 those now existing." Such of the latter, as 
 originated partly from animals and partly from 
 plants, still resemble each other in form and 
 mode of life. The plants which remained sta- 
 tionary at this inferior degree of organisation, 
 were outstripped by the animal kingdom, which 
 in its progressive development attained that per- 
 fection from the summit of which man looks 
 down upon the organic world. 
 
 We must not be understood to maintain that 
 the whole organic world originated from a single 
 centre. All facts and investigations prove, on 
 the contrary, that it must have arisen from in- 
 numerable independent central points, both as 
 regards the vegetable and animal world. The 
 similarity and differences between these centres 
 prove the fundamentally independent force of 
 nature. 
 
 We do not, like some naturalists, consider this 
 inquiry to be an idle one ; for, according to our 
 present state of knowledge, it would be too ven- 
 turesome to attribute to spontaneous generation 
 the immediate origin of all organic genera, and 
 even of man, in the primeval epochs. What 
 would be the object of the evident law of gradual 
 development and formation of prototypes, this 
 similarity in the first development of individuals, 
 if it did not indicate the possibility of a separa- 
 tion into different forms and kinds under differ- 
 
84 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 ent conditions ? Spontaneous generation played, 
 no doubt, a more important part in the primeval 
 epoch than at present ; nor can it be denied that 
 in this way beings of a higher organisation were 
 produced than now. We possess, however, 
 neither certainty nor well-founded data on this 
 point, and are ready to confess our ignorance. 
 But, though as regards organic creation much 
 may be doubtful, we may still positively assert 
 that it may have, and has, proceeded without the 
 interference of external forces. 
 
 If the contemplation of surrounding nature 
 strikes us so much by its grandeur, that we can- 
 not divest ourselves of the idea of a direct crea- 
 tive cause, the origin of this feeling is owing to 
 the fact, that we contemplate as a whole, the 
 united effects of natural forces through a period 
 of millions of years ; and, thinking only of the 
 present, and not of the past, cannot imagine that 
 nature has produced all this out of itself. The 
 law of analogies ; the formation of prototypes ; 
 the necessary dependence upon external circum- 
 stances which organic bodies exhibit in their 
 origin and form; the gradual development of 
 higher organic forms from lower organisms ; the 
 circumstance that the origin of organic beings 
 was not a momentary process, but continued 
 through all geological periods ; that each period 
 is characterised by creatures peculiar to it, of 
 which some individuals only are continued in the 
 next period; — all these relations rest upon in- 
 controvertible facts, and are perfectly irrecon- 
 
PRIMEVAL GENERATION. 
 
 85 
 
 cilable with the idea of a personal almighty 
 creative power, which could not have adopted 
 such a slow and gradual labour, and have ren- 
 dered itself dependent upon the natural phases 
 of the development of the earth. " An import- 
 ant question/' says Zimmermann,* "is this: 
 Whence came these animals ? How did they 
 originate ? The assumption that God has created 
 them of his free will is not only not satisfactory, 
 but unworthy of God. The great spirit of the 
 world, who created (?) solar systems and galaxies, 
 can scarcely work in pottery (which we are ac- 
 cording to this view), nor can he form animals 
 by way of experiment, and seeing that they are 
 not good, make others with improvements/'' 
 
 The work of nature, with its half-accidental 
 half-necessary products, has, on the contrary, 
 been infinitely slow, gradual, and not premedi- 
 tated. We nowhere perceive in this work an 
 origin indicative of a personal will. i( Nature," 
 said Linnaeus, (c performs nothing jper saltum;" 
 and, indeed, every new discovery in natural his- 
 tory confirms this axiom. The plant passes im- 
 perceptibly into the animal, the animal into man. 
 All endeavours to fix the limits between vege- 
 table and animal life have hitherto failed ; nor is 
 there any existing insurmountable barrier between 
 man and animal, of which we hear so much. 
 
 Geologists compute the age of the human race 
 from eighty to one hundred thousand years — the 
 age of the alluvial stratum ; whilst the history of 
 * Die Wunder der Urwelt. 
 
86 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 human existence dates only from a few thousand 
 years. What period must not have elapsed until 
 man rose to such an intellectual height as to feel 
 the desire of recording his experience for the 
 benefit of posterity ! And what right have we 
 to cite the present cultivated human beings 
 standing upon the uppermost step of a ladder of 
 one hundred thousand years, as a product of a 
 supernatural power ? Taking into consideration 
 his origin, our judgment must be altered. In 
 the earlier epochs, man certainly resembled the 
 animal ; and the oldest dug-out skulls exhibit a 
 rude undeveloped animal shape.* How much 
 more perfect the structure of the skull of Euro- 
 peans has become in the course of historical 
 times will be mentioned in the chapter ' ( Brain 
 and Soul." 
 
 Were we now, contrary to philosophical rea- 
 soning, to assume that the immediate hand of 
 the Creator has conducted these processes, scat- 
 tered as they are through space and time, we 
 * The oldest human skulls found in various spots of the 
 earth, together with the bones of animals., exhibit a primi- 
 tive undeveloped form, distinguished by a very receding and 
 remarkably fiat forehead. Such a skull was recently found 
 in the Neander valley (between Düsseldorf and Elberfeld) . 
 It was of a type in such a low state of development, accord- 
 ing to Dr. Schaafhausen, that it can scarcely be matched 
 with the skulls of any of the most degraded living races. 
 It approaches the animal form, and reminds us in the facial 
 bones of the expression of the ape. The skeleton may have 
 belonged to an individual of the savage tribes which inha- 
 bited Northern Europe before the immigration of the Indo- 
 Germanic races, and which were by civilisation destroyed, 
 like the American and Australian tribes of our own period. 
 
PEIMEVAL GENERATION. 87- 
 
 should approach to pantheistic ideas, and could not 
 but admit that this relation still continues, inas- 
 much as the development of the earth, and of the 
 animals and plants living upon it, has not ceased, 
 but continues as formerly. We must, then, also 
 assume that no lamb is born without the action 
 of this creative power, and that every gnat which 
 lays eggs has some claim upon that power for 
 the provision of its offspring. Science, however, 
 has long banished every thought of supernatural 
 interference in demonstrating the mechanical 
 and accidental processes in these phenomena. 
 These relations speak in favour of our views ; as 
 we are justified in deducing from the naturalness 
 of the present process, that it was the same in 
 the beginning, and vice versa. "Who says A, 
 must also say B. A supernatural beginning re- 
 quires necessarily a supernatural continuance." 
 (Feuerbach.) 
 
 " The earth, taken individually," says Bur- 
 meister, " remained in certain immutable rela- 
 tions to surrounding media, and whatever hap- 
 pened upon it, independent of these conditions, 
 was produced by its own inherent force; for 
 there neither was nor is there any force upon the 
 earth, than that it actually possesses. By this 
 force was the earth developed, and as far as this 
 force extends, so far are the effects manifested. 
 Wherever the terrestrial forces are wanting all 
 effects cease, and whatever the earth is unable 
 to produce has never existed and will never be 
 produced." And Professor Giebel of Halle ob- 
 
88 
 
 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 serves : " Tliese laws of animal life were unalter- 
 ably the same from the beginning; for nature 
 does not experiment like nations and princes, who 
 improvise constitutions, abrogate laws, and dic- 
 tate new ones. Human nature is pliable, but the 
 laws of nature are immutable and eternal. Na- 
 ture is perfect in itself, being in its development 
 governed by unalterable laws." 
 
 Science has never obtained a greater victory 
 over those who assume an extramundane or 
 supernatural principle to explain the problem of 
 existence, than by means of geology and petri- 
 factions ; never has the human mind more deci- 
 sively saved the rights of nature.* Nature knows 
 neither a supernatural beginning nor a super- 
 natural continuance. Nature, the all-engender- 
 ing and all- devouring, is its own beginning and 
 end, birth and death. She produced man by her 
 own power, and takes him again. May not the 
 present human race perish, and a more perfect 
 one take its place? Or will the earth retrograde, 
 and destroy the results of so many years labour ? 
 No one knows, no one will know it, but the 
 survivors ! . 
 
 * The words of Agassiz show that the task was not a 
 light one. " Those only who are familiar with the history 
 of science, know what trouble it cost to establish the fact 
 that fossils were indeed the relics of extinct animals. It 
 was then necessary to prove that these relics were not those 
 of the Mosaic deluge, an opinion so generally prevalent even 
 among men of science. It was only after Cuvier had ren- 
 dered it evident that the remains were the relics of extinct 
 animals, that palaeontology acquired a firm basis. And even 
 now, how many questions remain yet to be solved !" 
 
89 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 DESIGN IN NATTJEE (TELEOLOGY). 
 
 <f It is reflecting reason which brought design into the world, 
 and which admires a wonder created by itself." 
 
 Kant. 
 
 " Every process of nature determined by laws, every form 
 the result of the vital principle, contains within itself 
 the tendency of what man term's adaptation to a certain 
 end." Tuttle. 
 
 "We should not place the works of nature on one side, 
 and nature on the other. Nature is a work, and not a 
 person." De Jouvencel. 
 
 Design in nature has ever been, and is still, one 
 of the chief arguments in favour of the theory 
 which ascribes the origin and preservation of the 
 world to a ruling and organising creative power. 
 Every flower which unfolds its blossoms, every 
 gust of wind which agitates the air, every star 
 which shines by night, every wound which heals, 
 every sound, everything in nature affords to the 
 believing teleologist an opportunity for admiring 
 the unfathomable wisdom of that higher power. 
 Modern natural science has pretty much emanci- 
 pated itself from such empty notions, and aban- 
 dons these innocent studies to such as delight in 
 contemplating nature rather with the eyes of the 
 feelings, than with those of the intellect. 
 
90 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 The combination of natural materials and forces 
 must; in giving rise to the variety of existing 
 fornis, have at the same time become mutually 
 limited and determined, and must have produced 
 corresponding contrivances, which, superficially 
 considered, appear to have been caused by an 
 external power. Our reflecting reason is the 
 sole cause of this apparent design, which is 
 nothing but the necessary consequence of the 
 combination of natural materials and forces. 
 Thus, as Kant says, our intellect admires a won- 
 der which it has created itself. How can we 
 speak of design, knowing the objects only in one 
 form and shape, and having no idea how they 
 would appear to us in any other ? What natural 
 contrivance is there which might not be imagined 
 to be rendered more perfect in design ? We ad- 
 mire natural objects without considering what an 
 infinite variety of other contrivances and forms 
 have slumbered, and are still dormant, in the lap 
 of nature. It depends on an accident whether or 
 not they will enter into existence. Are not the 
 huge forms of plants and animals, which we 
 know only from their relics, long extinct ? May 
 not at some futwe time this beautiful world, so 
 full of design, be destroyed by a revolution, and 
 would it not again require another eternity until 
 these or other dormant forms .should again be- 
 come developed ? Numbers of arrangements in 
 nature apparently full of design, are nothing but 
 the results of the influence of external natural 
 
DESIGN IN NATUKE. 91 
 
 conditions; an influence, it must never be for- 
 gotten, which continued for millions of years, to 
 become dominant. Can the experience of the 
 short space of time known to us judge of the 
 power of such an influence ? 
 
 Animals inhabiting the north have a thicker 
 fur than those of the south ; and likewise the 
 hair and feathers of animals become thicker in 
 winter, and fall out in summer. Is it not more 
 natural to consider these phenomena as the effects 
 of changes in the temperature, than to imagine a 
 heavenly tailor who takes care of the summer 
 and winter wardrobes of the various animals ? 
 The stag was not endowed with long legs to en- 
 able him to run fast, but he runs fast because his 
 legs are long. He might have become a very 
 courageous animal, instead of a timid one, had 
 his legs been unfit for running. The mole has 
 short spatulated feet for digging ; had they been 
 different, it would have never occurred to him to 
 dig. Things are just as they are, and we should 
 not have found them less full of design, had they 
 been different. How many unfortunate attempts 
 may not nature, or the materials endowed with 
 force, have made in the production of these 
 various forms. These attempts failed when all 
 conditions necessary for their existence did not 
 concur.* Such forms as could preserve them- 
 
 * When tlie author, seven years ago, wrote these lines, he 
 did not expect that the progress of natural history would in 
 so short a time furnish the most convincing proofs in sup- 
 port of his opinion. The learned Darwin, in his excellent 
 work, On the Origin of Species (1860), clearly proves that, in 
 
s* 
 
 92 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 selves are now seen in a well ordered series, in 
 mutual relation to each other and to surrounding 
 natural forces ; and this order, established by 
 natural conditions, appears to us as produced by 
 design. What is now existing in the world, are 
 the remains of an infinite number of beginnings. 
 This exposition may be opposed to a remark 
 made by Dr. Spiesz of Frankfort, against the old 
 pantheistic theory. ' c If it was merely an acci- 
 dental concurrence of the elements to which 
 natural beings owe their origin, we cannot con- 
 ceive why new combinations, and with them new 
 
 the perpetual struggle of living beings for existence, only 
 those forms which possessed some, however feeble, an 
 advantage over their contemporaries, were able to sustain 
 themselves. The transmission and the successive develop- 
 ment of these advantages may, perhaps, explain the growth 
 of the organic world. Thus the colours of some animals, e.g. 
 of green insects and the partridges of the Pyrenees, are the 
 result of natural selection ; animals of a different colour soon 
 succumbed to their enemies, who transmitted to their off- 
 spring their superior qualities. An animal with thick fur has 
 a greater chance of preserving -its species in a cold climate 
 than one less favoured in this respect, and transmits this 
 advantage to its descendants. The superficial observer looks 
 upon this arrangement as a divine adaptation for a certain 
 end ; whilst the scientific inquirer sees in it .the effect of 
 natural causes. The most perfect organ in the body, the 
 eye, is, according to Darwin, the gradual development of a 
 simple sensitive nerve, having arrived at its actual condition 
 by numerous imperfect gradations, and is yet susceptible of 
 a much greater development before arriving at the greatest 
 perfection, etc. Empedocles, the Greek philosopher, already 
 taught that, when matter assumed shape, there were many 
 irregular forms which could only partly sustain themselves, 
 and which only slowly attained forms adapted to certain 
 ends. 
 
DESIGN IN NATUKE. 93 
 
 beings, should not arise from similar accidents \" 
 But there is no accident in nature in the sense 
 in which Dr. Spiesz uses the term. There reigns 
 everywhere, in consequence of the immutability 
 of nature's laws, a certain necessity which admits 
 of no exception. It is, therefore, impossible that 
 accident should, under similar conditions, pro- 
 duce new combinations. When, however, the 
 conditions are essentially changed, the products 
 of the natural forces change with them ; and it 
 may not be unknown to Dr. Spiesz, that what he 
 desires from the accidental concurrence of ele- 
 ments is actually existing, as every stratum of 
 the earth conceals different combinations and 
 organisms. 
 
 If, further, we believe the assertion of the cele- 
 brated geologist Lyell, that new organisms are 
 continually arising, and that the earth produces 
 from time to time new species of animals, which 
 are looked upon as merely newly discovered, 
 then there is still going on under our eyes what 
 Dr. Spiesz requires from the accidental concur- 
 rence of the elements.* 
 
 f- * « The multitude of living being/' says De Jouvencel, 
 {Genese selon la Science, 2nd ed.), "presents itself before us, 
 not as the execution of a natural plan, but as an historical 
 result, continually modified by a multitude of causes, which 
 have acted consecutively, and in which every accident, every 
 irregularity, represents the action of a cause. The plan — in 
 the sense in which the expression is employed — does not 
 exist. The forces act necessarily blindly, and from their 
 concurrence beings take their origin. To believe that nature 
 follows a serial plan would be a grave error. The series is a 
 
94 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Takings then, into consideration that nature 
 does not act from a conscious design, but accord- 
 ing to an immanent necessary instinct, it be- 
 comes obvious that it must be guilty of many 
 purposeless absurdities. In contemplating, there- 
 fore, nature in relation to design, it is an easy 
 task to shew distinctly how nature, when opposed 
 in its action by external obstacles, commits the 
 most ridiculous faults and absurdities. No one 
 can, in the first place, deny that in its unconscious 
 and necessary creative impulse, nature has 
 produced a number of beings and contrivances, 
 in which no design can be detected, and which 
 are frequently more apt to disturb than to pro- 
 mote the natural order of things. The existence 
 of dangerous animals has, therefore, ever been a 
 thorn in the side of theologians, and the most 
 comical arguments have been used to justify 
 their existence ; with what little success, is 
 proved by the assumption of those religious sys- 
 tems which consider sin as the cause of that ab- 
 normity. According to Meyer and Stilling,* 
 dangerous * reptiles and insects are the conse- 
 quence of the curse pronounced on the earth and 
 its inhabitants. Their frequently monstrous 
 form, etc., is made to represent sin and destruc- 
 
 resultant, and not an idea of nature : it is nature itself. 
 The human mind, however, evidently perceives that, if the 
 forces of the universe are continually acting 1 on the globe in 
 the same way, in order to modify their organisms, their work 
 must constitute a complete and perfectly graduated series." 
 # Blätter für höhere Wahrheit. 
 
DESIGN IN NATUKE. 
 
 95 
 
 tion ! The old German heathens looked upon 
 these animals as evil spirits, from which all dis- 
 eases originated. These whimsical explanatory 
 attempts prove how little was effected in show- 
 ing the usefulness or the design in these trouble- 
 some and disgusting creatures. We know, on 
 the other hand, that very innocent, or even use- 
 ful, animals have become extinct, without nature 
 taking any means to preserve their existence. 
 Such, within historical times, was the case with 
 the Irish elk, the rytina steiler i, the dodo, etc. 
 There are other useful animals which are con- 
 stantly diminishing, threatening to become ex- 
 tinct; whilst very many injurious animals, as 
 field mice, are so fruitful, that their extinction 
 cannot, be thought of. Locusts and migratory 
 pigeons form swarms which darken the horizon, 
 and bring destruction, famine, and death over 
 the spots they alight upon. " Whoever," says 
 Giebel, " expects to find in nature nothing but 
 wisdom, conformity, and design, let him exercise 
 his acumen in the study of the natural history of 
 the tape-worm. The main object of its life con- 
 sists in the production of eggs, the development 
 of which can only be effected by the sufferings of 
 other creatures. Millions of such eggs perish; 
 some few are developed and transformed into a 
 sucking and productive scolex, the progeny of 
 which again produce eggs which putrify in the 
 excrements. In this process there is, according 
 to human conception, neither beauty, wisdom, 
 nor design." 
 
A 
 
 96 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 For what purpose, we may further ask, are the 
 hosts of cc diseases", and of physical evils in 
 general ?* Why that mass of cruelties and hor- 
 rors which nature daily and hourly practises on 
 her creatures ? Could a being acting from good- 
 ness and benevolence endow the cat, the spider, 
 and man — the crown of creation — with a nature 
 capable of all these horrors and cruelties ? 
 
 It is said, that the colour of the flowers is 
 there .to gladden the eyes of man. But how long 
 blossomed flowers which the human eye never 
 saw, and how many blossom now which the eye 
 never sees ? Since the invention of the diving- 
 bell, we listen with surprise to the narrations of 
 
 * The assertion frequently heard from the mouth of theo- 
 logians and orthodox naturalists (see KLenke, Sonntagsbrief 
 eines Naturforschers an seine Religiöse Freundin, 1855— Sunday 
 Letters of a Naturalist to his Religious Friend), that disease 
 was nothing normal in nature, but was produced by moral 
 sin, and artificially introduced by the corruption of humanity, 
 rests upon the most ridiculous ignorance of nature and his- 
 tory. Disease is as old as organic life itself. Palseozoology 
 knows numerous instances of morbidly changed bones of 
 animals ; and the oldest documents mention diseases. Mo- 
 dern medicine knows that disease has not an external indi- 
 vidual existence hostile to an organism, but is a vital process 
 modified by abnormal conditions, an altered metamorphosis 
 of materials produced in the same way as normal formations, 
 and is therefore a necessary consequence of the laws acting 
 on the body, and nothing abnormal. The younger, the 
 more primitive, the less cultivated a people is, the more 
 subject is it to destructive and disgusting diseases. Geo- 
 graphy and the history of disease fully confirm this view. 
 A paradise not accessible to disease and evil is, for the clear 
 eye of the naturalist, a myth invented by the childish mind 
 of the peoples. 
 
DESIGN IN NATUEE. 97 
 
 the divers, who speak of a flora of magnificent 
 colours flourishing at the bottom of the sea, and 
 of a not less magnificent animal world. Coral- 
 lines of the most beautiful tints, inhabited by 
 innumerable swarming populations, are seen be- 
 neath the sea. Why these colours and beauties ; 
 why this life, at a depth into which the eye of 
 diver only can penetrate ? 
 
 Comparative anatomy, as already stated, has 
 for its chief object to find out the conformity in 
 the corporeal structure of various animals, and 
 to indicate the fundamental plan in each genus 
 and species. This science, accordingly, makes us 
 acquainted with a number of physical characters 
 which are perfectly useless to the animal pos- 
 sessing them, and which appear merely as the 
 rudiments of an organ which in another species 
 is more developed, and consequently useful to 
 the animal. The vertebral column of man termi- 
 nates in an appendage perfectly useless to him, 
 and which by many anatomists is considered as 
 indicative of the tail of animals. Contrivances 
 apparently purposeless are numerous in the 
 structure of animals and plants. No one knows 
 the object of the vermiform process, or of the 
 mammary gland in man. Yogt relates that 
 there are animals which are perfect hermaphro- 
 dites, possessing developed organs of both sexes, 
 yet incapable of reproduction, as two individuals 
 are required for copulation. ce What is the pur- 
 pose," he asks justly, " of such a contrivance ? 
 
 H 
 
yö FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Tlie fruitfulness of many animals is so great, 
 that, abandoned to themselves, they wonld in a 
 few years fill up the seas and cover the earth. 
 Why such an arrangement, as space and mate- 
 rials are wanting for such a number of animals V 
 
 For what purpose did nature place a mammary 
 gland on the shoulder of a man aged thirty-four 
 (case recently described by Dr. Klob of Vienna) ? 
 There are animals which never swim, and yet 
 their fingers are provided with the requisite 
 membranous apparatus. The sting of the bee 
 or the wasp causes the death of the insect when 
 made use of, etc. 
 
 " We ought," says Tuttle, " to be able more 
 rationally to interpret the aim of an almighty and 
 benevolent creator. If there were such, would 
 this being endow animals with organs of so little 
 use to them ? What can be the object and the 
 use of the transition forms of the foetus, in which 
 the mammifers resemble fishes and reptiles be- 
 fore they assume their actual forms ? Why have 
 all mammals rudimentary organs, which are only 
 developed in reptiles ? Why in the male mam- 
 mals are the genital organs of the opposite sex 
 not developed, and vice versa?" 
 
 One of the most important facts which speaks 
 against the theory that nature acts with conscious 
 design, is the production of monstrosities. The 
 unsophisticated human mind could so little re- 
 concile these phenomena with the belief in a 
 creator acting with design, that they were for- 
 
DESIGN IN NATUEE. 99 
 
 merly considered as indicative of the wrath of 
 the gods ; and they are, even at present, not unfre- 
 quently looked upon as punishments from heaven. 
 The author saw, in a veterinary cabinet, a goat 
 fully developed in every part, but born without a 
 head. Can we imagine anything more absurd 
 than the development of an animal, the existence 
 of which is impossible from the beginning ? 
 Professor Lotze of Gröttingen surpasses himself 
 in the following remarks on monstrosities. " If 
 the foetus is without a brain, it would be but 
 judicious, in a force having a free choice, to sus- 
 pend its action, as this deficiency cannot be com- 
 pensated. But, inasmuch as the formative forces 
 continue their action, that such a miserable and 
 purposeless creature may exist for a time, ap- 
 pears to us strikingly to prove, that the final 
 result always depends upon the disposition of 
 purely mechanical definite forces, which, once 
 set in motion, proceed straight on, according to 
 the law of inertia, until they meet with an ob- 
 struction/'' 
 
 This is plain language; and it appears very 
 singular how the same author can assert, in 
 another place, " Nature, having no confidence in 
 the inventive . power of the mind, has endowed 
 the body with certain mechanical contrivances," 
 which, for instance, effect by coughing the ex- 
 pulsion of foreign bodies from the throat. Were 
 it possible that such views should generally 
 spread, there would be an end to all inquiries, 
 and science would yield to a passive faith. 
 
100 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 That a writer, looked upon as an authority, 
 should pronounce in one breath two such contra- 
 dictory sentences, proves how unsubstantial our 
 present philosophy is. If, as Lotze thinks, 
 nature had reason to distrust the inventive power 
 of the mind, it might have found ample oppor- 
 tunities of making preventive contrivances for 
 certain eventualities ; e.g. that bullets should be 
 repelled by the body, that swords should not 
 cut it, etc. A foreign body in the trachea may 
 be removed by coughing ; but a foreign body in 
 the gullet may induce suffocation. What a per- 
 verse arrangement; and no trace here of any 
 distrust against the inventive power of the mind, 
 which, however, has invented pincers, etc. ! The 
 physician has daily and hourly opportunities of 
 convincing himself of the helplessness of nature, 
 and of the unsuitable, perverse, and unsuccessful 
 methods it employs in its endeavours to heal. 
 There would be no need of physicians, if nature 
 acted with a purpose. Inflammation, mortifica- 
 tion, suppuration, etc., etc., are chosen by it, 
 and frequently become fatal ; while she might 
 have selected simpler means to effect a recovery. 
 Is it by design that a foetus should fix itself and 
 become developed in any other but its natural 
 place, the uterus ? — a case which frequently 
 occurs, and conduces to the death of the mother. 
 Or even that in such extra-uterine pregnancies, 
 after the lapse of the normal time, pains are felt 
 in the uterus, though nothing is to be expelled ? 
 
DESIGN IN NATURE. 
 
 101 
 
 There is a healing power of nature in its usual 
 sense, as little as there is a vital power. The 
 organism proceeding in certain definite direc- 
 tions frequently adjusts morbid disturbances. 
 At other times the contrary occurs. The exist- 
 ence of certain specifics against certain diseases, 
 is frequently quoted as a striking argument in 
 favour of design in nature. But there are no re- 
 medies which heal definite diseases with certainty 
 and under all circumstances, and can be looked 
 upon as intended to heal them. All rational 
 physicians deny the existence of specific reme- 
 dies in the above sense, and are of opinion that 
 the effects of medicines are not the result of a 
 specific neutralisation of the disease, but must 
 be ascribed to very different causes, mostly 
 accidental. Hence we must also abandon the 
 theory that nature has created various plants to 
 act as antidotes — a theory which imputes an ab- 
 surdity to a creative power, which is to have 
 created an evil with its antidote, instead of omit- 
 ting the creation of either. A creative power 
 acting with design could not have been guilty of 
 so useless an act. 
 
 To return again to the subject of monstrosities, 
 it may be mentioned, that they may be produced 
 artificially by injuries done to the foetus or to 
 the ovum. Nature has no means of remedying 
 such an injury. The impulse once given is, on the 
 contrary, followed in a false direction, and in due 
 time a monstrosity is produced. The purely 
 
102 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 mechanical process, in such cases, can be easily- 
 recognised. Can the idea of a conscious power 
 acting with design be reconciled with such a 
 result ? And is it possible that the hand of the 
 Creator should thus be bound by the arbitrary- 
 act of man ? There is nothing gained by saying 
 that nature has only given the original impulse 
 for a certain end, but that subsequent action 
 proceeds in a mechanical manner. For the im- 
 pulse for a definite purpose necessarily implies 
 its result. And where are we to search for this 
 designing impulse, since the natural circum- 
 stances in which natural beings arise are known 
 as such, and as we know that the traces of an 
 active creating hand are nowhere found in the 
 facts ? 
 
 We possess, moreover, proofs that in the most 
 remote periods nature committed faults similar 
 to those just pointed out. She has not taken the 
 precaution always to place organic beings in 
 regions where the conditions most favourable to 
 their well-being existed. There were in primi- 
 tive times no horses in Arabia, where now the 
 most noble variety of that race exists; there 
 were no camels in Africa, where this ship of the 
 wilderness alone renders it possible for man to 
 exist with comfort ; Italy had no olive trees, nor 
 the Rhine vineyards. Is it design, to take 
 an example from the structure of the universe, 
 that light should, in spite of its prodigious swift- 
 ness, traverse space so slowly that thousands of 
 
DESIGN IN NATUEE. 103 
 
 years are requisite before it reaches another 
 star? Why these unwise restrictions in the 
 manifestations of a creative will ? 
 
 The curious relation in which the vegetable 
 kingdom stands to the animal kingdom appears, 
 superficially considered, a remarkable proof of 
 design. The animal world cannot exist without 
 the vegetable world, since the latter only pos- 
 sesses the capacity of producing ternary and qua-^ 
 ternary combinations from inorganic elements. 
 These combinations nourish the vegetable feeders, 
 which again afford nutriment to carnivorous ani- 
 mals ; so that, without that peculiar property of 
 the vegetable world, animal life could not exist. 
 This relation, though remarkable, is in nowise 
 created ; it is, on the contrary, produced in the 
 most natural way, and could not have been other- 
 wise. Whilst animals return to the world the 
 carbon received from plants, to serve again as 
 nourishment to plants, so as to continue its cycle, 
 they in no way follow a supernatural order, but a 
 strict necessity, which results from the things 
 themselves and their relation to each other. 
 
 A number of pretended purposes are obtained 
 by nature in a troublesome roundabout way, 
 when it is undeniable that the same ends might 
 have been obtained in a much simpler manner. 
 The great pyramids of Egypt, and other gi- 
 gantic structures, are formed of stones which 
 owe their origin to the chalk shells of minute 
 animals. The quarry stones of which nearly the 
 
104 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 whole city of Paris is built, consists of the shells 
 of animals, of which two hundred millions are 
 computed in a cubic foot. The time which these 
 stones required for their formation must be 
 counted by aeons. They are now useful to man, 
 and appear to him as a proof of the provision of 
 nature. The magnitude of object and means are, 
 however, here strangely out of proportion. Such 
 circumstances, generally, in which the slow work- 
 ings of thousands of years suddenly appear be- 
 fore our eyes, impress us with the feeling of 
 wonder; whilst the calm eye of the philosopher 
 only perceives in it the necessary, slow, and 
 finished course of nature. 
 
 Man is accustomed to look upon himself as the 
 climax of creation, and to consider that the earth 
 and all that it contains has only been created for 
 his use and profit. A glance at the history of 
 the earth might teach him modesty. How long 
 did not the earth exist without him ! and how 
 little of it is as yet in his possession ! " Man," 
 says Helmholz, " has the habit of measuring the 
 greatness and wisdom of the universe, in propor- 
 tion to the advantage it promises to his race; 
 but the history of the earth shows how short 
 and momentary is as yet the existence of the 
 human race." And who would seriously main- 
 tain that the earth could not have been more 
 comfortable for man ? With what difficulties 
 must he not struggle until he renders a little 
 spot fit for a dwelling-place ; and how many 
 
DESIGN IN NATUEE. 105 
 
 regions are not, from climate, soil, etc., perfectly 
 inaccessible to him ! No being can have been 
 destined to live merely for the good of man. All 
 that lives has an equal right to exist ; and it is 
 merely the right of might which permits man to 
 subject or to kill other living beings. There are 
 no ends which nature had in view to favour a 
 privileged being. Nature is an end in itself. 
 
 Physics* show that, as there was a time when 
 no organic life existed on earth, so will the 
 time arrive — no doubt an infinite and incommen- 
 surable period — when the physical forces now 
 existing will be exhausted, and all animated 
 beings plunged into night and death. What 
 are, in the presence of such facts, the pompous 
 phrases of a philosophy about the designs which 
 became accomplished in the creation of man; 
 the incarnation of God in history ; the history of 
 humanity as the subjective unveiling of the ab- 
 solute; the eternity of conscience, liberty, and 
 will, etc. ? What are the life and the efforts of 
 man, and all humanity, compared with the eternal, 
 inexorable, irresistible, half-accidental, half-ne- 
 cessary march of nature ? The momentary play 
 of an ephemeron, hovering over the sea of eter- 
 nity and infinity. 
 
 * See Helinholz, On the Action of Physical Forces, 1854. 
 
106 
 
 1 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 BEAIN AND SOUL. 
 
 " Cerebral action must be proportionate to the mass of the 
 
 brain." Liebig. 
 
 ** It is by the brain that we ascend from matter to mind." 
 
 Txjttle. 
 
 " If," says Moleschott, (C the axiom that compo- 
 sition, shape, and power, necessarily influence 
 each other, that their alterations always go hand 
 in hand, so that an alteration in one part pre- 
 supposes a simultaneous change in another, also 
 applies to the brain, then it must be admitted 
 that material changes in the brain must influence 
 thought. And inversely, that thought must be 
 reflected in the material condition of the body." 
 
 That the brain is the organ of thought, and 
 that both stand in such an intimate and neces- 
 sary relation that their separate existence cannot 
 be imagined, is a truth which is scarcely doubted 
 by a physician or physiologist; as daily expe- 
 rience and numerous striking facts forcibly im- 
 press him with this conviction. 
 
 The following exposition of facts is, therefore, 
 intended rather for the public at large, to which 
 the simplest and most evident truths in natural 
 
BKAIN AND SOUL. 107 
 
 history are frequently perfect enigmas. It is 
 singular that it is just in relation to this question 
 that the public have ever obstinately refused to 
 acknowledge the power of facts ; it is, however, 
 not difficult to guess the reason, which is chiefly 
 of a selfish nature. 
 
 The brain is the seat and organ of thought ; 
 its size, shape, and structure, are in exact pro- 
 portion to the magnitude and power of its in- 
 tellectual functions. Comparative anatomy fur- 
 nishes us in this respect with the clearest proof 
 by showing the prevailing law, that through 
 all classes of animals, up to man, the intellectual 
 energy is in proportion to the size and material 
 quality of the brain. Animals which possess no 
 brain proper, but merely nervous ganglia or 
 rudimentary brains, generally occupy the lowest 
 place in relation to mental activity, and appear 
 rather to vegetate than to live. Man, on the 
 contrary, occupying the highest place as an 
 intellectual being, has absolutely and relatively 
 the largest brain. If in some few of the largest 
 animals the cerebral mass exceeds that of the 
 human being, the anomaly relates only to such 
 parts of the encephalon, which preside as central 
 organs of sensation and motion, and which, in 
 consequence of the great number and thickness 
 of the nervous fibrils terminating in them, must 
 exhibit a larger development ) whilst those parts 
 engaged in the function of thought in no animal 
 reach the size and shape of the corresponding 
 
108 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 portions of the human brain. Those animals 
 which possess the largest cerebral development, as 
 the elephant, dolphin, ape, dog, etc., have always 
 been considered as the most sagacious. We 
 find, then, that there exists through the whole 
 series of animals a gradual development of intel- 
 tectual power corresponding to the size and form 
 of the brain. Bibra, one of the latest and most 
 conscientious inquirers, has made exact measure- 
 ments of the brain of animals and man. The 
 general and undoubted result of these measure- 
 ments was : that man stands at the head ; that 
 animals possess less brain in a descending ratio ; 
 and that amphibia and fishes occupy the lowest 
 rank. 
 
 This law of a gradual development of the brain 
 through the animal kingdom in an ascending 
 or descending line, is too evident and general to 
 be denied, or for its validity to be questioned by 
 the occurrence of apparently contradictory facts. 
 The discovery of individual anomalies rests fre- 
 quently upon false observation; at other times 
 upon wrong inferences. Persons do not consider 
 that, in estimating the intellectual capacity of a 
 brain, we must not merely regard its size and 
 weight, but its shape, structure, the quality of 
 its convolutions, and its chemical composition. 
 Valentin* says : " It is not merely the quantity, 
 but the quality of the nervous tissues influencing 
 the reciprocal action of the individual elements, 
 * Lehrbuch der Physiologie. 
 
BRAIN AND SOUL. 109 
 
 which decides the amount of mental activity." 
 It is, therefore, possible that an apparent ano- 
 maly in one direction, may be balanced by a 
 compensating development in another part. 
 
 The investigations in this respect are but 
 scanty. Bibra has made some experiments to 
 determine the comparative chemical composition 
 of the brains of different animals. The general 
 result seems to be, that the brains of the higher 
 animals contain more fat, and consequently more 
 phosphorus, which is combined with it, than the 
 brains of the lower creatures. The quantity of 
 cerebral fat is much less in the foetus and new- 
 born children than in grown-up persons ; the 
 quantity of water being very considerable in the 
 brains of children. There is more fat in the 
 new-born child than in the foetus, and it in- 
 creases rapidly with advancing age. The brain 
 does not lose its fat like other parts of the body ; 
 which proves that cerebral function absolutely 
 requires a certain amount of fat. 
 
 Small brains of large animals, as of the ox and 
 horse, yield a proportionate large amount of fat ; 
 so that, according to Bibra, the quantity is com- 
 pensated by the quality — a relation the existence 
 of which is proved by many other facts. Schloss- 
 berger found the brain of a new-born boy to be 
 much richer in water and poorer in fat than in 
 grown-up persons. But, in determining the 
 intellectual capacity of a brain, we must take 
 into account, not merely its chemical composi- 
 
110 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 tion, but also its morphological condition. The 
 so-called convolutions of the brain have long 
 excited the attention of inquirers, who endea- 
 voured to find out their relation to the activity 
 of the brain or of the soul. This relation has 
 lately been determined by the investigations of 
 Professor Huscke, who found that the more 
 numerous these convolutions, the deeper the 
 sulci between them ; and the more asymmetrical 
 and apparently irregular their structure, the 
 more perfect and intellectually superior is the 
 animal. Dr. T. Wagner reports that the brain 
 of Beethoven presented anfractuosities twice as 
 deep and numerous as those of an ordinary 
 man. 
 
 The history of the development of the human 
 being shows us the same law which pervades the 
 development of the brain in all animals. The 
 mental capacity of man is enlarged in propor- 
 tion to the material growth of his brain, and 
 is diminished according to the gradual dimi- 
 nution of its substance in old age. From exact 
 measurements, Peacock found that the weight of 
 the human brain increases steadily to the age of 
 twenty-five, when it remains stationary until the 
 age of fifty, when it begins gradually to decrease. 
 According to Sims, the brain, increasing in man 
 up to the fortieth year, attains its maximum 
 weight and volume between forty and fifty. The 
 brain of the aged becomes atrophied ; that is, it 
 shrinks, leaving cavities between the convolu- 
 
BKAIN AND SOUL. Ill 
 
 tions, which previously adhered to each other. 
 The cerebral substance becomes more tough, its 
 colour more greyish, it is less vascular, the con- 
 volutions become smaller, and the chemical con- 
 stitution approaches, according to Schlossberger, 
 that of infancy. It is a fact known to every 
 body, that the intelligence diminishes with in- 
 creasing age, and that old people become childish. 
 The great Newton, to whom we owe some of the 
 most pregnant discoveries in natural philosophy, 
 occupied himself in his old age with Daniel the 
 Prophet and the Revelation of St. John ! 
 
 ' ' The greatest thinker of his age," says Tuttle, 
 " may in one hour during illness lose all his 
 intelligence ; in advanced age he enters a second 
 childhood. The decay of the body induces decay 
 of the mental faculties, which become extin- 
 guished with the last breath, like a lamp without 
 sufficient oil, emitting only some feeble glim- 
 mers." 
 
 The soul of the child becomes developed in 
 the same degree as the material organisation of 
 its brain becomes more perfect. The brain sub- 
 stance of the child is more fluid and pultaceous, 
 richer in water, and poorer in fat, than that of 
 the adult. The differences between the grey and 
 white substance, and other microscopic pecu- 
 liarities, become only gradually developed ; thus 
 the so-called fibration of the brain, which is so 
 plainly seen in the adult, is not easibly observ- 
 able in the child. The more marked this fibra- 
 
112 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 tion grows, the more manifest becomes mental 
 activity. The grey substance on the surface is 
 but little developed ; the convolutions are sparing, 
 and little vascular. " The histological develop- 
 ment of many parts of the nervous centre appear 
 very imperfect in the new-born." (Valentin.) 
 " The different mental faculties/' says Vogt, 
 " develope themselves gradually with the growth 
 of the hemispheres." 
 
 It is known that the female sex is intellec- 
 tually inferior to the male sex. Peacock found, 
 that the average weight of the male brain 
 considerably exceeds that of the female; that 
 of the former being fifty, and of the latter forty- 
 four ounces.* Dr. Geist' s investigations in the 
 hospital of Nürnberg exhibit, according to 
 Bibra's communications, the same results. Dr. 
 Hoffmann of Silesia concludes, from sixty to 
 seventy observations, that on the average the 
 female brain is only two ounces lighter than the 
 male. Lauret measured the heads of two thou- 
 sand individuals, and found that both in diameter 
 and circumference the female head is consider- 
 ably smaller than the male. The same law pre- 
 vails in the comparison of human brains, accord- 
 ing to the manifestation of mental activity in the 
 healthy or diseased state. The brain of the cele- 
 brated Cuvier weighed considerably above four 
 pounds, whilst the normal weight of a human 
 brain averages from three to three and a half 
 * London Journal of Medicine, 1851. 
 
BEAIN AND SOUL. 113 
 
 pounds. Tiedemann weighed the brains of 
 three adult idiots, and found them to be between 
 one and two pounds. The circumference of the 
 heads of obtuse individuals, whether male or 
 female, according to Lauret's measurements, is 
 considerably below the average. Individuals 
 whose heads are not sixteen inches in circumfer- 
 ence are always imbecile. " An abnormal small- 
 ness of the brain is always combined with imbe- 
 cility." (Valentin.) The celebrated poet Lenau 
 became insane, and died idiotic ; his brain, having 
 become atrophied by disease, weighed only two 
 pounds eight ounces. The gradual decline of the 
 intellect, according to Parchappe, is connected 
 with the diminution of the brain. Having taken 
 the average in 782 cases, he proves by figures 
 how the diminution of the weight of the brain 
 was in proportion to the mental perturbation.* 
 
 Hauner, physician to the hospital for children 
 in Munich, considers himself justified from his 
 experience in asserting as follows : 
 
 11 Having for many years examined the cranial 
 development of all our children, we have gained 
 the conviction that an abnormal smallness of the 
 skull, though not always leading to cretinism 
 and idiocy, is mostly accompanied with limited 
 mental qualifications; whilst mental perturba- 
 tions are rarely observable in those possessing 
 abnormally large skulls/'' 
 
 The remarkable vivisections and experiments 
 * Comptes Eendus du 31 Juillet, 1848. 
 
 I 
 
114 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 of Flourens prove our law so forcibly, that any 
 refutation of it becomes next to impossible. Flou- 
 rens performed his experiments on such animals, 
 which from their physical constitutions were 
 able to support considerable lesions of the skull 
 and of the brain. He removed the superior parts 
 of the brain in layers ; and it is not too much to 
 assert that the mental capacities were removed 
 in the same ratio. Flourens was thus enabled 
 to place fowls in such a condition that every 
 mental function, every capacity to perceive sen- 
 sual impression, was obliterated, without extin- 
 guishing life. The animals, reduced apparently 
 to a deep sleep, remained immovable on the spot 
 where they were placed, insensible to any exter- 
 nal stimulus, and were only preserved by artifi- 
 cial feeding. They were in a certain measure 
 reduced to a vegetative life. In this state they 
 remained for months and years, and * even in- 
 creased in weight. " If," says Valentin, " both 
 hemispheres of a mammal are removed in layers, 
 mental activity will be reduced in proportion to 
 the mass removed. Perfect unconsciousness is 
 generally the result if the loss extends to the 
 ventricles." Can we desire any stronger proof 
 as to the necessary connection of the soul and 
 the brain than that afforded by the knife of the 
 anatomist, who cuts off the soul piecemeal ? 
 
 Almost every extended range of mountains con- 
 tains in its deep and damp valleys an unfortunate 
 class of human beings, whose whole existence is 
 
BRAIN AND SOUL. 115 
 
 more allied to the brutes than to the human 
 race. They are crippled, dirty, and disgust- 
 ing ; their heads are either small or abnormally 
 large ; the formation of the skull is angular, 
 resembling that of the monkey ; the forehead low 
 and narrow ; the organs of mastication large ; 
 the belly protuberant; the legs slender; they 
 are deficient in sensibility, and are rarely able to 
 utter articulate sounds. The organs of digestion 
 and of propagation are the only organs deve- 
 loped; hence the desire for food and sexual 
 gratification are their chief manifestations. Who 
 has not, during a journey through mountain- 
 ous districts, seen the cretins cowering on the 
 wayside, or at the doors of their huts ? The 
 report of the Commission appointed by the Sar- 
 dinian Government to inquire into the causes of 
 cretinism, states that in all cretins there exists a 
 defective formation of the cranium, and a de- 
 fective development of the brain. 
 
 " The brain," says Foerster,* " in cretinism is 
 always smaller in the large hemispheres than 
 usual; the cranium has an abnormal shape, and 
 is characterised by smallness, asymmetry and 
 malformation of the skullcap." Dr. Knolz ob- 
 serves, that tl the cretins remain children in old 
 age, and act as such." " In studying," says 
 Baillarger, "the chief features of the develop- 
 ment of cretins, I found that the general forms 
 of the body and of the limbs continued to re- 
 * Lehrbuch der Pathol. Anatomie. 
 
116 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 semble those of children, and that their desires 
 and inclinations were similar." Yrolik of Am- 
 sterdam communicates the following result of 
 the post mortem examination of a young cretin 
 aged 19.* "The skull was small, oblique, the 
 forehead low, the occiput flattened; the convolu- 
 tions few in number and imperfect, the sulci 
 shallow, the cerebrum and cerebellum imperfectly- 
 developed and asymmetric, the lateral ventricles 
 expanded by serum. 
 
 The physical and their corresponding mental 
 differences between the varieties of the human 
 race are too well known to require more than a 
 few indications. Every one must have observed, 
 either from nature or from delineations, the small 
 ape-like skull of the Negro, and compared it 
 (with the expanded cranium of the Caucasian; 
 1 and everyone is aware of the congenital mental 
 I inferiority of the black race, so that opposed to the 
 / white man the Negro appears as a child, and will 
 (^always remain so. The brain of the Negro is 
 much smaller than that of the European, ap- 
 proaching that of the animal; its convolutions 
 being much less numerous. An acute observer 
 in the Allgemeine Zeitung compares the Negroes, 
 from their whole mental disposition and charac- 
 ter, to children. 
 
 Count Gorzf narrates of the Negroes in Cuba : 
 " Their character is very degraded, the moral 
 feeling entirely undeveloped ; all their actions 
 
 * Yerhandl. der K. Akademie der Wetenscliapen, 1854. 
 f Voyage Eound the World. 
 
BRAIN AND SOUL. 117 
 
 proceed from animal impulse, or a cunning cal- 
 culation of their own advantage. Generosity and 
 indulgence, exhibited by the white man, they 
 consider as weakness. Power imposes upon 
 them and excites their hatred, which would be- 
 come dangerous were they not aware of their 
 powerlessness. The only efficacious punishment 
 for them is the whip. They delight in sowing dis- 
 cord, are thievish and revengeful; devoid of any 
 religious feeling, they are given to the crudest 
 superstition. Their frame is, however, well deve- 
 loped and powerful, their teeth magnificent, their 
 legs slender ; they digest like beasts of prey, etc." 
 " I have often tried," observes Burmeister, 
 " to obtain an insight into the mind of a Negro ; 
 but it never was worth the trouble. The only 
 valuable result obtained was, that there is not 
 much mental life in the Negro, and that all his 
 thoughts and actions are merely directed to the 
 lowest requirements of human existence." The 
 same may be said of other varieties inferior to the 
 Caucasian race. The natives of Australia, in 
 whom the superior parts of the brain are almost 
 wanting, possess neither great intellectual ca- 
 pacity nor any sense of art or moral worth. All 
 attempts of the English to civilise them have 
 hitherto failed. The American Indians, with 
 their small peculiarly shaped heads, are of a 
 savage, cruel nature, and, according to the pub- 
 lished reports, incapable of civilisation, and are 
 likely to be exterminated by the progress of the 
 Caucasian race. 
 
118 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Let us now pass from this anatomical sketch 
 to some physiological facts, in order to establish 
 the necessary and inseparable connection of brain 
 and soul. It is through the nervous system 
 radiating from the brain, and which may be con- 
 sidered as presiding over all organic functions, 
 that the brain sways the whole mass of the or- 
 ganism, and reflects again to various parts exter- 
 nal impressions, whether of a material or spiritual 
 nature. The physical effects of mental emotions 
 are sufficiently known. We grow pale from ter- 
 ror, we blush from shame or anger. The eye 
 sparkles with joy, and the pulse is quickened. 
 Terror causes sudden fainting ; wrath, a copious 
 secretion of bile. The mere thought of a dis- 
 gusting object may cause instant vomiting; the 
 sight of a favourite dish excites a rapid and 
 copious secretion of saliva. The milk of the 
 mother is by powerful emotions so rapidly altered 
 in its nature, that it may prove highly injurious 
 to the child. It is an interesting fact, that men- 
 tal labour not merely increases the appetite, but, 
 according to Davy, augments the animal heat. 
 Men of a sanguine temperament live shorter and 
 faster than others, because powerful mental ex- 
 citement of the nervous system hastens the change 
 of matter and consumes life more rapidly. The re- 
 verse is the case with phlegmatic persons. Short* 
 necked individuals are lively and passionate; long- 
 necked persons are calm and sedate, the brain 
 being in the latter more distant from the heart, 
 
BRAIN AND SOUL. 119 
 
 the focus of the circulation. Parry relieved 
 attacks of mania by compressing the carotid 
 arteries; and Fleming (Brit. Rev., April 1855) 
 produced by the same manipulation sleep or 
 feverish dreams in healthy individuals. 
 
 Still more than in man is the character of 
 animals, e.g. of horses and dogs, estimated ac- 
 cording to the length of the neck. Great mental 
 power and knowledge produce a favourable influ- 
 ence on the physical frame. Alibert quotes as a 
 constant observation of physicians, the dispropor- 
 tionately large number of old men found among 
 scholars. 
 
 On the other hand, the various conditions of 
 the body are again reflected in the mind. A 
 copious secretion of bile has, as is well known, a 
 powerful influence on the mental disposition. 
 Degeneration of the Ovaria produces satyriasis 
 and nymphomania ; diseases of the sexual organs 
 frequently cause an unconquerable desire to com- 
 mit murder or other crimes. How frequently is 
 not pietism combined with excesses in physical 
 love, etc.! 
 
 Finally, pathology furnishes us with an abund- 
 ance of striking facts, and teaches us that no 
 part of the brain exercising the function of 
 thought can be materially injured without pro- 
 ducing a corresponding mental disturbance. 
 Should exceptional cases now and then occur, 
 then it will be found that the injury is confined 
 to one hemisphere only, the other acting vica- 
 
120 FOECE AND 3JATTEE. 
 
 riously. Tales of individuals who, in spite of the 
 destruction of both hemispheres, are said to have 
 experienced no loss of intellect, are fables. An 
 inflammation of the brain causes delirium or 
 mania; an extravasation of blood, stupefaction 
 and unconsciousness ; a permanent pressure upon 
 the brain, weakness of intellect, idiocy, etc. 
 "Who has not seen the melancholy spectacle of a 
 child suffering from hydrocephalus ? Lunatics 
 suffer either from an idiopathic disease of the 
 brain, or from a reflex of other diseased organs. 
 The greatest number of physicians and medical 
 psychologists are now of opinion that all mental 
 diseases are caused by physical affections, espe- 
 cially of the brain, though it may not in all cases, 
 owing to the imperfection of our senses, be pos- 
 sible to establish the fact. And even those who 
 do not entirely agree in this view, cannot but 
 admit that no mental disease can be thought of 
 without assuming a functional disturbance of the 
 brain. Roman Fischer compared the results of 
 318 dissections in the lunatic asylum of Prague. 
 Among these 318 cases, there were but 32 in 
 which no pathological changes could be detected 
 in the brain and its integuments, and in five only 
 were there no pathological alterations whatever 
 (the work appeared Luzern 1854). No physician 
 can, according to the present state of science, 
 doubt that, even in these five bodies, there must 
 have been material pathological alterations, 
 though they were not visible. Dr. Follet con 7 
 
BKAIN AND SOUL. 121 
 
 eludes, from the autopsy of above a hundred 
 lunatics, that the cerebral mass must, for the 
 performance of several intellectual faculties, pos- 
 sess a certain thickness, and that the more this den- 
 sity diminishes and the ventricles become dilated, 
 the weaker become memory and the intellectual 
 faculties in general. According to this physician, 
 mental diseases are the result of disturbed equi- 
 librium of the innervation of the two hemispheres. 
 1 ' All intellectual perturbations," says Dr. Wachs- 
 muth, u proceed from diseases of the brain, which 
 is the organ of thought, as shewn by the patho- 
 logy of the corporeal organ." 
 
 Physical affections or lesions of the brain fre- 
 quently produce curious mental effects. It is 
 credibly asserted that, in the hospital of St. 
 Thomas in London, a man, after recovery from a 
 severe injury of the head, spoke in a foreign lan- 
 guage. The language proved to be his mother- 
 tongue — Welsh — which, however, he had forgot- 
 ten during a thirty years residence in London. 
 The cases of lunatics or maniacs sometimes reco- 
 vering the use of reason a short time before 
 death, are frequently quoted in support of oppo- 
 site opinions. We must, on the contrary, in 
 such cases assume that the general exhaustion 
 on the approach of death causes the brain to be 
 freed from the morbid influences of the body. 
 Viewed in this light, such cases speak in favour 
 of our theory. 
 
 The pathological facts which support or prove 
 
122 
 
 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 our opinion are so numerous and comprehensive, 
 that volumes might be filled with them. The 
 weight of our arguments has always been ac- 
 knowledged by thoughtful men, being accessible 
 to the most simple power of observation. 
 
 " If the blood/' says Frederick the Great, in a 
 letter to Voltaire in the year 1775, "circulates 
 too rapidly in the brain, as in intoxication or 
 fevers, it confuses the ideas : if there be a small 
 obstruction in the nerves of the brain, it causes 
 madness ; if a drop of water spread within the 
 cranium, it causes loss of memory; a drop of 
 extravasated blood, pressing upon the brain and 
 the nerves, causes apoplexy, etc." 
 
 The law that brain and soul are necessarily 
 connected, and that the material expansion, 
 shape, and quality of the former stand in exact 
 proportion to the intensity of the mental func- 
 tions, is strict and irrefutable, and the mind 
 again exercises an essential influence on the 
 growth and development of its organ, so that it 
 increases in size and power just in the same 
 manner as any muscle is strengthened by exer- 
 cise. Albers of Bonn states that, having dis- 
 sected the brains of many persons who had for 
 years undergone much mental labour, he found 
 in all of them the substance of the brain very firm 
 and the grey matter as well as the convolutions 
 highly developed. Comparisons between the 
 skulls of the ancients and the heads of the 
 present generation leave no doubt as to the fact 
 
BRAIN AND SOUL. 
 
 123 
 
 that the cranium of the European has, in the 
 course of historical time, gained in circumference. 
 The important and interesting researches of 
 Abbe Frere, in Paris, have led to the result that 
 the older and more primitive a human type is, 
 the more developed is the skull in the occipital 
 region, and the natter is the forehead. The 
 progress of civilisation seems to have produced 
 the effect that the anterior portion of the skull 
 became more arched, and the occipital part 
 flatter. The rich collection of Abbe Frere, con- 
 taining crania of all centuries of our era, exhibits 
 the various phases of this development.* 
 
 In the face of facts like these, it can no longer 
 be deemed an impossibility that the human race 
 should, in the course of 80,000 years, have gra- 
 dually risen from a crude and nearly brutish condi- 
 tion to its present state. A comparison of the cra- 
 nial formation of the higher and lower classes of 
 society yields a similar result. It is a daily 
 observation of hatters that the educated classes 
 require on the average much larger hats than the 
 uneducated. It has been equally observed that 
 the forehead and the parietal parts of the skull 
 are less developed in the lower classes. The 
 circumstance that clever persons have sometimes 
 very small, whilst some stupid individuals have 
 proportionately large heads, is frequently men- 
 tioned as an argument in refutation of the de- 
 
 * The collection is now in the new Museum of Anthropo- 
 logy of Paris. 
 
124 FOßCE AND MATTER. 
 
 pendence of mental power on the material quality 
 of the brain. But though the facts are undoubted, 
 the inferences drawn from them are wrong. We 
 have already, in the beginning of the chapter, 
 shown that it is not merely the size, but its 
 shape and composition which determine its 
 mental power, so that a deficiency in one direction 
 is compensated by an excess in other respects, 
 and vice versa. But what still more essentially 
 modifies the relations, and which must be taken 
 into account, is the influence of education. An 
 individual may, though possessing good natural 
 capacities, appear stupid from want of education, 
 whilst another with a poor or moderate cerebral 
 organisation may by study be enabled to conceal 
 his original defect. A close and practised ob- 
 server is, however, generally able to detect the 
 original condition. 
 
 But enough of facts. The whole science of 
 man is a continuous proof in favour of the con- 
 nexion of brain and mind ; and all the verbiage 
 of philosophical psychologists in regard to the 
 separate existence of the soul and its independ- 
 ence of its material organ is without the least 
 value in opposition to the power of facts. We 
 can find no exaggeration in what Friedreich, a 
 well known writer on psychology, says on this 
 point. u The exhibition of power cannot be 
 imagined without a material substratum. The 
 vital power of man can only manifest its activity 
 by means of its material organs. In proportion 
 
BEAIN AND SOUL. 125 
 
 as the organs are manifold so will be the pheno- 
 mena of vital power, and they will vary accord- 
 ing to the varied construction of the material 
 substratum. Mental function is hence a peculiar 
 manifestation of vital power, determined by the 
 peculiar construction of cerebral matter. The 
 same power which digests by means of the sto- 
 mach, thinks by means of the brain, etc." 
 
 The material simplicity of the organs of thought 
 in regard to form and composition has been 
 adduced in refutation of our view as regards the 
 connexion of brain and soul. The brain, it is 
 said, presents in most of its parts a homogeneous 
 soft mass, which is neither distinguished by a 
 complicated structure nor peculiar chemical com- 
 position. HoWj then, is it possible that this 
 homogeneous matter can be the sole cause of so 
 infinite a variety of mental phenomena exhibited 
 by the animal and human soul ? The connexion 
 must evidently be very slender, nearly accidental : 
 infinitely complicated powers can only arise from 
 infinitely complicated materials. The soul exists, 
 therefore, per se, independent of earthy materials, 
 and is only accidentally or for a short time con- 
 nected with the substance we term brain. 
 
 This apparently well founded objection rests, 
 in the first place, on wrong premises. The theory 
 which considers the soul as the product of matter, 
 must certainly grant that cause and effect must 
 stand in exact relation : and that complicated 
 effects presuppose complicated material condi- 
 
126 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 tions. Now, in point of fact, we know in the 
 whole organised world of no tissue which ex- 
 hibits more delicate and wonderful forms, or a 
 finer and more peculiar structure, and probably, 
 also, a more remarkable chemical composition 
 than the brain. Unfortunately, our knowledge 
 is in this respect as yet very deficient and 
 circumscribed. Yet, this much we know, that 
 the brain is not a homogeneous mass, but con- 
 sists mostly of extremely delicate and peculiarly 
 constructed filaments or cylinders, containing an 
 oily coagulable substance ; and that the so-called 
 primitive fibres, of the breadth of one thousandth 
 part of an inch, decussate each other, and are 
 peculiarly entwined. The minute anatomy of the 
 brain is, however, as yet nearly a terra incognita, 
 from the difficulties attending a microscopic ex- 
 amination of nervous matter. Microscopic an- 
 atomy, however, shows us in the interior parts 
 of the brain, singularly entwined forms, of which 
 the physiological functions are entirely unknown,* 
 while upon the surface we observe deeply indented 
 convolutions, in which the grey and white matter 
 meet, and which, as already shown, stand in 
 close relation to mental function. The so-called 
 ganglionic globules, the second histological ele- 
 
 * "We find in the brain eminences and depressions, 
 bridges and aqueducts, beams and vaults, screws and hooks, 
 trees and sheaves, harps, etc. No one knows the functions 
 of these singular forms." (Huschke, in his celebrated work, 
 Schädel, Hirn und Seele des Menschen.) 
 
BEAIN AND SOUL. 127 
 
 ment of nervous matter which, is chiefly found in 
 the substance of the brain and the spinal cord, 
 equally exhibit variations and peculiarities of 
 structure. They are partly surrounded by primi- 
 tive fibres, or united with them by bridges, and 
 partly seem to emerge from them. There exists, 
 consequently, no animal organ which can be com- 
 pared with the brain in regard to delicacy and 
 variety of form. The nerves of sense may per- 
 haps be excepted, and may be considered merely 
 as conductors to the nervous centre. The brain 
 is, moreover, of all the organs receiving from the 
 heart the largest quantity of blood, and in which 
 the change of matter consequently proceeds ra- 
 pidly. Chemists finally assure us that the chemi- 
 cal composition of the brain is by no means so 
 simple as was hitherto believed, but that there 
 are found in it peculiarly constituted bodies, such 
 as cerebrin and lecithin, the chemical nature of 
 which is as yet unknown, and which are not 
 found in the same degree in other organic tissues. 
 We are further assured that the chemical consti- 
 tution of the nerves, and especially of the brain, 
 is not, as in other organic tissues, the same every- 
 where, but on the contrary, that it varies essenti- 
 ally in different parts, so that it seems that the 
 brain is composed of various organs possessing a 
 different chemical constitution. We have already 
 mentioned the peculiar part which the cerebral 
 fat seems to play. Another constituent not less 
 important in the chemistry of the brain is phos- 
 
128 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 phorus, and the outcry .raised against Moleschott' s 
 known adage, " without phosphorus no thought," 
 merely proves the scientific ignorance of the cla- 
 mourers. It follows, therefore, that however 
 imperfect the anatomy and chemistry of the brain 
 may be, it offers no valid objection against our 
 view on the relation of mind and matter. But 
 even if the apparent simplicity of the brain- 
 material stood in contradiction to the multipli- 
 city of its functions, it would not affect our ar- 
 gument, considered from the following point of 
 view. Nature is quite capable of producing great 
 and varied effects by the most simple means, 
 owing to a different mechanical arrangement of 
 the minute constituents of matter. Thus, iso- 
 meric bodies exhibit, though of the same chemical 
 composition, different qualities. Among the al- 
 kaloids there are some of a very poisonous na- 
 ture, whilst other alkaloids, of exactly the same 
 chemical composition, produce such a different 
 effect upon the animal economy, that they are 
 employed as antidotes. From the investigations 
 with respect to the power of refraction in isomeric 
 bodies, we learn that their constituent atoms 
 must be differently arranged to account for their 
 various refractive qualities. If causes apparently 
 so simple are capable of producing so great a 
 variety of effects, how can it be deemed impossi- 
 ble that the same relation may exist in regard to 
 the brain and the soul? Thus the ganglionic 
 globules of the cortical portion of the brain, 
 
BKAIN AND SOUL. 129 
 
 which undoubtedly are concerned in the mental 
 process, cannot anatomically be distinguished 
 from the globules situated in the ganglia of the 
 abdomen ; still it may be possible that they act 
 in a different manner. " The phenomena of the 
 polarisation of light and heat/' observes Valentin, 
 ( ' the magnetic and diamagnetic relations prove, 
 that apparently homogeneous masses exhibit an 
 essentially different arrangement of their constitu- 
 ent atoms. Nature works everywhere by means of 
 an infinite number of infinitely minute particles.'" 
 The so-called contagia depend, no doubt, upon 
 some definite material condition of those organic 
 substances which transmit them, yet neither che- 
 mistry nor the microscope have hitherto suc- 
 ceeded in throwing any light on the subject, so, 
 for instance, as to distinguish pus impregnated 
 with a specific contagion from ordinary pus. We 
 must also bear in mind the remarkable facts of 
 the transmission of mental and physical disposi- 
 tions and diseases from parent to offspring. 
 How insignificantly minute is the matter yielded 
 by the father for the production of the germ ! 
 Yet, though the substance appears everywhere 
 the same in regard to form and chemical com- 
 position, still the child resembles the father in 
 his physical and mental peculiarities. The mole- 
 cular relations of the minute matter which trans- 
 mits the future physical and mental qualities are 
 imperceptible to our senses.* 
 
 * So long as nothing was known of the existence of 
 
 K 
 
130 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 Filially, we must, in refutation of this objec- 
 tion, never forget that the minute material con- 
 dition of organic bodies, however much light the 
 microscope and chemistry may throw upon it, is 
 only known to us in its external aspect. We 
 possess not the slightest conception of the re- 
 condite condition of the infinitely minute matter 
 and of its possible manifestation of effects. This 
 is strikingly illustrated by the difficulties of the 
 physician in fathoming the cause of certain dis- 
 eases. All our diagnostic signs are insufficient for 
 this purpose. No one is enabled to distinguish 
 blood pregnant with certain morbid matter from 
 healthy blood, and yet it cannot be doubted that 
 the disease is the result of material changes which 
 may destroy the whole organism. But as little 
 as our ignorance of these conditions gives us the 
 right to assume the existence of unknown dy- 
 namic effects independent of matter, so little can 
 the apparent simplicity of the substance of the 
 brain form a valid objection against our view of 
 the connection of brain and soul. Thus it has been 
 deemed impossible that the faculty of memory 
 
 spermatozoa (tailed corpuscles, capable of rapid motion) 
 which form the essential element of the semen of the animal, 
 and fecundate the female ovulum, so long could the remark- 
 able fact of the transmission of mental peculiarities be 
 quoted as an argument in favour of the existence of an im- 
 material soul. This is no longer possible. The seminal 
 animalcule penetrates the ovulum, and furnishes a material 
 basis for the transmission of mental capacities. This fact 
 cuts off all ground for asserting that anything spiritual can 
 be transmitted by any other than a material vehicle. 
 
BKAIN AND SOUL. 131 
 
 should be considered as dependent on the com- 
 bination of the substance of the brain, inasmuch 
 as the one is permanent during the whole life, 
 whilst the matter is in a state of constant change. 
 Nevertheless, the facts leave even in this respect, 
 however inexplicable the subject may be, no rea- 
 sonable doubt that memory is merely the product 
 of material combinations. There is no other men- 
 tal quality which suffers to the same extent from 
 physical affections of the brain, as memory. It 
 is known that traumatic lesions or internal affec- 
 tions of the brain considerably influence or di- 
 minish the faculty of memory. It has even been 
 observed that the loss of particular portions of 
 the cerebral mass has, in some persons, induced 
 a loss of memory in regard to certain periods of 
 their existence. In old age, as every one knows 
 our memory is much enfeebled. The brain matter 
 undergoes, no doubt, a constant change, but the 
 mode of its combination which determines indivi- 
 dual consciousness ever remains the same. That 
 this modification is both inexplicable and incom- 
 prehensible, proves nothing against the fact itself. 
 Who can explain why certain morbid conditions 
 are transmitted to the third instead of the second 
 generation ? Is not such a phenomenon more 
 wonderful than the connection of brain and 
 memory ? Yet no rational physician doubts 
 that it can only be the result of material con- 
 ditions, the laws of which are, and probably will 
 ever remain, unknown to us. 
 
132 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Under these circumstances, we Lave no right 
 to deny to matter the possibility of wonderful 
 effects, though its form and composition are ap- 
 parently not very complicated. And from these 
 points of view, and in the face of the adduced 
 facts, it is not very difficult to assume the pos- 
 sibility that the soul may be the product of a 
 peculiar combination of matter. We are aston- 
 ished at the effects, chiefly because the connec- 
 tion of the springs is hidden from our eyes. 
 Does not the locomotive engine, as it rushes 
 along, appear to us as a living being endowed 
 with intelligence ? Do not the poets speak of a 
 steam horse — a fire horse ? It is the peculiar 
 combination of matter and force, which imbues 
 us involuntarily with the idea that there is life in 
 the engine. A watch, equally a mechanical pro- 
 duct of the human hand, has, as is frequently 
 said, a head of its own ; it goes, it stops, fre- 
 quently in a manner that makes it appear to have 
 a will of its own. But how singularly crude and 
 simple is the combination of matter and force in 
 these machines, compared with the complex me- 
 chanical and chemical composition of the animal 
 organism ! 
 
 The comparison is in many respects imperfect, 
 and is not intended to prove anything beyond 
 affording a slight hint as to the possibility of 
 the production of the soul from material com- 
 binations. But for the gist of our question, it is 
 a matter of perfect indifference to us to know the 
 
BEAIN AND SOUL. 133 
 
 mode by which such a connection is rendered 
 possible. It is enough for our purpose to have, 
 by facts, shown the inseparableness of matter 
 and mind, of soul and body, as well as the ne- 
 cessity of their causal relations. This law admits 
 of no exception, and pervades the whole animal 
 creation. The most minute infusorial animalcule 
 exhibits sensation and will : consequently mental 
 function. Its body is dried up by the rays of the 
 sun, and it dies ; that is to say, the phenomena 
 of its corporeal organisation, which require water 
 for their manifestation, disappear. In this state 
 it may remain for years, until an accidental drop 
 of water excites again the vital capacity of the 
 matter, and with it the mental force which seemed 
 extinguished. The animal begins a new life, in 
 order, perhaps, shortly to experience a similar 
 fate. 
 
 What kind of soul can it then be, which lives 
 and thinks independently of matter ? Where was 
 it whilst the matter lay in a death- sleep ? How- 
 ever incomprehensible may be to us the how, in the 
 connection of matter and spirit, the fact that it is 
 so can scarcely be doubted by intelligent persons. 
 
 Philosophers and philosophical psychologists 
 have, in a variety of ways, endeavoured to get 
 over this forcible fact — and it appears to us with 
 very little success. Some tried to explain it by 
 admitting the connection of body and soul, but 
 looked upon man as an essentially spiritual crea- 
 ture, whose body must only be considered as a 
 
134 E0ECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 subordinate appendage of the soul. Such phrases 
 do but obscure the question, and nothing is gained 
 by them. The relation of body and soul is, on 
 the whole, very definite, and if it sometimes ap- 
 pears that either the mind or the matter pre- 
 dominates, such relations are merely individual. 
 In some men the intellectual, in others the 
 physical nature will be found to predominate; 
 the one may be compared to the gods, the other 
 to brutes. There exists an uninterrupted scale 
 of mental qualifications from the animal to the 
 most cultivated man. Physical and mental na- 
 ture determine each other ; but no direct com- 
 parison can be made between them — it can only 
 be asserted that they are inseparable. To what 
 insoluble difficulties an internal dualism, and an 
 external inseparable connection of matter and 
 mind must lead in relation to individual con- 
 sciousness, cannot concern us in this question, 
 which is purely one of facts. 
 
135 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THOUGHT. 
 
 " Thought is a motion of matter." 
 
 Moleschott. 
 " There subsists the same relation between the thought and 
 the electrical vibrations of the filaments of the brain, as 
 between colour and the vibration of ether." 
 
 Huschke. 
 
 The author was induced to write this chapter by 
 the well-known and much attacked expression of 
 Vogt, that " Thought stands in the same relation 
 to the brain, as bile to the liver, or urine to the 
 kidneys/'' an expression which is, however, quali- 
 fied by the preceding sentence : " to express my- 
 self rather coarsely." 
 
 Without in the least joining in the cry of con- 
 demnation raised by this sentence in the scientific, 
 literary, and theological world, we cannot help 
 considering this comparison very badly chosen. 
 We are not able, after the maturest consideration, 
 to find any analogy between the secretion of bile 
 and urine and the process by which thought is 
 produced in the brain. Urine and bile are visible, 
 tangible, and ponderable substances ; they are, 
 moreover, excretions of used up materials : but, 
 thought, spirit, soul, are not material, not a sub- 
 stance, but the effect of the conjoined action of 
 
136 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 many materials endowed with forces or qualities. 
 When a machine, made by the hand of man, has. 
 for its object to set itself or other bodies in motion, 
 to indicate the hour and so forth, this effect is 
 certainly, considered apart, something very dif- 
 ferent from the material excretions which may 
 be produced at the same time. The steam-engine 
 is in a certain sense endowed with life, and pro- 
 duces, as the result of a peculiar combination of 
 force-endowed materials, a united effect, which 
 we use for our purposes, without, however, being 
 able to see, smell, or touch the effect itself. The 
 steam expelled by the engine is a secondary thing, 
 it has nothing to do with the object of the ma- 
 chine, and may be seen and felt as matter. Now, 
 in the same manner as the steam-engine produces 
 motion, so does the organic complication of force- 
 endowed materials produce in the animal body a 
 sum of effects, so interwoven as to become a unit, 
 and is then by us called spirit, soul, thought. 
 The sum of these effects is nothing material : it 
 can be perceived by our senses as little as any 
 other simple force, such as magnetism, electricity, 
 etc. — merely by its manifestations. We have 
 defined force as a property of matter, inseparable 
 from it, yet, with regard to our conception, they 
 are widely distinct, and in a certain sense op- 
 posed to each other. At least, we know not how 
 to define force or spirit otherwise than by some- 
 thing immaterial or opposed to matter. In con- 
 trast with this, we find that bile and urine are 
 
THOUGHT. 
 
 137 
 
 not a sum-total of ideal force effects, but are 
 themselves material bodies and the proceeds of 
 materials. The liver and the kidneys must afford 
 materials for producing the secretions ; the brain 
 furnishes no materials for secreting thought, but 
 preserves them, though they are subjected to 
 constant change. It is true that the brain pro- 
 duces a material substance, it secretes a small 
 quantity of fluid in some of its cavities, which, 
 as is known, may be much increased in a diseased 
 state. But this secretion has nothing whatever 
 to do with mental activity, and no one now pre- 
 tends to find in it an analogy to, or the cause of, 
 thought.* This secretion is, on the contrary, when 
 abnormally increased, inimical to mental activity. 
 The brain is, then, only the carrier and the source, 
 or rather the sole cause of the spirit, or thought; 
 but not the organ which secretes it. It pro- 
 duces something which is not materially perma- 
 nent, but which consumes itself in the moment of 
 its production. The secretion of the liver and 
 kidneys proceeds imperceptibly, and produces a 
 tangible substance ; the activity of the brain is 
 impossible without perfect consciousness, it se- 
 cerns not materials, but forces. All vegetative 
 functions : respiration, circulation, digestion, and 
 secretion, proceed whether we are asleep or 
 awake ; but the manifestations of the soul are 
 suspended from -the moment that the brain sinks 
 
 * Kant, as is well known, looked for the seat of the soul 
 in the water contained in the ventricles of the brain. 
 
138 EOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 into sleep, owing to a diminished circulation of 
 the blood. This circumstance indicates, besides, 
 how little the quoted comparison is admissible. 
 No organ but the brain sleeps; none other re- 
 quires so much relaxation and rest — a circum- 
 stance which demonstrates, not merely an essen- 
 tial distinction between the organs mentioned, 
 but also between psychical and mechanical ac- 
 tivity. The heart beats so long as it receives 
 blood : the machine works so long as it is nour- 
 ished — nor does it become fatigued. The function 
 of the brain, on the contrary, can only continue 
 in activity during a definite time; growing weaker 
 and ceasing altogether if deprived of rest. The 
 same may be said of those muscles which are set 
 in motion by the brain through the nervous system 
 — the voluntary muscles. 
 
 Electricity, a force the manifestations of which 
 were hitherto only observed in the inorganic 
 world, plays, according to modern investigations, 
 a very essential part in the physiological functions 
 of the nervous system. Electric currents con- 
 stantly surround the nerves when at rest. These 
 currents cease, or become weaker, whenever the 
 nerve is excited to activity. The nerves, there- 
 fore, are not the conductors, but generators of 
 electricity. This generation ceases with the ac- 
 tivity of the nerves, that is, with sensation or the 
 exertion of the will. Psychical activity accord- 
 ingly was, by some, defined as latent electricity ! 
 and sleep as a relaxed function of the electrical 
 
THOUGHT. 139 
 
 nerves ! Experimental inquiry may, perhaps, lead 
 us to a more intimate knowledge of psychical 
 functions. 
 
 Our inquiry assumes a different character 
 when we examine the true and fundamental 
 idea of Vogt's expression. We then find this 
 idea to agree with that in favour of which we 
 have, in the preceding chapter, adduced numer- 
 ous examples — in the law that mind and brain 
 necessarily determine each other, that they stand 
 to each other in inseparable causal relations. As 
 there is no bile without liver, no urine without 
 kidneys, so is there no thought without a brain : 
 mental activity is a function of the cerebral sub- 
 stance. This truth is simple, clear, easily sup- 
 ported by facts, and indisputable. 
 
 Acephali, are children born with a merely rudi- 
 mentary brain. These miserable creatures, which 
 give a very unfavourable testimony as regards 
 design in nature, are incapable of any mental 
 activity, and soon die ; as they are deficient in 
 the most essential organ of human existence and 
 thought. ' c Nothing is more certain," says Lotze, 
 " than that the physical state of corporeal ele- 
 ments constitutes the conditions upon which 
 the existence of our mental state necessarily 
 depends." 
 
 Thought vanishes with the matter ! 
 
 "Why," exclaims Hamlet, in the celebrated 
 churchyard scene, " might not that be the skull 
 of a lawyer ? Where be his quiddits now, his 
 
140 EORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 quillets, his cases, his tenures, and his tricks ? 
 Why does he suffer this rude knave now to 
 knock him about the sconce with a dirty shovel 
 and will not tell him of his action of battery ? — 
 
 lc Where be your gibes now, poor Yorick ? 
 Your gambols ? Your songs ? Your flashes of 
 merriment, that were wont to set the table on a 
 roar ? Not one,now, to mock your own grinning ? 
 Quite chap-fallen V 
 
 
141 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE SEAT OF THE SOUL. 
 
 " Physiology teaches with the greatest certainty, that the 
 brain is the seat and the organ of all intellectual facul- 
 ties, and of all sensual perceptions." 
 
 Beneke. 
 
 The brain is not merely the organ of thought 
 and of all higher mental faculties, but also the 
 sole and exclusive seat of the soul. Every thought 
 is produced in the brain, every kind of feeling 
 and sensation, exertion of the will and voluntary 
 motion, proceeds from it. 
 
 However simple this truth may be ; however 
 clearly it may be established by innumerable 
 physiological and pathological facts, it took, 
 nevertheless, a long time before it was recog- 
 nised, and it is eVen to this day difficult for those 
 who are not physicians, to convince themselves 
 of its correctness. 
 
 Plato, it is true, declared the brain to be the 
 seat of the soul ; but his pupil, Aristotle, placed 
 it in the heart. Heraclitus, Oritios, and the 
 Jews sought for it in the blood, Epicurus in the 
 chest. 
 
 Among the moderns, Eicinus placed it again 
 in the heart ; Cartesius in the pineal gland — a 
 
142 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 little organ situated in the centre of the brain, 
 and containing sandy particles. Sömmering 
 looked for it in the ventricles, and Kant in 
 the water contained in them. Long did they 
 search for the soul in this or in that part of the 
 brain, without considering that its functions can 
 only be the result of the activity of the whole 
 organ. Among the more recent inquirers we 
 find Ennemoser, who, by way of speculation, 
 made the acute discovery that the whole body was 
 the seat of the soul ; whilst philosopher Fischer 
 entertains no doubt that the soul is immanent in 
 the whole nervous system. 
 
 These philosophers are singular people. They 
 talk of the creation of the world as if they had 
 been present on the occasion; they define the 
 Absolute as if they had sat at its table for years ; 
 they babble about the nothing and the something, 
 the ego and non-ego, the per se and in se, uni- 
 versal and particulars, perishability and absolute 
 existence, the unknown x, etc., etc., with a confi- 
 dence as if a celestial codex had £iven them exact 
 information about all these ideas and things, and 
 they plaster up the simplest notions with such a 
 confused mass of high-sounding and learned, but 
 incomprehensible words and phrases, as to turn 
 the head of rational man. 
 
 But in spite of all this, upon their metaphy- 
 sical eminence they are not unfrequently so far 
 off from any positive knowledge, that they com- 
 mit the most amusing blunders — especially in 
 
THE SEAT OP THE SOUL. 143 
 
 those cases in which philosophy and science meet, 
 and when the latter threatens to destroy the re- 
 sults of metaphysical speculation. Thus, almost 
 all philosophical psychologists have struggled 
 with rare energy against the theory of the seat 
 of the soul in the brain, and continue in their 
 opposition without taking the least notice of the 
 progress of experimental science. Fortlage, the 
 author of a big work on Psychology which ap- 
 peared in 1855, says : "There are certain errors 
 in the human mind, etc. The error of the seat 
 of the soul in the brain is one of them." If 
 Fortlage had taken the trouble of reading, merely 
 superficially, any manual of Physiology, he would 
 have kept this remark to himself. 
 
 Philosopher Fischer, of Basle, says : " That 
 the soul is immanent in the whole nervous system 
 is proved, as it feels, perceives, and acts in every 
 part thereof. I do not feel pain in a central 
 part of the brain, but in a particular spot and 
 place." 
 
 And yet, what Fischer denies is undoubtedly 
 the fact. The nerves themselves do not perceive ; 
 they merely call forth sensations by conducting 
 the impressions received to the brain. We do 
 not feel pain in the place injured, but in the 
 brain. If a nerve of sensation be divided in its 
 course to the brain, all the parts which are sup- 
 plied by it lose their sensibility — for no other 
 reason than that the conducting of the impres- 
 sion to the brain is no longer possible. Every 
 
144 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 man who has no knowledge of physiological pro- 
 cesses, believes the feeling of hunger to be in 
 the stomach. This is not so, the brain alone 
 makes us conscious of the feeling. If the nerve 
 uniting brain and stomach be divided, hunger is 
 at an end, nor does it return. Neither does 
 anger arise in the liver, or courage in the chest, 
 but in the brain only. The heart, to which in 
 common language so many feelings are ascribed, 
 has nothing whatever to do with mental actions. 
 It is nothing but a hollow muscle, which propels 
 the blood. That mental feelings are indicated by 
 its more or less frequent pulsations is caused by 
 the mediation of a nerve, which connects heart 
 and brain. This sympathy ceases with the de- 
 struction of the nerve. We see not with the 
 eye or the optic nerve, but with the brain. If 
 the optic nerve be divided, seeing is at an end. 
 This also happens on the removal of the tuber- 
 cula quadrigemina, though the eyes may remain 
 perfect. 
 
 Habit and external appearance have led to the 
 false notion, that we feel in places subjected to 
 external irritation. Physiology calls this relation 
 ' ' the law of eccentric phenomena." According 
 to it we falsely attribute the feeling perceived in 
 the brain to the place where the impression is 
 made. On this account it is pretty much the 
 same where the impression is made in the tract 
 of the nerve; we always feel it only in the 
 peripheral expansion of the nerve. If the elbow 
 
THE SEAT OF THE SOUL. 145 
 
 nerve receives a shock, we do not feel it at the 
 elbow but in the fingers. If an exostosis presses 
 upon the facial nerve at its issue from the era- V 
 
 nium, the most intolerable pain is felt in the face, 
 though the peripheral expansions of the nerve 
 are quite sound. If a piece of skin taken from 
 the forehead is transplanted to the nose, the per- 
 son operated upon thinks he feels his forehead in 
 touching his new nose. Persons who have lost r 
 their arms or legs by amputation often feel during 
 their whole lives, in atmospheric changes, pains 
 in limbs which they no longer possess. If all his 
 limbs were removed, man would still feel them. 
 
 From these facts, it can scarcely be doubted 
 that there must exist in the brain a topography 
 by means of which the various sensations of the 
 different parts of the body arise. Every part of 
 the body which can be separately perceived, must 
 have a corresponding spot in the brain which in 
 some degree represents it in the forum of con- 
 sciousness. It may easily happen that the irrita- 
 tion conducted by the corresponding nerve to 
 the central point is not confined to it, but is 
 communicated to neighbouring centres of sensa- 
 tion. In this way arise the so-called sympathies. 
 Persons suffering from a hollow tooth generally 
 feel pain in the whole cheek. 
 
 What is sard of sensations is equally applicable 
 to the exertion of the will. Only in the brain, 
 and not in the muscles, arise acts of the will. 
 The nerves conduct the irritation, and bring to 
 
 L 
 
146 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 the muscles the message of the brain. The effect 
 ceases immediately on the division of the nerve. 
 Affections of the spinal cord cause lameness, the 
 nervous connection "between the legs and the brain 
 being interrupted. Apoplexy is an extravasation 
 of a quantity of blood into the interior of the brain. 
 The moment that this happens in sufficient quan- 
 tity to suspend the cerebral function in that part, 
 there ceases also in the corresponding half of the 
 body every kind of sensation and motion. Who 
 has not had an opportunity of observing the 
 melancholy state of an individual struck by apo- 
 plexy ? Similar results follow the division of the 
 spinal cord in all the parts below the division. 
 
 The origin of the nerves of voluntary motion 
 must, like those of sensation, be distributed in 
 the brain in a certain topographical manner, in 
 order that they may individually obey the will. 
 This relation has very aptly been compared to 
 the keys of a piano, upon which the person plays, 
 The will, like the player, requires practice to 
 learn this play, in order to produce particular 
 movements by touching different keys. Very 
 frequently the player cannot succeed, and he 
 strikes several keys together and thus produces 
 involuntary movements. We wish, for instance, 
 to move one finger, and move all of them. The 
 grimaces whilst speaking rest upon this sym- 
 pathy. These kinds of movements are best ob- 
 served in children, who have not yet learned to 
 isolate the actions of the will : if they wish to 
 
THE SEAT OP THE SOUL. 147 
 
 execute a simple motion, they move the whole 
 body. 
 
 Let us now turn to the objections of another 
 philosopher. Professor Erdmann of Halle says, 
 in his psychological letters : 
 
 " The theory that the soul has its seat in the 
 brain, must lead to the result that, when the body J 
 
 is separated from the head, the soul should con- 
 tinue to exist " ! 
 
 This undoubtedly would be the case, if we 
 were able in an artificial manner to supply the 
 brain with a continued stream of blood necessary 
 for its nourishment, integrity, and action. But, 
 in consequence of the separation from the body, 
 the flow of blood ceases, and with it every cere- 
 bral function and every mental activity. 
 
 There have been a few instances of men in whom, 
 by some accident, a dislocated cervical vertebra 
 compressed the spinal cord in such a manner 
 that the connection between the brain and the 
 body was severed. Eespiration and pulsation con- 
 tinued, however ; and with them the nutrition of 
 the brain. Such a state is a living death. The 
 whole body is perfectly insensible and motion- 
 less — a corpse; the head only lives, with its im- 
 mediate adjoining parts. The intellect, however, 
 remains in such persons intact ; they are living 
 corpses. 
 
 The theory that the brain is the seat of the 
 soul is so incontrovertible, that it has long been 
 adopted in the rules of law in regard to mon- 
 
 y/ 
 
148 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 strosities. A monstrosity with one body and 
 two heads counts for two persons ; one with two 
 bodies and one head, only for one person. Mon- 
 strosities without a brain, so-called acephali, pos- 
 sess no personality. 
 
 Mr. Ennemoser found that the soul resides in 
 the whole body. Had Mr. Ennemoser ever had 
 the misfortune of losing a leg by amputation, he 
 would be greatly surprised to find that his soul 
 had lost nothing of its integrity. 
 
 Attempts have recently been made to weaken 
 the axiom of the brain being the sole seat of the 
 mind, by ascribing to the spinal cord a share in 
 sensation and voluntary motion. The experi- 
 ments performed on animals to support this 
 theory are by no means convincing; whilst the 
 reasons against it are so strong, that science is 
 by no means inclined to adopt it. 
 
 We may also mention that some authors ima- 
 gined that the soul, under certain circumstances, 
 leaves the brain for a short time and occupies 
 another part of the nervous system. The solar 
 plexus, a concatenation of sympathetic nerves 
 situated in the abdomen, was especially pointed 
 out as the favoured spot. The sympathetic nerve 
 running along the vertebral column is apparently 
 but slightly connected with the cerebro-spinal 
 system, and exhibits in its functions such a phy- 
 siological independence, that the organs supplied 
 by it are, in their normal state, independent of 
 the will and of consciousness. This nerve is, 
 
THE SEAT OE THE SOUL. 149 
 
 however, not the least concerned in mental acts ; 
 and physiology has never yet succeeded in proving 
 such manifestations, either in man or animals. 
 
 Theorists, nevertheless, did not hesitate to 
 make this innocent nerve an accomplice in the 
 mystical and speculative sins of our age, and lay 
 to its charge a number of those phenomena 
 which are designated as the night-life of the soul. 
 This nerve, it was said, rendered it possible that 
 somnambulists could read sealed letters or indi- 
 cate the time of a watch placed on the pit of the 
 stomach. 
 
 We are compelled to enter into some details 
 respecting these phenomena, not merely to prove 
 our proposition that the brain is exclusively the 
 seat of the soul, but for other reasons. Some 
 of these phenomena, clairvoyance especially, have 
 been laid hold of to prove the existence of su- 
 pernatural and supersensual phenomena. They 
 were considered as the link of connection be- 
 tween the spiritual and material world; and it 
 was surmised that these phenomena opened a 
 gate through which man might pass, and succeed 
 in obtaining some immediate clue regarding 
 transcendental existence, personal continuance, 
 and the laws of the spirit. All these things are 
 now, by science and an investigation of the facts, 
 considered as idle fancies which human nature 
 is so much inclined to indulge in to satisfy its 
 longing after what appears miraculous and super- 
 sensual. 
 
150 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 This propensity has given rise to the most 
 curions errors of the human mind. Though it 
 sometimes appears that the progress of science 
 arrests its development in some place, it sud- 
 denly breaks forth with greater force at some other 
 place where it was least expected. The events 
 of the last few years afford a striking example. 
 What the belief in sorcery, witchcraft, demoniac 
 possession, vampirism, etc., was in former cen- 
 turies, reappears now under the agreeable forms 
 of table-moving, spirit-rapping, psychography, 
 somnambulism, etc. 
 
 The educated classes think that the belief in 
 what is wonderful and supersensual is more pecu- 
 liar to the ignorant classes ; but history has just 
 proved the contrary. How many educated persons 
 are there not who dislike to sit at a table when the 
 number amounts to thirteen ! How many do not 
 consider Friday as an unfortunate day, or consider 
 the meeting with certain animals a bad omen ! 
 What success do not magnetisers and clairvoyants 
 meet with in the higher classes ! Among the phe- 
 nomena constituting the so-called " night-life" of 
 the soul are usually enumerated the following: The 
 frightening of pregnant women, animal magnet- 
 ism with its attendant phenomena of clairvoy- 
 ance, somnambulism, forebodings, second sight, 
 apparitions, sympathetic cures, etc. 
 
 The influence upon the foetus by sudden frights 
 experienced by the mother is of little importance 
 in our inquiry, being rejected by the best autho- 
 rities. 
 
THE SEAT OF THE SOUL. 151 
 
 Magnetic sleep, induced either by continued 
 passes on the body, or spontaneously without ex- 
 ternal means, as in idiosomnambulism, is stated 
 to be frequently attended by an intellectual 
 ecstasy, which in certain privileged persons, 
 chiefly females, rises to what is called clawv&y- 
 In this state, those persons are said to 
 exhibit mental faculties not natural to them, to 
 speak fluently foreign languages, and to discuss 
 things perfectly unknown to them in the waking- 
 state. Such a somnambulist is further said to 
 have something ethereal, something glorified in 
 his whole bearing, reminding us of his new rela- 
 tions to superior spheres ; his voice is stated to 
 be sweet and solemn. If this state passes into 
 clairvoyance proper, the person now perceives 
 things beyond the sphere of his senses, he reads 
 sealed letters, guesses the thoughts of other per- 
 sons, reveals the past, etc. Finally, such indi- 
 viduals sometimes give us information about 
 the arrangements in heaven and hell, our state 
 after death, and so forth; but we cannot help 
 mentioning that these revelations are ever in re- 
 markable harmony with the religious views of 
 the church, or of the priest under whose influence 
 the patient may be for the time. 
 
 Clairvoyance is only a modern invention in its 
 form, not in its essence. Pythia of the Greeks, 
 prophesying upon her tripod, was a clairvoyante 
 in an antique form, who was as much prompted 
 in her answers as our modern somnambulists. 
 
x* 
 
 152 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 The various gambols of religious maniacs in the 
 middle ages were attended with similar pheno- 
 mena of inspirations. The history of that kind 
 of exaltation which occurred in Languedoc is an 
 instance in point. 
 
 There can be no doubt that all pretended cases 
 of clairvoyance rest upon fraud or illusion. Clair- 
 voyance, that is a perception of external objects 
 without the use of the senses, is an impossibility. 
 It is a law of nature which cannot be gainsaid, 
 that we require our eyes to see, our ears to hear, 
 and that these senses are limited in their action 
 by space. No one can read an opaque sealed 
 letter, extend his vision to America, see with 
 closed eyes what passes around him, look into 
 the future, or guess the thoughts of others. 
 These truths rest upon natural laws, which are 
 irrefutable, and admit, like other natural laws, of 
 no exception. All that we know, we know by 
 the medium of our senses. There exist no super- 
 sensual and supernatural things, and capacities ; 
 and they never can exist, as the eternal confor- 
 mity of the laws of nature would thereby be 
 suspended. As little^as a stone can ever fall in any 
 other direction than towards the centre of the 
 earth, so little can a man see without using his 
 eyes. . 
 
 Cases so repugnant to the laws of nature have 
 never been acknowledged by rational unprejudiced 
 individuals. Ghosts and spirits have hitherto 
 only been seen by children, or ignorant and 
 
THE SEAT OP THE SOUL. 153 
 
 superstitious individuals. All that has been nar- 
 rated of the visits of departed spirits is sheer 
 nonsense ; never has a dead man returned to this 
 world. There are neither table-spirits nor any- 
 other spirits. The naturalist entertains, from 
 observation and experience, no doubt as to these 
 truths ; a constant intercourse with nature and 
 its laws has convinced him that they admit of no 
 exception. The majority of human beings think 
 differently ; they must, therefore, be instructed. 
 
 The scientific impossibility of clairvoyance has 
 been confirmed by an examination of the facts 
 by sober and unprejudiced observers, and were 
 proved to be deceptions and illusions. The 
 Faculty of Medicine of Paris many years ago 
 took the trouble of submitting a number of 
 such cases to a scientific examination ; they were 
 all proved to be deceptions, nor could a single 
 case be established of a perception without the 
 use of the senses. In 1837 the same academy- 
 offered a prize of 3,000 francs to any one who 
 could read through a board. No one gained the 
 prize. Some years since a scientific commission 
 in Geneva, appointed for the purpose, made some 
 experiments with M. Lassaigne and Mile. Pru- 
 dence Bernard, a famous Parisian somnambulist, 
 which all turned out so many failures. When- 
 ever proper means were employed to prevent de- 
 ception, clairvoyance was at an end. It is known 
 that the celebrated somnambulist Alexis of Paris, 
 who turns the heads and lightens the purses of 
 
154 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 the people, keeps agents in all the hotels of 
 Paris, who inform him of the conditions of 
 strangers. The author has himself had an op- 
 portunity of examining a clairvoyante, of whom 
 remarkable things were told, under circumstances 
 when a deception on the part of the magnetiser 
 was out of the question. The lady failed in all 
 her indications ; they were either absolutely false, 
 or so expressed that nothing could be made of 
 them. She, moreover, made the most ridiculous 
 excuses for her shortcomings. As she failed in 
 her clairvoyance, she preferred to fall into a state 
 of heavenly ecstasy, in which she discoursed with 
 her " ange" or tutelary genius, and recited reli- 
 gious verses. In reciting a poem of this kind, 
 she once stopped short and recommenced the 
 verse to assist her memory. She manifested, 
 withal, in this ecstasy, no superior mental capa- 
 cities ; her language was common, and her man- 
 ner awkward. The author left with the convic- 
 tion that the lady was an impostor who deceived 
 her patron. Still, several gentlemen present 
 were by no means convinced of the deception 
 practised on them ! 
 
 In the annals of forensic medicine there may 
 be met with numbers of such cases of pretended 
 somnambulists, who were found guilty of such 
 practices. In all these cases, a close examination 
 established imposition and fraud. Louise Braun, 
 the well known " wonderful girl" of the Schiffer- 
 strasse in Berlin, who in 1849 attracted thousands, 
 
THE SEAT OF THE SOUL. 155 
 
 -and was even called upon to render sight to a 
 blind king, was in 1853 sentenced at the assizes 
 to imprisonment as a common cheat. Dr. 
 Wittcke relates in the Journal of Medicine the 
 history of a somnambulist who, for a variety of 
 deceptions, had been sentenced to imprisonment 
 and the pillory. The superior court, however, 
 quashed the conviction, on the ground that the 
 deception was not sufficiently proved. She 
 naturally recommenced her practices, and gained 
 a large sum of money. This person was an un- 
 educated peasant woman, and attempted to speak 
 in foreign languages, to assume a high dialect, 
 to hold spiritual discourses, etc. ; by which many 
 were deceived. A second and closer examina- 
 tion, made by Dr. Wittcke, proved her to be a 
 complete impostor. 
 
 After all this, it can no longer be doubtful 
 that such supersensual and supernatural mental 
 capacities have never existed, and that the asser- 
 tion that the- soul takes, under such circum- 
 stances, refuge in the sympathetic system, where 
 unconsciously it performs things not natural to 
 it, is an empty phrase and nothing else. u No- 
 thing," says Hirschel, "is so improbable but a 
 German will find a theory for it." Sympathetic 
 or miraculous cures are all based upon deception 
 or imagination. Their empire is as large as the 
 world, and as old as history. To say anything 
 more regarding their natural impossibility, would 
 be to insult the intellect of the reader. 
 
 ( 
 
156 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 All that lias been said may also be applied to 
 apparitions, no matter in what form they may 
 appear — whether as spectres, table- spirits, or 
 demons. 
 
 Sleep-walking [somnambulism) is a state which 
 is, unfortunately, as yet little known from actual 
 observation, although it is highly interesting on 
 account of its scientific importance. However, 
 though not possessing an exact knowledge of its 
 nature, we are justified in considering the curious 
 tales related of sleep-walkers as so many fables. 
 No somnambulist can climb up a wall, or speak 
 unknown languages, or perform any intellectual 
 labour which exceeds his comprehension. 
 
 " Deny, then, who can," says Ule, "that the 
 senses are the source of all truth and of all error, 
 and that the human mind is a product of the 
 change of matter." 
 
157 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 " Nihil est in intellectu, quod non fuerit in sensu." 
 " There is nothing in our intellect, which has not entered 
 by the gate of the senses." 
 
 Moleschott. 
 
 The question whether there be innate ideas is a 
 Very old one, and, in our opinion, one of the 
 most important in relation to the contemplation 
 of nature. It decides to some extent whether 
 man, considered as the product of a higher world, 
 has received a form of existence as something 
 foreign and external to his essence, with the ten- 
 dency to shake off this earthly covering, and to 
 return to his spiritual home : or whether both in 
 his spiritual and bodily capacity man stands to 
 the earth which has produced him in a necessary 
 inseparable connection, and whether he has re- 
 ceived his essential nature from this world, so 
 that he cannot be torn from the earth, like the 
 plant which cannot exist without its maternal 
 soil. The question is, at the same time, one which 
 does not dissolve itself in a philosophical mist, but 
 which, so to speak, has flesh and blood, and, resting 
 upon empirical facts, can be discussed and de- 
 cided without high-sounding phrases. It is for 
 
158 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 this reason that the question has been chiefly 
 discussed by the French and English, as the lan- 
 guages of these nations do not admit of an empty 
 jugglery of words, which is frequently termed 
 " philosophy" by the Germans. 
 
 The advice has frequently been given, and 
 with some justice, we think, that the philosophi- 
 cal works of the Grermans should be translated 
 into foreign languages, so as to sift the grain 
 from the chaff. We are afraid that little would 
 remain after such an ordeal. Nothing is more 
 repulsive than that apparently profound philoso- 
 phical spirit which breaks forth in hollow rhap- 
 sodies, but which, fortunately, is now somewhat 
 arrested by the solid progress of empirical 
 science. After the splendid but short career of 
 the fashionable philosophy of Hegel, our German 
 philosophers have pretty much lost their autho- 
 rity, and are now but little attended to. 
 
 The French philosopher Descartes assumed 
 that the soul entered the body endowed with 
 all possible knowledge, but, forgetting it at 
 birth, gradually recollects it. Locke rejected 
 this view, and victoriously disproved the theory 
 of innate ideas. We do not hesitate, supported 
 by plain facts, also to declare against innate 
 ideas. Moleschott calls man a product of his 
 senses ; and, indeed, observation teaches that all 
 that we know, think, or feel, is merely a reflex 
 of what we or other men before us have received, 
 by the medium of our senses, from without. Any 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 159 
 
 supernatural absolute knowledge reaching be- 
 yond the world, not accessible to our senses, 
 does not exist, and is impossible. Daily expe- 
 rience teaches us that man begins his intellectual 
 life only with the gradual development of his 
 senses, and in proportion as he enters into a 
 definite relation to the external world ; and that 
 the development of his intellect keeps pace with 
 that of his organs of sense and his organ of 
 thought, and also with the number and import- 
 ance of the impressions received. " Every un- 
 prejudiced observer," says Virchow, " has arrived 
 at the conviction that thought is only gradually 
 developed in man." The new-born child thinks 
 as little, and has as little a soul as the unborn 
 child; it is, in our view, living in the body, 
 but intellectually dead. Man and animals gene- 
 rally, grow from a scarcely visible vesicle to a 
 certain size, when the embryo can move in the 
 womb; but these motions are involuntary, not 
 determined by a mental act : the embryo neither 
 thinks nor feels, and is not conscious of its ex* 
 istence. Man recollects nothing of this state, 
 nor of the first period of his existence in which 
 the senses were dormant ; and this perfect un- 
 consciousness proves his spiritual non-existence 
 at that period. The reason can only be that, 
 during the foetal state, there are no impressions 
 whatever received from without, and so weak 
 and imperfect are they in the first few weeks, 
 that the intellect cannot be said to exist. 
 
160 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 It is of some interest with regard to this ques- 
 tion, to mention the somewhat ludicrous discus- 
 sion about the period of the animation of the 
 embryo ; a question which became important at 
 the time when the destruction of the embryo was 
 beginning to be considered a crime. 
 
 The question to be decided was, at what time 
 the soul entered the body of the embryo, as a 
 crime could only be committed after the period 
 of its animation. The scientific and logical im- 
 possibility of determining the time proves the 
 absurdity of the whole theory, which assumes 
 that a higher power breathes the soul into the 
 nostrils of the foetus. The Eoman lawyers 
 accordingly did not look upon the foetus as an 
 individual being, but as a part of the mother. 
 The destruction of the foetus was therefore per- 
 mitted to the women of Eome, and we find that 
 Plato and Aristotle had already adopted the 
 same view. The Stoics held that the soul en- 
 tered the body of the child with the first act of 
 respiration. It was not until the time of Ulpian 
 that the destruction of the foetus was forbidden. 
 The Justinian code fixed the fortieth day after 
 conception as the time of the animation of the 
 foetus. Some modern lawyers look upon con- 
 ception and animation as occurring simulta- 
 neously — a theory irreconcilable with scientific 
 experience. Any one who has ever seen a human 
 or animal ovulum under the microscope, can only 
 smile at the assumption of an egg-soul. These 
 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 161 
 
 germs must no doubt possess natural disposi- 
 tions capable of mental development; but the 
 actual presence of a soul in that state is out of 
 the question. Such philosophical and religious 
 exaggerations, which exhibit the most simple 
 things in a wrong light, did not exist in former 
 times. Moses and the Egyptians entertained a 
 decided opinion that the child was not animated 
 while in the womb. In some countries they 
 know nothing of an animated foetus. The de- 
 struction of the foetus and infanticide is, accord- 
 ing to Williams, a common occurrence in Mada- 
 gascar. It is also very common in Otahaiti, 
 China, and the Society Islands.* 
 
 Even at birth, when the child is separated 
 from the mother, it is impossible to assume that 
 a ready-made soul, lying in wait, should sud- 
 denly rush in and take possession of its new 
 habitation. This soul, on the contrary, is only 
 gradually developed in proportion to the rela- 
 tions which, by the awakening senses, are now 
 established between the individual and the ex- 
 ternal world. It is possible, perhaps certain, 
 that already in the womb the physical organisa- 
 tion of the new individual, chiefly determined by 
 hereditary transmission, possesses predisposi- 
 
 * "We by no means intend to convey the opinion that such 
 customs might be desirable in our present social state. Our 
 investigations are without reference to such practical ques- 
 tions. The state may have numerous reasons for protecting 
 the foetus against external violence, which can only be ques- 
 tioned by the political economist. 
 
 V 
 
162 EOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 tions which, subsequently excited by external 
 impressions, are developed into mental qualities 
 and peculiarities ; but no conception or idea can 
 be innate.* 
 
 The assertion recently promulgated by Eudolf 
 Wagner, one of our most distinguished physiolo- 
 gists, that the transmission of mental peculiarities 
 from parent to child presupposes the existence 
 of a transferable immaterial substance, is per- 
 fectly untenable, as it rests upon the false idea 
 that the germs of animals contain a psychical 
 substance, which certainly can neither be divided 
 nor transferred. 
 
 The further development of the child^s mind 
 by means of the senses, education and example, 
 etc., always determined by physical organisation 
 and predisposition, proves so clearly the objective 
 growth of the mind, that no theory can subvert 
 the fact. In proportion as the senses are exer- 
 cised and gain strength, and external impres- 
 sions are multiplied and frequently repeated, 
 there arises slowly and gradually an internal pic- 
 ture of the external world in the material organ 
 of thought, and conceptions and ideas are formed. 
 A long period elapses before the human being 
 
 * The sucking 1 of a new-born child at the breast is not 
 the result of a conscious idea, or an act of the will, but, as 
 is well known, a reflex act ; i.e. produced mechanically by 
 means of a physiological process perfectly independent of 
 the will and of consciousness. Hence the child sucks, not 
 merely at the breast of the mother, but at every object 
 placed into its mouth. 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 163 
 
 arrives at a perfect self-consciousness, and until 
 he learns to use his organs and limbs for definite 
 purposes; indeed, until he can distinguish his 
 personal individuality. Children, as is well 
 known, rarely use at the outset the first personal 
 pronoun. This gradual and imperceptible intel- 
 lectual growth induces man, when in full posses- 
 sion of his powers, to forget his origin, to 
 despise the external world, his mother, and to 
 look upon himself as a son of heaven, from which 
 he had received knowledge as a gift. An unpre- 
 judiced glance at his past state, or at the condition 
 of those whom nature has deprived of one or more 
 of their senses, might have taught him better. 
 
 What does a person born blind know of colour, 
 light, and the splendour of this world? Night 
 and darkness are the normal state of his existence, 
 like that of the lowest animals which possess no 
 eyes. What does a deaf-mute know of sound, of 
 language, music, and melodies ? For him there 
 is eternal silence, and he stands in this respect 
 in the same intellectual position as the house-fly, 
 which, wanting the organ of hearing, is not 
 frightened by any noise. Deaf-mutes are unfortu- 
 nate creatures who can only with great trouble be 
 mentally improved. Hirzel relates of a deaf-mute 
 named Meystre, of good natural disposition, that 
 it had cost him immense trouble to impress upon 
 Meystre the use of language. The first word 
 which Meystre learned was ' l Ami", the Christian 
 name of a blind inmate of the institution. As 
 
164 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 often as lie pronounced this word the blind man 
 came to him. Meystre thus learned, to his great 
 surprise, that by means of speech one might 
 render himself intelligible at a distance. He 
 had no idea of God ; and, when it was attempted 
 to give him a conception of it, he always con- 
 founded God with the sun. Deaf-mutes are, 
 therefore, in most civilised countries considered 
 irresponsible beings, on account of the weakness 
 of their intellect. We read sometimes in the 
 newspapers of the brutal state of those unfortu- 
 nate beings, whom avarice or cruelty had from 
 their early childhood kept confined in dark cel- 
 lars, and excluded from all social intercourse or 
 intellectual excitement. The physical and mental 
 state of such individuals is mere vegetation, not 
 a developed human existence. Where, then, in 
 such creatures is the supersensual spirit ? Why 
 is it not developed, in spite of external obstruc- 
 tions, and obtain a victory by its own inherent 
 power ? It was impossible to impart to the well 
 known Caspar Häuser the idea of a horse. When 
 the word was pronounced, he thought of a 
 wooden toy which he played with during his im- 
 prisonment, being unable to attach any meaning 
 to the word horse but in this connection. Let 
 us imagine a man born without any senses. Is 
 it possible that any idea should arise within him, 
 or any intellectual faculty be developed ? Cer- 
 tainly not. He would, if nourished and attended 
 to, vegetate physically, in some such manner as 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 165 
 
 the animals deprived by Flourens of their brain. 
 Corresponding observations have been made on 
 men, who from their earliest childhood had 
 lived and grown up among animals, removed 
 from the society of men. They lived and sup- 
 ported themselves like animals ; they had no 
 spiritual wants ; they could not speak, and ex- 
 hibited not a trace of that " divine spark" which 
 is said to be " innate" in man. Mental diseases 
 arising from psychical causes rarely occur in in- 
 fancy, and not at all during the first years of 
 existence ; for that which does not exist cannot 
 become diseased. The frequency of diseases of 
 the mind is again lessened in old age ; because, 
 as we have already shown in a former chapter, 
 brain and soul begin to retrograde at that 
 time. 
 
 The animal world offers equally good arguments 
 against the theory of innate ideas, although the 
 so-called instinct of animals has been quoted as an 
 argument in its favour. In a subsequent chapter 
 we shall endeavour to show that an instinct, in 
 the accepted meaning of the term, i.e. an irre- 
 sistible impulse of nature, does not exist ; but 
 that animals think, learn, and deliberate like 
 man, but in a much less degree. Animals, like 
 man, are taught by the example of parents, and 
 by surrounding circumstances, though their phy- 
 sical organisation renders them more apt for cer- 
 tain qualifications. Hounds brought up in the 
 house exhibit no trace of that strong inclination 
 
166 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 for the chase so peculiar to the race, Carnivorous 
 animals only become greedy for a flesh diet after 
 they have tasted it, as may be observed in the 
 domestic cat. Tame animals change their cha- 
 racter in the wilderness, whilst wild animals 
 become tame in confinement. The nightingale, 
 brought up in solitude, does not sing ; it learns 
 it from other birds. It has been observed that 
 birds, finches for instance, have different melodies 
 in different countries. It is asserted that the 
 idea of a hexagonal cell is innate in the bee, and 
 that it is impelled to build it in such a form. 
 But the bee now and then constructs cells of a 
 different form; and if a bee-hive composed of 
 artificial cells is placed in their way, the bees 
 have so much intellect, and so little instinct, that 
 they make use of them without thinking of 
 building cells of their owm Another argument 
 in favour of innate ideas was this : Animals, it 
 was said, also possess senses, frequently more 
 acute than those of man, and yet they always 
 remain brutes. This has no solid foundation. 
 The senses are not the immediate generators, 
 but merely the mediators of mental qualities ; 
 they conduct external impressions to the brain, 
 which receives, digests, and reproduces them 
 according to its material energy. This process 
 cannot go on without the senses, consequently 
 all mental activity originates from this source ; 
 but this process must, even with the most acute 
 senses, be defective, if the apparatus of thought 
 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 167 
 
 be indifferently organised. We have already 
 spoken of the relation of the animal to the human 
 brain. There are innate predispositions depend- 
 ent on the different material qualities of the 
 animal organisation, but no innate intuitions or 
 ideas. Even the dispositions ever remain 
 without development in absence of the senses, 
 which are as necessary for the origin of an idea 
 as a chemical substance is required to form with 
 another body a third substance by chemical com- 
 bination. It must also be admitted, that much, 
 perhaps most, of what is usually called innate 
 talent, proves when closely examined to be the 
 result of an early training of certain senses ; as 
 the sense for music, painting, numbers, etc. An 
 infinite number of mental differences among 
 human beings is, moreover, the result of a 
 variety of external circumstances. The more 
 numerous our perceptions of the external world 
 are, the richer will be the world of our thought, 
 and the more comprehensive our intellect. 
 
 In order to refute the sensual theory, certain 
 universal ideas have been mentioned, which were 
 said to be so forcibly impressed in individuals as 
 well as nations, that an empirical origin of them 
 is out of the question, and that we must assume 
 that these ideas were originally implanted in the 
 human mind. Such are especially metaphysical, 
 sesthetical, and moral notions, as the ideas of 
 truth, the good, and the beautiful. 
 
 We observe, it is said, that the mind of the 
 
/ 
 
 168 FOECE AND HATTEK. 
 
 boy already revolts at the sight of a wrong with 
 an intensity which exhibits his inner state, and 
 that his pleasure in the beautiful is shown at a 
 period when he is yet unable to institute compa- 
 risons. Against this view we must, in the first 
 place, observe that what is usually termed an 
 idea, is not an acquisition of every single indi- 
 vidual, but a conquest of the whole human race, 
 the result of spiritual battles fought during long 
 periods of time. Man selects from the surround- 
 ing objective world that which is common to 
 each, and conceives an ideal form, to which he 
 gives the predicates of true, beautiful, or good. 
 This mental process dates already from the time 
 when man entered the historical period. The 
 idea gradually acquired thereby an historical 
 right and an objective form, so that an individual 
 is no longer obliged to commence the mental 
 process anew, but merely to receive what already 
 exists. Without a retrospective glance at the 
 origin of the idea, it must appear to him as 
 innate. But this idea could never have been 
 developed without a definite relation of the ob- 
 jective world to the power of perception of the 
 individual. What man is to do with what he has 
 received by his senses, or by the acquisition of 
 what has been done and known before him, how he 
 is to digest and combine these materials, to form 
 conclusions and construct sciences — mathematics, 
 for instance — is his own affair, and independent 
 of sensual impressions; but these impressions 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 169 
 
 were originally the only means which conld pro- 
 vide him with materials to work upon ; he never 
 possessed an innate, an immediate perception. 
 Oersted expounds the historical development of 
 the idea as follows : u It could not be otherwise 
 but that man presupposed in his fellow-creatures 
 an intellectual being like himself. When one 
 man excited an agreeable feeling in another, 
 there arose love; if the reverse was the case, 
 hatred. Such influences may have given rise to 
 the idea of a something in the actions of a man, 
 which is to be approved or to be rejected ; and this 
 small beginning became the seed of the notion 
 of right and wrong." None but a mind preju- 
 diced in favour of a supernatural influence can 
 assert, like Liebig, "We know nothing of the 
 origin of an idea." 
 
 The supernatural, divine, and innate origin of 
 ideas, asserted by idealists, is forcibly refuted by 
 the following considerations. If 83sthetical, moral, 
 or metaphysical conceptions were innate, they 
 should be identical, uniform, and have every- 
 where the same absolute value. We find, how- 
 ever, in fact, that this value is relative in the 
 highest degree, and that, with regard to indivi- 
 duals or nations, these ideas exhibit at different 
 periods the greatest differences ; sometimes so 
 great, as to become opposed to the original idea, 
 which owed its origin to different circumstances. 
 The white man paints the devil black, the Negro 
 paints him white. Savages paint their bodies 
 
170 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 and wear nose-rings — a fashion which disgusts 
 us. There cannot be a more striking proof of 
 the relative value of sesthetical notions than so- 
 called fashion, which delights in contrast. Our 
 notions of the beautiful resemble our notions of 
 design. We find something beautiful and pro- 
 per just because it is so, and might probably 
 have found it not less beautiful had it been dif- 
 ferent. The Greeks, that highly cultivated 
 people, combine in their sculptures human and 
 animal forms, which we at present consider de- 
 grading and opposed to beauty. The Greeks and 
 Romans knew little or nothing of the beauties of 
 nature which we so much admire ; and the rustic 
 inhabitants of beautiful mountainous districts 
 have generally no appreciation of the beauties by 
 which they are surrounded. The Chinese con- 
 sider it beautiful in a woman to be very fat, and 
 to have feet so small that she can scarcely walk. 
 The Javanese consider only a yellow skin beau- 
 tiful, and colour their teeth black, as they consider 
 it disgusting to have "white teeth like a dog"; 
 whilst our poets speak with enthusiasm of the 
 splendid white teeth of their lady-loves. Mr. L. C. 
 Schmarda writes that the inhabitants of Ceylon 
 have, by chewing betel, become so accustomed to 
 the sight of black teeth, that the sight of white 
 teeth excites in them disgust. The same author 
 also observes that the Chinese conquerors of that 
 island found the long noses of the Cingalese, in 
 comparison with their own, so abominable, that 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 171 
 
 they wrote to their friends : <{ The Cingalese are 
 a detestable people, with beaks instead of noses." 
 The Batokas in Sonth Africa extract at the time 
 of puberty the superior incisors, which, causing 
 the inferior to attain a large size, gives a horrid 
 aspect to the face. Yet every girl who has not 
 yet undergone this operation considers herself 
 ugly. These instances of an essential difference 
 in gesthetical notions might be easily multi- 
 plied. 
 
 If there be anything common in these notions, 
 it is the result of education and experience. No 
 art has ever been able to create an idea the in- 
 dividual parts of which were not borrowed from 
 nature ! And in the arts and thoughts of every 
 nation may easily be recognised the influence of 
 external circumstances. 
 
 Moral notions are justly considered as the 
 result of gradual experience. Nations in a state 
 of nature are deficient in moral qualities, and 
 commit cruelties and bestialities forwhich civilised 
 nations have no words ; and friends and enemies 
 consider such acts as perfectly in order. They 
 have very little, if any, notion of the rights of pro- 
 perty ; hence the propensity to theft found among 
 all uncivilised nations. A well executed theft is, 
 among the Indians, considered a highly merito- 
 rious act. The New Caledonians, according to 
 the reports of Captain Montravel, share what- 
 ever they possess with every individual requiring 
 it, and present the first comer with what they had 
 
172 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 just received, so that objects of considerable value 
 pass rapidly through many hands, etc. Even 
 among nations more civilised, the notion of the 
 right of property is very feeble indeed. Among 
 the Chinese and Slaves, scruples about the right 
 of property do not belong to the category of 
 points of honour. Not merely theft, however, 
 but murder and blood-revenge are quite 'common 
 among uncivilised nations. There is in India, a 
 terrible association, that of the Thugs, who com- 
 mit murders for religious purposes. The Dama- 
 ras, a people in South Africa, live in polygamy, 
 and have no scruples about incest. Anderson* 
 found a mother and her daughter in the harem 
 of one of the chiefs. Children grown up in the 
 wilderness have no conception of any moral law, 
 and possess only one desire — that of satisfying 
 their appetites. We have already, in a previous 
 chapter, mentioned the deficiency of the Negro 
 as regards moral conceptions. Like all nations 
 in a state of nature, they use their intellectual 
 powers rather for evil than for good. Brehmf 
 relates that the Negroes of East Sudan not 
 merely justify deceit, theft, and murder, but con- 
 sider them meritorious acts." Deception passes 
 with them as the victory of mental superiority 
 over mental weakness. 
 
 Captain Speke observes of the Somalis, the ' 
 inhabitants of a southern part of Aden, and se- 
 
 * Explorations in South Western Africa. London : 1856. 
 f Eeiseskizzen aus Nordost Afrika. 1855. 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 173 
 
 parated by the gulf of Aden from the Arabian 
 coast, that a well-executed theft is more agree- 
 able to them than any other mode of gaining a 
 livelihood, and that the narration of such exploits 
 forms their greatest amusement.* Among the 
 Fijis, shedding blood is no crime but a glorious 
 action, whether the victim, man, woman or child, 
 be slain in battle or treacherously murdered. 
 To be acknowledged a murderer is the ambition 
 of these islanders. Children kill their parents 
 and the parents their children without the least 
 scruple. Gratitude for benefits is unknown among 
 them. The captain of a foreign ship took a 
 wounded native on board, treated him kindly for 
 two months till he was cured. Being about to 
 leave, he asked the captain to make him a present 
 of a gun ; but being refused, he set fire to the 
 store-room, which caused a damage of above 
 three hundred dollars. Werner Munzingerf says 
 of the Bogos, that their ideas of good and had 
 relate only to useful and useless. Intrepidity, re- 
 venge, dissimulation of hatred until the proper 
 moment arrives, politeness, pride, indolence, hos- 
 pitality, splendour, are in their eyes the marks of 
 a virtuous man. WaitzJ says, that a man interro- 
 gated about his notions respecting the difference 
 between good and evil, first avowed his ignorance, 
 
 * Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine. 
 
 f Manners and Laws of the Bogos. 
 
 X Anthropologie der Naturvölker. 1859. An English 
 translation of the first volume is published by Messrs. 
 Longman. 
 
174 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 but after some reflection said, " Good is to cany 
 off the wives of others, but bad when others steal 
 our wives. " 
 
 Experience, moreover, teaches us, that even 
 among civilised nations, moral notions differ 
 greatly, and sometimes to such a degree that 
 they become contradictory. Depending on ex- 
 ternal circumstances and on individual intuitions, 
 it has ever been impossible to give an exact defini- 
 tion of the notion good* This can be proved by 
 thousands of examples. If, then, there appears 
 to us, at first sight, something fixed and unalter- 
 able in the chief commands of the moral law, the 
 reason must be sought for in the definite form of 
 those laws and social customs, which human so- 
 ciety has from experience found necessary gra- 
 dually to establish for its self-preservation. But 
 even these precepts and customs are extremely 
 varying, according to the conditions of external 
 circumstances in regard to time and individual 
 intuitions. The destruction of the foetus in utero 
 was by no means considered an immoral act 
 among the Romans ; at this day it is severely 
 punished. Among the heathens, to hate your ene- 
 mies was considered the highest virtue ; Chris- 
 tianity commands us to love our enemies. Which 
 
 * It is well known that the notion of good cannot be 
 denned. The theologians help themselves by saying, that 
 is good which agrees with God's commands. But the com- 
 mands of God are made by the theologians themselves. 
 Everyone can easily draw herefrom his conclusions. 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 175 
 
 of either sentiment is to be considered as moral ? 
 Many acts which are now branded as abomina- 
 tions were in former times considered perfectly 
 lawful. Education and example make us now 
 acquainted with moral precepts,, and induce us 
 to believe in an innate moral law, which is found 
 to be made up, when closely examined, of para- 
 graphs from the penal law. Again, there exists 
 a considerable difference between the laws of the 
 state and those of morality ; and a still greater 
 difference between the laws of the state, of custom, 
 of religion, and those laws which are in every par- 
 ticular case prescribed to every individual by his 
 own nature and power of reflection. Society 
 and the State frequently brand some act as a 
 crime which morally may be a great deed. That 
 essential difference between ' ' lawful" and ' l mo- 
 ral" is the best proof that the notion " good" 
 has no general absolute value. Most crimes are 
 committed by the lower classes, and are gene- 
 rally the consequences of a defective education, 
 or intellectual weakness. The whole moral na- 
 ture of man is intimately connected with his ex- 
 ternal relations. The higher the civilisation the 
 greater the morality, and consequently there is a 
 diminution of crime. " A glance at the history 
 of civilisation," observes Krahmer, te teaches us 
 that virtue, Grod, or right, had at all times different 
 notions attached to them." An innate idea of 
 justice is out of the question. 
 
 " All lawyers," says Czolbe, " assume the em- 
 
 v/ 
 
176 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 pirical and existing reciprocal relations between 
 men as the basis of justice, without which it can 
 as little be thought of as the theorems of geo- 
 metry without the assumption of lines, angles, 
 etc. If there really were an objective right, how 
 could there ever be any difference between law 
 and justice ? 
 
 The notion of truth is still more indebted to 
 the progress of science for its origin and develop- 
 ment ; and though the laws of thought exhibit 
 under certain circumstances an immutable neces- 
 sity, they are analogous to the laws of nature in 
 general, and dependent on actual, definite rela- 
 tions. Mathematics are thus founded upon actual 
 tangible relations without which mathematical 
 laws would be impossible, on which account most 
 mathematicians are now of opinion, that mathe- 
 matics belong to the natural, and not to the phi- 
 losophical and speculative sciences. The notions 
 of space, size, expansion, of height and breadth, 
 are derived from sensual perception, and would 
 not have existed without it. Numbers are not 
 absolute notions, but arbitrary designations for 
 one or more objects. The savage Negroes of 
 Surinam cannot count further than twenty, 
 using their fingers and toes. All that ex- 
 ceeds this number is called ' ' wiri-wiri", or 
 "much". There is no such thing as meta- 
 physical or transcendental knowledge, and all 
 metaphysical systems, however finely drawn, 
 have come to nothing. All philosophical reason- 
 
INNATE IDEAS, 177 
 
 ings winch leave the field of facts and objects, be- 
 come unintelligible and untenable, and are merely 
 arbitrary and subjective radiations of an empirical 
 notion — a fantastic play of words. 
 
 Every person can try for himself whether he 
 has any conception of a general proposition, 
 called an abstraction, without necessarily refer- 
 ring to external objects as examples ! " Even 
 the highest ideas," says Yirchow, " are slowly 
 and gradually developed from the accumulation 
 of sensual experience, and their truth is only 
 guaranteed by the possibility of finding concrete 
 examples for them in real existence." 
 
 With regard to the manifestations of general 
 notions in children, it must be denied that such 
 a manifestation ever takes place under circum- 
 stances when the influence of education and 
 external conditions is entirely wanting. The 
 sense of right or justice can only be deve- 
 loped in a boy who, living in community with 
 others, is able to establish comparisons ; nor is 
 the pleasure he feels in the contemplation of the 
 beautiful an innate intuition. Children have, on 
 the contrary, the most singular tastes ; they can- 
 not easily distinguish between mine and thine, 
 they have no notion of wrong, they exhibit no 
 trace of a feeling of shame which subsequently is 
 so much developed. The State imputes personal 
 responsibility only after a certain age ; proof suf- 
 ficient that children are not supposed to possess 
 an innate idea of what is right and just. Among 
 
178 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 savage uncultivated nations we find the same 
 want of sense or shame, the same moral irrespon- 
 sibility, and the same deficiency in all elevated 
 ideas as in children. Even the Greeks had no 
 notion of what is now understood by decency 
 and morality in relation to sexual intercourse. 
 Adultery and all kinds of sensual excesses were 
 quite common amongst them without any fear of 
 blame or publicity. The Ismaelites, an oriental 
 religious sect, are devoid of any feeling of shame ; 
 disgusting religious dogmas and revolting cynical 
 usages form the chief features of their religious 
 worship. Who, therefore, asserts with Liebig, 
 that " the moral nature of man remains ever the 
 same," must know little or nothing of the facts, 
 which just prove the contrary. 
 
 The sense of the beautiful, of justice and 
 truth, which is impressed upon every individual 
 with a certain necessity, but only to a limited 
 degree, from the objective world, must be exer- 
 cised to acquire any power. How differently 
 does the scholar, accustomed to thought, observe 
 and form conclusions, from one engaged merely 
 in manual labour ! How different is the judg- 
 ment of the experienced man, who has studied 
 history, from that of an inexperienced youth, 
 yielding to the pressure of an obscure impulse, in 
 relation to right and justice ! How different are 
 the judgments of the connoisseur, from those of 
 the unskilled in regard to beauty ! Like the plant 
 in the soil, so have we, with all our knowledge 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 179 
 
 and feelings, our footing in the objective world, 
 though carrying our ideas beyond it; but torn 
 from this foundation we die and decay like the 
 plant. 
 
 There results from all this, that we can have 
 neither any knowledge nor any conception of 
 the absolute — of that which transcends the sur- 
 rounding sensual world. However much meta- 
 physicians may vainly attempt to define the ab- 
 solute ; however much religion may endeavour to 
 excite faith in the absolute by the assumption of 
 a revelation : nothing can conceal the defect of 
 the definition. All our knowledge is relative, 
 and results from the comparison of surrounding 
 sensible objects. We could have no notion of 
 darkness without light, no conception of high 
 without low, of heat without coldness, etc.; ab- 
 solute ideas we have none. We are not able to 
 form any conception of " everlasting", or " infi- 
 nite" as our understanding, limited by time and 
 space, finds an impassable barrier for that con- 
 ception. From being in the sensual world accus- 
 tomed to find a cause for every effect, we have 
 falsely concluded that there exists a primary 
 cause of all things, although such a cause is per- 
 fectly inaccessible to our ideas, and is contra- 
 dicted by scientific experience. 
 
 " It is undoubted," says Czolbe, " that innu- 
 merable natural phenomena are the effects of 
 causes. Hence was deduced that imperfect 
 conclusion that nature herself, or 'all/ has a 
 
180 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 cause. Not merely are experimental reasons 
 wanting for the proof that matter and space have 
 been create d, or can be destroyed, but we can- 
 not even conceive such an idea. Matter and 
 space must therefore be considered as eternal." 
 
 Phrenologists, who teach that the intellectual 
 faculties are not uniformly distributed through 
 the whole mass of the brain, but are located in 
 particular spots, and that their energy is depend- 
 ent upon the greater or lesser development of 
 the corresponding parts, appear to believe that 
 their theory is opposed to that which rejects in- 
 nate ideas. They consider a certain congenital, 
 material organisation of the brain as determin- 
 ing the character, and that an individual in his 
 mental development, can only to a certain extent 
 withdraw himself from this natural influence. 
 
 Assuming the correctness of this theory 
 (against which there are, however, weighty sci- 
 entific objections), it does not, on closely exa- 
 mining it, appear to us that there subsists any 
 real contradiction between phrenology, and the 
 theory which rejects innate ideas. 
 
 We have also seen, that the material organisa- 
 tion of the brain determines mental development, 
 but this development can only proceed in union 
 with the impressions of the objective world. If 
 the latter be wanting, there will be no reflection 
 of the images upon the material brain, however 
 finely constructed, from external objects. The 
 strength and vigour of the reflected image de- 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 
 
 181 
 
 pends on the structure of the brain. If it be 
 true that particular mental qualities are located 
 in particular parts of the brain, it merely follows, 
 that external impressious separate, according to 
 their character, in different directions, to become 
 fixed in the corresponding parts ; there takes 
 place, so to speak, an internal attraction between 
 certain impressions and individual parts of the 
 brain. The greater the material development of 
 these parts, the greater will be the power of 
 attraction, and in proportion as the material sub- 
 stratum is developed, so will be the correspond- 
 ing intellectual power. An analogous instance of 
 such attraction is found, in the physical world, in 
 the action of various medicines. Many medicines, 
 after being received in the animal body, show 
 a decided predilection for the individual organs, 
 tissues, or systems of that body, especially for the 
 nervous system and its subdivisions. Some act 
 upon the peripheral nerves, others upon the spinal 
 cord, others upon the brain. It is therefore ma- 
 nifest, that these medicines, carried with the blood 
 through the whole system, are only attracted 
 in certain spots. The localisation of external 
 impressions may take place in a similar manner. 
 We do not wish to contradict Noel, when he 
 says that in observing children we are obliged 
 to admit internal dispositions which induce them, 
 more or less, to incline to different kinds of con- 
 ceptions. But this proclivity is not the result of 
 innate intellectual qualities, ideas, or perceptions; 
 
182 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 but of material dispositions apt for the develop- 
 ment of certain mental qualities founded upon 
 sensual and empirical acquisitions. The propen- 
 sities to destroy, to construct, to acquire, etc., 
 could only be developed by objects, and would 
 ever remain dormant without them. An organ 
 of tune without sounds, of colour without colours, 
 of locality without places, is not cogitable. The 
 power of comparing and forming conclusions can 
 only exist where there are things and objects. 
 
 It may further be observed that, the relation of 
 phrenological organs to external impressions may 
 be the converse of what has just been stated. If it 
 be true, that the whole brain increases in size and 
 power by continued psychical activity, it may, 
 always supposing the correctness of phrenological 
 principles, also be possible that, during the time 
 of the growth and development of the brain, the 
 corresponding organ should grow materially 
 stronger by continued external impressions in 
 one direction, just in the same manner as a 
 muscle grows stronger by exercise. 
 
 There exist, therefore, no scientific facts 
 which might compel us to assume the existence 
 of innate ideas. Nature knows of no purpose 
 and aim, nor of any material or spiritual condi- 
 tions imposed from above ! It has from the be- 
 ginning developed itself, and is still developing 
 itself from within. We conclude this important 
 chapter with the remarkable words of Moleschott. 
 "By the mode of instruction prevalent in our 
 
INNATE IDEAS. 183 
 
 schools, thought is rendered the more difficult, as 
 the pupils are not induced to form conceptions, 
 judgments and conclusions, from the existing 
 fresh reality. However unsuccessful, the school 
 still zealously endeavours to impress upon the 
 pupil the necessity of withdrawing his attention 
 from the green tree, and of abstracting thought 
 from matter, in order to acquire abstract notions, 
 with which the tormented brain is moving in a 
 world of shadows." 
 
184 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE IDEA OF A GOD. 
 
 " God is a blank sheet, upon which nothing is found but 
 what you have yourself written." 
 
 Lutheb. 
 
 "Man depicts himself in his gods." 
 
 Schiller. 
 
 If it be correct that there are no innate intuitions, 
 then must the assertion of those be incorrect, 
 who assume that the idea of a God, or the 
 conception of a supreme personal being, who 
 created, who governs and preserves the world, is 
 innate in the human mind, and therefore incon- 
 trovertible by any mode of reasoning. The ad- 
 herents to this view maintain that there exist 
 neither individuals nor peoples, however uncivil- 
 ised, among whom there was not found the idea 
 of a God, or the belief in a supreme personal 
 being. An exact knowledge, and unprejudiced 
 observation of individuals and nations in an un- 
 civilised state, prove the contrary to be the fact. 
 Only a prejudiced mind can, in the worship of 
 animals practised by ancient and existing na- 
 tions, find something analogous to a real belief 
 in a God. It by no means corresponds to the idea 
 of a God, when we see man worshipping such 
 
THE IDEA OF A GOD. 
 
 185 
 
 animals, as he from experience knows may in- 
 jure or be useful to him ; as when, for instance, 
 the Egyptian worships the cow or the crocodile, 
 the Indian the rattlesnake, the African the Congo 
 snake, etc. A stone, a tree, a river, an alligator, 
 a. parcel of rags, a snake, form the idols of the 
 Negroes of Guinea. Such a worship does not 
 express the idea of an almighty being, governing 
 the world and ruling nature and man, but merely 
 a blind fear of natural forces, which frighten un- 
 civilised man, or appear supernatural, as he is 
 not able to trace the natural connection of things. 
 Had the idea of a supreme being been really and 
 indelibly impressed upon the human mind, it 
 would appear impossible that it should be mani- 
 fested in such an imperfect, rude, and unnatural 
 way as in the worship of animals. The animal is 
 in its entire nature inferior and subordinate to 
 man ; and a God in the shape of an animal is no 
 God, but a caricature. English travellers in 
 North America* relate that " the religious views 
 of the Indians in Oregon are exceedingly low. 
 It is doubtful whether they have any idea of a 
 supreme being. Attempts were naturally made 
 to translate the word God; but in no dialect pre- 
 valent in Oregon could missionaries and skilful 
 interpreters find a corresponding expression. 
 Their highest divinity is called the Wolf, and 
 seems, according to their descriptions, to be a 
 hybrid of a divinity and an animal." The 
 * London Athenaeum, July 1849. 
 
 J 
 
186 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Kaloshes, an Indian tribe, have no religious 
 mode of worship, and imagine the supreme 
 being to be a raven. Lieut. Hooper, speaking 
 of the Tusks, u people belonging to the Mongo- 
 lian race inhabiting the north-eastern point of 
 the Asiatic continent, and possessing a very 
 good character, observes : f ' Whether they have 
 any conception of a divine providence, of a go- 
 vernor of the world, could not be ascertained, nor 
 a trace found whether they worship a benevolent 
 spirit or demons." Burmeister relates of the Cor~ 
 rados, the former masters of the province of Rio 
 de Janeiro, that they possess no desire for a reli- 
 gion. They pass by the church doors without 
 turning their heads or taking off their hats. The 
 South American aborigines have no conception 
 of a religion; they receive baptism without 
 knowing what it signifies. " The natives of 
 Australia," observes Hasskarl,* " are deficient in 
 the idea of a creator or moral governor of the 
 world, and all attempts to instruct them termi- 
 nate in a sudden break up of the conversation." 
 The Bechuanas, one of the most intelligent tribes 
 of the interior of South Africa, have no idea of a 
 supreme being, and there is no word to be found 
 in their language for the conception of a creator. f 
 Moffat, the missionary, says of them : ' c I have 
 often wished to find something to work upon the 
 heart of the natives. I have asked them for the 
 
 * Australien und seine Colonien, 1849. 
 
 f See Andersson's Reise in Südafrika. London : 1856. 
 
THE IDEA OF A GOD. 187 
 
 altar of the unknown God, for the faith of their 
 ancestors in regard to the immortality of the 
 soul, or any other religious idea : but they had 
 never thought of such things. When I con- 
 versed with the chiefs about a creator, who 
 governs heaven and earth — of original sin and 
 redemption — of the resurrection of the dead, and 
 eternal life-w-it appeared to them as if I spoke of 
 things more fabulous and absurd than their idle 
 tales of lions, hyaenas, and jackals. When I told 
 them that these and other religious teachings 
 must be known and believed in, there only 
 escaped from them exclamations of great sur- 
 prise, as if these things were too absurd to be 
 listened to by the most stupid." Oppermann 
 says of the Kaffirs, a race physically and intel- 
 lectually much developed : " They have not the 
 least notion of a supreme being — their chief is 
 their God." 
 
 Nearly every book of voyages contains similar 
 descriptions of nations in a state of nature. The 
 indolent Hottentots acknowledge a good and a 
 bad divine principle, but have neither temple 
 nor a proper mode of worship, except dancing 
 at the time of the full moon. The dwarfed Bush- 
 men, a degenerate tribe of the former race, 
 possess no worship whatever. When the thunder 
 rolls, they believe it to be the voices of evil genii, 
 and reply by maledictions and imprecations. 
 Paul Kane describes the Indian Chinooks, like 
 most red-skins, to be without distinct religious 
 
188 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 sentiments. They ascribe everything to the 
 great spirit; bnt this great spirit is, according 
 to their ideas, a very vague being, and not the 
 object of any worship. Randall told the mis- 
 sionaries of the King's Mill Islands (Southern 
 Micronesia) : " They have no real religion, nor 
 temples nor idols. They adore spirits ; but since 
 they have been decimated by an epidemic, they 
 no longer put any. confidence in them." A cor- 
 respondent of the Revue des deux Mondes states 
 of the Indians of New Granada : " They seem to 
 know of no other religion than love of liberty; 
 and I have never been able to ascertain whether 
 they really believed in a great spirit, or the im-r 
 mortality of the soul. Only when the thunder 
 rolls, they throw firebrands round, with loud 
 cries, as if they wished to return sound for sound 
 and flashes of lightning." From the reports of 
 an English officer, we learn that the Kariens of 
 Pegu (India)" do not believe in a God, but only 
 in the influences of two evil genii. The inhabit- 
 ants of Pasamah Labar, in the isle of Sumatra, 
 worship neither idols nor any natural objects, 
 and have no idea of a supreme being. Ladislaus 
 Magyar found no trace of religion among the 
 Negroes of Oucanyama, one of the numerous 
 stations of South Africa; it seems as if they 
 worshipped their king, by sacrificing to him both 
 human beings and animals. The Fiji islanders 
 represent their supreme Grod (Ndengei) as a 
 being without any other feeling but hunger ; he 
 
THE IDEA OE A GOD. 189 
 
 lives with his companion Uto in a secluded cave, 
 eats and drinks, and replies to the questions of 
 the priests. The original religion of Buddha 
 knows neither of God nor immortality. The two 
 religious systems of the Chinese are as atheistical 
 a3 Buddhism; so that, according to Schopen- 
 hauer, the Chinese language has no words for 
 God and creation. According to the same author, 
 revelation and the idea of a personal God origin- 
 ated in one people only, the Jews, and was trans- 
 ferred from Judaism to Christianity and Moham- 
 medanism. 
 
 We may observe such phenomena in the midst 
 of us, of individuals in whom the idea of a 
 supreme being has not been called forth by edu- 
 cation or communication. We read pretty often 
 of persons, who have to appear before the tri- 
 bunals of Earis and London, who have no con- 
 ception of God and immortality. The last census 
 taken in England has shown that there are six 
 millions who never cross the threshold of a 
 church, and who know not to what religious sect 
 they belong. Meystre the deaf-mute had, as 
 already stated, no idea of God, nor could it "be 
 imparted to him. 
 
 If nature is incapable of prevailing without 
 instruction, it must be concluded that it knows 
 nothing of such original conceptions. If the 
 conception of a God is to be called an innate 
 idea, we might assert the same of the idea of an 
 evil being j endowed with supreme power — a devil, 
 
V 
 
 190 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 Satan, or demon. The belief in evil powers 
 inimical to man, is clearly more prevalent among 
 primitive peoples than the belief in a beneficent 
 God. All these notions are the resnlt of educa- 
 tion or meditation, and not innate. 
 
 No one has better expounded the purely human 
 origin of the idea of God thsm Ludwig Feuer- 
 bach. He calls all conceptions of God and divinity 
 anthropomorphisms, i. e., products of human 
 fancies and perceptions, formed after the model 
 of human individuality. Feuerbach finds this 
 anthropomorphism in the feeling of dependence 
 inherent in human nature. " An extraneous and 
 superhuman God/' says Feuerbach, " is nothing 
 but an extraneous and supernatural self, a sub- 
 jective being placed, by transgressing its limits > 
 .above the objective nature of man.'''' The his- 
 tory of all religions is indeed a continuous argu- 
 ment for this assertion, and how could it be 
 otherwise ? Without any knowledge or any no- 
 tion of the absolute, without any immediate reve- 
 lation, the existence of which is indeed asserted 
 by all but not proved by any religious sect — all 
 ideas of God, no matter of what religion, can 
 only be human ; and as man knows in animated 
 nature no being intellectually superior to himself, 
 it follows that his conceptions of a supreme being 
 can only be abstracted from his own self, and 
 must represent a self -idealisation. 
 
 Hence the condition, wishes, hopes; the in- 
 tellectual development and tendency of every 
 
THE IDEA OF A GOD. 191 
 
 people are always faithfully and characteristically 
 reflected in their religious notions, and we are 
 accustomed to infer the intellectual state of 
 any people from their religious worship. Let us 
 think of the poetical heaven of the Greeks, inha- 
 bited by ideal forms, in which the gods in eternal 
 youth and beauty enjoy themselves like human 
 beings; they laugh, fight, form intrigues, and 
 find a peculiar charm in interfering in human 
 affairs — that heaven which inspired Schiller in 
 the composition of his beautiful poem, The Gods 
 of Greece. Think of the angry, gloomy Jehovah 
 of the Jews, who punishes to the third and fourth 
 generation ; think of the Christian heaven, in 
 which God shares his sovereign power with his 
 Son, and determines the heavenly rank of the 
 blessed quite according to human notions ; think 
 of the heaven of the Catholics, in which the 
 Virgin Mary, resting on the lap of the Saviour, 
 uses her gentle, womanly persuasive powers in 
 favour of the guilty ; think of the heaven of the 
 Orientals, with its number of blooming houris, 
 cascades, coolness, and sensual enjoyment ; of 
 the heaven of the Greenlander, with its abun- 
 dance of blubber ; of the heaven of the Indian 
 hunter, in which abundant game is promised as 
 a reward ; think of the heaven of the Germans, 
 who expect in Walhalla to drink mead out of 
 the skulls of slain enemies, etc. The purely 
 human conception of a God is also, as Feuerbach 
 proves, evinced in the various modes of worship. 
 

 192 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 The Greek offers meat and wine to his gods ; 
 the Negro spits masticated food into the faces 
 of his idols ; the Ostiak besmears his idols 
 with blood and grease, and fills their nostrils 
 with tobacco ; the Christian and Mohammedan 
 think to appease their God by prayers. Every- 
 where human weakness, human passion, human 
 desires for enjoyment ! All nations and religions 
 have the custom of placing eminent men among 
 the gods or saints — a striking proof in favour of 
 the human origin of the divine idea. How just 
 and acute is the remark of Feuerbach, that an 
 educated man is a much higher being than the 
 God of savages, whose physical and mental qual- 
 ities must be in due proportion to the degree 
 of civilisation of his worshippers. This neces- 
 sary connection of the human with the divine, 
 and the dependence of the latter upon the former, 
 must forcibly have been impressed upon Luther, 
 when it made him say, "If God sat alone in 
 heaven, like a block, he would not be God." 
 
 Already Xenophanes, the Greek philosopher 
 (572 b. a), reproved the superstition of his coun- 
 trymen in the following terms : — " Mortals seem 
 to think that the gods possess their form, 
 clothes, and language. Negroes worship black 
 and flat-nosed gods ; Thracians, blue-eyed and 
 red-haired gods. If beeves and lions had hands 
 to make gods, they would depict their gods in 
 similar shapes, etc." 
 
 If the simple human intellect has not been 
 
THE IDEA OF A GOD. 193 
 
 able to acquire a pure and abstract idea of the 
 Absolute, the attempts of philosophers to de- 
 fine it have, if possible, been still less suc- 
 cessful. Should any one take the trouble of 
 comparing all philosophical definitions, which 
 have been given of God, the Absolute, the Soul 
 of the World, etc., there would result a most sin- 
 gular mixture, in which from the beginning of 
 historical times until now, in spite of the pre- 
 tended progress of philosophy, nothing essen- 
 tially new has been said. Fine words and high- 
 sounding phrases will not be found wanting, but 
 these offer no compensation for a defect of truth. 
 
 " Are we" asks Czolbe, " a single step fur- 
 ther in the knowledge of the supersensual than a 
 thousand years ago ? What else do we possess 
 but empty words and names 1" " Hence it fol- 
 lows," says Virchow, " that man can only com- 
 prehend his own self, and that anything beyond 
 is transcendental for him." 
 
 Let us, for instance, see how that philosophical 
 naturalist, Fechner, recently expressed himself in 
 his Zendavesta. " God, as the totality of existence 
 and action, has no external world — no being ex- 
 ternally opposed to him ; He is the only one and 
 alone ; all spirits move in the internal world of 
 his spirit; He describes a cycle within himself, 
 is not determined by anything from without ; He 
 determines himself, in himself, by containing all 
 determinating causes of existence." What ra- 
 tional man, from such phrases, can obtain a clear 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 notion of the meaning of the expounder ? A 
 God, in whose bodily and mental interior all 
 spirits and bodies move, who describes a cycle 
 within himself, and is not determined by any- 
 thing from without ! If all spirits move in the 
 spirit, all bodies in the body of God, if He has 
 no external world, how can He be a personal 
 God ? — personal God, as Fechner expressly calls 
 Him in other passages. Is He not rather the 
 compendium of all corporeal or spiritual exist- 
 ence, or the sum-total of the world itself, which 
 the expounder presents in the shape of a person, 
 whilst the world in its infinite multiplicity and 
 variety is just the negative of every personifica- 
 tion ? The conception of a divinity spread and 
 manifesting itself through the whole world, has 
 been technically termed pantheistic, at a time 
 when the present state of natural sciences was 
 little dreamt of. But our modern philosophers 
 delight in hashing up cold meat with new phrases, 
 and dishing them up as the last invention of the 
 philosophical kitchen. 
 
195 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 PEKSONAL CONTINUANCE. 
 
 " The body and the soul have, from the moment of death, 
 as little sensation as before birth." 
 
 Pliny. 
 
 " Thy best of rest is sleep, 
 
 And that thou oft provoFst ; yet grossly fear'st 
 Thy death, which is no more." -s 
 
 The Duke, in Measure for Measure. 
 
 In a preceding chapter, we have proved by 
 facts the intimate and inseparable connection 
 of spirit and body, of soul and brain, and the 
 dependence of the sonl in all its manifesta- 
 tions npon its material substratum; we have 
 also seen that it grows and decays with this 
 substratum. Though we are unable to form a 
 definite idea as to the how of this connection, we 
 are still by these facts justified in asserting, that 
 the mode of this connection renders it apparently 
 impossible that they should continue to exist 
 separately. As little as thought can exist without 
 a brain, so can there be no normally formed and», 
 nourished brain without thought; and this law is / 
 merely a repetition of the fundamental principle in > . & J 
 our philosophical investigation — "~No matter { 
 without force, no force without matter." "It \ 
 
196 FORCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 is as impossible/' says Moleschott, "that a 
 healthy brain should not think, as that thought 
 should be connected with any organ but the 
 brain/''* 
 
 A spirit without body is as unimaginable, as 
 electricity or magnetism without metallic or 
 other substances on which these forces act. We 
 have equally shown, that the animal soul does 
 not come into the world with any innate intui- 
 tions, that it does not represent an ens per se, 
 but is a product of external influences, without 
 which it would never have been called into exist- 
 ence. In the face of all these facts, unprejudiced 
 philosophy is compelled to reject the idea of an 
 individual immortality, and of a personal continu- 
 ance after death. With the decay and dissolu- 
 tion of its material substratum, through which 
 alone it has acquired a conscious existence and 
 become a person, and upon which it was de- 
 pendent, the spirit must cease to exist. All 
 knowledge which this being has acquired relates 
 to earthly things ; it has become conscious of 
 itself in, with, and by these things ; it has be- 
 come a person by its being opposed against 
 earthly, limited individualities. How can we 
 
 * Mr. Eingseis, it is true, tells us that apparitions, i.e. 
 ghosts, "think without a brain." "Why has Mr. Eingseis, 
 to strengthen his argument, not added that men have been 
 seen at night, carrying their heads under their arms ? That 
 neither a brain nor a nervous system has yet been detected 
 in the infusoria, forms, for many reasons into which we 
 cannot here enter, no valid objection against our principle. 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 197 
 
 imagine it to be possible that, torn away from 
 these necessary conditions, this being should 
 continue to exist with self-consciousness and as 
 the same person ? It is not reflection, but obsti- 
 nacy ; not science, but faith, which supports the 
 idea of a personal continuance. " Physiology," 
 says Vogt, " decides definitely and categorically 
 against individual immortality, as against any 
 special existence of the soul. The soul does not 
 enter the foetus like the evil spirit into persons 
 possessed, but is a product of the development 
 of the brain ; just as muscular activity is a pro- 
 duct of muscular development, and secretion a 
 product of glandular development. So soon as 
 the substances composing the brain are aggre- 
 gated in a similar form, will they exhibit the 
 same functions. We have seen that we can de- 
 stroy mental activity by injuring the brain. By 
 observing the development of the child, we also 
 arrive at the conviction that the activity of the 
 soul progresses in proportion as the brain is 
 gradually developed. The v foetus manifests no 
 mental activity, which only shows itself after 
 birth when the brain acquires the necessary 
 material condition. Mental activity changes 
 with the periods of life, and ceases altogether at 
 death." 
 
 Experience and daily observation teach us that 
 the spirit perishes with its material substratum, 
 that man dies. "The times have been," says 
 Macbeth, "that when the brains were out the 
 
198 FORCE AtfD MATTER. 
 
 man would die^ and there an end." There never 
 has been, and never will be, a real apparition, 
 which could make us believe or assume that the 
 soul of a deceased individual continues to exist : 
 it is dead, never to return. " That the soul of 
 a deceased person," says Burmeister, tf does not 
 reappear after death, is not contested by rational 
 people. Spirits and ghosts are only seen by 
 diseased or superstitious individuals." 
 
 Having thus premised our view in general, we 
 must now discuss some of the chief arguments 
 used in favour of an individual immortality, and 
 we shall have occasion to consider this interest- 
 ing and important question from some empirical 
 points of view. There is something suspicious 
 in the great zeal and the waste of arguments 
 with which this question has at all times be^n 
 defended, which yet, for obvious reasons, has 
 rarely experienced serious scientific attacks. 
 This zeal appears to show that the advocates of 
 this theory are rather anxious about their own 
 conscience, since plain reason and daily experience 
 are but little in favour of an assumption which 
 can only be supported on theoretical grounds. 
 It may also appear singular, that at all times 
 those individuals were the most zealous for a per- 
 sonal continuance after death, whose souls were 
 scarcely worthy of such a careful preservation. 
 
 First of all, attempts were made to deduce 
 from the immortality of matter, the immortality 
 of the soul. There being, it was said, no ab so- 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 199 
 
 lute'annihilation, it is neither possible nor imagin- 
 able that the human soul, once existing, should 
 be annihilated ; which would be opposed to rea- 
 son. Against this we must remark, that there 
 is no analogy between the destructibility of mat- 
 ter and that of spirit. Whilst the visible and - 
 tangible matter sensually exhibits its indestruc- 
 tibility, the same cannot be asserted of spirit or 
 soul, which is not matter, but merely an ideal 
 product of a particular combination of force-en- 
 dowed "materials. With the dispersion of these 
 materials, and their entrance into other combina- 
 tions, the effect, which we call soul, must disap- 
 pear. When we destroy a watch, it no longer 
 indicates the time ; and we thus destroy simul- 
 taneously the whole notion connected with such 
 an instrument : we have no longer a timekeeper 
 before us, but a mass of various materials which 
 no longer present a whole. That this analogy is 
 applicable, inasmuch as the organic world is not, 
 'bs many suppose, obeying different laws, but is 
 formed of the same materials, endowed with the 
 same forces, as the inorganic world, will be 
 shown in the chapter on " Yital Force." Expe- 
 rience teaches, in accordance with this view, that 
 the personal soul was, in spite of its pretended 
 indestructibility, annihilated; i.e., it was non- 
 existing during an eternity. Were the spirit 
 indestructible, like matter, it must not only, like 
 it, la N st for ever, but have ever existed. But 
 where was the soul before the body to which it 
 
200 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 belongs was formed ? It was not : it gave not 
 the least sign of an existence; and to assume 
 an existence is an arbitrary hypothesis. 
 
 But that which never was, can also perish and 
 be annihilated. It is in the very nature of things 
 that all that arises should necessarily perish. 
 Again, in deducing the immortality of spirit from 
 the immortality of force, we should, although 
 we are not justified in considering the notions of 
 V force", " spirit", " soul" as identical, not con- 
 found a passing form or phenomenon of force with 
 force itself. It is true that, in the eternal cycle 
 of matter and force, nothing is destructible ; but 
 this only applies to the whole, while its parts un- 
 dergo a constant change of birth and decay. 
 There is a state, which might enable us to pro- 
 duce a direct and empirical argument in favour 
 of the annihilation of the individual soul — the 
 state of sleep. In consequence of corporeal 
 changes, the function of the organ of thought is 
 suspended, and the soul, in a certain sense, anni- 
 hilated. The spiritual function is gone, and the 
 body exists or vegetates without consciousness 
 in a state similar to that of the animals in which 
 Flourens had removed the hemispheres. On 
 awakening, the soul is exactly in the state it was 
 before sleep. The interval of time had no exist- 
 ence for the soul, which was spiritually dead. 
 This peculiar condition is so striking, that sleep 
 and death have been termed brothers. During 
 the French revolution, the celebrated Chaumette 
 
PEBS0NAL CONTINUANCE. 201 
 
 erected in the cemeteries, statues representing 
 Sleep. The churchyard gates bore an inscrip- 
 tion : "Death is an eternal sleep."* Andrea, 
 the author of an old " Descrvptio reipubliccB cliris- 
 Manopolitcmce" of the year 1619, says : " This one 
 republic knows not death, and yet it is very 
 familiar with it, but they call it sleep." The 
 phenomena of dreaming have been used as argu- 
 ments against the supposed annihilation of the 
 •soul during sleep, by their proving that the soul 
 is also active in that state. This objection is 
 founded upon error, it being well known that 
 dreaming does not constitute the state properly 
 called sleep, but that it is merely a transition 
 between sleeping and waking. Perfectly healthy 
 individuals know little of this transition, and 
 dream rarely. Profound sleep knows of no 
 dream ; and a person suddenly shaken from such 
 a state requires some time to collect his thoughts, 
 so much so that in law he is not responsible for 
 
 * Chaumette, procurator of the commune of Paris during 
 the revolution of 1789, and one of the chiefs of the Hebertist 
 party, assumed the name of the Greek philosopher Anax- 
 agoras. He enjoined morality, labour, patriotic virtue ; he 
 suppressed the publichouses, mendicity, and prostitution, 
 established asylums for workmen, and closed the clubs for 
 females who neglected their household duties to meddle 
 with politics. He interdicted all kinds of worship except in 
 the legalised churches j he abolished public funerals and the 
 traffic in relics, and covered the churchyards with beautiful 
 flowers pleasant to behold. Both he and his party were 
 overthrown by Eobespierre, and most of them executed 
 March 24th, 1794. 
 
202 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 any act lie may have committed at that moment, 
 on account of the suddenness of the transition 
 from one state into another. A. Maury has pub- 
 lished some observations made on himself, from 
 which he concludes that dreaming is almost con- 
 stantly the result of a change in some part of our 
 organism reacting upon the brain. During 
 dreaming, an individual resembles an insane 
 person. 
 
 Certain morbid conditions are still more calcu- 
 lated to prove the annihilation of our spirit. 
 There are affections of the brain, e. g., concus- 
 sions, lesions, etc., which so much influence its- 
 functions, that consciousness is suspended. Such 
 perfectly unconscious states may continue for 
 months together. On recovery, it is found that 
 the patients have no recollection whatever of the 
 period which has passed, but connect their mental 
 life with the period when consciousness ceased. 
 This whole time was for them a deep sleep or a 
 mental death; they in a sense died, and were 
 born again. Should death take place during that 
 period, it is perfectly immaterial to the individual 
 who, considered as a spiritual being, was already 
 dead at the moment when consciousness left him. 
 Those who believe in a personal immortality, 
 might find it somewhat difficult, or rather impos- 
 sible to explain these processes, or to give some 
 clue as to the whereabouts of the soul during 
 these periods. In the eaves of our houses live 
 infusoria which dry up and cease to live. This 
 
PEKSONAL CONTINUANCE. 203 
 
 apparent death lasts until a new rain awakens 
 these animalcules to a new life. Does not the 
 soul, in these instances, plainly show itself to be 
 a vital process dependent upon the motion of 
 matter ? 
 
 We must also reject the theory which assumes 
 the existence of an universal spiritual matter, an 
 universal soul, from which individual souls ema- 
 nate, and to which they again return on the de- 
 struction of their material substratum. Such 
 theories are idle and unprofitable. The assump- 
 tion of a " spiritual matter" involves, moreover, 
 a contradiction, as in saying " a black bay horse", 
 etc. " Imponderable matter," says Burmeister, 
 "is a contradiction in itself." Light is not 
 material, as was formerly believed, but is the 
 result of the vibrations of the ultimate parts 
 of matter already existing. Hence the notion of 
 a " spiritual matter" or soul- sub stance is incon- 
 ceivable — a logical and empirical nonentity. 
 The theory of a personal immortality, moreover, 
 would profit nothing by such an assumption. 
 The return into an universal soul, involving the 
 loss of personality and of any recollection, is 
 equivalent to an annihilation; and it may be 
 perfectly indifferent to the individual whether or 
 not his so-called spiritual matter is again em- 
 ployed in the reconstruction of other souls. 
 
 Attempts have recently been made to infer 
 personal continuance from the existence of this 
 "spiritual-matter", or "soul-substance". Bu- 
 
204 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 dolph Wagner speaks of an immaterial, individual 
 psychical substance, which, connected for a time 
 with the body, disperses after death, like light, 
 into space, from which it possibly again returns 
 to the earth. The absurdity of such a theory and 
 such a comparison between the ether and the 
 pretended psychical substance, rendered it easy 
 for Carl Yogt to assign to this discovery, as re- 
 gards personal continuance, a place among spe- 
 culative fables. (See his work Köhlerglaube und 
 Wissenschaft, 1855.*) The belief that the human 
 soul, after death, will not be separated from 
 matter, but will enter a more perfect body, is 
 perfectly hypothetical, and is unsupported by 
 physiological facts, which teach that the human 
 body is composed of the most delicate and most 
 perfect organs, and cannot be conceived to be- 
 come still finer and more perfect. 
 
 The annihilation of a personal soul has also 
 been protested against upon moral grounds. It 
 was, in the first place, asserted, that the idea of 
 an eternal annihilation is so revolting to the in- 
 nermost feeling of man, that it must be untrue. 
 Although an appeal to the feelings is not a 
 scientific method of proceeding, it must cer- 
 tainly be admitted, that the thought of an eternal 
 life is more terrifying than the idea of eternal 
 
 * We take this opportunity to state, that the above work 
 reached its only while our first edition was in the press. 
 The reader should therefore consider the similarity of certain 
 passages as merely accidental. 
 
PEKS0NAL CONTINUANCE. 205 
 
 annihilation. The latter is by no means repug- 
 nant to a philosophical thinker. Annihilation, non- 
 existence, is perfect rest, painlessness, freedom 
 from all tormenting impressions, and therefore 
 not to be feared. There can be no pain in anni- 
 hilation, as little as in profound sleep, but merely 
 in the conception of annihilation. " The fear of 
 death which is natural to all men, the most unfor- 
 tunate as well as the wisest, is," as Montaigne 
 justly observes, ' ' not so much the fear of dying, 
 as the thought of being dead, which the sub- 
 ject of death believes he retains after life, in 
 some dark grave or elsewhere, looking upon the 
 corpse as it were still himself, though it is no 
 longer so." Fichte says very truly : " It is quite 
 clear that he who does not exist feels no pain. 
 Annihilation, if it exists, is therefore no evil." 
 The idea of an eternal life — of not being able to 
 die, is, on the contrary, the most horrid that 
 human fancy can invent, and its horrors have 
 long been expressed in the legend of the never- 
 dying Ahasverus. 
 
 The school philosophers, perceiving the loose 
 ground upon which they stand in regard to this 
 question, have, in their endeavours to reconcile 
 philosophy and faith, tried to help themselves by 
 very singular expedients. " The desire of our 
 nature," says Carriere, " to solve so many prob- 
 lems requires immortality, and the many sor- 
 rows of this earth would be such a shocking dis- 
 sonance in the world if it were not to find its 
 
206 FOItCE AND MATTER. 
 
 solution in a higher harmony, namely, in the 
 purification and development of personal in- 
 dividuality. This and other considerations 
 render immortality, from our point of view, 
 a subjective certainty — a conviction of the 
 heart." Every one may, certainly, have con- 
 victions of the heart, but to mix them up with 
 philosophical questions is unscientific. Either 
 something accords with reason and experience 
 — it is then true : or it does not accord — then 
 it is untrue, and can find no place in philo- 
 sophical systems. It may be that we are sur- 
 rounded by many riddles ; it may be that this is 
 very inconvenient to our philosophers and the 
 afflicted ; it may be that it would be very fine if 
 in heaven, as in the last act of a heart- stirring- 
 drama, everything would resolve in a touching 
 harmony or in general joy ; but science has no- 
 thing to do with what may be, but with what 
 is; and is accordingly compelled to infer from 
 experience the finiteness of human existence. 
 Indeed, a perfect solution of the enigmas of the 
 universe, as Carriere desires, must be considered 
 as impossible for the human mind. The moment 
 we arrive at this point we are creators, and 
 capable of shaping matter according to pleasure. 
 Such a knowledge would be equivalent to disso- 
 lution — annihilation, and there exists no being 
 which can possess it. Where there is no striving 
 there can be no life; perfect truth would be a 
 sentence of death for him who has acquired it, 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 207 
 
 and lie must perish in apathy and inactivity. 
 Lessing associates with this idea such a notion 
 of ennui that he was terrified at it. Nothing 
 is gained by assuming a constant and more 
 perfect striving in another world, as the limits 
 would only be further removed ; the second life 
 would be merely an amended repetition of the 
 first, labouring under the same fundamental de- 
 fects, the same contradictions, and equally result- 
 less. But, like the aspirant for a place, who 
 prefers accepting an indefinite appointment from 
 fear of obtaining none at all, so are there thou- 
 sands and thousands, who, in their mental em- 
 barrassment, grasp at the uncertain prospect of 
 a problematical eternal or temporal continuance. 
 Those philosophers, finally, who in this ques- 
 tion do not hesitate to abandon philosophical 
 reasoning — their constant boast — and appeal to 
 an indefinite supersensualism, scarcely deserve to 
 be noticed. Thus Fichte, the philosopher, de- 
 crees as follows : " An infinite continuance is not 
 explicable by natural conditions : nor need it be 
 so, as it extends beyond all nature. Though we 
 cannot comprehend from an empirical point of 
 view hoiu an eternal continuance be possible, it 
 still must be possible, as it lies in that which is 
 above all nature." Such decrees can only be 
 valid for him who believes, or wishes to believe :' 
 all others will find it natural, that, in doubtful 
 questions, we must apply human knowledge, and 
 examine whether we can arrive at any solution 
 
208 FORCE AND HATTEE. ' 
 
 by experience, reason, and the aid of natural- 
 sciences. Examining it in this way, they will 
 find that reason and experimental knowledge 
 must be laid aside, to conceive the possibility of 
 personal continuance. 
 
 Of no more value are the inventions of some 
 naturalists who believe they can give scientific 
 reasons for the doctrine of individual immortality. 
 Thus Mr. Drossbach discovered that every body 
 contains a limited number of monads, capable of 
 self-consciousness, which gradually acquire self- 
 consciousness, but which collapse at death. These 
 monads aggregate again at future periods, or in 
 other worlds, and form a new man, who recollects 
 his former life ! These problematical monads 
 are too intangible for us to concern ourselves 
 about them. 
 
 We may, however, take this opportunity of 
 alluding to the unconquerable difficulties which 
 must arise from the eternal congregation of in- 
 numerable swarms of souls which belonged to 
 men who, in their sojourn upon the earth, have 
 acquired so extremely different a degree of de- 
 velopment. Eternal life is said to be a per- 
 fectioning — a further development of earthly life, 
 from which it would follow that every soul should 
 have arrived at a certain degree of culture which 
 is to be perfected. Let us think, now, of the 
 souls of those who died in earliest childhood, of 
 savage nations, of the lower classes of our popu- 
 lation ! Is this defective development or educa- 
 
'PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 209 
 
 tion to be remedied beyond ? "I am weary of 
 sitting on school-benches," says Danton, in Ban- 
 ton's Death, by Greorge Büchner. And what is 
 to be done with the sonls of animals ? Man in 
 his pride has in this affair only thought of self, 
 and will not comprehend that the animal pos- 
 sesses the same right as himself. That there is 
 no essential and natural distinction between man 
 and animal, and that the human and animal soul 
 are fundamentally the same will be shown in a 
 subsequent chapter. It might, therefore, for the 
 adherents to the theory of personal continuance, 
 who do not believe in the immortality of the 
 animal soul, be difficult, nay impossible, to point 
 out the limit at which the indestructibility of the 
 human soul commences. The latter is only dis- 
 tinguished from the former in quantity, not in 
 quality, and a general law must be applicable to 
 either. " If the soul of man be immortal, the 
 animal soul must be equally so. Both have, by 
 their fundamental qualities, the same claim upon 
 continuance" (Burmeister). In applying this ar- 
 gument to the lowest animals, all moral grounds 
 for individual mortality fail, and result in absur- 
 dities which overthrow the whole system.* We 
 
 * Moffat, the missionary, relates the following interest- 
 ing anecdote. One of the tribe of the Bechuanas (in the 
 interior of South Africa) asked him one day, pointing to his 
 dog, " What difference is there between me and this crea- 
 ture ? You maintain I am immortal ; why is not my dog 
 or my ox equally so ? They die, and do you see anything 
 of their souls ? What, then, is the difference between man 
 
 P 
 
210 FORCE AND MATTER. ' 
 
 may in this place remind the reader of the results 
 indicated in the chapters treating of the con- 
 struction of the heavens and the universality of 
 the laws of nature, shewing, from a scientific 
 stand-point, that there neither exists, nor can 
 exist, any spot beyond the earth where the souls 
 separated from their material substratum, could 
 congregate. 
 
 It has been further maintained, that the idea 
 of immortality is, like that of God, innate in the 
 spiritual nature of man, and cannot be contro- 
 verted by any reasoning ; upon which ground 
 there exists no religion which did not consider 
 individual immortality as a fundamental principle. 
 We have already expressed our views in relation 
 to innate ideas ; and, as regards religions, there 
 are many which know nothing of an immortality. 
 The chief religious sects of the Jews knew no- 
 thing of personal continuance. According to 
 Richter (Lectures on Personal Continuance) , most 
 of our theologians agree that, in the books of 
 the Old Testament, written before the Babylonian 
 exile, there cannot be found any certain indica- 
 tions of a belief in personal continuance. The 
 Mosaic doctrine never points to a reward in 
 heaven after death. The original religion of 
 Confucius says nothing of a heavenly hereafter. 
 Buddhism, which counts two hundred millions 
 of disciples, knows nothing of immortality, and 
 
 and animal ? None ! only that man is a greater rogue." 
 (See Ausland, 1856, No. 33.) 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 211 
 
 preaches non-existence as the highest object of 
 deliverance.* The Greeks, who excelled us in 
 
 * This remarkable atheistic and materialistic religion, 
 founded 600 b.c. by the son of an Indian king (Gautama or 
 Buddha) — who, rejecting castes, taught the equality of all 
 men, and abolished sacrifices — spread in a short time among 
 a third of then existing humanity, until it was exterminated 
 in India, 800 A.c., by the reaction of the priests or Brahmins, 
 after the most bloody wars. According to this doctrine, the 
 original matter, or prakriti, is the only thing existing divine 
 per se. In this matter there are immanent two forces, 
 which produce two different conditions — quiescence and 
 activity. In one state it remains quiescent with conscious- 
 ness in an absolute inactive vacuity ; and this is the state 
 of büss of the original nothing (cunja). In another state 
 the matter steps out of itself by its activity. It becomes 
 then active, and is shaped into limited forms. In doing so 
 it loses its consciousness. It acquires it again in becoming 
 man ; and there is in this manner an original and a born 
 consciousness. The aim of man is to reproduce the 
 original consciousness. On arriving at it, he learns that 
 there is nothing real beside the original matter, and that 
 nothing else exists ; his spirit then becomes identical with 
 the original conscious nothing, and he becomes a Buddha, 
 i.e. a knowing one, a god-man, etc. From this Buddha doc- 
 trine sprung the Vaiceschika doctrine, which remarkably 
 agrees with the results of modern natural science. Its 
 founder was called Kanada, or the atom-giver. The ori- 
 ginal matter has, according to him, no consciousness. It is 
 merely matter, without possessing the highest spiritual prin- 
 ciple, self -consciousness, which exists only, in man. The com- 
 bination of atoms produces the series of existing developments. 
 The world is eternal and existing by itself, but it only acquires 
 consciousness in man. Sensual perception is the cause of con- 
 sciousness. The soul is only a form, determined by the modi- 
 fication of forces, resulting from the aggregation of atoms. 
 With the dispersion of the atoms the soul ceases to exist; there 
 is no personal immortality. The chief schools of this doc- 
 
212 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 many respects, knew only of departed shades ; 
 and, among the Komans, the belief in immor- 
 tality was very faint indeed. Travellers relate 
 that among a great number of primitive nations, 
 the belief in a personal continuance is either not 
 existing, or is combined with such notions as 
 neutralise the idea (see Meiner' s Kritische Ges- 
 chichte der Religionen, 1806-7). Thus Dr. Gr. 
 Helfer reports of the Seelongs, in India, that they 
 believe in good and evil spirits, which govern the 
 
 trine are the Tscharvakas and Lokajatikas. In those 
 countries in which Buddhism continued to prevail, it dege- 
 nerated in different directions. These principles, neverthe- 
 less are, according to Dr. Heifer's report on the provinces 
 of Tenasseriin, still prevalent. The Buddhists inhabiting 
 these parts are not proselyting like other religious sects, 
 and are very tolerant. They do not pretend that their reli- 
 gion is the best, but that it suits them. Those who consider 
 the dogma of personal continuance necessary for the pre- 
 servation of public morality, may be surprised by a notice 
 contained in the Systeme de la Nature (vol. i, p. 280, note 78), 
 and taken from the Argument du Dialogue d,e Phedon de la 
 Traduction de Datier. It runs thus : " When the dogma 
 concerning the immortality of the soul spread from the 
 school of Plato through Greece, it caused the greatest con- 
 fusion, and induced a number of individuals dissatisfied 
 with their lot, to commit suicide. Ptolemseus Philadelphus, 
 King of Egypt, on seeing the effects which this theory pro- 
 duced upon his subjects, forbade its teaching on pain of 
 death." An analogous event occurred in our days. At the 
 beginning of this century a theistical sect arose in Birman, 
 where Buddhism prevails, which assumed an almighty and 
 omnipotent spirit which created the world, and which also 
 taught a species of immortality. The king burned fourteen 
 of these heretics at the stake, and exterminated the sect. 
 (See Ausland, 1858, No. 19.) 
 
PERSONAL CONTINUANCE. 213 
 
 motions of natural tilings, but have no idea of an 
 eternal life, and always reply to such questions, 
 " We do not think of them." 
 
 Among the enlightened of all nations and 
 times, the dogma of the immortality of the soul 
 has had ever but few partisans, though they made 
 no efforts obstinately to support their opinion like 
 their opponents. Mirabeau said on his deathbed, 
 " I shall now enter into nothingness ;" and the 
 celebrated Danton, being interrogated before the 
 revolutionary tribunal as to his residence, said, 
 "My residence will soon be in nothingness." 
 Frederic the Great, one of the greatest geniuses 
 Germany has produced, candidly confessed his 
 disbelief in the immortality of the soul. He 
 who has opportunities of observing people in 
 the domestic circle, and in various critical situa- 
 tions, is able to judge how much the ideas of the 
 enlightened classes differ from the dogmas of the 
 church in general, and particularly as regards the 
 immortality of the soul. He will frequently hear 
 observations proving that the belief in existence 
 after death has taken but a feeble root in the 
 mind. The whole tendency of our time, all social 
 efforts, are scarcely in harmony with this doc- 
 trine. "No one," says Feuerbach, "who has eyes 
 to see can fail to remark, that the belief in the 
 immortality of the soul has long been effaced from 
 ordinary life, and that it only exists in the sub- 
 jective imagination of individuals, still very nu- 
 merous." Nor can we otherwise explain the 
 
214 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 fear of death, despite all the consolation religion 
 affords, if death were not considered as putting 
 an end to all the pleasures of the world. 
 
 Finally, let us listen to what Pomponatius, an 
 Italian philosopher of the sixteenth century, says 
 on this subject : " In assuming the continuance 
 of the individual, we must first show how the 
 soul can live without requiring the body as the 
 subject and object of its activity. We are inca- 
 pable of thought without intuitions, but these 
 depend upon the body and its organs. Thought 
 in itself is eternal and immaterial ; but human 
 thought is connected with the senses, and per- 
 ceptions succeed each other. Our soul is, there- 
 fore, mortal, as neither consciousness nor recol- 
 lection remains." And again : " That virtue is 
 much purer which is practised for itself, without 
 hope of reward. Still those politicians must not 
 be blamed, who, for sake of the public good, have 
 the immortality of the soul preached, in order 
 that the weak and bad may, from fear and hope, 
 choose the road which noble minds' select from 
 inclination. For it is certainly false that only 
 despicable scholars have denied immortality, and 
 that all estimable sages have adopted it. Homer, 
 Pliny, Simonides, and Seneca were, though want- 
 ing this hope, not bad men : they ivere only free 
 from expecting the ivages of a slave." 
 
215 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 VITAL FOECE. 
 
 " If we could seriously believe that the natural laws can 
 arbitrarily be disobeyed by life, all natural and psy- 
 chical science would be useless." 
 
 Ule. 
 
 Among those mystical notions which bring con- 
 fusion into the investigations of natural science, 
 and which are now rejected by exact observation, 
 must be particularly mentioned the notion of 
 what is called vital force. There is scarcely any 
 assumption which has done so much harm to 
 science as that of a particular organic force 
 which was said to resist inorganic forces (gra- 
 vity, affinity, light, electricity, magnetism), thus 
 constituting exceptional laws — a separate code — 
 a state in the state. If science were forced to 
 accept this theory, our axiom of the universality 
 of natural laws, and of the immutability of the 
 mechanical order in the universe, would lose its 
 value, and we should be obliged to admit that an 
 extraneous power interferes and creates excep- 
 tions which cannot be estimated. A gap would 
 then exist in the constitution of the world, sci- 
 ence would despair, and, as Ule justly observes, 
 natural and psychological science would cease to 
 
216 FOKCE AND MATTEK. 
 
 exist. Science, fortunately, instead of yielding 
 in this question to dynamical theorists, has car- 
 ried off the victory by the accumulation of a mass 
 of striking facts; so that the notion of a vital 
 force is reduced to a walking shadow, and exists 
 only in the brains of such individuals as have 
 lagged behind in science. All those who have 
 specially studied any branch of natural science 
 touching the organic world agree now in regard 
 to vital force, and the term itself has become 
 so obnoxious that it is rarely used. It could not 
 be otherwise, there being no doubt that life 
 obeys no exceptional laws, that it does not resist 
 inorganic forces, but that, on the contrary, life 
 itself is nothing but the product of the conjoined 
 action of these forces. 
 
 Chemistry has established, beyond any doubt, 
 that the fundamental elements are perfectly the 
 same in the organic and inorganic world, and 
 that life contains in its material substratum not a 
 single element not to be found in activity in the 
 inorganic world. Chemistry has also succeeded 
 in separating organic structures into their ele- 
 mentary constituents, like inorganic bodies. 
 That primitive mud (Urschleim) as it was called, 
 from which, as was formerly assumed, all organic 
 beings have originated, is a chemical chimera, 
 and does not exist. This fact alone might have 
 sufficed to banish the thought of a particular 
 vital force. We have seen that forces are but 
 qualities or motions of matter, and that every 
 
VITAL FOKCE. 217 
 
 atom is inseparably connected with such force. 
 Hence every atom, in whatever position or con- 
 nection it may happen to be, whether in organic 
 or inorganic forms, can only display the same 
 forces and produce the same effects. The qua- 
 lities of the atoms are indestructible. As, then, 
 experience has shown that all organisms consist 
 of the same atoms as in the organic world, though 
 differently grouped, it follows that there can be 
 no particular organic force, no vital power. All 
 organic life, says Mulder, is the result of mole- 
 cular forces. It is a law that nothing can be im- 
 ported into the world. Mulder compares the 
 assumption of a vital force with the supposition 
 of a single force in great battles in which thou- 
 sands are engaged, through which guns are fired 
 and wounds inflicted, etc., whilst this effect is not 
 the result of a single force, " battle force," but 
 merely the sum total of innumerable forces and 
 combinations. Vital force is, therefore, not a 
 principle, but a result. When an organic structure 
 appropriates inorganic materials in its proximity, 
 it effects this, not by a particular force but 
 by a kind of infection by which it transfers to 
 them its own molecular conditions, in the same 
 manner as forces are transferred from matter to 
 matter in the inorganic world. The origin of the 
 organic world from one or several beginnings 
 without any assistance from vital force may thus 
 be explained. The possibility of such a begin- 
 ning has already been treated of in the chapter 
 on primeval generation. 
 
218 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Though upon general grounds it must appear 
 impossible to assume exceptional laws existing in 
 the organic world, it may be rendered more clear 
 in concrete relations. Chemistry and physics 
 have proved that inorganic forces act in the same 
 manner in living and in dead nature; and the 
 action of these forces has been investigated in 
 the most delicate combinations of vegetable and 
 animal organisms. It is now generally acknow- 
 ledged that physiology, or the science of life, 
 cannot subsist without chemistry and physics, 
 and that no physiological process is possible 
 without chemical and physical forces. " Che- 
 mistry/'' says Mialhe, "has undoubtedly, either 
 as cause or as effect, had a share in creation in 
 the growth and the existence of all living beings. 
 The functions of respiration, digestion, assimila- 
 tion, secretion, are chemical operations ; che- 
 mistry alone is able to explain these important 
 phenomena/'' 
 
 Oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, and nitrogen, enter 
 in the body in various combinations ; they sepa- 
 rate, and act according to the same laws as out of 
 the body. Compound bodies act in a similar man- 
 ner. W ater, the chief constituent of all organic 
 bodies, without which neither animal nor vegetable 
 life could exist, dissolves, evaporates, and flows 
 within the organism in the same manner as out 
 of the body. The inorganic materials which it 
 carries along in a state of solution, are deposited 
 in the bones of animals, or the tissues of plants, 
 
VITAL FORCE. 219 
 
 as in inorganic nature. The oxygen of the air, 
 combining in the lungs with venous bloo$L, im- 
 parts to it that scarlet colour which it also ac- 
 quires when exposed to the air out of the body. 
 The carbon contained in the blood is, in this 
 contact, consumed in the same manner as else- 
 where. The animal stomach may correctly be 
 called a chemical retort, in which materials are 
 decomposed, or combined, according to the laws 
 of chemical affinity, etc. A poisonous substance 
 introduced in the stomach, can be neutralised in 
 the same manner as out of the body ; a morbid 
 substance is neutralised and destroyed as in any 
 other inorganic vessel. The chemical changes 
 which food undergoes in the stomach and ali- 
 mentary canal have been carefully examined, and 
 the mode ascertained by which it enters the 
 various tissues. It is also known, that their 
 constituent elements emerge from the body in 
 the same quantity as they entered, partly un- 
 changed, and partly in different forms and com- 
 binations. Digestion is purely a chemical act. 
 The action of medicines is equally so. All me- 
 dicines not soluble in the fluids of the organism, 
 and thus incapable of chemical action, are in- 
 effective. 
 
 " These observations," says Miahle, " show 
 that all organic functions are effected by che- 
 mical processes, and that a living being may be 
 considered as a chemical laboratory, in which ac- 
 tions are going on, which united, constitute life." 
 
220 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 Not less plain are the mechanical processes in 
 the living organism. The circulation of the 
 blood is clearly mechanical, and the anatomical 
 apparatus by which it is effected, perfectly re- 
 sembles that made by the hand of man. The 
 heart has its valves, like a steam engine, and 
 their closure produces audible sounds ; the fric- 
 tion of the air against the walls of the bronchige 
 produces the sound in ordinary breathing; the 
 ascent of the blood from the inferior extremities 
 to the heart is accomplished by mechanical ar- 
 rangements. In a similar manner are the con- 
 tents of the alimentary canal carried downwards 
 by vermicular motion ; and so is all muscular 
 action in man and animals simply mechanical. 
 The structure of the eye is founded upon the 
 same laws as the construction of a camera ob- 
 scura, and the ear receives the sound waves like 
 any other cavity. " In science," observes Krah- 
 mer, c ' there prevails, at present, no doubt as to 
 the impossibility of designating any natural qua- 
 lity, which is only to be found in the bodies of 
 one kind. It is also known that organic pro- 
 cesses cannot be called self-acting, as they, like 
 the changes in the inorganic world, are only 
 called into action by the external world and the 
 physical forces connected therewith." Hence, 
 as Schaller observes, physiology begins now to 
 reject the theory of an essential difference be- 
 tween the organic and inorganic world. 
 
 If sometimes the effects of organic combina- 
 
VITAL FORCE. 221 
 
 tions are surprising, inexplicable, and apparently 
 unlike the usual effects of natural forces, this 
 arises from the complexity of the material com- 
 binations in the organic world. Such complicated 
 material conditions must, as previously shown, 
 produce apparently wonderful effects. The la- 
 bours of physiologists are now directed to the 
 investigation of these combinations. Much that 
 was formerly deemed impossible has already been 
 effected. The time approaches, when, as Liebig 
 believes, physiology will, with the assistance of 
 organic chemistry, be enabled to find out the 
 causes of certain phenomena not accessible to the 
 eye. We must not, because most of these phe- 
 nomena are as yet unexplained, infer the exist- 
 ence of an unknown dynamical power. We have, 
 on the contrary, not merely the right but the 
 duty, in accordance with the laws of induction, 
 to infer the unknown from the known, and to 
 maintain that a universal law which is true for a 
 portion of organic phenomena is applicable to 
 all. We must bear in mind that a number of 
 phenomena now explained were formerly the chief 
 supports of peculiar vital forces. It is not so very 
 long that the chemistry of respiration and diges- 
 tion has been known ; or that the process of im- 
 pregnation and generation has been ascertained to 
 resemble the simple and mechanical processes in 
 the inorganic world. The semen is no longer 
 considered as a living and vivifying vapour ; and 
 what was formerly deemed the inexplicable effect 
 
222 FOECE AND MATTES. 
 
 of that animating vapour, is proved to result from 
 the immediate contact of the semen with the 
 ovum, mechanically effected. Many processes in 
 the animal body, such as the ascent of particles 
 upon mucous membranes, apparently against the 
 law of gravitation, seemed to justify the assump- 
 tion of a vital power, until the discovery of 
 ciliary motion proved it to be a mechanical pro- 
 cess. This remarkable motion is perfectly inde- 
 pendent of life, and continues long after death, 
 and only ceases with the softening of the parts 
 by putrefaction. The ciliary motion was ob- 
 served to continue in a tortoise fifteen days after 
 death. Since the discovery of the blood cells, 
 and of the process of absorption and resorption • 
 since the discovery of the laws of endosmosis and 
 exosmosis, a new light has been thrown on the 
 processes in the blood. The most wonderful, 
 and apparently most inexplicable, action in the 
 animal body — nervous activity, begins to receive 
 a new light from physics, and it becomes daily 
 more apparent what an important part an inor- 
 ganic force — electricity — plays in these organic 
 processes. 
 
 "Life," says Yirchow, "is a peculiar, and, 
 indeed, the most complicated form of mecha- 
 nical action, in which the usual mechanical laws 
 act under the most unusual and most varied 
 conditions, and in which the final results are 
 separated from the original causes by such a 
 number of intermediate links, that their connec- 
 tion is not easily established." 
 
VITAL FOECE. 223 
 
 It has been objected, in order to prove the 
 necessity of the assumption of a vital force, that 
 chemistry is unable to produce organic combina- 
 tions ; that is, such groupings of chemical ele- 
 ments in ternary or quaternary combinations 
 always existing in living bodies, and so to pro- 
 duce in their retorts organic beings, or man. 
 Chemists reply and prove that organic elements 
 can be produced, such as grape-sugar, and seve- 
 ral organic acids. They have created several 
 organic bases, and produced urea, a peculiarly 
 organic substance, which not long since was by 
 physicians considered as a striking proof that 
 chemistry could not imitate the products of the 
 organism. We know not how far we may yet 
 advance. " It is scarcely fifteen years," says 
 Dr. Schiel, in a manuscript at this moment before 
 us, " that the synthesis of organic substances, 
 that is, their production from inorganic bodies 
 in the laboratory of the chemist, was deemed 
 impossible ; yet to-day they make spirits of wine 
 and costly perfumes from coals, candles from slate, 
 prussian blue, urea, taurine, and many other sub- 
 stances, which, as was formerly believed, could 
 only be produced by organic bodies from the in- 
 organic materials furnished by nature. The dis- 
 tinction between organic and inorganic chemistry 
 is at present merely a conventional term for classi- 
 fication, no longer corresponding to the pheno- 
 mena, but only used for convenience."* And if 
 
 * It was in 1828 that Mr. Woehler, by producing urea 
 
224 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 the production of ternary and quaternary combin- 
 ations can only be effected by vital force, it must 
 be denied to those organisms which possess this 
 force in the highest degree ; it being known that 
 animals have no power of producing organic com- 
 binations from inorganic matter, and are there- 
 fore for their existence entirely dependent upon 
 the vegetable world, which alone is capable of 
 transforming inorganic materials into organic. 
 
 No one who places any value upon facts, and 
 knows the method of scientific induction, can 
 hesitate to banish the notion of a particular force 
 producing vital phenomena independent of na- 
 tural laws, or can doubt that nature, with its 
 materials and forces, is an indivisible whole, with- 
 out limits or exceptions. And, further, that the 
 strict distinction between " organic" and " inor- 
 ganic" is forced ; that the difference between 
 them is not in essence, but in relation to external 
 form and grouping of the atoms. "That the 
 changes of organic bodies," says Krahmer, " cor- 
 respond to the idea of class, genus, or species, 
 whilst inorganic bodies are not in their changes 
 
 artificially,, upset tlie theory which sustained that organic 
 combinations could only be obtained from organic bodies. 
 In 1856 Berthelot produced formic acid from inorganic sub- 
 stances ; namely, from carbonic oxide and water, by heating 
 these substances with caustic potash, and without the co- 
 operation of either vegetable or animal. Grease may be 
 artificially produced from oleic acid and glycerine — two 
 substances which are now obtained by merely chemical 
 X^rocesses, a remarkable result of the progress of synthetic 
 chemistrv. 
 
VITAL FORCE. 225 
 
 subject to a similar limitation, is true so far as 
 any one likes to believe it. When a piece of 
 sheet iron is manufactured into a nail, does not 
 the idea correspond to the nail rather than to the 
 sheet iron ? When the larva becomes a but- 
 terfly, the process is of the same kind as when 
 the sheet iron becomes a nail." The distinc- 
 tion between organic and inorganic forms arises 
 from the first molecular arrangement, which con- 
 tains the germs of these forms, being different. 
 But the formation of crystals, shows that there 
 are laws of form in the inorganic world which 
 cannot be transgressed, and which approach 
 those of the organic. " The appeal to a vital 
 force," says Vogt, (C is merely a periphrasis 
 of ignorance. It constitutes one of those back 
 doors — of which there are so many — in science, 
 and which are the constant refuge of indolent 
 minds who will not take the trouble to investi- 
 gate what appears incomprehensible, but are sa- 
 tisfied with accepting the apparent miracle." 
 
 The doctrine of vital power is now a lost affair. 
 However much the mystics may endeavour to in- 
 spire new life into this shadow ; however much 
 the metaphysicians cry out against the presump- 
 tion of physiological materialism in discussing* 
 philosophical subjects; however much some in- 
 dividuals may point to undiscovered and obscure 
 physiological questions — all this cannot save vital 
 force from a rapid and complete scientific death. 
 
226 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE SOUL OF BETTTES. 
 
 The intelligence of the animal manifests itself entirely in 
 the same manner as that of man. No essential differ- 
 ence, but only one in degree, can be proved to exist 
 between instinct and reason." 
 
 Krahmee. 
 
 ; The human body is a modified animal form ; his soul an 
 enlarged animal soul." 
 
 Btjemeisteb. 
 
 ■ The great gap which is supposed to exist between the 
 intellect and instinct will be filled up, and the mind 
 will readily submit to the jurisdiction of fixed physical 
 laws." Ttjttle. 
 
 The best authorities in physiology are now pretty 
 nmch agreed in the view that the soul of animals 
 does not differ in quality, but merely in quantity, 
 from that of man. Carl Yogt has recently again 
 discussed and decided this question in his own 
 striking manner, so that little that is new can be 
 added. Man has no absolute advantage above 
 the animal ; his mental superiority being merely 
 relative. There is not one intellectual faculty 
 which belongs to man exclusively ; his superiority 
 is merely the result of the greater intensity, and 
 the proper combination, of his capacities. The 
 enlarged human faculties are, as we have already 
 seen, the natural and necessary result of the 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 227 
 
 higher and more perfect development of his ma- 
 terial organ of thought. As the physical con- 
 formation of this substance presents an uninter- 
 rupted scale from the lowest creature up to man, 
 so is there manifested a corresponding ascending 
 series of mental qualifications. Neither in form 
 nor chemically can any essential difference be 
 proved between the animal and human brain; 
 the differences are great, but only in degree. 
 This fact alone, added to the expositions already 
 given on the dependence of mental functions on 
 the structure, size, and composition of the brain, 
 might suffice to render the above proposition 
 evident. 
 
 Singularly over-estimating himself, man has 
 been pleased to give the name of instinct to un- 
 doubted psychical manifestations in animals. But 
 there exists no instinct in the sense in which the 
 word is usually applied. It is not a necessity in- 
 born in themselves and their mental organisa- 
 tion, nor a blind, involuntary impulse, which 
 impels animals to action, but deliberation — the 
 result of comparisons and conclusions. The 
 mental process through which this is effected, is 
 in its essence perfectly the same as in man, 
 though the power of judgment is much weaker. 
 No doubt this act of the will, and the process of 
 mental deliberation which produces it, is so much 
 determined by external and internal circum- 
 stances, that a free choice in such an act de- 
 scends not unfrequently to zero, or is, at least, 
 
228 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 confined within to the most narrow limits. But 
 exactly the same may be said of the actions of 
 man, whose free will, to the extent which he 
 believes he possesses it, is a mere chimera. 
 
 By the same rule from which we deduce the ac- 
 tions of animals from instinct, we might also say 
 that man obeys in actions merely instinctive im- 
 pulses. But both assumptions are false. The 
 animal considers, deliberates, acquires experi- 
 ence, recollects the past, cares for the future, 
 feels — like man; and what hitherto had been 
 considered as the consequence of a blind instinct, 
 can easily be proved to be the result of conscious 
 mental activity. " The opinion," says Czolbe. 
 "that animals possess neither conception, judg- 
 ment, nor the power of forming conclusions, is 
 refuted by experience." " It is the height of 
 folly," says the Systeme de la Nature, " to deny 
 to animals the possession of mental faculties ; 
 they feel, they think, they judge and compare, 
 they choose and deliberate, they possess memory, 
 they show love and hatred, and their senses are 
 frequently more acute than ours." It is not 
 from mere instinct that the fox constructs two 
 outlets in his cover, or that he robs the roost at 
 a time when he knows that the farmer and his 
 servants are absent or at dinner, but from deli- 
 beration. It is not instinct but experience which 
 renders old animals more prudent than young 
 ones. The examples proving the intelligence and 
 judgment of animals are as numerous as they are 
 
THE SOUL OP BEUTES. 229 
 
 striking. Every person who has opportunities 
 of observing the actions of dogs, has seen some 
 remarkable cases of their calculating intelligence 
 and cunning. 
 
 Professor Hinrichs* is of opinion that the 
 animal possesses neither conception nor judg- 
 ment, otherwise it would, for instance, take a 
 walk by itself without its master, or visit a public 
 house. Mr. Hinrichs must have had no oppor- 
 tunity of observing dogs. That they take walks 
 on their own account, and visit hostelries known 
 to them, are facts which may be observed daily. 
 There is probably no philosophical question which 
 so clearly exhibits the unfortunate position of 
 philosophical theorists, than the question con- 
 cerning the intellectual life of animals. All the 
 facts, however striking, are discarded, while the 
 accustomary philosophical categories are, with 
 the self-sufficiency of a limited knowledge, ap- 
 plied to parts of the question. Nature happily 
 knows nothing of the subjective speculations of 
 these learned personages, and renders, almost in 
 every individual fact, their theoretical construc- 
 tions ridiculous. Read, for instance, the philo- 
 sophical disquisitions, on the difference between 
 man and animal which M. Julius Schaller — who, 
 in the treatment of his subject, forms an. honour- 
 able exception among the school philosophers — 
 introduces in the second edition of his much 
 praised work Body and Soul (1855). M. Schaller 
 * Das Leben in der Natur, etc., 1854. 
 
230 FOKCE AND MATTEE. 
 
 considers the animal as an exemplar of its spe- 
 cies, but distinguishes man as an individual, 
 an ego. But what valid objection can be made 
 if we reverse this idea, and maintain : the animal 
 has its value only as a single individual ; man, on 
 the contrary, as a human being, or as a repre- 
 sentative of his species ? Read what Dujardin 
 says of the intelligence of bees ; what Burdach 
 writes of crows ; and what Yogt relates of dol- 
 phins, and of the remarkable training of a puppy 
 by an old dog ; remember the well-known anec- 
 dote of the swallow, which finding, on her return 
 in spring, her nest occupied by a sparrow, re- 
 venged itself on the usurper by walling up the 
 fly -hole. Why are animals, especially birds 
 (crows, sparrows) not afraid of people who do 
 not carry guns ? Who knows not the wonderful 
 economy of the beehive from Vogt's admirable 
 description of it ? And who has not read of the 
 communities of dogs in the North American 
 prairies ? Hooker, an Englishman, writes of the 
 elephant : " The docility of these animals has 
 been known for ages, but loses so much by mere 
 description, that their mildness, obedience, and 
 intelligence appeared to me as surprising as if 
 I never had heard of it. Our elephant was so 
 docile, that, on demand, he picked up stones 
 with his trunk, and reaching them to his master 
 saved him, in his geological excursions, the trouble 
 of alighting." 
 
 We must descend to the lower spheres of 
 
THE SOUL OP BEUTES. 231 
 
 liuman society, in order to comprehend that the 
 intellectual scale from the brute to man is not 
 interrupted. Leaving out of sight the most 
 degraded human races, we often find, in our 
 European population, individuals of whom it is 
 questionable whether their mental disposition 
 transcends the intellectual sphere of an intelli- 
 gent brute. Does not the ere' tin, who is cer- 
 tainly a man, stand below the brute ? 
 
 At what distance, finally, stands the Negro 
 from the ape ? The author saw, in the Zoolo- 
 gical Gardens of Antwerp, an ape who had a 
 complete bed in his cage, into which he placed 
 himself at night, covering himself up like a man. 
 He performed tricks with hoops and balls, turn- 
 ing all the while towards the spectators, as if he 
 were anxious to show them his arts. He also 
 followed with his finger the shadows which he 
 cast on the wall. The exhibition produced a 
 sad impression, as one could not divest oneself of 
 the feeling that a kind of human, reflecting, and 
 sensitive being was caged there. On the other 
 hand, the Negro, according to the excellent de- 
 scription of Burmeister, forcibly reminds us of 
 the ape, both in his physical and mental as- 
 pect. We find there the same impulse of imita- 
 tion, the same cowardice, in short, all its charac- 
 teristic peculiarities. Historically (as in Haiti) 
 the Negro presents himself, to use the expression 
 of a writer in the Allgemeine Zeitung, half ape, 
 half tiger. Burmeister describes the Brazilian 
 
232 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 aborigines as animals in their actions, wholly 
 destitute of any intellectual tendencies. " In the 
 wildernesses of Borneo and Sumatra, and the 
 Polynesian islands/' says Hope,* "there are 
 hordes of savages, whose resemblance to the 
 baboon is striking, and whose physical and mental 
 superiority above the brute is scarcely percep- 
 tible. They possess little memory, and still less 
 imagination. They appear incapable of reflecting 
 on the past, or to provide for the future ; nothing 
 but hunger disturbs their apathy. No other 
 mental capacity can be discovered in them, but 
 that low, brutish cunning ascribed to the apes/'' 
 It is often said that language is so character- 
 istic a mark of distinction, as to leave no doubt 
 about the deep chasm existing between man and 
 the brute. Such objectors are certainly ignorant 
 of the fact that brutes can also speak. Numbers 
 of instances can be adduced, proving that animals 
 possess the power of mutual communication even 
 on concrete subjects. Dujardin placed a saucer 
 with sugar in the niche of a wall at a consider- 
 able distance from a beehive. A single bee hap- 
 pening to discover this treasure, was seen repeat- 
 edly to fly about the margins of the niche, and 
 to touch them with the head, in order to remem- 
 ber the locality. It then flew away, and returned 
 shortly after accompanied by a number of friends, 
 who quickly consumed the sugar. Had not 
 these animals spoken to each other? Birds 
 * Essay on the Origin of Man, 1831. 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 233 
 
 especially^ as is proved by many instances, freely 
 communicate with each other, make appoint- 
 ments, etc. M. de Fraviere* quotes some of the 
 most remarkable and well authenticated facts in 
 relation to the power of intercommunication pos- 
 sessed by bees. The mode in which the chamois 
 place their watches, and inform each other of an 
 approaching danger, equally proves this power 
 of communication. And can instinct have im- 
 bued them with this foresight, inasmuch as the 
 chamois are certainly older than the chamois- 
 hunter ? Many animals which live in commu- 
 nities choose a leader, and place themselves 
 voluntarily under his guidance. Can this be 
 effected without mutual communication? But 
 man, because of his not understanding the lan- 
 guage of animals, deems it easier to deny it alto- 
 gether. Parkyns, an Englishman who in his 
 travels through Abyssinia had opportunities of 
 observing the conduct of monkey-tribes, remarks 
 that "they possessed a language as intelligible 
 to them as our own is to us/'f "The apes," 
 observes Parkyns, "have leaders, whom they 
 obey better than men usually do theirs, and a 
 regular system of depredation. When a tribe 
 leaves the rocky clefts which it inhabits, and 
 descends into the plain, in order to rob a corn 
 field, it is accompanied by all its members, old 
 and young, male and female. The elders of the 
 
 * Gartenlaube, iii, No. 47. 
 f Revue Britannique. 
 
234 EOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 tribe, which are easily recognised by their hirsute 
 appearance, are chosen as outposts. They care- 
 fully in descending examine every gulf, and 
 climb up all the eminences to obtain a good view. 
 Sentinels are also placed on the flanks and in the 
 rear; indeed, their watchfulness is remarkable. 
 From time to time they call and reply to each 
 other, to announce whether any danger threatens, 
 or whether all's right. Their cries are so sharply 
 accentuated, so various, so distinct, that they 
 may in time be understood. At the least cry of 
 alarm the whole tribe halts at once, and hearkens 
 until a second cry, differently intoned, bids them 
 again to march."" 
 
 An observer relates that he had recently as- 
 sisted at a remarkable consultation of swallows. 
 A couple had, in the spring, commenced building 
 a nest under the roof of a house. One day a 
 number of other swallows appeared on the roof, 
 when there arose between them and the builders 
 of the nest, a lengthened conversation, manifested 
 by their loud cries and twittering. The con- 
 sultation having lasted for some time, during 
 which the nest was examined by some individual 
 swallows, the meeting broke up. The result was 
 that the nest was abandoned, and a better loca- 
 lity under the same roof selected ! 
 
 Well, then, animals possess a language, but it 
 is incapable of improvement. This, again, is an 
 unfounded assertion. Notwithstanding that we 
 can know next to nothing of the possible or real 
 
THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 235 
 
 improvement of the language of animals, since 
 we do not understand it, there exists a number 
 of facts, which leave no doubt that the vocal-and- 
 sign language of animals is capable of a certain 
 development — facts which are certainly unknown 
 to him who concludes only from appearances or 
 abstract premises. 
 
 Thus there has been observed an essential dif- 
 ference between the vocal expression of wild 
 and that of tamed animals of the same species.* 
 And in regard to man, we may ask of what im- 
 provement is the language of the negro or of 
 those savage hordes capable, of whom travellers 
 relate that they speak more by signs than by 
 articulate sounds ? The language of the savages, 
 described by Hope, consists of a few hoarse 
 grunting sounds. That of the Bushmen is, ac- 
 cording to Reichenbach, so poor in words, that 
 it consists mostly of harsh, throat sounds, and 
 clicks, for which we have no representatives in 
 our alphabet, so that they communicate with each 
 other much by signs. We know, moreover, that 
 the mental capacities of animals are as capable of 
 being developed as those of man. What remark- 
 able actions do not trained animals perform ! A 
 trained hound is quite a different being from an 
 untrained one. This training is not, as gene- 
 rally believed, a mere mechanical development, 
 but it rests upon the possibility of imparting to 
 the animal a conception of the object to be at- 
 * Y. Fuchs, das Seelen leiben der Thiere, etc., 1854. 
 
236 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 tained by a certain action, without which it would 
 be impossible to make a dog point at game. 
 
 That the education of animals proceeds but 
 slowly and is attended with difficulties, does not 
 so much depend on the limited faculties of the 
 creature, but rather on the impossibility of direct 
 communication. The same means must be em- 
 ployed — and they are so in fact — which are re- 
 quired in the troublesome education of the deaf 
 and dumb. But even without any particular 
 training, it is well known that domesticated and 
 tamed animals improve in mental capacity through 
 their continual intercourse with mankind. 
 
 Another assertion that the capacity for rational 
 improvement is innate in man, whilst the intelli- 
 gence of animals would ever remain stationary 
 unless improved by man, is neither perfectly cor- 
 rect, nor calculated to establish an essential dif- 
 ference between man and brute. That the lowest 
 human races in their reasoning faculties are defi- 
 cient in this internal impulse for improvement, 
 and consequently possess no history, is well 
 known; while, as has already been mentioned, 
 the human race, considered as a whole, required 
 an immensely long period to feel that impulse for 
 improvement. 
 
 Hence the gradual transition which through 
 innumerable steps, both physical and intellectual, 
 leads from the brute up to man, can only be 
 denied by those who delight in placing their in- 
 dividual opinions above the actual facts. All the 
 

 THE SOUL OF BRUTES. 237 
 
 known marks of distinction, which are quoted as 
 arguments to establish a strict boundary line, are 
 in their nature merely relative, and not absolute. 
 How could it be otherwise ? The infinitely di- 
 versified reciprocal action between matter and 
 force in living nature must result in an infinite 
 variety of results which admit of no boundary, 
 but spread in every direction and in an uninter- 
 rupted connexion. Nature knows of no limits, 
 which are imagined by the systematising intellect 
 of man. Man has, therefore, no right to place 
 himself proudly above the organised world, and 
 to consider himself as a being of a different and 
 higher nature ; he should, on the contrary, ac- 
 knowledge the firm and infrangible link which 
 chains him to nature, and that he shares with 
 every thing that lives and flourishes the same 
 origin and end. 
 
 " That which has not a little contributed," 
 says the author of Menschen und Dinge* "to veil 
 from us for so long a time the intellectual aspect 
 of the animal world, is the antiquated opinion 
 that man alone is gifted with intellect and spirit, 
 and that there exists an insurmountable barrier 
 between him and the brute. This error once re- 
 moved, and the view adopted that the animal 
 world is not merely in its physical, but also in 
 its intellectual and moral nature, a disjointed 
 
 * Mittheilungen aus dem Tagebuche eines reisenden 
 Naturforschers, 1855, (Men and Things; Communications 
 from the Diary of a Travelling Naturalist. ) 
 
238 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 man (ein auseinandergelegter Mensch), we shall 
 see a comparative psychology arise, just as we 
 possess a comparative anatomy. 
 
 Professor B. Cotta relates a remarkable case, 
 first observed by Darwin, of certain crabs in- 
 habiting the Keeling Islands, which open the 
 cocoa-nuts with their claws to get at the kernel. 
 This circumstance has been quoted as a proof of 
 a peculiar instinct, and the narrator seems even 
 inclined to view it as a striking proof of the 
 wisdom of the Creator, who has for this purpose 
 created a peculiarly constructed animal ! It is 
 difficult to conceive how a naturalist can form 
 such an idea. It can scarcely be doubted that 
 the creature has performed some special experi- 
 ments upon the nuts, before it came upon the 
 idea of using its claws in a suitable manner. 
 To view it in any other light, or to assume that 
 a peculiar apparatus has been given to it on 
 account of the cocoa-nuts, is little short of pre- 
 sumption. By the same rule, we might say man 
 has been created to travel on railroads ; that he 
 has constructed locomotive engines by instinct : 
 and that he has been endowed with legs to step 
 into the carriages. 
 
239 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 FEEE WILL. 
 
 " Man is free like the bird in a cage ; he can move within 
 certain limits." Lavater. 
 
 " A free will, an act of the will, which should be independ- 
 ent of the sum of influences which determine man at 
 every moment and set limits to the most powerful, does 
 not exist." Moleschott. 
 
 Man is a product of nature in body and mind. 
 Hence not merely what he is, but also what he 
 does, wills, feels, and thinks, depends upon the 
 same natural necessity as the whole structure of 
 the world. Only a superficial observation of 
 human existence could lead to the conclusion, that 
 the actions of nations and of individuals were the 
 result of a perfectly free will. A closer inquiry 
 teaches us, on the contrary, that the connection 
 of nature is so essential and necessary, that free 
 will, if it exist, can only have a very limited 
 range; it teaches us to recognise in all these 
 phenomena fixed laws which hitherto were consi- 
 dered as the results of free choice. " Human 
 liberty, of which all boast/'' says Spinoza, " con- 
 sists solely in this, that man is conscious of his 
 will, and unconscious of the causes by which it is 
 determined." 
 
240 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 That this view is no longer theoretical, but 
 sufficiently established by facts, is chiefly owing 
 to that interesting new science Statistics, which 
 exhibits fixed laws in a mass of phenomena, 
 that until now were considered to be arbitrary 
 and accidental. The data for this truth are fre- 
 quently lost in investigating individual pheno- 
 mena, but taken collectively they exhibit a strict 
 order, inexorably ruling men and humanity. 
 It may, without exaggeration, be stated, that at 
 present most physicians and practical psycholo- 
 gists incline to the view in relation to free will, 
 that human actions are, in the last instance, de- 
 pendent upon a fixed necessity, so that in every 
 individual case free choice has only an extremely 
 limited, if any, sphere of action. 
 
 It is impossible for us to prove this truth by 
 exhaustive facts, as it would require us to call in 
 the aid of the whole province of human knowledge. 
 This proof is, however, too intimately connected 
 with our view of nature to be passed over. We 
 shall, therefore, endeavour to furnish the reader 
 with some data from the following intelligible 
 facts. 
 
 The conduct and actions of every individual 
 are dependent upon the character, manners, and 
 modes of thought of the nation to which he be- 
 longs. These again are, to a certain extent, the 
 necessary product of external circumstances 
 under which they live and have grown up. 
 
 Galton* says : " The difference of the moral 
 * London Journal of the Eoyal Geog. Society, v, 22. 
 
FEEE WILL. 241 
 
 and physical character of the various tribes of 
 South Africa depends on the form, the soil, and 
 the vegetation of the parts they inhabit. The 
 dry inland plateaux, which are merely covered 
 with thick jungles and short shrubs, are in- 
 habited by the dwarfish and sinewy Bushmen ; in 
 the open, undulating pasture lands dwell the 
 Dammares, a tribe of independent shepherds, 
 where every father of a family reigns supreme in 
 his household ; while, in the rich crown lands of 
 the north, we find the Orampos, the most civi- 
 lised of these tribes. Charles Müller remarks 
 that the desert has changed its inhabitant, the 
 Bedouin, into a cat. According to Desor, the 
 history, customs, and manners of the American 
 Indians, whom he distinguishes as prairie and 
 forest Indians, may be traced to the difference of 
 soil which they inhabit. "It is about two 
 hundred and thirty years," says Desor, " since 
 the first colonists, in every respect true English- 
 men, came to New England. In this short time 
 they have undergone considerable changes ; a 
 peculiar American type has been developed, 
 chiefly, it appears, by the influence of the cli- 
 mate. An American is distinguished by his long 
 neck, his spare figure, and by something irri- 
 table and feverish in his character. The scanty 
 development of the glandular system, which 
 gives to American women a certain ethereal ex- 
 pression of the figure, and the lank, dry hair, may 
 be connected with the dryness of the atmosphere. 
 
 E 
 
242 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 It has been observed that, during the prevalence 
 of easterly winds the irritability of the Americans 
 is considerably increased. The rapidity of the 
 American State development, which surprises us, 
 may thus, to a considerable extent, be ascribed 
 to the climate." As in America, so have the 
 English given rise to a new type in Australia, 
 specially in New South Wales. The males are 
 tall, thin, but muscular ; the females of great but 
 transitory beauty. The whole character of the 
 Englishman is an expression of his foggy sky 
 and his heavy atmosphere. The Italian is the 
 reflex of his ever bright sky and of his sunny 
 climate. The imaginative world of the oriental 
 is connected with the copiousness of the nature 
 by which he is surrounded. In the inhospitable 
 north the shrubs are scanty, the trees dwarfish, 
 and so is the race which inhabits it. The extreme 
 south admits as little of a high development of 
 the human race. It is only where climate, soil, 
 and other circumstances of the surface harmo- 
 nise and are in equilibrium, that man acquires 
 that degree of mental culture which gives him 
 the superiority above his fellow creatures. 
 
 If the nations are thus in the aggregate, in 
 regard to character and history, dependent upon 
 external circumstances, the individual is no 
 less the product of external and internal natural 
 actions, not merely in relation to his physical 
 and moral nature, but in his actions. These ac- 
 tions depend necessarily, in the first instance, 
 
FREE WILL. 243 
 
 upon his intellectual individuality. But what is 
 this intellectual individuality which determines 
 man, and prescribes to him, in every individual 
 case, his mode of action with such force, that 
 there remains for him but a minute space for 
 free choice; what else is it but the necessary 
 product of congenital physical and mental dispo- 
 sitions in connection with education, example, 
 rank, property, sex, nationality, climate, soil, and 
 other circumstances ? Man is subject to the 
 same laws as plants and animals. As the plant 
 is for its existence, size, shape, and beauty de- 
 pendent upon the soil in which it has taken root ; 
 as the animal is small or large, tame or wild, 
 beautiful or ugly, according to the circumstances 
 under which it became developed ; as an ento- 
 zoon changes its form, accordingly as it inhabits 
 the interior of any other animal ; so is man phy- 
 sically and mentally the product of such external 
 influences, and becomes, in this manner — cer- 
 tainly not that morally independent, free-willing 
 creature as he is represented by moralists. One 
 individual possesses a remarkable propensity for 
 benevolence ; everything he does exhibits this 
 peculiarity : he is charitable, tolerant, beloved by 
 all, and it is his enjoyment*to indulge in these 
 inclinations. Another inclines to conscientious- 
 ness : he is just in all his transactions, and may 
 put a term to his existence if deprived of the 
 possibility of fulfilling his obligations. The 
 thoughtless man, on the contrary, is, by his 
 
244 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 mental disposition, induced to commit acts ap- 
 proaching to wickedness. Some individual, again, 
 possesses a violent character bent on destruc- 
 tion, which can only be restrained by the greatest 
 efforts. A fifth has a particular love for children, 
 and is a model husband; whilst a sixth dislikes 
 children and domestic life. Vanity or love of 
 approbation may be the cause of the most per- 
 verse actions or the greatest crimes, while firm- 
 ness may enable a person with limited faculties 
 to achieve the greatest results. All these na- 
 tural dispositions, developed by education, ex- 
 ample, etc., are so powerful in human nature, 
 that neither deliberation nor religion can effec- 
 tually neutralise them, and it is constantly ob- 
 served that man rather follows his inclinations. 
 (i The actions of man/ 5 says Auerbach, C( are in- 
 dependent of their belief in God, etc. ; they act 
 according to their impulses and habits/'' How 
 frequently does it occur that a man, knowing his 
 intellectual character and the error of his ways, 
 is yet unable to struggle successfully against his 
 inclinations. The many contradictions in the 
 moral nature of man (piety and love for children 
 without actual benevolence, feelings sometimes 
 exhibited by the most hardened criminals), can 
 be explained in no other way than by considering 
 them as the result of natural impulses. 
 
 Not merely, however, the intellectual nature of 
 man, but every individual action, if not a neces- 
 sary emanation from his character, is still deter- 
 
FREE WILL. 245 
 
 mined by natural influences which limit the exer- 
 cise of his freedom of choice. It is well known 
 that climate, and even changes of the weather, 
 influence our mental disposition. Our resolutions 
 change with the state of the barometer; and a 
 number of actions, which we believe to have re- 
 sulted from free choice, were perhaps merely the 
 products of such accidental circumstances. Our 
 corporeal conditions equally exercise an almost ir- 
 resistible influence over our mental disposition and 
 resolutions. " A young man," says Krahmer, 
 " has different ideas from an old man ; a person 
 in a recumbent position thinks in a different 
 manner than when erect; the famished and the 
 comfortable argue differently from the satiated 
 and uncomf or table." The great influence which 
 diseases of the various organs of the body exer- 
 cise upon thought and action are too .well 
 known, and have already been indicated. The 
 most dreadful crimes have, independently of the 
 will of the agent, been committed under the in- 
 fluence of such abnormal corporeal conditions. 
 It was reserved for modern science closely to 
 examine such cases, and to establish disease as 
 the cause of crimes which formerly were consi- 
 dered as the result of deliberate choice. 
 
 No one, therefore, who searches beneath the 
 surface can deny that the assumption of a free 
 will must, in theory and practice, be restricted 
 within the narrowest compass. Man is free, 
 but his hands are bound; he cannot cross the 
 
246 FOECE AND MATTEE. 
 
 limit placed by nature. " For, what is called free 
 will/' says Gotta, "is nothing but the result of 
 the strongest motives." Most of the crimes com- 
 mitted against the state or society arise from 
 passion or ignorance, the result of defective edu- 
 cation or power of reflection, etc. An educated 
 person finds means to obviate a disagreeable posi- 
 tion without offending against the law; the 
 ignorant seeks relief in committing a crime, and 
 is thus the victim of circumstances. What does 
 freedom of choice do for him who robs, steals, 
 and murders from sheer necessity ? What is the 
 amount of responsibility attached to the man 
 whose organ of destructiveness, and whose cruel 
 propensities are large, and his intellectual facul- 
 ties small ? Deficiency of intellect, poverty, and 
 want of education, are the chief causes of crime. 
 Criminals are rather deserving of pity than of 
 disgust. (C Therefore," says Forster, " it were 
 best to judge and to condemn nobody." 
 
 We now come to a point which we must not 
 pass over, though by its practical bearing it ap- 
 pears foreign to our theoretical investigations. 
 An unprejudiced study of nature and the world 
 based upon innumerable facts, shows that the 
 actions of individuals and of men in general, are 
 determined by physical necessities which restrict 
 free will within the narrowest limits. Hence it 
 has been concluded that the partisans of this doc- 
 trine denied the discernment of crime, and that 
 they desired the acquittal of every criminal, by 
 

 FEEE WILL. 247 
 
 which the state and society would be thrown into 
 a state of anarchy. We shall presently return 
 to the last reproach which has, by the way, thou- 
 sands of times been made to natural science ; as 
 to the first; it is too absurd to deserve any refu- 
 tation. No scientific system has rendered the 
 necessity of social and political order more evi- 
 dent than that to which natural science owes its 
 progress, nor has any modern naturalist denied 
 to the state the right of legitimate defence against 
 attacks on the well-being of society. What is 
 true is that the partisans of these modern ideas 
 hold different opinions as regards crime, and 
 would banish that cowardly and irreconcilable 
 hatred, which the state and society have hitherto 
 cherished with so much hypocrisy as regards the 
 malefactor. Penetrated by such ideas, we cannot 
 help a feeling of commiseration for the offender, 
 whilst we not the less abhor every action calcu- 
 lated to disturb society; a humane sentiment, 
 which gives the preference to preventive mea- 
 sures over punishment. 
 
 Since the general results of philosophy and of 
 the natural sciences have become accessible to 
 the people at large, the greatest dangers to so- 
 ciety have been apprehended from their mate- 
 rialistic tendencies. They have even predicted 
 the downfall of society and a bellum omnium 
 contra omnes, if such tendencies should become 
 prevalent. Only complete ignorance of the springs 
 of society could fear such a catastrophe. The 
 
248 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 like predictions and tirades have been heard at 
 all times without having ever been realised. So- 
 ciety rests upon more solid foundations than these 
 prophets imagine. It would be easy for us to 
 show that naturalism does not ignore the value of 
 moral ideas, so far as they form the foundation of 
 human society, and that no attack is made on the 
 real nature and existence of that society; but 
 such a discussion would transgress the limits of 
 our subject. Still we may shortly indicate the 
 road which is to be followed by him who would 
 more closely examine this subject. 
 
 Society rests upon the principles of necessity 
 and reciprocity.* The principle of necessity is 
 identical with the restrictions to which free will is 
 subject, and is by no means directly influenced by 
 the diversity of the general opinions we entertain 
 of the world, but only indirectly and very feebly. 
 But when the principle of necessity is not in 
 action, it is replaced by the relation of reciprocity. 
 
 This principle presents in its details as infi- 
 nitely complicated a mechanism, as the relations 
 of force and matter. To know, to explain, or to 
 direct this mechanism according to any general 
 principle is, in our opinion, impracticable. From 
 our point of view we confidently assert, that these 
 ideas of Grod and the world, or moral motives, in 
 so much danger of being wrecked against na- 
 turalism, exercise but a very imperceptible influ- 
 ence on the ordinary march of human society. 
 We are astonished that our society is so ticklish 
 
FEEB WILL. 249 
 
 as regards certain truths taught by science — a 
 society whose social virtue is nothing but hypo- 
 crisy, covered by a veil of morality. Just cast a 
 glance at this society, and tell us whether it acts 
 from virtuous, divine, or even moral motives ? 
 Is it not, in fact, a bellum omniun contra omnes ? 
 Does it not resemble a race-course, where every- 
 one does all he can to outrun or even to destroy 
 the other ? Are we not tempted to say of this 
 society what Burmeister says of the Brazilians ■ 
 " Everyone does what he believes he can do 
 without incurring^ punishment. He cheats and 
 abuses others as much as possible, being con- 
 vinced that they would do the same to him. 
 Anyone who acts differently is treated as an 
 idiot"? Is it not the most refined egotism which 
 is the spring of this social mechanism ; and dis- 
 tinguished authors, who best know human society, 
 do they not constantly depict in their narrations 
 the cowardice, disloyalty, and hypocrisy of this 
 European society ? 
 
 A society which permits human beings to die 
 of starvation on the steps of houses filled with 
 victuals ; a society whose force is directed to 
 oppress the weak by the strong, has no right to 
 complain that the natural sciences subvert the 
 foundations of its morality. 
 
 Yes, those who know how to appreciate the 
 ideas we defend, and which are so vehemently 
 attacked by the whole clique of pharisees, hypo- 
 crites', mystics, Jesuits, and pietists, may be able 
 
250 
 
 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 to imagine that at some future period there may 
 be a more ideal social edifice, which will have for 
 its foundations human dignity and human equal- 
 ity. Does not antiquity furnish us with examples 
 of such a partial transformation ? 
 
 Whatever may be our ideas of the government 
 of the world and of immortality, whether or not 
 they undergo a change, society will not perish. 
 And even if our ideas were false, if the enlight- 
 ened part of the community cannot be deprived 
 of its prejudices without doing some damage to 
 society at large, science and empirical philosophy 
 can only say : truth is above things divine and 
 human ; there exist no reasons strong enough to 
 cause us to abandon it. 
 
 u La verite," says Yoltaire, " a des droits im- 
 prescriptibles ; comme il est toujours temps de la 
 decouvrir, il n'est jamais hors de saison de la 
 defendre/'' 
 
251 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 CONCLUDING OBSEEVATIONS. 
 
 "Les hommes se tromperont toujours, quand ils abandon- 
 neront T experience pour des systemes enfantes par 
 l'imagination. L'nonrme est l'ouvrage de la nature, il 
 existe dans la nature, il est soumis a ses lois, il ne peut 
 s'en affranchir, il ne pent mSme par la pensee en sortir; 
 c'est en vain que son esprit veut s'elancer au-dela des 
 bornes du monde visible, il est toujours force d'y 
 rentrer." Systeme de la Nature. 
 
 " It is now nearly twenty years/' says Göthe, in 
 his posthumous works, " since all the Germans 
 have become transcendentalists. They will wonder 
 at themselves should they ever become aware of 
 it." That time seems to approach. The pompous 
 speculative systems are fast expiring, chiefly by 
 the influence of an exact investigation of nature. 
 The result is the more important, as the natural 
 sciences had hitherto only exercised an indirect in- 
 fluence on the march of philosophical disquisitions. 
 Exact science inculcates modesty ; and it is per- 
 haps for this reason, that our modern naturalists 
 have hitherto neglected to apply the standard of 
 exact science to philosophy, and from the treasury 
 of facts to forge arms for the overthrow of tran- 
 scendental speculations. Now and then there 
 issued from the workshops of these industrious 
 
252 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 labourers a ray of light which, reaching the noisy 
 philosophers, did not fail to heighten the existing 
 confusion. These single rays were, however, suf- 
 ficient to cause in the camp of speculative philo- 
 sophy a feverish excitement, and gave rise to 
 sallies in anticipation of a threatened attack. 
 There was something ludicrous in it to see these 
 philosophers so desperately defend themselves 
 before they were seriously attacked. It cer- 
 tainly will not be long before the battle becomes 
 general.* Is the victory doubtful? The struggle 
 is unequal ; the opponents cannot stand against 
 the trenchant arm of physical and physiological 
 materialism, which fights with facts that every- 
 one can comprehend, while the opponents fight 
 with suppositions and presumptions. But an 
 hypothesis can never be the foundation of a 
 scientific system. Hypothesis, used to such an 
 extent as in philosophical speculation, abandons 
 sensual perception, the only source of human 
 knowledge, and ascends into regions inaccessible 
 to our intelligence. In its erratic movements, 
 it can never arrive at a resting-place ; for all 
 imaginable things may exist behind that which 
 is concealed from us. All that transcends the 
 sensual world and the deductions resulting from 
 
 * Since these remarks were first expressed by the airthor, 
 his expectations have been partly fulfilled. The scientific 
 agitation in regard to the questions discussed is daily 
 spreading, and becoming, without exaggeration, a sign of 
 the present time. 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 253 
 
 the comparison of sensual objects, is hypothesis, 
 and may be sufficient for him who is satisfied 
 with it. " The naturalist can never be satisfied 
 with it, he knows only bodies and their qualities ; 
 what is beyond, he terms transcendental, and he 
 considers transcendentalism as an aberration of 
 the human mind/'' (Vir chow.) 
 
 Whosoever rejects experience, rejects human 
 conception, and has yet to learn that human 
 knowledge and thought without real objects is 
 a nonentity. Thinking and being are as insepa- 
 rable as force and substance, spirit and matter ; 
 an immaterial spirit is an arbitrary assumption 
 without any real basis. Were the human mind 
 in possession of any metaphysical knowledge not 
 determined by the real world, we should expect 
 the same conformity in the views of metaphysi- 
 cians as we find among physiologists in regard 
 to the function of certain muscles, or the law of 
 gravitation, etc. ; instead of which we find 
 nothing but obscurity and contradictions. 
 
 ' ( If," says Yirchow, ' c philosophy is the science 
 of what is actual, it can only proceed by the road 
 of natural science, and search , in experience for 
 its objects of investigation. It becomes, then, not 
 merely in essence but in method natural science, 
 from which it only differs in its aim ; inasmuch as 
 all philosophical systems have a transcendental 
 object, viz. the investigation of the plan of the 
 universe, or the fathoming of the Absolute, while 
 true natural science considers the knowledge of 
 
254 FORCE AKD MATTER. 
 
 individual existences as its chief task; for the 
 example of all times has shewn how fruitless and 
 hopeless the way is to the Absolute." 
 
 We hear a general talk of the boundaries of 
 natural sciences ; but the talkers are usually 
 ignorant of the meaning of their words, and 
 follow merely an instinctive impulse of sudden 
 fear lest their theories be suddenly overthrown 
 by these sciences. A science knows of no bound- 
 aries but of such as are inherent in its nature. 
 As far as it extends, it has to say its say, to use a 
 common expression ; and no science has a greater 
 right to do so than natural science, which may 
 perhaps be the only science that will remain. 
 According to our view, an exposition of tran- 
 scendental things which cannot be made to har- 
 monise with the results of natural science, is a 
 convolution of words without sense. When spe- 
 culative philosophy, powerless against the facts 
 brought to bear against it, tries to save itself by 
 ascending to inaccessible metaphysical heights, 
 it resembles an animal which tries to escape a 
 danger by concealing its head. An armed oppo- 
 nent has never yat been conquered by haughty 
 contempt. 
 
 We consider it mere prudery on the part 
 of some naturalists, who declare that the em- 
 pirical material is insufficient to return definite 
 answers to transcendental questions. It cer- 
 tainly is incapable of answering these questions 
 positively, and for that purpose it will never suf- 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 255 
 
 fice j but it is more than sufficient to answer 
 them negatively, and to put an end to the reign 
 of philosophical transcendentalism, which rejects 
 experience. Whosoever combats hypothesis in 
 science, must also combat it in philosophy. Hy- 
 pothesis may maintain that being and thought 
 existed once separately ; empiricism knows only 
 that they are inseparable. 
 
 The materialistic tendency of the natural sci- 
 ences has recently been, to the surprise of the 
 German scientific world, vehemently attacked by 
 a distinguished naturalist. The attack seemed 
 an act of despair ; for this philosopher, possess- 
 ing sufficient positive knowledge to estimate 
 the impotence of idealism in science, avows 
 that all resistance to the approaching enemy 
 would be vain. And yet it is not by facts that 
 he endeavoured to combat his invisible enemy, 
 as he knew well the facts would be against him. 
 He therefore went roundabout, and appealed to 
 the moral consequences of truths established by 
 science. This mode of discussion is so little 
 consistent with science, that it is surprising that 
 a professor should have committed such a blun- 
 der before an assembly of savans. The merited 
 reward for such conduct was not long withheld ; 
 according to published reports, the assembly 
 received his remarks with great indignation. 
 
 " The morality," exclaimed Professor Rudolph 
 Wagner, at the meeting of German physicians 
 and naturalists at Göttingen — u the morality 
 
256 FOECE AND MATTER. 
 
 which flows from scientific materialism, may be 
 comprehended within these few words : ' Let us 
 eat and drink, for to-morrow we die/ All noble 
 thoughts are but vain dreams, the effusions of 
 automata with two arms, running about on two 
 legs, which, being finally decomposed into chemi- 
 cal atoms, combine themselves anew, resembling 
 the dance of lunatics in a madhouse." 
 
 The fundamental idea of this burst of anger 
 has been already refuted in preceding chapters. 
 To attack an established principle because fools 
 draw from it false inferences, is a mode of tactics 
 long used up. " If," says Keclam,* u he were 
 to lay down such a general principle, he ought 
 to forbid the sale of matches, as they have caused 
 fires, or the use of locomotives, since people have 
 been killed by them ; and no houses with several 
 stories ought to be built, to prevent persons from 
 throwing themselves out of the window." 
 
 To pretend that the materialism of science 
 changes all great and noble ideas into vain 
 dreams, that materialism has no future and no 
 morality, is such a gratuitous assertion that it 
 deserves no refutation. There have at all times 
 been great philosophers holding such or 
 similar opinions, who nevertheless were neither 
 fools, robbers, assassins, nor desperadoes. At 
 this time our most laborious scientific workers, 
 our most indefatigable physicians, profess mate- 
 rialistic opinions, without one of them having 
 * German Museum. 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 257 
 
 justified Professor Wagner's assertion. The con- 
 stant zeal to enrich their minds, the search after 
 truth, and the conviction of the necessity of 
 social and moral order, are for them sufficient 
 compensation for what passes by the name of 
 religion. Even if these ideas should become 
 general, and increase in man the thirst for enjoy- 
 ment, which has, by the way, been observed at 
 all times, and which is now greater than ever, it 
 would not much matter. The difference in this 
 respect between former and present times lies 
 only in the sincerity of the avowal. Some may 
 assume a devout appearance, but their actions 
 belie their words. In antiquity, words and ac- 
 tions were in classical harmony. We put on a 
 hypocritical garment, to appear different from 
 what we really are. " The hypocrisy of self-de- 
 ception," says Feuerbach, " is the main vice of our 
 times." 
 
 We must finally be permitted to leave all ques- 
 tions about morality and utility out of sight. The 
 chief, and indeed the sole object which concerned 
 us in these researches, is truth. Nature exists 
 neither for religion, for morality, nor for human 
 beings ; but it exists for itself. What else can we 
 do but take it as it is ? Would it not be ridiculous 
 in us to cry like little children, because our bread 
 is not sufficiently buttered ? 
 
 To those who may, by some of the results of 
 our investigations, have felt shaken in their philo- 
 sophical or religious convictions, we recommend 
 
258 
 
 FOKCE AND MATTER. 
 
 tlie following passage of Cotta as a fit conclusion 
 of this chapter, and of the whole work. 
 
 " Empirical natural science has no other object 
 than to find out the truth, be it. according to 
 human notions, consolatory or the reverse, beauti- 
 ful or ugly, logical or illogical, rational or absurd, 
 necessary or contingent."* 
 
 * In former editions (1-4) the place of this concluding- 
 passage was occupied by a polemical exposition in answer 
 to an attack which a distinguished physicist, shortly before 
 the appearance of the first edition, had directed against the 
 materialistic view, and which at the time attracted the 
 attention of all educated minds and called forth many 
 replies. This polemic in the first edition of " Force and 
 Matter" ran as follows : Everyone acquainted with the cir- 
 cumstances must share our regret that the very man to 
 whom the exact investigation of nature is so highly in- 
 debted, urged on thereto by a morbid sensibility, should 
 but lately publicly and spontaneously have thrown down the 
 gauntlet to the mechanical and materialistic view of nature. 
 It is true, this was done in a manner peculiar to the courage 
 of despair : for sufficiently enabled by positive knowledge to 
 perceive the critical position of idealism, he began with the 
 confession that all resistance to the ever advancing enemy 
 would be vain. But he did not attempt to defeat his in- 
 visible and yet so terrible opponent with facts — he could 
 not be ignorant of the circumstance that idealism has no 
 facts to fall back upon — but by a turn which is usually called 
 a false assertion; by a turn which endeavours to combat 
 natural truths with moral consequences, and which must be 
 called so totally unscientific, that it is difficult to conceive 
 how anyone could venture to advance it in the presence of a 
 meeting of scientifically educated men. Certainly the 
 author at once met with his reward, and the indignation of 
 the assembly was expressed unequivocally enough, if we are 
 to believe the published reports. " The doctrine," exclaimed 
 Eudolf Wagner, professor and Aulic counsellor, at the last 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 2'59 
 
 meeting of German physicists and physicians at Göttingen. 
 " the doctrine proceeding from the materialistic cosmology 
 is : let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. All great 
 and serious thoughts are idle dreams and fancies ; the 
 trifling of mechanical contrivances, running about with two 
 arms and two legs, that resolve themselves into chymical 
 atoms, recombine, etc., comparable to the gambols of mad- 
 men in a lunatic asylum, without a future, without a moral 
 basis, etc." 
 
 The idea which lies at the root of this inconsiderate 
 outbreak of wrath coincides so well with the objections we 
 found occasion to combat in the preceding chapter, that Ave 
 may well spare ourselves the trouble again to criticise this 
 ill- applied aspersion. Indeed it is an artifice as worn-out 
 as it is absurd, to deduce the untruth of a principle from 
 the accidental consequences which unreasoning people may 
 derive from such principle, after it has once been proved and 
 found correct. " If Professor Wagner," says Beclam (German 
 Museum), " will adopt this principle as his universal rule, 
 lucifer matches must be prohibited, for they may set a 
 house on fire — locomotive engines must have warrants of 
 caption issued against them, for men have been run over by 
 them — and houses must have no upper floors, so that no one 
 may fall out of a window." 
 
 But to say that the materialistic view of nature reduces 
 all great and noble thoughts to idle dreams, that the future 
 and all moral basis are annihilated, is so arbitrary and hasty 
 an assertion as to have no claim to any serious refutation. 
 In all ages great philosophers have entertained such views 
 without becoming fools, robbers, murderers, or desperate 
 wretches. At the present day our most industrious workers, 
 our indefatigable investigators of natural science entertain 
 materialistic views, but it has never been found that they 
 act according to the suppositions of Professor Wagner. The 
 striving after knowledge and truth, and the conviction of 
 the outward necessity of social and moral order readily stand 
 them in place of what the ruling conceptions designate as 
 religion and futurity. And should such knowledge never- 
 theless, when become more general, contribute to the 
 
260 FORCE AND MATTER. 
 
 increase of man's aiming at temporary enjoyment — whose 
 force, however, has at all times been striking enough, and is 
 so still — we may console ourselves with the words of 
 Moleschott : " The false doctrine of greed for enjoyment 
 can scarcely find so many followers, as the dominion of 
 priests of all colours has exacted unfortunate victims."* 
 But, in conclusion, we must be permitted to disregard all 
 such questions of morality or utility. The highest and only 
 fixed point of view adopted in our investigations is that of 
 truth. Nature does not exist for the sake of religion, 
 morality, or man, but for its own. What can we do but 
 accept it as it is ? Should we not expose ourselves to just 
 derision, were we like little children to cry because our 
 bread is not buttered thickly enough ? " Empirical inves- 
 tigation of nature," says Cotta, "has no other object but to 
 discover truth, whether according to haman conceptions it 
 be consolatory or the reverse, beautiful or ugly, logical or 
 illogical, rational or foolish, necessary or miraculous." 
 
 Could any rational being ever seriously think of issuing a 
 prohibition against the progress of natural science and its 
 just participation in the discussion of philosophical ques- 
 tions — for no other reason but because the last results of 
 sach investigations are not such as may, perhaps, by the 
 individual be considered agreeable to himself and others ? 
 That truth is not always pleasant, not always consolatory, 
 not always lovely, is as well-known as the old experience of 
 the almost total absence of internal or external reward which 
 its followers meet with. Or the reward at least is in no pro- 
 portion with the difficulties which the individual has to en- 
 counter on such road. Externally it ever and everywhere, 
 where truth had to combat received opinions, consisted in 
 personal danger and persecution ; and the uncertainty of its 
 internal reward has been well expressed by a Persian poet : 
 
 * As regards the enjoyment of life, we differ from the 
 ancients, who in a felicitous manner harmonised their prin- 
 ciples and actions, but by the internal contradiction existing 
 between our conduct and our philosophic view of nature. 
 "The hypocrisy of self-delusion," says Feuerbach, "is the 
 great vice of the present age." — (From Editions n to iv.) 
 
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS. 261 
 
 " But no ! set aside mind, break asunder its chains ! 
 Be a fool ! for the fool alone doth enjoy life. 
 Like the nightingale by the rose such a heart ever rejoices, 
 For it escaped, torture of knowledge, thy sting. 
 Wherefore blessing his God, let him praise his destiny, 
 Who through the bliss of ignorance may yet taste 
 happiness ! " 
 
 To him, the poet, the nature of things appeared in its last 
 simplicity, and unveiled by the mass of external superaddi- 
 tions, by which error or calculation have rendered the clear 
 language of nature unintelligible to the majority of mankind; 
 but for that reason also he could not escape the mental 
 disquiet which can be felt by him only, who has travelled 
 along certain paths of knowledge. He is assuredly right in 
 calling him happy who lives yet in "the bliss of ignorance," 
 but he is wrong in advising him on that account to " bless 
 his God." He only that possesses knowledge can call the 
 ignorant happy because of his ignorance, for the pang of 
 knowledge exists but for him, while the very essence of 
 ignorance consists in neither knowing nor suspecting it. 
 In the deep consciousness of this remarkable fact, and 
 perhaps bearing in mind the luxurious dreamy enjoyment 
 of life in the east, the Persian undisguisedly calls on man 
 to prefer such enjoyment of life to the restless striving 
 after knowledge. But the western world thinks and feels 
 differently, and a life without contest and activity has no 
 charm for it. Truth conceals within itself a secret charm 
 of attraction, to which all other human considerations 
 must yield, wherefore truth among the intellectual nations 
 of the west will never lack enthusiastic followers and 
 champions regardless of consequences. 
 
 Nor can any prohibition or outward difficulty for any 
 length of time arrest its course : opposition rather en- 
 courages and invigorates it. The whole history of the 
 human race, in spite of the boundless sum of follies apparent 
 in it, and so to speak, joining hands, is yet a constant 
 witness for this assertion. Even when in the power of the 
 inquisition, Galileo uttered the famous words, since then 
 enthusiastically repeated a thousand times : 
 " E pur si muove." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 TRANSLATIONS OF ADDITIONAL NOTES IN THE 
 TENTH EDITION. 
 
 r. — P. 20. " Or forges nails tinder the arm of the forger." — 
 The following interesting extract is taken from the Life of 
 George Stephenson, by Smiles (Murray, 1857) : — "On Sunday, 
 just when the company had returned from church, and were 
 standing on the terrace overlooking the railway station 
 (Drayton), a train rushed by, leaving a long line of white 
 steam behind. 'Now,' said Stephenson to Buckland, the 
 well-known theological geologist, 'can you tell me what 
 power moves that train ?' ' Why,' replied the other, ( I 
 suppose it is one of your big engines.' ' But what moves the 
 engine ?' f O, probably one of your stout Newcastle engine- 
 drivers.' ' What say you to the light of the sun ?' ' What do 
 you mean ?' ' Nothing else moves the engine,' said the great 
 engineer; 'it is light which since thousands of years has ac- 
 cumulated in the earth — light which was inhaled by plants, 
 that these during the time of their growth might fix the 
 carbon, and which now after having for thousands of years 
 been buried in the coal-beds of the earth, is again brought 
 forth and set free, to serve the great purposes of mankind, 
 as here in this engine.' Assuredly a most remarkable utter- 
 ance, considering the time in which it was made, and one 
 instantaneously illumining a new field of science !" 
 
 ii. — P. 22. "And what is immortal cannot have been 
 created." — For rightly viewing this newly discovered natural 
 truth and its results, it may be interesting to remember 
 that Voltaire, who, as is well-known, was a violent opponent 
 of his materialistically inclined countrymen, demanded 
 nothing more of them but just this proof of the constancy of 
 natural powers, to be convinced. " The materialists," he 
 says in his Traite de Metaphysique, c. ii, "must maintain 
 
264 APPENDIX. 
 
 that motion is inseparable from matter. Wherefore they 
 are further compelled to maintain that motion can never in- 
 crease or decrease ; they must admit that a hundred 
 thousand men, setting themselves in motion, and a hundred 
 cannons fired off, produce no new movement in nature." 
 Now this proof which Voltaire considered impossible to be 
 produced, and from the absence of which he attempted to 
 prove the absurdity of materialism, has been fully and com- 
 pletely afforded at the present day ! How many similar de- 
 mands made upon the materialists will experience the same 
 fate! 
 
 in. — P. 47. "In a similar manner, have taken place in all 
 other planets." — " If the hypothesis of Herschel and Laplace 
 be correct/' says Professor Contejean in a lecture on the 
 Past and Future of the Earth, " matter, not only within our 
 solar system, but in the entire universe, must be the same. 
 This is proved by the following considerations : all the fixed 
 stars we can observe, have a spherical form ; all the bodies 
 comparable to our earth, i.e. planets, bulge out at the 
 equator and are flattened at the poles, their axes are more 
 or less inclined, and have the double motion of rotation 
 and translation — all signs of a similar origin. All the celes- 
 tial bodies whose proximity allows of a closer examination 
 of their surface reveal the same physical conditions as those 
 of the earth. Venus has high mountains, Mars continents 
 and seas, summer and winter. The moon has mountains, 
 plains, valleys, volcanoes like the earth. . . . The aerolites 
 which move through space in great masses, undoubtedly 
 once formed parts of the universal matter of sun and 
 planets, and are formed of the same constituents as our 
 earth. . . . Finally, the spectral analysis of light has quite 
 recently confirmed the supposition of the unity of matter. 
 . . . Not only the light of the sun, but that of stars and 
 nebulae has besn investigated by this method, and no sub- 
 stance has been found in any of them not already known to 
 us. Even comets have lately been subjected to this test, 
 and shown the same lives as the nebula?. If this discovery 
 should be confirmed, and therewith the assumption that 
 

 APPENDIX. 265 
 
 comets consist of the same substances as nebulae, we obtain 
 again a striking confirmation of the homogeneousness of 
 substances, and therewith of the forces throughout the 
 universe, and also of the similarity of development in our 
 solar system, as well as in the distant regions of the fixed 
 stars. And Professor Kirchhoff, the celebrated discoverer 
 of spectral analysis, expresses himself in a recent article on 
 the sun (Westermann's Monatsheft, March 1865), to this 
 effect, that such discoveries prove at all events, "that all 
 the substances and forces in the whole universe are essen- 
 tially the same." 
 
 iv. — P. 53. " Will become worlds and solar Systems."" — There 
 are nebular spots in the heavens which are collections of 
 stars, that with good instruments resolve themselves into 
 such to the eye of the observer. On the other hand, there 
 are others that are essentially different from the former, 
 cannot be resolved into single stars, and evidently consist 
 of cosmic or primeval matter in various stages of develop- 
 ment. Some of them have nuclei, which have already 
 separated from the total mass into more solid centres, 
 others are annular, etc.; yea, by a comparison of earlier 
 and later observations of these spots it has been possible 
 to determine the changes taking place in them. A great 
 number of them seem to have a twofold motion similar 
 to that of our sun and planets, and this will probably finally 
 develope itself in the same manner. Nay, various mani- 
 festations seem to indicate that even within the limits 
 of our own planetary system there are remains of that 
 nebular mass out of which it once formed itself. The latest 
 investigations also in the analysis of light have fully con- 
 firmed the theory of the primeval nebulae, propounded by 
 Herschel and Laplace. But the only force to which all these 
 motions and formations are due, is simply attraction ; the 
 attraction that condenses mists, forming them into suns and 
 planets, regulating their movements, and finally producing 
 by such condensation warmth and light, the sole and last 
 source of all the manifestations of life. (After the French 
 astronomer JBriot.) 
 
266 APPENDIX. 
 
 v. — P. 65 (instead of note at foot). " The climax of gradual 
 development." — The opinion expressed above, at the time 
 when the first edition of this book was published, was still 
 prevailing among savans. Since, then, however, the highly 
 interesting inquiries concerning the age of the human race 
 have made it clear that man must have lived on the earth 
 together with the large, now extinct, animals of that period, 
 as early as the time of the diluvium, a period of terrestrial 
 development preceding the present or alluvial period. 
 But most probably his existence reaches still further 
 back beyond the whole diluvial epoch into the later or 
 middle portions of the great tertiary epoch ; and in such 
 case the presence of man on earth in a temporal point of 
 view can only be reckoned by hundred thousands of years. 
 But even in that case the above assertion is not without 
 value, and in comparison with the immense periods of the 
 primeval world man must still be looked upon as one of the 
 last and youngest products of the great organic or earthly 
 process of formation and development. The reader is 
 further referred to Lyell's Age of Man, and the author's book 
 Nature and Science." (Note p. 146 seq.) ' 
 
 vi. — P. 71 (additional to). " Unworthy of the conception of 
 a perfect Creator." — A scientific attempt . . . (des Sensualis- 
 mus, 1865). In fact certain recent discoveries seem to lend 
 some actual support to the above view. Wöhler proved in 
 a meteor, which fell in Hungary in 1857, the existence of 
 organic formations of carbonetted hydrogen (Kohlenwas- 
 serstoff), and in another body of the same kind organic sub- 
 stances were discovered. (See Mohr's History of the Earth, 
 1866.) This proves that in the universal space traversed by 
 meteorites there is an organic substance, and in fact such a 
 one as, according to the well-known experiments of the 
 chymist Berthelot, can even be produced artificially from 
 inorganic bodies, forming a starting point for the production 
 of all organic substances. And since it has even been sup- 
 posed that perchance our earth may gradually have been 
 formed by the agglomeration of meteorites, the presence 
 thereon of organic substances from the very commencement 
 would not be a strange circumstance. 
 
APPENDIX. 267 
 
 vir. — P. 72. " Will throw more light on the subject." — This 
 hope has been realised sooner than the author could have 
 anticipated by the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species, 
 a work which has produced a total revolution in organic 
 natural science, and thrown a surprising light on the origin 
 and transformation of organic beings. 
 
 viii. — P. 78. " Carl Vogt, an opponent of the transmutation 
 theory, says, etc." — Since the above was written — and this 
 certainly is no small proof of the justness of our views and 
 the conquering power of truth — the standpoints of the dis- 
 tinguished physiologist named in the text, who hitherto 
 insisted to the utmost on the constancy of species in opposi- 
 tion to all theories of transformation, have, under the in- 
 fluence of Darwin's teaching, entirely altered. In his 
 Lectures on Man (Griessen, 1863) he says: — " I must now 
 confess that it (Darwinism) affords a better solution than 
 any other theory of the connexion between the different 
 types, and certainly is a step towards the attainment of 
 truth." 
 
 ix. — P. 82 (addition to note). " Appeared immediately in 
 numerous races." — In a somewhat similar manner Professor 
 Kölliker, of Würzburg, one of the most distinguished savans 
 of Germany, expresses himself in a lecture delivered at 
 Leipsic (1864) on Darwin's theory of creation. His funda- 
 mental thought is that, under the influence of a general law of 
 development creatures out of germs produced by them bring 
 forth creatures slightly differing from themselves, either 
 through the transition under peculiar circumstances of the 
 impregnated eggs into higher forms, or through the original 
 and later organisms producing ivithout impregnation from 
 germs or eggs other organisms, similar to the remarkable 
 process of the so-called parthenogenesis. The natural facts 
 on which Kölliker relies to support such a theory are the 
 changes occurring in each generation, the similarity of 
 embryos of the larger groups of animals and some further 
 experiments which show that an egg does not always neces- 
 sarily assume the same form. Now as in this manner the 
 
268 APPENDIX. 
 
 great plan of development of the organic world urges the 
 simpler forms to ever more diversified manifestations, there 
 take place either many sudden changes, or one form 
 gradually produces others of a totally different kind. 
 
 x.— P. 109. "Than the brains of the lower creatures." — 
 Recent researches by Borfarelli prove that the average 
 quantity of phosphorus contained in the brain is consider- 
 ably larger than hitherto supposed ; and that this substance 
 is far more abundant in the brain than in any other organ 
 of the body. 
 
 xr. — P. 109. " Than in grown-up persons." — According to 
 the investigations of Harless and Bibra the well-known 
 effects of etherisation by means of ether, chloroform, etc., 
 upon consciousness and sensibility, are due to the fact that 
 by such means fat is withdrawn from the nervous marrow — 
 a loss which indeed is speedily balanced in the organism by 
 the rapidity of the conversion of matter. Whence also the 
 quick passing away of the effects of ether or chloroform, 
 which, however, under certain circumstances, when the loss 
 was too rapid or too considerable, may bring on death. No 
 better instance than this to prove the immediate dependence 
 of psychic or soulish functions on the material condition of 
 the nervous matter need be looked for. 
 
 xii. — P. 128. "Proves the scientific ignorance of the 
 clamourers." — According to Dr. Bertillon the functions of 
 the brain are performed in the same manner as those of 
 the muscles, with this distinction, that the latter consume 
 carbon, while the brain consumes sulphur and phosphorus to 
 produce thought. This is the indubitable result of a long 
 series of experiments, based on the law of the unity of 
 forces. This cerebral consumption takes place between the 
 oxygen conducted to it by the arterial blood and the matte r 
 of the brain, containing a peculiar phosphorus-like fatty 
 substance. Whence all cerebral activity may at once be 
 arrested by stopping the supply of blood ; or, when extinct, 
 restored by the artificial injection of arterial blood. (See 
 also text and note, p. 147) [immediately following below.] 
 
APPENDIX. 269 
 
 xiii. — P. 147. " For its nourishment, integrity, and action" 
 — The above observation, since it was written, has been 
 fully verified by the experiments of physiologists. For 
 instance, on decapitating an animal, say a dog or rabbit, 
 the severed head gradually loses its excitability : the eyelids 
 are closed, the eyes rigid, the nostrils immovable. Now, if 
 at that moment blood of a bright red and deprived of its 
 fibrous matter be injected into the arteries of the brain, the 
 previously lifeless head is reanimated ; the eyelids open, the 
 nostrils expand, warmth and sensibility return, the eyes 
 revive, look at the bystanders and move in their sockets. 
 If the animal be called by its name, the eyes turn in the 
 direction whence the sound came. These signs of returning 
 life last as long as the injection is continued, and vanish 
 and reappear as the operation is suspended or recommenced. 
 These experiments have not yet been tried on human heads 
 severed from their bodies, but we may safely assume that 
 the same results would follow. But Brown- Sequard, to 
 whom especially we are indebted for these investigations, 
 made the attempt on a human arm recently cut off, though 
 already cold and insensible. In a few moments warmth, 
 sensibility, contraction of the muscles, in fact, all the normal 
 activities returned, and M. Brown-Sequard was enabled to 
 repeat the experiment with the same success, until sheer 
 fatigue compelled him to desist. 
 
 xiv. — P. 178. Insert in text after — " Form the chief features 
 of their religious worship," as follows : — The notions of the 
 Japanese, a people far advanced in mental culture, on 
 decency and morality, are so different from ours and 
 apparently so immoral, that a comparison between them 
 appears out of the question. 5 ' * Continue : " Who, therefore, 
 asserts with Liebig, etc." 
 
 * Morality in Japan, according to the excellent accounts 
 of W. Reinhold, is an idea totally different from ours. What 
 we designate by the contemptuous term of " prostitution" 
 in Japan is a universal custom, promoted and regulated by 
 laws and the supervision of the State; and this apparently 
 so strange mode of viewing the matter influences both 
 
270 APPENDIX. 
 
 public and family life. It is only to secret not to public 
 prostitution that any stigma attaches. fr It is difficult/' says 
 Reinhold significantly, " to explain this distinction, unless 
 we accept morality as a relative idea." 
 
 xv. — P. 189. " To what religious sect they belong." — There 
 are at present in England one million of people that are not 
 baptised, and belong to no religious community. "What 
 can you tell me about Jesus Christ ?" asked a street mis- 
 sionary of a lounger on the pavement. " Never heard of 
 the Gentleman !" was the reply. 
 
 xvi. — P. 228. " Old animals are more 'prudent than young 
 ones." — Woldemar Schultz relates in his Brazilian Travels 
 (see Aiisland, 1866, No. 24) that old mules, that have grown 
 grey in the service of man often get beside themselves at 
 the sight of a pack-saddle, and strike with then- legs at the 
 object of their torment. Others, more malicious, indeed 
 allow themselves to be loaded, but then begin to kick and 
 run away, until they have thrown off all their burdens. " It 
 is remarkable," says Schultz, "how the older loaded mules 
 in travelling choose such passages between rocks and trees 
 only, as are wide enough to allow them to pass with their 
 loads, for which reason they will often make great detours. 
 But the younger animals are not so particular, and often 
 painfully seek to force their way through narrow passes. 
 
 xvii. — P. 234. " A letter locality under the same roof 
 selected." — A similar and still more remarkable instance is 
 reported as having occurred and been well observed at the 
 village of Weddendorf, in the parish of G-ardelegen, province 
 of Magdeburg, where a female stork, having been detected 
 in adultery, was, after a previous serious consultation, killed 
 by her mate and other storks with strokes of their beaks, 
 and thrown out of the nest. Of a sick hatching goose it is 
 said that she went to another and cackled at her, whereupon 
 the latter accompanied her and undertook the incubation. 
 The sick goose sat down beside her and died an hour after. 
 
 xviii. — P. 237. "In their nature merely relative, and not 
 
APPENDIX. 271 
 
 absolute." — In comparing man with the animal it is a com- 
 mon mistake to place on the one side the civilised European, 
 and on the other the brute little-known animal, instead of 
 directing the attention to the outermost limits of humanity 
 and the degrees of transition. Very opposite are Professor 
 Kölliker's remarks in his above-mentioned book on Darwin's 
 theory : " If we compare the cultivated Indo-German with 
 the highest mammalia, the gulf is indeed great, not only 
 intellectually, but even corporeally, and we can easily 
 understand the repugnance to acknowledge any generic 
 relationship between man and certain mammalia, as, for 
 instance, the highest apes. But if we look at the Australian 
 or Bushman, whose body may almost be called animal, and 
 whose psychic life is on the lowermost step, the gulf is not 
 so great ; nor is a comparison and juxta-position with such a 
 being particularly flattering. And who can tell us that the 
 now known apes most resembling man, gorillas, chimpan- 
 zees, and orang-outangs really were the mammalia most 
 resembling our race that ever existed, or that there were not 
 formerly men still more brutal and debased than such as we 
 know at the present day ?" 
 
 xix. — P. 242. "The superiority above his fellow creatures." 
 — M. Tremaux, in several discourses on the Unity of the 
 Human Eace, addressed to the French Academy, shows the 
 far reaching influences of soil and climate upon the mental 
 condition of man and the various races of men by examples 
 taken from the history of nations, and especially points out 
 a very decided connexion between geological formations and 
 the men living thereon. " The most imperfect man," he 
 says, " belongs to the oldest formation and the less favoured 
 climate, whilst the most perfect man always inhabits the 
 country which on a comparatively small space offers the 
 greatest variety, and peculiarly belongs to recent forma- 
 tions. . . . Now, as long as a people or animal does not leave 
 its native soil, or, on leaving it, finds one of the same 
 nature, no change takes place ; but it changes as soon as it 
 settles on new soil or enters into different circumstances; 
 advantageously, if the new soil be more recent ; detriment- 
 ally, if it be older than the one left behind." 
 
T. ETCHARDS, 57, GREAT QUEEN STREET. 
 
 £B 141949 
 
/"Vi 
 
 
 : 
 

 
 ■» .r\V" 
 
 
 3 ^ 
 
 r^* r ^ % * 
 
 f\>*o, ■ V'"°cP*V-< ■ V" s ^-'< -.<*>* VV- 
 
 **> 
 
 |fe \^ 
 
 o" * 
 
 
 \ 
 
 ^ * *'Ä^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 £ *Wr. ^ 
 
 
 0^ . 
 
 
 
 MM** ^ ~:mm\ ^$ 
 
 
 
 * «> 
 
 .v %> 
 
 k v ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ■Vi 
 
 -CV • « i * o , <>>. „(V 
 
 ^q Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
 *2 Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
 
 Treatment Date: Oct. 2004 , 
 
 < 
 
 PreservationTechnologies 
 
 A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION ' 
 
 1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
 Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
 (7241 779-2111 
 

 ^- . **^/,%^ ° <•% ■'■■ % 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 **■%. 
 
 3» 
 
 <. 
 
 "%< 
 
 &wX^^-X 
 
 . ... . <**''** 
 
 ,. v - «$? ^ %«{§?* «$? ^s *_ 
 
 #M>2 z &<v 
 
 ^°^ 
 
 
 \ r v." v . -ay rf 
 
 z u v