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XVI
Organic Nature
(See Exposition on Brief, Chapter 16)
F
OR A
long time science came to a standstill in the presence
of the organic. Its methods were not considered adequate to grasp
life and its manifestations. Indeed, it was believed that every
conformity to law such as is effective in inorganic Nature here
ceases to exist. What was admitted with reference to the
inorganic world — that a phenomenon is intelligible to us
when we know its natural prerequisite conditions — was here
simply denied. The organism was supposed to have been designed
purposefully by the Creator according to a determinate plan. Each
organ was supposed to have its predestined function; all questions
here could be directed only to the discovery of what the purpose of
this or that organ is; for what end this or that is present. Whereas,
in the inorganic world, one gave attention to the prerequisite
conditions of a thing, this was considered quite futile for the facts
of life, and primary importance was attached to the purpose of a
thing. Likewise in regard to the processes which accompany life, the
question asked was not so much concerning the natural causes, as in
the case of the physical phenomena, but these processes were supposed
to be attributable to a special vital force. What was formed in the
organism was supposed to be a product of this force, which simply
took a position above other natural laws. In short, up to the
beginning of the nineteenth century, science did not know how to deal
with organisms. It was restricted to the sphere of the
inorganic.
In thus seeking
the laws governing the organism, not in the nature of the objects,
but in the thought which the Creator followed in forming them, men
were cut off from any possibility of an explanation. How is that
thought to be made known to me P I am limited to what I have before
me. If this thing itself does not lay bare its laws within my
thoughts, then my knowledge ceases. We cannot discuss in a scientific
sense the divination of a plan held by a Being outside the thing
itself.
At the close of the eighteenth
century, the point of view which almost universally prevailed was
that there is no science which interprets the phenomena of life in
the sense in which, for example, physics is an interpretive
science. Indeed, Kant sought to give a philosophic basis for this
opinion. He considered our intellect to be of such a nature that it
can proceed only from the particular to the general. The particulars,
the single things, are given to the intellect, he thought, and from
these it abstracts its general laws. This form of thinking Kant
called discursive, and he considered it the sole form belonging
to man. Therefore, according to his opinion, there could not be any
science except as regards those things in which the particular, of
and for itself, is quite void of a concept, and is only subsumed
under an abstract concept. In the case of organisms, Kant did not
find this condition fulfilled. Here the single organism betrays
a purposive — that is, a conceptual — arrangement. The
particular bears traces of the concept in itself. But, according to
the Königsberg philosopher, we
are wholly lacking in capacity to grasp such an entity. We can
understand only that in which concept and single thing are separated,
where one represents the general, the other the particular.
Nothing then remains for us but to make of the idea of purpose the
basis for our observations of organisms: to deal with the creature as
if a system of purposes lay at the basis of its phenomena. Thus Kant
here established the unscientific scientifically, so to
speak.
Against such
unscientific procedure Goethe protested vigorously. He could
never see why our thoughts are not also qualified to ask in
regard to the organ of a creature: “Whence comes it?”
instead of, “What purpose does it serve?” This was in
keeping with his nature, which always impelled him to look into
every entity in its inner completeness. It seemed to him an
unscientific form of observation to concern oneself only with
the external purpose of an organ — that is, its usefulness to
something else. What could this have to do with the inner essential
nature of a thing? Therefore, it never concerns him to know for what
purpose a thing serves, but always rather to know how it evolves. He
wished to observe an object, not as a completed thing, but in its
becoming, in order that he might know its primal origin. He was
especially attracted to Spinoza because the latter did not give
prominence to the external purpose of organs and organisms. Goethe
demanded for the knowledge of the organic world a method which is
thoroughly scientific in the sense in which that method is scientific
which we apply to the inorganic world.
Not with so much
genius as in Goethe, yet none the less insistently, appeared
the craving over and over again for such a method in natural science.
Nowadays only a very small section of the scientists doubts its
possibility. But whether the attempts which are being made here and
there to introduce such a method have been successful or not, —
this is naturally another question.
First of all, a
great error has been committed in this matter. It has been supposed
that the methods of inorganic science should simply be transferred to
the organic. The methods applied in the former field have simply been
considered as the only scientific methods possible, and it has been
thought that, if a science of “organics” is possible, it
must be so in the same sense as physics. But the possibility has been
ignored that the concept of the nature of science might be far
broader than the definition “interpretation of the
universe according to the laws of the physical world.” Even
today men have not come to recognize this truth. Instead of seeking
to learn what constitutes the scientific character of the
inorganic sciences, and then seeking for a method which might be
applied to the living world without sacrificing the requirements
resulting from this inquiry, the laws discovered at those lower
stages of existence are simply postulated as
universal.
But the inquiry should be, first of
all, as to the basis upon which scientific thinking rests. In our
treatment we have followed this principle. In the preceding
chapter we have also learned that the conformity to law which
characterizes the inorganic is not something isolated, but a
special instance of all possible conformities to law. The
method of physics is merely a special instance of a general
scientific method of research in which consideration is given to the
nature of the object under examination and to the field served
by this science. If this method is extended to the organic, then the
specific character of the latter is effaced. Instead of investigating
the organic according to its nature, we force upon it a law alien to
it. But so long as we negate the organic we shall never come to know
it. Such scientific behavior merely repeats upon a higher plane
that which it has gained on a lower plane; and, while it expects to
bring the higher form of existence under these ready-made laws
applicable elsewhere, this higher form eludes the investigator's
efforts, since he does not know how to lay hold upon it and handle it
according to its own characteristics.
All this comes from the fallacious
opinion that the method of a science is something external to the
objects of that science, prescribed not by their nature but by
ours. It is supposed that we must think about the objects in a
certain manner, and indeed about all — the whole universe
— in the same manner. Investigations are undertaken which
are intended to show that, by reason of the nature of our minds, we
can think only inductively, only deductively,
etc.
But in all this
the fact is overlooked that the objects may perhaps refuse to yield
to the methods of observation which we would vindicate upon
them.
That the charge
which we make against the organic natural science of our time is
fully justified — that is, that it carries over to organic
Nature, not the scientific principle in general, but that of
inorganic Nature — is evident if we glance at the opinions of
the most distinguished of contemporary scientific theorists —
Haeckel.
When he requires
of all scientific endeavor that “the causal interconnection of
all the phenomena shall be made evident” — when he says:
“If the psychic mechanics were not so infinitely complicated,
if we were in position to survey fully the historic evolution of the
psychic functions also, we should be able to reduce them all to
a mathematical soul-formula” — it is clear what he wishes
to do: to deal with the entire world according to the stereotyped
pattern of the physical sciences.
*
But
this requirement is fundamental also in Darwinism, not in its
original form, but in its contemporary interpretation. We have seen
that the explanation of an occurrence in inorganic Nature means to
show its derivation according to law from other sensible realities,
to deduce it from other objects which belong like it to the sense
world. But how does the contemporary science of
“organics” apply the principles of adaptation and the
survival of the fittest? — neither of which will be
challenged by us as an expression of a complex of facts. It is
supposed that the character of a certain species can be deduced
from the external conditions under which it has existed, just as we
can derive the heating of a body from the sunbeam falling on it. It
is entirely overlooked that this character, according to its
contentual characterizations, can never be derived as a result of
these conditions. The conditions may have a definite influence, but
they are not a creative cause. We are entirely safe in
asserting that a species must so evolve under the influence of
this or that set of facts as to develop this or that organ in a
special way; but the essential (inhaltliche),
the specific-organic, is not to be deduced from external conditions.
Suppose that an organic entity had the essential
characteristicsabc and
then evolved under definite influences so that its characteristics
have assumed the particular forma'b'c'. When we take this
influence into account, we shall understand thata has evolved into the
forma'; b into b'; c intoc. But
the specific nature ofabc can never be derived
from external influences.
Before everything else, we must
direct our thought to this question: Whence do we derive the content
of the general class of which we consider the single organic entity a
particular instance? We know perfectly well that the
specialization is due to the external influences, but the specialized
form itself we must derive from an inner principle. The fact that
this specialized form itself has evolved we can explain when we study
the environment of the entity. Yet this special form is, none
the less, something in and of itself; we find it possessed of certain
characteristics. We see what is the essential matter. There
comes into relation with the external phenomenal world a certain
self-formed content which provides us with what we need in order to
deduce these characteristics. In inorganic Nature we become aware of
a certain fact and we seek a second fact and a third in order to
explain this; and the result of the inquiry is that the first seems
to us the inevitable consequence of the second. In the organic world
this is not the case. Here we need still another factor besides the
facts. We must conceive at a deeper level than the influences of
external conditions something which does not passively allow itself
to be determined by these conditions but actively determines itself
under their influence.
But what is this
fundamental element? It cannot be anything else than that which
appears in the particular in the form of the general. But what always
appears in the particular is a definite organism. That basic element
is, therefore, an organism in the form of the general: a general form
of the organism which includes within itself all particular
forms.
This general organism we shall call,
after the precedent of Goethe, the type. Whatever may be the meaning
of the word typeaccording to its
etymology, we use it in this sense intended by Goethe and mean by it
nothing more than what is expressed. This type is not elaborated in
all its entirety in any single organism. Only our rationalizing
thought is capable of grasping this by abstracting it as a general
image out of the phenomenal. The type is thus the Idea of the
organism; the animality in the animal, the general plant in the
specific plants.
Under this termtype
we must not imagine anything fixed. It has absolutely
nothing to do with what Agassiz, the most notable adversary of
Darwin, called “an incarnate creative idea of God.” The
type is something entirely “fluidic” out of which may be
derived all separate species and families, which we may consider
sub-types, specialized types. The type does not exclude the theory of
descent. It does not contradict the fact that organic forms evolve
one from another. It is only the rational protest against the idea
that organic evolution proceeds merely in the successively appearing
objective (sense-perceptible) forms. It is that which is basic in
this entire evolution. It is the type that establishes the
interconnection amid all the infinite multiplicity. It is the inner
aspect of that which we experience as the outer forms of living
creatures. The Darwinian theory presupposes the
type.
(See Notes to the New Edition, 1924, page 94)
The type is the true primal organism;
either primal plant or primal animal according as it specializes
ideally. It cannot be any single sensibly-real living entity. What
Haeckel or other naturalists look upon as the primal form is a
form already specialized: the simplest form of the type. The fact
that it first appears in the time sequence in the simplest form does
not render it necessary that the forms appearing later in time are
the results of the chronologically preceding forms. All forms are the
results of the type; the first and equally the last are
manifestations of the type. It is this type which we must take as the
basis for a true organics, not undertaking simply to deduce the
single species of animals and plants one from another. Like a red
line does the type manifestitself through all
the evolutionary stages of the organic world. We must firmly grasp it
and then follow it in its course through all this great multiform
kingdom. Then does this become intelligible. Otherwise, like
all the rest of the world of experience, it disintegrates into a mass
of unrelated units. Indeed, even when we believe we have reduced the
later, more complex, compounded forms to the earlier simpler form,
and that in the latter we have an original, we merely deceive
ourselves; for we have simply derived one specialized form from
another.
Friedrich
Theodor Vischer once expressed the
opinion in regard to the Darwinian theory that it would render
necessary a revision of our concept of time. Here we have arrived at
a point which makes manifest to us in what sense such a revision
would have to occur. It would have to show that the deducing of a
later from an earlier is no explanation; that the first in time is
not the first in principle. Every derivation must be out of what
constitutes the principle, and at most it would be necessary to show
what factors were effective in bringing it about that one sort of
entity evolved in time before another.
The type plays in
the organic world the same role as that of the natural law in the
inorganic. As the latter gives us the possibility of recognizing each
single occurrence as a member of a greater whole, so the type puts us
in position to look upon the single organism as a particular shaping
of the primal form.
We have already
pointed out that the type is no circumscribed crystallized conceptual
form, but is fluid: that it can assume the most manifold formations.
The number of these formations is unlimited, because that by
reason of which the primal form becomes a single specialized form has
for the primal form no significance. The case is just like that of a
natural law which controls innumerable single manifestations,
because the special determinants which appear in the single instances
have nothing to do with the natural law.
But we are here
dealing with something essentially unlike inorganic Nature.
There our task is to show that a certain sensible fact can appear so
and not otherwise because of the existence of this or that natural
law. That fact and that law face one another as two separate factors,
and no other mental work is required than that, when we behold a
fact, we shall recall the law which is determinative. In the case of
a living entity and its manifestations, the case is different. There
our task must be to evolve the single form which meets us in direct
experience from the type — which we must have apprehended. We
must perform a mental process of an entirely different sort. We must
not simply set the type as something finished, like a natural law,
over against the single manifestation.
That every body, unless prevented by
some accompanying circumstance, falls to the earth in such a
way that the distances covered in successive intervals of time are in
the ratio 1:3:5:7 etc., is a definite law once for all fixed. This is
a primal phenomenon which appears whenever two masses (the earth and
bodies thereon) come into reciprocal relationship. If, now, a more
special instance enters the field of our observation in which this
law is applicable, we need only bring the sensibly observable facts
into that relationship which gives us the law, and we shall find it
confirmed. We trace the single case back to the law. The
natural law expresses the interrelationship of the separate facts of
the sense-world; but it continues to exist and confront the single
facts. In the case of the type we must evolve out of the primal form
each specialized instance that meets us. We must not confront the
single forms with the type in order to see how the latter
governs the former; we must cause the former to issue from the
latter. Natural law governs a manifestation as something
standing above this; the type flows into the single living
entity, identifies itself with this.
Therefore, a
science of organics that sets out to be scientific in the sense in
which physics or mechanics is scientific must show the type as the
most universal form and then in various ideal separate forms.
Mechanics also is such a grouping together of various natural laws in
which the requirements of reality are presupposed theoretically
throughout. The same must be true in organics. Here also, if we are
to have a rational science, we must presuppose hypothetically
determined forms in which the type takes shape. One must then show
how these hypothetical forms can always be reduced to a definite form
lying before our eyes.
Just as we trace a
phenomenon in the inorganic to a law, so here we evolve a specific
form from the primal form. Organic science does not come about
through the external comparison of special and general, but through
the evolution of the former out of the latter.
As mechanics is a
system of natural laws, so organics must be a succession of forms
evolved from the type; only that in the former case we bring together
the single laws and arrange them into a whole, whereas here we must
cause the single forms to proceed in living stream one from
another.
Here an objection
may be raised. If the typical form is something altogether
fluid, how then is it at all possible to set up a chain of special
types in a series as the content of an organics? It may well be
imagined that, in each special instance observed, a particular form
of the type is to be recognized, and yet we cannot merely
assemble such actually observed instances in the name of
science.
But we can do something else. We can
allow the type to follow its course through the series of
possibilities and then fix (hypothetically) in each case this or that
form. In this way we arrive at a series of forms deduced by thought
from the type, as the content of a rational
organics.
An organics is
possible which will be scientific in the strictest sense just as
mechanics is scientific. Only the method is different. The method of
mechanics is that of proof. Each proof rests upon a certain rule.
There always exists a definite presupposition (that is, prerequisites
accessible to experience are given) and we then determine what occurs
when these presuppositions are realized. We then comprehend a single
phenomenon under the basic law. We think thus: — Under these
conditions, the phenomenon occurs; the conditions are present and,
therefore, the phenomenon must occur. This is the thought process we
employ to explain an occurrence of the inorganic world when we
meet it. This is the method of proof. It is scientific because it
completely permeates an occurrence with the concept; because it
brings about a coincidence of experience and
thought.
Through this
method of proof, however, we can make no headway in the science
of the organic. The type does not require that, under certain
conditions, a definite phenomenon occur; it does not fix anything in
regard to a relationship of elements mutually alien which confront
one another. It determines only the conformity to law of its
own parts. It does not point beyond itself like a natural law. The
particular organic forms can be evolved only from the universal
type-form, and every organic entity which appears in experience
must coincide with some one of these derivative forms of the
type. Here the evolutionary method must replace the method of proof.
Here it is not to be established that the external conditions
act upon one another in this way and for that reason bring about a
definite result, but that a special form has been developed under
definite external conditions out of the type. This is the radical
difference between inorganic and organic science. This distinction is
not made basic in any other method of research so consistently as in
Goethe's. No one else recognized as Goethe did that an organics must
be possible apart from all vague mysticism, without teleology,
without the assumption of special creative thoughts. But neither has
any one else more definitely rejected the demand to apply to
this field the methods of inorganic science.
The type, as we have seen, is a more
complete scientific form than the primal phenomenon. Moreover, it
presupposes a more intensive activity of our minds than that required
by the other. In reflecting about the things of inorganic nature, our
sense-perception provides us with the content. Here it is our
sense-organization which yields to us what, in the case of the
organic, we lay hold of only by means of our minds. In order to
become aware of sweetness, sourness, warmth, light, color, etc., one
needs only healthy senses. There we have to discover by means of
thought only the form of the substance. But, in the type, content and
form are intimately united one with the other. Therefore, the type
does not determine the content in a merely formal way as does the
law, but permeates it vitally from within outward as its very own.
The task which is required of our mind is to participate
productively in creating the contentual element while dealing with
the formal.
A mode of thinking
in which the formal and the contentual appear in direct connection
has always been called intuitive.
Intuition appears
repeatedly as a scientific principle. The English philosopher
Reidt classifies as an intuition the act of creating a
conviction of the real being of external phenomena directly from our
perception of the phenomena (sense-impressions). Jacobi thought that
in our feeling of God we are given, not merely this feeling, but the
guarantee that God is. This judgment also is called intuitive. The
characteristic of intuition, as we see, is that more must be given in
the content than this itself; that one knows of a
thought-characterization, without proof, merely through direct
conviction. It is not considered necessary to prove such
thought-characterizations as that of existence, etc. of the material
of perception, but we are believed to possess these in inseparable
unity with the content.
But, in the case of the type, this is
really true. Therefore it cannot furnish any means of proof but
merely suggests the possibility of evolving each special form
out of the type. For this reason, the mind must work with far greater
intensity in apprehending the type than in grasping the natural
law. It must create the content with the form. It must take upon
itself an activity which is the function of the senses in inorganic
science and which we call perception
(Anschauung).
The mind itself, therefore, must be perceptive on this higher plane.
Our power of judgment must perceive in thinking and think in perceiving.
Here we have to do with a perceptive power of thought, as was first
explained by Goethe.
[See footnote, p. 119.]
Goethe thereby pointed out as a necessary form of apprehension in the
human mind that which Kant wished to prove to be quite unattainable by
man because of the nature of his whole endowment.
As the type in organic nature replaces natural law (the primal phenomenon)
in the inorganic, so intuition (perceptive power of thought) replaces
the power of judgment through proof (reflective judgment). As it
has been supposed that the same laws may be applied to organic nature
which are determinative at a lower stage of knowledge, so it has been
supposed that the same methods hold good here as there. Both
suppositions are fallacious.
Intuition has
often been treated with scant respect in science. It has been
considered a defect in Goethe's mind that he expected to reach
scientific truths by means of intuition. What is attained by way of
intuition is considered by many persons as very important, to
be sure, when this has to do with a scientific discovery. There, it
is said, a chance idea often carries one farther than trained,
methodical thought. For it is generally said to be an intuition
when one has hit by chance upon something which is true but whose
truth is discovered by investigators only in a roundabout way.
It is always denied, however, that intuition itself can be a
principle of science. Whatever intuition chances upon must afterward
be proved — so it is thought — if it is to have
scientific value.
So Goethe's
scientific achievements have also been looked upon as brilliant
chance ideas which only later have attained to confirmation by
the rigid methods of science.
For organic
science, however, intuition is the right method. It becomes quite
clear, we believe, from our exposition that Goethe's mind, just
because it was fundamentally intuitive, found the right way in
organics. The method proper to organics harmonized with the
constitution of his mind. For this reason it became all the
clearer to him how far organics differs from inorganic science.
The one became clear to him in connection with the other. For this
reason he sketched with sharp lines the essential nature also
of the inorganic.
The slight value
attached to intuition is due in no small measure to the fact that its
achievements are not supposed to be deserving of that degree of
confidence which is reposed in the achievement of knowledge through
proof. Often only that which has been proved is called knowledge; all
else is called belief.
It must be borne
in mind that intuition possesses a significance for the scientific
attitude represented by the present writer (based upon the conviction
that in thought we grasp in its very essence the central core of the
world) altogether different from the significance it possesses
according to the point of view which places this core of the world in
a Beyond not accessible to our research. Whoever sees in this world
lying before us, so far as we either experience it or penetrate it
through thought, nothing more than a reflection, a copy of a Beyond,
an unknown, an activating, which remains hidden behind this shell,
not only at first glance but also in spite of all scientific
research, — such a person can see only in the method of proof a
substitute for our lack of insight into the real nature of things.
Since he does not penetrate to the opinion that a thought-combination
comes about through the essential content given in the thoughts
themselves, and therefore through the thing itself, he necessarily
thinks that he can support such combinations only on the ground
that they harmonize with certain basic convictions (axioms) which are
so simple as to be neither susceptible of proof nor in need thereof.
If, then, a scientific postulate is offered him without proof
— even one which in its whole nature excludes the method of
proof — this seems to him to have been thrust upon him from
without; a truth appears before him without his recognizing what are
the grounds of its validity. He does not think he has an item of
knowledge, an insight into the thing, but thinks he can only yield
himself to a belief that some sort of reasons for this validity
exists beyond the reach of his thought.
Our view of the world is not exposed
to the danger that it must look upon the limits of the method of
proof as coinciding with the limits of scientific certitude. It has
led us to the point of view that the central essence of the world
flows into our thinking; that we do not merely
think concerning the nature of
the world but that thinking is an entrance into connection with the
nature of reality. Intuition does not thrust a truth upon us from
without, for from one point of view there is no such thing as an
outer and an inner in the manner in which these are presupposed by
the scientific attitude we have described, which is the
opposite of our own. For us, intuition is the actual being-within, an
entrance into the truth which gives to us all that comes in any way
under consideration in regarding truth. It merges completely
with what is given to us in our intuitive judgment. The
characteristic which is significant in belief — that only
existent truth is given us and not the reasons therefore, and that we
lack a penetrating insight into the thing concerned — is here
wholly wanting. Insight gained by way of intuition is just as
scientific as that won by proof.
Every single
organism is the molding of the type in a special form. It is an
individuality which governs and determines itself from a center
outward. It is a totality complete in itself — which in
inorganic Nature is true of the cosmos alone.
The ideal of
inorganic science is to grasp the totality of all phenomena as a
unitary system, in order that we may approach each phenomenon with
the consciousness that we recognize it as a member of the cosmos. In
organic science, on the contrary, the ideal must be to have in the
utmost entirety possible in the type and its phenomenal forms that
which we see evolving in the series of single beings. Tracing the
type back through all phenomena is here that which matters. In
inorganic science the system exists; in organic the comparison (of
each single form with the type).
Spectral analysis
and the perfecting of astronomy extend to the universe the truths
attained on the limited sphere of the earth. Hereby these sciences
approach the first ideal. The second will be fulfilled when the
comparative method applied by Goethe is recognized in its full
scope.
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