The riddle of the universe at the close of the nineteenth century / by Ernst Haeckel ; translated by Joseph McCabe.

  • Haeckel, Ernst, 1834-1919. Welträthsel
Date:
1902
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The riddle of the universe at the close of the nineteenth century / by Ernst Haeckel ; translated by Joseph McCabe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with mechanical and realistic theories. Dualism, in the widest sense, breaks up the universe into two entirely distinct substances —the material world and an immaterial God, who is represented to be its creator, sustainer, and ruler. Monism, on the con- trary (likewise taken in its widest sense), recognises one sole substance in the uni- verse, which is at once “God and Nature”; body and spirit (or matter and energy) it hokls to be inseparable. The extra-mun- dane God of dualism leads necessarily to Theism ; the intra-mundane God of the monist leads to Pantheism. The different ideas of monism and maferialism, and likewise the essentially distinct tendencies of theoretical and prac- tical materialism, are still very frequently confused. As this and other similar cases of confusion of ideas are very prejudicial, and give rise to innumerable errors, we shall make the following brief observations, in Order to prevent misunderslanding :— I. Pure monism is identical neither with the theoretical materialism that denies the cxistencc of spirit, and dissolves the world into a hcap of dead atoms, nor with the theoretical spiritualism (lately cntitled “cnergetic” spiritualism by Ostwald) which rejects the notion of matter, and considers the world to be a specially-arranged group of “ cnergics,” or immatcrial natural forccs. II. On the contrary, we hold, with Goethe, that “ matter cannot exist and be operative without spirit, nor spirit without matter.” We adhere firmly to the pure, unequivocal monism of Spinoza: Matter, or infinitely- extended substance, and Spirit (or Energy), or sensitive and thinking substance, are the two fundamental attributes, or principal properties, of the all-embracing divme essence of the world, the universal substance. (Cf. chap. xii.) CHAPTER II. OUR BODILY PRAME Fundamental importance of anatomy. Human anatomy. Hippocrates, Aristotle, Galen, Vesalius. Comparative anatomy. Georges Cuvier. Johannes Müller. Carl Gegenbauer. Histology. The cellular Iheory. Schleiden and Schwann. Kölliker. Virchow. Man a vertebratc—a tetrapod—a mammal—a placen- tal—a primate. Prosimise and simite. The catarrhinse. Papiomorphic and anthropo- morphic. apes. Essential llkeness of man and the ape in corporal structure. All biological research, all Investigation into the forms and vital activities of organ- isms, must first deal with the visible body, in which the morphological and physio- logical phenomena are observed. This fundamental rule holds good for man just as much as for all other living things. Moreover, the inquiry must not confine itself to mere observation of the outerform; it must penetrate to the interior, and study both the general plan and the minute details of the structure. The Science which pursues this fundamental Investi- gation in the broadest sense is anatomy. The first Stimulus to an inquiry into the human frame arose, naturally, in medicine. As it was usimlly practised by the priests in the older civilisations, we may assume that these highest representatives of the educa- tion of the time had already acquired a certain amount of anatomical knowledge two thousand years before Christ, or even earlier. We do not, however, find more exact observations, founded on the dissec- tion of mammals, and applied, by analogy, to the human frame, until we come to the Greek scientists of the sixth and fifth cen- turies before Christ — Empedocles ■ (of Agrigentum) and Democritus (of Abdera), and especially the most famous physician of classic antiquity, Hippocrates (of Cos). 11 was from these and other sources that the great Aristotle, the renowned “ Father of natural history,” equally comprehensive as investigator and philosopher, derived his first knowledge. After hirn only one anatomist of any consequence is found in antiquity, the Greek physician, Claudius Galenus (of Pergamus), who developed a wealthy practice in Rome in the second Century after Christ, under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. All these ancient anato- mists acquired their knowledge, as a rule, not by the dissection of the human body itself—which was then sternly forbidden— but by a study of the bodies of the animals which most closely resembled man, espe- cially the apes ; they were all, indeed, com- parative anatomists. The triumph of Christianity and its mys- tic theories meant retrogression to anatomy, as it did to all the other Sciences. The popes were resolved above all things to detain humanity in ignorance ; they rightly deemed a knowledge of the hum.an organism to be a dangerous source of enlightcnment
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