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PARERGA AND PARALIPOMENA: SHORT PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS

[b]CHAPTER 6: On Philosophy and Natural Science[/b]

§ 70

Nature is the will in so far as it beholds itself independently of and apart from itself; for this purpose its standpoint must be an individual intellect. This is likewise its product.

§ 71

Instead of demonstrating, like the English, the wisdom of God in the works of nature and of the mechanical instincts of animals, we should learn to understand from these that everything brought about through the medium of the representation and thus the intellect, even if such were enhanced to the faculty of reason, is mere bungling when compared with that which comes directly from the will as thing-in-itself and is not brought about by any representation, in other words, when compared with the works of nature. This is the theme of my essay On the Will in Nature, which I therefore cannot too often recommend to my readers; in it is to be found more clearly expounded than anywhere else the real core of my teaching.

§ 72

If we observe how nature, while showing little concern for individuals, watches with such excessive care over the preservation of the species by means of the omnipotence of the sexual impulse and by virtue of the incalculable surplus of seed which in the case of plants, fishes, and insects is often ready to replace the individual by several hundred thousand, we arrive at the assumption that, whereas the production of the individual is for nature an easy matter, the original generation of a species is for her one of extreme difficulty. Accordingly, we never see such generation arise for the first time. Even when generatio aequivoca [1] occurs (and there is really no doubt that it takes place in the case of epizoa and parasites generally), only known species are produced. Nature is unable to replace the extremely few extinct species of the fauna now inhabiting the earth, for example, that of the dodo bird (didus ineptus), although they were to be found in her scheme of things. We therefore stand in astonishment that our eagerness has succeeded in playing her such a trick.

§ 73

In the blazing primordial nebula of which the sun extending as far as Neptune consisted according to the cosmogony of Laplace, it was not yet possible for the chemical elements to exist actu, but only potentia. But the first and original separation of matter into hydrogen and oxygen, sulphur and carbon, nitrogen, chlorine, and so on, and also into the different metals, so similar to one another and yet so sharply separated-this indeed was the first striking of the world's fundamental chord.

Moreover, I surmise that all metals are the combination of two absolute elements, as yet unknown, and that they differ from one another merely through the relative quantum of these two. On this their electrical resistance also depends in accordance with a law analogous to the one in consequence whereof the oxygen of the base of a salt stands to its radical in the inverse ratio of that which the two have to each other in the acid of the same salt. If we could split metals into those constituents, we should probably be able even to make them; but there is an obstacle in the way.

§ 74

There still exists the old fundamentally false contrast between spirit and matter among the philosophically untutored who include all who have not studied the Kantian philosophy and consequently most foreigners and likewise many present-day medical men and others in Germany who confidently philosophize on the basis of their catechism. But in particular, the Hegelians, in consequence of their egregious ignorance and philosophical crudeness, have recently introduced that contrast under the name' spirit and nature' which has been resuscitated from pre-Kantian times. Under this title they serve it up quite naively as if there had never been a Kant and we were still going about in full-bottomed wigs between clipped hedges and philosophizing, like Leibniz in the garden at Herrenhausen (Leibniz, ed. Erdmann, p. 755), on 'spirit and nature' with princesses and maids of honour, understanding by 'nature' the clipped hedges and by 'spirit' the contents of the periwigs. On the assumption of this false contrast, we then have spiritualists and materialists. The latter assert that, through its form and combination, matter produces everything and consequently the thinking and willing in man, whereat the former then raise a great outcry.

But in point of fact, there is neither spirit nor matter, but a great deal of nonsense and fancies in the world. The tendency to gravity in the stone is precisely as inexplicable as is thinking in the human brain, and so on this score, we could also infer a spirit in the stone. Therefore to these disputants I would say: you think you know a dead matter, that is, one that is completely passive and devoid of properties, because you imagine you really understand everything that you are able to reduce to a mechanical effect. But physical and chemical effects are admittedly incomprehensible to you so long as you are unable to reduce them to mechanical. In precisely the same way, these mechanical effects themselves and thus the manifestations that result from gravity, impenetrability, cohesion, hardness, rigidity, elasticity, fluidity, and so on, are just as mysterious as are those others, in fact as is thinking in the human head. If matter can fall to earth without your knowing why, so can it also think without your knowing why. That which is really intelligible in mechanics, through and through and to the final limit, does not go beyond the purely mathematical in every explanation and is, therefore, restricted to determinations of space and time. Now these two, together with their whole conformity to law, are known to us a priori; and so they are mere forms of our knowing and belong solely to our representations or mental pictures. Their determinations are, therefore, at bottom subjective and do not concern the purely objective, that which is independent of our knowledge, the thing-in-itself. But as soon as we go, even in mechanics, beyond the purely mathematical; as soon as we come to impenetrability, gravity, rigidity, fluidity, or the gaseous state, we are already face to face with manifestations that to us are just as mysterious as are thinking and willing in man; and thus we are confronted with that which is directly unfathomable; for every force of nature is such. And so where is that matter of yours which you know and understand so intimately that you try to explain everything from it and to refer everything to it? It is always only the mathematical that is clearly comprehensible and wholly explicable because it is that which is rooted in the subject, in our own representation-apparatus. But as soon as something really objective appears, something not determinable a priori, then, in the last resort, it too is at once unfathomable. What is perceived generally by our senses and understanding is a wholly superficial phenomenon that leaves untouched the true and inner essence of things. This is what Kant meant. Now if you assume in the human head a spirit, like a deus ex machina, [2] then, as I have said, you must also concede to every stone a spirit. On the other hand, if your dead and purely passive matter can as heaviness gravitate, or as electricity attract, repel, and emit sparks, so too as brain-pulp can it think. In short, we can attribute matter to every so-called spirit, but also spirit to all matter, whence it follows that that contrast is false.

Therefore the philosophically correct division of all things is not the Cartesian into spirit and matter, but that into will and representation. But such a division does not run parallel with the Cartesian, for it spiritualizes everything, in that, on the one hand, it shifts into the representation or mental picture even that which is entirely real and objective, thus the body, matter, and, on the other, refers the essence-in-itself of every phenomenon to will.

The origin of the representation of matter in general as the objective bearer of all properties, itself being entirely without any, was first discussed by me in my chief work, volume i, § 4, and then more clearly and precisely in the second edition of my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 21. I mention it here so that the reader will never lose sight of this new doctrine that is essential to my philosophy. Accordingly, matter is only the intellect's function of causality itself objectified, in other words, projected outwards and thus objectively hypostasized activity in general, without further definition of its method and nature. Consequently, with the objective apprehension of the corporeal world, the intellect from its own resources furnishes all the forms of this world, namely time, space, and causality, and with this also the concept of matter which is thought in the abstract and is devoid of properties and form and, as such, cannot possibly occur in experience. But as soon as the intellect, by means of and in these forms, notices a real intrinsic property (coming always only from the sensation of the senses), that is to say, something which is independent of its own forms of knowledge and manifests itself not in activity in general but in a definite mode of acting, then it is this that the intellect supposes to be body, that is to say, to be formed and specifically determined matter, such matter thus appearing as something independent of the forms of the intellect, that is, as something absolutely objective. But here we must bear in mind that empirically given matter everywhere manifests itself only through forces that express themselves therein, just as conversely every force is always known only as something inherent in matter; the two together constitute the empirically real body. Nevertheless, everything empirically real retains transcendental ideality. The thing-in-itself that manifests itself in such an empirically given body, and thus in every phenomenon, has been shown by me to be will. Now if we again take this as our starting-point, then, as I have often said, matter is the mere visibility of the will, but not the will itself. Accordingly, matter belongs to the merely formal part of our representation, not to the thing-in-itself. For this very reason, we must think of it as devoid of form and properties, as absolutely inert and passive. Yet we can think of it only in the abstract, for mere matter without form and quality is never given empirically. But just as there is only one matter that is yet the same, although it appears in the most varied forms and accidents, so also is the will in all phenomena ultimately one and the same. What matter is objectively, will is subjectively. All the natural sciences labour under the inevitable disadvantage of comprehending nature exclusively from the objective side and of being indifferent to the subjective. But the main point is necessarily to be found in the latter; and it devolves on philosophy.

In consequence of the foregoing, that from which everything originates and comes into existence must appear precisely as matter to our intellect, tied as this is to its forms and destined originally to serve only an individual will and not to know objectively the true essence of things. In other words, it must appear to our intellect as something which in general is real, fills space and time, endures amidst all the changes of qualities and forms, and is the common substratum of all intuitive perception, although by itself alone it is not intuitively perceivable. For what this matter may be in itself, remains primarily and directly an open question. Now if we understand by absolute, a word so often used, that which can never have come into being and never pass away, of which, on the other hand, every existing thing consists and from which it has come, then we must not look for this in imaginary places; on the contrary, it is quite clear that matter entirely satisfies all these requirements. Now after Kant had shown that bodies are mere phenomena, but that their essence-in-itself remained unknowable, I yet succeeded in showing that such essence is identical with what we directly recognize in our self-consciousness as will. Accordingly, I have described matter (World as Will and Representation, volume ii, chap. 24) as the mere visibility of the will. Further, as every force of nature is, according to me, a phenomenon of the will, it follows that no force can appear without a material substratum and hence also that no manifestation of force can take place without some material change. This induced Liebig, the zoochemist, to state that every muscular action, in fact every thought in the brain, must be accompanied by a chemical transposition of substance. We, on the other hand, must still stick to the fact that we always know matter empirically only through the forces that manifest themselves therein. It is simply the manifestation of these forces in general, that is, in abstracto; in itself, it is the visibility of the will.

§ 75

When once we get an opportunity of seeing on a colossal scale quite simple effects that are daily before our eyes on a small scale, the spectacle is novel, interesting, and instructive because only then do we obtain an adequate conception of the forces of nature which here manifest themselves. Instances of this kind are lunar eclipses, conflagrations, large waterfalls, the opening of the canals in the interior of Mont St. Feriol which supply the Languedoc Canal with water, the crashing and crushing of ice-floes at the rising of a river, the launching of a ship, even a hawser some five hundred feet long when its whole length is suddenly pulled out of the water, as happens when a ship is being towed. What would it be like, if we were able to survey by direct intuitive perception the action of gravitation which we know only from an extremely narrow aspect as terrestrial gravity and could see it at work on a grand scale between heavenly bodies

[quote]how they play and are enticed

on to the bounds of space. [3][/quote]

Empirical in the narrower sense is the knowledge that stops at effects without being able to arrive at the causes. For practical purposes it often suffices, as for example in therapeutics.

The nonsense of the natural philosophers of Schelling's school on the one hand, and the results of empiricism on the other, have provoked in many such a dread of system and theory that they expect progress in physics entirely by hand without the aid of the head and would, therefore, like best of all simply to experiment without giving any thought to the matter. They imagine that their physical or chemical apparatus should do their thinking for them and itself should express the truth in the language of mere experiments. For this purpose, experiments are now multiplied ad infinitum and again in these the conditions, so that operations are carried on solely with extremely complicated, and in the end utterly absurd, experiments, namely with such as can never furnish a simple and straightforward result. Nevertheless, they are to act as thumbscrews applied to nature in order to force her even to speak. The genuine research worker, on the other hand, who thinks for himself, arranges for his experiments to be as simple as possible so that he may plainly hear nature's clear statement and judge accordingly. For nature appears always only as a witness. Examples in support of what has been said are furnished in particular by the entire chromatological part of optics, including the theory of physiological colours, such as have been dealt with by the French and Germans in the last twenty years.

Speaking generally, however, it is not the observation of rare and hidden phenomena that can be produced only by experiments, but the study of those that are obvious and accessible to everyone, which will lead to the discovery of the most important truths. Therefore the problem is not so much that of seeing what no one has yet seen, but rather of thinking in the case of something seen by everyone that which no one has yet thought. For this reason, it also takes very much more to be a philosopher than a physicist.

§ 77

For acoustics the difference of tones in regard to pitch and depth is qualitative; physics, however, reduces it to one that is merely quantitative, to that of quicker or slower vibrations, and accordingly everything is explained from merely mechanical effect or operation. Thus in music not only the rhythmic element, the beat, but also the harmonic, the pitch and depth of tones, is reduced to motion and consequently to the mere measure of time, and hence to numbers.

Now analogy here furnishes a strong presumption for Locke's view of nature, namely that everything we perceive by means of the senses as quality in bodies (Locke's secondary qualities) is in itself nothing but a difference of what is quantitative, of the mere result of impenetrability, size, form, rest or motion, and number of the smallest parts. These properties are admitted by Locke as the only objectively real and are accordingly called primmy i.e. original qualities. Now in tones this could be plainly demonstrated simply because here the experiment admits of every enlargement in that we can arrange for long and thick strings to vibrate whose slow vibrations can be counted. Nevertheless, it would be just the same with all qualities. It was, therefore, first applied to light whose effect and colouring are deduced from the vibrations of a wholly imaginary ether and are very accurately calculated. This colossal humbug and tomfoolery which is recited with unheard-of effrontery, is repeated especially by the most ignorant in the republic of learning with such childlike assurance and confidence that one would imagine they had actually seen and had in their hands the ether and its vibrations, atoms and any other fiddlesticks there might be. From this view, conclusions would follow in favour of the atomic theory which prevails especially in France but is also gaining ground in Germany after being countenanced by the chemical stoicheiometry of Berzelius. (Pouillet, i, p. 23.) 4 To enter here on a detailed refutation of the atomic theory would be superfluous, for at best it can be regarded as an unproved hypothesis.

However small an atom may be, it is still always a continuum of uninterrupted matter. If you can picture to yourself anything so minute, then why not something large? What then is the purpose of atoms?

Chemical atoms are merely the expression of the constant fixed ratios in which the elements combine with one another. As this expression had to be given in numbers, it was based on an arbitrarily assumed unit, the weight of a quantity of oxygen with which every element combines, For these weight-ratios, however, the old expression atom was most unfortunately chosen; and from this there has been developed in the hands of French chemists, who have learnt their chemistry but nothing else, a crude atomic theory. This takes the thing seriously, hypostasizes those mere counters as real atoms, and then, like Democritus, speaks of their arrangement in different bodies, in order to explain from this their qualities and differences; and this without having an inkling of the absurdity of the thing. It goes without saying that there is in Germany no lack of ignorant apothecaries who are also 'an ornament to the professorial chair' and slavishly imitate those chemists. We must not be surprised when in their compendiums they tell the students with downright dogmatism and in all seriousness, as if they actually knew something about it, that 'the crystal form of bodies has its basis in a rectilinear arrangement of the atoms.'! (Wohler, Grundriss der Chemie, Pt. I, Unorganische Chemie, p. 3). But these men speak the same language as Kant and from their youth have heard his name mentioned with reverence; yet they have never pored over his works, for which reason they are bound to produce such scandalous rubbish. But we could really do the French a good turn (une charite) if we were to give them an accurate translation of Kant's Metaphysische Anfangsgrunde der Naturwissenschaft in order, if it is still possible, to cure them of a relapse into that Democritism. Even a few passages from Schelling's Ideen zur Philosophie der Natur, for example, chapters three and five of the second book, could be given by way of illustration. For wherever, as here, Schelling stands on Kant's shoulders, he says much that is good and worth taking to heart.

The Middle Ages have shown us where we get to when we think without experimenting; and the present century is destined to show us where we get to when we experiment without thinking and what results from our restricting the education of youth to physics and chemistry. Only from a total ignorance of the Kantian philosophy on the part of the French and English at all times, and from its being neglected and forgotten by the Germans since Hegel's process of blunting the intellect set in, is it possible to explain the incredible crudeness of present-day mechanical physics. Its adepts try to reduce every natural force of a higher kind, light, heat, electricity, chemical process, and so on, to the laws ~f motion, impact, and pressure, and to geometrical configuration, namely of the imaginary atoms. With bashful mien, they often call them merely 'molecules' and from the same feelings of bashfulness they hardly venture on gravity in their explanations. Even this they deduce, a la Descartes, from a thrust so that there will be nothing in the world but pushing and being pushed, the only things they can understand. They are most amusing when they talk of the molecules of the air or its oxygen. Accordingly, the three states of aggregation are for them a fine powder, one finer, and a third still finer; this is what they understand. These men who have carried out many experiments, have done little thinking and are, therefore, realists of the crudest kind; they regard matter and the laws of impact as something absolutely given and thoroughly intelligible, and so a reference to these seems to them to be a thoroughly satisfactory explanation. Yet, in point of fact, those mechanical properties of matter are just as mysterious as are those others that are to be explained through them; thus, for example, cohesion is just as difficult to understand as is light or electricity. The large amount of manual work in experimenting really makes our physicists strangers to both thinking and reading; they forget that experiments can never furnish them with the truth, but only with the data for its discovery. Akin to them are the physiologists who deny vital force and try to substitute for it chemical forces.

According to them, an atom is not merely a bit of matter without any pores, but, as it must be indivisible, it is either without extension (in which case it would not be matter), or is endowed with absolute, i.e. the utmost possible, power of superior cohesion of its parts. Here I refer the reader to what I have said on the subject in my chief work, volume ii, chapter 23. Moreover, if chemical atoms are understood in the true sense and thus objectively and as real, then at bottom there is no longer any chemical combination at all in the real sense, but every such combination is reduced to a very fine mixture of different atoms that remain eternally separate. Now, on the contrary, the peculiar characteristic of a chemical combination consists precisely in the fact that its product is an absolutely homogeneous body wherein we cannot find even an infinitely small part that does not contain both substances in combination. (Proof of this Kantian proposition is in Schelling's Wettseele, pp. 168 and 137.) Thus water is vastly different from the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen because it is the chemical combination of the two elements which in the gaseous state exist together merely as the finest mixture. *

The mania and fixed idea of the French of reducing everything to mechanical events is, of course, strengthened by that reduction of chemical combinations previously mentioned to very fine mixtures of atoms. But there is no advantage to truth in whose interests I rather recall the statement of Oken (Uber Licht und Warme, p. 9) 'that nothing, absolutely nothing, in the universe, which is a world-phenomenon, is brought about through mechanical principles.' At bottom, there is only a mechanical mode of acting which consists in the will of one body to penetrate the space occupied by another. Pressure as well as impact can be reduced to this; they differ merely in gradualness or suddenness, although in the latter case the force becomes 'living'; and so everything achieved by mechanics is due to these. Pulling is only apparent; for example, the rope with which a man pulls a body pushes it, i.e. presses it from behind. But now from this these men try to explain the whole of nature; the action of light on the retina is then said to consist of mechanical impacts, now slow, now more rapid. They have imagined for this purpose an ether that is supposed to push; whereas they see how, in the most violent storm that overwhelms everything, the ray of light remains as still and motionless as a ghost. The Germans would do well to get as far as possible from this vaunted empiricism and its manual labour and to study Kant's Metaphysical Rudiments of Natural Science in order to clear it away once for all not only from the laboratory but also from their heads. In consequence of its subject-matter, physics frequently and inevitably encroaches on the problems of metaphysics; and then our physicists, who know nothing except their electrical playthings, voltaic piles, and frogs' hind legs, reveal such crass cobbler's ignorance and crudeness in matters of philosophy (of which they are called Doctores). Such ignorance is often accompanied by the impudence with which they philosophize at random, like crude clodhoppers, on problems (such as matter, motion, change) which have engaged the attention of philosophers for thousands of years. They therefore merit no other reply than the epigram of Goethe and Schiller:

[quote]Poor empirical devil! You do not even know

The dullness in you; it is alas so a priori dull. *[/quote]

§ 78

Chemical analysis is the conquest of cohesion through affinity. Both are qualitates occultae.

§ 79

I do not regard light either as an emanation or as a vibration; both hypotheses are mechanical and are akin to the one that explains transparency through pores. On the contrary, light as such is quite unique, sui generis, and without any real analogue.* Most clearly akin to it, but at bottom its mere metamorphosis, is heat whose nature, therefore, might serve to elucidate that of light.

In fact heat, like light itself, is imponderable; yet it shows a certain materiality in that it behaves as permanent substance in so far as it passes from one body and locality to another and must quit the former in order to take possession of the latter; so that when it has left a body, it must always be possible to state where it has gone to and that it is to be found somewhere, even if only in the latent state. Therefore in this respect, it behaves like a permanent substance, that is to say like matter.** It is true that there is no body which is absolutely impervious to heat and by means of which it could be entirely confined. Nevertheless, we see it escape slowly or rapidly, according as it is retained by good or bad non-conductors; and so we have no reason to doubt that an absolute non-conductor could confine and retain it for ever. It shows with particular clearness its permanence and substantial nature when it becomes latent; for then it enters a state wherein it can be stored for any length of time and later appear again undiminished as free heat. This becoming latent and again becoming free irrefutably proves the material nature of heat and, as it is a metamorphosis of light, that also of light. Therefore the emanation system is right, or rather comes nearest to the truth. It is materia imponderabilis, as it has been rightly named. In short, we indeed see it migrate and also conceal itself; but we never see it disappear and can at all times state what has become of it. Only during incandescence is it converted into light and then it assumes the nature and laws thereof. This metamorphosis is particularly evident in the Drummond limelight which, as we know, has been used for the oxyhydrogen microscope. All suns are a constant source of fresh heat; yet, as already shown, the existing heat never passes away, but only wanders and at most becomes latent. Therefore we might conclude that the world as a whole will become ever warmer. This is a question I leave unanswered. Thus heat as such always shows itself as a quantum which cannot be weighed, it is true, but is nevertheless permanent.* Yet against the view that it is a material substance which enters into chemical combination with the warmed body, it may be asserted that the greater the affinity two substances have for each other, the more difficult it is to separate them. Now those bodies, that most easily take up heat, also let it go again most easily, metals for instance. On the other hand, when heat becomes latent, this may be regarded as its really chemical combination with bodies; thus ice and heat furnish us with a new body, namely water. Since it is actually united with such a body by an overwhelming affinity, it does not at once pass from this to any other that approaches it, as it does from other bodies to which it merely adheres. Whoever wishes to use this for comparisons of the kind like Goethe's Elective Affinities, may say that a faithful wife is united to her husband as latent heat is to water; whereas the faithless coquette is to him as heat is to the metal in that she has suddenly come from without to remain for as long as no one else approaches who would covet her more.

To my astonishment, I find that the physicists as a rule (possibly without exception) regard calorific capacity and specific heat as the same thing and as synonymous terms. I, on the contrary, consider them to be opposites. The more specific heat a body has, the less it can absorb of the heat that is supplied to it; on the contrary, it again gives it up at once; and so the smaller is its calorific capacity, and vice versa. If, in order to bring a body to a definite temperature, it requires more heat flowing to it from without than does another, then it has greater calorific capacity; for example, linseed oil has half the capacity of water. To bring a pound of water to 167°F. requires as much heat as to melt a pound of ice, where the heat becomes latent. Linseed oil, on the other hand, is brought to a temperature of 167°F. by applying to it half the amount of heat; but then it can melt only half a pound of ice by again giving up this heat and falling to 32°F. Therefore linseed oil has twice the specific heat of water and consequently half the capacity; for it can again give up only the heat that is imparted to it, not the specific heat. And so the more specific heat, that is, the more heat peculiar to it, a body has, the smaller its capacity, that is to say, the more readily it casts off the applied heat that affects the thermometer. The more heat applied to it and necessary for this purpose, the greater its capacity, and the less its specific heat, in other words, the heat that is inalienable and peculiar to it; accordingly, it again gives up the heat supplied to it. Therefore a pound of water at a temperature of 167°F. melts a pound of ice, and in so doing falls to 32°F.; a pound of linseed oil at a temperature of 167°F. can melt only a half a pound of ice. It is absurd to say that water has more specific heat than oil. The more specific heat a body has, the less external heat is required to raise its temperature, but also the less heat it can give up; it rapidly becomes cool just as it rapidly became warm. The whole question is perfectly correct in Tob. Mayer's Physik, §§ 350f., but even he in § 356 confuses capacity with specific heat and regards them as identical. The fluid body loses its specific heat only when it changes its physical condition, namely when it freezes. Accordingly, it would be latent heat in the case of fluid bodies; but even solid bodies have their specific heat. Baumgartner mentions iron-filings.

The fact that heat becomes latent is a striking and inevitable refutation of the assertion, made by the shallow mechanical physics of today, that heat is a mere motion, an agitation, of a body's smallest parts. For how could a mere motion be completely stopped in order to emerge again after many years of rest and indeed with exactly the same velocity that it had previously?

The behaviour of light is not so material as that of heat; on the contrary, it has only a ghostly phantom nature, in that it appears and disappears without leaving a trace. In fact, it exists really only as long as it is coming into being; if it ceases to be evolved, then it ceases also to eradiate; it has disappeared and we cannot say where it has gone to. There are vessels enough whose material is impervious to it, yet we cannot shut it up and again let it out. At most the Bononian stone and also some diamonds retain it for a few minutes. Nevertheless, there is a most recent report of a violet fluor-spar, for this reason called chlorophan or pyro-emerald, which states that, when it is exposed to sunlight for only a few minutes, it remains luminous for three to four weeks. (See Neumann's Chemie, 1842.) This vividly reminds one of the ancient myth of the carbuncle, carbunculus, [x]. Incidentally, all the notes on this are found classified in Philostratorum opera, ed. Olearius, 1709, p. 65, note 14; to which I add that it is mentioned in the Sakuntala, Act II, p. gl, of Sir William Jones's translation, and that a more recent and detailed account of it is found in Benvenuto Cellini's Racconti, 2nd edn., Venezia, 1829, race. 4, which is found abbreviated in his Trattato del oreficeria, Milano, 1811, p. go. But as all fluor-spar becomes luminous through being warmed, we must conclude that this stone in general readily converts heat into light and that, for this very reason, pyro-emerald does not convert light into heat, as do other bodies, but gives it up again undigested, so to speak. This applies also to the Bononian stone and to some diamonds. Therefore only when light, falling on an opaque body, is converted into heat in accordance with the body's opacity and has now assumed the more substantial nature of heat, can we so far give an account of it. But now light shows a certain materiality in reflection where it follows the laws of resilience of elastic bodies; and likewise in refraction. In the latter case, it also reveals its will since of the bodies that are open to it and are therefore transparent, it prefers and selects those that are denser.* For it abandons the rectilinear path followed by it in order to incline in the direction where the greater quantum of denser diaphanous matter is to be found. Therefore when passing from one medium to another, it is always diverted to where the mass lies nearest to it, or to where this is most concentrated; and so it always strives to approach this. With the convex glass, the greatest mass is in the middle and therefore the light emerges in conical form; with the concave, the mass is in the periphery and thus the light on emerging spreads out in the shape of a funnel. If it falls obliquely on a flat surface, then, when entering or leaving, it is always diverted from its path towards the mass of that medium and, as it were, extends to this a hand of welcome or farewell. Also in the case of diffraction, it shows this tendency towards matter. It is true that in the case of reflection it is refracted, but a part goes through; on this depends the so-called polarity of light. Analogous manifestations of will on the part of heat could be demonstrated especially in its reaction to good and bad conductors. The only hope of investigating the nature of light lies in our following up its properties which have here been touched on, not in mechanical hypotheses of vibration or emanation which are inappropriate to its nature, let alone in absurd fairy-tales of molecules of light, that crass creation of the idee fixe of the French which asserts that every event must be ultimately mechanical and everything must depend on thrust and counter-thrust. Descartes is still always part and parcel of their lives. I am surprised they have not yet said that acids consist of little hooks and alkalies of eyes and that this is why they have entered into so stable a combination. 'A shallow and insipid spirit moves through these times'; [5] it manifests itself in the mechanical physics in the resuscitated atomic theory of Democritus, in the denial of vital force, as also of real morality, and so on.

But the impossibility of every mechanical explanation is already clear from the ordinary everyday fact of perpendicular reflection. Thus if I stand right in front of a mirror, the rays from my face fall perpendicularly on to its surface and by the same path return therefrom to my face. Both happen all the time and without interruption and consequently simultaneously. In the case of this occurring mechanically, whether it be vibration or emanation, the oscillations or streams of light, striking one another in straight lines and from opposite directions (like two inelastic spheres encountering each other from opposite directions with equal velocity), would inevitably impede and eliminate one another, so that no image would appear; or they would press one another to one side and all would be confusion. But my image stands before me firm and unshaken; and so it does not happen mechanically. (Cf. World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chap. 23.) But now the general assumption (Pouillet, vol ii, p. 282) is that the vibrations are supposed to be not longitudinal but transversal, in other words, occur perpendicularly to the direction of the ray. Thus the vibration with the impression of light does not come from the spot, but dances where it is and rides on its beam, like Sancho Panza on the wooden donkey that is shoved under him and which he cannot shift with his spurs. Therefore instead of vibration, they are fond of saying waves because they get on better with these; but only an inelastic and absolutely mobile body like water forms waves, not an absolutely elastic body like air or ether. If there were actually anything like interference, mechanical elimination of light by light, then this would inevitably show itself especially in the decussation in the focus of a lens of all the rays emanating from a picture, for at the focusfrom all angles they impinge on one another in a single point. But after this decussation or crossing, we see the rays emerge quite unaltered and present the original image without loss, merely inverted and the other way round. Indeed, the imponderability of the imponderables already excludes all mechanical explanation of their action. That which has no weight, can also exert no thrust; and that which exerts no thrust cannot operate through vibration. But the impudence with which an entirely unproved, thoroughly false, and baseless hypothesis (actually based on musical air-vibrations) is circulated, I mean the hypothesis that colours depend on the different velocities of the undulations of the (entirely hypothetical) ether-all this is just a proof of the complete lack of judgement on the part of the great majority. Apes imitate what they see; human beings repeat what they hear.

Their chaleur rayonnante [6] is just an intermediate station on the path of the metamorphosis of light into heat or, if we prefer it, the chrysalis thereof. Radiant heat is light which has given up the characteristic of affecting the retina but has retained the other attributes-comparable to a very deep bass string or even an organ pipe that still visibly vibrates but no longer sounds, that is, no longer affects the ear-therefore light which shoots forth in direct rays and traverses several bodies, yet only when it strikes opaque bodies heats these. The method of the French of complicating experiments by adding to the conditions may increase their accuracy and be favourable to correct measurements; but it renders judgement difficult and even confuses it. As Goethe has said, this method is to blame for the fact that judgement and a comprehension of nature have certainly not kept pace with empirical knowledge and the accumulation of facts.

Perhaps the best information on the nature of pellucidity can be given by those bodies that are transparent only in the fluid state but opaque in the solid, such as wax, spermaceti, tallow, butter, oil, and so on. For the present, we can interpret the facts by saying that the tendency to the fluid state, peculiar to these as well as to all solid bodies, shows itself in a strong affinity, i.e. love, for heat, as being the only way to reach that state. Therefore in the solid state, they at once convert into heat all the light that falls on them, and so remain opaque till they have become fluid; but then they are saturated with heat and therefore let the light through as such.*

This universal tendency of solid bodies to the fluid state may well have its ultimate ground in the fact that such a state is the condition of all life, but that the will is always striving upwards in the scale of its objectification.

The metamorphosis of light into heat and vice versa obtains striking proof in the behaviour of glass when heated. Thus at a certain temperature, it becomes incandescent, that is to say, it converts into light the heat it has received; at a higher temperature, however, it melts and then ceases to emit light. For now the heat is sufficient to fuse it, in which case the greatest part thereof becomes latent for the purpose of the fluid physical state; and so no heat remains to be needlessly converted into light. Yet such conversion occurs when the temperature is once more raised, in which case the glass-flux itself becomes luminous; for now it no longer needs to use in any other way the heat that is still applied to it. (Incidentally, this fact is mentioned by Babinet in the Revue des deux mondes, 1 November 1855 without his understanding it in the very least.)

It is stated that the temperature of the air on mountain tops is, of course, very low, but that the direct heat of the sun on the body is very intense. This may be explained from the fact that sunlight, still undiminished by the denser atmosphere of the lower layer, strikes the body and at once undergoes the metamorphosis into heat.

The well-known fact that at night all noises and sounds are louder than in the daytime is usually explained from the general peace and calm of night. I have forgotten who advanced, some thirty years ago, the hypothesis that the thing was due possibly to an actual antagonism between sound and light. From frequent observation of this phenomenon, one certainly feels inclined to accept this explanation; methodical experiments alone can decide the question. Now this antagonism might be explained from the fact that the essential nature of light, tending to move in absolutely straight lines, diminishes the elasticity of the air by its penetration thereof. Now if this were verified, it would be one more step towards our knowledge of the nature of light. If ether and the system of vibration were proved, then the explanation that its waves intersected and impeded those of sound would have everything in its favour. On the other hand, the final cause would here readily follow that the absence of light, while depriving animals of the use of sight, would enhance that of hearing. Alexander v. Humboldt (cr. Birnbaum, Reich der Wolken, Leipzig, 1859, p. 61) discusses the matter in a later and revised essay of 1820 to be found in his Kleinere Schriften, volume i, 1853. He too is of the opinion that the explanation from the peace and calm of night does not suffice; on the other hand, he gives the explanation that, in the daytime, the ground, rocks, water, and objects on the earth were heated unequally, whereby columns of air of unequal density rose; the sound-waves had to penetrate these successively and thus became broken and unequal. But at night, I say, the unequal cooling-off would inevitably produce the same effect; moreover, this explanation applies only when the noise comes from a distance and is so loud that it remains audible; for only then does it pass through several columns of air. But at night springs, fountains, and streams murmur at our feet two or three times more loudly. Generally speaking, Humboldt's explanation concerns only the propagation of sound, not its immediate intensification that takes place even in the closest proximity. Then again, as general rain everywhere equalizes the temperature of the ground, it must, like night, produce the same intensification of sound. But at sea the intensification could not possibly occur at all; he says it would be less; yet it is difficult to test this. Therefore his explanation is entirely irrelevant; and so the intensification of sound at night must be attributed either to the falling off of day noises or to a direct antagonism between sound and light.

79a

Every cloud has a contractility; it must be held together by some internal force, so that it does not entirely disintegrate and dissolve into the atmosphere. Now such a force may be electrical, or mere cohesion, gravitation, or something else. But the more active and effective this force is, the more firmly does it tie up from within the cloud which thus receives a sharper contour and generally a more massive appearance. This is the case with the cumulus, and rain is unlikely; rain clouds, on the other hand, have blurred contours. With regard to thunder, I have hit upon a hypothesis which is very bold and may perhaps be called extravagant. I myself am not convinced of it, and yet I cannot make up my mind to set it aside, but will submit it to those who are mainly concerned with physics, so that they may first test the possibility of the thing. If this were once settled, its reality could hardly be doubted. We are still not quite clear about the immediate cause of thunder, since current explanations are inadequate, especially when, with the cracking of a spark from a conductor, we conjure up in our minds the loud report of thunder. And so we might venture to put forward the bold and even reckless hypothesis that the electrical tension in the cloud electrolyses water, that the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen thus formed produces little bubbles from the remaining part of the cloud, and that these are afterwards ignited by the electric spark. The loud report of thunder corresponds exactly to such a detonation and the heavy downpour that often immediately follows a violent thunder-clap could also be explained in this way. Electric shocks in the cloud without previous electrolysis of the water would be sheet lightning and generally lightning without thunder.*

H. Scoutetten delivered a memoire sur l' electricite atmospherique before the Academie des Sciences, an extract of which appeared in the Comptes rendus of 18 August 1856. Relying on experiments he had conducted, he states that the vapour that rises from water and plants during sunlight and forms clouds, consists of microscopically small bubbles whose content is electrified oxygen and whose envelope is water. Of the hydrogen that corresponds to this oxygen he says nothing. But at any rate, here we should have had to assume in the cloud the one element of the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen even without an electrolysis of water.**

During the electrolysis of the atmospheric water into two gases, a great deal of heat necessarily becomes latent. From the resultant cold it might be possible to explain hail that is still so problematical; it occurs most frequently as the accompaniment of a thunder-storm as is seen on page 138 of the Reich der Wolken. Naturally, it arises only in consequence of a complicated set of circumstances, and therefore rarely. Here we see only the source of the cold that is required to freeze raindrops in the hot summer season.

§ 80

No branch of knowledge impresses the masses so much as does astronomy. Accordingly, astronomers, who for the most part have mere calculating minds and are in other respects of second-rate ability, as is usually the case with such men, frequently assume very great airs with their' sublimest of all the sciences', and so on. Even Plato ridiculed these claims of astronomy and recalled the fact that what looks upwards is not exactly what is called sublime (Republic, lib. VII, pp. 156, 157, ed. Bip.). The almost idolatrous worship enjoyed by Newton, especially in England, is beyond all belief. Even quite recently in The Times he was called 'the greatest of human beings' and in another article of the same paper the attempt was made to console us again by assuring us that after all he was only human! In 1815 (according to an account in the weekly publication The Examiner and reprinted in the Galignani of 11 January 1853), one of Newton's teeth was sold to a peer for £730 who had it set in a ring, a circumstance that reminds one of the Buddha's sacred tooth. This ludicrous veneration of the great arithmetician is now due to the fact that people take as the measure of his merit the magnitude of the masses whose motion he traced to their laws and these to the natural force that operates in it. (Moreover, this was not even his discovery but Robert Hooke's, which he merely authenticated by calculation.) Otherwise, it is inconceivable why more veneration is due to him than to anyone else who traces given effects to the manifestation of a definite force of nature, and why, for example, Lavoisier should not be just as highly esteemed. On the contrary, the problem of explaining given phenomena from many kinds of co-operating natural forces, and even of discovering such forces from these phenomena, is much more difficult than is the one that has to consider only two such simply and uniformly operating forces as gravitation and inertia in non-resisting space. It is precisely on this incomparable simplicity or scantiness of its material that the mathematical certainty, trustworthiness, and precision of astronomy rest, by virtue whereof it astonishes the world through its ability to announce the existence even of planets that have not yet been seen. This may have been admirable, yet, when closely considered, it is only the same intellectual operation that is carried out every time we determine a cause, as yet unseen, from its effect that now manifests itself. It is the same operation that was carried out to an even more admirable degree by that connoisseur of wine who, from a glass of wine, knew with certainty that there must be leather in the barrel. This was denied until after the barrel was finally emptied when a key was found lying at the bottom with a small leather strap attached. The intellectual operation here occurring is the same as that taking place in the discovery of Neptune, and the difference is merely in the application and thus in the object; it differs merely in the substance, certainly not in the form. Daguerre's invention, on the other hand, unless perhaps it was due largely to chance, as some assert, so that Arago had afterwards to think out the theory,* is a hundred times more ingenious than the much admired discovery of Leverrier. But as I have said, the awe of the crowd is due to the magnitude of the masses in question and to the immense distances. I would like to take this opportunity to say that many physical and chemical discoveries can be of incalculable value and benefit to the whole human race, whereas it needed very little wit to make them, so little that occasionally chance alone performed the function thereof. And so there is a great difference between the intellectual and material values of such discoveries.

From the point of view of philosophy, we might compare astronomers to those who attend the performance of a great opera. Without allowing themselves to be diverted by the music or the contents of the piece, they merely pay attention to the machinery of the decorations and are so pleased when they find out all about its working and the sequence of its operations.

§ 81

The signs of the zodiac are mankind's family coat of arms; for they are found as the same pictures and in the same order among the Hindus, Chinese, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and so on, and there is some dispute as to their origin. Ideler, Ueber den Ursprung des Thierkreises, 1838, does not venture to give a decision as to where it was first found. Lepsius asserted that it first occurs on monuments between Ptolemaic and Roman times. But Uhlemann, Grundzuge der Astronomie und Astrologie der Alten, besonders der Aegypter, 1857, states that the signs of the zodiac are found even in the royal tombs of the sixteenth century B.C.

§ 82

In regard to the Pythagorean harmony of the spheres, we should work out what chord would result if we grouped and combined a sequence of tones in proportion to the different velocities of the planets, so that Neptune provided the bass and Mercury the soprano. In this connection, see Scholia in Aristotelem, collegit Brandis, p. 496.

§ 83

According to the present state of our knowledge and as Leibniz and Buffon have also maintained, it seems that the earth was once in a state of intense heat and fusion and in fact still is, since only its surface has cooled and hardened. Before this it was, therefore, like everything intensely hot, also luminous. As the large planets were also luminous and for an even longer period, the sun at that time must have been represented by the astronomers of more remote and ancient worlds as a double, threefold, or even fourfold star. Now the cooling of the earth's surface occurs so slowly that not the slightest increase in this respect is noticeable in historic times; in fact according to Fourier's calculations, such cooling no longer takes place to any appreciable extent, since just as much heat as is radiated yearly by the earth is received back by it from the sun. Therefore, in the volume of the sun which is 1,384,472 times that of the earth and of which the earth was once an integral part, the cooling down must take place the more gradually in proportion to this difference in volume, although without compensation from outside. Accordingly, the radiance and heat of the sun are then explained from the fact that it is still in the condition in which the world once was; but their decline proceeds far too slowly for its influence to be felt even after thousands of years. That its atmosphere should really be luminous might be explained indeed from the sublimation of the hottest parts. The same holds good of the fixed stars; of these the double stars are those that have planets still in a state of self-luminosity. In consequence of this assumption, however, all incandescence would gradually be extinguished and, after billions of years, the whole world would inevitably be submerged in cold rigidity and darkness; unless in the meantime new fixed stars condense from the luminous nebula, and thus another kalpa is ushered in.

§ 84

The following teleological consideration could be deduced from physical astronomy.

The time necessary to cool or heat a body in a medium of different temperature increases rapidly in proportion to the size of the body; accordingly, Buffon attempted to calculate this in respect of the different masses of the planets which were assumed to be hot; yet in our day this has been done more thoroughly and successfully by Fourier. We see this on a small scale in glaciers that no summer is capable of melting, and even in the ice in a cellar where a sufficiently large mass of it is kept. Incidentally, divide et impera [7] would appear to have its best illustration in the effect of summer heat on ice.

The four large planets receive extremely little heat from the sun; for example, according to Humboldt, the illumination on Uranus is only 1/368 of that received by the earth. Consequently, for the maintenance of life on their surface they are dependent entirely on their internal heat, whereas the earth depends almost entirely on the external heat coming from the sun, if one can rely on Fourier's calculations according to which the effect of the very intense heat of the earth's interior on its surface amounts to only a minimum. With the sizes of the four major planets, varying as they do from eighty to thirteen hundred times that of the earth, the time necessary for their cooling down is now incalculably long. Within historic times, we have not the slightest trace of a cooling of the earth that is so small in comparison with the major planets. This was most ingeniously demonstrated by a Frenchman from the fact that, in relation to the earth's rotation, the moon does not move more slowly than it did in the earliest times of which we have information. Thus if the earth had become any cooler, it would necessarily have contracted to that extent, in which case an acceleration of its rotation would have arisen, whereas the motion of the moon remained unaltered. According to this, it seems exceedingly appropriate that the major planets are remote from the sun, the minor, on the other hand, are nearer, and the smallest nearest of all. For these will gradually lose their internal heat, or at any rate will become so thickly encrusted, that such heat no longer penetrates to the surface;* and so they need the external source of heat. As the mere fragments of an exploded planet, the asteroids are something entirely fortuitous and abnormal and so are not considered here. But, of course, in and by itself, this accident is gravely antiteleological. Let us hope the catastrophe took place before the planet was inhabited. Nevertheless, we know of nature's lack of consideration; I cannot vouch for anything. Now this extremely probable hypothesis, which was advanced by Olbers, is again being questioned and the reasons for this may be just as much theological as astronomical.

However, for the proposed teleology to be complete, the four major planets would have to be so arranged that the largest was the farthest from, and the smallest the nearest to, the sun; but in point of fact the reverse is rather the case. It might also be urged that their mass is much lighter and thus less dense than that of the minor planets, yet this is not nearly enough to account for the enormous difference in size. Perhaps it is so merely in consequence of their internal heat.

The obliquity of the ecliptic is the object of quite special teleological admiration, since without it no seasonal changes would occur, but perpetual spring would reign on earth. Therefore fruits could never ripen and thrive, and consequently the earth could not be inhabited everywhere almost as far as the poles; and so the physico-theologians see in the obliquity of the ecliptic the wisest of all provisions and the materialists the happiest of all accidents. This admiration, with which Herder in particular is inspired (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte, vol. i, chap. 4), is, however, on closer consideration, a little ingenuous. For if eternal spring reigned as suggested, the plant world would certainly not have failed to adapt its nature accordingly, so that a less intense heat, albeit always constant and equable, would be suitable to it, just as the now fossilized flora of the primeval world were adapted to an entirely different state of the planet and flourished marvellously during it, no matter in what way this was caused.

That on the moon no atmosphere is discernible through refraction is a necessary consequence of its small mass that amounts to only 1/88 that of our planet. Accordingly, it exerts so small a force of attraction that our atmosphere placed on it would retain only 1/88 of its density. Consequently, it could not produce any noticeable refraction and would inevitably be just as feeble and impotent in other respects.

Here may be the place for a hypothesis concerning the lunar surface, for I cannot make up my mind to discard it, although I am well aware of the difficulties to which it is exposed; I regard it only as a daring conjecture and offer it as such. It is that the water of the moon is not absent but frozen, since through lack of an atmosphere an almost absolute cold is produced which does not permit even the evaporation of the ice to take place, an evaporation that would otherwise be promoted by that lack of an atmosphere. Thus on account of the smallness of the moon, 1/49 the volume and 1/88 the mass of the earth, we must regard its internal source of heat as exhausted, or at any rate as no longer affecting the surface. From the sun it receives no more heat than does the earth. For although once a month it comes nearer to the sun by an amount equal to its distance from us, in which case it invariably exposes to the sun only the face that is always turned away from us, this face thereby receives, according to Madler, merely an illumination (and consequently also a heating) that is brighter in the ratio of 101 to 100 than that received by the face that is turned towards us. This never happens to the latter face even in the opposite case when, after fourteen days, the moon has again become more distant from the sun by an amount equal to its distance from us. We have, therefore, to assume that the influence of solar heat on the moon is no stronger than that of such heat on the earth; in fact it is even weaker, as it lasts a fortnight naturally for each face, but is then interrupted by a night that lasts two weeks and prevents the cumulative effect of that influence. But now all heating by sunlight is dependent on the presence of an atmosphere; for it takes place only by virtue of the metamorphosis of light into heat; and this occurs when light strikes an opaque body, in other words, one that is impervious to it as light. Thus it cannot with its lightning rectilinear speed penetrate an opaque body as it can one which is transparent and through which it passes to reach the other body. It is then converted into heat that ascends and radiates in all directions. Now as this is absolutely without weight (imponderable), it must be restrained and held together by the pressure of an atmosphere, otherwise it is dissipated at the moment it is formed. For however instantaneously light in its original radiating nature cuts through the atmosphere, its passage is very slow when, converted into heat, it has to overcome the weight and resistance of this very atmosphere which, as we know, is the worst of all conductors of heat. On the other hand, if the air is rarefied, the heat escapes more easily; and if there is no air at all, it escapes at once. Therefore high mountains, where the pressure of the atmosphere is reduced to half, are covered with eternal snow, whereas deep valleys, if they are wide, are the warmest places. What must it be like then when there is no atmosphere at all? And so as regards temperature, we should have to assume without hesitation that all the water on the moon is frozen. But then there arises the difficulty that, as rarefaction of the atmosphere facilitates ebullition and lowers the boiling-point, its total absence must greatly accelerate generally the process of evaporation, whereupon the frozen water of the moon must have long ago evaporated. Now this difficulty is met by the consideration that all evaporation, even that in a vacuum, takes place only by virtue of a very considerable quantity of heat that becomes latent precisely through such evaporation. But such heat is lacking on the moon where the cold must be wellnigh absolute, since the heat formed by the immediate effect of the sun's rays instantly passes away, and the little evaporation that is thereby induced is again stopped at once by the cold, like hoarfrost.* For however much in itself rarefaction of the air promotes evaporation, it prevents this even more by the fact that it causes the heat necessary for such evaporation to escape and we also see this in the Alpine snows which as little disappear through evaporating as through melting. Now with a total absence of air, the instantaneous disappearance of the heat that is formed will in equal proportion be more unfavourable to evaporation than the lack of air pressure in itself is favourable thereto. As a result of this hypothesis, we should have to regard all the water on the moon as converted into ice and in particular the whole mysterious grey part of its surface, always described as maria (seas), as frozen water.** Its many unevennesses will then no longer cause any difficulty and the conspicuous, deep, and often straight furrows that intersect it could be explained as yawning crevices in the splintered ice; for their shape greatly favours this explanation.***

Generally speaking, it is not entirely safe to infer an absence of life from a lack of air and water. Such a conclusion might even be called narrow and parochial, in so far as it rests on the assumption of a partout comme chez nous. [8] The phenomenon of animal life might easily be brought about by means other than respiration and blood circulation; for the essential point of all life is simply the constant change of matter with permanence of form. Of course, we can imagine this as happening only through the medium of what is fluid and vaporous. But matter generally is the mere visibility of the will which, however, everywhere aims at the enhancement step by step of its phenomenal appearance. The forms, ways, and means of attaining this may be very varied. On the other hand, it should again be borne in mind that most probably the chemical elements not only on the moon, but also on all the planets, are the same as those on the earth. For the whole system has been evolved from the same primordial luminous nebula to which the present sun once extended. This certainly permits one to surmise a similarity also of the higher phenomena of the will.

§ 85

The extremely ingenious cosmogony, i.e. theory of the origin of the planetary system, which Kant first gave in his Naturgeschichte des Himmels, 1755, and then more completely in the seventh chapter of his 'only possible argument', 1763, was developed with greater astronomical knowledge and established on a firmer foundation almost fifty years later by Laplace (Exposition du systeme du monde, vol. v, p. 2). However, its truth rests not only on the basis of the spatial relation which was insisted on by Laplace, namely that forty-five heavenly bodies collectively circulate in one direction and simultaneously rotate in precisely the same direction; but it has an even firmer support in the temporal relation. This is expressed by Kepler's second and third laws, in so far as such laws state the fixed rule and exact formula whereby all the planets in a strictly natural ratio circulate the more rapidly, the nearer they are to the sun. In the case of the sun itself, however, mere rotation has taken the place of circulation and now stands as the maximum of velocity of that progressive ratio. When the sun still extended as far as Uranus, it rotated once in eighty-four years; but now, after undergoing an acceleration through each of its contractions, it rotates once in twenty-five and a half days.

Thus if the planets were not remnants of a once very large central body, but each had originated in a different way and by itself, one could not possibly understand how it had come exactly into the position that it must precisely occupy according to the last two laws of Kepler if it is not either to fall into, or flyaway from, the sun in consequence of Newton's laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. The truth of the Kant-Laplace cosmogony depends primarily on this. Thus if, with Newton, we regard the circulation of the planets as the product of gravitation and a counteracting centrifugal force, then, taking each planet's existing centrifugal force as fixed and given, there is for it only one position where its gravitation is in exact equilibrium with this force, and it accordingly keeps to its orbit. Therefore it must have been one and the same cause that gave to each planet its position and at the same time its velocity. The nearer a planet is to the sun, the more rapidly it must move in its orbit and hence the more centrifugal force it must acquire, if it is not to fall into the sun. The farther a planet is from the sun, the less must its centrifugal force become in proportion as its gravitation is thereby reduced, otherwise it will flyaway from the sun. Thus a planet could have its position anywhere if only a cause existed which imparted to it the centrifugal force that is exactly suited to each position and is thus precisely in equilibrium with the gravitation at that point. Now as we find that each planet actually has just the velocity necessary for it to be where it is, this can be explained only from the fact that the same cause that gave it its position also determined simultaneously the degree of its velocity. Now this can be understood only from the cosmogony in question; for it makes the central body contract intermittently and thus detach a ring that is afterwards formed into a planetary ball. In consequence of Kepler's second and third laws, the rotation of the central body must be vigorously accelerated after each contraction and it bequeathes the velocity thus determined to the planet that is detached at the place where the next contraction occurs. Now it can detach the planet at any point of its sphere, for the planet always acquires exactly the right centrifugal force for this spot, but for no other. This force proves to be the stronger, the nearer that spot is to the central body and thus the more intense the effect of gravitation which attracts it to that body and against which that centrifugal force has to act. For the speed of rotation of the body that successively detaches planets had been increased by an amount that was exactly requisite for this. Moreover, whoever would like to have a graphic illustration of this necessary acceleration of rotation in consequence of contraction, will obtain a delightful example from a large burning Catherine wheel. At first it rotates slowly; and then the smaller it becomes, the more rapidly it turns.

In his second and third laws Kepler has expressed merely the actual relation between a planet's distance from the sun and the velocity of its orbital motion. Now it may concern one and the same planet at different times or two different planets. By ultimately assuming Robert Hooke's fundamental idea which he had at first rejected, Newton deduced this relation from gravitation and its opposing centrifugal force and from this showed that it must be so and why. Thus it must be so because, at such a distance from the central body, the planet must have precisely such velocity in order not to fall into, or flyaway from, it. Indeed in the descending causal series this is the causa efficiens; but in the ascending it is only the causa finalis. Now only the Kant-Laplace cosmogony tells us how the planet came to acquire precisely at this spot just the necessary velocity, or even how, with this given velocity, it was placed precisely at the very spot where gravitation is in equilibrium with that velocity; only this cosmogony tells us about this cause, this causa efficiens that lies still higher.

The approximately regular arrangement of the planets will once more make this clear, so that we shall no longer understand it as being merely regular, but as conforming to law, in other words, as having followed from a natural law. Something of the kind is indicated by the following arrangement which was known even a hundred years before the discovery of Uranus and depends on our always doubling the number in the upper row and then adding four to form a number in the lower. The latter then gives the approximate average distances of the planets which agree tolerably well with the figures that are accepted at the present time:

0 / 3 / 6 / 12 / 24 / 48 / 96 / 192 / 384

4 / 7 / 10 / 16 / 28 / 52 / 100 / 196 / 388

[x] / [x] / [x] / [x] / Asteroids / [x] / [x] / [x] / [x]

The regularity of this arrangement is unmistakable, although only approximately so. Perhaps there is for each planet a position in its orbit between the perihelion and aphelion where the rule proves to be absolutely correct; this could then be regarded as its proper and original position. In any case, this more or less precise regularity must have been the result of forces that were active at each successive contraction of the central body, as well as of the nature of the primordial substance that formed their very basis. Each new contraction of the primordial nebulous mass was a result of the acceleration of rotation which was brought about by previous contractions. Now the outer zone could no longer follow this accelerated rotation and therefore tore itself off and remained where it was. In this way, a repetition of the contraction took place, which again produced an acceleration, and so on. As the central body thus became intermittently smaller and smaller, so each time the amount of contraction was less in proportion, namely something under half the one that preceded it, since each time the central body contracted by half its existing dimensions (- 2). However, it is remarkable that a catastrophe overtook the very middle planet in consequence whereof only its fragments still exist. It was the boundary between the four major and the four minor planets.

A corroboration of the theory is also to be found in the fact that, on the whole, the planets are larger, the farther they are from the sun, because the zone from which they were formed into globes was so much greater, although some irregularities have here crept in in consequence of the accidental differences in the width of such zones.

A different corroboration of the Kant-Laplace cosmogony is the fact that the density of the planets decreases approximately in proportion to their distance from the sun. For this is explained from the fact that the most distant planet is a remnant of the sun at the time when this was at its maximum extension and consequently at its minimum density; thereupon the sun contracted and thus became denser, and so on. The same thing is confirmed by the fact that the moon later originated in the same way through the contraction of the earth which was still vaporous, but, because of this, reached as far as the present moon, and also that the moon has only 5/9 of the earth's density. However, the sun itself is not the densest of all the bodies of the system; and this is explained by the fact that each planet came into existence from the subsequent formation of a whole ring into a globe, but that the sun is merely the residuum of that central body which has not been further compressed after its last contraction. Yet another special corroboration of the cosmogony we are considering is furnished by the circumstance that, whereas the inclination of all the planetary orbits to the ecliptic (earth's orbit) varies between 3/4 and 3-1/2 degrees, that of Mercury amounts to 7° 0' 6". But this is almost equal to the inclination of the sun's equator to the ecliptic, which amounts to 7° 30'. This can be explained from the fact that the last ring that was detached by the sun remained almost parallel to that body's equator whence it was severed; whereas the previously detached planets were thrown more out of equilibrium, or the sun shifted its axis of rotation after they were detached from it. Venus, as the last but one, has an inclination of 3-1/2 degrees; all the others are even under two with the exception of Saturn which has 2-1/2 degrees. (See Humboldt's Kosmos, vol. iii, p. 449.) The very' strange motion of our moon, where rotation and revolution are one and the same and thus the same face is always presented to us, can also be understood solely from the fact that this is precisely the motion of a ring circulating round the earth. From the contraction of such a ring, the moon subsequently came into being; but then it was not, like the planets, set in more rapid rotation by some accidental impulse.

These cosmogonical considerations primarily give rise to two metaphysical observations. First in the true essence of all things a harmony is established by virtue whereof the primordial, blind, crude, and lowest forces of nature, guided by the most rigid laws, through their conflict in the matter that is equally at the mercy of them all, and through the accidental consequences accompanying such conflict-such forces, I say, produce nothing less than the very foundations of a world that is arranged with admirable appropriateness to be the birthplace and haunt of living beings. These forces produce to perfection a world such as could have been achieved only by the most astute deliberation under the guidance of the most penetrating intellect and the keenest and precisest calculation. And so we see here in the most astonishing way how the causa efficiens and the causa finalis, the [x] and the [x] of Aristotle, each marching along independently of the other, combine in the result. The discussion of this observation and the explanation of its underlying phenomenon from the principles of my metaphysics are found in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 25. I mention it here merely to point out that it suggests to us a scheme wherein we can see by analogy, or at any rate in general, how all the chance events, that intervene and clash in the course of an individual's life, nevertheless accord with one another in a secret and pre-established harmony. We can see how they do all this in order to evolve, in reference to the individual's character and to his true ultimate well-being, a totality just as appropriately harmonious, as if everything existed only for his sake, as a mere phantasmagoria for him alone. To throw more light on this question was the task of the essay to be found in the first volume and entitled' On the apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual'.

The second metaphysical observation raised by that cosmogony is that even so far-reaching a physical explanation of the origin of the world can never do away with the need for a metaphysical, or take the place thereof. On the contrary, the more we have found out about the phenomenon, the more clearly do we observe that we are concerned with this alone and not with the essence of things-in-themselves. With this, then, we feel the need for metaphysics as a counterbalance to the physics that has been carried to such lengths. For at bottom, all the materials, from which this world has been built up in the presence of our understanding, are just so many unknown quantities and appear precisely as the riddles and problems of metaphysics. Thus we have the inner essence of those forces of nature whose blind operation here so appropriately constructs the framework of the world. Then there is the inner essence of the elements, chemically different and accordingly acting on one another; from their conflict that has been most perfectly described by Ampere, the individual nature of the separate planets has arisen; geology is concerned with the demonstration of this in the traces of that conflict. Finally, there is also the inner essence of the force which ultimately shows itself as organizing, and produces on the outermost surface of the planet, like a coating or mildew, vegetation and animal life. With animal life, consciousness and thus knowledge first appear, the latter again being the condition of the whole course of events that has so far developed. For all the things of which these events consist exist only for and in such knowledge and have reality only in reference thereto. In fact, the events and changes themselves could appear only in virtue of the forms (time, space, causality) that are peculiar to knowledge and therefore exist also only relatively for the intellect.

Thus, on the one hand, it must be admitted that all those physical, cosmogonical, chemical, and geological events existed even before the appearance of a consciousness and so outside this since, as conditions, they were necessarily bound to precede such an appearance by a long interval of time. Yet, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that, as those events first appear in and through the forms of a consciousness, they are absolutely nothing outside it and are not even conceivable. In any case, it might be said that, by virtue of its forms, consciousness is the condition of the physical events in question, but that again these condition it by virtue of their matter. At bottom, however, all those events that cosmogony and geology urge us to assume as having occurred long before the existence of any knowing creature are themselves only a translation into the language of our intuitively perceiving intellect from the essence-in-itself of things which to it is incomprehensible. For those events have never had an existence-in-itself, any more than have present events. But with the aid of the principles a priori of all possible experience and following a few empirical data, the regressus leads back to them; it is itself, however, only the concatenation of a series of mere phenomena that have no absolute existence.* Therefore even in their empirical existence, in spite of all the mechanical accuracy and mathematical precision of the determination of their appearance, those events still always retain an obscure and enigmatical core, like an inscrutable mystery lurking in the background. Thus we see it in the natural forces that manifest themselves in those events, in the primordial matter that bears these, and in the necessarily beginningless and hence incomprehensible existence of such forces. To explain this obscure and enigmatical core on the empirical path is impossible. Here, then, metaphysics must appear which, in the will in our own true nature, makes us acquainted with the kernel and core of all things. In this sense, Kant has also said that' the primary sources of the effects of nature must obviously be dealt with entirely by metaphysics.' (Van der wahren Schatzung der lebendigen Krafte, § 51.)

And so from the standpoint which we are here considering and is that of metaphysics, the physical explanation of the world which is acquired by such an expenditure of effort and ingenuity appears to be inadequate. In fact, it seems superficial and, to a certain extent, becomes a mere pretence at explanation, because it consists in a reduction to unknown quantities, to qualitates occultae. It is comparable to a mere superficial force, something like electricity, that does not penetrate the inner essence of things. Indeed it is even like paper-money which has only a relative value that is based on the assumption of a different kind of money. Here I refer to the more detailed discussion of this relation to be found in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 17. There are in Germany shallow empiricists who try to make their public believe that, speaking generally, there is nothing except nature and her laws. But this will not do, for nature is not a thing-in-itself, and her laws are not absolute.

If we place in an imaginary row the Kant-Laplace cosmogony, geology from Deluc down to Elie de Beaumont, and finally the original generation of the vegetable and animal kingdoms with the commentary of their results, namely botany, zoology, and physiology, then we have before us a complete history of nature, since we survey in all its sequence and continuity the entire phenomenon of the empirically given world. This, however, at the outset constitutes the problem of metaphysics. If mere physics were capable of solving it, it would already have been well on the way to solution; but this is for ever impossible. The two points already mentioned, namely the essence-in-itself of natural forces and the fact that the objective world is conditioned by the intellect and also the a priori certain beginninglessness of both the causal chain and matter, deprive physics of all independence, or are the stem whereby the lotus of physics is rooted to the soil of metaphysics.

Moreover, the relation between the latest results of geology and my metaphysics could be expressed briefly in the following way. In the very first period of the terrestrial globe which preceded granite, the objectification of the will-to-livc was restricted to its lowest stages, to the forces of inorganic nature. Here, however, it manifested itself on the grandest scale and with blind violence, since the elements, already differentiated chemically, entered into a conflict whose scene was not the mere surface but the whole mass of the planet, and whose phenomena must have been so colossal as to be quite beyond the powers of one's imagination to describe. The evolutions of light accompanying those gigantic chemical processes must have been visible from every planet of our system, whereas the detonations which took place and would have shattered any ear naturally could not pass beyond the atmosphere. After this titanic conflict had died down and the granite as a tombstone had covered the combatants, the will-to-live, after a suitable pause and the interlude of the Neptunian deposits of rock, finally manifested itself at the next higher stage and in the strongest contrast, in the mute and still life of a mere plant world. This also appeared on a colossal scale with its towering and interminable forests whose remains supply us, after millions of years, with an inexhaustible quantity of coal. This plant world gradually removed the carbon dioxide from the air which then first became fit for animal life. Till then, the long and profound peace of that period of no animals lasted and finally ended through a natural revolution which destroyed that plant paradise by engulfing the forests. Now as the air had become pure, the will-to-live entered the third great stage of objectification, the animal world. In the sea were fish and cetacea, but on land there were still only reptiles, yet these were colossal. Again the curtain fell on the scene and there followed the higher objectification of the will in the life of warm-blooded land animals, although the genera of these no longer exist and most of them were pachydermata. After another upheaval of the earth's surface with every living thing thereon, life was once more kindled afresh. The will-to-live now objectified itself in an animal world which offered a far greater number and variety of forms and whose genera still exist, although naturally the species are no longer to be found. This objectification of the will-to-live became more perfect through such multiplicity and variety of forms and ascended as far as the ape. But even this last primeval world of ours had to perish in order to make way for the present inhabitants on a restored soil, where the objectification reached the stage of mankind. Accordingly, the earth can be compared to a palimpsest that has been written on four times. Incidentally, a secondary consideration of interest is to visualize how each of the planets that revolve round the innumerable suns in space, although still at the chemical stage where it is the scene of a fearful conflict of the most violent forces or is passing through an interval of peace, nevertheless conceals mysterious forces within its interior. From these there will one day come into existence the plant and animal worlds with all the inexhaustible variety of their forms. To such forces that conflict is only the prelude, since it prepares for them their scene of action and arranges for the conditions of their appearance. In fact, we can hardly help assuming that what rages in those seas of fire and tempestuous torrents of water and will later endow those flora and fauna with life, is one and the same thing. But in my opinion the stage where mankind is reached must be the last because here there has already occurred to man the possibility of denying the will and thus of turning back from all the ways of the world, whereby this divina commedia then comes to an end. Accordingly, although there are no physical grounds for guaranteeing that another world-catastrophe will not occur, there is nevertheless against it a moral one, namely that such a catastrophe would now be to no purpose, since the inner essence of the world needs no higher objectification for the possibility of its salvation from the world. What is moral, however, is the kernel or ground-bass of the matter, however little inclined are mere physicists to grasp this.

§ 86

In order to appreciate in all its greatness the value of the system of gravitation which Newton undoubtedly raised to perfection and certainty, we must call to mind the dilemma in which thinkers had been for thousands of years in regard to the origin of the motion of heavenly bodies. Aristotle represented the universe as composed of transparent spheres, one inside the other, the outermost of which carried the fixed stars. Each of the others carried a planet, whilst the last had the moon, the earth being the heart of the whole machine. Now what force it is that incessantly turns this constellation was a question to which he was unable to say anything except that there must be somewhere a [x], [9] a reply that was afterwards indulgently interpreted as his theism, whereas he does not speak of a God-Creator, but rather of an eternity of the universe and merely a first power of movement. But even after Copernicus had substituted the correct construction of the world-machine for the legendary and Kepler had also discovered the laws of its motion, the old dilemma still persisted with regard to the moving force. Aristotle had already set up as many gods for the guidance of the individual spheres. The Schoolmen had assigned this to certain so-called intelligences,* a word that is merely a more distinguished name for the angels in heaven; and each of those intelligences now drove its planet like a coach. Later, free thinkers like Giordano Bruno and Vanini could think of nothing better than to make the planets themselves into living divine beings of some kind.* Then came Descartes who always tried to explain everything mechanically and yet knew of no moving force except impact. Accordingly, he assumed an invisible and intangible substance that revolved round the sun in layers and pushed the planets forward-the Cartesian vortices. How childish and crude indeed all this is and how highly we should esteem the system of gravitation! It has undeniably demonstrated the moving causes and the forces that are active therein; and it has done this with such certainty and precision that even the smallest deviation and irregularity, the least acceleration or retardation in the motion of a planet or satellite, can be completely explained and accurately calculated from its most direct cause.

Accordingly, the fundamental idea of making gravitation that is known to us directly only as weight, the thing that holds the planetary system together, is, on account of the significance of the results attaching to it, so exceedingly important that an inquiry into its origin ought not to be set aside as irrelevant. In particular, we should, at any rate as posterity, endeavour to be just since, as the living generation, we are very rarely capable of being so.

When Newton published his Principia in 1686, it is well known that Robert Hooke raised a great outcry over his own priority of the fundamental idea. It is also well known that Hooke's bitter complaints and those of others extorted from Newton the promise to mention it in the first complete edition of the Principia in 1687. This he did with the fewest possible words in a scholium to Pt. I, prop. 4, corol. 6, where he said in parenthesis: ut seorsum collegerunt etiam nostrates Wrennus, Hookius, et Hallaeus. [10]

Even in the year 1666 Hooke had expressed, although only as a hypothesis, the essential point of the system of gravitation in a communication to the Royal Society, as is seen from the principal passage of this which is printed in Hooke's own words in Dugald Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind, volume ii, p. 434. In the Quarterly Review of August 1828, there is a really fine and concise history of astronomy which treats Hooke's priority as a settled question.

In the Biographie universelle by Michaud, running to nearly a hundred volumes, the article on Newton appears to be a translation from the Biographia Britannica to which it refers. It contains in detail the description of the system of the universe from the law of gravitation, word for word from Robert Hooke's An Attempt to prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations, London, 1674, p. 4. Further, the article says the fundamental idea that gravity extends to all heavenly bodies is already to be found in Borelli, Theoria motus planetarum e causis physicis deducta, Florence, 1666. Finally, it gives Newton's long reply to Hooke's above-mentioned protest over the priority of discovery On the other hand, the story of the apple, which is repeated ad nauseam, is without authority. First of all, it is found as a well-known fact mentioned in Turnor's History of Grantham, p. 160. Pemberton who knew Newton, although in his dotage, relates in the preface to his View of Newton's Philosophy, that the idea first occurred to him in a garden, but he says nothing about the apple. This was subsequently a plausible addition. Voltaire asserts that he personally came to know about it from Newton's niece and this is probably the source of the story; see Voltaire, Elemens de philosophie de Neuton, Part II, chapter 3.*

To all these authorities who are opposed to the assumption that the great conception of universal gravitation is a brother of the thoroughly false theory of homogeneous light, I have now to add another argument which, of course, is only psychological, but will carry great weight with the man who also knows human nature from the intellectual side.

It is a well-known and indisputable fact that Newton had understood very early, presumably in 1666, the system of gravitation, possibly by his own methods or by someone else's, and that he now attempted to verify it by applying it to the motion of the moon. However, it is well known that, because the result did not tally exactly with the hypothesis, he again dropped this and for many years dismissed the matter from his mind. Just as well known is the origin of that discrepancy that deterred him from it; it had arisen simply from Newton's assuming the moon's distance from us to be nearly one-seventh too little, and this again because the distance can be computed in the first place only in the earth's radii, and again the earth's radius is calculated from the size of the degrees of the earth's circumference, but only these can be directly measured. Now Newton assumed, merely from the ordinary geographical definition, that the degree was in round numbers sixty miles, whereas in point of fact it is sixty-nine and a half. The result of this was that the motion of the moon did not agree with the hypothesis of gravitation, according to which gravitation is a force that diminishes with the square of the distance. Therefore Newton gave up the hypothesis and dismissed it from his mind. Only some sixteen years later in 1682 did he by chance get to know of the result of Picard's measurement of the degree which had already been completed some years earlier. According to this, the degree was approximately one-seventh greater than he had formerly assumed it to be. Without regarding this as particularly important, he made a note of it in the academy where it was communicated to him from a letter and then, without bothering any more about it, listened attentively to the lecture that was being given there. Only afterwards did the old hypothesis occur to him; he again took up his calculations and then found that the facts tallied exactly with the hypothesis; as we all know, he went into raptures over this.

Now I ask anyone who is himself a father, who has himself produced, nourished, and nurtured hypotheses; does a man treat his children in this way? Does he, when things go wrong, at once drive them mercilessly from home, slam the door on them, and make no more inquiries about them in sixteen years? In a case of this sort, before saying so bitterly that it is useless, will he not rather suspect a mistake anywhere, even with God the Father and creation if need be, before looking for it in his own precious child that has been reared and nurtured by him? And here was the very place where one could easily have been suspicious, namely in the sole empirical datum (together with one adjusted angle) which was the basis of the calculation, and the uncertainty of which was so well known that the French had since 1669 been engaged on their measurements of the degree. Newton, however, had quite perfunctorily accepted this precarious datum from the ordinary statement in miles. Is a man thus led astray with a true hypothesis that explains the world? Never, if it is one of his own! On the other hand, I can say also who are treated in this way, namely strange children who are reluctantly admitted into the house where they are looked on with envy and jealousy by the man (aided by his own barren wife who gave birth only once, and then to a monster). Merely for the sake of duty, he admits them to the test, hoping that they will not pass it. But as soon as this hope is realized, he drives them from the house with scornful laughter.

This argument is with me at any rate so important that I recognize in it a complete confirmation of the statements which attribute to Hooke the fundamental idea of gravitation and concede to Newton only its verification by calculation. Thus the same thing happened to poor Hooke as happened to Columbus; in the one case the name is 'America', and in the other, 'the Newtonian System of Gravitation'.

Moreover, as regards the seven-coloured monster previously touched on, I might certainly be bewildered by the fact that, forty years after the appearance of Goethe's theory of colour, it is still wholly in favour and the ancient litany of the foramen exiguum [11] and the seven colours is for ever being chanted in spite of all evidence-had I not long ago accustomed myself to number among the imponderables the judgement of contemporaries. Therefore I see in it only a proof of the lamentable and deplorable nature of the professional physicists on the one hand, and of the so-called educated public on the other. Instead of testing and investigating what a great man has said, this public faithfully repeats the words of those transgressors who say that Goethe's colour theory is an abortive uncalled-for attempt, a weakness to be forgotten.

§ 87

The obvious fact of fossilized shellfish, which was known even to Xenophanes the Eleatic and on the whole was correctly explained by him, is disputed, denied, and even declared to be a chimera by Voltaire. (See Brandis, Comment. Eleaticae, p. 50, and Voltaire, Dictionnaire philosophique, art. Coquille.) So great, in fact, was his aversion to admitting anything that might even be distorted into a corroboration of the Mosaic accounts, of the Flood in this instance. This example is a warning of how eagerness and enthusiasm can lead us astray when we have taken sides.

§ 88a

A complete fossilization is a total chemical change without any mechanical.

§ 88b

When, in order to enjoy looking at the incunabula of the globe, I contemplate a piece of granite freshly broken off, I cannot possibly believe that this primary rock could have originated in any way through fusion and crystallization in a dry manner, or again through sublimation, and as little through precipitation; but it seems to me that it must have come about by a chemical process of an entirely different kind which now no longer takes place. The notion of a rapid and simultaneous combustion of a mixture of metals and metalloids combined with the elective affinity of the products of this combustion which operates at once-this comes nearest to my conception of the matter. I wonder if anyone has ever attempted to mix together silicium, aluminium, and so on in the proportion in which they constitute the radicals of the earthy minerals of the three ingredients of granite, and to have them burnt rapidly under water or in the air.

Of the examples of generatio aequivoca that are visible to the naked eye, the commonest is the rapid sprouting of fungi whereever some dead vegetable substance, such as a trunk, branch, or root is rotting; and in fact at no other spot but here. But then, as a rule, they are not sporadic, but grow equally in clusters; so that evidently it is not a seed (spore), cast here and there by blind chance, which has determined the spot, but the rotting body there which offered the ubiquitous will-to-live a suitable material which it at once seizes. It is no argument against this to say that these very fungi are afterwards reproduced through spores, for it holds good of all living beings which have seed and nevertheless must have at one time originated without seed.

§ 89

A comparison of freshwater fish in widely separated countries gives perhaps the clearest evidence of nature's original creative power that she has exercised in a similar manner wherever locality and circumstances are similar. Where we have approximately the same geographical latitude, topographical altitude, and finally also the same size and depth of streams, we shall find, even in the most widely separated localities, exactly the same, or very similar, species of fish. We need only think of the trout in the streams of almost all mountainous districts. The assumption of intentional introduction generally falls to the ground in the case of these animals. Propagation through birds that eat but do not digest spawn does not suffice in the case of great distances, for the process of digestion is completed in a shorter time than that taken on their flight. I would also like to know whether it is true with non-digestion and thus with eating that is unsuitable; for, of course, we digest caviar very easily, but the crop and gizzard of birds are adapted even to the digestion of hard grains of corn. If the attempt is made to shift the origin of freshwater fish back to the last great universal deluge, then it is forgotten that this consisted of sea-water and not river-water.

§ 90

We are no more capable of understanding the formation of cubic crystals from salt water than we are of comprehending the formation of the chick from the fluid substance in the egg. Again, between this and generatio aequivoca, Lamarck maintained that he found no essential difference. Yet such does exist, for only one definite species emerges from each egg, and so this is generatio univoca [12] ([x] Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z. 25). Again it might be objected that each precisely determined infusion usually produces only a definite species of microscopically small animals.

§ 91

With the most difficult problems of all, whose solution drives one almost to despair, the few trifling data we have must be used to the greatest possible advantage, so that from their combination something is elicited.

In the Chronik der Seuchen by Schnurrer, 1825, we find that, after the Black Death had in the fourteenth century depopulated the whole of Europe and also a great part of Asia and Africa, there immediately ensued a most unusual fertility of the human race and twin-births in particular were very common. In agreement with this, Casper (Die wahrscheinliche Lebensdauer des Menschen, 1835), who is upheld by experiences that have four times been repeated on a large scale, tells us that, in the given population of a district, the mortality and duration of life always keep pace with the number of births so that the deaths and births always and everywhere increase and decrease in the same ratio. This is established beyond question by records he has gathered from many countries and their different provinces. However, he goes astray by confusing generally cause and effect, in that he regards the increase in births as the cause of the increase in deaths. According to my way of thinking, however, and in agreement with the phenomenon which Schnurrer cites but which is apparently not known to him, it is, on the contrary, the increase in deaths which entails an increase in births not through physical influence, but through a metaphysical relationship. I have already discussed this in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 41. On the whole, therefore, the number of births depends on that of deaths.

According to this, there might be a natural law that the prolific power of the human race, which after all is only a special form of nature's creative force, is enhanced by a cause that is antagonistic to it and that it, therefore, thrives on opposition. Hence mutatis mutandis this law could be subsumed under Mariotte's to the effect that with compression the resistance increases to infinity. Now if we assume that this cause, which is antagonistic to the prolific power, were once to appear through devastations from epidemics, natural upheavals, and so on, on an immense and effective scale as had never previously happened, then the prolific force must subsequently rise again to quite an unprecedented height. Finally, if in this intensification of the antagonistic cause we go on to the extreme limit, namely to the complete extermination of the human race, then the prolific power, forced to that limit, will attain a strength commensurate with the pressure; consequently, it will be brought to a pitch of intensity where it now achieves the seemingly impossible. Thus, since generatio univoca or the birth of like from like is barred to it, it will then vigorously resort to generatio aequivoca. However, this is no longer conceivable at the higher grades of the animal kingdom in the same way as it appears to us at the lowest grades of all. Thus the forms of the lion, wolf, elephant, ape, or even man, can never have originated like animalculae, entozoa, and epizoa and raised themselves directly from some coagulating, sun-incubated marine ooze, slime, or decaying organic substance. On the contrary, their origin can be thought of only as a generatio in utero heterogeneo  [13] and consequently as coming from the uterus or rather egg of a specially favoured animal couple. After the vital force of this couple's species had been checked in some way and had been augmented and enhanced in that couple to an abnormal degree, there now no longer emerged the likeness of the couple, but, by way of exception, a form directly akin to it, yet at a higher stage; and this occurred at a favourable hour, at the right position of the planets, and with a fortunate combination of all the atmospheric, tellurian, and astral influences. Thus the pair had on this occasion produced not a mere individual, but a species. Naturally, events of this kind could take place only after the lowest animals of all had, through the usual generatio aequivoca, worked their way up to the light of day from organic putrefaction or the cellular tissue of living plants as the harbingers and precursors of the generations of animals to come. Such a set of circumstances must have occurred after each of those great world-upheavals which have already completely extinguished all life on the planet at least three times so that it had to be kindled afresh, whereupon it appeared each time in forms more perfect, that is, more nearly approaching those of existing fauna. But only in the animal series, that appeared after the last great catastrophe of the earth's surface, did events come as far as producing the human race, when they had got as far as producing the ape after the last catastrophe but one. We see the batrachia lead the life of a fish before assuming their own more perfect form and, according to an observation now fairly generally recognized, every foetus in the same way passes successively through the classes existing under its species until it reaches its own. Now why should not every new and higher species have arisen through the fact that that enhancement of the foetus-form once exceeded by a stage the form of the mother carrying it? It is the only mode of origin of the species which from a rational point of view is conceivable.

But we must imagine this enhancement not as in a single line, but in several that rise side by side. Thus, for example, there once emerged from the egg of a fish an ophidian, at another time from the egg of this a saurian; but at the same time there came from the egg of another fish a batrachian; however, from this there then came a chelonian; from the egg of a third was born a cetacean and eventually a dolphin. Later on, a cetacean again produced a phoca and ultimately a phoca once gave birth to a walrus. Possibly the duck-bill CHmefrom the egg of the duck, and some larger mammal from that of an ostrich. In general, these events must have taken place simultaneously in many countries that were independent of one another, yet they occurred everywhere in stages which were at once definite and clear and each of which furnished a fixed and permanent species. They did not, however, take place in gradual and obliterated transitional stages, and so not on the analogy of a tone howling from the lowest to the highest octave, but on that of a scale rising with definite intervals and pauses. We will not disguise the fact that we should accordingly have to imagine the first human beings as having come in Asia from the pongo (the parent of the orang-utan) and in Africa from the chimpanzee, though not as apes, but directly as' human beings. It is noteworthy that this origin is taught even by a Buddhist myth that is to be found in I. J. Schmidt's Forschungen uber die Mongolen und Tibeter, pp. 210-14, also in Klaproth's Fragmens bouddhiques in the Nouveau Journal asiatique, March 1831, likewise in Koppen's Die Lamaische Hierarchie, p. 45.

The idea, here worked out, of a generatio aequivoca in utero heterogeneo [14] was first put forward by the anonymous author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (6th ed. 1847). Yet he certainly did not make it really clear and definite because he closely associated it with untenable assumptions and gross errors. This springs ultimately from the fact that, with him as an Englishman, every assumption that goes beyond mere physics and is, therefore, metaphysical, at once coincides with Hebrew theism. In his desire to avoid this, he then unduly extends the province ofphysics. Thus in his neglect and want of culture with regard to all speculative philosophy or metaphysics, an Englishman is absolutely incapable of any intellectual grasp of nature. He therefore knows of no middle course between understanding the workings of nature as occurring in accordance with a strict and possibly mechanical conformity to law, or else as something previously thought out and skilfully made by the Hebrew God whom he calls its 'maker'. The priests, the parsons in England, these craftiest of all obscurantists, are responsible for this. In that country they have so moulded people's minds that, even in the best-informed and most enlightened, the system of fundamental ideas is a mixture of the crassest materialism with the crudest Jewish superstition that are together shaken up like vinegar and oil. They can see how these get on together and that, as a result of an Oxford education, my lords and gentlemen belong in the main to the masses. But it will never be any better, so long as the education of the cultured classes is still carried out by the orthodox oxen of Oxford. Even in the year 1859, we still find Agassiz, the Americanized Frenchman, holding the same view in his Essay on Classification. He too is confronted with the same alternative that the organic world is either the work of the purest chance that had jumbled it together as a natural freak of physical and chemical forces, or a work of art cleverly constructed in the light of knowledge (this functio animalis), after previous deliberation and calculation. The one is as false as the other and both depend on the naive realism that is positively scandalous eighty years after Kant's appearance. Thus Agassiz philosophizes on the origin of organic beings like an American cobbler. If those gentlemen have not learnt and will not learn anything but their natural science, then they must not in their writings go a step beyond this, but must stick strictissime to their empiricism lest, like Mr. Agassiz, they prostitute themselves and make themselves ridiculous by talking like old women about the origin of nature.

Now an inference in the other direction from that law which is advanced by Schnurrer and Casper would be as follows. It is obvious that, in so far as we succeeded by the most correct and careful use of all the forces of nature and of every tract of land in reducing the misery of the lowest classes, the number of these proletarians, very appropriately so called, would increase and thus the misery would assert itself again and again. For the sexual impulse always promotes hunger, just as the latter, when satisfied, always promotes the former. But the abovementioned law would guarantee that matters could not reach the stage where the earth was actually over-populated, an evil so terrible that the most vivid imagination can hardly picture it. Thus in consequence of the law in question, after the earth had received as many human beings as it was capable of supporting under the best possible conditions, the fertility of the race would have meanwhile declined to the stage where it was barely sufficient to replace the deaths, whereupon every accidental increase of these would again bring the population below the maximum.

§ 92

In different parts of the world, similar or analogous kinds of plants and animals have come into existence under similar or analogous conditions of climate, topography, and atmosphere. Therefore several species are very similar to one another, yet without being identical (and this is the proper concept of the genus), and many are divisible into races and varieties that cannot have originated from one another, although the species remains the same. For unity of the species does not by any means imply unity of origin and descent from a single pair. On the whole this is an absurd assumption. Who will believe that all oaks are descended from a single first oak, all mice from a first pair, or all wolves from the first wolf? On the contrary, in similar circumstances but in different localities, nature repeats the same process and is much too careful to allow the existence of a species, especially of the higher kinds, to be quite precarious, by staking it on a single venture and thereby exposing to a thousand accidents a work that was for her so difficult to achieve. Rather does she know what she wants, wills it decidedly, and accordingly sets to work; but the occasion is never exclusive and unique.

Now the African elephant, who has never been tamed, whose ears are very broad and long and cover the back of the neck, and whose female also has tusks, cannot be a descendant of the Asiatic, who is so docile and intelligent, whose female has no tusks, and whose ears are much smaller. Just as little is the American alligator a descendant of the crocodile from the Nile, for the two differ in their teeth and in the number of scales on the back of the neck; just as little also can the Negro be a descendant of the Caucasian race.

Nevertheless, it is extremely probable that the human race originated in only three places, since we have only three distinctly separate types that point to original races, namely the Caucasian, the Mongolian, and the Ethiopian. Moreover, this origin could have taken place only in the Old World; for in Australia nature was unable to produce any apes at all; in America, however, she produced only the long-tailed monkey, not the short-tailed, to say nothing of the highest species of tailless apes who occupy the last stage before man. Natura non facit saltus. [15] Again, man's origin could have occurred only within the tropics because in the other zones the new-born human infant would have perished in the first winter. For although he had been nursed not without maternal care, he had yet grown up without any instruction and had inherited no knowledge from any ancestors. Therefore the infant of nature had first to recline on her warm bosom before she ventured to send it out into the rough and harsh world. Now in the torrid zones man is black, or at any rate dark brown. This, then, is the true, natural, and characteristic colour of the human species, regardless of race, and there has never been a naturally white race. In fact, to talk of such and childishly to divide people into white, yellow, and black, as is still done in all books, is evidence of great prejudice and a lack of thought. I have already briefly discussed the subject in my chief work volume ii, chapter 44, and have stated that a white man has never sprung originally from the womb of nature. Only in the tropics is man at home, and here he is always black or dark brown. It is only in America that this is not general because that part of the world has been inhabited mostly by nations already bleached, principally by Chinese. However, the savages in the forests of Brazil are dark brown.* Only after man propagated his stock during a long period of time outside his only natural habitat between the tropics and extended it, in consequence of this increase, into the more frigid zones, did he become fair and finally white. Therefore only as a result of the climatic influence of the temperate and frigid zones did the European human stock gradually become white. We see in the case of the gipsies how slowly this proceeds; they are a Hindu stock who have led a nomadic life in Europe since the beginning of the fifteenth century and whose colour is roughly midway between that of the Hindu and ours. In the same way, the families of the Negro slaves who have propagated for three hundred years have become somewhat fairer in colour, despite the fact that in this respect they are checked through their interbreeding with fresh ebony-coloured immigrants, a renewal that does not happen to the gipsies. The immediate physical cause of this turning pale when man is driven from his natural habitat is to be found, I think, in the fact that, in a hot climate, light and heat produce on the rete Malpighi a slow but steady deoxidation of the carbonic acid that escapes undecomposed through the pores. It then leaves behind enough carbon for colouring the skin; the specific odour of Negroes is probably connected with this. The fact that among the white races the lower classes who work strenuously are generally darker than the upper is explained from their perspiring more; the effect of which is analogous to that of a hot climate, though to a much smaller extent. Accordingly, the Adam of our race must in any case be conceived as black and it is ludicrous for painters to depict this first human being as white, a colour that has originated from the skin's turning pale. Moreover, as Jehovah fashioned him in his own image, he too should be depicted in works of art as dark. Here, however, he can be given the conventional white beard, as the thin beard is not associated with a dark colour, but merely with the Ethiopian race. Yet even in the oldest pictures of the Madonna and child, as seen in the Levant and still met with in some old Italian churches, the complexions are dark. In fact, the whole of God's chosen people was black or dark brown, and is even now darker than we who are descended from pagan tribes that immigrated earlier. Present-day Syria, however, was populated by half-breeds descended partly from northern Asia (like the Turcomans, for example). In the same way Buddha and even Confucius are sometimes portrayed as dark. (Davis, The Chinese, vol. ii, p. 66.) That the white face is a degeneration and unnatural is shown by the aversion and repugnance that are excited among some tribes of the interior of Africa when they first see such a face; to them it looks like a sickly and unhealthy pining away. A traveller in Africa was very hospitably entertained with milk by Negro girls who also sang: 'Poor stranger, how we pity you for being so white!' A note to Byron's Don Juan (can. XII, st. 70) reports the following: 'Major Denham says that when he first saw European women after his travels in Africa, they appeared to him to have unnatural, sickly countenances.' Yet the ethnographers, after the example of Buffon (Flourens, Buffon: Histoire de ses travaux et de ses idees, Paris, 1844, pp. 160ff.), still always talk quite confidently of the white, yellow, red, and black races, making colour the principal basis of their classifications. In point of fact, however, colour is not the essential thing at all and its difference has no other origin than the greater or lesser distance and the earlier or later removal of a stock from the torrid zone where alone the human race is indigenous. Therefore outside that zone, it can exist only under artificial care by hibernating in hothouses like exotic plants; but then it gradually degenerates first of all in colour. The fact that, after turning pale, the colour of the Mongolian race turns out to be somewhat yellower than that of the Caucasian, may certainly be due to a racial difference. The highest civilization and culture, apart from the ancient Hindus and Egyptians, are found exclusively among the white races; and even with many dark peoples, the ruling caste or race is fairer in colour than the rest and has, therefore, evidently immigrated, for example, the Brahmans, the Incas, and the rulers of the South Sea Islands. All this is due to the fact that necessity is the mother of invention because those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want, and misery, which in their many forms were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature and out of it all came their high civilization.

Just as the dark colour is natural to man, so too is the vegetable diet; but only in a tropical climate does he remain true to the latter as to the former. When he spread to the more frigid zones, he had to counteract the unnatural climate by an equally unnatural diet. Right in the north one cannot exist at all without animal food. I have been told that in Copenhagen, if a punishment of six weeks' imprisonment on bread and water is carried out most strictly and without exception, it is regarded as a danger to life. Therefore man has at the same time become white and carnivorous. But in this way and also through heavier clothing, he has assumed a certain foul and offensive state which other animals, at any rate in their natural state, do not have, and which he must counteract by constant and particular cleanliness if he is to avoid being repulsive and unpleasant. Such measures, therefore, are possible only to the well-to-do, to those classes who are comfortably off and are thus aptly called in Italian gente pulita. [16] Another consequence of the heavier clothing is that, while all animals, strutting along in their natural form, covering, and colour, afford a spectacle that is natural, pleasing, and aesthetic, man in his many different clothes that are often very odd and strange besides being frequently shabby and tattered goes about in them like a caricature. It is a form that is not in keeping with the whole; it is out of place since it is not, like all other forms, the work of nature but of a tailor. Consequently, it is an impertinent interruption of the harmonious whole of the world. The noble disposition and taste of the ancients sought to mitigate this evil by making the clothing as light as possible and by so fashioning it that it did not fit the body tightly and become a part thereof. On the contrary, their clothing hung loosely as something separate and foreign and enabled the human form to be recognized as clearly as possible in all its parts. Through the opposite tendency, the clothing of the Middle Ages and modern times is inelegant, barbaric, and displeasing. But the most repulsive are the present-day clothes of women, ladies I mean, which, imitating the tastelessness of their great-grandmothers, afford the greatest possible disfigurement of the human form and which, moreover, under the bundle of the crinoline makes its breadth equal to its height. An accumulation of unsavoury odours may well be imagined which are not only offensive and unpleasant, but even repulsive.*

§ 93

Life may be defined as the state or condition of a body wherein it at all times retains the form essential (substantial) to it under a constant fluctuation of matter. If anyone should reply that a whirlpool or waterfall also retains its form under a steady fluctuation of matter, I should have to say that with these the form is certainly not essential, but, following universal laws of nature, is thoroughly contingent in that it depends on external circumstances. By varying these, we can at will change even the form without in this way touching what is essential.

§ 94

Arguments against the assumption of a vital force, which are nowadays becoming the fashion, deserve, in spite of their imposing airs, to be called not merely false but positively stupid. For whoever denies vital force, at bottom denies his own existence and can, therefore, boast of having reached the very height of absurdity. But in so far as this presumptuous nonsense has come from physicians and pharmaceutical chemists, it contains in addition the basest ingratitude. For it is vital force that overcomes diseases and effects cures for which these gentlemen afterwards pocket fees and write out receipts. Unless a characteristic force of nature, to which acting suitably and appropriately is as essential as bringing bodies together is to gravity, unless, I say, such a force moves, guides, and arranges the highly complex machinery of the organism and manifests itself therein, as does the force of gravity in the phenomena of falling and gravitation, as does the force of electricity in all the phenomena produced by the friction-machine or by the voltaic pile, and so on, then life is a false phantom, a deception; in fact, every being is then a mere automaton, that is to say, a play of mechanical, physical, and chemical forces, brought together in this phenomenon either by chance, or through the intention of an artificer who is so satisfied with the result. Physical and chemical forces certainly do operate in the animal organism, but what holds these together and guides them so that an appropriate and suitable organism comes into existence from them, this is vital force. Accordingly, it controls those forces and modifies their effect which is, therefore, only subordinate here. On the other hand, to imagine that those forces produce an organism solely by themselves is not merely false but, as I have said, stupid. In itself that vital force is the will.

Attempts have been made to discover a fundamental difference between vital force and all the other forces of nature in the fact that it does not again take possession of the body from which it has once departed. Properly speaking, it is only by way of exception that the forces of inorganic nature forsake the body that is once controlled by them. For example, magnetism can be taken from steel by raising it to a red heat and restored to it by fresh magnetization. Even more definitely can the gain and loss of electricity be stated, although it must be assumed that the body does not receive from without electricity itself, but only excitation in consequence whereof the electrical force already present in it now separates out into + E and - E. On the other hand, a body never loses either its heaviness or its chemical property. Thus through combination with other bodies, that quality becomes merely latent and, after their decomposition, again exists unimpaired. For example, from sulphur we get sulphuric acid and from this calcium sulphate; but, through the successive analysis of both, sulphur is again produced. But after vital force has left a body, it cannot again take possession thereof. The reason for this, however, is that it does not, like the forces of inorganic nature, adhere to the mere substance, but primarily to the form. Its activity consists precisely in the production and maintenance (i.e. continued production) of this form. Therefore as soon as vital force departs from a body, such a body's form is now destroyed, at any rate in its finer parts. Now the production of the form has its regular and even systematic procedure in the definite succession of what is to be produced and thus origin, means, and progress. Therefore, wherever vital force appears afresh, it must begin its tissue at the beginning and thus commence really ab ovo. Consequently, it cannot again take up the work which is left as it is or is already on the decline; and so it cannot come and go like magnetism. On this rests the difference in question between vital force and the other forces of nature.

Vital force is absolutely identical with the will, so that what appears in self-consciousness as will, is in unconscious organic life the primum mobile [17] thereof which has been very appropriately described as vital force. Merely from the analogy with this, we infer that the other forces of nature are also fundamentally identical with the will, only that in them the will is at a lower stage of its objectification. Therefore to attempt to explain organic from inorganic nature and thus life, knowing, and finally willing, is like trying to deduce the thing-in-itself from the appearance, this mere phenomenon of the brain. It is as if we were to try to explain the body from its shadow.

Vital force is the only one which, as an original and primary force, as something metaphysical, as thing-in-itself, as will, is untiring and thus needs no rest. Its phenomenal forms, however, irritability, sensibility, and reproductivity, certainly become fatigued and need rest. But this is really only because they produce, maintain, and control the organism first by overcoming the phenomena of the will at the lower stages, such phenomena having a prior right to the same matter. This at once becomes visible in irritability, as that which has to struggle perpetually with gravity; and so it tires most rapidly; but all propping, supporting, sitting, and reclining help to relieve it. Precisely on this account, these positions of rest are favourable to thought, to the severest exertion of sensibility, since vital force can then devote its undivided attention to this function especially when it is not absolutely taken up with the third, with reproduction, as is the case during digestion. Nevertheless, anyone who is capable of thinking for himself will have noticed that walking in the open is unusually favourable to the stimulation of original ideas. But I ascribe this to the respiratory process which is quickened by that movement and partly invigorates and accelerates the blood circulation, and to some extent improves the oxygenation of the blood. In the first place, the twofold movement of the brain, namely that following every breath and that following every pulse, thus becomes more rapid and energetic and its turgor vitalis becomes more intense. In the second place, a more completely oxygenated blood, free from carbon dioxide and thus more vital and arterial, permeates the whole substance of the brain from the ramifications of the carotids and enhances its inner vitality. Nevertheless, the stimulation of the power of thought which is produced by all this lasts only as long as a man does not in the least become tired through walking. For when the slightest fatigue occurs, the now enforced exertion of irritability demands vital force; and in this way the activity of sensibility declines, and indeed with great fatigue becomes quite feeble.

Again, sensibility rests only in sleep and therefore endures a longer activity. Whilst irritability also rests at night simultaneously with sensibility, vital force, that can act wholly and entirely and so with all its power only under one of its three forms, generally assumes that of the power of reproduction. Therefore the formation and maintenance of the parts, especially the nutrition of the brain, also all growth, reparation, healing, and thus the effect of the vis naturae medicatrix [18] in all its forms, particularly in the wholesome crises of illnesses-all these take place mainly in sleep. Accordingly, one of the main conditions for lasting health and so also for a long life, is the constant enjoyment of uninterrupted and sound sleep. Yet it is not a good thing to continue this as long as possible, for what it gains in extension it loses in intension, that is, in depth. But It is precisely deep sleep wherein the organic vital processes just mentioned are most completely carried out. This can be inferred from the fact that, when our sleep has been disturbed and cut short on a particular night and now, as is inevitable, turns out to be all the sounder on the following night, we then wake up feeling remarkably invigorated and refreshed. The exceedingly beneficial depth of sleep cannot be replaced by our prolonging it; on the contrary, such depth is obtained precisely by our limiting the duration of the sleep. On this is based the observation that all who have reached a great age have been early risers, as also Homer's dictum [x]. [19] Therefore if we wake early of our own accord, we should not try to go to sleep again, but should get up and say with Goethe: 'Schlaf ist Schaale, wirf sie fort.' [20] The above-mentioned beneficial effect of deep sleep reaches its highest degree in magnetic sleep, as being merely the soundest of all; and hence this sleep appears as the panacea of many diseases. Like all functions of organic life, digestion also takes place more easily and rapidly in sleep, on account of a cessation of the brain's activity. Therefore a short sleep of ten or fifteen minutes half an hour after a meal has a wholesome effect which is also stimulated by coffee just because this quickens digestion. On the other hand, a longer sleep is a disadvantage and may even become a danger. I explain this by saying that in sleep respiration takes place far more slowly and feebly, on the one hand, but that, on the other, as soon as the digestion promoted by sleep has reached the stage of forming chyle, this flows into the blood and raises the carbon content thereof so that it now requires this content to be reduced by the process of breathing more than it does at other times. But this process is enfeebled by sleep and with it circulation as well as oxygenation. The consequence of this can be seen quite clearly in those who have fair complexions and white delicate skins when they have had a long sleep after a meal. For their faces as well as the sclerotic assume a somewhat brownish-yellow tinge as a symptom of a higher carbon content. (We can see from Mayo's Philosophy of Living, p. 168, that this theory concerning the disadvantage of the afternoon siesta is unknown at any rate in England.) For the same reason, full-blooded, short, and stout people run the risk of apoplexy through having a long midday sleep. One may even have observed consumption as a result of this as well as of copious evening meals, a disease that could be easily explained on the same principle. It is also clear from this why it may easily be harmful to eat a heavy meal only once a day because this imposes too much work at one time not only on the stomach but also on the lungs after such an increased formation of chyle. Moreover, that respiration abates in sleep can be explained from the fact that it is a combined function; in other words, it proceeds partly from the spinal nerves and to that extent is a reflex movement that continues as such in sleep; and partly from the nerves of the brain where it is then sustained by conscious volition whose cessation in sleep slows down respiration and gives rise even to snoring. This can be seen in more detail in Marshall Hall's Diseases of the Nervous System, §§ 290-311, with which Flourens' Du systeme nerveux, second edition, chapter 11, should be compared. From this part that is played in respiration by the nerves of the brain, it can also be explained why breathing becomes easier and slower when we rally our mental activity for concentrated thinking or reading; this was observed by Nasse. On the other hand, exertions of irritability, likewise vigorous emotions such as joy, anger, and so on, quicken blood circulation and also respiration. Therefore anger is certainly not altogether harmful and, if only one can really give vent to it, it even has a beneficial effect on many natures who for this reason instinctively aim at it; moreover, it at the same time promotes the discharge of bile.

A further proof of the mutual balancing of the three fundamental physiological forces here discussed is afforded by the undoubted fact that Negroes have more physical strength than have other races; consequently, what they lack in sensibility they have in more irritability. They are, of course, in this respect nearer to animals, for, in proportion to their size, all these have more muscular strength than has man.

Concerning the different relation of the three fundamental forces in individuals, I refer to the work On the Will in Nature, at the end of the chapter on 'Physiology'.

§ 95

We could regard the living animal organism as a machine without primum mobile, a series of movements without beginning, a chain of causes and effects of which none is the first, if life pursued its course without any reference to the external world. This point of contact, however, is the process of breathing; it is the most immediate and essential connecting link with the external world and supplies the first impulse. Movement of life must, therefore, be regarded as coming from it and it must be conceived as the first link in the causal chain. Accordingly, a little air emerges as the first impulse and thus as the first external cause of life. This air slips in and oxygenates; it then introduces other processes and so life is the result. Now that which comes from within to meet this external cause, proclaims itself as a powerful craving, indeed as an irresistible urge, to breathe, and therefore directly as will. The second external cause of life is nourishment which also operates initially from without as motive; yet it is not so pressing and insistent as is air; only in the stomach does its physiological causal operation begin. Liebig has worked out the budget of organic nature and has drawn up a balance of its receipt and expenditure.

§ 96

Philosophy and physiology have certainly covered a good distance in the last two hundred years from the glandula pinealis [21] of Descartes and his spirites animales moving it or even moved by it to Charles Bell's motor and sensible nerves of the spinal cord and the reflex movements of Marshall Hall. His fine discovery of reflex movements, which is explained in his excellent book On the Diseases of the Nervous System, is a theory of involuntary or automatic actions, in other words, of those that are not brought about by means of the intellect, although they must nevertheless proceed from the will. I have explained in volume ii, chapter 20 of my chief work how this theory throws light on my metaphysics by helping to make clear the difference between will [Wille] and conscious volition [Willkur]. Here are a few more remarks raised by Hall's theory.

When we enter a cold bath, respiration is at once greatly speeded up, and when the bath is very cold, this effect lasts for a while, even after we come out. Marshall Hall in § 302 of his above-mentioned book declares this to be a reflex movement that is brought about by the cold suddenly acting on the spinal cord. To this causa efficiens of the matter, I would like to add the final cause, that nature wishes to replace as rapidly as possible so significant and sudden a loss of heat. This then takes place precisely through an increase of respiration which is the internal source of heat. The secondary result of this, namely an increase of arterial, and a decrease of venous, blood together with the direct effect on the nerves, may be largely responsible for the incomparably clear, bright, and purely contemplative disposition that is usually the direct consequence of a cold bath; the colder the bath, the more is this the case.

Yawning is one of the reflex movements. I imagine that its remoter cause is a momentary lowering of the power of the brain which is brought about by boredom, mental indolence, or drowsiness. The spinal cord now gains the ascendancy over the brain and by its own method produces that curious spasm. On the other hand, as the stretching of the limbs that often accompanies yawning is still subject to conscious volition, although occurring unintentionally, it can no longer be regarded as one of the reflex movements. I believe that, just as yawning in the last resort arises from a deficiency of sensibility, so stretching results from an accumulated momentary surplus of irritability, whereof we thus try to rid ourselves. Accordingly, it occurs only in periods of strength not of weakness. A fact worth considering in the investigation of the nature if nervous activity is the case where limbs grow numb which have been subjected to pressure, as also the remarkable circumstance that this never occurs in sleep (of the brain).

When the desire to urinate is resisted, it disappears entirely, but returns later, and the same thing is repeated. I explain this by saying that keeping the sphincter vesicae [22] shut is a reflex movement that is maintained as such by the spinal nerves and consequently without consciousness and free choice. Now when these nerves become fatigued through the increased pressure of a full bladder, they relax, but their function is at once taken over by other nerves that belong to the cerebral system; and so this occurs with conscious volition and a painful sensation. It lasts until the former nerves are rested and again take up their function. This may be repeated several times. While the cerebral nerves act on behalf of the spinal, and accordingly conscious functions deputize for those that are unconscious, we endeavour to obtain some relief by a quick movement of our legs and arms. I explain this from the fact that, while the nervous force is thus directed to the active nerves that excite irritability, the sensible nerves that, as messengers to the brain, cause that painful sensation, lose something in sensibility.

I am surprised that Marshall Hall does not include laughing and weeping among reflex movements. For this they undoubtedly are as definitely involuntary or automatic movements. Thus we are just as little able to bring them about intentionally as we are yawning or sneezing, but in the one case as in the other we can produce only an inferior imitation that is at once recognized; likewise all four are equally difficult to suppress. Laughing and weeping have in common with an erection that is regarded as a reflex movement the fact that they occur on mere stimulus mentalis. Moreover, laughter can be excited entirely physically by tickling. Its usual and thus mental excitation has to be explained from the fact that the brain-function whereby we suddenly recognize the incongruity of an intuitively perceptual representation and an abstract representation that is in other respects appropriate thereto, has a peculiar effect on the medulla oblongata, or else plays a part appertaining to the exciter-motor system, whence comes that strange reflex movement which at the same time convulses many parts of the body. The par quintum and the nervus vagus seem to have in this the largest share.

In my chief work (vol. i, § 60) it says: 'Far more than any other external member of the body, the genitals are subject merely to the will, and not at all to knowledge. Here, in fact, the will shows itself almost as independent of knowledge as it does in those parts which, on the occasion of mere stimuli, serve vegetative life.' Indeed representations or mental pictures affect the genitals not as motives, as they normally do the will, but merely as stimuli just because an erection is merely a reflex movement; consequently, they affect them directly and only so long as they are present. For this very reason, to be effective, it is necessary for them to be present for a certain length of time. On the other hand, a representation acting as a motive does this often after being present for the shortest period of time; and generally speaking, it is not associated in its effectiveness with any relation to the duration of its presence. (This and every distinction between stimulus and motive are found discussed in my Ethics, 'Freedom of the Will', Pt. III, and also in my essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 20.) Further, the effect that a representation has on the genitals cannot, like that of a motive, be abolished by another representation, except in so far as the former is removed from consciousness by the latter and is, therefore, no longer present. But then it happens infallibly, even when the second representation contains nothing at all that is contrary to the first, as is required, on the other hand, in the case of a counter-motive. Accordingly, for the consummation of coitus, it is not sufficient for a woman's presence to act on the man as a motive (possibly for the procreation of children, or for the fulfilment of marital duty, and so on), however powerful this motive might be as such, but her presence must act immediately as stimulus.

§ 97

To be audible, a tone must make at least sixteen vibrations a second, which seems to me to be due to the fact that its vibrations must be mechanically communicated to the auditory nerve. For the sensation of hearing is not, like that of seeing, an excitation brought about by a mere impression on the nerves, but requires that the nerve itself be pulled again and again. This must, therefore, occur with a definite rapidity and shortness that compel the nerve to turn in a sharp zigzag not in a rounded curve. Moreover, this must occur in the interior of the labyrinth and cochlea, since bones are everywhere the sounding-board of the nerves. However, the lymph that there surrounds the auditory nerve is inelastic and moderates the counter-effect of the bone.

§ 98

When we reflect that, as a result of the most recent researches, the skulls of idiots as well as of Negroes are generally inferior to others solely in the width between the temples and that, on the contrary, great thinkers have unusually wide heads, from which even Plato's name is derived; further, when we consider that hair usually begins to turn grey at the temples, more as a result of mental exertion and grief than of old age, and repeat even a Spanish proverb: canas son, que no lunares, CUANDO comienzan por los aladares (white hair is no blemish, when it begins at the temples) ; then we are led to suppose that the part of the brain lying under the temporal region is particularly active when we are thinking. Perhaps we shall be able one day to establish a true craniology, couched in quite different terms from that of Gall with its crude and absurd psychological basis and its assumption of brain-organs for moral qualities. Moreover, grey and white hair are for man what red and yellow leaves are for trees in October; both frequently look quite well, only there must not be in addition any falling off.

As the brain consists of very many delicate folds and fascia separated by innumerable interstices and also contains in its cavities watery humours, then, in consequence of gravity, some of those delicate parts must bend and some must press on one another, and of course differently with different positions of the head, the turgor vitalis, however, being unable to eliminate this entirely. It is true that the dura mater prevents the pressure of the larger masses on one another (according to Magendie, Physiologie, vol. i, p. 179, and Hempel, pp. 768, 775), since it is interposed between these, forming the falx cerebri and the tentorium cerebelli; but it passes over the smaller parts. Now if we imagine the operations of thought to be associated with actual movements, however small, of the brain's substance, then the influence of position would necessarily be very great and immediate through the pressure on one another of the smaller parts. Now the fact that it is not so, proves that things do not happen just mechanically. Nevertheless, the position of the head cannot be a matter of indifference, for not only that pressure of the brain's parts on one another, but also the greater or lesser afflux of blood, which is in any case effective, depends on it. I have actually found that, when vainly attempting to recall to mind something, I have ultimately succeeded by a vigorous change of position. Generally the position most favourable to thinking appears to be the one where the basis encephali comes to rest quite horizontally. Therefore in deep thought, the head is bent forward and with great thinkers, like Kant for instance, this position has become a matter of habit; Cardanus also mentions this about himself (Vanini, Amphitheatrum, p. 269). Nevertheless, this may perhaps be attributed partly to the abnormally greater weight of their brain generally, and in particular to the marked excess in weight of the front half (in front of the foramen occipitale) over the rear half, with an unusually slender spinal cord and consequently slender vertebrae. This does not occur in the case of those with thick heads who are at the same time blockheads; and so they carry their heads quite high. Moreover, heads of this kind betray themselves by the obviously thick and massive cranial bones, in consequence whereof the brain-space proves to be very small, in spite of the size of the head. There is actually a certain way of carrying the head high with a very straight vertebral column, which we feel at once to be a physiognomic sign of stupidity, even without reflection and previous knowledge. This is probably due to the fact that the rear half of the brain actually equals, if it does not even exceed, in weight the front half. Just as the forward position of the head favours deep thinking, so does it appear that the opposite position, and thus raising and even bending it back and looking upwards, is favourable to the momentary exertion of the memory. For those who endeavour to recall something, often assume such an attitude and with success. Relevant to this is also the fact that very clever dogs who, as we know, understand a part of human speech, cock their heads alternately on one side and the other, when their master speaks to them and try to make out the meaning of his words. This makes them look highly intelligent and amusing.

§ 99

The view that, apart from a few exceptions, acute illnesses are nothing but healing processes introduced by nature herself in order to remove some disorder that has taken root in the organism, is to me quite clear. For this purpose, the vis naturae medicatrix, [23] vested with dictatorial power, now adopts extraordinary measures which constitute the serious illness. The cold in the head furnishes us with the simplest type of this universal course of events. The activity of the outer skin is paralysed through a chill and thus the very powerful excretion by means of exhalation is stopped; and this could bring about the death of the individual. The inner skin, the mucous membrane, begins at once to deputize for the outer; and this constitutes the cold in the head, an illness. But obviously this is merely the remedy of the real, but not serious, disease and thus of the suspension of the skin's function. This illness, the cold in the head, like any other, now runs through the same stages, namely first appearance, aggravation, crisis, and improvement. At first acute, it gradually becomes chronic and then continues as such until the fundamental disease, itself not serious, and thus the paralysis of the skin's function, is over. It is, therefore, dangerous to drive a head cold inwards. The same course of events constitutes the essential nature of almost all illnesses, and these are really only the medical remedy of the vis naturae medicatrix.* Such a process is opposed by allopathy or enantiopathy with all its force; for its part, homoeopathy endeavours to hasten or strengthen the process unless, by making a caricature thereof, it tries to put nature against it, at all events to hasten the reaction that is everywhere the result of every excess and every one-sided view of things. Accordingly, both claim to understand things better than does nature herself; yet she certainly knows the direction as well as the measure of her method of treatment. Therefore physiatrics should rather be recommended in all cases that do not come under the above-mentioned exceptions. Only those cures are radical which nature herself brings about by her own methods. The expression tout ce qui n' est pas naturel est imparfait [24] applies here. The methods of physicians are often directed merely to the symptoms which they take to be the disease itself; and so after such a cure we feel ill at ease. On the other hand, if only we give nature the time, she herself will gradually effect the cure, after which we then feel better than we did before the illness, or the affected part is stronger than it was previously. We can observe this, conveniently and without risk, in the slight illnesses with which we are often afflicted. I admit that there are exceptions, or cases where only the physician can help; in particular, the cure of syphilis isa triumph of medicine. However, by far the most recoveries are simply the work of nature for which the physician pockets the fee even when, in spite of his efforts, they are successful. The reputation and profits of physicians would be in a bad way if the conclusion cum hoc, ergo propter hoc [25] were not of such general application. The good patients of physicians regard their bodies as if these were clocks or other kinds of machinery; if anything goes wrong with them, they think that it can be again put right only by a mechanic. But this is not so; for the body is a self-repairing machine. Most of the major and minor disorders that occur are entirely removed automatically by the vis naturae medicatrix. Therefore let us leave this alone, and peu de medecins, peu de medecine. Sed est medicus consolatio animi. [26]

§ 100

I explain in the following way the necessity of the metamorphosis of insects. The metaphysical force underlying the phenomenon of so tiny a creature is so small that it cannot simultaneously carry out the different functions of animal life. It must, therefore, divide these up in order successively to fulfil that which with the higher animals takes place simultaneously. It accordingly divides the insect life into two halves; in the first, the larval condition, it manifests itself as the force of reproduction, nourishment, plasticity. The immediate object of this larval life is merely the production of the chrysalis; but as the interior of this is quite fluid, it can be regarded as a second egg from which the future imago will emerge. Thus the whole purpose of the larval iife is the preparation of the humours from which the imago can come. In the second half of the insect life, which is separated from the first by that egg-like state, the vital force, in itself metaphysical, manifests itself as irritability that is increased a hundredfold, in untiring flight, as greatly enhanced sensibility, in more perfect and often quite new senses, and in marvellous mechanical instincts, but principally as generative function that now appears as the ultimate aim of life. On the other hand, nutrition is greatly diminished and sometimes even suspended altogether, whereby life has assumed a wholly ethereal character. And so this complete change and separation of the functions of life exhibit to a certain extent two animals that live successively and whose extremely varied form is in keeping with the difference of their functions. What it unites is the egg-like state of the chrysalis, the preparation of whose contents and substance was the purpose of the first animal's life. Now the predominantly plastic powers of this animal do the final thing in this chrysalis state by producing the second form. And so nature, or rather the metaphysical element underlying her, carries out in two stages with these animals that which would be too much for her in one; she divides her work. Accordingly, we see that metamorphosis is most complete where the separation of the functions appears to be most definite, for instance in the case of the lepidoptera. Thus many caterpillars eat in a day twice their own weight of food; many butterflies, on the other hand, and also many other insects, eat nothing at all in the fully developed state, for example, the butterfly of the silkworm, and many others. Metamorphosis is incomplete, on the other hand, in the case of those insects where nutrition proceeds apace, even in the fully developed state, for instance in the case of crickets, locusts, bugs, and others.

§ 101

The phosphorescent light in the sea which is peculiar to almost all gelatinous radiata (radiares mollasses), like the illumination of phosphorus itself, springs possibly from a slow process of combustion. In fact, the breathing of vertebrate animals is such a process which is replaced by that illumination as a respiration with the entire surface. Accordingly, it is a slow external combustion, just as the other is internal. Or possibly here too an internal combustion takes place whose luminous development becomes externally visible merely by virtue of the complete transparency of all these gelatinous animals. Here one could also boldly conjecture that all breathing with lungs or gills is accompanied by a phosphorescence and consequently that the interior of a living thorax is illuminated.

§ 102

If there were not objectively a quite definite distinction between plant and animal, the question as to what constituted this difference would have no meaning. For it would merely like to see reduced to clear concepts this difference which is understood by everyone with certainty yet without clearness. I have mentioned it in my Ethics, 'Freedom of the Will', Pt. III, and in the essay On the Principle of Sufficient Reason, § 20.

The different animal forms, wherein the will-to-live manifests itself, are related to one another as is the same idea that is expressed in different languages and in accordance with the spirit of each; and the various species of a genus may be regarded as a number of variations on the same theme. More closely considered, however, that diversity of animal forms can be deduced from the different mode of life of each species and the difference of aims arising out of this. This has been specially discussed in my essay On the Will in Nature, in the chapter 'Comparative Anatomy'. On the other hand, we cannot by any means state so definitely in particular the reasons for the variety of plant forms. I have indicated in a general way in my chief work, volume i, § 28, how far we are able to do this approximately. There is, moreover, the fact that we can teleologically explain something in plants, as for instance the blossoms of the fuchsia which hang downwards. This is because their pistil is very much longer than the stamens and so that position favours the falling and gathering of the pollen. Generally speaking, however, it may be said that in the objective world, in the representation of intuitive perception, nothing can manifest itself at all which does not have in the essence of things-in-themselves and thus in the will that underlies the phenomenon, a tendency that is precisely modified to suit. For the world as representation can furnish nothing from its own resources; but for this very reason it cannot serve up any fanciful or frivolously invented fairy-tale. The infinite variety of the forms and even colourings of plants and their blossoms must yet be everywhere the expression of a subjective essence that is just as modified; in other words, the will as thing-in-itself which manifests itself in them, must be exactly reflected through them.

For the same metaphysical reason and because the human individual's body is only the visibility of his individual will and so objectively presents this, but even his intellect or brain, as being the phenomenal appearance of his will-to-know, belongs to that same will, it must really be possible to understand and deduce not only the nature of his intellect from that of his brain and from the blood-flow that excites this, but also the whole of his moral character with all its traits and peculiarities from the more specific nature of all the rest of his corporization, thus from the texture, size, quality, and mutual relation of heart, liver, lungs, spleen, kidneys, and so on, although, of course, we shall never succeed in actually achieving this. But the possibility of doing this must exist objectively.* The following consideration may serve as a transition to this. Not only do the passions affect the different parts of the body (see World as Will and Representation, vol. ii, chap. 20); but conversely, the individual state or condition of the separate organs excites the passions and even the representations or mental pictures connected therewith. When the vesiculae seminales have a periodical excess of sperm, lewd and obscene ideas continually arise without any particular cause. We naturally think that the reason for this is purely psychic, a perverse tendency of our thoughts; but it is purely physical and ceases as soon as the above-mentioned excess is over, through the reabsorption of the sperm into the blood. Sometimes we are inclined to be angry and annoyed and to quarrel, and seriously look for the causes of this. If we find no external cause, we conjure up in our thoughts some long-forgotten annoyance in order to fret and fume over this. It is highly probable that this state is the result of an excess of bile. Sometimes we are inwardly worried and anxious without any cause and the condition persists; in our thoughts we look for objects of fear and disquietude, and readily imagine we have found them. In English they have the expression 'to catch blue devils'; [27] its source is probably the intestines, and so on.

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[b]Notes:[/b]

1 [' Spontaneous generation' (the coming into existence of living beings from inanimate matter).]

 2 ['The god from the machine'. Any person, thing, or concept artificially  introduced in order to solve some difficulty.]

 3 [From Schiller's Die Grosse der Welt.]

 4 [Pouillet, Elements de physique experimentale et de meteorologie.]

 * The hydrogen and oxygen are a mere mixture; if we ignite it, a terrific  detonation, accompanied by intense light and heat, informs us of a great and total  change that affects and strikes at the innermost essence of those two component  parts of the mixture. In fact, we at once find water as their product, a substance  differing fundamentally and in every respect from those two component parts,  but yet homogeneous through and through. We see, therefore, that the change  that occurred here was in keeping with the riotous commotion of the natural  spirits that ushered it in. Thus by the complete surrender of their own peculiar and  opposite natures, those two components of the mixture became so thoroughly  interpenetrated that they now present only one absolutely homogeneous body in  the minutest possible particle of which those two components still always remain  inseparably united so that in this body nothing remains which can be found alone  and by itself. It was, therefore, a chemical and not a mechanical process. It is only  possible with our modern Democrituses to explain this occurrence by saying that the  'atoms' (!)(sic), previously scattered in confusion, have now arranged themselves  in ranks and files, in pairs, or rather, on account of the great inequality of their  numbers, have so sorted themselves that nine nicely arranged oxygen atoms have  grouped themselves round one hydrogen atom in consequence of innate and inexplicable  tactics. The detonation had then been merely the beating of drums for  them to 'fall in', and thus really much ado about nothing. And so I say that this is nonsense, like the vibrating ether and the whole mechanical and atomistic physics of Leucippus, Democritus, and Descartes, with all their stiff, wooden explanations. It is not enough for us to know how to put the thumbscrew on nature; we must also be capable of understanding her when she speaks out; but we are far from doing so.

In general, however, if there were atoms, they would have to be without distinction and qualities, and thus not atoms of sulphur, iron, and so on, but merely atoms of matter, since differences abolish simplicity. For example, the atom of iron would necessarily contain something missing in that of sulphur, and accordingly would be not simple but compound; and generally speaking, change of quality cannot take place without change of quantity. Ergo: If atoms are possible at all, then they are conceivable only as the ultimate constituents of absolute or abstract matter, not of definite materials or elements.

* As regards the Kantian forces of repulsion and attraction, I note that the latter is not, like the former, spent and deadened in its product, namely in matter. For the force of repulsion whose function is impenetrability, can act only where a foreign body attempts to penetrate the sphere of the given body and thus not beyond this. On the other hand, it is in the nature of the force of attraction not to be abolished by the limits of a body and consequently to act even beyond the sphere of the given body; otherwise, as soon as any part of the body became detached, it would at once be withdrawn from the effect of this force. But this attracts all matter, even at a distance, since it regards everything as belonging to one body, primarily to the terrestrial body, and then farther afield. From this point of view, we can certainly regard gravity also as one of the a priori knowable properties of matter. Yet only in the closest possible contact of its parts, which we call cohesion, is the power of this attraction sufficiently concentrated for it to resist the attraction of the terrestrial body that is millions of times greater, to the extent that the parts of the given separate body do not fall in a straight line towards the terrestrial body. But if the cohesion is too weak, this happens and the body crumbles and collapses through the mere weight of its parts. This cohesion itself, however, is a mysterious state that we can bring about only through fusion and coagulation, or solution and evaporation, and thus only by transition from the fluid to the solid state.

If in absolute space (i.e. apart from all environment) two bodies approach each other in a straight line, then phoronomically it is the same thing and there is no difference whether I say A goes towards B, or vice versa; but dynamically there is a difference whether the moving cause operates or has operated on A or B; for according to this difference, the motion ceases as I check A or B. It is the same as regards circular motion; phoronomically it is all the same whether (in absolute space) the sun moves round the earth, or the earth rotates on its own axis; but dynamical(y there is the difference just mentioned and also the fact that, on the rotating body, the tangential force comes into conflict with the body's cohesion and, by virtue of that very force, the circulating body would flyaway from it unless another force tied it to the centre of its motion.

* Light can be as little explained mechanically as can the force of gravity. At first the very same attempt was made to explain this also by the impact of an ether; in fact Newton himself advanced this as a hypothesis, but soon dropped it. Leibniz, however, who did not admit gravitation, was wholly in favour of it. This is also confirmed in a letter of his in the Lettres et opuscules inedits, edited by Careil in 1854, p. 63. Descartes is the inventor of ether: 'Aether ille Cartesianus, quem EULERUS ad luminis propagandi doctrinam adornavit' ['That Cartesian ether used by Euler for the theory of the propagation of light'], says Platner in his dissertation De principio vitali, p. 17. Light undoubtedly has a certain connection with gravitation, yet indirectly and in the sense of a reflection, as its absolute opposite. It is essentially a propagating force, just as the other is contractive. Both always act in straight lines. Perhaps, in a figurative sense, light can be called the reflex of gravitation. No body can act through impact which is not at the same time heavy or ponderable. Light is an imponderable and therefore cannot act mechanically, that is through impact.

** Wind very easily blows away heat, for example the heat coming from our own bodies; but it cannot blow away light, or even shake it in any way.

 * That heat is not a rapid vibration of the parts is also clear from the well-known  fact that the colder a body is, the more rapidly it takes up the heat applied to it;  as, on the other hand, it is more difficult to set a body in motion, the more complete  its state of rest.

 * On the other hand, see Pouillet, vol. II, p. 180.

 5 [Apparently a parody by Schopenhauer on Schiller's words: Es geht ein  finstrer Geist durch unser Haus.-Piccolomini. III. 9.]

 6 ['Radiant heat'.]

 * Indeed I venture to surmise that it might be possible to explain from a similar  occurrence the everyday phenomenon that, as soon as brilliantly white paving-stones  are sprinkled with rain, they appear dark brown, in other words, they no  longer reflect light because, in its desire to evaporate, the water then at once  converts into heat all the light falling on the stones, whereas when dry, they reflect  this. But why does white polished marble not appear dark when it is sprinkled? Why not also white porcelain?

* Nevertheless, the tendency is again to regard this as very distant thunder! Poey has conducted a long dispute over lightning without thunder and thunder without lighting in the Academie des sciences, 1856-7; he states (April 1857) that even the energetic fork-lightning sometimes occurs without thunder (Analyse des hypotheses sur les eclairs sans tonnerre par Poey in the Journal des mathematiques.) In Comptes rendus, 27 October 1856, an article, written to correct another on lightning without thunder and vice versa, assumes, as a settled question and certo certius entirely without previous examination, that thunder is simply on a large scale the noise made by a spark jumping across a conductor. Sheet-lightning is for him a distant flash. In his Kosmische Physik, 1856, Joh. Muller states in his old-fashioned way that thunder is 'the vibration of the air that is agitated during the flashing out of electricity', and thus the cracking of sparks from the conductor. Thunder, however, bears no resemblance whatever to the noise of jumping electric sparks; they are as much alike as are the elephant and the fly. The difference between the two sounds is not merely quantitative but qualitative (see Birnbaum, Reich der Wolken, pp. 167, 169). On the other hand, it bears the greatest resemblance to a series of detonations which may be simultaneous and reach our ears successively merely on account of the great distance. A battery of Leiden jars?

** If, as is assumed, the clouds consist of hollow bubbles (for water vapour is really invisible), then, in order to float, these must be filled with a gas that is lighter than the atmosphere and hence either mere water vapour or hydrogen. The opposite argument on page 91 of Birnbaum's Reich der Wolken is false.

 * Inventions often occur through mere groping and testing. The theory of each is  afterwards thought out just as is the proof of an acknowledged truth.

 7 ['Set at variance and rule.']

 * Volcanoes are the safety-valves of the great steam-boiler.

* This hypothesis is fully supported by the Leslie experiment, mentioned by Pouillet, vol. i, p. 368. Thus we see the water in a vacuum freeze because evaporation deprived it even of the heat that was necessary to keep it in the fluid state.

** Humboldt (Kosmos, vol. iii, p. 460) says Sir John Herschel imagines that the temperature of the moon's surface possibly exceeds considerably that of boiling water. He explains this in his Outlines of Astronomy, 1849, § 432.

*** When sending a photograph of the moon, Father Secchi writes from Rome on 6 April 1858: tres remarquable dans la PLEINE LUNE est lefond noir des parties lisses, et le grand eclat des parties raboteuses: doit-on croire celles-ci couvertes de GLACES ou de NEIGE? ['Very remarkable in the full moon are the dark ground of the level parts and the great brilliance of the rough and uneven. Ought one to assume that the latter are covered with ice or snow?'] (See Comptes rendus, 28 April 1858.) In a very recent drama there is a passage: 'That I could clamber to the frozen moon, And draw the ladder after me!' -- poetic instinct.

8 [' Everywhere as with us'.]

* The geological events that preceded all life on earth did not exist in any consciousness at all, either in their own because they had none or in the consciousness of another because no such consciousness existed. Therefore through the lack of any subject, they had absolutely no objective existence, that is, they did not exist at all; but then what does their having existed signify? At bottom, it is merely hypothetical, namely, if a consciousness had existed in those primeval times, then such events would have appeared in it; thus far does the regressus of phenomena lead us. And so it lay in the very nature of .the thing-in-itself to manifest itself in such events.

When we say, in the beginning let there have been a luminous primordial nebula that formed itself into a sphere and started to rotate; then suppose it thus became shaped like a lens and its extreme periphery became detached in the form of a ring that was then formed into a planetary sphere, and the same process was repeated again and again-the whole Laplace cosmogony in fact; and when we add also the earliest geological phenomena up to the appearance of organic nature, then everything we say is true not in the literal sense, but is a kind of figurative language. For it is the description of phenomena that have never existed as such;  for they are spatial, temporal, and causal phenomena that, as such, can exist positively  only in the mental picture or representation of a brain. This brain has space,  time, and causality as the forms of its knowing and consequently without it, those  phenomena are impossible and have never existed; and so that description merely  states that, if a brain had existed at that time, then the aforesaid events would have  appeared in it. On the other hand, in themselves, those events are nothing but the  dull craving, devoid of knowledge, of the will-to-live for its first objectification. Now  after brains come into existence, this will must manifest itself in their range of ideas  and by means of the regressus which is necessarily produced by the forms of their  representations, as those primary cosmogonical, and geological phenomena. In this  way, these acquire for the first time their objective existence; but on this account,  the objective existence is no less in keeping with the subjective than if it had occurred  simultaneously therewith and not merely after countless thousands of years.

* Vanini intimates in his Amphitheatrum, p. 211, that Aristotle, Physics, lib. VIII, speaks of intelligences.

9 ['A first mover'.]

* Vanini, Dialogi, p. 20.

10  ['As also our countrymen Wren, Hooke, and Halley have independently concluded'.]

 * Compare Byron's Works, 1850, p. 804, the note to Don Juan, x. I; 'The  celebrated apple tree, the fall of one of the apples of which is said to have turned  the attention of Newton to the subject of gravity, was destroyed by wind about  four years ago. The anecdote of the falling apple is mentioned neither by Dr.  Stukeley nor by Mr. Conduit, so, as I have not been able to find any authority  for it whatever, I did not feel myself at liberty to use it.' Brewster's Life of Newton.  p. 344.

11 ['The narrow slit'.]

 12 ['The birth of like from like'.]

 13 ['Generation in the womb of another'.]

 14 ['Spontaneous generation in the womb of another'.]

 15 ['Nature makes no jumps.' (Law of continuity first laid down by Aristotle.)]

 * Savages are not primitive human beings any more than the wild dogs of South  America are primitive dogs. On the contrary, the latter are dogs that have run  wild and the former are men who have run wild, descendants of those who lost  their way or were shipwrecked and were of cultured stock. They were incapable of  preserving this culture among themselves.

 16 ['The clean and tidy classes'.]

 * A physical difference, not yet observed, between man and animals is that the  white of the sclerotic remains permanently visible. Captain Mathew says that this  is not the case with the bushmen now to be seen in London; their eyes are round  and do not show the white. In Goethe's case, on the contrary, the white was usually  visible, even over the iris.

 17 ['The first movable thing'; 'the first motive'.]

 18 ['The healing power of nature'.]

19 ['Even copious sleep is a burden and a misery.' (Odyssey, xv. 394.)]

20 [' Sleep's a shell, to break and spurn!' (Faust, Pt. II, Bayard Taylor's translation.)]

 21 ['Pineal gland'.]

 22 ['Sphincter of the bladder'.]

23 ['The healing power of nature'.]

* MORBUS ipse est MEDELA naturae, qua opitulatur perturbationibus organismi: ergo remedium medici medetur medelae. ['The illness itself is nature's attempt to heal whereby she comes to the aid of the organism's disorders; hence the remedy of the physician helps the attempt to heal.'-Schopenhauer's own idea in Latin.]- There is only one healing power, and this is nature; there is none in pills and ointments. At most, these can prompt nature's healing power where there is something to be done for it.

24 ['Everything that is not natural is imperfect.']

25 ['Since this, therefore because of this.']

26 ['Few doctors, little medicine. But the physician is certainly a consolation of the soul.']

* Compare § 63.

27 [Schopenhauer's own English.]

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