Ernst Haeckel and the "World Enigma"

I

What should philosophy do alongside and above the individual special sciences?¹ The representatives of the latter are probably not averse to answering this question simply as follows: it is supposed to be nothing at all. In their view, the entire field of reality is encompassed by the specialized sciences. Why anything else that goes beyond this?

All sciences regard it as their task to research truth. Truth can be understood as nothing other than a system of concepts that reflects the phenomena of reality in their lawful context in a way that corresponds to the facts. If someone stands still and says that for him the network of concepts, which depicts a certain area of reality, has an absolute value and he needs nothing more, then a higher interest cannot be demonstrated to him. However, such a person will not be able to explain to us why his collection of concepts has a higher value than, for example, a collection of stamps, which, when organized systematically, also depicts certain connections in reality. This is the reason why the argument about the value of philosophy with many natural scientists does not lead to any results. They are lovers of concepts in the same sense that there are lovers of stamps and coins. But there is an interest that goes beyond this. This interest seeks, with the help and on the basis of the sciences, to enlighten man about his position in relation to the universe, or in other words: this interest leads man to place himself in such a relationship to the world as is possible and necessary according to the results obtained in the sciences.

In the individual sciences, man confronts nature, separates himself from it and observes it; he alienates himself from it. In philosophy he seeks to reunite with it. He seeks to make the abstract relationship into which he has fallen in scientific observation into a real, concrete, living one. The scientific researcher wants to acquire an awareness of the world and its effects through knowledge; the philosopher wants to use this awareness to make himself a vital member of the world as a whole. In this sense, individual science is a preliminary stage of philosophy. We have a similar relationship in the arts. The composer works on the basis of the theory of composition. The latter is a sum of knowledge that is a necessary precondition for composing. Composing transforms the laws of musicology into life, into real reality. Anyone who does not understand that a similar relationship exists between philosophy and science is not fit to be a philosopher. All real philosophers were free conceptual artists. With them, human ideas became artistic material and the scientific method became artistic technique. Thus the abstract scientific consciousness is elevated to concrete life. Our ideas become powers of life. We do not merely have a knowledge of things, but we have turned knowledge into a real, self-controlling organism; our real, active consciousness has taken precedence over a mere passive perception of truths.

I have often heard it said that our task at present is to collect building block after building block. The time is over when philosophical doctrines were proudly put forward without first having the materials to hand. Once we have collected enough of this material, the right genius will emerge and carry out the construction. Now is not the time to build systems. This view arises from a regrettable lack of clarity about the nature of science. If the latter had the task of collecting the facts of the world, registering them and organizing them systematically and expediently according to certain points of view, then one could speak like this. But then we would have to renounce all knowledge altogether, for we would probably only finish collecting the facts at the end of days, and then we would lack the necessary time to carry out the required scholarly registration work.

Whoever realizes just once what he actually wants to achieve through science will soon understand the folly of this demand, which requires an infinite amount of work. When we confront nature, it initially stands before us like a profound mystery, it stretches out before our senses like an enigma. A mute being looks out at us. How can we bring light into this mystical darkness? How can we solve the riddle?

The blind man who enters a room can only feel darkness in it. No matter how long he wanders around and touches all the objects: Brightness will never fill the room for him. Just as this blind man faces the furnishings of the room, so in a higher sense man faces nature, who expects the solution to the riddle from the contemplation of an infinite number of facts. There is something in nature that a thousand facts do not reveal to us, if we lack the visual power of the mind to see it.

Every thing has two sides. One is the outside. We perceive it with our senses. But there is also an inner side. This presents itself to the mind when it knows how to observe. No one will believe in his own inability in any matter. Whoever lacks the ability to perceive this inner side would prefer to deny it to man altogether, or to disparage those who pretend to possess it as fantasists. Nothing can be done about an absolute inability, and one could only pity those who, because of it, can never gain insight into the depths of the world's being. The psychologist, however, does not believe in this inability. Every person with normal mental development has the ability to descend into those depths to a certain point. But the convenience of thinking prevents many from doing so. Their spiritual weapons are not blunt, but the bearers are too casual to wield them. It is infinitely more convenient to pile fact upon fact than to seek out the reasons for them by thinking. Above all, such an accumulation of facts rules out the possibility of someone else coming along and overturning what we have advocated. In this way we never find ourselves in the position of having to defend our intellectual positions; we need not be upset that tomorrow someone will advocate the opposite of our current positions. By merely dealing with actual truth, we can lull ourselves into the belief that no one can deny us this truth, that we are creating for eternity. Yes, we also create for eternity, but we only create zeros. We lack the courage of thought to give these zeros a value by placing a meaningful number in front of them in the form of an idea.

Few people today have any idea of this: that something can be true, even if the opposite can be asserted with no less right. There are no unconditional truths. We drill deep into a thing of nature, we bring up the most mysterious wisdom from the most hidden shafts; we turn around, drill in a second place: and the opposite shows itself to be just as justified. That every truth is only valid in its place, that it is only true as long as it is asserted under the conditions under which it was originally founded, this must be understood above all.

Who today does not cringe with respect when the name Friedrich Theodor Vischer is mentioned? But not many people know that this man considered it the greatest achievement of his life to have thoroughly attained the above-mentioned conviction of the nature of truth. If they did know it, then a quite different air would flow towards them from Vischer's magnificent works; and one would encounter less ceremonial praise, but more unconstrained understanding of this writer. Where are the times when Schiller found deep understanding when he praised the philosophical mind over the bread scholar! the one who digs unreservedly for the treasures of truth, even if he is exposed to the danger that a second treasure digger will immediately devalue everything for him with a new find compared to the one who eternally repeats only the banal but absolutely "true": "Two times two is four".

We must have the courage to enter boldly into the realm of ideas, even at the risk of error. Those who are too cowardly to err cannot be fighters for the truth. An error that springs from the mind is worth more than a truth that comes from platitude. He who has never asserted anything that is in some sense untrue is not fit to be a scientific thinker.

For cowardly fear of error, our science has fallen victim to bareness.

It is almost hair-raising which character traits are praised today as virtues of the scientific researcher. If you were to translate them into the realm of practical living, the result would be the opposite of a firm, resolute, energetic character.

A recently published work owes its origin to a firm, bold thinker's courage, which, on the basis of the great actual results of natural science and from a true, genuine philosophical spirit, simultaneously attempts to solve the world riddles: Ernst Haeckel's "The World Riddles".

II

"Forty years of Darwinism! What tremendous progress in our knowledge of nature! And what a change in our most important views, not only in the fields of biology as a whole, but also in anthropology and all the so-called "human sciences"!" This is how Ernst Haeckel was able to speak of the scientific achievements associated with the name Darwin in the speech he gave at the Fourth International Zoological Congress in Cambridge on August 26, 1898. Just four years after the publication of Darwin's epoch-making work "On the Origin of Species in the Animal and Vegetable Kingdom by Means of Natural Breeding" (London 1859), Haeckel himself became the appointed pioneer, but also the continuator of Darwin's views with his "General Morphology of Organisms" (Berlin 1866). The boldness of thought, the sharpness of mind of this natural scientist and world thinker, which did not shy away from any consequence arising from the new doctrine, were already clearly evident in this book. Since then, he himself has worked tirelessly for a further thirty-three years on the construction of the scientific world view that makes our century appear as the "century of natural science". Special works that shed a bright light on hitherto unknown areas of natural life, and summarizing writings which, from the newly gained point of view, dealt with the whole field of knowledge that today satisfies our highest spiritual needs, are the fruit of this research life endowed with rare energy.

And now, in his "Welträtseln", this spirit presents to us "the further elaboration, substantiation and supplementation of the convictions" which he has "already held for a lifetime" in his other "writings".

What is most striking to anyone who studies Haeckel's achievements with understanding is the unity and coherence of the thinker's personality from which they emanate. There is nothing in him of the questionable striving of those who seek the "reconciliation of religion and culture" in order to be able to "feel piously and think freely at the same time". For Haeckel, there is only one source of true culture: "courageous striving for knowledge of the truth" and "gaining a clear, scientific view of the world based firmly on it" (Welträtsel, p.3 f.). He is also characterized by the iron rigour of the thinker, who relentlessly labels everything as untruth that he has recognized as such. With such rigor, he wages his war against the reactionary powers that, at the end of our enlightened century, would like to call back the former darkness of the mind.

"Die Welträtsel" is a book inspired by devotion to the truth and abhorrence of outdated endeavors that are harmful to scientific insight. A book that is uplifting for us not only because of the level of insight from which the author views life and the world, but also because of the moral energy and passion for knowledge that shine out of it. For Haeckel, the natural world view has become a creed that he defends not only with reason, but with his heart. "Through reason alone can we arrive at true knowledge of nature and the solution to the riddles of the world. Reason is man's highest good and the one virtue that alone distinguishes him essentially from the animals. However, it has only acquired this high value through the advancement of culture and intellectual development, through the development of science. ... But the view is still widespread in many circles today that there are two other (even more important!) ways of knowing besides divine reason: Mind and revelation. We must decisively oppose this dangerous error from the outset. The mind has nothing to do with the knowledge of truth. What we call "mind" and value highly is an intricate activity of the brain, which is composed of feelings of pleasure and displeasure, of ideas of affection and aversion, of strivings of desire and flight. The most diverse other activities of the organism can play a part in this, the needs of the senses and the muscles, the stomach and the sexual organs, etc. All these states of mind and emotional movements in no way promote the realization of the truth; on the contrary, they often disturb reason, which alone is capable of it, and frequently damage it to a sensitive degree. No "riddle of the world" has yet been solved or even promoted by the brain function of the mind. The same also applies to the so-called "revelation and the alleged "truths of faith" achieved through it; these are all based on conscious or unconscious deception" (Welträtsel, p.19 f.). Thus speaks only a personality whose own mind is completely imbued with the truth of what reason reveals. How do those who still have words of admiration for those who build religion on the mind and want to make it "independent of progressive science as a personal experience" stand up to such courage of thought today?

A deeply philosophical basic trait in his way of thinking enabled Haeckel to undertake the solution of the highest human questions from natural science, and a sure eye for the lawful connections in natural processes, which appear as intricate as possible to direct observation, bring about that monumental simplicity in his view of the world which always appears in the wake of greatness in matters of worldview. One of the greatest naturalists and thinkers of all time, Galileo, said that in all her works nature makes use of the nearest, simplest and easiest means. We are constantly reminded of this saying when we follow Haeckel's views. What many a philosopher seeks in the remotest paths of speculation, he finds in the simple, clear language of facts. But he really makes these facts speak, so that they do not stand side by side, but explain each other in a philosophical way. "We must welcome as one of the most gratifying advances in solving the riddles of the world the fact that in recent times the two only paths leading to it: experience and thought - or empiricism and speculation - have increasingly been recognized as equal and mutually complementary methods of knowledge. ... However, even today there are still some philosophers who want to construct the world merely from their heads and who disdain empirical knowledge of nature simply because they do not know the real world. On the other hand, even today some natural scientists claim that the only task of science is "actual knowledge, the objective investigation of the individual phenomena of nature"; the "age of philosophy is over and natural science has taken its place. (Rudolf Virchow, Die Gründung der Berliner Universität und der Übergang aus dem philosophischen in das naturwissenschaftlichen Zeitalter, Berlin 1893.) "This one-sided overestimation of empiricism is just as dangerous an error as the opposite of speculation. Both paths of knowledge are mutually indispensable. The greatest triumphs of modern natural science, the cell theory and the heat theory, the theory of development and the law of substance, are philosophical deeds, but not the results of pure speculation, but of the preceding, most extensive and most thorough empiricism" (Welträtsel, p. 20 f.).

That there is only one kind of natural lawfulness and that we can trace such a lawfulness in the same way in the stone that rolls down an inclined plane according to the law of gravity, in the growth of the plant, in the organization of the animal and in the highest rational achievements of human beings: this conviction runs through Haeckel's entire research and thinking. He recognizes a fundamental law in the entire universe. This is why he calls his world view monism in contrast to those views that assume a different kind of lawfulness for the mechanically proceeding natural processes than for the beings (the organisms) in which they perceive a purposeful arrangement. Just as the elastic ball rolls on when it is pushed by another: all life processes in the animal kingdom, and indeed all spiritual events in the cultural process of mankind, are connected with the same necessity.

"The old world view of ideal dualism with its mystical and anthropistic dogmas is sinking into ruins; but above this enormous field of ruins rises the new sun of our real-monism, which fully opens up the wonderful temple of nature to us. In the pure cult of "the true, the good and the beautiful, which forms the core of our new monistic religion, we find a rich substitute for the lost anthropistic ideals of "God, freedom and immortality"" (Welträtsel, p. 438 f.).

III

The basic character of Haeckel's conception of nature lies in the elimination of any kind of theory of purpose or teleology from human ideas about the world and life. As long as such ideas still exist, there can be no question of a truly natural world view. This question of purposefulness comes to the fore in its most significant form when it is a question of determining the position of man in nature. Either something similar to what we call the human spirit, the human soul and so on, is present in the world outside man and produces the phenomena in order ultimately to create its own image in man, or this spirit is only present in the course of natural development at the time when it actually appears in man. Then the natural processes have brought forth the spirit through purely causal necessity, without it having come into the world through any intention. The latter follows irrefutably from Haeckel's premise. Basically, all other thoughts stem from outdated theological ideas. Even where such ideas still appear in philosophy today, they cannot deny their origin to anyone who takes a closer look. The crude, childish aspects of theological mythologies have been stripped away, but purposeful world ideas, in short spiritual potencies, have been retained. Schopenhauer's will and Hartmann's unconscious are nothing other than such remnants of old theological ideas. Recently the botanist J. Reinke, in his book Die Welt als Tat (The World as Act), again expressed the view that the interaction of substances and forces cannot of itself produce the forms of life, but that it must be determined in a certain way by directing forces or dominants. Haeckel's new book clearly shows that all such assumptions are superfluous, that the phenomena of the world can be fully explained for our need for knowledge if we assume nothing more than the necessity of natural law.

It outlines the course of world development from the processes of inorganic nature up to the expressions of the human soul. The conviction that the so-called "world history" is a vanishingly short episode in the long course of the organic history of the earth and that this itself is only a small part of the history of our planetary system: it is supported by all the means of modern natural science. The errors that oppose it are fought relentlessly. These errors can basically all be traced back to a single one, to the "humanization" of the world. Haeckel understands this term to mean "that powerful and widespread complex of erroneous ideas which places the human organism in opposition to all the rest of nature, conceiving it as the premeditated final goal of organic creation and as a god-like being fundamentally different from it. A closer examination of this influential conception reveals that it actually consists of three different dogmas, which we distinguish as the anthropocentric, anthropomorphic and anthropolatric errors. I. The anthropocentric dogma culminates in the idea that man is the premeditated center and final purpose of all life on earth - or, in a broader version, of the whole world. Since this error is extremely desirable to human self-interest and since it is closely interwoven with the creation myths of the three great Mediterranean religions, with the dogmas of the Mosaic, Christian and Mohammedan teachings, it still dominates most of the cultural world today. - II. The anthropomorphic dogma... compares the world creation and world government of God with the artistic creations of an ingenious technician or "machine engineer and with the state government of a wise ruler. God... is... is presented as human-like... II. The anthropolatric dogma ... leads to the divine worship of the human organism, to the "anthropistic greatness". (Welträtsel, p.13 f.) The human soul is regarded as a higher being that temporarily inhabits the subordinate organism.

Haeckel contrasts such mythological ideas with his - conviction of the "cosmological perspective", according to which eternal - in the sense of the divine world ground of religions - is only matter with its inherent power and from the processes of this power endowed matter all phenomena develop with necessity. The opponents of the monistic world view reject it because it declares that which bears the trait of highest purposefulness, the animal and human organism, as the work of a blind necessity, without predetermined intention, i.e. that it basically came into being by mere coincidence. If one understands by chance that which occurs without any previous thought of its existence existing anywhere, then in the scientific sense the whole universe is a mere chance; for "the development of the whole world is a uniformly mechanical process in which we can nowhere discover aim and purpose; what we call so in organic life is a special consequence of biological conditions; neither in the development of the world's bodies nor that of our inorganic earth's crust can a guiding purpose be detected" (Welträtsel, p.316). But the general law that every phenomenon has its mechanical cause exists in the whole universe, and in this sense there is no coincidence.

If one follows Haeckel's explanations with understanding, one will arrive at the true concept of what today alone should be called " scientific explanation". Science must not use anything to explain a phenomenon other than what actually preceded it in time. All processes in the world are determined by those that took place before them. In this sense, they are necessary and not coincidental. However, any explanation that attributes any influence on something that came into being earlier to something that is later in time is unscientific. Whoever wants to explain man should explain him on the basis of natural processes that preceded his existence, but he should not present the matter as if the emergence of man had had a retroactive effect on these earlier processes, that is, as if these backward processes had taken place in such a way that man resulted from them as a goal. A world view that only adheres to the "before" in its explanations and derives the "after" from this is "monism". Such a worldview, on the other hand, which starts from the "after" and presents the "before" as if it somehow points to this "after", is teleology, the doctrine of expediency and thus dualism. For if it were correct, then a purposeful phenomenon would be twice present in the world, namely really in the period in which it occurs, and spiritually, ideally, according to its design, before its real emergence, as a thought, as a guiding purpose in the general world plan.

May Haeckel's illuminating expositions lead to the difference between teleology and monism soon being understood in the widest circles in a way that is desirable in the interest of spiritual progress.