The wonders of life : a popular study of biological philosophy / by Ernst Haeckel ; translated by Joseph McCabe.
- Ernst Haeckel
- Date:
- 1905
Licence: In copyright
Credit: The wonders of life : a popular study of biological philosophy / by Ernst Haeckel ; translated by Joseph McCabe. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![metaphysics, and partly to a confusioir of it with hedonism. This practical materialism in its extreme forms (as Aristippus of Cyrene and the Cyrenaic school, and after- wards Epicurus, taught it) finds the chief end of life in pleasure—at one time crude sensual pleasure, and at others spiritual pleasure. Up to a certain point, this thirst for happiness and a pleasant enjoyable life is innate in every man and higher animal, and so far just; it only began to be censured as sinful when Christianity directed the thoughts of men to eternal life, and taught them that their life on earth was only a preparation for the future. We shall see afterwards, when we come to weigh the value of life (chap, xv.), that this asceti- cism is unjustifiable and unnatural. But as every legitimate enjoyment can become wrong by excess, and every virtue be turned into vice, so a narrow hedonism is to be condemned, especially when it allies itself with egoism. However, we must point out that this excessive thirst for ])leasure is in no way connected with mate- rialism, but is often found among idealists. Many convinced supporters of theoretical materialism (manyscientists and physicians, for instance) lead very simple, blameless lives, and are little disposed to material pleasures. On the other hand, many priests, theologians, and idealist philosophers, who ijreach theoretical idealism, are pronounced hedonists in practice. In olden times many temples served at one and the same time for the theoretic worship of the gods, and for practical excesses in the way of wine and love; and even in our day the luxurious and often vicious lives of the higher clergy (at Rome, for instance) do not fall far short of the ancient models. This paradoxical situation is due to the special attractiveness of everything that is forbidden. But it is utterly unjust to extend the natural feeling against excessive and egoistic hedonism to theoretical materialism and to monism. Equally unjust is the habit, still widely spread, of depreciating matter, as such, in favour of spirit. Impartial biology hgs tqught us of la|e years that whqt vye call ‘■spirit” Is—as Goethe said long ago— inseparably bound up with matter. Expe- rience has never yet discovered any spirit apart from matter. On the other hand, pure dynamism, now often called energism (and often spiritual- ism), is quite as one-sided as pure material- ism. J ust as the latter takes one attribute of substance, matter, as the one chief cause of phenomena, dynamism takes its second attribute, force (dynamis). Leibnitz most consistently developed this system among the older German philosophers ; and Fechner and Zdllner have recently adopted it in part. The latest development of it is found in Wilhelm Ostwald’s Natural Philosophy (1902). This work is purely monistic, and very ingeniously endeavours to show that the same forces are at work in the whole of nature, organic and in- organic, and that these may all be com- prised under the general head of energy. It is especially satisfactory that Ostwald has traced the highest functions of the human mind (consciousness, thought, feel- ing, and will), as well as the simplest physical and chemical processes (heat, electricity, chemical affinity, etc.), to special forms of energy, or natural force. How- ever, he is wrong when he supposes that his energism is an entirely new system. The chief points of it are found in Leibnitz ; and other Leipzig scientists, especially Fechner and Zdllner, had come very close to similar spiritualistic views—the latter going into outright spiritism. Ostwald’s chief mistake is to take the terms “energy” and “ substance ” to be synonymous. Gertainly his universal, all-creating energy is, in the main, the same as the substance of Spinoza, which we have also adopted in our “law of substance.” But Ostwald would deprive substance of the attribute of matter altogether, and boasts of his Refutatioti of Materialism (1895). He would leave it only the one attribute, energy, and reduce all matter to immaterial points of force. Nevertheless, as chemist and physicist, he never gets rid of space-filling substance— which is all we mean by “matter”—and has to treat it and its parts, the physical molecules and chemical atoms (even if only conceived as symbols), daily as “vehicles of energy.” Ostwald would reject even these in his pursuit of the illusion of a “ science without hypotheses.” As a fact, he is forced every day, like every other exact scientist, to assume and apply ip practice the indispensable idea of matter, and its separate pqrticles, the rnoleculeg and aj:qms. Knowledge is impossible with? Qut hypotheses. Monism is best expressed as hylozoism) in so far as this removes the antithesis pf materialism and spiritualism (or mechani- cism and dynamism), and unites them in a natural and harmonious system. Our monistic system has been charged with leading to pure naturalism; one of its most vehement critics, Frederick Paulsen,](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b28075754_0046.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
