Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 59.djvu/380

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370
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

phenomena of nature to which he attempts to apply his principles, was the weakest spot in his system. As the sciences progressed, this became more and more evident, and it would have been asking too much of human nature to have required the enemy to forego this grand opportunity for telling assault. No doubt, these attacks went too far, as the formative influence of the 'Philosophy of Nature' upon men like Oken, Oersted, K. E. von Baer, Johannes Müller and Schönlein proves overwhelmingly. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the insights of 'Naturphilosophie' were not restored to scientific citizenship till late in the century, and its unchastened speculations alone attracted general attention in pre-Darwinian times. In this field, the decisive one for science, be it remembered, the vaunted higher and special knowledge of philosophy was adjudged guilty of ludicrous error, of gross carelessness, of otiose imaginings.

While the newer science thus scouted the new philosophy, was it without sin? In answering this question, we come upon what I have called one of the greatest paradoxes of history. Just after the nineteenth century had passed its zenith, a group of writers, penetrated by the dynamical and biological tendencies of contemporary science, thought that the times were ripe for an accordant theory of the universe. The discoveries of Wöhler, who produced an organic substance by the synthesis of inorganic materials; the startling advances of biology, especially in the physiological line; and the speculations of such thinkers as Schopenhauer and Feuerbach, appeared to furnish a ground for scientific explanation of certain factors in experience which had defied interpretation hitherto. Thus, despite its contempt for the regnant philosophy, science, stimulated by its own problems, produced a philosophical theory. Opponents of this movement, like opponents in all ages, thought to get rid of an irritating novelty by means of a nickname. Accordingly, we hear of the monism of Moleschott, Büchner, Carl Vogt and Haeckel. By applying this title, critics intended to indicate that these thinkers suppressed the great differences of experience—the difference between matter and mind or between the organic and the inorganic—and saddled one term, in this case, matter or the inorganic, with the entire responsibility of a solution. Now, it is true that this school alleged matter to be the cause of mind, that they said, 'brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile,' and did many other things equally foolish or objectionable. At the same time, their critics stood too near them and a clearly defined focus was unobtainable. The real fact was—and here the paradox emerges—that Büchner and the rest set up, not a monism, but a dogmatism. Despite the circumstance that the progress of science, to say nothing of Hume and Kant, had demonstrated beyond doubt the insufficiency and fallacy of the dualistic, static and analytic theory of