The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy. Ernst Haeckel

Dualistic Theory of Life (Vitalism) 1. The phenomena of life are merely functions of plasm, determined by the physical, chemical, and morphological character of the living matter. 1. The phenomena of life are wholly or partly independent of the plasm, and determined by a special immaterial force, the vital force (vis vitalis). 2. The energy of the plasm (as the sum-total of the forces which are connected with the living matter) is subject to the general laws of physics and chemistry. 2. The energy of the plasm is wholly or partly subject to the immaterial vital force, which controls and directs the physical and chemical forces of the living matter. 3. The obvious regularity of the vital processes and the organization they produce are the outcome of natural evolution; their physiological factors (heredity and adaptation) are subject to the law of substance. 3. The general regularity in the organization and in the vital processes it accomplishes is the outcome of conscious creation; it can only be explained by intelligent immaterial forces which are not subject to the law of substance. 4. All the various functions have thus been mechanically produced, orderly structures having been created by adaptation and transmitted to posterity by heredity. 4. All the various functions of organisms have been produced by design, the historical evolution (orphyletic transformation) being directed to a preconceived ideal end. 5. Nutrition is a physico-chemical process, the metabolism of which has an analogy in inorganic catalysis. 5. Nutrition is an inexplicable miracle of life, and cannot be understood by chemical and physical processes. 6. Reproduction is a mechanical consequence of transgressive growth, analogous to the elective multiplication of crystals. 6. Reproduction is an inexplicable miracle of life, without any analogy in inorganic nature. 7. The movement of organisms is, in every form, not essentially different from the movements of inorganic dynamos. 7. The movement of organisms is an inexplicable metaphysical miracle of life, specifically different from all inorganic movements. 8. Sensation is a general form of the energy of substance, not specifically different in sensitive organisms and irritable inorganic objects (such as powder, dynamite). There is no such thing as an immaterial soul. 8. The sensation of organisms can only be explained by ascribing a soul to them, an immaterial, immortal being that only dwells for a time in the body. After death this spirit lives an independent life.

      III

MIRACLES

       Table of Contents

      Miracle and natural law—Belief in miracles of savages (fetichism), of semi-civilized (idolatry), of civilized (theism), and of educated people (dualism)—Religious belief in miracles—Apostles' Creed—Article relating to creation—Article relating to redemption—Article relating to immortality—Philosophic belief in miracles—Academic thinkers and Free-thinkers—Dualism of Plato and Kant—Belief in miracles in the nineteenth century, in modern metaphysics, theology, and politics.

      In ordinary parlance the word "miracle" means a number of different things. We say a phenomenon is miraculous or wonderful[5] when we cannot explain it and trace its causes. But we say a natural object or a work of art is wonderful when it is unusually beautiful and imposing—when it passes the ordinary limits of our experience. In this work I do not take the word in this relative sense, but in the absolute sense in which a phenomenon is said to transcend the limits of natural law and lie beyond the range of rational explanation. In this sense it means the same as "supernatural" or "transcendental." We can know natural phenomena by our reason and bring them within our cognizance. The miraculous can only be accepted on faith.

      The belief in supernatural miracles is in contradiction to pure reason, which lays the foundations of all science. Kant, who won so great a vogue for the term "pure reason," understood by this originally "reason as independent of experience." The phrase was used in a narrower sense subsequently to express independence of dogma and prejudice, as the base of pure and unprejudiced science. In this sense we oppose pure reason to superstition.

      I have dealt in the sixteenth chapter of the Riddle with the important question of the relations of knowledge and faith. But I must return to the subject here, as what I said has given rise to a good deal of misunderstanding and criticism. I by no means claimed, as my opponents allege, to "know everything," or to have solved every problem. In fact, I said repeatedly that there are narrow limits to our knowledge, and always will be. I had also expressly stated that the irresistible impulse to learn in the intelligent man, or reason's constant demand to know causes, presses us to fill up the gaps in our knowledge by faith. But I had at the same time pointed out the contrast between scientific (natural) and religious (supernatural) faith. The one leads us to form hypotheses and theories; the other ends in myths and superstition. Scientific faith fills the gaps in our knowledge of natural law with temporary hypotheses; but mystic religious faith contradicts natural law, and transcends its limits in the form of a belief in miracles.

      The great triumph of the progress of science in the nineteenth century, its theoretical value in the formation of a rational philosophy of life, and its practical value on the various sides of modern civilization, consist, above all, in the absolute recognition of fixed natural laws. That relation of things to each other, which we call causation, makes it possible for us to understand and explain facts. We feel that our thirst for a knowledge of the causes of things is contented when science points out the "sufficient reason" of them. In the whole province of inorganic cosmology natural law is now generally recognized to be all-powerful; in astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry all phenomena are reduced to fixed laws, and in the long-run to the all-embracing law of substance, the great law of the conservation of matter and force (Riddle, chapter xii.).

      It is otherwise in biology, or the organic section of cosmology. Here we still find miracles set up in opposition to the law of substance, and the transgression of natural laws by supernatural forces. The belief in miracles of this kind, which pure reason calls superstition, is still very wide-spread—much more prevalent than is usually thought. For my part, I hold that superstition and unreason are the worst enemies of the human race, while science and reason are its greatest friends. Hence it is our duty and task to attack the belief in miracles wherever we find it, in the interest of the race. We have to prove that the reign of natural law extends over the whole world of phenomena as far as we can reach it. A general survey of the history of faith on the one hand and of science on the other clearly shows that the advance of the latter has always been accompanied by an increasing knowledge of fixed natural laws and the shrinking of superstition into an ever-lessening area. To-day we convince ourselves of this by an impartial examination of mental culture at the various stages of civilization. For this purpose I take the four chief stages of mental development which Fritz Schultze has given in his Physiology of Uncivilized Races, and Alexander Sutherland in his work, On the Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct: 1, savages; 2, barbarians; 3, civilized races; 4, educated races (cf. chapter i.).

      The mental life of savages rises little above that of the higher mammals, especially the apes, with which they are genealogically connected. Their whole interest is restricted to the physiological functions of nutrition and reproduction, or the satisfaction of hunger and thirst in the crudest animal fashion. Without fixed habitation, constantly struggling for existence, they live on the raw produce of nature—fruits, the roots of wild plants, and the animals they fish in the water or catch on land. Their intelligence moves within the narrowest bounds, and one can no more (or no less) speak of their reason than of that of the more