Life and Matter A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe'

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CHAPTER I

MONISM

In his recent Presidential Address before the British Association, at Cambridge, Mr Balfour rather emphasised the existence and even the desirability of a barrier between Science and Philosophy which recent advances have tended to minimise though never to obliterate. He appeared to hint that it is best for scientific men not to attempt to philosophise, but to restrict themselves to their own domain; though, on the other hand, he did not appear to wish similarly to limit philosophers, by recommending that they should keep themselves unacquainted with scientific facts, and ignorant of the theories which weld those facts together. Indeed, in his own person he is an example of the opposite procedure, for he himself frequently takes pleasure in overlooking the boundary and making a wide survey of the position on its physical side—a thing which it is surely very desirable for a philosopher to do.

But if that process be regarded as satisfactory, it is surely equally permissible for a man of science occasionally to look over into the philosophic region, and survey the territory on that side also, so far as his means permit. And if philosophers object to this procedure, it must be because they have found by experience that men of science who have once transcended or transgressed the boundary are apt to lose all sense of reasonable constraint, and to disport themselves as if they had at length escaped into a region free from scientific trammels—a region where confident assertions might be freely made, where speculative hypothesis might rank as theory, and where verification was both unnecessary and impossible.

The most striking instance of a scientific man who on entering philosophic territory has exhibited signs of exhilaration and emancipation, is furnished by the case of Professor Haeckel of Jena. In an eloquent and popular work, entitled das Welt-Räthsel, the World Problem, or "The Riddle of the Universe," this eminent biologist has surveyed the whole range of existence, from the foundations of physics to the comparison of religions, from the facts of anatomy to the freedom of the will, from the vitality of cells to the attributes of God; treating these subjects with wide though by no means superhuman knowledge, and with considerable critical and literary ability. This work, through the medium of a really excellent translation by Mr M'Cabe, and under the auspices of the Rationalist Press Association, has obtained a wide circulation in this country, being purchasable for six-pence at any bookstall; where one often finds it accompanied by another still more popular and similarly-priced treatise by the same author, a digest or summary of the religious aspect of his scientific philosophy, under the title The Confession of Faith of a Man of Science.

Professor Haeckel's credentials, as a learned biologist who introduced Darwinism into Germany, doubtless stand high; and it is a great tribute to his literary ability that a fairly abstruse work on so comprehensive a subject should have obtained a wide notoriety, and have been welcomed by masses of thinking readers, especially by many among the skilled artisans, in this country....