The Rudolf Steiner Archive

People with a comprehensive, worldly spirit often find the redeeming word for a matter that scholars sitting in a room have racked their brains over for a long time in vain.

What is philosophy supposed to do alongside and above the individual specialized sciences? The representatives of the latter are probably not averse to answering this question simply as follows: it should do nothing at all. In their view, the entire field of reality is encompassed by the special sciences. Why anything that goes beyond these? The person who used the most succinct expression for this was the labor apostle Ferdinand Lassalle. "Philosophy can be nothing but the consciousness which the empirical sciences attain about themselves." These are his words. You could hardly find a better formula for the matter.

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

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

This conception of philosophy should be penetrated in particular by those who want to present the historical development of philosophy in writing or in academic lectures. In the face of many an unpleasant phenomenon in this field, we welcome with pleasure a recently published book: "Die Hauptprobleme der Philosophie in ihrer Entwicklung und teilweise Lösung von Thales bis Robert Hamerling. Lectures, held at the K.K. Vienna University by Vinzenz Knauer (Vienna 1892)."

From the presentation of the history of philosophy by the same author (Geschichte der Philosophie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Neuzeit. Second improved edition. 1882) we got the impression that in Vinzenz Knauer we are dealing with a philosophical nature in the truest sense of the word. It is not an external observer, but a man living in the world of ideas who describes the phenomena of philosophy in ancient and modern times. And the new book has only strengthened this conviction. The lectures are highly suitable for stimulating philosophical thought. We are not dealing with a historian who gives a lecture on one system after another and then adds a critique from any point of view - J. H. Kirchmann, Thilo and others have practiced such arts ad nauseam - but with a philosopher who develops the problems vividly for his listeners and readers.

There are people who think it is objectivity to be as external as possible to the problems they deal with. They want to see everything from a bird's eye view. Such so-called objectivity, however, does not achieve a true visualization of its subject. Knauer has a different, genuine objectivity; he penetrates so deeply into the ideas of a philosopher that he resurrects them before our minds in the most unadulterated way possible. He knows how to revive the dramatic element that characterizes the ideas of every true philosopher. Where we so often only feel "the master's own spirit", Knauer really introduces us to the "spirit of the times".

Of course, all this is only possible with the high degree of mastery of the material that we admire in Knauer. Every sentence testifies to a long, thorough immersion in philosophical world views.

I would like to award this praise unreservedly to the first part of the book, which I extend to Thomas Aquinas. From Thomas Aquinas onwards, Knauer's inclination towards dualistic and pluralistic ideas seems to me to impair the free historical presentation. I personally felt this painfully in the second part. I consider Knauer's presentation of Aristotelian philosophy to be one of the clearest, most transparent and most correct there is; his treatment of modern philosophy does not yet seem to me to be so free of scholastic concepts as to be able to do justice to monistic philosophy. Knauer fails to recognize the difference between abstract and concrete monism. The former seeks a unity alongside and above the individual things of the cosmos. This monism is always embarrassed when it is supposed to derive the multiplicity of things from the absolutized unity and make it comprehensible. The consequence is usually that it declares the multiplicity to be illusory, which results in a complete evaporation of the given reality. Schopenhauer's and Schelling's first system are examples of this abstract monism. Concrete monism pursues the unified world principle in living reality. It does not seek a metaphysical unity alongside the given world, but is convinced that this given world contains the moments of development into which the unified world principle divides and separates itself.

This concrete monism does not seek unity in multiplicity, but wants to understand multiplicity as unity. The concept of unity on which concrete monism is based conceives the latter as substantial, which sets the difference in itself. It is contrasted with that unity which is generally indiscriminate in itself, i.e. absolutely simple (Herbart's reals), and with that which, of the equalities contained in these things, combines the former into a formal unity, just as we combine ten years into a decennium. Knauer only recognizes the latter two concepts of unity. The former, since it can only explain the distinct things of reality from the interaction of many simple realities, can lead to pluralism; the latter leads to abstract monism, because its unity is not immanent in things, but exists alongside and above them. Knauer tends towards pluralism. He overlooks the concrete-monistic elements of recent philosophy. That is why this part of his lectures seems deficient to me.

I am committed to concrete monism. With its help, I am able to understand the results of recent natural science, namely Goethe-Darwin-Haeckel organicism. If Knauer had taken the science of the organic into account in his arguments in the same way as he rightly does with that of the inorganic (heat equivalent, conservation of force, second law of mechanical heat theory), he would have seen through the difficulty of applying pluralism. It is impossible to apply the theory of development (and its consequences: Heredity Theory, Adaptation Theory and Basic Biogenetic Law) by means of the interaction of distinct simple reals without contradiction.

However, these objections should not prevent me from recognizing the great importance of the second part of Knauer's book. In addition to the clear, original discussion of Herbart's thought processes, I see this significance in the comprehensive and fair treatment of Hamerling's philosophizing. The fact that Hamerling appears in such an unprejudiced, unreserved manner in the ranks of philosophers is a merit that cannot be overestimated, which Knauer has earned through these lectures. As a historian of philosophy, he has spoken a word first. He who merely compiles and develops the philosophical systems recognized by everyone in a new way cannot be compared with the one who first recognizes the significance of a phenomenon. The fact that I myself have a completely different attitude to Hamerling than Knauer does not prevent me from recognizing this in these lectures. I appreciate the poet-philosopher's philosophical view because of the many monistic elements it contains, despite its tendency towards a dualistic and pluralistic world view. In my opinion, this circumstance cannot be judged correctly as long as German philosophy remains completely dependent on Kant, which completely obscures the free view of world conditions. Kant's philosophy is a dualistic one. It bases dualism on the organization of the human cognitive organism. And the fact that the propositions which Kant put forward for the subjectivity of cognition are inviolable in a more or less modified form is regarded today as the basic dogma of philosophy, so to speak. Anyone who doubts this is declared by many to be unsuitable for philosophical thinking. Anyone who has their own opinion, regardless of this prejudice, can have bad experiences today. I recently experienced it myself. When a "Society for Ethical Culture" was formed in Germany last year along the lines of similar associations in England and America, I took the opportunity to publicly express my opinion about such a backward foundation (e.g. in the "Literar. Merkur", Vol. XII. 1892, No. 40, and "Zukunft", 1892, Vol. I, No. 5). My views in this regard are rooted in my epistemological convictions, which I last substantiated in my essay "Truth and Science". The latter represent an epistemology that is independent of Kant and has grown out of the doctrines of modern monism. They provide full proof that I arrived at my views quite independently of Nietzsche. Nevertheless, I was simply accused of Nietzscheanism by German philosophers who were supposed to know something about the matter, and I was accused not only of lacking intellect but also of having an immoral attitude. That doesn't bother me any more. Some people think differently about my intellect than the gentlemen of the "ethical culture"; and as far as my morals are concerned: in my school reports it says: "exemplary", later it said: "perfectly in accordance with the academic laws"; since then, every authority I have called upon has given me a good moral certificate. So it seems that I have done nothing that should prompt a German scholar to call me before a "moral judgment seat" (cf. Ferd. Tönnies, "Ethische Kultur und ihr Geleite"). Or is it one of the insights of the new "ethical culture" that one is morally condemned because of one's theoretical views?

The phenomena of hypnotism and suggestion, in which research is currently taking a lively interest, are of such a nature that the representatives of the most diverse intellectual fields feel the need to deal with them. Hypnosis seems to provide the physician with a means of distinguishing functional from organic diseases, and at the same time the possibility of curing the former by suggestive intervention. The legal scholar will not be able to avoid taking into account the effect that auto-suggestion and external suggestion have on a person in questions in which free will and personal responsibility come into consideration. Judicial practice will always have to be mindful of the fact that suggestive influence can cause the statements of both the accused and the witnesses to take on a form that deviates more or less from the truth. In the field of religious and cultural history, many things can be better explained with reference to hypnotism than without it. That from here an explanatory light also falls on the phenomena of artistic imaginative activity seems to me undoubted. And this brings me in an informal way to that science which is interested in the question of hypnotism above all other fields, namely psychology. I must agree with Hans Schmidkunz (Psychologie der Suggestion,.5) when he seeks here an important addition to our existing psychology. And it is highly regrettable that a researcher like W. Wundt is guilty of the most incredible distortions of individual assertions in Schmidkunz's book in his assessment of it. Wundt has rendered great services to psychology through his experimental investigations and has earned a high reputation among his philosophizing and philosophically educated contemporaries. We do not wish to deny the former, nor rebel against the latter, when we count his recently published work on "Hypnotism and Suggestion" among those that create confusion rather than enlightenment in the field of psychology. The one-sided, in a certain sense purely mechanical way in which Wundt views the life of the soul makes him completely misjudge the value which, for example, the assumption of a double consciousness (superconscious and subconscious) has for the elucidation of the facts in question. He finds in it "a pronounced example of that kind of psychological pseudo-explanation which consists in introducing a new name for the things to be explained" (p. 36). Wundt overlooks the fact that such theories, even if they are not called upon to speak the last word about the facts, nevertheless keep the real moments that continually flow into one another in reality conceptually sharply apart, which is the first step towards a real explanation. Wundt's own views seem completely inadequate to me. He wants to derive all the facts under consideration from a functioning of the ordinary mechanism of imagination that differs only gradually from the normal one. But I cannot see how this can explain the behavior towards the outside world that we observe in hypnosis. It only seems comprehensible to me if in hypnosis such a modification of our conscious functions occurs that we enter into an interaction with our surroundings which is one step closer to the purely physical relationship than that of our ordinary mental life. This interaction is concealed by our higher spiritual life like a weaker light by a stronger one; but it makes itself felt when the normal consciousness is obscured. In the latter case we descend one step on the ladder of world effects; we are in intimate contact with purely physical nature. The processes of the latter affect us without passing through our higher consciousness. Without giving the matter this turn into the universal philosophy of nature, we will not get any further.

I would like to summarize my view of Wundt's writing as follows. When I consider the concept that this psychologist has of consciousness, it does not seem to correspond at all to what emerges from an exhaustive immersion in the life of the human soul. If Wundt's concept of consciousness were correct, then man would always be in hypnosis, and our states of consciousness would be suggested to us by the mechanically operating mechanism of imagination. It is only because Wundt's psychology does not rise above that level of consciousness which receives its content more or less by way of suggestion that it does not see the profound difference between a suggested and a mass of imagination received by the waking consciousness.

In physiological terms, I find the explanation most acceptable that they serve subcortical brain centers to mediate those functions which take place in the state of hypnosis, and this by switching off the cerebral cortex, which is only active during waking consciousness.

In addition to Wundt's work, I have a number of others on the same subject. If you are looking for an easy-to-follow guide through the entire field of these phenomena, I recommend H. Schmidkunz: "Der Hypnotismus".¹ Appearances, application, views and dangers of hypnotism are clearly presented by a knowledgeable hand. An inserted somnambulistic case history and an excellent chapter on the history of hypnotism further enhance the value of this book, which is excellent in every respect, Anyone who wants to learn about a typical case of hypnosis (with four modifications of consciousness) and the views of an eminent clinician on this field must consult the book by v. KrafftEbing ² reach. In the "Zeitfragen des christlichen Volkslebens" is by C. Ziegler ³ A treatise appeared which takes the standpoint of the so-called "great hypnotism" of the Paris school. The latter (with Charcot at its head) sees only special cases of hysteria in the phenomena in question. The author's view is somewhat clouded by this, but the book seems to me to be worth reading because of the good compilation of the phenomena. I have similar things to say about a brochure by Dr. Karl Friedr. Jordan.⁴ What is confusing here is the fact that the author is a follower of Prof. Gustav Jäger's theory of the life agent. According to Jordan, a quantity of this agent in excess of the usual amount flows from the hypnotist to the person being hypnotized and causes the somnambulistic state in the latter. Leaving aside this view, which is not supported by observation, this book also provides a good summary of what is relevant to hypnotism.

A study on hypnotism by Otto von Berlin seems to me to be confused and unclear.⁵ It is, however, to be taken more seriously than the latest publication by Dr. F. Wollny.⁶ We are dealing here with a very strange gentleman. Wollny senses secret societies which have the power to exert a magnetic influence on the individual as well as on whole masses of people and to induce them to all kinds of actions. The author has already expressed the same in a number of earlier writings, and has even made a petition to the imperial authorities to prosecute the alleged mischief. I believe that Wollny suffers from the kind of partial insanity that we often have occasion to observe. His writing is therefore only of pathological interest.

Following on from these remarks, I would like to say a few words about a question which, with regard to the experience of hypnotism, interests the philosophical thinker above all others. things. I mean that of the relation of suggestion to the conviction gained by logical means. There can be no doubt that, despite the qualitative difference between the hypnotic and the normal consciousness, auto-suggestion and external suggestion also play a great part in the latter, and that a large part of what we believe and consider to be true has taken root in us in a suggestive way. However, a complex of ideas that has come about through suggestion must never claim the value of a conviction. It is therefore all the more important to keep the designated areas strictly separate. After all, only that which is a logically acquired conviction can have scientific significance.

How does a judgment come about? We would never be able to connect ideas logically if the real unity of the universe did not appear to us as a multiplicity of ideas. The reason for the latter lies in our mental organization. If we were organized differently, we would see the entire (physical and spiritual) cosmos with a single glance. There would be no scientific thinking. The latter consists precisely in uniting the separate elements of the world through conscious activity. Through the development of this activity we approach more and more that overview of the world with a single glance. If this unification is to be a truly logical one, then two things are necessary. Firstly, we must see through the elements of world phenomena in their separate state exactly according to their content; secondly, from this content we must find the way in which we can objectively integrate the separate details into the unified whole of the world. Only if the world elements given to us behave completely passively in this unification and this only comes about through our "I" can the result be given the name of a conviction.

But there is no question that the same union of ideas which is brought about by our "I" can also take place independently of it merely through the attraction of the ideas themselves. This will happen if the "I" is switched off in some way, put into inactivity. The human psyche unites two moments: it takes in the world as a multiplicity, as a sum of details, and at a higher level it combines them again into the unity from which they originate. Because they belong to such a unity, they will strive for unification even if they are present in consciousness and the "I" does not confront them as a regulating factor. If this is the case, then we are dealing here with suggestion in the broadest sense. For a monistic view of the world, the latter is completely understandable. What is rooted in a unity strives for connection when it appears somewhere as a multiplicity. Since the totality of a person's life phenomena is always the result of the forces active in his consciousness, it can assert itself in two ways. If the process of imagination is regulated by the "I", then the phenomena of the personality can only be derived from its activity; if, on the other hand, the "I" is extinguished, then the cause of what takes place in and with the personality must be sought outside it. Every complex of imagination or every action of the latter kind is to be regarded only as a suggestion. There is only a gradual difference between the person acting in deep hypnosis and the scholar whose method is not based on considerations of his own "I" but on those of the head of the school. Only he who sees through the connections of the world in such a way that his judgment becomes completely independent of any external influence, raises the content of his imagination above a sum of suggestions. We can tell how so many people will act or think in a given case because we know the suggestions under whose influence they are. A person living under the influence of a suggestion is integrated into the chain of lower natural processes, where the causes of a phenomenon must always be sought not in it but outside it. Only the "I-consciousness" lifts us out of this chain, breaks the connection with the rest of nature in order to close it again within consciousness. To have given this central position to the "I" in the field of science is a merit of Joh. Gottlieb Fichte that cannot be appreciated enough. In this thinker, the development of human reason made a leap forward that cannot be compared with anything else. It is characteristic of contemporary German philosophy that it has no idea of this leap. The man who rises to the understanding of Fichte must experience a change in himself, like a man born blind who is given sight by an operation. All aberrations, both those of spiritualism and those of physiological psychology, can only be judged by those who know Fichte. It would never occur to Du Prel to place the action of a somnambulistic person higher than that conditioned by "ego-consciousness" if he had grasped the latter in a more intimate view. He would then know that everything that is not conditioned by the "I" is one step closer to physical nature than that which is. By making the suggestions of the consciousness alienated from the "I" the content of their teachings, the spiritualists make a mockery of science, since this can only consist of the judgments carried out by the "I". They place themselves on the same level as the believers in revelation, who also make the suggested contents of the imagination from outside the content of their views. It is quite characteristic of the dullness and cowardice of thinking reason in our time that the tendency to gain a view of the world with the exclusion of thought appears every moment.

• 1. Der Hypnotismus in gemeinfaßlicher Darstellung. With a somnambulistic case history. By Dr. Hans Schmidkunz. Stuttgart 1893 (VI, 266 p.).
• 2. An experimental study in the field of hypnotism together with remarks on suggestion and suggestion therapy. By Dr. R. v. Krafft-Ebing. 3rd ed. Stuttgart 1893 (108 pp.).
• 3. Der Hypnotismus. By C. Ziegler (Zeitfragen des christlichen Volkslebens, XVI, 1). Stuttgart 1892 (63 pp.).
• 4. The riddle of hypnotism and its solution. By Dr. Karl Friedr. Jordan. 2nd ed. Berlin 1892 (IV, 79 p.).
• 5. Kaleidoscopic study on hypnotism and suggestion. By Otto von Berlin. Freiburg 1892 (73 p.).
• 6. In Sachen der Hypnose und Suggestion. A Vademecum for Herm Prof. Wundt. By Dr. F. Wollny. Leipzig 1893 (24 pp.).

Today's German physicists agree that it is the greatest among them who closed his eyes forever on September 8, 1894. For decades, wide circles of educated people have become accustomed to turning primarily to the writings of two outstanding contemporaries when they need advice on the two most important questions that the contemplation of nature awakens in every thinking person. Those who thirst to learn something about how living beings, including man, have come into being and developed, should consult the works of Ernst Haeckel; those who ponder the effects of nature on man's senses will find the most varied inspiration in the works of Hermann Helmholtzens. These two men are the embodiment of our current understanding of nature. The one endeavored to solve the riddle of the becoming of living beings; the other immersed himself in what had become and traced the laws of its action. Few researchers have succeeded in having their achievements recognized to such a high degree during their lifetime as Hermann Helmholtz. Tributes and awards poured in from all over the world when he celebrated his seventieth birthday three years ago. Such a rare success is astonishing when one considers the difficulties with which the pioneers of science often have to struggle, especially when, like Helmholtz, they disdain to step out of the circle of their scientific work and take part in branches of public life in which there is more interest than in strict science. The astonishment disappears as soon as one takes a look at the historical position of the deceased researcher within the scientific development of the last century. Helmholtz's youth was a time that was richer than any other in burning scientific questions. He found a myriad of tasks that were in such a state that the solution could be expected any day. The methods of research were so well developed that in many cases only a small step was needed to achieve epoch-making discoveries on the paths already taken. The great stimulus in the field of natural science in Germany is Johannes Müller, the teacher of Helmholtz and Haeckel and many others with whose names the modern view of nature is associated. All those who were present at the celebration of Ernst Haeckel's sixtieth birthday in Jena on February 17, 1894, will never forget the enthusiasm with which this researcher spoke the words with which he described the influence that Johannes Müller had exerted on him: "I had already heard comparative anatomy ... and came, so well prepared, to the lectures of Johannes Müller, a man whose extraordinary greatness and majesty are still vivid in my mind today. Now, when I occasionally tire at work, I need only look at the picture of Johannes Müller hanging in front of me in my study to gain new strength. ... He taught comparative anatomy and physiology. ... I had such reverence for his formidable personality that I did not dare to approach him. ... It happened to me several times that I wanted to ask him for advice. My heart pounding, I climbed the stairs, touched the doorbell, but didn't dare ring it and turned back." This is how his students describe the man who initiated the scientific movement within which Helmholtz achieved his great successes. Johannes Müller purged science of a whole series of prejudices in order to clear the way for a sober, but unbiased view of the processes in the animal and human organism. He took up the fight against the short-sighted view that assumes two fundamentally different explanatory principles for inorganic and organic nature, between which mediation is supposed to be absolutely impossible. To explain inorganic nature, this view assumed the mechanical, chemical and physical forces; to elucidate the phenomena of organic life, it believed that a special "life force" was required, of which, however, a clear conception is impossible. The extension of the physical approach and its methods to the study of living nature forms the basic feature of the so-called "scientific age", which began with Johannes Müller. Helmholtz's research results bear the hallmark of this age in the most perfect way. Any scientific assumption that contradicts the laws of mechanical physics is unjustified: that was the end of his thinking. Whoever speaks of a "life force" turns the organism into a perpetual motion machine, a self-moving mover. He makes the force necessary for organic movement spring from nothing. This is impossible. Every form of force can only arise from another through transformation. There is one unchangeable quantity of force in the universe, and all kinds of forces, organic as well as inorganic, can only be forms of this one force. Where force arises, it must emerge from the transformation of a corresponding quantity of a different kind of force. This is the now famous "law of the conservation of force", which Helmholtz defended before the members of the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1847. The fact that the establishment of this law was in the truest sense of the word a requirement of the view of the times is proven by the fact that it was also discovered at the same time by Julius Robert Mayer from Württemberg. The application of the physical research method to the processes of organic life led Helmholtz to the idea of determining the speed at which a stimulus exerted on a nerve propagates in the organism. The fact that he succeeded in this was a success for the physical school of thought. It was proof that the processes inside and outside the organism could be measured.

Helmholtz also used the same physical method to research the laws according to which our senses convey our perception of the outside world. Johannes Müller had also paved the way in this field. He was the originator of the view that the type of sensation that an external impression makes on us depends on the sensory nerves through which it is conveyed. If the optic nerve is stimulated, the sensation of light arises, regardless of whether light or electric current or pressure acts on the eye. This theorem drew the attention of natural scientists to the mechanism of the sensory organs. Helmholtz found a fruitful field of work here. A momentous invention in this field made him a famous man in one fell swoop. It is the ophthalmoscope, through which the images on the retina in the eye and parts of this retina itself can be observed. Helmholtz also found everything ready for this invention. Brücke, also a student of Johannes Müller, had been working on the theory of ocular luminosity, which is based on the fact that part of the light that falls on the retina is reflected back outwards. Brücke had only neglected to ask himself which optical image the light returning from the eye belonged to. Helmholtz came across this question when he was considering how he could best teach his students Brücke's theory of ocular luminosity. The answer to this question also provided the instrument that would allow us to look inside the human eye and thus open up new avenues in ophthalmology. Helmholtz thus proved that modern natural science must also satisfy those who agree with Bacon of Verulam, the father of empirical science, and believe that science should draw its knowledge from life in order to make it practically applicable to life. The construction of the eye mirror was decisive for his external position in the world. He now found no obstacle to carrying out his great plans concerning the physiology of the sensory organs. He set out the functions of the eye and the ear in two extensive works. He shed new light on long-known facts and improved inadequate methods. When it came to filling gaps in research left open by his predecessors with new equipment, his ingenuity never let him down. In this way, in his "Physiological Optics" and in his "Doctrine of the Sensations of Sound", he produced works that have become fundamental to the fields of knowledge to which they belong. He subjected the processes in the eye under the influence of external objects and after the removal of the external influence to a precise investigation; for the perception of colors and color nuances he devised ingenious hypotheses based on the views of Th. Young. Some of his explanations are no longer tenable in the light of our present experience; but everyone who enters this field of research first seeks to gain a position in relation to Hermann Helmholtz's views. Proof of this is the recently published "Theory of Color Vision" by Ebbinghaus. No one contradicted Helmholtz without first expressing their appreciation of his achievements.

Helmholtz's explanation of the nature of timbre in his "Theory of the Sensations of Tone" had the effect of enlightenment. Helmholtz had deduced from observations first made by G. S. Ohm that the so-called tones of the violin, piano and so on, and even those of the human voice, are not simple tones at all, but sound phenomena composed of one tone with its numerous overtones. By taking into account the experience that microscopists had gained about the structure of the ear, he succeeded in gaining an understanding of how the organ of hearing breaks down the composite elements back into their constituent elements and in this way conveys the perception of timbre to consciousness. Helmholtz explains the appearance of chords by the occurrence of so-called beats when two tones of different pitches are sounded simultaneously, which consist in the alternating rise and fall of the tone strengths. With this work, Helmholtz wanted to provide a physiological basis for music aesthetics. How well he knew that aesthetics had an independent field alongside natural science, which he himself did not want to enter, is demonstrated by his words in the final chapter of the book, where he says with regard to the questions that lie beyond physiology: "Admittedly, the more interesting part of musical aesthetics only begins here - after all, it is a matter of finally explaining the wonders of the great works of art, of getting to know the expressions and movements of the various moods of the soul. However tempting the goal may be, I prefer to leave these investigations, in which I would feel too much like a dilettante, to others and remain myself on the ground of natural research to which I am accustomed." These words should be heeded by those who believe that all salvation must come from natural science, and for whom all intellectual courage immediately fades if they do not have the solid ground of experimental facts under their feet.

The inner circle of mathematical physicists and mathematicians also regarded Hermann Helmholtz as a leading spirit in his field of knowledge. He succeeded in solving problems on which Euler and Lagrange had tried their ingenuity in vain. He found answers in many things where others only clearly recognized that there was a question. He who works in this way satisfies many, because he frees them from the nightmare of agonizing riddles. Some of Johannes Müller's enormous demands have been fulfilled today. Helmholtz is the greatest of those who have worked on this fulfillment. He was one of the best of his time because he understood his tasks like few others. His views on art were rooted in the soil of classicism. In his "Doctrine of the Sensations of Sound", he wanted to create a scientific basis for classical music. This did not prevent him from fully understanding Richard Wagner's genius. We younger people need not be deceived by the fact that we can no longer share Helmholtz's views in many areas. A new view of art, a new philosophy fills us, and these will also have a new view of nature in their wake, which will break with much that is associated with Helmholtz's name. But every view of the times gives rise to achievements that are everlasting, and these include those that Helmholtz incorporated into science out of the character of his time.

I

Wilhelm Preyer was a bold researcher, a fertile thinker full of stimulating ideas, a tireless seeker of new paths and goals in science and cultural life. Physiology was at the center of his work. His comprehensive mind was at home in all areas of natural science. His thoughts and facts flowed from everywhere, which he processed into the great body of ideas that he envisioned as physiology in the broadest sense of the word. His writings open up broad, spiritual vistas. It was quite impossible for him to tread well-trodden paths. What he attacked became something new through his work, through his thinking. He had a clear, unclouded view of everything significant that has occurred in the intellectual life of recent decades. He always knew what had a future. Ernst Haeckel says in the preface to Preyer's recently published biography of Darwin: "Like me, you belong to the small number of neuroscientists who, immediately after the publication of Darwin's epoch-making work on the origin of species, were convinced of its tremendous importance and who had the courage to firmly defend its fundamental views at a time when the vast majority of their peers were still hostile or dismissive." Preyer was not one of those scholars and thinkers who are happy in their narrowness, who acquire a sum of convictions through tradition and then take a few steps further themselves in the direction that is thereby marked out for them. The belief that they are following a safe path makes such scholars unsuitable for committing great errors. They do not take bold risks in science. Preyer dared a great deal. Some of his ideas are regarded as aberrations by his peers. Much of what he held as his view will prove to be untenable in the course of time. But he was more inspiring as an erring man than the others, who could not fail to be so, because great errors cannot be made in the circulation of small scientific coins. It is said of Lombroso that he liked the new in intellectual life simply because it was new. Something similar is true of Preyer. He liked to immerse himself in areas of science that were young. Hypnotism, graphology, the question of whether Bacon was the author of Shakespeare's plays, occupied him and inspired him to write writings and essays that are valuable and original, even though their content must meet with strong doubts. Preyer turned his work and his thoughts to things that seem so absurd to some that he does not even want to talk about them seriously. The scientific study of manuscripts was his favorite occupation in recent times. Finding the soul of man, his essence, his character in his handwriting was considered by him to be the task of scientific graphology. Scientific prejudices and a certain type of scholarly education have led many people to believe that it is unscientific to get involved in certain things. The majority of our scientific contemporaries are of the opinion that such things as graphology are incapable of scientific treatment. They arrive at such an opinion because they have formed very definite ideas about what is possible in nature and what is not. They simply reject what does not correspond to these ideas. Minds like Preyer cannot allow themselves to be captured by such ideas. They know how tenuous the "truths" are that make up the content of our sciences. They know how uncertain, how hypothetical much of what the majority of scientifically educated people regard as absolutely certain is. That is why they are convinced that even things that at first seem very doubtful can provide important insights and experiences. Nothing in spiritual life is so certain that one can say: because we recognize these or those laws about one area of nature, something else can only be counted as an impossibility. Everything must be tried, everything must be thought through: this was Preyer's leitmotif. It led him to his immensely interesting investigations into "The Soul of the Child". In the book he wrote on this subject there are more and more significant psychological experiences and ideas than in the writings of the exact fashionable psychologists who want to get close to the human soul through experimentation in the laboratory. Preyer has a keen eye for the intimate aspects of a child's life and a tremendous gift for deduction. His observations come together in an admirable way to form a great scientific edifice. Preyer is both a master of detailed work and an ingenious discoverer of great connections. His biography of Darwin is a masterpiece in terms of penetrating the subject matter with great effective ideas. In a few meaningful strokes, Preyer outlines the contribution that Darwinism has made to all areas of modern intellectual life.

Preyer is never interested in knowledge alone. He wants to put what he has gained through scientific observation at the service of life. His book "The Soul of the Child" not only has the task of exploring the human soul, but also the other task of creating a solid psychological foundation for education. "The realization that psychogenesis is the necessary foundation of pedagogy is becoming more and more apparent. Without the study of the development of the young child's soul, education and the art of teaching cannot be founded on solid ground. ... The art of making the young child become is much more difficult than that of training it prematurely," he says in the preface to the aforementioned work. The views he expressed on the necessary reform of the secondary school system flow from the same source. Preyer is radical here. He wants the classical grammar school education to be replaced by one in the spirit of the modern scientific approach. The knowledge that moves our time should be passed on to young people by the grammar school. One need only have the courage to think in the spirit of our time and one must agree with Preyer's ideas. Only despondent spirits who are averse to any reform can disagree here. Such spirits are afraid of any upheaval. They see how the old works; they cannot or do not want to imagine how the new will work. They want the old because it is comfortable. Lively minds like Preyer hate stagnation as such. They will always carry reformatory ideas with them because they want all things to always be in a state of becoming, in flux.

II

Preyer emphasizes that "every physiological system that claims to be complete is forced to fill numerous and large gaps with conjectures. And because these are always subjective, there is no physiological doctrine that enjoys general approval. The energetic thinker made extensive use of the right to make such assumptions. For he knew that facts usually only reveal their nature to the researcher when he has first formed hypothetical ideas about their connection. The law that ultimately proves to be the correct one can be very different from the one expressed in the form of a conjecture; after all, the latter first pointed the way that led to the former. Preyer made a bold assumption about the origin of life. His courage of thought did not allow him to stop at this fundamental question of all physiology. Many contemporary physiologists do not dare to say a word about this question because science does not seem to be far enough along for them. Others are of the opinion that in the not too distant future it will be possible to solve the riddle of the origin of life by artificially producing living matter from carbonic acid, ammonia, water and salts in the laboratory. This, they believe, will prove that living things in nature once developed from inanimate things through primordial generation. The organic processes will then only appear as complicated mechanical, physical and chemical processes, and it will be possible to explain them with the help of the laws of physics and chemistry, just as the phenomena of inorganic nature are explained today. A third type of researcher, however, considers this to be completely impossible. Bunge, for example, explains: "The more thoroughly, versatilely and thoroughly we strive to investigate the phenomena of life, the more we come to the realization that processes which we had already believed we could explain physically and chemically are of a far more complex nature and for the time being defy any mechanical explanation. ... All processes in our organism that can be explained mechanistically are just as little phenomena of life as the movement of leaves and branches on a tree shaken by a storm, or as the movement of pollen blown by the wind from the male poplar to the female." The latter is also roughly Preyer's opinion. He did not admit that living things could ever have arisen from inanimate things, because the organic law seemed to him to be of a higher order than the inorganic law. Either it took place in earlier epochs, which lie far behind us in the past, and no longer takes place today, or it took place in the past and is still taking place today. In favor of the former case, it is argued that during the rapid cooling of the earth's surface there were completely different conditions than now, different air and light, different distribution of solids and liquids, different chemical compounds and different temperatures of the oceans. It is therefore possible, according to well-known researchers, that the peculiar, non-recurring process of primordial generation could have taken place under such peculiar, non-recurring conditions until the earth's surface, gradually becoming more similar to the present one, had changed to such an extent that living bodies existed, but could no longer come into being without the interposition of living bodies." Preyer believes that this view is based on weak foundations. "It is incomprehensible what, once the conditions for the combination of dead bodies into living ones were in place, whereupon life arose and persisted, should change so that it could continue in its lowest forms and develop further, but could no longer renew itself through primordial generation, but only through procreation. There is no reason why, if once self-generation took place, it should not also take place now." The conditions that are necessary for life today must have already existed at the time of the primordial generation, otherwise the generated life could not have survived. The change in these conditions of life can therefore not be a significant one. If procreation was possible in prehistoric times, it must also be possible today. But all attempts to artificially produce living things from lifeless things in the laboratory have failed. "It is true," says Preyer, "that in the next few years more such experiments will be made, and in particular efforts will be made to produce artificially in the laboratory the conditions which alone are realized on the deep seabed, but no cogent argument can be advanced in favour of the view that a positive result can be obtained at all. The number of chemical elements that can be used for such experiments is small, and even if the quantitative ratios, the absolute quantities, the degrees of pressure and the temperatures of the individual ingredients are highly variable, the possibilities of mixing in experiments remain confined within relatively narrow limits, particularly with regard to the thermal limits that are conducive to protoplasmic movements alone."

Those who deny that living matter has developed from inanimate matter in the course of time, and yet wish to remain on the basis of today's natural science, must assume that living matter is uncreated, eternal. Eberhard Richter decided on this view. In May 1865 he defended the opinion that the germs of life are eternal. However, since they could not thrive on the earth when it was molten, they must have reached our planet from other celestial bodies later, when the cooling was sufficiently advanced. Richter says: "Astronomy shows that masses of fine substances float in space; from the almost disembodied comet tails to the meteor stones that glow in our atmosphere and frequently fall to earth. In the latter, chemistry has detected remnants of organic matter (coal) in addition to molten metals. The question of whether these organic substances, before they were destroyed by the incandescence of the aerolite, consisted of shapeless primordial ooze or of formed organic structures, is to be decided in favor of the latter, because we have corresponding experience of this in our atmosphere." After Richter has spoken of the fungal germs and infusoria present in the earth's air, he says: "But if microscopic creatures float so high in the earth's atmosphere, they can also occasionally, for example under the attraction of passing comets or aerolites, reach outer space and then be caught on another world body that has become habitable, i.e. that enjoys the appropriate warmth and humidity, and develop again through self-ascending activity." Richter links his basic idea to all sorts of things that are untenable. Nevertheless, it cannot simply be dismissed out of hand. It is a fact that numerous organisms, germs and eggs on earth can retain their viability for centuries without showing the slightest sign of life. Such living substances fall into a lifeless state when deprived of the necessary conditions of life, but they can be revived if the right conditions are created. They are called anabiotic. It could therefore be that the bodies that fall to earth from outer space contain substances in which there is dormant life that can be awakened on earth under suitable conditions. In this way, the once dead Earth could have been populated with life. This hypothesis is so unadventurous that Helmholtz and Thomson have spoken out in favor of its scientific justification.

Preyer nevertheless quite rightly describes it as inadequate. It achieves nothing. She says that life did not originate on Earth from something lifeless, but came to it from other world bodies. The same question is repeated for the other world bodies. Did it originate there from inorganic matter or was it eternally present? Preyer resorts to another hypothesis. Why should not the living, the primordial, be the first and the inanimate have developed from the living alone that was present at the beginning? Preyer finds the view quite justified that "through life processes alone, which were already present before the formation of the earth, everything inorganic came into being through excretion, solidification, decomposition, cooling of living bodies, as is also the case today". Preyer finds that the difference between the inorganic and the organic is often shown by natural scientists in a completely false light. Some inorganic processes can be seen as transitions from the inanimate to the living. They represent analogies of life activity, if one looks closely. "An obvious example is the sea, which breathes in the same air as we do, takes in many things as its daily food and assimilates them by dissolving them so that they become constant marine components. The sea as such - like an organism - can only exist within narrow temperature limits, because if it solidifies when it cools down too much or evaporates when it gets too warm, its life dies out. The oceans also show currents in their interior. Rivers carry water to them like veins carry the nourishing juice to the body parts. The ejecta of the sea, its dead parts, the ice, reactants and products of its metabolism are thrown onto the beach. It produces heat through the friction of its water masses against each other, and if it is colder than the air, it swallows up its heat. It constantly generates itself anew, like protoplasm... Fire, too, can generally be called alive. It breathes the same air that we breathe, and suffocates when we deprive it of it. It consumes with insatiable greed what its lambent organs seize and feeds on its prey. It grows with slow movement, beginning in the dark, like the germ imperceptible, then it glows, unfolds ever more rapidly, growing into a heaven-aspiring blaze and propagates itself with terrifying haste, sending sparks everywhere, giving birth to new fires." Imagine these phenomena, reminiscent of life, heightened to full vitality, and you have that state of the once living earth mass from which both the presently living and the presently lifeless have separated. Preyer does not assert that the simplest life-substance we know today was present from the beginning of the formation of the earth, but that the beginningless movement in the universe is not a merely mechanical or physical one, but that it is a living one, and that the simple life-substance must necessarily have remained after the bodies now called inorganic had been separated out by the life-activity of the glowing planet on its surface. "The heavy metals, once also organic elements, no longer melted and did not return to the cycle that had excreted them. They are the signs of the rigor mortis of premature gigantic glowing organisms, whose breath may have been luminous iron vapor, whose blood was liquid metal and whose food may have been meteorites."

A similar idea to Preyer was later put forward by G. Th. Fechner in his "Ideen zur Schöpfungs- und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Organismen". He also conceived of the universe as originally animate.

Preyer's view must attract philosophical minds. They will never be able to understand how the phenomena of life can be explained by the summation of mechanical, physical and chemical processes. That living things transform themselves into inanimate things is quite understandable and proven by daily experience; that living things develop from inanimate things contradicts all observation that penetrates into the essence of things. The inorganic processes are present in the organic body in a heightened form, in a form that they do not have within inorganic nature. They cannot increase themselves into organic activity, but must first be captured and appropriated by an organism in order to serve life.

In contrast to the hypothesis of primordial generation, Preyer's is the more philosophical one. More refined minds will agree with Preyer when he says: "It is indeed reasonable to assume that the life and warmth of celestial bodies and organisms in the narrower sense are not merely inseparably bound together by the same great laws, but in the last instance originate from the same source. The sun lives the most intense life. And even if our earth is only its satellite, it still has light from its light, warmth from its warmth and in its 'womb life from its life: and it is no mere fantasy to think that we humans also originally come from the fire in the firmament."

III

Preyer derives the lifeless from the living. For him, the universe is a large, all-encompassing organism. From this view, it is only one step to the further step of imagining the world as an animated, spirit-filled organism. Preyer has also taken this step. He regards the propositions of mechanics, "matter is dead; it does not feel", as an aberration. He assumes that even the smallest, apparently dead body particle is endowed with sensation, i.e. with spirit. It corresponds to the facts to assume that "nowhere is there a sharp boundary between sentient and insentient beings, but that all matter has a certain capacity for sensation, which, however, can only give rise to sensation in a certain, extremely complicated arrangement and movement of the particles. Hence the simple substances, the dead bodies, even if they are in part very easily changed by slight influences, cannot, in spite of their dark sensory faculty, feel perceptibly, but as soon as they become components of the gray matter of the brain or only of the living protoplasm (through the ingestion of food), together with others, in an incalculably complicated movement, the sensation arises explosively, if an impression is now exerted on them."

The spirit originally slumbers in matter, but it is active in this slumbering state, it shapes matter, it organizes it until it has assumed such a form that it can itself appear in a manner appropriate to it. This is the leitmotif that Preyer is guided by in all his. Preyer's observations and thinking in physiology and psychology. He did not want to follow organic development merely to see how one form emerges from the other. He sought in the activity, in the function that an organ ultimately has to perform, the reason why it develops in a certain way. "What determines the final form in the development of the stem? I answer: the function. Only when this is activated does the differentiation of the substrate of the original beings begin. It is not the organ from which the function has to derive its origin, but originally the reverse is the case. The functions create their organs. Or, to avoid an expression that is difficult to define, one can say: the need determines the organic form, which is then inherited and only precedes the function in the embryo of higher animals, at least in the disposition." For Preyer, the highest, the last thing that comes into being is the creator of the first, of what precedes it in time. "Every single function of man must be traced step by step, once in individual life back to its first appearance in the living egg and then in the series of animals that are still close to his ancestors, and from these further on to the protoplasm, which is no longer animal, nor plant, but only living. Then one will begin to know where the higher and lower functions, for example speaking and seeing, as well as breathing and growing, come from, and how they have become what they are." The need to speak causes certain organs to undergo such a development that they ultimately become organs of speech. To anyone who views organic development in this way, the endeavor to explain the processes of life and soul mechanically can only appear as a historically strange aberration. "If physiology were really nothing other than physics and chemistry applied to the processes of life, then it would not be a science in itself, it would resemble technology and mechanical engineering and other applied disciplines," says Preyer, and he continues: "The fact that it could even come to be regarded and defined as the physics of organisms or the science of the mechanism and chemistry of living bodies is a historically important fact. The great error arose from the physical explanations of individual phenomena of life that have only become more frequent in this century, especially in recent decades, and from the many artificial reproductions of chemical products of animal and plant metabolism. ... No one doubts that research into the processes of life cannot progress without the continual utilization, application and development of physical and chemical principles and theories. But this does not mean that the science of life is nothing more than the physics and chemistry of living bodies... There are so many processes in the healthy organism which, remaining incomprehensible to physicists and chemists, do not even come within the scope of their investigations that the extension of physical-chemical explanations to them must also be called inadmissible, unscientific, arbitrary. This is a case of misguided induction, as is often observed in childhood: because many things taste good that end up in the mouth, everything must be put in the mouth."

Preyer has made a number of interesting observations in the field of sensory physiology and psycho-physiology and published the results of these in writings that are exemplary in their sharp formulation of what is presented. In my opinion, these works are also influenced by the idea that it is the mind that shapes the organism. What is the interaction between mind and body? How do the senses work to provide the spirit with what it needs to maintain itself? These are questions asked by those who believe that the spirit creates such an organic form for itself that it can manifest itself in a manner appropriate to its needs. Preyer made the dependence of muscle contraction on the strength of the stimulus exerted on the muscle on the one hand and the dependence of the movement triggered in the muscle on the stimulus on the other (the myophysical law) the subject of an important treatise (1874). He also investigated the nature of sensations ("Elemente der reinen Empfindungslehre", Jena 1877) and made observations about which vibrations are perceived as sound and which no longer manifest themselves as sound because they are too slow or too fast ("Über die Grenzen der Tonwahrnehmung", Jena 1876). His research into the nature of sleep, hypnosis and mind-reading all have the same origin: he wanted to recognize the intimate relationships between the spiritual and the physical. And his endeavors in the field of graphology are no less rooted in his basic idea. He wanted to recognize in the written word the spirit that had created its own body.

The intellectual life of the present would have a completely different physiognomy if two books had not been published in this century: Darwin's "Origin of Species" and Lyell's "Principles of Geology". The professors in the lecture halls of the universities would be talking about many things differently than they do, the religious consciousness of educated mankind would be different from what it is, Ibsen would have embodied other ideas in his dramas than those we hear from them: if Darwin and Lyell had not lived. Dramatic and narrative literature would have lived a different life if we had not had these books. The content of these books is an important part of the intellectual air we breathe. We cannot easily imagine how we would think if Darwin and Lyell had not inoculated their thoughts into the mental organism of mankind. One need never have read a line in the "Origin of Species" and in the "Principles of Geology", and yet one is under the influence of these books. Not only our thinking, but also our emotional life has received its characteristic imprint from them. A young person who reads these books today believes he will find nothing in them that he does not already know. Many of us grow up with the ideas of Darwin and Lyell before we know more than the names of these great observers of nature. Many of us have to speak a very different language to people who have not grown up with these ideas than the one they are used to. We begin to look at people who don't understand our language as beings who are remnants of a past historical era. How many of them think this way is not important. The main thing is that we see in ourselves, who think this way, the real and true people of the present. We know that we are the young and others are the old. We look forwards, the others look backwards. The future cultural historian will have to let our ideas begin a new epoch of thought. The thought of the future evokes joy and delight in us, because those to come will regard us as their forerunners. These future people will know more and be able to do more than we do, but they will have feelings that are similar to ours. We are closer to these people than to the pulpit orator who was born at the same time as us. The first, the greatest, the leaders among us are Lyell and Darwin. We are infinitely grateful to them, because we believe that without them we would belong to a dying part of humanity. Our sentient life canonizes them. We shudder at the spiritual experience we would have lived if they had not preceded us. We have even lost the "right judgment" of the greats of older times, because they are the most important to us. We do not grieve about this. We do not want to take things objectively as they are; we want to live, and we want our life to become something; it should carry the forces of growth within it. We would rather look at what has not yet been done than lose ourselves in contemplations about what has happened. If we were more just, we would be less fruitful. We have the injustice of the son who loves his parents more than others who are far away from him. We love Darwin more than Aristotle, Lyell more than Plato, because Darwin and Lyell are our well-known fathers, Plato and Aristotle are ancestral images that we have hung up in our mental castle. When we read Lyell and Darwin, it is as if someone were giving us a warm hand; when we study Plato and Aristotle, it is as if we were walking in a hall of ancestors. We live with Darwin and Lyell, we learn about Plato and Aristotle.

We do not always agree with Darwin and Lyell, we disagree with them on many things, but we feel that they speak in our language even when we disagree with them. We count among our own some who oppose Darwin and Lyell in the sharpest terms, but we know that even our opposition, if it is fruitful, could only have been so through those two minds. Great minds also produce their opponents, and together with their opponents they move humanity forward. Even if future mankind should come to substantially different ideas than Darwin and Lyell had, these sons of the future will still have to honor their fathers in these two men.

Lyell gave a new character to thinking about the formation of the earth. Before him, this thinking was dominated by ideas that seem childish to us today. We do not see why the enormous mountain formations should have been caused by forces other than those that still prevail today. Lyell saw that in the course of verifiable periods of time, the flowing water detaches the rock masses from the mountains and deposits them elsewhere. As a result, formations disappear in one place and others reappear in another. This happens slowly. But if we imagine such effects continuing over immeasurable periods of time, we can imagine that the entire surface of the earth has taken on the shape it has today as a result of these forces that still prevail today. In addition, there are the transformations that the earth's surface is undergoing today through floating icebergs, through moving glaciers that carry debris and boulders with them. Think also of earthquakes and volcanic phenomena that raise and lower the ground, think of the wind that raises dunes and the slow, gradual weathering of rocks. Everything that has happened up to now to form the earth may have happened in such a way that these effects were present over long periods of time. Today we have no doubt that this is the case. But before Lyell, people thought differently. They believed that the mighty mountain formations were caused by extraordinary forces acting instantaneously. When a form of the earth's surface was ripe for destruction, the creative power intervened anew to give our planet a new face; so thought our ancestors. When we examine the earth's crust, we realize that a number of earth epochs have been there and have perished again. We find the submerged earth epochs as layers of the earth's crust piled on top of each other. In each layer we discover fossilized animal and plant forms. Our ancestors assumed that over and over again the creative power had caused the life of an epoch to perish and put a new one in its place. Lyell showed that this is not the case. Through the gradual action of the forces which are still active today, one epoch has developed from another; and in each succeeding epoch those living beings have lived which have survived from the previous one and which have been able to adapt themselves to the new conditions of life. The creatures of the more recent periods of the earth are the descendants of those who lived in older ones.

This idea was of infinite fertility for Darwin. He recognized that animal species can change over the course of time. That animal species are not each created separately, but that they are related to each other, that they have diverged. If this realization is taken together with Lyell's thoughts, it becomes clear that all life on earth, past and future, forms a great natural unity. The processes that we see today with our eyes and understand with our minds have always taken place. No others have ever been there. What is happening today is happening without miracles and without supernatural influences. Darwin and Lyell have shown that it has always been so miraculous on earth. This makes them the creators of a whole new world view, a whole new way of feeling, a new way of life.

They have the greatest influence on our ethical life. They have freed us from the feelings we should have towards beings that dwell in the wind and weather. Those who see the approaching God in the thunderstorm feel differently than those who believe that thunderstorms and earthquakes are as natural as the effect of a stone falling to the ground. Those who believe in the ideas of Darwin and Lyell have a different attitude to the forces of nature than those who believe in the supernatural gods. The gods can no longer help him, they can no longer harm him, they cannot reward or punish him. He has become free of fear and hope in the face of inscrutable powers. The natural is the universe to him, and the natural can be explored. It can also be conquered and placed at the service of human ideas. One can consciously make oneself master of the earth. Reverence diminishes, but pride increases. One wants to rule wisely, but no longer humbly obey and submit to impenetrable counsels. Darwin and Lyell have replaced the world view of pride, of self-confident man, with the world view of humility, of submissiveness. They have done unspeakable things for the liberation of mankind. They taught us not to erect an altar to the "unknown god", but to offer our services to the known spirit of nature. They taught man not to regard himself as a dwarf, but to act as a hero. They have created a free path for action, for will, because they have freed it from the heavy weight that is attached to it by the will working on the other side. They have shown knowledge where it has its field, and have thus given it real power. It is only since Lyell and Darwin that it can be perceived as truth that knowledge is power. Before Lyell and Darwin, people had to tell themselves to submit to what they were destined to do; today they can tell themselves to do what they realize is valuable.

All relapses into an old world view will not be able to stop the development described. What Ernst Haeckel said at the founding of the Ethical Society in Berlin, that modern morality, modern religiosity and modern action are based on the modern world view: it is an incontrovertible truth. I cannot speak of Lyell or Darwin without thinking of Haeckel. All three belong together. What Lyell and Darwin began, Haeckel continued. He developed it in the full awareness that he was not only serving the scientific need, but also the religious consciousness of mankind. He is the most modern mind, because his world view is free of old prejudices, as was the case with Darwin, for example. He is the most modern thinker, because he sees the natural as the only field of thought, and he is the most modern perceiver, because he wants life to be organized according to the natural. We know that he celebrates Lyell's birthday with us as a feast day, because for him it must be the day that brought the one founder of the new world view. The feast day dedicated to Lyell makes us realize that we belong to the Haeckel community. When Haeckel talks to us about the processes of nature, every word has a secondary meaning for us that is related to our feelings. He is at the helm; he steers powerfully. Even if we don't exactly want to go past some of the places he leads us to, he still has the direction we want to take. He got the helm from Lyell and Darwin's hands; they couldn't have given it to anyone better. He will hand it over to others who will lead in his direction. And our community sails swiftly forward, leaving behind the helpless ferrymen of the old worldviews.

These are the ideas that November 14, when Lyell's birthday returned for the hundredth time, stirred in me.

We feel lucky to be able to live with certain people at the same time. If I were to name such people, one of the first would be Herman Grimm, who celebrates his seventieth birthday on January 6. He showed me directions of spiritual life that no one else could have shown me. Through him, I was introduced to a world of imagination that no one else could have introduced me to. I could only name two or three contemporary writers of whom I can say the same about him: from the first sentences of each of his books, each of his essays, I have a personal relationship with him. He is one of the writers for whom I have had the greatest sympathy since my youth. There are few people I respect as much as him when I have to disagree with them. With others, the contradiction we encounter blunts our love for them. Never with him. I have the feeling that everything he says comes from high places and must be accepted, even if we believe we have to disagree. I cannot speak of error to Herman Grimm.

Everything that Herman Grimm writes and speaks has the most personal character of his being. What he researches through diligent scholarly work, what he gains through the most careful observation, he expresses as a personal view, as a subjective opinion. He never writes a sentence that does not reflect his personality. He expresses personal experiences, whether he is talking about Goethe, Homer, Raphael, Michelangelo or Shakespeare. The personal experiences of a deeply and nobly feeling spirit.

A noble personality in the noblest sense of the word stands before my soul when I think of Herman Grimm. Every thing he touches takes on a peculiar meaning in his hands. One can look at it under the idea of nobility. The greatness that lies in nobility is peculiar to him. There are things that remain alien to him because they cannot be viewed from the perspective of nobility.

Strict researchers who insist on so-called objectivity are annoyed by Herman Grimm. One could hear very derogatory judgments in this direction when his book on Homer was published. I have a very special fondness for this book. A purely human interest captivates me to the work. Others write about Homer as the impersonal "method" demands. Herman Grimm writes as someone who enjoys Homer's works with artistic sensitivity must write. He thus brings their content much closer to us than any historical-philological method can do.

Herman Grimm's works on Michelangelo and Raphael show us these artists in a light in which we can only see them through him. His view will live on in the development of art history.

Herman Grimm is not interested in the breadth of historical development. The great personalities are the essential thing for him. The fact that Western culture has produced a Homer, Sophocles, Michelangelo, Raphael, Dante, Shakespeare and Goethe is what makes this culture valuable to him. What lies between these spirits should only be considered for their sake.

Although Herman Grimm opens up great historical perspectives for us, the historical approach has never obscured his feeling for the immediate present. He lives in the present, albeit in his own way. We hear his opinion on every significant contemporary issue with the greatest interest.

The image that Herman Grimm creates of Goethe is not to the liking of Goethe scholars. This is because he views every move, every utterance of Goethe with a personal interest. For him, Goethe's image is something that he regards as entirely subjective. The question of what Goethe is to me shines through all his remarks. He considers Goethe insofar as he is an element that effectively intervenes in his own life. He says things about Goethe that he feels he must say if Goethe is to be worthy of him. He does not say things that do not interest Herman Grimm, even if scholars believe that they are important for understanding Goethe. Herman Grimm's Goethe is not the "objective" Goethe, but we would not want to be without him as part of our intellectual life.

A few weeks ago, Herman Grimm gave us the third edition of a volume of novellas. All of Grimm's novellistic works have a beauty that speaks deeply to the heart. Whoever reads them feels in a characteristic way what culture is. One has the feeling that one is confronted with a personality who leads a stylish life.

The style of life seems to me to be an outstanding feature of Herman Grimm's personality. Everything he does in detail fits into a whole. Nothing stands out from the big picture that strikes us about him.

Our scientific way of looking at things is far removed from Herman Grimm. In many respects, it offends his personal sensibilities. His favorite object of contemplation is human nature as it is currently presented before our eyes and as it expresses itself in the works of imagination and reason. He is not interested in how this nature has developed organically from other forms. A natural feeling seems to give him better insight into the highest philosophical and religious questions than the scientific way of looking at things.

An expression of this way of looking at things is Herman Grimm's style. For him, every sentence springs from a personal impulse. He does not know the deduction of one sentence from another, the derivation of judgments from basic assumptions. In his progression from proposition to proposition, there are no starting points and results. Every assertion arises from a new experience. It is due to this peculiarity of his style that we believe we become richer in inner life content when reading his books.

He always gives us fresh, warm life: that's why we bring it to him.

A book that brings back fond memories lies before me. Robert Vischer, the son of the famous aesthete Friedrich Theodor Vischer, has begun publishing his father's works. He calls the book "Beauty and Art", which he has compiled with great effort and care from the papers left behind by the deceased and from the transcripts of his students.

As I read the book, all the ideas I once had about the nature of the arts come back to me. The "once" means eighteen to twenty years ago. At that time, people my age were reading works on aesthetics by Vischer, Weiße, Carriere, Schasler, Lotze and Zimmermann to find out more about the nature of the arts.

These men came from the philosophy that dominated education in the first half of our century. Some relied on Hegel, others on Herbart.

And for these men, art was a philosophical matter.

Goethe, Schiller and Jean Paul also formed their own ideas about the nature of art. They took art itself as their starting point. They expressed what people are forced to think when they allow art to have an effect on them. Their concepts of art were born out of art.

Vischer, Carriere, Weiße, Zimmermann and Schasler did not originally start out from directly living nature. They thought about the totality of world phenomena. And these world phenomena also include the products of artistic creation. Just as they asked about the nature of light, warmth and animal development, they also asked about the nature of art. Their starting points were those of cognitive people, not those of artistically sensitive natures.

Of course, I do not mean that a man like Fr. Th. Vischer should be denied artistic feeling in the highest and purest sense of the word. On the contrary: his relationship to art is the most lively and personal imaginable. But when he speaks about art, he speaks as a philosopher.

For Vischer, the world was a realization of the divine spirit. A representation of the divine spirit in marble, in lines and colors, in words is therefore art for him. How does the artist realize the divine spirit in the sensual material? That was the fundamental question for Vischer. A high, mature philosophical training underlies all his explanations. The language he speaks is only understood by a few today. It could only be understood by those who had the philosophical thoughts of Schelling and Hegel as part of their education. Only they could be interested in the questions that Vischer asked, in the thoughts that he communicated.

Today, few people can read a book by Vischer in the way his contemporaries read it. For contemporary people, it discusses things that are none of their business.

For Vischer, art was ultimately an impersonal matter. It was one of the tasks assigned to people by higher powers. Vischer did not believe in a personal God. But he does believe in a God. In a basic spiritual being that lives itself out in nature, in history, in art. This fundamental being is above man. Our best have given up this belief. For them, the spirit is nothing independent. For them, the spirit is only there insofar as nature has the ability to produce spiritual things from itself. For them, the highest spirit is produced by man, who gives birth to it out of his nature. Only when man creates the spiritual is it there. Vischer believes that the spiritual is there in itself and that man must seize it. Today's people believe that only the natural exists without man, and that the spiritual is only created by man. Therefore, for Vischer, the artist is a person who is filled with the divine spirit and embodies it in his works. For today's artists, the artist is a person who feels the need to do violence to things and give them the imprint of his personality. They do not believe that they should embody a spirit, they want to create things that correspond to their ideas, their imagination.

Vischer says: the sculptor imprints a human form on the marble that does not resemble a real human being because he unconsciously carries within him the image, the idea of all humanity, the archetype of man and wants to embody it. This archetype is the divine in man. The moderns know nothing of such an archetype. They only know that a figure appears before their souls when they look at man, and that they want to realize this figure. They want to give birth to an artificial world alongside the natural one, which their temperament, their imagination gives them. This is a humanly willed world, not one that has sprung from the divine spirit.

Today's people no longer understand it when one speaks of art as a realization of the divine, they can only understand that man has the need to shape things according to his temperament, according to his inspiration.

Modernists want to talk about art in human terms; they no longer want to go into the religious trait that underlies Vischer's explanations.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

There is an interesting essay by Goethe on this subject in the form of a conversation. In it, the question: "What kind of truth should one demand from works of art?" is dealt with in an exhaustive manner. What is said there outweighs volumes that have been written on this subject in more recent times. Since there is currently both lively interest and great confusion about the question, it may be appropriate here to recall the main ideas of Goethe's discussion.

It begins with the description of the "theater within the theater". "In a German theater, an oval, somewhat amphitheatrical building was presented, in whose boxes many spectators are painted, as if they were taking part in what is going on below. Some of the real spectators on the first floor and in the boxes were dissatisfied with this and resented the fact that something so untrue and improbable was being put upon them. On this occasion, a conversation took place, the approximate content of which is recorded here."

The conversation takes place between an artist's lawyer, who believes he has solved his problem with the painted spectators, and a spectator who is not satisfied with such painted spectators because he demands the truth of nature. This spectator wants "at least everything to seem true and real". "Why would the decorator take the trouble to draw all the lines most exactly according to the rules of perspective, to paint all the objects in the most perfect position? Why study the costume? Why would it cost so much to remain faithful to it in order to transport me back to those times? Why do they praise most the actor who expresses their feelings most truly, who comes closest to the truth in speech, posture and gestures, who deceives me into believing that I am seeing not an imitation but the thing itself?"

The artist's advocate now draws the spectator's attention to the extent to which all this does not entitle him to say that in the "theater he does not have to have the people and events before him in such a way that they seem true to him; rather, he must claim that at no moment does he have the sensation of seeing truth, but an appearance, albeit an appearance of the true.

At first, the audience believes that the lawyer is playing a pun. Goethe finely lets the lawyer reply to this: "And I may add that, when we speak of the effects of our spirit, no words are delicate and subtle enough, and that puns of this kind themselves indicate a need of the spirit, which, since we cannot express what is going on in us outright, seeks to operate through opposites, to answer the question from two sides and thus, as it were, to grasp the matter in the middle."

People who are only accustomed to living in the crude concepts that everyday life generates often see unnecessary verbiage in the delicate, conceptual distinctions that must be made by those who want to grasp the subtle, infinitely complicated relationships of reality. It is true that words can be used to argue excellently, that words can be used to prepare a system, but it is not always the fault of the one who prepares the system that there is no concept in the word. Often the person who hears the words cannot connect the concept with the word heard. It often seems strange when people complain that they cannot think of anything when they hear the words of this or that philosopher. They always think it's the philosopher's fault - often it's the readers' fault, who just can't think anything, while the philosopher has thought a lot.

There is a big difference between "seeming true" and "having the appearance of truth". The theatrical representation is, of course, appearance. One can now be of the opinion that the appearance must have such a form that it feigns reality. Or one can be convinced that appearance should sincerely show: I am not reality; I am appearance. If appearance has this sincerity, then it cannot take its laws from reality, it must have its own laws, which are not the same as those of reality. Whoever wants an artistic appearance that imitates reality will say: in a theatrical representation everything must proceed as it would have proceeded in reality if the same events had taken place. On the other hand, those who want an artistic appearance that sincerely presents itself as an appearance will say: in a theatrical representation, some things must proceed differently than they would in reality; the laws according to which the dramatic processes are connected are different from those according to which the real ones are connected.

Those who are of such a conviction must therefore admit that there are laws in art for the connection of facts for which there is no corresponding model in nature. Such laws are conveyed by the imagination. It does not create according to nature, it creates a higher truth of art alongside the truth of nature.

Goethe has the "artist's advocate" express this conviction. He claims "that the truth of art and the truth of nature are completely different, and that the artist should by no means strive, nor should he, for his work to actually appear as a work of nature".

Only those artists who lack imagination, who therefore cannot create anything that is true to art, but who must borrow from nature if they want to create anything at all, will want to deliver truth to nature in their works. And only those viewers will demand the truth of nature in works of art who do not have enough aesthetic culture to demand a special truth of art alongside the truth of nature. They only know the true that they experience every day. And when they are confronted with art, they ask: does this artificiality correspond to what we know as reality? People with an aesthetic culture know another truth than that of common reality. They seek this other truth in art.

Goethe has his "artist's advocate" explain the difference between a person with aesthetic culture and one without it with a very crude but excellent example. "A great naturalist had a monkey among his pets, which he once lost and found after a long search in the library. There the animal was sitting on the ground with the copper of an unbound work of natural history scattered around him. Astonished by this eager study of his domestic friend, the master approached and saw to his astonishment and annoyance that the sniveling monkey had eaten out all the beetles he had found depicted here and there."

The monkey only knows naturally real beetles, and the way it behaves towards such naturally real beetles in everyday life is that it eats them. He does not encounter reality in the pictures, but only appearance. He does not take the appearance as appearance. For he could not relate to an appearance. He takes the appearance as reality and relates to it as to a reality.

In the case of this monkey, those people who take an artistic appearance as a reality. When they see a robbery scene or a love scene on stage, they want exactly the same thing from this robbery or love scene as from the corresponding scenes in reality.

The "spectator" in Goethe's conversation is brought to a purer view of artistic enjoyment by the example of the monkey and says: "Should not the uneducated lover demand that a work of art be natural in order to be able to enjoy it in a natural, often crude and mean way?" - The work of art wants to be enjoyed in a higher way than the natural work. And anyone who has not imbibed this higher kind of enjoyment through aesthetic culture is like the monkey that eats the painted beetles instead of looking at them and acquiring scientific knowledge through their contemplation. The "Lawyer" puts it in these words: "A perfect work of art is a work of the human spirit, and in this sense also a work of nature. But by combining the scattered objects into one and incorporating even the most commonplace in their meaning and dignity, it is above nature. It wants to be grasped by a spirit that has arisen and formed harmoniously, and this spirit finds what is excellent, what is complete in itself, according to its nature. The common lover has no concept of this; he treats a work of art like an object he finds in the marketplace: but the true lover sees not only the truth of the imitation, but also the merits of the selected, the spiritual richness of the composition, the supernatural of the small world of art; he feels that he must elevate himself to the status of an artist in order to enjoy the work, he feels that he must gather himself from his scattered life, dwell with the work of art, look at it repeatedly and thereby give himself a higher existence."

Art, which strives for mere natural truth, an ape-like imitation of common everyday reality, is refuted the moment one feels within oneself the possibility of giving oneself the "higher existence" demanded above. Basically, only everyone can feel this possibility in themselves. Therefore, there can be no general, convincing refutation of naturalism. Anyone who only knows the common, everyday reality will always remain a naturalist. Those who discover in themselves the ability to look beyond the natural world to a particular artistic world will perceive naturalism as the aesthetic world view of artistically narrow-minded people.

Once you have realized this, you will not fight against naturalism with logical or other weapons. For such a battle would be like trying to prove to a monkey that painted beetles are not for eating but for looking at. Even if one were to go so far as to make the monkey understand that he should not eat painted beetles, he would never understand one thing, namely what painted beetles are for, since one is not allowed to eat them. It is the same with the aesthetically uneducated. It may be possible to bring him to the realization that a work of art is not to be treated in the same way as an object found in the marketplace. But since he only understands such a relationship as he can gain to the objects of the market, he will not understand what works of art are actually there for.

This is roughly the content of the Goethe conversation mentioned above. You can see that it deals in a noble manner with questions that many people today are subjecting to renewed scrutiny. The examination of these and many other things would not be necessary if one were to take the trouble to delve into the thoughts of those who have approached these matters in connection with a uniquely high culture.

The last few years have brought us a considerable number of reflections on the cultural achievements of the past century. And in the two years that we still have to live through in this century, these reflections are likely to pile up to an immense number. Those who like to emphasize the self-evident may argue that the passing of a century is a purely coincidental turning point in the development of mankind and that, in a different chronology, this turning point could coincide with a completely different phase of this development. Such an objection cannot arise in the face of the suggestive effect of the fact that the century appears numerically as a whole.

In addition to this general point, there is another particular reason to take a look at the achievements of our culture and the directions it is currently taking at the turn of the century.

The next thing that strikes the observer is the enormous wealth of new conditions for mastering the forces of nature and the associated progress in the practical organization of life. From the railroad and steamship to the telephone, one would have to review the series of inventions with their tremendous effects if one were to revive this idea from the outside.

And it is no different with the new conditions that have been created to expand our knowledge of the world. What insights into nature are provided by spectral analysis, the discovery of Röntgen, the studies on the age of the human race, the organic theory of development and others, which I will naturally refrain from mentioning here, as I am only interested in pointing to these things.

Despite all these and many other achievements, for example in the field of art, the person with a deeper perspective cannot be very happy about the educational content of the time. Our highest spiritual needs demand something that time only provides in meagre quantities.

In Goethe's sense, one can say of education that it must lead to the highest bliss through the purest culture. Our education does not lead to this bliss. - It lets the finest spirits down when they seek to satisfy the most intimate needs of their minds. In this respect, the end of the century presents a different picture from its beginning. Consider how Fichte inflamed minds a hundred years ago when he sought to harmonize the totality of the formation of time with the innermost needs of the human spirit. Schelling and Hegel deepened the knowledge of external things in the same direction. And how the voices of these spirits were heard!

A complete change occurred around the middle of the century. The innumerable insights into external things that were coming at people seemed to completely eclipse the ability to gain insight into one's own soul and to seek harmony between the external and internal worlds.

This change is expressed in an almost paradoxical way by the low esteem in which philosophy and its proponents are held today. How does Nietzsche's view that the Greeks are so highly regarded because, unlike other peoples, they do not present prophets but their seven wise men as human ideals compare to this disdain?

We should not be surprised if, in the face of such phenomena, minds with deeper spiritual needs find the proud thought structures of scholasticism more satisfying than the ideas of our own time. Otto Willmann has written an excellent book, his "History of Idealism" ¹ (Braunschweig 1894-97), in which he proclaims himself the eulogist of the worldview of past centuries. It must be admitted: the human spirit longs for that proud, comprehensive illumination of thought which human knowledge experienced in the philosophical systems of the scholastics. And this spirit will always be unsatisfied by confessions such as the one made by the great physicist Hermann Helmholtz in his Weimar Gods Speech* a few years ago. He said: in the face of the wealth of our present knowledge, it is hardly possible for a comprehensive spirit to emerge that encompasses the totality of this knowledge with a unified circle of ideas.

The urge of the human soul to integrate all knowledge into an overall view, from which the highest spiritual needs can be satisfied, is opposed in our time by the despondency of our thinking, which does not allow us to gain such an overall view.

This despondency is a characteristic feature of intellectual life at the turn of the century. It clouds our enjoyment of the achievements of the recent past.

Wherever someone appears who tries to draw up an overall picture of our knowledge, there are countless voices testifying to this despondency, emphasizing the impossibility of such an overall picture, claiming that our knowledge is far from being ready for such a conclusion. Such voices are also audible, defending the impossibility of such a conclusion. The human mind has just seen through the successes of the sciences how incapable it is of recognizing anything about those things that were once made objects of reflection by the philosophers.

If it were up to the opinion of the people who make such voices heard, one would be content to measure, weigh and compare things and phenomena, to examine them with the available apparatuses: but never would the question be raised as to the "higher meaning" of things and phenomena.

We have lost the unshakeable belief that thinking is called upon to solve the mysteries of the world. Only a few researchers, such as Ernst Haeckel, have the inclination to penetrate existing knowledge in such a way that such sense emerges. - It does not matter whether one agrees with the thoughts that Haeckel develops in his essay "Monism as a bond between religion and science" (Bonn 1892). The essential point is that here, with the means of our intellectual education, the question is raised: how can the human mind satisfy its needs through modern knowledge? This is the same question that the religions of all times and scholasticism sought to solve with their means of education.

The fact is, however, that thoughts of this kind have little effect today in the face of the general despondency, even cowardice, of human thought.

It is therefore not at all surprising that reaction in the intellectual field is rearing its head everywhere. As long as the scientifically educated thinkers are too discouraged to offer a substitute for the outdated religious ideas from the standpoint of their knowledge, people who have the need for a world view will fall back on the traditional ideas; and the few who arrange their lives according to a modern world view will remain singers without an audience. I would like to explain the reasons why the most advanced spirits of the present are so little understood.

• 1. See note, page 635