and scientific investigation of a reciprocal action, to an identification of the two factors which act upon one another, is still an infinite step. If science is not even able to identify material motion and sensation, still less can it identify material motion and the spiritual and ethic activities. When this is done, it is done only in consequence of the same confounding of condition and cause which we had to expose on the occasion of the assertion of the possibility of explaining the origin of life or of sensation, and of consciousness or of self-consciousness. But we here also willingly admit that the realm in which causality reigns in the form of mechanism, aims at being the support, foundation, and instrument of another realm where causality still reigns, but mechanism ceases. How far investigation may still proceed in the direction of those interesting points and lines where both realms touch one another in causal reciprocal action, we do not know. We are hardly able to indicate the direction in which the investigation must proceed, and this direction seems to be assigned to it by the idea of Auslösung. * The idea of Auslösung, which plays such an *This word, which is of recent coinage in Germany, has been found so incapable of being rendered by an exact English equivalent, that it has been thought best to retain it and to give the author's own explanation of the meaning which he desired it to express. He says, in a note to the translator: "I was led to this idea [of Auslosung] in a small essay of Robert von Mayer (" Ueber Auslösung," 1876). Afterwards Mayer personally stated to me that he heartily approved the emphasis I had given to this idea, and said that he had only thought of the fact that psychical processes, like the action of the will, losen aus (release) physiological processes, like the action of the muscles, and that I had carried the idea farther, in saying that psychical processes are ausgelost (released) by physiological processes, and that this is a very important step farther on the way of investigation. Mayer important rôle in physics, seems to be still fruitful for the knowledge of psycho-physical life: bodily functions lösen aus spiritual ones, spiritual functions bodily ones. But so much the more clearly does this theory show the limits of mechanism: mechanism reigns in the world of bodies from the Auslösungen and to the Auslösungen, with which the mind induces the body to activity, and the body the mind; beyond these limits causality still reigns, but no longer mechanism. Now if thus the mechanical view of the world has within its own most proper realm-the realm of material phenomena—its limits, even if they are capable of being moved farther; and if it is without any scientific acceptance in the realm of soul and mind: its usurpations reach the highest possible degree when it pretends to himself thought it would be necessary to call the attention to this, when he further developed the ideas he had given in the before-mentioned essay; his intention to do so was prevented by his death. Auslosung is a word originated by modern mechanical science, and means: (1.) Slight mechanical operations of detaching and the like, by which another and more important action, whose forces were heretofore restrained, can be set into activity : e. g., the pressure which sets in motion a machine, previously at rest, is Auslosung; the pressure on the trigger of a gun is Auslosung; the friction of a match which is the beginning of a great fire is Auslosung. (2.) This idea may now be applied to chemical processes: e. g., a glass of sugar-water will remain sweet unless some foreign element is introduced into it, but the moment it receives a fermenting substance either by chance, from the air, or with intention, then the sugar water is brought into a process of chemical decomposition, and from this there results Auslosung; but the introduction of the fermenting agent into the sugar-water is Auslosung. (3.) Von Mayer applies this idea to psychophysical relations of life, and says: when the will acting through the agency of the motor nerves sets in motion the muscles, this is Auslosung."-[TRANS.] explain the last causes of things. For from its very nature it follows that it is only able to explain the reciprocal action of material things among themselves, when these things in their qualities, or the causes of their qualities and conditions, are already present, and the laws which they follow are already active. As to the origin of those qualities or their causes, and of these laws, this view leaves us entirely in the dark. : CHAPTER II. METAPHYSICAL CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE §1. Elimination of the Idea of Design in the World.Monism. From this mechanical view of the world, quite a peculiar conclusion has been recently drawn-not by Darwin, who does not give any opinion at all about the mechanical view of the world, as such, or about its extension and influence, nor, indeed, by Darwinians, not even by all followers of a mechanical view of the world, but only by a part of them; namely, by those who have in a high degree attracted to themselves the attention of reading people. This conclusion is nothing less than the elimination of the idea of design in nature. This phenomenon demands our attention. Heretofore, the proof of plan, design, and end in nature, at large and in detail, was looked upon as the most beautiful blossom and fruit of a thoughtful contemplation of nature; it was the great and beautiful common property, in the enjoyment of which the direct, the scientific, and the religious contemplation of nature peacefully participated. Now this view is to be given up forever, in consequence of nothing else than Darwin's selection theory. With an energy -we may say with a passionateness and confidence of victory-such as we were accustomed to see only in the most advanced advocates of materialism, Ludwig Büch Ј ner, D. F. Strauss, Häckel, Oskar Schmidt, Helmholtz, the editor of the "Ausland" and some of his associates, and our often-mentioned "Anonymus,"-in a common attack, assail every idea of a conformity to an end in nature, every idea of a goal toward which the development at large and individually strives; in a word, the whole category of teleology.* In order to be just in our judgment, we shall have to let the advocates of this view speak for themselves ;— the advocates of Dysteleology, as Häckel, who is so extremely productive in forming new exotic words, calls it; or of Aposkopiology, as Ebrard, in his "Apologetik" ("Apologetics "), correcting the etymology, some * For the use of readers who do not understand Greek, we may state that the word teleology is derived from the Greek word telos, Gen. teleos: end, purpose, aim; and means the "doctrine of design or a conformity to the end in view," or, as K. E. von Baer prefers and wishes to have introduced into scientific language, "the doctrine of the striving toward an end" (Zielstrebigkeit). It seems to be quite a superficial treatment of an idea on whose reception or rejection no less a thing than an entire view of the world with all its most important and deepest questions depends, when Dr. G. Seidlitz, in an essay on the success of Darwinism ("Ausland," 1874, No. 37), states incidentally that teleology is derived from the Greek téλɛos, perfect. It is true that the Greek adjective for perfect is also derived from that noun, vélos, which has the same root as the German word Ziel, and there is even an Ionic form for that adjective which is téλso5, but the Attic form is téletos; and since modern languages, when a choice is allowed, do not derive their Greek foreign words from the Ionic, but from the Attic dialect, that word—were it really derived from that adjective and did it express "doctrine of perfection”— would have to be teleiology, or, in Latinized form, teliology. As far as we know, the word, since it was introduced into scientific language, has never been derived from any other root than from Télos, Gen. Télɛos, end, and has never been used in any other sense than to express the doctrine of a purpose and end in the world. |