The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour Part 2

"All my life I have been engaged in investigating the past; I am a philologist and have therefore been also a student of history, have especially studied the historical development of the various religions of mankind, and to this end have had to make a study of ancient languages, particularly Oriental languages. When one consecrates one's life to such a cause, one acquires an interest in and a love for the ancients, and a wish to know what has consoled them in this vale of grief. As you probably acquired a love for your colts, mares, and stallions, I acquired an interest in ancient and modern religions. And as you probably do not immediately kill or reject your horses because they possess a blemish, shy, kick, prance about, etc., so I do not immediately destroy all beliefs, and least of all my own mount, because they are not faultless, occasionally leave me in the lurch, behave foolishly, even dance on their hind legs with head in air; but I endeavour to understand them. When we understand even a little, we can forgive much. That many religions, including our own, contain errors and weak points, just as your horses do, I know perhaps even better than you. But have you ever asked yourself, what would have become of mankind without any religion, without the conviction that beyond our horizon, that is beyond our limit, there still must be something? You will answer, 'How do we know that?' Well, can there be any boundary without something beyond it? Is not that as true as any theorem in geometry? If it were not so, how could we explain the fact that mankind has never been without a belief in a world beyond, nor without religion, either in the lowest or in the highest levels.

"This horizon, this boundary, does not relate only to s.p.a.ce, as all will agree, even when carried beyond the Milky Way; it relates as well to time.

You a.s.sert, 'The world is much older than we suppose;' you are right, but if it were a million years, still there must have been a time before it was even a day old. That also is indisputable. But when we reach the limit of our senses and our understanding, then the horse shies, then we imagine that nothing can go beyond our understanding. Now let us begin with our five senses. They seem to be our wings, but seen in the light they are our fetters, our prison walls. All our senses have their horizon and their limits; and the limits in the external world are our making. Our sight scarcely reaches a mile, then it ceases; we can observe the movement of the second hand, but that of the minute hand escapes us. Why? We might know that a cannon-ball pa.s.ses through our field of vision, but we cannot locate it. Why not? Our sense of touch is also very weak and only extends over a very limited s.p.a.ce. And as it is on the large scale, so is it with the small. We see the eye of a needle, but infusoria and bacteria, which we know to be there and which affect us so much, we cannot see. With telescopes and microscopes we can slightly extend the field of our perception, but the limitations and weakness of our sense-impressions remain none the less an undeniable fact. We live in a prison, in a cave as Plato said, and yet we accept our impressions as they are, and form out of them general notions and words, and with these words we erect this stately building, or this tower of Babel, which we then call human science.

"Yes, say certain philosophers, our senses may be finite and untrustworthy, but our understanding, and still further our reason, they are unlimited, and recognise nothing which is beyond them. Well, what does this most wise understanding do for us? Has not Hobbes long since taught us that it adds and subtracts, and _voila tout_? It receives the impressions of the senses, combines them, feels them, comprehends and designates or names them after any characteristic, and when man has found words, then the adding and subtracting begin, but unfortunately also the jumbling and chattering, till we finally establish that philosophy and religion, which have aroused in so great degree your anger, and even your blood thirstiness. In spite of all it remains true that we can no more get beyond the horizon of our senses than we can jump out of our skins. You know that old saying of Locke's, although it is much older than Locke, that there is nothing in our intellect which was not first in our senses.

And therefore, however much we may extend our knowledge by adding and subtracting, everywhere we feel in the end our horizon, our limitations, our ignorance, for with the limitations of our senses it cannot be otherwise. Invariably we receive the old answer, 'You are like the mind which you conceive, not me.'

"But you say that we have no right whatever to speak of a mind. That is possible, but everything depends upon what we understand by the term 'mind.' Is not mind, that is to say, a recipient, essential to our seeing and hearing? The eye can no more see than a camera obscura. True seeing, hearing, and feeling are not perceptible through the organs of sense, but through the recipient, for without it the organs of sense could make no resistance, could not receive, could not perceive. This unknown element which lies beyond the senses, this recipient must be there. It is true he cannot be named. Perhaps it would have been better to have called him '_x_' or the Unknown; but when we know what is meant, why not call it mind or spirit, that is, breath? You call it a soul-phantom. Well, good, but without such a soul-phantom we cannot get on; you would have to consider yourself a mere photographic apparatus, and I do not believe that you do.

"Of course you can still say that the mind is a development, a self-evolving phenomenon. Rightly understood that is quite true, but how misleading that word 'evolution' has been in these latter days. Darwin certainly brought much that is beautiful and true to the light of day. He demonstrated that many of the so-called species are not independent creations, but have been developed from other species. That means that he has corrected the earlier erroneous nomenclature of Natural History and has introduced a more correct cla.s.sification. He has greatly simplified the work of the Creator of the world. Of that merit no one will deprive him, and it is a great merit. And those who believed that every species required its own act of creation, and had to be finished by the Creator separately (as was the established opinion in England, and still is in some places), cannot be grateful enough to Darwin for having given them a simpler and worthier idea of the origin of the earth and of its animal and vegetable kingdoms.

"But now comes Mr. Herbert Spencer and tells us, 'We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.' That sounds splendid, but every one who does not quite ignore the past, knows that evolution or development is neither anything very new or very useful. Formerly we used simply to say the tree grows, the child develops, and this was metaphorically transferred to society, the state, science, and religion.

The study of this development was called history, and occasionally genetic or pragmatic history; but instead of talking as we do now of evolution with imperceptible transitions, it was these transitions which industrious and honest investigators formerly sought to observe. They aimed at learning to know the men, and the events, which marked a decided step in advance in the history of society, or in the history of morals. This required painstaking effort, but the result obtained was quite different from the modern view, in which everything is evolved, and, what is the worst, by imperceptible degrees. In Natural History this is otherwise; in it the term 'evolution,' or 'growth,' may be correctly applied, because no one really has ever seen or heard the gra.s.s grow, and no one has ever observed the once generally accepted transition from a reptile to a bird.

In this we must doubtless admit imperceptible transitions. Yet even in this we must not go beyond the facts; and if a man like Virchow a.s.sures us that the intermediate stages between man and any sort of animal have never been found to this day, then in spite of all storms we shall probably have to rest there. But I go still farther. Even supposing, say I, that there is an imperceptible transition from the Pithecanthropos to man, affecting his thigh, his skull, his brain, his entire body, have we then found a transition from the animal to man? Certainly not; for man is man, not because he has no tail, but because he speaks, and speech implies not only communication,-an animal can do that perhaps better than a man,-but it implies thinking, and thinking not only as an animal thinks, but thinking conceptually. And this small thing, the concept, is the transition which no animal has ever accomplished. The moment an ape achieved it, he would be _ipso facto_ a man, in spite of his miserable brain, and in spite of his long tail.

"Concepts do not present themselves spontaneously (or we should find them also among animals), but they are a special product, in part the work of our ancestors, and inherited by us with our language, and in part even now the work of more gifted men from time to time. This making necessarily implies the existence of a maker, and if we now provisionally call this maker, this transcendent, invisible, but very powerful '_x_,' mind, are we thereby chargeable, as you say, with having conjured up a soul-phantom?

Call it a phantom if you will, but even as a phantom it has a right to exist. Call it mind, breath, breathing, willing, or (with Schopenhauer) will, there is always a He or It to be reckoned with. Of this He or It, this p.r.o.nominal soul-phantom, you will never rid yourself.

"And if we now perceive with our senses a world as it is given us whether we will or no, and in this objective world, without us, which so many regard as within us, we everywhere recognise the presence of purpose, must we then not also have a name for that which manifests itself in nature as purposive or rational? Shall we only call it '_x_,' or may we transfer the word designating what works purposively in us to this Unknown, and speak of a universal Mind without which nature could not be what it is? Nature is not crazy nor incoherent. When the child is born, has the mother milk, and to what purpose? Why, certainly, to nourish the child. And the child has the lips and muscles to suck. When the fruit has ripened on the tree, it falls to the earth full of seed. The husk breaks, the seed falls in the soil, it rains and the rain fertilises the seed, the sun shines and makes it grow, and when the tree has grown and again bears blossoms and fruit, this fruit is useful to man, is food and not poison to him. Is all this without purpose, without reason? Is it a symphony without a composer? Man, too, needs rain and sunshine, and warmth and darkness; and all this is given to him so that he may live and work and think. What would man be without darkness, without the rest afforded by night? Probably crazy. What would he be without sunshine? Perhaps an Esquimau or a mole. But how remarkable it is that as the tree always reproduces itself, so also does man. The son differs from the father, and yet how like they are. Where is the form which retains the continuous resemblance to itself, and yet leaves to each separate person freedom and individuality? Whence comes this purpose in all nature? That is an old question which has received many answers, both wise and foolish. Unfortunately men so frequently forget what has already been attained, and then begin again at the beginning. Darwin was an industrious and delicate observer, and showed admirable power of combination. But he was no philosopher, and never sought to be one. He was of opinion that everything in nature which appeared to show purpose proceeded from the survival of the fittest. But that is no answer. We ask, Why does the fittest survive? And what is the answer? Because only the fittest survives. And when we come to Natural Selection, who is the selector that selects? These are nothing but phrases, which have long been known and long since been abandoned, and still are always warmed up again. If we recognise in nature purpose or reason, then we have a right to conclude that the source of it lies in the eternal reason, in the eternally rational. Behind all objects lies the thought or the idea. If there are rational ideas in nature, then there must be a rational thinker. Behind all trees-oaks, birches, pines-lies the thought, the idea, the form, the word, the _logos_ of tree. Who made or thought it before ever the first tree existed? We can never see a tree; we see only an oak, a birch, a pine, never a tree. But the thought or idea of tree meets us, realised and diversified in all trees. This is true of all things. No one has ever seen an animal, a man, a dog, but he sees a St.

Bernard, a greyhound, a dachshund, and strictly not even that. What, then, is it that is permanent, always recurring in the dog, by means of which they resemble each other, the invisible form in which they are all cast?

That is the thought, the idea, the _logos_ of dog. Can there be a thought without a thinker? Did the ideas in nature, the millions of objects which make up our knowledge, fall from the clouds? Did they make themselves or did nature make them? Who, then, is nature? Is it a masculine, feminine, or neuter? If nature can choose, then it can also think and produce. But can it? No, nature is a word, very useful for certain purposes; but empty, intangible, and incomprehensible. Nature is an abstraction, as much as dog or tree, but far more inclusive. When we recognise thought, reason, purpose in nature, still it is all in vain, we must a.s.sume a thinker in, above, behind nature, and we must as a matter of course have a name for him. The infinite thinker of all things, of all ideas, of all words, who can never be seen and never comprehended, because he is infinite, but in whose thoughts all creatures, the entire creation, have their source, and who when rightly understood approaches us palpably or symbolically in all things, in the sole path of sense by which he can approach us sentient beings, why should we not call him Mind, or G.o.d, or as the Jews called him, Jehovah, or the Mohammedans, Allah, or the Brahmins, Brahman? Either reason operates in nature, or nature is without reason, is chaos and confusion. Neither survival of the fittest nor natural selection could bring order into this confusion; we might as well believe that if the type in a printing office be thoroughly shaken and mixed, it could produce Goethe's _Faust_ by chance. If we insist upon adhering to the theories of natural selection, or survival of the fittest, be it so; we only transfer the choice to a Something which can choose, and leave the fitness or adaptability to the judgment of an originator, who can really judge and think.

"I hope that I have made this plain to you; but what would be plain to us would not be plain to children, and still less to mankind in its infancy five thousand or fifty thousand years ago. I have especially endeavoured to discover what led these men of old, in many respects so uncultivated, to believe in something beyond, invisible, superhuman, supernatural. We can see from their language and from the oldest monuments of their religion that they early observed that something happened in the world.

The world was not dark, nor still, nor dead. The sun rose, and man awoke, and asked himself and the sunshine. 'Whence?' he said; 'stop, what is there? who is there?' Such an object as the sun cannot rise of its own volition. There is something behind it. At first the sun itself was considered a labourer; it accomplished the greatest work on earth, gave light, heat, life, growth, fruits. It was quite natural, then, to pay great honour to the sun; to be grateful to it, to appeal to it for light, heat, and increase. And therefore the sun became a G.o.d, _e.g._ a Deva (deus), which originally meant nothing more than light. But even then an old Inca in Peru observed that the sun was not free; could not, therefore, be a being, to whom man could be grateful, to whom he could pray. It is, said he, like a beast of burden, which must daily tread its appointed round. And although the worship of the sun was the religion of his country, and he himself was worshipped as a child of the sun, he renounced the ancient faith of his country, and became what is now frequently called an atheist; that is, he longed after a truer G.o.d. What say you to this Inca? This same thing occurred also in other lands, and instead of continuing to worship the sun and moon, the dawn, the storm-wind, or the sky, they worshipped that which must be behind it all, which was called Heaven-Father, Jupiter, and every conceivable name. These names were no longer to indicate the visible object, but Him who had thought and created the object, the thinker and ruler of the world. This is the fundamental idea from which all religions have arisen: not animism, fetishism, totemism, or whatever the little tributaries may be called, which have poured for thousands of years into the main stream. Every people has produced its own religion, its own language, in the course of thousands of years; later, religions have been framed for all mankind, and we are still engaged in that task, even in what you call that clap-trap of Chicago.

Even though we have all been born and educated in some religion, we nevertheless have the right, even the duty, like the old Inca, to examine every article of our hereditary religion, to retain it or to cast it aside, according to our own judgment and conception of the truth. Only the fundamental principle must remain; there is a thinker and a ruler of the universe. Of Pontius Pilate and Caiaphas, of Joseph and Mary, of the resurrection and ascension, let each one believe what he will, but the highest commandment applies to all, 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy G.o.d with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.'

"You see, therefore, that I, too, am a G.o.d-romancer. And what objection can you raise against it? You are of opinion that to love G.o.d and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, and are evidently very proud of your discovery that there is no distinction between good and evil. Well, if loving G.o.d and your neighbour is equivalent to being good, then it follows that not loving G.o.d and not loving your neighbour is equivalent to not being good, or to being evil. There is, then, a very plain distinction between good and bad. And yet you say that you turned a somersault when you discovered that there was no such distinction. It is true that the nature of this distinction is often dependent on the degree of lat.i.tude and longitude where men are congregated, and still more on the intention of the agent. This is very ancient knowledge. The old Hindu philosophers went still farther, and said of an a.s.sa.s.sin and his victim, 'The one does not commit murder, and the other is not murdered.' That goes still farther than your somersault. At all events, we entirely agree with each other, that everything which is done out of love to G.o.d and our neighbour is good, and everything which is done through selfishness is bad. The old philosopher in India must have turned more somersaults than you; but what he had in his mind in doing it does not concern us here. But it was not so bad as it sounds, and I believe that what you say, that there is no real distinction between good and evil, is not so bad as it sounds.

"We have now reached that stage that we must admit that there is a mind within us, in our inner world, and a mind without us, in the outer world.

What we call this mind, the Ego, the soul within us, and the Non-ego, the world-soul, the G.o.d without us, is a matter of indifference. The Brahmans appear to me to have found the best expression. They call the fundamental cause of the soul, of the Ego, the Self, and the fundamental cause of the Non-ego, of the World-soul, of G.o.d, the highest Self. They go still farther, and hold these two selves to be in their deepest nature one and the same-but of this another time. To-day I am content, if you will admit, that our mind is not mere steam, nor the world merely a steam-engine, but that in order that the machine shall run, that the eye shall see, the ear hear, the mind think, add, and subtract, we need a seer, a hearer, a thinker. More than this I will not inflict on you to-day; but you see that without deviating a finger's breadth from the straight path of reason, that is from correct and honest addition and subtraction, we finally come to the soul-phantom and to the idea of G.o.d, which you look upon with such blood-thirstiness. I have indicated to you, with only a few strokes, the historical course of human knowledge. There still remains much to fill in, which must be gained from history and the diligent study of the sacred books of mankind, and the works of the leading philosophers of the East and the West. We shall then learn that the history of mankind is the best philosophy, and that not only in Christianity and Judaism, but that in all religions of the world, G.o.d has at divers times spoken through the prophets in divers manners, and still speaks.

"And now only a few words more over another somersault. You say that the mind is not a _prius_, but a development out of matter. You are right again, if you view the matter only from an embryological or psychological standpoint. A child begins with deep sleep, then comes dream-sleep, and finally awakening, collecting, naming, adding, subtracting. What is that which awakens in the child? Is it a bone, or is it the soft ma.s.s which we call brain? Can the gray matter within our skulls give names, or add? Why, then, has no craniologist told us that the monkey's brain lacks precisely those tracts which are concerned with speech or with aphasia?(36) I ask again, Can the eye see, the ear hear? Try it on the body under dissection, or try it yourself in your sleep. Without a subject there is no object in the world, without understanding there is nothing to understand, without mind no matter. You think that matter comes first, and then what we call mind. Where is this matter? Where have you ever seen matter? You see oak, fir, slate, and granite, and all sorts of other _materies_, as the old architects called them, never matter. Matter is the creation of the mind, not the reverse. Our entire world is thought, not wood and stone. We learn to think or reflect upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world, invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought. What we see, hear, taste, and feel, is all within us, not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are sweet. The sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is large or small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves. Man is the measure of all things, as an ancient Greek philosopher a.s.serted; and man has inferred, discovered, and named matter. And how did he do it? He called everything, out of which he made anything, matter; _materia_ first meant nothing more than wood used for building, out of which man built his dwelling. Here you have the whole secret of matter. It is building-material, oak, pine, birch, whichever you prefer. Abstract every individual characteristic, generalise as you will, the wood, the _hyle_, always remains. And you will have it that thought, or even the thinker, originated from this wood. Do you really believe that there is an outer world such as we see, hear, or feel? Where have we a tree, except in our imagination? Have you ever seen a whole tree, from all four quarters at once? Even here we have something to add first. And of what are our ideas composed, if not our sense-perceptions? And these perceptions, imperfect as they are, exist only in us, for us, and through us. The thing perceived is and always remains, as far as we are concerned in the outer world, transcendent, a thing in itself; all else is our doing; and if you wish to call it matter or the material world, well and good, but at least it is not the _prius_ of mind, but the _posterius_, that which is demanded by the mind, but is always unattainable. Even the professional materialist ascribes inertia to matter. The atoms, if he a.s.sumes atoms, are motionless, unless disturbed.

From whence comes this disturbance? It must proceed from something outside the atoms, or the matter, so that we can never say that there is nothing in the universe but matter. And now if we ascribe motion to the atoms, or like other philosophers, perception, then that is nothing more nor less than to ascribe mind to them, which, however, if you are right, must first evolve itself out of this matter. If we wind something into these atoms, then we can also wind something out of them; in doing this, however, we give up at the outset the experiment of letting mind evolve itself out of matter. Give an atom the germ-power of an acorn, and it will develop into an oak. Give an atom the capacity of sense-perception, and it will become an animal, possibly a man. But what was promised us was the development of feeling and perception out of the dead atoms of hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, etc. Even if we could explain life out of the activities of these atoms, which may be possible,-although denied by Haeckel and Tyndall,-still feeling, perception, understanding, all the functions of mind, would remain unexplained. J. S. Mill is certainly no idealist, and no doubt is one of your heroes. Well Mr. Mill declares that nothing but mind could produce mind. Even Tyndall, in his address as President of the British a.s.sociation in Belfast, declared in plain words that the continuity of molecular processes and the phenomena of consciousness const.i.tute the rock on which all Materialism must inevitably be shattered.

"Think over all of this by your iron stove, or better still at some beautiful sunrise in spring, and you will see before you a more glorious revelation than all the revelations of the Old World."

Yours faithfully, F. Max Muller Oxford, November, 1896.

CHAPTER III.

Concerning The Horseherd

The appearance of my article in the _Deutsche Rundschau_ seems to have caused much headshaking among my friends in Germany, England, and America.

Many letters came to me privately, others were sent directly to the publishers. They came chiefly from two sides. Some were of the opinion that I dealt too lightly with the Horseherd; others protested against what I said about the current theory of evolution. The first objection I have sought to make up for in what follows. The other required no answer, for I had I think, in my previous writings, quite clearly and fully explained my att.i.tude in opposition to so-called Darwinism. Some of my correspondents wished peremptorily to deny me the right of pa.s.sing judgment upon Darwin's doctrine, because I am not a naturalist by profession. Here we see an example of the confusion of ideas that results from confusion of language.

Darwinism is a high-sounding, but hollow and unreal word, like most of the names that end in ism. What do such words as Puseyism, Jesuitism, Buddhism, and now even Pre-Darwinism and Pre-Lamarckism signify?

Everything and nothing, and no one is more on his guard against these generalising _termini technici_ than the _heroes eponymi_ himself. What has not been called Darwinism? That the present has come out of the past, has been called the greatest discovery of the nineteenth century. Darwin himself is not responsible for such things. He wished to show how the present has come out of the past, and he did it in such a manner that even the laity could follow him and sincerely admire him. Now, of course, it cannot be denied that if we understand _Darwinism_ to mean Darwin's close observations concerning the origin of the higher organisms out of lower as well as the variations of individuals from their specific types, caused by external conditions, it would as ill become me to pa.s.s either a favourable or unfavourable judgment as it would Darwin to estimate my edition of the Rig-Veda, or a follower of Darwin to criticise my root theory in philology, without knowing the ABC of the science of language. If, however, we speak of Darwinism in the domain of universal philosophical problems, such as, for instance, the creation or development of the world, then we poor philosophers also have no doubt a right to join in the conversation. And if, without appearing too presuming, we now and then dare to differ from Kant, or from Plato or Aristotle, is it mere insolence, or perhaps treason, to differ from Darwin on certain points?

This was not the tone a.s.sumed by Darwin, giant as he was, even when he spoke to so insignificant a person as myself. I have on a previous occasion published a short letter addressed to me by Darwin (_Auld Lang Syne_, p. 178). Here follows another, which I may no doubt also publish without being indiscreet.

Down, Beckenham, Kent, July 3, 1873.

"DEAR SIR: I am much obliged for your kind note and present of your lectures. I am extremely glad to have received them from you, and I had intended ordering them.

"I feel quite sure from what I have read in your work, that you would never say anything to an honest adversary to which he would have any just right to object; and as for myself, you have often spoken highly of me, perhaps more highly than I deserve.

"As far as language is concerned, I am not worthy to be your adversary, as I know extremely little about it, and that little learnt from very few books. I should have been glad to have avoided the whole subject, but was compelled to take it up as well as I could. He who is fully convinced, as I am, that man is descended from some lower animal, is almost forced to believe, _a priori_, that articulate language has been developed from inarticulate cries, and he is therefore hardly a fair judge of the arguments opposed to this belief."

With cordial respect I remain, dear sir, Yours very faithfully, Charles Darwin.

This will at all events show that a man who could look upon a chimpanzee as his equal, did not entirely ignore, as an uninformed layman, a poor philologist. Darwin did not in the least disdain the uninformed layman. He thought and wrote for him, and there is scarcely one of Darwin's books that cannot be read by the uninformed layman with profit. And in the interchange of acquired facts or ideas, mental science has at least as much right as natural science. We live, it is true, in different worlds.

What some look upon as the real, others regard as phenomenal. What these in their turn look upon as the real, seems to the first to be non-existent. It will always be thus until philology has defined the true meaning of reality.

It is, however, a worn-out device to place all those who differ from Darwin in the pillory of science as mystics, metaphysicians, and (what seems worst of all) as orthodox. It requires more than courage, too, to cla.s.s all who do not agree with us as uninformed laymen, "to accuse them of ignorance and superst.i.tion, and to praise our friends and disciples as the only experts or competent judges, as impartial and consistent thinkers." Through such a defence the greatest truths would lose their worth and dignity. The true scholar simply leaves such attacks alone. It is to be regretted that this resounding trumpet blast of a few naturalists renders any peaceful interchange of ideas impossible from the beginning. I have expressed my admiration for Darwin more freely and earlier than many of his present eulogists. But I maintain, that when anthropogeny is discussed, it is desirable first of all to explain what is understood by _anthropos_. Man is not only an object, but a subject also. All that man is as an object, or appears to be for a time on earth, is his organic body with its organs of sense and will, and with its slowly developed so-called ego. This body is, however, only phenomenal; it comes and goes, it is not real in the true sense of the word. To man belongs, together with the visible objective body, the invisible subjective Something which we may call mind or soul or _x_, but which, at all events, first makes the body into a man. To observe and make out this Something is in my view the true anthropogeny; how the body originated concerns me as little as does the question whether my gloves are made of kid or _peau de suede_. That will, of course, be called mysticism, second sight, orthodoxy, hypocrisy, but fortunately it is not contradicted by such nicknames. If an animal could ever speak and think in concepts, it would be my brother in spite of tail or snout; if any human being had a tail or a forty-four toothed snout, but could use the language of concepts, then he would be and remain a man, as far as I am concerned, in spite of all that. We, too, have a right to express our convictions. They are as dear to us as to those who believe or believed in the Protogenes Haeckelii. It is true we do not preach to the whole world that our age is the great age of the study of language and mind, and that it has cast more light on the origin of the mind (logogeny) and on the cla.s.sification of the human race (anthropology) than all other sciences together. A little progress, however, we have made. Who is there that still cla.s.sifies the human race by their skulls, hair, anatomy, etc., and not by their speech? If, like zoology, we may borrow countless millions of years, where is there any pure blood left, amid the endless wars and migrations, the polygamy and slavery of the ancient world?

Language alone is and remains identical, whoever may speak it; but the blood, "this very peculiar fluid," how can we get at that scientifically?

It is, however, and remains a fixed idea with these "consistent thinkers"

that the sciences of language and mind lead to superst.i.tion and hypocrisy, while on the other hand the science of language gratefully acknowledges the results of zoology, and only protests against encroachments. Both sciences might advance peacefully side by side, rendering aid and seeking it; and as for prejudices, there are plenty of them surviving among zoologists as well as philologists, which must be removed _viribus unitis_. What is common to us is the love of truth and clearness, and the honest effort to learn to understand the processes of growth in mind and language, as well as in nature, in the individual (ontogenetically) as well as in the race (phylogenetically). Whether we now call this evolution or growth, philology at all events has been in advance of natural science in setting a good example, and securing recognition of the genetic method.

Such men as William Humboldt, Grimm, and Bopp did not exactly belong to the dark ages, and I do not believe that they ever doubted that man is a mammal and stands at the head of the mammalia. This is no discovery of the nineteenth century. Linnaeus lived in the eighteenth century and Aristotle somewhat earlier. I see that the Standard Dictionary already makes a distinction between Darwinism and Darwinianism, between the views of Darwin and those of the Darwinians, and we clearly see that in some of the most essential points these two tendencies are diametrically opposed to each other. There is one thing that naturalists could certainly learn from philologists, viz., to define their _termini technici_, and not to believe that wonders can be performed with words, if only they are spoken loud enough.

The following letter comes from a naturalist, but is written in a sincere and courteous tone, and deserves to be made public. I believe that the writer and I could easily come to terms, as I have briefly indicated in my parentheses.