Here
under follows the transcription of chapter 9B1 of Houston Stewart Chamberlain's
The
Foundations of the 19th Century, 2nd ed., published by John Lane, The
Bodley Head, 1912.
CONTENTS
|
261
1. DISCOVERY (From Marco Polo to Galvani)
THE INBORN
CAPACITY
To the sum of what is to be known there is obviously no limit. In science
— in contrast to the material of knowledge — a stage of development might
certainly be conceived at which all the great laws of nature should have
been discovered; for we have to deal with a question of a relation between
phenomena and the human reason, and so of something which, in consequence
of the special nature of our reason, is strictly limited, and, as it were,
“individual“ — inasmuch as it is accommodated to and pertinent to the individuality
of the human race. Science would in this case find an inexhaustible scope
within itself, only in a more and more refined analysis. On the other hand,
all experience proves that the realm of phenomena and of forms is infinite
and can never be completely investigated. No geography, physiography or
geology, however scientific, can tell us anything at all about the peculiarities
of a yet undiscovered country; a newly discovered moss, a newly discovered
beetle, is an absolutely new thing, an actual and permanent enrichment
of our conceptive world, of the material of our knowledge. Naturally, for
our own human convenience, we shall at once assign beetle and moss to some
established species, and if no pinching and squeezing will accomplish this,
we shall for the sake of classification invent a new “species,“ incorporating
it, if possible, in a well-known “order“; nevertheless the beetle in question
and the moss in question remain, as before, something perfectly individual,
something that could not be invented or reasoned out, a new unexpected
embodiment, so to speak, of the cosmic plan, and this embodiment we now
possess, whereas formerly we lacked it. It is the same with all phenomena.
The refraction of light by the prism, the presence of
262 DISCOVERY
electricity
everywhere, the circulation of the blood ... every discovered fact means
an enrichment. “The individual manifestations of the laws of nature,“
says Goethe, “all lie like Sphinxes, rigid, unyielding, silent outside
of us. Every new phenomenon perceived is a discovery; every discovery a
possession.“ This makes the distinction within the sphere of knowledge
between discovery and science very clear; the one has to deal with the
Sphinxes that lie without us, the other means the elaboration of these
perceptions into the new form of an inner possession. * That is why we
can very well compare the raw material of knowledge, i.e., the mass
of the Discovered, to the raw material of property, that is, money. So
long ago as the year 1300 the old chronicler Robert of Gloucester wrote:
“For the more that a man can, the more worth he is.“ He who knows much
is rich, he who knows little is poor. But this very comparison, which,
to begin with, will seem somewhat commonplace, serves excellently to teach
us how to lay our finger on the critical point as regards knowledge; for
the value of money depends altogether on the use which we are able to make
of it. That riches give power and poverty cripples, is a truism; the most
stupid observes it daily in himself and in others, and yet Shakespeare,
one of the wisest of men, wrote:
-
If thou art rich,
thou'rt poor.
And, as a matter of
fact, life teaches us that no simple, direct relation prevails between
riches and power. Just as hyperaemia or superfluity of blood in the organism
proves a hindrance to vital activity and finally even causes death, so
we frequently observe how easily great riches
* Goethe repeatedly lays great stress upon the distinction between “without
us“ and “within us“; here it is very useful in distinguishing between discovery
and science; but as soon as we transfer it to the purely philosophical
or even purely scientific sphere, we must be very cautious: see
the remarks at the beginning of the section
on “Science.“
263 DISCOVERY
can paralyse.
It is the same with knowledge. I have shown in a previous section how the
Indians were ruined by anaemia of the material of knowledge; they were,
so to speak, starved idealists; the Chinese, on the other hand, resembled
bloated upstarts, who had no idea how to employ the huge capital of knowledge
which they have collected — being without initiative, imagination or idea.
The common proverb, “Knowledge is power,“ is not, therefore, absolutely
valid, it depends upon the person who knows. It might be said of knowledge,
even more than of gold, that in itself it is nothing at all, absolutely
nothing, and just as likely to injure a man and utterly ruin him as to
elevate and ennoble him. The ignorant Chinese peasant is one of the most
efficient and happy men in the world, the learned Chinaman is a plague,
he is the cancer of his people; that is why that wonderful man, Lâo-tze
— who has been so shamefully misunderstood by our modern commentators,
reared as they have been on phrases of “humanity“ — was absolutely right
in saying: “Alas, if we [the Chinese] could only give up our great knowledge
and do away with learning, our people would be a hundred times more prosperous.“
* Thus here again we are thrown back upon individuality, natural capacities,
inborn character. A minimum of knowledge suffices one human race, more
is fatal, for it has no organ to digest it; in the case of another the
thirst for knowledge is natural, and the people pines away when it can
convey no nourishment for this need; it also understands how to elaborate
in a hundred ways the continual stream of the material of knowledge; not
only for the transformation of outward life, but for the continual enrichment
of thought and action. The Teutons are in this case. It is not the amount
of their knowledge that deserves admiration — for all knowledge constantly
remains relative — but the fact that they possessed the rare capacity to
acquire it, that is,
* Tâo Teh King xix. 1.
264 DISCOVERY
ceaselessly to
discover, ceaselessly to force the “silent Sphinxes“ to speak, and in addition
the capacity to absorb, so to say, what had been taken up, so that there
was always room for new matter, without causing hypertrophy.
We see how infinitely complex every individuality is. But I hope that from
these few remarks, in union with those in the preceding part of this chapter,
the reader will without difficulty grasp the peculiar importance of knowledge
for the life of the Teuton, knowledge of course in its simplest form, as
the discovery of facts. He will also recognise that in many ways this —
in a certain sense purely material — gift is connected with his higher
and highest capacities. Only remarkable philosophical gifts and only an
extremely active economic life can render the consumption, digestion, and
utilisation of so much knowledge possible. It is not the knowledge that
has created the vigour; the great superfluity of vigour has ceaselessly
striven to acquire ever wider knowledge, in exactly the same way as it
has striven to acquire more and more possession in other spheres. This
is the true inner source of the victorious career of the zeal for knowledge,
which from the thirteenth century onwards never flags. He who grasps this
fact will follow the history of discoveries not like a child, but with
understanding.
THE
IMPELLING POWERS
When we contemplate this phenomenon which is so characteristically individualistic,
we are at once bound to be impressed by the connection of the various sides
of the individuality. I have just said that our treasure of knowledge is
due to our keenness to possess; I had no intention to attach any evil signification
to this word; possession is power, power is freedom. Moreover, all such
keenness implies not merely a longing to increase our power by lay-
265 DISCOVERY
ing hold of what
lies outside of ourselves, but also the longing for renunciation of self.
Here, as in love, the contrasts go hand in hand; we take, in order to take,
but we also take in order to give. And precisely as we recognised in the
case of the Teuton an affinity between the founder of states and the artist,
* so a certain noble striving after possession is closely related to the
capacity to create new things out of what is possessed, and to present
them to the world for its enrichment. But in spite of all we must not overlook
one fact in the history of our discoveries, what a great part has been
played quite directly and undisguisedly by the craving for gold. For at
the one end of the work of discovery there stands, as the simple broad
basis of everything else, the investigation of the earth, the discovery
of the planet which is the abode of man; it was this that first taught
us with certainty the shape and nature of our planet, and at the same time
the fundamental facts concerning man's position in the cosmos; from it
we first learnt full details concerning the various races of men, the nature
of rocks, the vegetable and animal world; at the extreme other end of the
same work stands the investigation of the inner constitution of visible
matter, what we to-day call chemistry and physics, an extremely mysterious
and, till a short time ago, doubtful interference with the bowels of nature,
savouring of magic, but at the same time a most important source of our
present knowledge and our present power. † Now in the opening up of these
two spheres of knowledge, in the voyages of discovery and in alchemy as
well, the direct search for gold was for centuries the impelling power.
Besides this motive and above it, we certainly always find in the great
individual pioneers something else — a pure ideal power; a Columbus is
ready at any moment to die for his idea, an
* See vol. i. p. 543.
† The great importance of alchemy as the source of chemistry is now universally
recognised; I need only refer to the books of Berthelot and Kopp.
266 DISCOVERY
Albertus Magnus
is vaguely pursuing the great problems of the world; but such men would
not have found the needful support nor would bands of followers, indispensable
for the toilsome work of discovery, have joined them, had not the hope
of immediate gain spurred them on. The hope of finding gold led to keener
observation, it doubled the inventive power, it inspired the most daring
hypotheses, it conferred infinite endurance and contempt of death. After
all it is much the same to-day: the States, it is true, no longer scramble
for the yellow metal, as the Spaniards and Portuguese of the sixteenth
century did, yet the gradual discovery of the world and its subjection
to Teutonic influence depends solely upon whether it will pay. Even a Livingstone
has after all proved a pioneer for capitalists in search of high interest,
and it is they who first carry out what the individual idealist could not
accomplish. Similarly, modern chemistry could not dispense with expensive
laboratories and instruments, and the State maintains these, not out of
enthusiasm for pure science, but because the industrial inventions that
spring therefrom enrich the country. * The South Pole, which still defies
the twentieth century, would be discovered and overrun in six months if
people thought that rocks of pure gold rise there above the waves.
As the reader can see, I have no wish to represent ourselves as better
and nobler than we are; honesty is the best policy, as the proverb says;
and this holds good even here. For from this observation regarding the
power of gold we are brought to recognise a fact which, once our attention
is called to it, we shall find confirmed on all sides: that the Teuton
has a peculiar capacity to make a good use of his shortcomings; the ancients
would have said that he was a favourite of the
* To say nothing of the discovery of new kinds of powder for cannons and
explosives for torpedoes.
267 DISCOVERY
Gods; I think
that I see in this a proof of his great capacity for culture. A commercial
company, with an eye only to good interest and not always proceeding conscientiously,
subjugates India, but its activity is kept alive and ennobled by a whole
succession of stainless military heroes and great statesmen, and it was
the officials of this company who — fired by noble enthusiasm and qualified
for their task by a learning acquired by great self-sacrifice — enriched
our culture by the revelation of the old Aryan language. We are thrilled
with horror when we read the history of the annihilation of the Indians
in North America: everywhere on the side of the Europeans there is injustice,
treachery, savage cruelty; * and yet how decisive was this very work of
destruction for the later development of a noble, thoroughly Teutonic nation
upon that soil! A comparative glance at the South American bastard colonies
convinces us of this. † That boundless passion displayed in the pursuit
of gold leads to the recognition of yet another fact, one that is essential
for the history of our discoveries. Passion may, indeed, influence very
various parts of our being — that depends upon the individual; characteristic
of our race are daring, endurance, self-sacrifice; great power of conception,
which causes the individual to become quite wrapt up in his idea. But this
element of passion does not by any means reveal itself merely in the sphere
of egotistical interest: it confers on the artist power to work on amid
poverty and neglect; it provides statesmen, reformers and martyrs; it has
also given us our discoverers. Rousseau's remark: “Il n'y a
* Take as an example the total annihilation of the most intelligent and
thoroughly friendly tribe of the Natchez by the French on the Mississippi
(in Du Pratz: History of Louisiana) or the history of the relations
between the English and the Cherokees (Trumbull: History of the United
States). It is always the same story: a fearful injustice on the part
of the Europeans provokes the Indians to take vengeance, and for this vengeance
they are punished, that is, slaughtered.
† See vol. i. p. 286.
268 DISCOVERY
que de grandes
passions que fassent de grandes choses,“ is probably not so universally
true as he thought, but it is absolutely true of us Teutons. In our great
journeys of discovery, as in our attempts to transform substances, the
hope of gain has been the great incentive, but in no other sphere, unless
it be in that of medicine, has this succeeded. Here then, was the passionate
impulse dominant — an impulse likewise towards possession, but it was the
possession of knowledge, purely as knowledge. Here we have a peculiar and
specially to be venerated aspect of the purely ideal impulse; to me it
seems closely related to the artistic and the religious impulse; it explains
that intimate connection between culture and knowledge, the puzzling nature
of which I have so often illustrated by practical examples. * To believe
that knowledge produces culture (as is frequently taught to-day) is senseless
and contradicts experience; living wisdom, however, can only find a place
in a mind predisposed to high culture; otherwise knowledge remains lying
on the surface like manure on a stony field — it poisons the atmosphere
and does no good. Concerning this passionate character of genius as the
fundamental cause of our victorious career of discoveries, one of the greatest
discoverers of the nineteenth century, Justus Liebig, has written as follows:
“The great mass of men have no idea what difficulties are involved in works
which really extend the sphere of knowledge; indeed, we may say that man's
innate impulse towards truth would not suffice to overcome the difficulties
which oppose the accomplishment of every great result, if this impulse
did not in individuals grow into a mighty passion which braces and multiplies
their powers. All these works are undertaken without prospect of gain and
without claim to thanks; the man who accomplishes them has seldom the good
fortune to live to see them put
* See pp. 247 and 251.
269
DISCOVERY
to practical use;
he cannot turn his achievement into money in the market of life, it has
no price and cannot be ordered or bought.“ *
This perfectly disinterested “passion“ we find, in fact, everywhere in
the history of our discoveries. † To the reader whose knowledge in this
branch is not very extensive, I should recommend the study of Gilbert,
a man who, at the end of the sixteenth century (when Shakespeare was writing
his dramas), by absolutely endless experiments laid the foundation of our
knowledge of electricity and magnetism. At that time no one could dream
of the practical application of this knowledge even in distant centuries;
indeed these things were so mysterious that up to Gilbert's time they had
either not been heeded and observed, or only used for philosophical hocus-pocus.
And this one man, who had only the old and well-known observations in connection
with rubbed amber and the magnet to start from, experimented so indefatigably
and extracted from nature her secret with such natural genius that he established,
once for all, all the fundamental facts in reference to magnetism, recognised
electricity (the word was coined by him) as a phenomenon different from
magnetism, and paved the way for its investigation.
NATURE
AS TEACHER
Now we may connect
with the example of Gilbert a distinction which I briefly established in
drawing up my
* Wissenschaft
und Landwirtschaft ii. at the end.
† An
excellent example of the “disinterested passion“ peculiar to the pure Teuton
is provided by the English peasant Tyson, who died in 1898. He had emigrated
to Australia as a labourer, and died the greatest landed proprietor in
the world, with a fortune reckoned at five million pounds. This man remained
to the last so simple that he never possessed a white shirt, much less
a pair of gloves; only when absolutely necessary did he pay a brief visit
to a city; he had an insurmountable distrust of all churches. Money in
itself was a matter
270
DISCOVERY
Table of subjects,
and which I again cursorily touched upon when mentioning Goethe's distinction
between what is without and what is within us; practice will show its importance
more clearly than theory, and it is essential for a rational view of the
history of Teutonic discoveries: I mean the distinction between discovery
and science. Nothing will make this clearer to us than a comparative glance
at the Hellenes. The capacity of the Hellenes for real science was great,
in many respects greater than our own (think only of Democritus, Aristotle,
Euclid, Aristarchus, &c.); their capacity for discovery, on the contrary,
was strikingly small. In this case, too, the simplest example is at the
same time the most instructive. Pytheas, the Greek explorer — the equal
of any later traveller in daring, intuition and understanding * — stands
quite alone; he was ridiculed by all, and not a single one of those philosophers
who could tell us such beautiful things concerning God, the soul, atoms
and the heavenly sphere, had the faintest idea of the significance which
the simple investigation of the surface of the earth must have for man.
This shows a striking lack of curiosity and absence of all genuine thirst
for knowledge, a total blindness to the value of facts, purely as such.
And do not suppose that in their case “progress“ was a mere question of
time. Discovery can begin every day and anywhere; the necessary instruments
— mechanical and intellectual — are derived spontaneously from the needs
of the investigation. Even to our own day the most faithful observers are
usually not the most learned men, and frequently they are exceedingly weak
in the theoretical summarising of their
of indifference to him:
he valued it only as an ally in his great lifework, the struggle with the
desert. When asked about his wealth he replied, “It is not having it but
fighting for it that gives me pleasure.“ A true Teuton! worthy of his countryman
Shakespeare:
-
Things won are done, joy‘s
soul lies in the doing.
* See vol. i. p. 52.
271 DISCOVERY
knowledge. Thus,
for example, Faraday (perhaps the most remarkable discoverer of the nineteenth
century) grew up almost without higher education as a bookbinder's apprentice;
his knowledge of physics he derived from encyclopaedias which he had to
bind, that of chemistry from a popular summary for young girls; thus prepared
he began to make those discoveries upon which almost the whole technical
part of electricity is to-day based. * Neither William Jones nor Colebrooke,
the two discoverers of the Sanscrit language at the end of the eighteenth
century, were philologists by profession. The man who accomplished what
no other scholar had been able to do, who discovered how to steal from
plants the secret of their life, the founder of the physiology of plants,
Stephen Hales (1761), was a country minister. We only need in fact to watch
Gilbert, whom we mentioned above, at work: all his experiments in electricity
of friction might have been carried out by any clever Greek two thousand
years before; he invented his own apparatus; in his time there were no
higher mathematics, without which a complete comprehension of these phenomena
is to-day scarcely thinkable. No, the Greek observed but little and never
without bias; he immediately plunged into theory and hypothesis, that is,
into science and philosophy; the passionate patience which the work of
discovery demands was not given to him. We Teutons, on the other hand,
possess a special talent for the investigation of nature, and this talent
does not lie on the surface, but is most closely bound up with the deepest
depths of our being. As theorists we have apparently no great claim to
importance: the philologists confess that the Indian Pânini surpasses
the greatest Grammarians of to-day; † the jurists say that the ancient
Romans were
* See Tyndall: Faraday as a Discoverer (1890); and W. Grosse:
Der
Äther (1898).
† See vol. i. p. 431.
272
DISCOVERY
very superior
to us in jurisprudence; even after we had sailed round the world we would
not believe that it was round till the fact had been fully proved to us
and hammered into us for centuries, whereas the Greeks, who knew only the
insignificant Mediterranean, had long ago demonstrated the fact by way
of pure science; in spite of the enormous increase of our knowledge, we
still cannot do without Hellenic “atoms,“ Indian “ether,“ Babylonian “evolution.“
As discoverers, however, we have no rivals. So that historian of Teutonic
civilisation and culture, whom I invoked above, will here have to draw
a subtle and clear distinction, and then dwell long and in detail upon
our work of discovery.
Discovery demands above all childlike freedom from bias — hence those large
childlike eyes which attract us in a countenance such as Faraday's. The
whole secret of discovery lies in this, to let nature speak. For this self-control
is essential: the Greeks did not possess it. The preponderance of their
genius lay in creative work, the preponderance of ours lies in receptivity.
For nature does not obey a word of command, she does not speak as we men
desire, or utter what we wish to hear; we have by endless patience, by
unconditional subjection, by a thousand groping attempts to find out how
she wills to be questioned and what questions she cares to answer, what
not. Hence observation is a splendid discipline for the formation of character:
it exercises endurance, restrains arbitrariness, teaches absolute truthfulness.
The observation of nature has played this part in the history of Teutonism;
it would play the same part to-morrow in our schools, if only the pall
of medieval superstition would at length lift, and we came to understand
the fact that it is not the repetition by rote of antiquated wisdom in
dead, misunderstood languages, nor the knowledge of so-called “facts“ and
still less science, but the “method“ of acquiring all knowledge —
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DISCOVERY
— namely observation
— that should be the foundation of all education, as the one discipline
which at the same time forms the mind and the character, confers freedom
but not licence, and opens up to every one the source of all truth and
all originality. For here again we observe knowledge and culture in contact
and begin better to understand how discoverers and poets belong to the
one family: for only nature is really original, but she is so everywhere
and at all times. “Nature alone is infinitely rich, and she alone forms
the great artist.“ *
The men whom we call geniuses, a Leonardo, a Shakespeare, a Bach, a Kant,
a Goethe, are finely organised observers; not, of course, in the sense
of brooding and burrowing, but in that of seeing, storing up and elaborating
what they have seen. This power of seeing, that is, the capacity of the
individual man to adopt such an attitude towards nature that, within certain
limits prescribed by his individuality, he may absorb her ever creative
originality and thus become qualified to be creative and original himself
— this power of seeing can be trained and developed. Certainly only in
the case of a few extraordinary men will it display freely creative activity,
but it will render thousands capable of original achievements.
If the impulse to discovery by investigation is innate in the Teuton in
the manner described, why was it so long in awakening! It was not long
in awakening, but was systematically suppressed by other powers. As soon
as the migrations with their ceaseless wars gave even a moment's peace,
the Teuton set to work, thirsting after knowledge and diligently investigating.
Charlemagne and King Alfred are well-known examples (see vol. i.
p.
326 f.); even of Charlemagne's father, Pepin, we
* Goethe: Werther‘s Leiden, Letter of May 26 of the 1st year. Cf.
what is said in vol. i. p. 267.
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DISCOVERY
read in Lamprecht,
* that he was “full of understanding, especially for the natural sciences.“
† Important are the utterances of such a man as Scotus Erigena, who (in
the ninth century) said that nature can and should be investigated; that
only thereby does she fulfil her divine purpose. ‡ Now what was the fate
of this man who in spite of his desire for knowledge was extremely pious
and characteristically inclined to fanatical mysticism? At the command
of Pope Nicholas I. he was driven from his chair in Paris and finally murdered,
and even four centuries later his works, which in the meantime had been
widely circulated among all really religious, anti-Roman Teutons of various
nations, were hunted for everywhere by the emissaries of Honorius II. and
burned. The same happened whenever a desire for knowledge began to assert
itself. Precisely in the thirteenth century, at the moment when the writings
of Scotus Erigena were being committed so zealously to the flames, there
was born that incomprehensibly great mind Roger Bacon, § who sought
to fill men with ardour for discovery, “by sailing out to the west, in
order to reach the east,“ who constructed the microscope and in theory
planned the telescope, who first demonstrated the importance of scientific
knowledge of languages studied in a strictly philological manner, &c.,
&c., and who above all established for good the importance of the observation
of nature as the basis of all real knowledge, and spent his whole fortune
on physical experiments. Now what encouragement did this man receive, though
he was better qualified than any one before or after him to provide the
spark that would make the intellectual capacities
* Deutsche Geschichte ii. 13.
† In passing let me make the addition which is so important for our Teutonic
individuality, “for the natural sciences and music.“!
‡ De Divisione Naturae v. 33; cf., too, p. 129 above.
§ Of him Goethe says (in his Gespräche ii. 46): “The whole
magic of nature, in the finest sense of the word, is revealed to him.“
275 DISCOVERY
of all Teutons
burst into bright flames? At first he was merely forbidden to write down
the results of his experiments, that is to say, to communicate them to
the world; then the reading of the books already issued was punished with
excommunication, and his papers — the results of his studies — were destroyed;
finally he was condemned to a cruel imprisonment, in which he remained
for many years, till shortly before his death. The struggle which I have
exemplified by these two cases lasted for centuries and cost much blood
and suffering. Essentially, it is exactly the same struggle as that described
in my eighth chapter: Rome against Teutonism. For, no matter what we may
think of Roman infallibility, every unbiased person will admit that Rome
has always with unerring instinct known how to hinder what was likely to
further Teutonism, and to give support to everything whereby it was bound
to be most seriously injured.
However, to rob the matter of all sting which might still wound, we will
follow it back to its purely human kernel: what do we find there? We find
that actual, concrete knowledge, that is, the great work of toilsome discovery,
has one deadly enemy, omniscience. The Jews are a case in point (vol. i.
p.
401); if a man possesses a sacred book, which contains all wisdom,
then all further investigation is as superfluous as it is sinful: the Christian
Church took over the Jewish tradition. This fastening on to Judaism, which
was so fatal for our history, is being accomplished before our very eyes;
it can be demonstrated step by step. The old Church Fathers, taking their
stand expressly upon the Jewish Torah, are unanimous in preaching contempt
of art and of science. Ambrosius, for example, says that Moses had been
educated in all worldly wisdom, and had proved that “science is a pernicious
folly, upon which we must turn our backs, before we can find God.“ “To
study astronomy and
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DISCOVERY
geometry, to follow
the course of the sun among the stars and to make maps and charts of lands
and seas, means to neglect salvation for things of no account.“ * Augustine
allows the study of the course of the moon, “for otherwise we could not
fix Easter correctly“; in other respects he considers the study of astronomy
a waste of time, in that it takes the attention away from useful to useless
things! He likewise declares that all art belongs “to the number of superfluous
human institutions.“ † However, this still purely Jewish attitude of the
ancient Church Fathers denotes an “infancy of art;“ it was in truth sufficient
to keep barbarians stupid as long as possible; but the Teuton was only
outwardly a barbarian; as soon as he came to himself, his capacity for
culture developed absolutely of itself, and then it was necessary to forge
other weapons. It was a man born in the distant south, a Teuton of German
extraction who had joined the ranks of the enemy, Thomas Aquinas, who was
the most famous armourer; in the service of the Church he sought to quench
his countrymen's ardent thirst for knowledge by offering them complete,
divine omniscience. Well might his contemporary, Roger Bacon, speak in
mockery of “the boy who taught everything, without having himself learned
anything“ — for Bacon had clearly proved that we still utterly lacked the
bases of the simplest knowledge, and he had shown the only way in which
this defect could be remedied — but what availed reason and truthfulness?
Thomas — who asserted that the sacred Church doctrine, in alliance with
the scarcely less sacred Aristotle, was quite adequate to answer once for
all every conceivable question (see p. 178),
while all further inquiry was superfluous and criminal — was declared a
saint, while Bacon was thrown into prison. And the omniscience of Thomas
did actually succeed
* De officiis ministrorum i. 26, 122—123.
† De doctrina christiana i. 26, 2, and i. 30, 2.
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in completely
retarding for three whole centuries the mathematical, physical, astronomical
and philological researches which had already begun! *
We now understand why the work of discovery was so late in starting. At
the same time we perceive a universal law which applies to all knowledge:
it is not ignorance but omniscience that forms a fatal atmosphere for every
increase of the material of knowledge. Wisdom and ignorance are both merely
designations for notions that can never be accurately fixed, because they
are purely relative; the absolute difference lies altogether elsewhere,
it is the difference between the man who is conscious of his ignorance
and the man who, owing to some self-deception, either imagines that he
possesses all knowledge, or thinks himself above all knowledge. Indeed,
we might perhaps go further and assert that every science, even genuine
science, contains a danger for discovery, in that it paralyses to some
extent the untrammelled naturalness of the observer in his attitude to
nature. Here, as elsewhere (see p. 182),
the decisive thing is not so much the amount or the nature of knowledge
as the attitude of the mind towards it. † In the recognition of this fact
lies the whole importance of
* This is the philosopher whom the Jesuits to-day elevate to the throne
(see p. 177) and whose
doctrines are henceforth to supply the foundation for the philosophical
culture of all Roman Catholics! We can see how freely the Teutonic spirit
moved, before these fetters were imposed by the Church, from the fact that
at the University of Paris in the thirteenth century theses like the following
were defended, “The sayings of the Theologists are based on fables,“ “There
is no increase of knowledge because of the pretended knowledge of the Theologians,“
and “The Christian religion prevents increase of knowledge.“ (Cf.
Wernicke: Die mathematisch-naturwissenschaftliche Forschung, &c.,
1898, p. 5).
† Hence Kant‘s profound remark on the importance of astronomy: “The most
important thing surely is that it has revealed to us the abyss of our ignorance,
which, but for that science, we could never have conceived to be so great,
and that reflection upon this must produce a great change in the determination
of the final purposes of our employment of reason.“ (Critique of Pure
Reason, note in the section entitled “Concerning the Transcendental
Ideal.“)
278 DISCOVERY
Socrates, who
was persecuted by the mighty of his time for the very same reason as were
Scotus Erigena and Roger Bacon by the authorities of their age. I have
no intention of making the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church a reproach
levelled at it especially and alone. It is true that the Catholic Church
is always the first to attract our attention, if only because of the decisive
power which it possessed a few centuries ago, but also for the splendid
consistency with which it has always, up to the present day, maintained
the one logical standpoint — that our system of faith is based on Judaism
— but even outside this Church we find the same spirit as the inevitable
consequence of every historical, materialistic religion. Martin Luther,
for example, makes the following terrible remark, “The wisdom of the Greeks,
when compared to that of the Jews, is absolutely bestial; for apart from
God there can be no wisdom, nor any understanding and insight.“ That is
to say, the ever glorious achievements of the Hellenes are “bestial“ in
comparison with the absolute ignorance and uncultured rudeness of a people
which has never achieved anything at all in any single field of human knowledge
or activity! Roger Bacon, on the other hand, in the first part of his Opus
majus, proves that the principal cause of human ignorance is “the pride
of a pretended knowledge,“ and there he truly hits the nail on the head.
* The lawyer Krebs (better known as Cardinal Cuxanus and famous as the
man who brought to light the Roman decretal swindle) maintained the same
thesis two centuries
* According to him there are four causes of ignorance — faith in authority,
the power of custom, illusions of sense and the proud delusion of an imagined
wisdom. Of the Thomists and Franciscans, considered the greatest scholars
of his age, Bacon says: “The world has never witnessed such a semblance
of knowledge as there is to-day, and yet in reality ignorance was never
so crass and error so deep-rooted“ (from a quotation in Whewell: History
of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. p. 378).
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DISCOVERY
later in his much-discussed
work De docta ignorantia, in the first book of which he expounds
the “science of not-knowing“ as the first step towards all further knowledge.
As soon as this view had gained so firm a hold that even Cardinals could
give utterance to it without falling into disfavour, the victory of knowledge
was assured. However, if we are to understand the history of our discoveries
and our sciences, we must never lose sight of the fundamental principle
here established. There has been, it is true, a shifting of the relations
of power since that time, but not of principles. Step by step we have had
not only to wrest our knowledge from nature, but to do so in defiance of
the obstacles everywhere planted in our path by the powers of ignorant
omniscience. When Tyndall in his famous address to the British Association
in Belfast in the year 1874 demanded absolute freedom of investigation,
he raised a storm of indignation in the whole Anglican Church and also
in all the Churches of the dissenters. Sincere harmony between science
and Church we can never have, in the way in which it prevailed in India:
it is absolutely impossible to harmonise a system of faith derived from
Judaism, chronistic and absolutist, with the inquiring, investigating instincts
of the Teutonic personality. We may fail to understand this, we may deny
it for reasons of interest, we may seek to hush it up in the interest of
other far-reaching plans, nevertheless it remains true, and this truth
forms one of the causes of the deep-seated discord of our age. That is
also the reason why so very little of our great work of discovery has been
consciously assimilated by the nations. They see, of course, some results
of research, such as those which have led to innovations which could be
exploited by industry; but obviously it does not in the least matter whether
our light is derived
280 DISCOVERY
from tallow candles
or electric globes; the important matter is, not how we see, but who sees.
It will only be when we shall have so completely revolutionised our methods
of education that the training of each individual from the first shall
resemble a Discovery, instead of merely consisting in the transmission
of ready-made wisdom, that we shall really have thrown off the alien yoke
in this fundamental sphere of knowledge and shall be able to move on towards
the full development of our best powers.
If we turn our gaze from such a possible future back to our still poverty-stricken
present, we shall be able also to look even further back, and to realise
intelligently what obstacles the work of discovery, the most difficult
of all works, encountered at every step. But for the lust of gold and the
inimitable simplicity of the Teutons success would have been impossible.
They even knew how to turn to account the childish cosmogony of Moses.
* Thus, for example, we observe how the theologians of the University of
Salamanca with the help of a whole arsenal of quotations from the Bible
and the Church Fathers proved that the idea of a western route over the
Atlantic Ocean was nonsense and blasphemy, and thereby persuaded the Government
not to assist Columbus; † but Columbus himself, pious man as he was, did
not lose heart; for he too relied, in his calculations, not so much upon
the map of Toscanelli and the opinions of Seneca, Pliny, &c., as upon
Holy Scripture and especially the apocalyptic book of Ezra, where
he found the statement that water covers only the seventh part of the earth.
‡ Truly a thoroughly Teutonic way of turning
* As happens again in the case of Darwinism to-day.
† Fiske: Discovery of America c. v.
‡ This is naturally only an application of the favourite division into
the sacred number seven, derived from the (supposed) number of the planets.
Compare the second book of Ezra in the Apocrypha, vi. 42
281 DISCOVERY
Jewish apocalyptic
writings to account! If men had then had any idea that water, instead of
covering a seventh of the surface of the earth — as the infallible source
of all knowledge taught — covered almost exactly three-fourths, they would
never have ventured out upon the ocean. In the later history of geographical
discovery also several such pious confusions were of great service. Thus
it was the gift to Spain (mentioned on p.
168) of all lands west of the Azores by the Pope as absolute lord of
the world, that literally compelled the Portuguese to discover the eastern
route to India by the Cape of Good Hope. When, however, this was achieved,
the Spaniards were at a disadvantage; for the Pope had bestowed upon the
Portuguese the whole eastern world, and now they had found Madagascar and
India, with its fabulous treasures in gold, jewels, spices, &c., while
America, to begin with, offered little; and thus the Spaniards knew no
peace till Magalhães had accomplished his great achievement and
reached India by the western route. *
and 52 (also called the fourth book of Ezra, when the canonical
book of Ezra and the book of Nehemiah are regarded as the
first and second, as was formerly the custom). It is a most noteworthy
fact that Columbus is indebted for all his arguments for a western route
to India, as well as for his knowledge of this passage from Ezra,
to the great Roger Bacon. It is some consolation that this poor man, who
was persecuted to death by the Church, exercised decisive influence not
only upon mathematics, astronomy and physics, but also upon the history
of geographical discoveries.
* Magalhães saw land, i.e., completed the proof that the
earth is round, on March 6, 1521, the very day on which Charles V. signed
the summons of Luther to Worms.
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DISCOVERY
THE
UNITY OF THE WORK OF DISCOVERY
I do not propose to enter into details. There certainly remains a great
deal to discuss, which the reader will not be able to supplement from histories
or encyclopaedias; but as soon as the whole living organism stands clearly
before our eyes — the special capacity, the impelling forces, the obstacles
due to the surroundings — then the task here assigned to me is completed,
and that is, I think, now the case. For it has not been my object to chronicle
the past, but to illumine the present. And for that reason I should like
to direct attention with special emphasis to one point only. It utterly
confuses our historical perception when geographical discoveries are separated,
as they usually are, from other discoveries; in the same way further confusion
arises, when those discoveries which affect especially the human race —
discoveries in ethnography, language, the history of religion, &c.
— are put in a class by themselves, or assigned to philology and history.
The unity of science is being recognized more and more every day — the
unity of the work of discovery, that is, of the collecting of the material
of knowledge, demands the same recognition. Whatever be discovered, whether
it be a daring adventurer, an ingenious man engaged in industry, or a patient
scholar that brings it to the light of day, it is the same gifts of our
individuality that are at work, the same impulse towards possession, the
same passionate spirit, the same devotion to nature, the same art of observation;
it is the same Teuton of whom Faust says:
-
Im Weiterschreiten
find‘ er Qual und Glück
-
Er! unbefriedigt jeden
Augenblick. *
Every single discovery, no matter in what sphere,
* In further progress let him find pain and happiness, he! unsatisfied
at every moment.
283 DISCOVERY
furthers every
other, however remote from it. This is particularly manifest in geographical
discoveries. It was avarice and religious fanaticism at the same time that
induced the European States to interest themselves in discovery; but the
chief result for the human intellect was, to begin with, the proof that
the earth is round. The importance of this discovery is simply inestimable.
It is true that the Pythagoreans had long ago supposed, and that scholars
at various times had asserted that the earth was spherical; but it is a
mighty advance from theoretical speculations such as this to an irrefutable,
concrete, tangible proof. From the Papal gifts to the Spaniards and Portuguese
of the year 1493 (see p. 168)
we see clearly enough that the Church did not really believe that the earth
was spherical: for to the west of every single degree of latitude lies
the whole earth! I have already pointed out (p.
7 note) that Augustine considered the idea of Antipodes absurd and
contrary to Scripture. At the close of the fifteenth century the orthodox
still accepted as authoritative the geography of the monk Cosmas Indicopleustes,
who declares the view of Greek scholars to be blasphemy and imagines the
world to be a flat rectangle enclosed by the four walls of heaven; above
the star-spangled firmament dwell God and the angels. * Though we may smile
at such conceptions now, they were and are prescribed by Church doctrine.
In reference to hell, Thomas Aquinas, for example, expressly warns men
against the tendency to conceive it only spiritually; on the contrary,
it is poenas corporeas (corporal punishments) that men will have
to endure: likewise the flames of hell are to be understood literally,
secundum
litteram intelligenda; and this surely implies the conception of a
place — to wit, “underneath the earth.“ † A round earth, hovering in
* Fiske: Discovery of America, chap. iii.
† Compendium Theologiae, chap. clxxix. I have no doubt that Thomas
Aquinas believed also in a definite localisation of heaven
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DISCOVERY
space, destroys the tangible conception
of hell just as thoroughly as and much more convincingly than Kant‘s transcendentality
of space. Scarcely one of the daring seafarers quite firmly believed in
the earth as a sphere, and Magalhães
had great difficulty in pacifying his comrades when he sailed across the
Pacific Ocean, as they daily feared they would reach the “edge“ of the
world and fall direct into hell. And now the matter had been concretely
proved; the men who had sailed out towards the west came back from the
east. That was for the time being the completion of the work begun by Marco
Polo (1254—1323); he had been the first to announce with certainty that
an ocean lay extended to the east of Asia. * At one blow rational astronomy
had become
though he appears to have
laid less stress on it. Conrad of Megenberg, a very scholarly and pious
man, canon of the Ravensberg Cathedral and author of the very first Natural
History in German, who died exactly a hundred years after him, says expressly
in the astronomical part of his work, “The first and uppermost heaven (there
are ten of them) stands still and does not revolve. It is called in Latin
Empyreum,
in German Feuerhimmel, because it glows and glitters in supernatural
brightness. There God dwells with the Chosen“ (Das Buch der Natur
ii. 1). The new astronomy, based on the new geography, therefore actually
destroyed “the dwelling of God,“ on which till then even scholarly and
free-thinking men had believed, and robbed the physico-theological conceptions
of all convincing reality.
* The
map given on the next page will enable the reader to understand more clearly
the work of geographical discovery which began in the thirteenth century.
The black portion shows how much of the world was known to Europeans in
the first half of the thirteenth century, i.e., before Marco Polo;
all that is left white was absolutely terra incognita. The comparison
is striking and the diagram is a symbol of the activity of the Teutons
in discovery in other spheres as well. If we were to take former ages and
non-European peoples into consideration, the black portion would require
to be modified considerably; the Phoenicians, for instance, knew the Cape
Verde Islands, but they had since then been lost to view so completely
that the old accounts were regarded as fables; the Khalifs had been in
constant intercourse with Madagascar and even knew — it is said — the sea-route
to China by way of India; there were Christian (Nestorian) bishops of China
in the seventh century, &c. — We cannot but suppose that some few Europeans,
at the Papal Court and in trade centres, had vaguely heard of these things
even in the thirteenth century; but, as I wished to show what was really
known and had been actually seen, my map
285 DISCOVERY
286 DISCOVERY
possible. The earth was round; consequently
it hovered in space. But if so, why should not sun, moon and planets do
the same? Thus brilliant hypotheses of the Hellenes were once more honoured.
* Previous to Magalhães such speculations
(e.g., those of Regiomontanus) had never gained a firm footing;
whereas, now that there was no longer any doubt about the shape of the
earth, a Copernicus immediately appeared; for speculation was now based
on sure facts. But hereby the remembrance of the telescope which Roger
Bacon had suggested was at once awakened, and the discoveries upon our
planet were continued by discoveries in the heavens. Scarcely had the motion
of the earth been put forward as a probable hypothesis, when the revolution
of the moons around Jupiter was observed by the eye. † History shows us
what an enormous impulse physics received from the complete revolution
of cosmic conceptions. It is true that
rather contains too much
than too little. Of the coast of India, for example, Europeans had then
no definite knowledge at all; three centuries later, as we see from the
map of Johann Ruysch, their conceptions were still uncertain and erroneous;
of inner Asia they knew only the caravan routes to Samarkand and the Indus.
A few years before Marco Polo two Franciscan monks reached Karakorum, the
capital of the Great Khan, and brought back the first minute accounts of
China — though only from hearsay. In the Jahresberichte der Geschichtswissenschaft
(xxii. 97) Helmolt supplements this note as follows: “Since 638 an Imperial
Chinese edict permitted the Nestorians to carry on missionary work in China;
an inscription of the year 781 (described in Navarra: China und die
Chinesen, 1901, p. 1089 f.) mentions the Nestorian patriarch Chanan-Ischu,
and tells us that since the beginning of missionary activity in China seventy
missionaries had gone there; to the south of the Balkhash lake the tombstones
of more than 3000 Nestorian Christians have been found.“ See also
the lecture of Baelz: Die Ostasiaten, 1901, p. 35 f. About the end
of the tenth century there were thousands of Christian churches in China.
* In
the dedication of his De Revolutionibus, Copernicus mentions these
views of the ancients. When the work was afterwards put on the Index, the
doctrine of Copernicus was simply designated doctrina Pythagorica
(Lange: Geschichte des Materialismus, 4th ed. i. 172).
† The
motion of these moons is so easy to observe that Galilei noticed it at
once and mentioned it in a letter dated January 30, 1610.
287
DISCOVERY
physics begin with Archimedes, so that
we must acknowledge that the Renaissance was of some little service here,
but Galilei points out that the depreciation of higher mathematics and
mechanics was due to the want of a visible object for their application,
* and the chief thing is that a mechanical view of the world could only
force itself upon men when they perceived with their eyes the mechanical
structure of the cosmos. Now for the first time were the laws of falling
bodies carefully investigated; this led to a new conception and analysis
of gravitation, and a new and more accurate determination of the fundamental
qualities of matter. The impetus to all these studies was given by the
imagination, powerfully stirred as it was by the vision of constellations
hovering in space. The great importance of continual discoveries for stimulating
the imagination, and consequently also for art, has been alluded to already
(vol. i. p. 267); here we gain
a sight of the principle at work. We see how one thing leads to another,
and how the first impulse to all these discoveries is to be sought in the
voyages of discovery. But soon this central influence extended its waves
farther and farther, to the deepest depths of philosophy and religion.
For many facts were now discovered which directly contradicted the apparent
proofs and doctrines of the sacrosanct Aristotle. Nature always works in
an unexpected way; man possesses no organ to enable him to divine what
has not yet been observed, be it form or law; this gift is denied to him.
Discovery is always revelation. These revelations, these answers wrung
from the “silent Sphinxes“ to riddles hitherto wrapt in sacred gloom, worked
in the brains of men of genius and enabled them not only to anticipate
future discoveries but also to lay the foundation of an absolutely new
view of life's problems —
* This
is at any rate the interpretation which I have given to a quotation in
Thurot, Recherches historiques sur le principe d‘Archimède,
1869, but at present I am unfortunately unable to verify the accuracy of
my memory and the correctness of my view.
288 DISCOVERY
a view which was neither Hellenic nor
Jewish, but Teutonic. Thus Leonardo da Vinci — a pioneer of all genuine
science — already proclaimed la terra è una stella (the earth
is a star), and added elsewhere by way of explanation, la terra non
è nel mezzo del mondo (the earth is not in the centre of the
universe); and with a sheerly incredible power of intuition he gave utterance
to the ever memorable words, “All life is motion.“ * A hundred years later
Giordano Bruno, the inspired visionary, saw our whole solar system moving
on in infinite space, the earth with its burden of men and human destinies
a mere atom among countless atoms. This was truly very far from the cosmogony
of Moses and the God who had chosen the small people of the Jews, “that
he might be honoured“; and it was almost equally as far from Aristotle
with his pedantic and childish teleology. We had to begin to rear the edifice
of an absolutely new philosophy, which should answer to the requirements
of the Teutonic horizon and the Teutonic tendency of mind. In that connection
Descartes, who was born before Bruno died, acquired an importance which
affected the history of the world, in that he, exactly as his ancestors,
the daring seafarers, insisted on systematically doubting everything traditional
and on fearlessly investigating the Unknown. I shall return to this later.
All these things resulted from the geographical discoveries. Naturally
they cannot be regarded as effects following causes, but certainly as events
which had been occasioned by definite occurrences. Had we possessed freedom,
the historical development of our work of discovery might have been different,
as we see clearly enough from the example of Roger Bacon; however, natura
sese adjuvat; all paths but that of geo-
* I
find the passage quoted thus in several places, but the only remark of
the kind which I know in the original is somewhat different: Il moto
è causa d'ogni vita (Motion is the cause of all life) (in J.
P. Richter's edition of the Scritti letterari di Leonardo da Vinci,
ii, 286, Fragment No. 1139). The former quotations are taken from Nos.
865 and 858.
289 DISCOVERY
graphical discoveries
had been forcibly closed against us; this remained open, because all Churches
love the perfume of gold, and because even a Columbus dreamt of equipping
an army against the Turks with the treasure to be won; thus geographical
discovery became the basis of all other discoveries, and so at the same
time the foundation of our gradual intellectual emancipation, which, however,
is even now far from being perfect.
It would be easy to prove the influence which the discovery of the world
exercised upon all other branches of life, upon industry and trade, and
so at the same time upon the economic moulding of Europe, upon agriculture
by the introduction of new vegetables, like the potato, upon medicine (think
of quinine), upon politics, and so forth. I leave this to the reader and
only call his attention to the fact that in all these spheres the aforementioned
influence increases the nearer we come to the nineteenth century; every
day our life, in contrast to the “European“ life of former days, is becoming
more and more a “planetary“ one.
IDEALISM
There is another great sphere of profound influence, little heeded in this
connection, which I cannot leave undiscussed, and that all the more since
in this very case the inevitable consequences of the discoveries have taken
longest to reveal themselves and hardly began even in the nineteenth century
to assume definite shape: I mean the influence of discoveries upon religion.
The discovery — first of the spheroidal shape of the earth, secondly, of
its position in the cosmos, then of the laws of motion, of the chemical
structure of matter, &c. &c., has brought about that the faultlessly
mechanical interpretation of nature is unavoidable and the only true one.
When I say “the only true one,“ I mean that
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DISCOVERY
it can be the
only true one for us Teutons; other men may — in the future as in the past
— think differently; among us also there is now and then a reaction against
the too one-sided predominance of a purely mechanical interpretation of
nature; but let not ephemeral movements lead us astray; we must ever of
necessity come back to mechanism, and so long as the Teuton predominates,
he will force this view of his even upon non-Teutons. I am not speaking
of theories, I must discuss them elsewhere; but whatever form the theory
may assume, henceforth it will always be “mechanical,“ that is, the inexorable
demand of Teutonic thought, for only thus can it keep the outer and the
inner world beneficially acting and reacting upon each other. This is so
unrestrictedly true of us that I can in no way make up my mind to regard
the doctrine of mechanism as a “theory,“ and consequently as pertaining
to “science“: I think I must rather view it as a discovery, as an established
fact. The philosopher may justify this, but the triumphant progress of
our tangible discoveries is a sufficient guarantee for the ordinary man;
for the mechanical thought, strictly adhered to, has been from the beginning
to the present day the Ariadne's thread which has guided us in safety through
all the labyrinthine paths of error. As I wrote on the title-page of this
book, “We proclaim our adherence to the race which from out the darkness
strives to reach the light.“ What in the world of empirical experience
has led and still leads us from darkness into light was and is the unfaltering
adherence to mechanism. By this — and this alone — we have acquired a mass
of perceptions and a command over nature never equalled by any other human
race. * Now this victory
* As one must ever and in all things be apprehensive of being misunderstood
in an age when the philosophic sense has become so barbarous, I add in
the words of Kant, “Though there can be no real knowledge of nature unless
mechanism is made the basis of research, yet this is true only of matter
and does not preclude the searching after
291
DISCOVERY
of mechanism signifies
the inevitable, complete overthrow of all materialistic religion. This
issue is a surprise, but irrefutable. The Jewish world-chronicle might
have some significance for Cosmas Indicopleustes, for us it can have none;
as applied to the universe, as we know it to-day, it is simply absurd.
But equally untenable in the face of mechanism is all that Eastern magic
which, almost undisguised, forms so essential a part of the so-called Christian
Creed (see pp. 123,
128).
Mechanism in philosophy and materialism in religion are for ever irreconcilable.
He who mechanically interprets empirical nature as perceived by the senses
has an ideal religion or none at all; all else is conscious or unconscious
self-deception. The Jew knew no mechanism of any kind: from Creation out
of nothing to his dreams of a Messianic future everything is in his case
freely ruling, all-powerful arbitrariness; * that is also the reason why
he never discovered anything; with him one thing only is essential, the
Creator; that explains everything. The mystical and magical notions, upon
which all our ecclesiastical sacraments are based, stand on an even lower
plane of materialism; for they signify principally a change of substance
and are therefore nothing more nor less than the alchemy of souls. Consistent
mechanism, on the other hand, as we Teutons have created it and from which
we can no longer escape, is compatible only with a purely ideal, i.e.,
transcendent, religion, such as Jesus Christ had taught: the Kingdom of
God is within you. † Religion for us cannot be chronicle, but experience
only — inner, direct experience.
I must come back to this elsewhere. Here I shall anticipate one point only,
that in my opinion Kant's universal importance rests upon his brilliant
compre-
and reflecting upon a Principle,
which is quite different from explanation according to the mechanism of
nature“ (Kritik der Urteilskraft, § 70).
* See vol. i. p. 240 f.
† See vol. i. p. 187 f.,
vol. ii. p. 40.
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DISCOVERY
hension of this
fact, that the Mechanical doctrine, consistently pursued to its furthest
limits, furnishes the explanation of the world, and that the purely Ideal
doctrine alone furnishes laws for the inner man. *
For how many more centuries shall we drag the fetter of the conscious falsehood
of believing in absurdities as revealed truth? I do not know. But I hope
that we shall not do so much longer. For the religious craving is growing
so great and so imperious in our breasts that of necessity a day must come
when that craving will
* In the interest of philosophically trained readers I wish to remark that
I am aware of the fact that Kant establishes a dynamic natural philosophy
in contrast to a mechanical natural philosophy (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe
der Naturwissenschaft ii.), but there it is a question of distinctions
which cannot be brought forward in a work like the present; moreover, Kant
uses the word “Dynamic“ merely to express a special view of a strictly
mechanical (according to the general use of the term) interpretation of
nature. I should like to take this opportunity of making it perfectly clear
that I do not bind myself hand and foot to the Kantian system. I am not
learned enough to follow all these scholastic turnings and twistings; it
would be presumption for me to say that I belonged to this or that school;
but the personality I do see clearly, and I observe what a mighty stimulus
it is, and in what directions. The important thing for me is not the “being
right“ or “being wrong“ — this never-ceasing battling with windmills of
puny minds — but first and foremost the importance (I might be inclined
in this connection to say the “dynamic“ importance) of the mind in question,
and secondly its individuality. And in this respect I behold Kant so great
that but few in the world‘s history can be compared with him, and he is
so thoroughly and specifically Teutonic (even in the limiting sense of
the word) that he attains to typical significance. Philosophical technique
is in him something subordinate, conditioned, accidental, ephemeral; the
decisive, unconditioned, unephemeral element is the fundamental power,
“not the word spoken but the speaker of it,“ as the Upanishads express
it. For Kant‘s importance as a discoverer I also refer the reader to F.
A. Lange‘s Geschichte des Materialismus (1881, p. 383), where the
author shows with admirable acuteness that with Kant it was not, and could
not be, a question of proving his fundamental principles, but rather of
discovering them. In reality Kant is an observer, to be compared with Galilei
or Harvey: he proceeds from facts and “in reality his method is no other
than that of induction.“ The confusion arises from the fact that men are
not clear on this matter. At any rate it is evident that, even from a formal
point of view, I was justified in closing the section on “Discovery“ with
the name of Kant.
293 DISCOVERY
shatter the rotten,
gloomy edifice, and then we shall step out into the new, bright, glorious
kingdom which has long been awaiting us; that will be the crown of the
Teutonic work of discovery.
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of page. Last update: April 2nd, 2004.
