Freedom in Science and Teaching by Ernst Haeckel, T. H. Huxley (well read books TXT) 📕

or less unlike; how, then, can the problems of life and their solution be alike for all? The more highly political life is organised, the more prominent is the great principle of the division of labour, and the more requisite it becomes for the lasting security of the whole state that its members should be variously distributed in the manifold tasks of life; and as the work to be performed by different individuals is of the most various kind, as well as the corresponding outlay of strength, skill, property, &c., the reward of the work must naturally be also extremely various. These are such simple and tangible facts that one would suppose that every reasonable and unprejudiced politician would recommend the theory of descent, and the evolution hypothesis in general, as the best antidote to the fathomless absurdity of extravagant socialist levelling.

Besides, Darwinism, the theory of natural selection--which Virchow aimed at in his denunciation, much more especially than at transformation, the theory of descent--which is often confounded with it--Darwinism, I say, is anything rather than socialist! If this English hypothesis is to be compared to any definite political tendency--as is, no doubt, possible--that tendency can only be aristocratic, certainly not democratic, and least of all socialist. The theory of selection teaches that in human life, as in animal and plant life everywhere, and at all times, only a small and chosen minority can exist and flourish, while the enormous majority starve and perish miserably and more or less prematurely. The germs of every species of animal and plant and the young individuals which spring from them are innumerable, while the number of those fortunate individuals which develop to maturity and actually reach their hardly-won life's goal is out of all proportion trifling. The cruel and merciless struggle for existence which rages throughout all living nature, and in the course of nature must rage, this unceasing and inexorable competition of all living creatures, is an incontestable fact; only the picked minority of the qualified "fittest" is in a position to resist it successfully, while the great majority of the competitors must necessarily perish miserably. We may profoundly lament this tragical state of things, but we can neither controvert it nor alter it. "Many are called but few are chosen." The selection, the picking out of these "chosen ones," is inevitably connected with the arrest and destruction of the remaining majority. Another English naturalist, therefore, designates the kernel of Darwinism very frankly as the "survival of the fittest," as the "victory of the best." At any rate, this principle of selection is nothing less than democratic, on the contrary, it is aristocratic in the strictest sense of the word. If, therefore, Darwinism, logically carried out, has, according to Virchow, "an uncommonly suspicious aspect," this can only be found in the idea that it offers a helping hand to the efforts of the aristocrats. But how the socialism of the day can find any encouragement in these efforts, and how the horrors of the Paris Commune can be traced to them, is to me, I must frankly confess, absolutely incomprehensible.

Moreover, we must not omit this opportunity of pointing out how dangerous such a direct and unqualified transfer of the theories of natural science to the domain of practical politics must be. The highly elaborate conditions of our modern civilised life require from the practical politician such circumspect and impartial consideration, such thorough historical training and powers of critical comparison, that he will not venture to make such an application of a "natural law" to the practice of civilised life, but with the greatest caution and reserve. How, then, is it possible that Virchow, the experienced and skilled politician, who, above all things, preaches caution and reserve in theory, suddenly makes just such an application of transformation and Darwinism--an application so radically perverse that it actually flies in the face of the fundamental ideas of these doctrines? I myself am nothing less than a politician. In direct contrast with Virchow, I lack alike the gift and the training for it, as well as taste and vocation. Hence I neither shall play any political part in the future, nor have I hitherto made any attempt of the kind. Though here and there I have occasionally uttered a political opinion, or have made a political application of some theory of natural science, these subjective opinions have no objective value. In point of fact I have by so doing overstepped the limits of my competence, just as Virchow has by going into questions of zoology and particularly that of the transformation of apes: I am a layman in political practice, as Virchow is in the province of zoological hypothesis. Moreover, such success as Virchow has attained during the twenty years of his painful, wearisome, and exhausting activity as a politician does not, in truth, make me pine for such laurels.

But this at least I, as a theoretical naturalist, may demand of practical politicians, that in utilising our theories for political ends they should first make themselves exactly acquainted with them; they then, for the future, would forbear drawing conclusions from them, the very opposite to those which ought reasonably to be inferred. Misunderstandings would never thus be wholly avoided, it is true, but what doctrine is universally secure against misunderstanding? And from what theory, however sound and true, may not the most unsound and frantic inferences be drawn?

Nothing, perhaps, shows so plainly as the history of Christianity how little theory and practice harmonise in human life; how little pains are taken, even by those whose calling it is to uphold established doctrines, to apply their natural consequences to practical life. The Christian religion, no doubt, as well as the Buddhist, when stripped of all dogmatic and fabulous nonsense, contains an admirable human kernel, and precisely that human portion of Christian teaching--in the best sense social-democratic--which preaches the equality of all men before God, the loving of your neighbour as yourself, love in general in the noblest sense, a fellow-feeling with the poor and wretched, and so forth--precisely, those truly human sides of the Christian doctrine are so natural, so noble, so pure, that we unhesitatingly adopt them into the moral doctrine of our monistic natural religion. Nay, the social instincts of the higher animals on which we found this religion (for instance the marvellous sense of duty of ants, &c.) are in this best sense strictly Christian.

And what--we may ask--what have the professed supporters, the "learned divines" of this religion of love done? Their deeds are written in letters of blood in the history of the civilisation of mankind during the last 1800 years. All else that differing church-religions have accomplished for the forcible extension of their doctrines and for the extirpation of heretics of other creeds, all that the Jews have been guilty of towards the heathen, the Roman emperors towards the Christians, the Mohammedans towards Christians and Jews alike--all this is outdone by the hecatombs of human victims which Christianity has demanded for the spread of her doctrines. And these were Christians against Christians--orthodox Christians against heterodox Christians! think only of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, of the inconceivable and inhuman barbarities committed by the "most Christian kings" of Spain, by their worthy colleagues in Frankfort, in Italy, and elsewhere. Hundreds of thousands then died that most horrible death by fire, simply because they would not bend their reason to pass under the yoke of the grossest superstition, and because their loyalty to their convictions forbade them to deny the natural truth that they clearly discerned. There are no deeds more hideous, base, and inhuman than those that at that time were committed--nay, are still committed--in the name and on account of "true Christianity."

And finally, how do matters stand with regard to the morality of the priests who announce themselves as the ministers of God's Word, and whose duty is therefore above all others to carry out the saving doctrines of Christianity in their own lives? The long, unbroken, and horrible series of crimes of every kind which is offered by the history of the Roman Popes is the best answer to this question. And just as these "Vicars of God on earth" did, so did their subordinates and accomplices, so, too, have the orthodox priests of other sects done; never failing to set the practice of their own course of life in the strongest possible contrast to those noble doctrines of Christian love which were constantly on their lips.

And as with Christianity so it is with every other religious and moral doctrine which ought to have proved its power in the wide domain of practical philosophy, in the education of youth, in the civilisation of nations. The theoretic kernel of this doctrine may always and everywhere stand in the most glaring contradiction to its practical working-out, testifying to the endless inconsistency of human nature: but what can all this matter to the scientific inquirer? His sole and only task is to seek for truth and to teach what he has discerned to be the truth, indifferent as to what consequences the various parties of state or church may happen to draw from it.

CHAPTER VII(IGNORABIMUS ET RESTRINGAMUR)

 

The dangerous attempt which Virchow made in Munich against the freedom of science is not the first of its kind. On the contrary, five years before, it experienced a similar attack which is most intimately connected with this later one, so that, in conclusion, we must here add a few words on the subject. Undoubtedly the famous "Ignorabimus-speech" of Du Bois-Reymond, which he delivered in 1872 at the forty-fifth meeting of German naturalists and physicians in Leipzig, forms only the first portion of that same crusade against the freedom of science of which Virchow's "Restringamur speech" of 1877, at the fiftieth meeting of the same society, forms the second part.

That brilliant and powerful essay by Du Bois-Reymond "on the Limitation of Natural Knowledge" has already been discussed so often, and from such different sides, that it might seem superfluous to say another word about it. It seems to me, nevertheless, that by most people the centre-of-gravity of its contents was overlooked in admiration of the brilliant accessories of the essay. Indeed this frequently happens with Du Bois-Reymond's articles, for he knows too well how to conceal the weakness of his argument and evidence, and the shallowness of his thought, by striking images and flowery metaphors, and by all the phraseology of rhetoric in which the versatile French nature is so superior to our sober German one. It is all the more important that we should not let ourselves be dazzled by these seductive tricks, and particularly by adduced facts which bear upon the most important and fundamental questions of human science, but that we should extract the hard kernel from the savoury and fragrant fruit. In the preface to my "Evolution of Man," and in the notes 22 and 23 of my Munich address, I have already incidentally alluded to the chief weaknesses of the "Ignorabimus-speech;" but I must here return somewhat more fully to the subject.

There are, as is well known, two problems which Du Bois-Reymond propounds as the impassable boundary of human knowledge of nature; limits which indeed the human mind