I. Haeckel and His Opponents

[^1]: I have characterised the contrast that exists between Goethe's and Kant's world-conceptions, in the Introductions to my edition of Goethe's Scientific Writings (in Kürschner, Deutsche National-Literatur) and in my book, Goethe's Conception of the World (p. 37 et seq.). It shows itself also in the attitude of the two personalities towards the explanation of organic nature. Goethe seeks for this explanation along the road which modern science has also trodden. Kant holds such an explanation to be impossible. Only one who penetrates deeply into the nature of Goethe's view of the world can acquire a correct judgment as to its position in regard to the Kantian philosophy. Goethe's own testimony is not conclusive, because he never devoted himself to a closer study of Kant. “The portal (of the Critique of Pure Reason) it was that pleased me, into the labyrinth itself I could not adventure: now it was my poetic gift that hindered me, now my commonsense, and I nowhere found myself any the better.” Single passages in Kant's Critique of Judgment pleased him, because he so interpreted their meaning that they agreed with his own view of the world. It is, therefore, only too easily understood why his conversations with followers of Kant appear somewhat peculiar. “They certainly listened to me, but could give me no answer, nor in any way help me on. More than once it happened to me, that one or the other confessed with smiling admiration: it may be something analogous to the Kantian mode of conception, but a rather strange one.” Karl Vorländer, in his essay Goethe's Verhältnis zu Kant in seiner historischen Entwickelung ( Kantstudien, i., ii.), has judged this relationship according to the actual words of Goethe's own testimony, and has reproached me with the fact that my conception thereof is “in contradiction with the clear testimony of Goethe himself,” and, at the very least, “strongly one-sided.” I would have left this objection unanswered, because I saw from the explanations of Herr Karl Vorländer that they proceed from a man who finds it quite impossible to understand a mode of thinking which is strange to him; however, it still seemed to me needful not to leave without answer a remark which he couples thereto. Herr Vorländer belongs to those men who regard their own opinion as absolutely right, and therefore as proceeding from the highest possible insight, and who therefore stamp every other view as a product of ignorance. Because I think otherwise about Kant than he does, he gives me the sage advice to study certain portions of Kant's works. Such a mode of criticising other people's opinions cannot be too strongly repudiated. Who gives anyone the right, not to criticise me for an opinion differing from his own, but to schoolmaster me? I have therefore told Herr Karl Vorländer my opinion as to his school-mastering in the fourth volume of my edition of Goethe's Scientific Writings. Thereupon, in the third volume of Kantstudien, he has discussed my book, Goethe's Conception of the World, in a fashion which not only far surpasses in point of form what he had previously said against me, but which is also full of objective untruths. Thus he speaks of an “isolated and embittered opposition “in which I find myself against the whole of modern philosophy (naturally exclusive of Nietzsche) and science. There at once one has three objective untruths. Anyone who reads my writings—and whoever, like Herr Vorländer, pronounces judgment upon me, should at the least read them—will perceive that I do indeed criticise technically particular views of modern science and endeavour to deepen others philosophically; but that to talk of an embittered opposition is simply absurd. In my Philosophie der Freiheit I have expressed my conviction to the effect that in my views is given the philosophical completion of the structure which “Darwin and Haeckel have erected for Natural Science” (p. 186). That I am the one who has sharply emphasised the fundamental deficiency in the world of Nietzsche's ideas is indeed known to the Frenchman Henri Lichtenberger, who observes in his book La Philosophie de Nietzsche: “R. Steiner is the author of Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Freedom. In the latter work he completes Nietzsche's theory on an important point.” He emphasises the point which I have shown that Nietzsche's Superman is not that which he ought to be. The German philosopher, Karl Vorländer, has either not read my writings, and none the less passes judgment upon me; or else he has done so, and still writes the above and other similar objective untruths. I leave it to the judgment of the competent public to decide whether his contribution, which was found worthy of acceptance in a serious philosophical review, is a proof of his complete lack of judgment or a dubious contribution to the morality of German scholarship.