A Theory of Knowledge
GA 2
XVI. Organic Nature
[ 1 ] For a long time science came to a standstill in the presence of the organic. Its methods were not considered adequate to grasp life and its manifestations. Indeed, it was believed that every conformity to law such as is effective in inorganic Nature here ceases to exist. What was admitted with reference to the inorganic world—that a phenomenon is intelligible to us when we know its natural prerequisite conditions—was here simply denied. The organism was supposed to have been designed purposefully by the Creator according to a determinate plan. Each organ was supposed to have its predestined function; all questions here could be directed only to the discovery of what the purpose of this or that organ is; for what end this or that is present. Whereas, in the inorganic world, one gave attention to the prerequisite conditions of a thing, this was considered quite futile for the facts of life, and primary importance was attached to the purpose of a thing. Likewise in regard to the processes which accompany life, the question asked was not so much concerning the natural causes, as in the case of the physical phenomena, but these processes were supposed to be attributable to a special vital force. What was formed in the organism was supposed to be a product of this force, which simply took a position above other natural laws. In short, up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, science did not know how to deal with organisms. It was restricted to the sphere of the inorganic.
[ 2 ] In thus seeking the laws governing the organism, not in the nature of the objects, but in the thought which the Creator followed in forming them, men were cut off from any possibility of an explanation. How is that thought to be made known to me P I am limited to what I have before me. If this thing itself does not lay bare its laws within my thoughts, then my knowledge ceases. We cannot discuss in a scientific sense the divination of a plan held by a Being outside the thing itself.
[ 3 ] At the close of the eighteenth century, the point of view which almost universally prevailed was that there is no science which interprets the phenomena of life in the sense in which, for example, physics is an interpretive science. Indeed, Kant sought to give a philosophic basis for this opinion. He considered our intellect to be of such a nature that it can proceed only from the particular to the general. The particulars, the single things, are given to the intellect, he thought, and from these it abstracts its general laws. This form of thinking Kant called discursive, and he considered it the sole form belonging to man. Therefore, according to his opinion, there could not be any science except as regards those things in which the particular, of and for itself, is quite void of a concept, and is only subsumed under an abstract concept. In the case of organisms, Kant did not find this condition fulfilled. Here the single organism betrays a purposive—that is, a conceptual—arrangement. The particular bears traces of the concept in itself. But, according to the Königsberg philosopher, we are wholly lacking in capacity to grasp such an entity. We can understand only that in which concept and single thing are separated, where one represents the general, the other the particular. Nothing then remains for us but to make of the idea of purpose the basis for our observations of organisms: to deal with the creature as if a system of purposes lay at the basis of its phenomena. Thus Kant here established the unscientific scientifically, so to speak.
[ 4 ] Against such unscientific procedure Goethe protested vigorously. He could never see why our thoughts are not also qualified to ask in regard to the organ of a creature: “Whence comes it?” instead of, “What purpose does it serve?” This was in keeping with his nature, which always impelled him to look into every entity in its inner completeness. It seemed to him an unscientific form of observation to concern oneself only with the external purpose of an organ—that is, its usefulness to something else. What could this have to do with the inner essential nature of a thing? Therefore, it never concerns him to know for what purpose a thing serves, but always rather to know how it evolves. He wished to observe an object, not as a completed thing, but in its becoming, in order that he might know its primal origin. He was especially attracted to Spinoza because the latter did not give prominence to the external purpose of organs and organisms. Goethe demanded for the knowledge of the organic world a method which is thoroughly scientific in the sense in which that method is scientific which we apply to the inorganic world.
[ 5 ] Not with so much genius as in Goethe, yet none the less insistently, appeared the craving over and over again for such a method in natural science. Nowadays only a very small section of the scientists doubts its possibility. But whether the attempts which are being made here and there to introduce such a method have been successful or not,—this is naturally another question.
[ 6 ] First of all, a great error has been committed in this matter. It has been supposed that the methods of inorganic science should simply be transferred to the organic. The methods applied in the former field have simply been considered as the only scientific methods possible, and it has been thought that, if a science of “organics” is possible, it must be so in the same sense as physics. But the possibility has been ignored that the concept of the nature of science might be far broader than the definition “interpretation of the universe according to the laws of the physical world.” Even today men have not come to recognize this truth. Instead of seeking to learn what constitutes the scientific character of the inorganic sciences, and then seeking for a method which might be applied to the living world without sacrificing the requirements resulting from this inquiry, the laws discovered at those lower stages of existence are simply postulated as universal.
[ 7 ] But the inquiry should be, first of all, as to the basis upon which scientific thinking rests. In our treatment we have followed this principle. In the preceding chapter we have also learned that the conformity to law which characterizes the inorganic is not something isolated, but a special instance of all possible conformities to law. The method of physics is merely a special instance of a general scientific method of research in which consideration is given to the nature of the object under examination and to the field served by this science. If this method is extended to the organic, then the specific character of the latter is effaced. Instead of investigating the organic according to its nature, we force upon it a law alien to it. But so long as we negate the organic we shall never come to know it. Such scientific behavior merely repeats upon a higher plane that which it has gained on a lower plane; and, while it expects to bring the higher form of existence under these ready-made laws applicable elsewhere, this higher form eludes the investigator's efforts, since he does not know how to lay hold upon it and handle it according to its own characteristics.
[ 8 ] All this comes from the fallacious opinion that the method of a science is something external to the objects of that science, prescribed not by their nature but by ours. It is supposed that we must think about the objects in a certain manner, and indeed about all—the whole universe—in the same manner. Investigations are undertaken which are intended to show that, by reason of the nature of our minds, we can think only inductively, only deductively, etc.
[ 9 ] But in all this the fact is overlooked that the objects may perhaps refuse to yield to the methods of observation which we would vindicate upon them.
[ 10 ] That the charge which we make against the organic natural science of our time is fully justified—that is, that it carries over to organic Nature, not the scientific principle in general, but that of inorganic Nature—is evident if we glance at the opinions of the most distinguished of contemporary scientific theorists—Haeckel.
[ 11 ] When he requires of all scientific endeavor that “the causal interconnection of all the phenomena shall be made evident”—when he says: “If the psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complicated, if we were in position to survey fully the historic evolution of the psychic functions also, we should be able to reduce them all to a mathematical soul-formula”—it is clear what he wishes to do: to deal with the entire world according to the stereotyped pattern of the physical sciences.
[ 12 ] But this requirement is fundamental also in Darwinism, not in its original form, but in its contemporary interpretation. We have seen that the explanation of an occurrence in inorganic Nature means to show its derivation according to law from other sensible realities, to deduce it from other objects which belong like it to the sense world. But how does the contemporary science of “organics” apply the principles of adaptation and the survival of the fittest?—neither of which will be challenged by us as an expression of a complex of facts. It is supposed that the character of a certain species can be deduced from the external conditions under which it has existed, just as we can derive the heating of a body from the sunbeam falling on it. It is entirely overlooked that this character, according to its contentual characterizations, can never be derived as a result of these conditions. The conditions may have a definite influence, but they are not a creative cause. We are entirely safe in asserting that a species must so evolve under the influence of this or that set of facts as to develop this or that organ in a special way; but the essential (inhaltliche), the specific-organic, is not to be deduced from external conditions. Suppose that an organic entity had the essential characteristics abc and then evolved under definite influences so that its characteristics have assumed the particular form a'b'c'. When we take this influence into account, we shall understand that a has evolved into the form a'; b into b'; c into c. But the specific nature of abc can never be derived from external influences.
[ 13 ] Before everything else, we must direct our thought to this question: Whence do we derive the content of the general class of which we consider the single organic entity a particular instance? We know perfectly well that the specialization is due to the external influences, but the specialized form itself we must derive from an inner principle. The fact that this specialized form itself has evolved we can explain when we study the environment of the entity. Yet this special form is, none the less, something in and of itself; we find it possessed of certain characteristics. We see what is the essential matter. There comes into relation with the external phenomenal world a certain self-formed content which provides us with what we need in order to deduce these characteristics. In inorganic Nature we become aware of a certain fact and we seek a second fact and a third in order to explain this; and the result of the inquiry is that the first seems to us the inevitable consequence of the second. In the organic world this is not the case. Here we need still another factor besides the facts. We must conceive at a deeper level than the influences of external conditions something which does not passively allow itself to be determined by these conditions but actively determines itself under their influence.
[ 14 ] But what is this fundamental element? It cannot be anything else than that which appears in the particular in the form of the general. But what always appears in the particular is a definite organism. That basic element is, therefore, an organism in the form of the general: a general form of the organism which includes within itself all particular forms.
[ 15 ] This general organism we shall call, after the precedent of Goethe, the type. Whatever may be the meaning of the word typeaccording to its etymology, we use it in this sense intended by Goethe and mean by it nothing more than what is expressed. This type is not elaborated in all its entirety in any single organism. Only our rationalizing thought is capable of grasping this by abstracting it as a general image out of the phenomenal. The type is thus the Idea of the organism; the animality in the animal, the general plant in the specific plants.
[ 16 ] Under this term type we must not imagine anything fixed. It has absolutely nothing to do with what Agassiz, the most notable adversary of Darwin, called “an incarnate creative idea of God.” The type is something entirely “fluidic” out of which may be derived all separate species and families, which we may consider sub-types, specialized types. The type does not exclude the theory of descent. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve one from another. It is only the rational protest against the idea that organic evolution proceeds merely in the successively appearing objective (sense-perceptible) forms. It is that which is basic in this entire evolution. It is the type that establishes the interconnection amid all the infinite multiplicity. It is the inner aspect of that which we experience as the outer forms of living creatures. The Darwinian theory presupposes the type.
[ 17 ] The type is the true primal organism; either primal plant or primal animal according as it specializes ideally. It cannot be any single sensibly-real living entity. What Haeckel or other naturalists look upon as the primal form is a form already specialized: the simplest form of the type. The fact that it first appears in the time sequence in the simplest form does not render it necessary that the forms appearing later in time are the results of the chronologically preceding forms. All forms are the results of the type; the first and equally the last are manifestations of the type. It is this type which we must take as the basis for a true organics, not undertaking simply to deduce the single species of animals and plants one from another. Like a red line does the type manifestitself through all the evolutionary stages of the organic world. We must firmly grasp it and then follow it in its course through all this great multiform kingdom. Then does this become intelligible. Otherwise, like all the rest of the world of experience, it disintegrates into a mass of unrelated units. Indeed, even when we believe we have reduced the later, more complex, compounded forms to the earlier simpler form, and that in the latter we have an original, we merely deceive ourselves; for we have simply derived one specialized form from another.
[ 18 ] Friedrich Theodor Vischer once expressed the opinion in regard to the Darwinian theory that it would render necessary a revision of our concept of time. Here we have arrived at a point which makes manifest to us in what sense such a revision would have to occur. It would have to show that the deducing of a later from an earlier is no explanation; that the first in time is not the first in principle. Every derivation must be out of what constitutes the principle, and at most it would be necessary to show what factors were effective in bringing it about that one sort of entity evolved in time before another.
[ 19 ] The type plays in the organic world the same role as that of the natural law in the inorganic. As the latter gives us the possibility of recognizing each single occurrence as a member of a greater whole, so the type puts us in position to look upon the single organism as a particular shaping of the primal form.
[ 20 ] We have already pointed out that the type is no circumscribed crystallized conceptual form, but is fluid: that it can assume the most manifold formations. The number of these formations is unlimited, because that by reason of which the primal form becomes a single specialized form has for the primal form no significance. The case is just like that of a natural law which controls innumerable single manifestations, because the special determinants which appear in the single instances have nothing to do with the natural law.
[ 21 ] But we are here dealing with something essentially unlike inorganic Nature. There our task is to show that a certain sensible fact can appear so and not otherwise because of the existence of this or that natural law. That fact and that law face one another as two separate factors, and no other mental work is required than that, when we behold a fact, we shall recall the law which is determinative. In the case of a living entity and its manifestations, the case is different. There our task must be to evolve the single form which meets us in direct experience from the type—which we must have apprehended. We must perform a mental process of an entirely different sort. We must not simply set the type as something finished, like a natural law, over against the single manifestation.
[ 22 ] That every body, unless prevented by some accompanying circumstance, falls to the earth in such a way that the distances covered in successive intervals of time are in the ratio 1:3:5:7 etc., is a definite law once for all fixed. This is a primal phenomenon which appears whenever two masses (the earth and bodies thereon) come into reciprocal relationship. If, now, a more special instance enters the field of our observation in which this law is applicable, we need only bring the sensibly observable facts into that relationship which gives us the law, and we shall find it confirmed. We trace the single case back to the law. The natural law expresses the interrelationship of the separate facts of the sense-world; but it continues to exist and confront the single facts. In the case of the type we must evolve out of the primal form each specialized instance that meets us. We must not confront the single forms with the type in order to see how the latter governs the former; we must cause the former to issue from the latter. Natural law governs a manifestation as something standing above this; the type flows into the single living entity, identifies itself with this.
[ 23 ] Therefore, a science of organics that sets out to be scientific in the sense in which physics or mechanics is scientific must show the type as the most universal form and then in various ideal separate forms. Mechanics also is such a grouping together of various natural laws in which the requirements of reality are presupposed theoretically throughout. The same must be true in organics. Here also, if we are to have a rational science, we must presuppose hypothetically determined forms in which the type takes shape. One must then show how these hypothetical forms can always be reduced to a definite form lying before our eyes.
[ 24 ] Just as we trace a phenomenon in the inorganic to a law, so here we evolve a specific form from the primal form. Organic science does not come about through the external comparison of special and general, but through the evolution of the former out of the latter.
[ 25 ] As mechanics is a system of natural laws, so organics must be a succession of forms evolved from the type; only that in the former case we bring together the single laws and arrange them into a whole, whereas here we must cause the single forms to proceed in living stream one from another.
[ 26 ] Here an objection may be raised. If the typical form is something altogether fluid, how then is it at all possible to set up a chain of special types in a series as the content of an organics? It may well be imagined that, in each special instance observed, a particular form of the type is to be recognized, and yet we cannot merely assemble such actually observed instances in the name of science.
[ 27 ] But we can do something else. We can allow the type to follow its course through the series of possibilities and then fix (hypothetically) in each case this or that form. In this way we arrive at a series of forms deduced by thought from the type, as the content of a rational organics.
[ 28 ] An organics is possible which will be scientific in the strictest sense just as mechanics is scientific. Only the method is different. The method of mechanics is that of proof. Each proof rests upon a certain rule. There always exists a definite presupposition (that is, prerequisites accessible to experience are given) and we then determine what occurs when these presuppositions are realized. We then comprehend a single phenomenon under the basic law. We think thus:—Under these conditions, the phenomenon occurs; the conditions are present and, therefore, the phenomenon must occur. This is the thought process we employ to explain an occurrence of the inorganic world when we meet it. This is the method of proof. It is scientific because it completely permeates an occurrence with the concept; because it brings about a coincidence of experience and thought.
[ 29 ] Through this method of proof, however, we can make no headway in the science of the organic. The type does not require that, under certain conditions, a definite phenomenon occur; it does not fix anything in regard to a relationship of elements mutually alien which confront one another. It determines only the conformity to law of its own parts. It does not point beyond itself like a natural law. The particular organic forms can be evolved only from the universal type-form, and every organic entity which appears in experience must coincide with some one of these derivative forms of the type. Here the evolutionary method must replace the method of proof. Here it is not to be established that the external conditions act upon one another in this way and for that reason bring about a definite result, but that a special form has been developed under definite external conditions out of the type. This is the radical difference between inorganic and organic science. This distinction is not made basic in any other method of research so consistently as in Goethe's. No one else recognized as Goethe did that an organics must be possible apart from all vague mysticism, without teleology, without the assumption of special creative thoughts. But neither has any one else more definitely rejected the demand to apply to this field the methods of inorganic science.
[ 30 ] The type, as we have seen, is a more complete scientific form than the primal phenomenon. Moreover, it presupposes a more intensive activity of our minds than that required by the other. In reflecting about the things of inorganic nature, our sense-perception provides us with the content. Here it is our sense-organization which yields to us what, in the case of the organic, we lay hold of only by means of our minds. In order to become aware of sweetness, sourness, warmth, light, color, etc., one needs only healthy senses. There we have to discover by means of thought only the form of the substance. But, in the type, content and form are intimately united one with the other. Therefore, the type does not determine the content in a merely formal way as does the law, but permeates it vitally from within outward as its very own. The task which is required of our mind is to participate productively in creating the contentual element while dealing with the formal.
[ 31 ] A mode of thinking in which the formal and the contentual appear in direct connection has always been called intuitive.
[ 32 ] Intuition appears repeatedly as a scientific principle. The English philosopher Reidt classifies as an intuition the act of creating a conviction of the real being of external phenomena directly from our perception of the phenomena (sense-impressions). Jacobi thought that in our feeling of God we are given, not merely this feeling, but the guarantee that God is. This judgment also is called intuitive. The characteristic of intuition, as we see, is that more must be given in the content than this itself; that one knows of a thought-characterization, without proof, merely through direct conviction. It is not considered necessary to prove such thought-characterizations as that of existence, etc. of the material of perception, but we are believed to possess these in inseparable unity with the content.
[ 33 ] But, in the case of the type, this is really true. Therefore it cannot furnish any means of proof but merely suggests the possibility of evolving each special form out of the type. For this reason, the mind must work with far greater intensity in apprehending the type than in grasping the natural law. It must create the content with the form. It must take upon itself an activity which is the function of the senses in inorganic science and which we call perception (Anschauung). The mind itself, therefore, must be perceptive on this higher plane. Our power of judgment must perceive in thinking and think in perceiving. Here we have to do with a perceptive power of thought, as was first explained by Goethe.12See footnote, p. 119. Goethe thereby pointed out as a necessary form of apprehension in the human mind that which Kant wished to prove to be quite unattainable by man because of the nature of his whole endowment.
[ 34 ] As the type in organic nature replaces natural law (the primal phenomenon) in the inorganic, so intuition (perceptive power of thought) replaces the power of judgment through proof (reflective judgment). As it has been supposed that the same laws may be applied to organic nature which are determinative at a lower stage of knowledge, so it has been supposed that the same methods hold good here as there. Both suppositions are fallacious.
[ 35 ] Intuition has often been treated with scant respect in science. It has been considered a defect in Goethe's mind that he expected to reach scientific truths by means of intuition. What is attained by way of intuition is considered by many persons as very important, to be sure, when this has to do with a scientific discovery. There, it is said, a chance idea often carries one farther than trained, methodical thought. For it is generally said to be an intuition when one has hit by chance upon something which is true but whose truth is discovered by investigators only in a roundabout way. It is always denied, however, that intuition itself can be a principle of science. Whatever intuition chances upon must afterward be proved—so it is thought—if it is to have scientific value.
[ 36 ] So Goethe's scientific achievements have also been looked upon as brilliant chance ideas which only later have attained to confirmation by the rigid methods of science.
[ 37 ] For organic science, however, intuition is the right method. It becomes quite clear, we believe, from our exposition that Goethe's mind, just because it was fundamentally intuitive, found the right way in organics. The method proper to organics harmonized with the constitution of his mind. For this reason it became all the clearer to him how far organics differs from inorganic science. The one became clear to him in connection with the other. For this reason he sketched with sharp lines the essential nature also of the inorganic.
[ 38 ] The slight value attached to intuition is due in no small measure to the fact that its achievements are not supposed to be deserving of that degree of confidence which is reposed in the achievement of knowledge through proof. Often only that which has been proved is called knowledge; all else is called belief.
[ 39 ] It must be borne in mind that intuition possesses a significance for the scientific attitude represented by the present writer (based upon the conviction that in thought we grasp in its very essence the central core of the world) altogether different from the significance it possesses according to the point of view which places this core of the world in a Beyond not accessible to our research. Whoever sees in this world lying before us, so far as we either experience it or penetrate it through thought, nothing more than a reflection, a copy of a Beyond, an unknown, an activating, which remains hidden behind this shell, not only at first glance but also in spite of all scientific research,—such a person can see only in the method of proof a substitute for our lack of insight into the real nature of things. Since he does not penetrate to the opinion that a thought-combination comes about through the essential content given in the thoughts themselves, and therefore through the thing itself, he necessarily thinks that he can support such combinations only on the ground that they harmonize with certain basic convictions (axioms) which are so simple as to be neither susceptible of proof nor in need thereof. If, then, a scientific postulate is offered him without proof—even one which in its whole nature excludes the method of proof—this seems to him to have been thrust upon him from without; a truth appears before him without his recognizing what are the grounds of its validity. He does not think he has an item of knowledge, an insight into the thing, but thinks he can only yield himself to a belief that some sort of reasons for this validity exists beyond the reach of his thought.
[ 40 ] Our view of the world is not exposed to the danger that it must look upon the limits of the method of proof as coinciding with the limits of scientific certitude. It has led us to the point of view that the central essence of the world flows into our thinking; that we do not merely think concerning the nature of the world but that thinking is an entrance into connection with the nature of reality. Intuition does not thrust a truth upon us from without, for from one point of view there is no such thing as an outer and an inner in the manner in which these are presupposed by the scientific attitude we have described, which is the opposite of our own. For us, intuition is the actual being-within, an entrance into the truth which gives to us all that comes in any way under consideration in regarding truth. It merges completely with what is given to us in our intuitive judgment. The characteristic which is significant in belief—that only existent truth is given us and not the reasons therefore, and that we lack a penetrating insight into the thing concerned—is here wholly wanting. Insight gained by way of intuition is just as scientific as that won by proof.
[ 41 ] Every single organism is the molding of the type in a special form. It is an individuality which governs and determines itself from a center outward. It is a totality complete in itself—which in inorganic Nature is true of the cosmos alone.
[ 42 ] The ideal of inorganic science is to grasp the totality of all phenomena as a unitary system, in order that we may approach each phenomenon with the consciousness that we recognize it as a member of the cosmos. In organic science, on the contrary, the ideal must be to have in the utmost entirety possible in the type and its phenomenal forms that which we see evolving in the series of single beings. Tracing the type back through all phenomena is here that which matters. In inorganic science the system exists; in organic the comparison (of each single form with the type).
[ 43 ] Spectral analysis and the perfecting of astronomy extend to the universe the truths attained on the limited sphere of the earth. Hereby these sciences approach the first ideal. The second will be fulfilled when the comparative method applied by Goethe is recognized in its full scope.
16. Die organische Natur
[ 1 ] Lange Zeit hat die Wissenschaft vor dem Organischen haltgemacht. Sie hielt ihre Methoden nicht für ausreichend, das Leben und seine Erscheinungen zu begreifen. Ja sie glaubte überhaupt, daß jede Gesetzlichkeit, wie eine solche in der unorganischen Natur wirksam ist, hier aufhöre. Was man in der unorganischen Welt zugab, daß uns eine Erscheinung begreiflich wird, wenn wir ihre natürlichen Vorbedingungen kennen, leugnete man hier einfach. Man dachte sich den Organismus nach einem bestimmten Plane des Schöpfers zweckmäßig angelegt. Jedes Organ hätte seine Bestimmung vorgezeichnet; alles Fragen könne sich hier nur darauf beziehen: welches ist der Zweck dieses oder jenes Organes, wozu ist das oder jenes da? Wandte man sich in der unorganischen Welt an die Vorbedingungen einer Sache, so hielt man diese für die Tatsachen des Lebens ganz gleichgültig und legte den Hauptwert auf die Bestimmung eines Dinges. Auch fragte man bei den Prozessen, die das Leben begleiten, nicht so wie bei den physikalischen Erscheinungen nach den natürlichen Ursachen, sondern meinte sie einer besonderen Lebenskraft zuschreiben zu müssen. Was sich da im Organismus bildet, das dachte man sich als das Produkt dieser Kraft, die sich einfach über die sonstigen Naturgesetze hinwegsetzt. Die Wissenschaft wußte eben bis zum Beginne unseres Jahrhunderts mit den Organismen nichts anzufangen. Sie war allein auf das Gebiet der unorganischen Welt beschränkt.
[ 2 ] Indem man so die Gesetzmäßigkeit des Organischen nicht in der Natur der Objekte suchte, sondern in dem Gedanken, den der Schöpfer bei ihrer Bildung befolgt, schnitt man sich auch alle Möglichkeit einer Erklärung ab. Wie soll mir jener Gedanke kund werden? Ich bin doch auf das beschränkt, was ich vor mir habe. Enthüllt mir dieses selbst innerhalb meines Denkens seine Gesetze nicht, dann hört meine Wissenschaft eben auf. Von dem Erraten der Pläne, die ein außerhalb stehendes Wesen hatte, kann im wissenschaftlichen Sinne nicht die Rede sein.
[ 3 ] Am Ende des vorigen Jahrhunderts war die Ansicht wohl allgemein noch die herrschende, daß es eine Wissenschaft als Erklärung der Lebenserscheinungen in dem Sinne, wie zum Beispiel die Physik eine erklärende Wissenschaft ist, nicht gebe. Kant hat sogar derselben eine philosophische Begründung zu geben versucht. Er hielt nämlich unseren Verstand für einen solchen, der nur von dem Besonderen auf das Allgemeine gehen könne. Das Besondere, die Einzeldinge, seien ihm gegeben und daraus abstrahiere er seine allgemeinen Gesetze. Diese Art des Denkens nennt Kant diskursiv und hält sie für die allein dem Menschen zukommende. Daher gibt es nach seiner Ansicht nur von den Dingen eine Wissenschaft, wo das Besondere an und für sich genommen ganz begrifflos ist und nur unter einen abstrakten Begriff subsumiert wird. Bei den Organismen fand Kant diese Bedingung nicht erfüllt. Hier verrät die einzelne Erscheinung eine zweckmäßige, das ist begriffsmäßige Einrichtung. Das Besondere trägt Spuren des Begriffes an sich. Solche Wesen aber zu begreifen fehlt uns, nach der Anschauung des Königsberger Philosophen, jede Anlage. Wir können nur da verstehen, wo Begriff und Einzelding getrennt sind; jener ein Allgemeines, dieses ein Besonderes darstellt. Es bleibt uns also nichts übrig als unseren Beobachtungen der Organismen die Idee der Zweckmäßigkeit zugrunde zu legen; die Lebewesen zu behandeln, als ob ihren Erscheinungen ein System von Absichten zugrunde liege. Kant also hat die Unwissenschaftlichkeit hier gleichsam wissenschaftlich begründet.
[ 4 ] Goethe hat nun gegen solch unwissenschaftliches Gebaren entschieden protestiert. Er konnte nie einsehen, warum unser Denken nicht auch ausreichen sollte, bei einem Organe eines Lebewesens zu fragen: woher entspringt es, statt wozu dient es. Das lag in seiner Natur, die ihn stets drängte, jedes Wesen in seiner inneren Vollkommenheit zu erblicken. Es schien ihm eine unwissenschaftliche Betrachtungsweise, welche sich nur um die äußere Zweckmäßigkeit eines Organes, das heißt um dessen Nutzen für ein anderes kümmert. Was soll das mit der inneren Wesenheit eines Dinges zu tun haben? Darauf kommt es ihm nie an, wozu etwas nützt; stets nur darauf, wie es sich entwickelt. Nicht als abgeschlossenes Ding will er ein Objekt betrachten, sondern in seinem Werden, damit er erkenne, welchen Ursprunges es ist. An Spinoza zog ihn besonders an, daß dieser die äußerliche Zweckmäßigkeit der Organe und Organismen nicht gelten ließ. Goethe forderte für das Erkennen der organischen Welt eine Methode, die genau in dem Sinne wissenschaftlich ist, wie es die ist, die wir auf die unorganische Welt anwenden.
[ 5 ] Zwar nicht in so genialer Weise wie bei ihm, aber nicht minder dringend trat das Bedürfnis nach einer solchen Methode in der Naturwissenschaft immer wieder auf. Heute zweifelt wohl nur mehr ein sehr kleiner Bruchteil der Forscher an der Möglichkeit derselben. Ob aber die Versuche, die man hie und da gemacht, eine solche einzuführen, geglückt sind, das ist allerdings eine andere Frage.
[ 6 ] Man hat da vor allem einen großen Irrtum begangen. Man glaubte die Methode der unorganischen Wissenschaft in das Organismenreich einfach herübernehmen zu sollen. Man hielt die hier angewendete Methode überhaupt für die einzig wissenschaftliche und dachte, wenn die Organik wissenschaftlich möglich sein soll, dann müsse sie es genau in dem Sinne sein, in dem es die Physik zum Beispiel ist. Die Möglichkeit aber, daß vielleicht der Begriff der Wissenschaftlichkeit ein viel weiterer sei als: «die Erklärung der Welt nach den Gesetzen der physikalischen Welt», vergaß man. Auch heute ist man bis zu dieser Erkenntnis noch nicht durchgedrungen. Statt zu untersuchen, worauf denn eigentlich die Wissenschaftlichkeit der unorganischen Wissenschaften beruht, und dann nach einer Methode zu suchen, die sich unter Festhaltung der sich hieraus ergebenden Anforderungen auf die Lebewelt anwenden läßt, erklärt man einfach die auf jener unteren Stufe des Daseins gewonnenen Gesetze für universell.
[ 7 ] Man sollte aber vor allem untersuchen, worauf das wissenschaftliche Denken überhaupt beruht. Wir haben das in unserer Abhandlung getan. Wir haben im vorigen Kapitel auch erkannt, daß die unorganische Gesetzlichkeit nicht ein einzig Dastehendes ist, sondern nur ein Spezialfall von aller möglichen Gesetzmäßigkeit überhaupt. Die Methode der Physik ist einfach ein besonderer Fall einer allgemeinen wissenschaftlichen Forschungsweise, wobei auf die Natur der in Betracht kommenden Gegenstände, auf das Gebiet, dem diese Wissenschaft dient, Rücksicht genommen ist. Wird diese Methode auf das Organische ausgedehnt, dann löscht man die spezifische Natur des letzteren aus. Statt das Organische seiner Natur gemäß zu erforschen, drängt man ihm eine ihm fremde Gesetzmäßigkeit auf. So aber, indem man das Organische leugnet, wird man es nie erkennen. Ein solches wissenschaftliches Gebaren wiederholt einfach das, was es auf einer niederen Stufe gewonnen, auf einer höheren; und während es glaubt, die höhere Daseinsform unter die anderweitig fertiggestellten Gesetze zu bringen, entschlüpft ihm diese Form unter seiner Bemühung, weil es sie in ihrer Eigentümlichkeit nicht festzuhalten und zu behandeln weiß.
[ 8 ] Alles das kommt von der irrtümlichen Ansicht, die da glaubt, die Methode einer Wissenschaft sei ein den Gegenständen derselben Äußerliches, nicht von diesen, sondern von unserer Natur Bedingtes. Man glaubt, man müsse in einer bestimmten Weise über die Objekte denken, und zwar über alle - über das ganze Universum - in gleicher Weise. Man stellt Untersuchungen an, die da zeigen sollen: wir könnten vermöge der Natur unseres Geistes nur induktiv, nur deduktiv usw. denken.
[ 9 ] Dabei übersieht man aber, daß die Objekte die Betrachtungsweise, die wir ihnen da vindizieren wollen, vielleicht gar nicht vertragen.
[ 10 ] Daß der Vorwurf, den wir der organischen Naturwissenschaft unserer Tage machen: sie übertrage auf die organische Natur nicht das Prinzip wissenschaftlicher Betrachtungsweise überhaupt, sondern das der unorganischen Natur, vollauf berechtigt ist, lehrt uns ein Blick auf die Ansichten des gewiß bedeutendsten der naturforschenden Theoretiker der Gegenwart, Haeckels.
[ 11 ] Wenn er von allem wissenschaftlichen Bestreben fordert, daß «der ursächliche Zusammenhang der Erscheinungen überall zur Geltung komme»,12Haeckel, Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, «Goethe und Lamarck», Jena 1882, Seite 53. wenn er sagt: «Wenn die psychische Mechanik nicht so unendlich zusammengesetzt wäre, wenn wir imstande wären, auch die geschichtliche Entwicklung der psychischen Funktionen vollständig zu übersehen, so würden wir sie alle in eine mathematische Seelenformel bringen können», so sieht man daraus deutlich, was er will: die gesamte Welt nach der Schablone der physikalischen Methode behandeln.
[ 12 ] Diese Forderung liegt aber auch dem Darwinismus nicht in seiner ursprünglichen Gestalt, sondern in seiner heutigen Deutung zugrunde. Wir haben gesehen, daß in der unorganischen Natur einen Vorgang erklären heißt: sein gesetzmäßiges Hervorgehen aus anderen sinnenfälligen Wirklichkeiten zu zeigen, ihn von Gegenständen, die wie er der sinnlichen Welt angehören, ableiten. Wie verwendet die heutige Organik aber das Prinzip der Anpassung und des Kampfes ums Dasein, die beide als der Ausdruck eines Tatbestandes von uns gewiß nicht angezweifelt werden sollen? Man glaubt geradezu den Charakter einer bestimmten Art aus den äußeren Verhältnissen, in denen sie gelebt, ebenso ableiten zu können, wie etwa die Erwärmung eines Körpers aus den auffallenden Sonnenstrahlen. Man vergißt vollständig, daß man jenen Charakter seinen inhaltsvollen Bestimmungen nach nie als eine Folge dieser Verhältnisse aufweisen kann, Die Verhältnisse mögen einen bestimmenden Einfluß haben, eine erzeugende Ursache sind sie nicht. Wir sind wohl imstande zu sagen: Unter dem Eindrucke dieses oder jenes Tatbestandes mußte sich eine Art so entwickeln, daß sich dieses oder jenes Organ besonders ausbildete; das Inhaltliche aber, das Spezifisch-Organische läßt sich aus äußeren Verhältnissen nicht ableiten. Ein organisches Wesen hätte die wesentlichen Eigenschaften abc; nun ist es unter dem Einflusse bestimmter äußerer Verhältnisse zur Entwicklung gelangt. Daher haben seine Eigenschaften die besondere Gestalt a' b' c' angenommen. Wenn wir diese Einflüsse in Erwägung ziehen, so werden wir begreifen, daß sich a in der Form von a' entwickelt hat, b in b', c in c'. Aber die spezifische Natur des a, b und c kann sich uns nimmermehr als Ergebnis äußerer Verhältnisse ergeben.
[ 13 ] Man muß vor allem sein Denken darauf richten: woher nehmen wir denn den Inhalt desjenigen Allgemeinen, als dessen Spezialfall wir das einzelne organische Wesen ansehen? Wir wissen ganz gut, daß die Spezialisierung von der Einwirkung von außen kommt, Aber die spezialisierte Gestalt selbst müssen wir aus einem inneren Prinzip ableiten. Daß sich gerade diese besondere Form entwickelt hat, darüber gewinnen wir Aufschluß, wenn wir die Umgebung eines Wesens studieren. Nun aber ist diese besondere Form doch an und für sich etwas; wir erblicken sie mit gewissen Eigenschaften. Wir sehen, worauf es ankommt. Es tritt der äußeren Erscheinung ein in sich gestalteter Inhalt gegenüber, der uns das an die Hand gibt, was wir brauchen, um jene Eigenschaften abzuleiten. In der unorganischen Natur nehmen wir eine Tatsache wahr und suchen behufs ihrer Erklärung eine zweite, eine dritte und so weiter; und das Ergebnis ist, jene erste erscheint uns als die notwendige Folge der letzteren. In der organischen Welt ist es nicht so. Hier bedürfen wir außer den Tatsachen noch eines Faktors. Wir müssen den Einwirkungen der äußeren Umstände etwas zugrunde legen, das sich nicht passiv von jenen bestimmen läßt, sondern sich aktiv aus sich selbst unter dem Einflusse jener bestimmt.
[ 14 ] Was ist aber diese Grundlage? Es kann doch nichts sein als das, was im Besonderen erscheint in der Form der Allgemeinheit. Im Besonderen erscheint aber immer ein bestimmter Organismus. Jene Grundlage ist daher ein Organismus in der Form der Allgemeinheit. Ein allgemeines Bild des Organismus, das alle besonderen Formen desselben in sich begreift.
[ 15 ] Wir wollen nach dem Vorgange Goethes diesen allgemeinen Organismus Typus nennen. Mag das Wort Typus seiner sprachlichen Entwicklung nach was immer noch bedeuten; wir gebrauchen es in diesem Goetheschen Sinne und denken dabei nie etwas anderes als das Angegebene. Dieser Typus ist in keinem Einzelorganismus in aller seiner Vollkommenheit ausgebildet. Nur unser vernunftgemäßes Denken ist imstande, sich desselben zu bemächtigen, indem es ihn als allgemeines Bild aus den Erscheinungen abzieht. Der Typus ist somit die Idee des Organismus: die Tierheit im Tiere, die allgemeine Pflanze in der speziellen.
[ 16 ] Man darf sich unter diesem Typus nichts Festes vorstellen. Er hat ganz und gar nichts zu tun mit dem, was Agassiz, Darwins bedeutendster Bekämpfer, einen «verkörperten Schöpfungsgedanken Gottes» nannte. Der Typus ist etwas durchaus Flüssiges, aus dem sich alle besonderen Arten und Gattungen, die man als Untertypen, spezialisierte Typen ansehen kann, ableiten lassen. Der Typus schließt die Deszendenztheorie nicht aus. Er widerspricht nicht der Tatsache, daß sich die organischen Formen auseinander entwickeln. Er ist nur der vernunftgemäße Protest dagegen, daß die organische Entwicklung rein in den nacheinander auftretenden, tatsächlichen (sinnlich wahrnehmbaren) Formen aufgeht. Er ist dasjenige, was dieser ganzen Entwicklung zugrunde liegt. Er ist es, der den Zusammenhang in dieser unendlichen Mannigfaltigkeit herstellt. Er ist das Innerliche von dem, was wir als äußerliche Formen der Lebewesen erfahren. Die Darwinsche Theorie setzt den Typus voraus.
[ 17 ] Der Typus ist der wahre Urorganismus; je nachdem er sich ideell spezialisiert: Urpflanze oder Urtier. Kein einzelnes, sinnlichwirkliches Lebewesen kann es sein. Was Haeckel oder andere Naturalisten als Urform ansehen, ist schon eine besondere Gestalt; ist eben die einfachste Gestalt des Typus. Daß er zeitlich zuerst in einfachster Form auftritt, bedingt nicht, daß die zeitlichfolgenden Formen sich als Folge der zeitlichvorangehenden ergeben. Alle Formen ergeben sich als Folge des Typus, die erste wie die letzte sind Erscheinungen desselben. Ihn müssen wir einer wahren Organik zugrunde legen und nicht einfach die einzelnen Tier- und Pflanzenarten auseinander ableiten wollen. Wie ein roter Faden zieht sich der Typus durch alle Entwicklungsstufen der organischen Welt. Wir müssen ihn festhalten und dann mit ihm dieses große, verschiedengestaltige Reich durchwandern. Dann wird es uns verständlich. Sonst zerfällt es uns wie die ganze übrige Erfahrungswelt in eine zusammenhanglose Menge von Einzelheiten. Ja selbst wenn wir glauben, Späteres, Komplizierteres, Zusammengesetzteres auf eine ehemalige einfachere Form zurückzuführen und in dem letzteren ein Ursprüngliches zu haben, so täuschen wir uns, denn wir haben nur Spezialform von Spezialform abgeleitet.
[ 18 ] Friedrich Theodor Vischer hat einmal in bezug auf die Darwinsche Theorie die Ansicht ausgesprochen, daß sie eine Revision unseres Zeitbegriffes notwendig mache. Wir sind hier an einem Punkt angekommen, der uns ersichtlich macht, in welchem Sinne eine solche Revision zu geschehen hätte. Sie hätte zu zeigen, daß die Herleitung eines Späteren aus einem Früheren keine Erklärung ist, daß das Zeitlich-Erste kein Prinzipiell-Erstes ist. Alle Ableitung hat aus einem Prinzipiellen zu geschehen und höchstens wäre zu zeigen, welche Faktoren wirksam waren, daß sich die eine Wesensart zeitlich vor der anderen entwickelt hat.
[ 19 ] Der Typus spielt in der organischen Welt dieselbe Rolle wie das Naturgesetz in der unorganischen. Wie dieses uns die Möglichkeit an die Hand gibt, jedes einzelne Geschehen als das Glied eines großen Ganzen zu erkennen, so setzt uns der Typus in die Lage, den einzelnen Organismus als eine besondere Form der Urgestalt anzusehen.
[ 20 ] Wir haben bereits darauf hingedeutet, daß der Typus keine abgeschlossene eingefrorene Begriffsform ist, sondern daß er flüssig ist, daß er die mannigfaltigsten Gestaltungen annehmen kann, Die Zahl dieser Gestaltungen ist eine unendliche, weil dasjenige, wodurch die Urform eine einzelne, besondere ist, für die Urform selbst keine Bedeutung hat. Es ist gerade so, wie ein Naturgesetz unendlich viele einzelne Erscheinungen regelt, weil die speziellen Bestimmungen, die in dem einzelnen Falle auftreten, mit dem Gesetze nichts zu tun haben.
[ 21 ] Doch.handelt es sich um etwas wesentlich anderes als in der unorganischen Natur. Dort handelte es sich darum, zu zeigen, daß eine bestimmte sinnenfällige Tatsache so und nicht anders erfolgen kann,weil dieses oder jenes Naturgesetz besteht.Jene Tatsache und das Gesetz stehen sich als zweigetrennte Faktoren gegenüber, und es bedarf weiter gar keiner geistigen Arbeit, als daß wir uns, wenn wir eines Faktums ansichtig werden, des Gesetzes erinnern, das maßgebend ist. Bei einem Lebewesen und seinen Erscheinungen ist das anders. Da handelt es sich darum, die einzelne Form, die in unserer Erfahrung auftritt, aus dem Typus heraus, den wir erfaßt haben müssen, zu entwickeln. Wir müssen einen geistigen Prozeß wesentlich anderer Art vollziehen. Wir dürfen den Typus nicht als etwas Fertiges wie das Naturgesetz einfach der einzelnen Erscheinung gegenüberstellen.
[ 22 ] Daß jeder Körper, wenn er durch keine nebensächlichen Umstände gehindert wird, so zur Erde fällt, daß sich die in den aufeinanderfolgenden Zeiten durchlaufenen Wege verhalten wie 1 :3:5:7 usw., ist ein einmal fertiges, bestimmtes Gesetz. Es ist ein Urphänomen, welches auftritt, wenn zwei Massen (Erde, Körper auf derselben) in gegenseitige Beziehung treten. Tritt nun ein spezieller Fall in das Feld unserer Beobachtung ein, auf den dieses Gesetz Anwendung findet, so brauchen wir nur die sinnlich beobachtbaren Tatsachen in jener Beziehung zu betrachten, die das Gesetz an die Hand gibt, und wir werden es bestätigt finden. Wir führen den einzelnen Fall auf das Gesetz zurück. Das Naturgesetz spricht den Zusammenhang der in der Sinnenwelt getrennten Tatsachen aus; es bleibt aber als solches gegenüber der einzelnen Erscheinung bestehen. Beim Typus müssen wir aus der Urform jenen besonderen Fall, der uns vorliegt, heraus entwickeln. Wir dürfen den Typus der einzelnen Gestalt nicht gegenüberstellen, um zu sehen, wie er die letztere regelt; wir müssen sie aus demselben hervorgehen lassen. Das Gesetz beherrscht die Erscheinung als ein über ihr Stehendes; der Typus fließt in das einzelne Lebewesen ein; er identifiziert sich mit ihm.
[ 23 ] Eine Organik muß daher, wenn sie in dem Sinne Wissenschaft sein will, wie es die Mechanik oder die Physik ist, den Typus als allgemeinste Form und dann auch in verschiedenen ideellen Sondergestalten zeigen. Die Mechanik ist ja auch eine Zusammenstellung der verschiedenen Naturgesetze, wobei die realen Bedingungen durchweg hypothetisch angenommen sind. Nicht anders müßte es in der Organik sein. Auch hier müßte man hypothetisch bestimmte Formen, in denen sich der Typus ausbildet, annehmen, wenn man eine rationelle Wissenschaft haben wollte. Man müßte dann zeigen, wie diese hypothetischen Gestaltungen stets auf eine bestimmte, unserer Beobachtung vorliegende Form gebracht werden können.
[ 24 ] Wie wir im Unorganischen eine Erscheinung auf ein Gesetz zurückführen, so entwickeln wir hier eine Spezialform aus der Urform. Nicht durch äußerliche Gegenüberstellung von Allgemeinem und Besonderem kommt die organische Wissenschaft zustande, sondern durch Entwicklung der einen Form aus der andern.
[ 25 ] Wie die Mechanik ein System von Naturgesetzen ist, so soll die Organik eine Folge von Entwicklungsformen des Typus sein. Nur daß wir dort die einzelnen Gesetze zusammenstellen und zu einem Ganzen ordnen, während wir hier die einzelnen Formen lebendig auseinander hervorgehen lassen müssen.
[ 26 ] Da ist ein Einwand möglich. Wenn die typische Form etwas durchaus Flüssiges ist, wie ist es da überhaupt möglich, eine Kette aneinandergereihter besonderer Typen als den Inhalt einer Organik aufzustellen? Man kann sich wohl vorstellen, daß man in jedem besonderen Falle, den man beobachtet, eine spezielle Form des Typus erkennt, aber man kann doch zum Behufe der Wissenschaft nicht bloß solche wirklich beobachtete Fälle zusammentragen.
[ 27 ] Man kann aber etwas anderes. Man kann den Typus seine Reihe der Möglichkeiten durchlaufen lassen und dann immer diese oder jene Form (hypothetisch) festhalten. So erlangt man eine Reihe von gedanklich aus dem Typus abgeleiteten Formen als den Inhalt einer rationellen Organik.
[ 28 ] Es ist eine Organik möglich, die ganz in dem strengsten Sinne Wissenschaft ist wie die Mechanik. Ihre Methode ist nur eine andere. Die Methode der Mechanik ist die beweisende. Jeder Beweis stützt sich auf eine gewisse Regel. Es besteht immer eine bestimmte Voraussetzung (d. h. es sind erfahrungsmögliche Bedingungen angegeben) und dann wird bestimmt, was eintritt, wenn diese Voraussetzungen statthaben. Wir begreifen dann eine einzelne Erscheinung unter Zugrundelegung des Gesetzes. Wir denken so: unter diesen Bedingungen tritt eine Erscheinung ein; die Bedingungen sind da, deswegen muß die Erscheinung eintreten. Das ist unser Gedankenprozeß, wenn wir an ein Ereignis der unorganischen Welt herantreten, um es zu erklären. Das ist die beweisende Methode. Sie ist wissenschaftlich, weil sie eine Erscheinung vollständig mit dem Begriffe durchtränkt, weil sich durch sie Wahrnehmung und Denken decken.
[ 29 ] Mit dieser beweisenden Methode können wir aber in der Wissenschaft des Organischen nichts anfangen. Der Typus bestimmt eben nicht, daß unter gewissen Bedingungen eine bestimmte Erscheinung eintritt; er setzt nichts über ein Verhältnis von Gliedern, die einander fremd, äußerlich gegenüberstehen, fest. Er bestimmt nur die Gesetzmäßigkeit seiner eigenen Teile. Er weist nicht wie das Naturgesetz über sich hinaus. Es können die besonderen organischen Formen also nur aus der allgemeinen Typusgestalt heraus entwickelt werden, und die in der Erfahrung auftretenden organischen Wesen müssen mit irgendeiner solchen Ableitungsform des Typus zusammenfallen. An die Stelle der beweisenden Methode muß hier die entwickelnde treten. Nicht daß die äußeren Bedingungen in dieser Weise aufeinander wirken und daher ein bestimmtes Ergebnis haben, wird hier festgestellt, sondern daß sich unter bestimmten äußeren Verhältnissen eine besondere Gestalt aus dem Typus herausgebildet hat. Das ist der durchgreifende Unterschied zwischen unorganischer und organischer Wissenschaft. Keiner Forschungsweise liegt er in so konsequenter Weise zugrunde wie der Goetheschen. Niemand hat so wie Goethe erkannt, daß eine organische Wissenschaft ohne allen dunklen Mystizismus, ohne Teleologie, ohne Annahme besonderer Schöpfungsgedanken möglich sein muß. Keiner aber auch hat bestimmter die Zumutung von sich gewiesen, mit den Methoden der unorganischen Naturwissenschaft hier etwas anzufangen.a7In meinen Schriften wird man in verschiedener Art über «Mystizismus» und «Mystik» gesprochen finden. Daß zwischen diesen verschiedenen Arten kein Widerspruch ist, wie man ihn hat herausphantasieren wollen, kann man jedesmal aus dom Zusammenhange ersehen. Man kann einen allgemeinen Begriff von «Mystik» bilden. Danach ist sie der Umfang dessen, was man von der Welt durch inneres, seelisches Erleben erfahren kann. Dieser Begriff ist zunächst nicht anzufechten. Denn eine solche Erfahrung gibt es. Und sie offenbart nicht nur etwas über das menschliche Innere, sondern über die Welt. Man muß Augen haben, in denen sieh Vorgänge abspielen, um über das Reich der Farben etwas zu erfahren. Aber man erfährt dadurch nicht nur etwas über das Auge, sondern über die Welt. Man muß ein inneres Seelenorgan haben, um gewisse Dinge der Welt zu erfahren.
Aber man muß die volle Begriffsklarheit in die Erfahrungen des mystischen Organes bringen, wenn Erkenntnis entstehen soll. Es gibt aber Leute, die wollen in das «Innere» sich flüchten, um der Begriffsklarheit zu entfliehen. Diese nennen «Mystik», was die Erkenntnis aus dem Lieht der Ideen in das Dunkel der Gefühlswelt - der nicht von Ideen erhellten Gefühlswelt - führen will. Gegen diese Mystik sprechen meine Schriften überall; für die Mystik, welche die Ideenklarheit denkerisch festhält und zu einem seelischen Wahrnehmungsorgan den mystischen Sinn macht, der in derselben Region des Menschenwesens tätig ist, wo sonst die dunklen Gefühle walten, ist jede Seite meiner Bücher geschrieben. Dieser Sinn ist für das Geistige völlig gleichzustellen dem Auge oder Ohr für das Physische.
[ 30 ] Der Typus ist, wie wir gesehen haben, eine vollere wissenschaftliche Form als das Urphänomen. Er setzt auch eine intensivere Tätigkeit unseres Geistes voraus als jenes. Bei dem Nachdenken über die Dinge der unorganischen Natur gibt uns die Wahrnehmung der Sinne den Inhalt an die Hand. Es ist unsere sinnliche Organisation, die uns hier schon das liefert, was wir im Organischen nur durch den Geist empfangen. Um Süß, Sauer, Wärme, Kälte, Licht, Farbe usw. wahrzunehmen, braucht man nur gesunde Sinne. Wir haben da im Denken zu dem Stoffe nur die Form zu finden. Im Typus aber sind Inhalt und Form enge aneinander gebunden. Deshalb bestimmt der Typus ja nicht rein formell wie das Gesetz den Inhalt, sondern er durchdringt ihn lebendig, von innen heraus, als seinen eigenen. An unseren Geist tritt die Aufgabe heran, zugleich mit dem Formellen produktiv an der Erzeugung des Inhaltlichen teilzunehmen.
[ 31 ] Man hat von jeher eine Denkungsart, welcher der Inhalt mit dem Formellen in unmittelbarem Zusammenhange erscheint, eine intuitive genannt.
[ 32 ] Wiederholt tritt die Intuition als wissenschaftliches Prinzip auf. Der englische Philosoph Reid nennt eine Intuition, daß wir aus der Wahrnehmung der äußeren Erscheinungen (Sinneseindrücke) zugleich die Überzeugung von dem Sein derselben schöpften. Jacobi vermeinte, in unserem Gefühle von Gott sei uns nicht nur dieses selbst, sondern zugleich die Bürgschaft dafür gegeben, daß Gott ist. Auch dieses Urteil nennt man intuitiv. Das Charakteristische ist, wie man sieht, immer, daß in dem Inhaltlichen stets mehr gegeben sein soll als dieses selbst, daß man von einer gedanklichen Bestimmung weiß, ohne Beweis, bloß durch unmittelbare Überzeugung. Man glaubt, daß man die Gedankenbestimmungen «Sein» usw. von dem Wahrnehmungsstoffe nicht beweisen zu müssen glaubt, sondern daß man sie in ungetrennter Einheit mit dem Inhalte besitzt.
[ 33 ] Das ist aber beim Typus wirklich der Fall. Daher kann er kein Mittel des Beweises liefern, sondern bloß die Möglichkeit an die Hand geben, jede besondere Form aus sich zu entwickeln. Unser Geist muß demnach in dem Erfassen des Typus viel intensiver wirken als beim Erfassen des Naturgesetzes. Er muß mit der Form den Inhalt erzeugen. Er muß eine Tätigkeit auf sich nehmen, die in der unorganischen Naturwissenschaft die Sinne besorgen und die wir Anschauung nennen. Auf dieser höheren Stufe muß also der - Geist selbst anschauend sein. Unsere Urteilskraft muß denkend anschauen und anschauend denken. Wir haben es hier, wie Goethe zum erstenmal auseinandergesetzt, mit einer anschauenden Urteilskraft zu tun. Goethe hat hiermit im menschlichen Geiste das als notwendige Auffassungsform nachgewiesen, wovon Kant bewiesen haben wollte, daß es dem Menschen seiner ganzen Anlage nach nicht zukomme.
[ 34] Vertritt der Typus in der organischen Natur das Naturgesetz (Urphänomen) der unorganischen, so vertritt die Intuition (anschauende Urteilskraft) die beweisende (reflektierende) Urteilskraft. Wie man geglaubt hat, dieselben Gesetze auf die organische Natur anwenden zu können, die für eine niedere Erkenntnisstufe maßgebend sind, so vermeinte man auch, dieselbe Methode gelte hier wie dort. Beides ist ein Irrtum.
[ 35 ] Man hat die Intuition oft sehr geringschätzend in der Wissenschaft behandelt. Man hat es für einen Mangel des Goetheschen Geistes angesehen, daß er mit der Intuition wissenschaftliche Wahrheiten erreichen wollte. Was auf intuitivem Wege erreicht wird, halten viele zwar für sehr wichtig, wenn es sich um eine wissenschaftliche Entdeckung handelt. Da, sagt man, führt ein Einfall oft weiter als methodisch geschultes Denken. Denn man nennt es ja häufig Intuition, wenn jemand durch Zufall ein Richtiges getroffen, von dessen Wahrheit sich der Forscher erst auf Umwegen überzeugt. Stets wird aber geleugnet, daß die Intuition selbst ein Prinzip der Wissenschaft sein könne. Was der Intuition beigefallen, müsse nachträglich erst erwiesen werden - so denkt man - wenn es wissenschaftlichen Wert haben soll.
[ 36 ] So hat man auch Goethes wissenschaftliche Errungenschaften für geistreiche Einfälle gehalten, die erst nachher durch die strenge Wissenschaft ihre Beglaubigung erhalten haben.
[ 37 ] Für die organische Wissenschaft ist aber die Intuition die richtige Methode. Aus unseren Ausführungen geht, denken wir, ganz deutlich hervor, daß Goethes Geist gerade deshalb, weil er auf Intuition angelegt war, im Organischen den rechten Weg gefunden hat. Die der Organik eigene Methode fiel zusammen mit der Konstitution seines Geistes. Dadurch wurde ihm nur um so klarer, inwiefern sie sich von der unorganischen Naturwissenschaft unterscheidet. Das eine wurde ihm am andern klar. Er zeichnete daher auch mit scharfen Strichen das Wesen des Unorganischen.
[ 38 ] Zu der geringschätzenden Art, mit der man die Intuition behandelt, trägt nicht wenig bei, daß man ihren Errungenschaften nicht jenen Grad von Glaubwürdigkeit beilegen zu können meint wie den der beweisenden Wissenschaften. Man nennt oft allein, was man bewiesen hat, Wissen, alles übrige Glaube.
[ 39 ] Man muß bedenken, daß die Intuition etwas ganz anderes bedeutet innerhalb unserer wissenschaftlichen Richtung, die davon überzeugt ist, daß wir im Denken den Kern der Welt wesenhaft erfassen, und jener, die den letzteren in ein uns unerforschbares Jenseits verlegt. Wer in der uns vorliegenden Welt, soweit wir sie entweder erfahren oder mit unserem Denken durchdringen, nichts weiter sieht als einen Abglanz, ein Bild von einem Jenseitigen, einem Unbekannten, Wirkenden, das hinter dieser Hülle nicht nur für den ersten Blick, sondern aller wissenschaftlichen Forschung zum Trotz verborgen bleibt, der kann allerdings nur in der beweisenden Methode einen Ersatz für die mangelnde Einsicht in das Wesen der Dinge erblicken. Da er nicht bis zu der Ansicht durchdringt, daß eine Gedankenverbindung unmittelbar durch den im Gedanken gegebenen wesenhaften Inhalt, also durch die Sache selbst zustande kommt, so glaubt er sie nur dadurch stützen zu können, daß sie mit einigen Grundüberzeugungen (Axiomen) im Einklange steht, die so einfach sind, daß sie eines Beweises weder fähig sind, noch eines solchen bedürfen. Wird ihm dann eine wissenschaftliche Behauptung ohne Beweis gegeben, ja eine solche, die ihrer ganzen Natur nach die beweisende Methode ausschließt, dann erscheint sie ihm als von außen aufgedrängt; es tritt eine Wahrheit an ihn heran, ohne daß er erkennt, welches die Gründe ihrer Gültigkeit sind. Er glaubt, nicht ein Wissen, nicht eine Einsicht in die Sache zu haben, er glaubt, er könne sich nur einem Glauben hingeben, daß außerhalb seines Denkvermögens irgendwelche Gründe für ihre Gültigkeit bestehen.
[ 40 ] Unsere Weltansicht ist der Gefahr nicht ausgesetzt, daß sie die Grenzen der beweisenden Methode zugleich als die Grenzen wissenschaftlicher Überzeugung ansehen muß. Sie hat uns zu der Ansicht geführt, daß der Kern der Welt in unser Denken einfließt, daß wir nicht nur über das Wesen der Welt denken, sondern daß das Denken ein Zusammengehen mit dem Wesen der Wirklichkeit ist. Uns wird mit der Intuition nicht eine Wahrheit von außen aufgedrängt, weil es für unseren Standpunkt ein Außen und Innen in jener Weise, wie es die von uns eben gekennzeichnete, der unserigen entgegengesetzte wissenschaftliche Richtung annimmt, nicht gibt. Für uns ist die Intuition ein unmittelbares Innesein, ein Eindringen in die Wahrheit, die uns alles gibt, was überhaupt in Ansehung ihrer in Betracht kommt. Sie geht ganz in dem auf, was uns in unserem intuitiven Urteile gegeben ist. Das Charakteristische, auf das es beim Glauben ankommt, daß uns nur die fertige Wahrheit gegeben ist und nicht die Gründe, und daß uns der durchdringende Einblick in die in Betracht kommende Sache abgeht, fehlt hier gänzlich. Die auf dem Wege der Intuition gewonnene Einsicht ist gerade so wissenschaftlich wie die bewiesene.
[ 41] Jeder Einzelorganismus ist die Ausgestaltung des Typus in einer besonderen Form. Er ist eine Individualität, die sich aus einem Zentrum heraus selbst regelt und bestimmt. Er ist eine in sich geschlossene Ganzheit, was in der unorganischen Natur erst der Kosmos ist.
[ 42 ] Das Ideal der unorganischen Wissenschaft ist: die Totalität aller Erscheinungen als einheitliches System zu erfassen, damit wir jeder Einzelerscheinung mit dem Bewußtsein gegenübertreten: wir erkennen sie als Glied des Kosmos. In der organischen Wissenschaft muß dagegen Ideal sein, in dem Typus und seinen Erscheinungsformen dasjenige in möglichster Vollkommenheit zu haben, was wir in der Reihe der Einzelwesen sich entwickeln sehen. Die Hindurchführung des Typus durch alle Erscheinungen ist hier das Maßgebende. In der unorganischen Wissenschaft besteht das System, in der Organik die Vergleichung (jeder einzelnen Form mit dem Typus).
[ 43 ] Die Spektralanalyse und die Vervollkommnung der Astronomie dehnen die auf dem beschränkten Gebiete des Irdischen gewonnenen Wahrheiten auf das Weltganze aus. Damit nähern sie sich dem ersten Ideal. Das zweite wird erfüllt werden, wenn die von Goethe angewendete vergleichende Methode in ihrer Tragweite erkannt wird.
16 Organic nature
[ 1 ] For a long time, science stopped at the organic. It did not consider its methods sufficient to comprehend life and its phenomena. In fact, it believed that all lawfulness, such as is effective in inorganic nature, ends here. What was admitted in the inorganic world, that a phenomenon becomes comprehensible to us when we know its natural preconditions, was simply denied here. The organism was thought to be purposefully designed according to a certain plan of the Creator. Every organ had its purpose predetermined; all questions could only relate to this: what is the purpose of this or that organ, what is this or that there for? In the inorganic world, if one turned to the preconditions of a thing, these were considered quite indifferent to the facts of life and the main value was placed on the determination of a thing. The processes that accompany life were not considered to have natural causes in the same way as physical phenomena, but were thought to be attributable to a special life force. What forms in the organism was thought to be the product of this force, which simply overrides the other laws of nature. Until the beginning of our century, science knew nothing about organisms. It was limited solely to the field of the inorganic world.
[ 2 ] By seeking the lawfulness of the organic not in the nature of the objects, but in the thought that the Creator followed in their formation, one also cut off all possibility of an explanation. How should that thought become known to me? I am limited to what I have before me. If this itself does not reveal its laws to me within my thinking, then my science simply ceases. There can be no question of guessing the plans that an external being had in the scientific sense.
[ 3 ] At the end of the last century, the view was probably still generally held that there was no science as an explanation of the phenomena of life in the sense that physics, for example, is an explanatory science. Kant even tried to give it a philosophical justification. He considered our understanding to be such that it could only proceed from the particular to the general. The particular, the individual things, are given to it and it abstracts its general laws from them. Kant calls this kind of thinking discursive and considers it to be the only kind that belongs to man. Therefore, in his view, there is only a science of things, where the particular in and of itself is completely devoid of concepts and is only subsumed under an abstract concept. Kant did not find this condition fulfilled in the case of organisms. Here the individual appearance betrays a purposeful, that is conceptual arrangement. The particular bears traces of the concept in itself. However, according to the Königsberg philosopher, we lack any ability to comprehend such beings. We can only understand where concept and individual thing are separated; the former represents a general, the latter a particular. There is therefore nothing left for us but to base our observations of organisms on the idea of purposefulness; to treat living beings as if their phenomena were based on a system of intentions. Kant has thus established the unscientific here, as it were, scientifically.
[ 4 ] Goethe protested strongly against such unscientific behavior. He could never see why our thinking should not also suffice to ask of an organ of a living being: where does it come from instead of what does it serve? This was in his nature, which always urged him to see every being in its inner perfection. It seemed to him an unscientific way of looking at things that was only concerned with the external usefulness of an organ, i.e. its usefulness for another. What should this have to do with the inner essence of a thing? He is never concerned with what something is useful for; always only with how it develops. He does not want to look at an object as a completed thing, but in its becoming, so that he can recognize its origin. What particularly attracted him to Spinoza was that he did not accept the external purposefulness of organs and organisms. Goethe demanded a method for recognizing the organic world that was scientific in exactly the same sense as the one we apply to the inorganic world.
[ 5 ] Although not in such an ingenious way as his, the need for such a method arose again and again in the natural sciences. Today, only a very small fraction of researchers doubt the possibility of such a method. But whether the attempts that have been made here and there to introduce such a method have been successful is another question.
[ 6 ] In particular, a great mistake has been made. It was believed that the method of inorganic science should simply be transferred to the realm of organisms. The method used here was thought to be the only scientific method at all, and it was thought that if organics were to be scientifically possible, then it must be so in exactly the same sense as physics, for example. However, the possibility that the concept of scientificity might be much broader than "the explanation of the world according to the laws of the physical world" was forgotten. Even today, this realization has not yet been reached. Instead of investigating what the scientificity of the inorganic sciences is actually based on, and then looking for a method that can be applied to the living world while retaining the resulting requirements, one simply declares the laws obtained at that lower level of existence to be universal.
[ 7 ] But above all, we should examine what scientific thinking is based on in the first place. We have done this in our treatise. In the previous chapter, we also recognized that inorganic lawfulness is not a unique entity, but only a special case of all possible lawfulness in general. The method of physics is simply a special case of a general scientific method of research, taking into account the nature of the objects under consideration, the field which this science serves. If this method is extended to the organic, then the specific nature of the latter is erased. Instead of investigating the organic according to its nature, a lawfulness foreign to it is imposed upon it. But by denying the organic, it will never be recognized. Such a scientific attitude simply repeats on a higher level what it has gained on a lower level; and while it believes that it can bring the higher form of existence under the laws established elsewhere, this form slips away under its efforts, because it does not know how to hold on to and treat it in its peculiarity.
[ 8 ] All this comes from the erroneous view that believes that the method of a science is something external to the objects of that science, not conditioned by them, but by our nature. One believes that one must think in a certain way about the objects, and indeed about all - about the whole universe - in the same way. Investigations are carried out to show that, due to the nature of our mind, we can only think inductively, deductively, etc.
[ 9 ] However, we overlook the fact that the objects may not be able to tolerate the way of looking at them that we want to impose on them.
[ 11 ] When he demands of all scientific endeavor that "the causal coherence of phenomena should everywhere come into its own",12Haeckel, Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, "Goethe und Lamarck", Jena 1882, page 53. when he says: "If psychic mechanics were not so infinitely compounded, if we were also able to completely overlook the historical development of psychic functions, we would be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula", one can clearly see from this what he wants: to treat the entire world according to the template of the physical method.
[ 11 ] When he demands of all scientific endeavor that "the causal coherence of phenomena should everywhere be brought to bear", when he says: "If psychical mechanics were not so infinitely compounded, if we were able also to overlook completely the historical development of psychical functions, we would be able to bring them all into a mathematical soul formula", we can see clearly from this what he wants: to treat the whole world according to the template of the physical method.
[ 12 ] This demand, however, is not the basis of Darwinism in its original form, but in its current interpretation. We have seen that to explain a process in inorganic nature means: to show its lawful emergence from other sensuous realities, to derive it from objects which, like it, belong to the sensuous world. But how does today's organicism use the principle of adaptation and the struggle for existence, both of which, as the expression of a state of affairs, should certainly not be doubted by us? We believe that we can deduce the character of a certain species from the external conditions in which it lives, just as we can deduce the warming of a body from the conspicuous rays of the sun. One completely forgets that one can never show that character according to its substantive determinations as a consequence of these conditions; the conditions may have a determining influence, but they are not a producing cause. We are well able to say: Under the impression of this or that fact, a species had to develop in such a way that this or that organ developed in a special way; but the content, the specific organic, cannot be derived from external conditions. An organic being would have the essential characteristics abc; now it has developed under the influence of certain external conditions. Therefore its properties have taken on the particular form a' b' c' . If we take these influences into consideration, we will realize that a has developed in the form of a', b into b', c into c'. But the specific nature of a, b and c can never be revealed to us as the result of external conditions.
[ 13 ] First of all, we must focus our thinking on this: where do we get the content of the general, as the special case of which we regard the individual organic being? We know quite well that specialization comes from external influence, but we must derive the specialized form itself from an inner principle. The fact that this particular form has developed is revealed to us when we study the environment of a being. But this particular form is something in and of itself; we see it with certain characteristics. We see what is important. The external appearance is confronted with a content that is formed in itself, which provides us with what we need to derive those properties. In inorganic nature we perceive one fact, and in order to explain it we seek a second, a third, and so on; and the result is that the first appears to us as the necessary consequence of the latter. It is not so in the organic world. Here we need one more factor besides the facts. We must base the effects of external circumstances on something that cannot be passively determined by them, but is actively determined by itself under their influence.
[ 14 ] But what is this basis? It can be nothing but that which appears in the particular in the form of the generality. But a specific organism always appears in the particular. That basis is therefore an organism in the form of generality. A general image of the organism that encompasses all of its particular forms.
[ 15 ] We want to call this general organism type, following Goethe's example. Whatever else the word type may mean according to its linguistic development; we use it in this Goethean sense and never think of anything other than what is indicated. This type is not developed in any individual organism in all its perfection. Only our rational thinking is capable of appropriating it by extracting it as a general image from the phenomena. The type is thus the idea of the organism: the animal in the animal, the general plant in the particular.
[ 16 ] We must not imagine anything fixed under this type. It has nothing whatsoever to do with what Agassiz, Darwin's most important opponent, called an "embodied idea of God's creation". The type is something quite fluid, from which all particular species and genera, which can be regarded as subtypes, specialized types, can be derived. The type does not exclude the theory of descent. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms develop apart. It is only the rational protest against the fact that organic development is purely absorbed in the successively occurring, actual (sensually perceptible) forms. It is that which underlies this whole development. It is he who establishes the connection in this infinite multiplicity. It is the inner aspect of what we experience as the external forms of living beings. The Darwinian theory presupposes the type.
[ 17 ] The type is the true primordial organism; depending on whether it is ideally specialized: Primal plant or primal animal. It cannot be a single, sensually real living being. What Haeckel or other naturalists regard as the primal form is already a special form; it is precisely the simplest form of the type. The fact that it appears first in time in the simplest form does not mean that the forms that follow in time arise as a consequence of the forms that precede them in time. All forms arise as sequences of the type, the first as well as the last are manifestations of the same. We must take this as the basis of a true organic system and not simply want to separate the individual animal and plant species. The type runs like a red thread through all developmental stages of the organic world. We must hold on to it and then walk with it through this great, diverse realm. Then it becomes comprehensible to us. Otherwise, like the rest of the world of experience, it disintegrates into an incoherent mass of details. Indeed, even if we believe that we can trace something later, more complicated and more complex back to a former simpler form and that we have an original in the latter, we are mistaken, for we have only derived special form from special form.
[ 18 ] Friedrich Theodor Vischer once expressed the view with regard to Darwin's theory that it necessitated a revision of our concept of time. We have arrived at a point here that makes it clear to us in what sense such a revision would have to take place. It would have to show that the derivation of a later from an earlier is not an explanation, that the first in time is not a first in principle. All derivation has to take place from a principle and, at most, it would have to show which factors were effective in causing one kind of being to develop temporally before the other.
[ 19 ] The type plays the same role in the organic world as the law of nature does in the inorganic world. Just as the latter enables us to recognize each individual event as a member of a larger whole, the type enables us to view the individual organism as a particular form of the primordial form.
[ 20 ] We have already indicated that the type is not a closed, frozen conceptual form, but that it is fluid, that it can take on the most diverse forms; the number of these forms is infinite, because that by which the archetypal form is a single, particular one has no meaning for the archetypal form itself. It is just as a law of nature regulates an infinite number of individual phenomena, because the particular determinations that occur in the individual case have nothing to do with the law.
[ 21 ] However, we are dealing with something essentially different from inorganic nature. There it was a question of showing that a certain sensible fact can take place in this way and not otherwise, because this or that law of nature exists. That fact and the law stand opposite each other as two separate factors, and no further mental work is required than that, when we become aware of a fact, we remember the law that is decisive. It is different with a living being and its phenomena. Here it is a question of developing the individual form that appears in our experience out of the type that we must have grasped. We must carry out a spiritual process of an essentially different kind. We must not simply juxtapose the type with the individual phenomenon as something finished, like the law of nature.
[ 22 ] That every body, if it is not hindered by any incidental circumstances, falls to earth in such a way that the paths traversed in successive times behave like 1 :3:5:7 etc., is a once-finished, definite law. It is a natural phenomenon that occurs when two masses (earth, bodies on it) enter into a mutual relationship. If a special case enters the field of our observation to which this law applies, we need only consider the sensually observable facts in the relationship that the law provides, and we will find it confirmed. We trace the individual case back to the law. The law of nature expresses the connection between the facts separated in the world of the senses; but it remains as such in relation to the individual phenomenon. In the case of the type, we must develop the particular case before us from the original form. We must not contrast the type with the individual form in order to see how it governs the latter; we must let it emerge from the same. The law governs the appearance as something above it; the type flows into the individual living being; it identifies itself with it.
[ 23 ] An organic science must therefore, if it wants to be a science in the sense that mechanics or physics is, show the type as the most general form and then also in various special ideal forms. Mechanics is, after all, also a compilation of the various laws of nature, whereby the real conditions are assumed hypothetically throughout. It should be no different in organics. Here, too, one would have to hypothetically assume certain forms in which the type develops if one wanted to have a rational science. One would then have to show how these hypothetical forms can always be brought to a certain form available to our observation.
[ 24 ] As in the inorganic we trace a phenomenon back to a law, so here we develop a special form from the original form. Organic science does not come about through the external juxtaposition of the general and the particular, but through the development of one form from the other.
[ 25 ] Just as mechanics is a system of natural laws, so organic science should be a sequence of developmental forms of the type. Only that there we assemble the individual laws and organize them into a whole, whereas here we must allow the individual forms to emerge vividly from one another.
[ 26 ] There is one possible objection. If the typical form is something quite fluid, how is it at all possible to set up a chain of particular types strung together as the content of an organic? One can well imagine that one recognizes a special form of the type in every particular case that one observes, but one cannot merely collect such really observed cases for the purpose of science.
[ 27 ] But one can do something else. You can let the type run through its series of possibilities and then always hold on to this or that form (hypothetically). In this way, one obtains a series of forms derived mentally from the type as the content of a rational organicism.
[ 28 ] An organic is possible that is science in the strictest sense like mechanics. Its method is just different. The method of mechanics is the method of proof. Every proof is based on a certain rule. There is always a certain presupposition (i.e. possible conditions are given) and then it is determined what happens when these presuppositions are fulfilled. We then understand an individual phenomenon on the basis of the law. We think thus: under these conditions a phenomenon occurs; the conditions are there, therefore the phenomenon must occur. This is our thought process when we approach an event in the inorganic world in order to explain it. This is the evidential method. It is scientific because it completely imbues a phenomenon with the concept, because through it perception and thought coincide.
[ 29 ] But we can do nothing with this method of proof in the science of the organic. The type does not determine that a certain phenomenon occurs under certain conditions; it does not establish anything about a relationship between members that are alien to each other, externally opposed. It only determines the regularity of its own parts. Like natural law, it does not point beyond itself. The particular organic forms can therefore only be developed out of the general type-form, and the organic beings that appear in experience must coincide with some such derivative form of the type. The method of proof must here be replaced by the method of development. It is not established here that the external conditions interact in this way and therefore have a definite result, but that under certain external conditions a particular form has emerged from the type. This is the fundamental difference between inorganic and organic science. No method of research is based on it as consistently as Goethe's. No one has recognized as Goethe did that an organic science must be possible without all dark mysticism, without teleology, without the assumption of special ideas of creation. No one, however, has more definitely rejected the imposition of using the methods of inorganic natural science here.a7In my writings you will find various kinds of talk about "mysticism" and "mysticism". That there is no contradiction between these different kinds, as one has tried to fantasize, can be seen each time from the context. One can form a general concept of "mysticism". According to this, it is the extent of what one can experience of the world through inner, spiritual experience. This concept is not to be contested at first. For such an experience does exist. And it not only reveals something about the human inner being, but about the world. One must have eyes in which processes take place in order to experience something about the realm of colors. But you don't just learn about the eye, you learn about the world. One must have an inner soul organ in order to experience certain things of the world.
But one must bring full conceptual clarity into the experiences of the mystical organ if knowledge is to arise. But there are people who want to flee into the "inner" in order to escape conceptual clarity. They call "mysticism" what wants to lead knowledge from the light of ideas into the darkness of the emotional world - the emotional world not illuminated by ideas. Against this mysticism my writings speak everywhere; for the mysticism which holds the clarity of ideas in thought and makes the mystical sense into an organ of perception of the soul, which is active in the same region of the human being where otherwise the dark feelings rule, is written on every page of my books. This sense is completely equivalent for the spiritual to the eye or ear for the physical.
[ 30 ] The type is, as we have seen, a fuller scientific form than the primordial phenomenon. It also presupposes a more intensive activity of our mind than the latter. In thinking about the things of inorganic nature, the perception of the senses provides us with the content. It is our sensory organization that provides us with what we receive in the organic only through the mind. To perceive sweet, sour, warmth, cold, light, color, etc., we only need healthy senses. In thinking we only have to find the form for the substance. In the type, however, content and form are closely linked. That is why the type does not determine the content purely formally like the law, but permeates it vividly, from within, as its own. Our mind is faced with the task of participating productively in the creation of content at the same time as the formal.
[ 31 ] A way of thinking in which the content appears to be directly related to the formal has always been called intuitive.
[ 32 ] Intuition repeatedly appears as a scientific principle. The English philosopher Reid calls it an intuition that from the perception of external phenomena (sensory impressions) we simultaneously draw the conviction of the being of the same. Jacobi believed that in our feeling of God we are not only given this itself, but also the guarantee that God is. This judgment is also called intuitive. The characteristic, as we see, is always that more is always supposed to be given in the content than this itself, that one knows of a mental determination without proof, merely through immediate conviction. One believes that one does not have to prove the mental determinations "being" etc. of the perceptual substance, but that one possesses them in undivided unity with the content.
[ 33 ] But this is really the case with the type. Therefore, it cannot provide a means of proof, but merely the possibility of developing each particular form from itself. Our mind must therefore work much more intensively in grasping the type than in grasping the law of nature. It must produce the content with the form. It must take upon itself an activity which in inorganic natural science is performed by the senses and which we call contemplation. At this higher level, therefore, the spirit itself must be contemplative. Our power of judgment must look thinking and think contemplating. We are dealing here, as Goethe explained for the first time, with a contemplative power of judgment. Goethe has thus demonstrated that as a necessary form of perception in the human mind of which Kant wanted to prove that it is not inherent in man as a whole.
[ 34 ] If the type in organic nature represents the natural law (primordial phenomenon) of inorganic nature, then intuition (contemplative power of judgment) represents the proving (reflective) power of judgment. Just as it was believed that the same laws could be applied to organic nature that are decisive for a lower level of cognition, it was also believed that the same method applied here as there. Both are a mistake.
[ 35 ] Intuition has often been treated with great disdain in science. It has been considered a shortcoming of Goethe's mind that he wanted to achieve scientific truths through intuition. What is achieved by intuitive means is considered by many to be very important when it is a matter of scientific discovery. They say that an intuition often leads further than methodically trained thinking. After all, it is often called intuition when someone hits on the right thing by chance, the truth of which the researcher only becomes convinced of in a roundabout way. However, it is always denied that intuition itself can be a principle of science. What falls under intuition must first be proven afterwards - so the thinking goes - if it is to have scientific value.
[ 36 ] Thus, Goethe's scientific achievements were also considered to be ingenious ideas that were only later authenticated by rigorous science.
[ 37 ] However, intuition is the correct method for organic science. From what we have said, we think it is quite clear that Goethe's mind found the right path in organic science precisely because it was based on intuition. The method inherent in organicism coincided with the constitution of his mind. This made it all the clearer to him how it differs from inorganic natural science. The one became clear to him from the other. He therefore also drew the essence of the inorganic with sharp strokes.
[ 38 ] The contemptuous way in which intuition is treated is due in no small part to the fact that people do not believe they can attach the same degree of credibility to its achievements as to those of the proving sciences. One often calls only what one has proven knowledge, all the rest belief.
[ 39 ] It must be remembered that intuition means something quite different within our scientific direction, which is convinced that we essentially grasp the core of the world in thinking, and that which relocates the latter to a beyond that is inscrutable to us. Whoever sees in the world before us, insofar as we either experience it or penetrate it with our thinking, nothing more than a reflection, an image of something beyond, something unknown, something active, which remains hidden behind this shell not only for the first glance but despite all scientific research, can only see in the method of proof a substitute for the lack of insight into the being of things. Since he does not penetrate to the view that a thought connection comes about directly through the being content given in the thought, i.e. through the thing itself, he believes he can only support it by the fact that it is in agreement with some basic convictions (axioms) that are so simple that they are neither capable of nor in need of proof. If then a scientific assertion is given to him without proof, indeed one which by its very nature excludes the method of proof, it appears to him as imposed from without; a truth approaches him without his recognizing the grounds of its validity. He believes that he has no knowledge, no insight into the matter, he believes that he can only surrender to a belief that some grounds for its validity exist outside his faculty of thought.
[ 40 ] Our view of the world is not exposed to the danger that it must regard the limits of the evidential method as the limits of scientific conviction. It has led us to the view that the core of the world flows into our thinking, that we not only think about the essence of the world, but that thinking is a merging with the essence of reality. Intuition does not impose a truth on us from outside, because for our point of view there is no outside and inside in the way that the scientific direction we have just characterized, which is opposite to our own, assumes. For us, intuition is a direct inner being, a penetration into the truth that gives us everything that comes into consideration with regard to it. It is completely absorbed in what is given to us in our intuitive judgment. The characteristic that is important in belief, that we are given only the finished truth and not the reasons, and that we lack the penetrating insight into the matter under consideration, is completely absent here. The insight gained through intuition is just as scientific as the proven insight.
[ 41 ] Each individual organism is the manifestation of the type in a particular form. It is an individuality that regulates and determines itself from a center. It is a self-contained whole, which in inorganic nature is only the cosmos.
[ 42 ] The ideal of inorganic science is to grasp the totality of all phenomena as a unified system, so that we face each individual phenomenon with the awareness that we recognize it as a member of the cosmos. In organic science, on the other hand, the ideal must be to have in the type and its manifestations that which we see developing in the series of individual beings in the greatest possible perfection. The implementation of the type through all phenomena is the decisive factor here. In inorganic science there is the system, in organic science the comparison (of each individual form with the type).
[ 43 ] Spectral analysis and the perfection of astronomy extend the truths gained in the limited field of the earthly to the world as a whole. This brings them closer to the first ideal. The second will be fulfilled when the comparative method used by Goethe is recognized in its scope.