| | | Within the last few years, Germany has presented the | somewhat singular spectacle of a Materialistic movement | very unlike anything which had previously been observed | in its philosophical schools. | Everyone knows that, whatever amount of | Scepticism and Rationalism Germany may have produced | and fostered, it has not, since it made any appearance in | the philosophic arena, boasted of eminent thinkers | belonging to the school of La Mettrie or Cabanis. Even Gall, | the founder of Phrenology, regarded the brain as only the |

“organ” p> of the mind, and laboured very strenuously | to show that his system was not contrary to the belief in | immortality. He would have been aghast at the plain, | emphatic, and even polemical explicitness of Moleschott, | Vogt, Buchner, and others, who proclaim with Feuerbach | that immortality is a delusion. Indeed, we think it may be | stated with perfect accuracy that German philosophy, even | when most heterodox, has always been spiritualistic, until | within the last few years. Hegel and Oken may be | translated into materialism, but they would have repudiated | such translation. Feuerbach and Vogt required no | translation. They leave no hazy metaphysical equivoque | hanging over their conclusions. Their language is as | explicit as language can be. Nor is this body of scientific | professors, and a large crowd of followers, swell the ranks | of the new materialist movement. As the reader may be | disposed to doubt this statement, or to regard it as | exaggerated, we will lay before him three significant facts | indicative of the state of public feeling. | In May, 1853, Rudolph Wagner, the well-known | physiologist, wrote a letter in the Gottinger gelehrten | Anzeigen, explaining his reasons for not continuing | the series of Physiological Letters which he had | commenced. He declares that they were too unfavourably | received by the German public, although in France and | Italy they had found admirers and translators. This | reception he attributes partly to their imperfect form, but | mainly

“to the uproar and disgust”

with which his | emphatic antagonism to materialist views was expressed, | and to his own position respecting the relation of Faith and | Knowledge. | In 1854, at a congress of physiologists in Gottingen, | Wagner declared his intention of discussing the question of | a special

“soul-substance,”

or, as we should | phrase it, of an immaterial principle superadded to the | brain. The challenge was accepted by Professor Ludwig, | and the congress imagined that a debate on the oft-mooted | problem ~~ Soul or Brain? would vary their meetings. But | Wagner declined. he said he was ill, and stayed away until | Ludwig left Gottinger; and as the reporter in the | Deutsches Museum, edited by Prutz (1854, No. 47), | remarks, | Finally, the book which Karl Vogt published against | Wagner under the title of The Creed of a | Charcoal-Burner versus Science (Kohlerglaube und Wissenschaft, | 1855) not only made a

“sensation,”

but in a | few weeks reached a second edition, and was quickly | followed by other works espousing the same principles, | one of them, Kraft und Stoff, by Dr. Louis | Buchner, being addressed to the unscientific public. | These instances will suffice to show that the movement is | serious; and we have, therefore, thought it would be | interesting to our readers if some historical exposition of | the principles of this school, and some account of the | chiefs, were briefly recorded here. We are not aware that | the existence of such a movement has even been hinted at | in any other quarter; yet it is surely a phenomenon not to | be passed over in silence. Two things will strike the | observer at the outset. In the first place, the most active | and polemical of the materialists belong to the | revolutionary party in Germany. Feuerbach, Karl Vogt, and | Moleschott ~~ the three most eminent among them ~~ | belong to the extreme Left. Secondly, the real importance | and numerical strength of the school are derived from the | scientific class, which, after holding aloof for many years, | and quietly pursuing its own investigations without | reference to philosophy and religion, has been dragged | into the controversy by the ill-judged zeal of Wagner and | his followers, who insisted on con trolling the investigations | of science by the teachings of Scripture ~~ precisely as | many well-meaning but ill-advised and ill-instructed | theologians in our country have endeavoured, and still | endeavour, to thwart geology by a literal interpretation of | Genesis. | Thus the Materialistic movement may be regarded as a | protest partly against the political despotism, and partly | against the pietistic despotism, unhappily dominant in | Germany. This will account for, and in some measure | excuse, the angry vehemence and the coarse | exaggerations of Vogt and his followers. It was with the | intention of startling that Vogt uttered his famous ~~ and | absurd ~~ phrase, It was to rouse his countrymen | against what he calls the organized hypocrisy of men in | office, that he attacked the doctrines on which those men | declare the whole social edifice must rest. Philosophical | speculation is animated by political passions. The “Party of | Order” takes its stand on the Bible ~~ the revolutionary | chiefs make a Bible of Science. Bureaucracy calls in the | aid of Hengstenberg and Radowitz ~~ the

“Reds”

| fly to Feuerbach and Cabanis. To the historian, such a | movement presents many aspects of interest. The very fact | that German philosophy has left the smoke-filled | atmosphere of the study to take an active part in political | life, is significant; and it is still more so, that these imitative | Germans should have gone back to the eighteenth century | for their watchwords and their weapons. | The principal point at issue is the relation of Science to | Scripture; and the principal questions which arise from this | discussion are ~~ 1, Is there a thinking principle | independent of the brain? 2, Is the soul immortal? 3, Are | men descended from a single pair, or have the several | races of men, several origins? Into questions so vast and | so abstruse our readers will not expect us to enter here; | but, as historians, we may indicate the lines of argument | adopted, and the works in which those arguments will be | found more fully stated. | Moleschott, one of the distinguished physiologists of | Germany, in the remarkable work which he published | against Liebig (Kreislauf des Lebens, 1852) ~~ | which will be studied with profit and pleasure even by those | who will most energetically condemn the final chapters ~~ | describes, in a series of popular letters, the whole

| “circle of matter,”

from the mineral world to the | vegetable, from the vegetable to the animal, from the | animal to the psychial. Matter and Force (Kraft und | Stoff) are the only realities he admits; all the | phenomena of life and mind are phenomena dependent of | the changes of matter, and are in fact the manifestations of | those changes. In this work there is nothing but a scientific | statement of the conclusions to which he thinks a study of | nature legitimately leads. He is not polemical, or only | incidentally so, as far as his materialism is concerned. No | trace of a political tendency is visible ~~ perhaps he was | not conscious of one. The book made a great sensation, | and for two reasons ~~ it attacked Liebig with acerbity, and | often with irresistible justice; and it popularized the most | striking results of modern science. | In the same year, but later, Karl Vogt published his | Bilder aus dem Thierleben ~~ a really valuable | contribution to our zoological literature, especially the | chapter on the Salpae. Vogt holds a | distinguished place among zoologists. His researches in | embryology, especially that of the salmon tribe, have made | many forgive his virulent politics, and his

“Red”

| opinions. In this Bilder aus dem Thierleben, he | published an essay on the souls of animals, in which he | declares that animals have souls, and that men are no | more than animals. It is a flippant, fragmentary essay, quite | unworthy of so serious a subject, calculated to teach | no-one , and to disgust the majority. | Rudolph Wagner, whose various works on Physiology | have made his name European, had often combated | Vogt’s materialism; and the phrase in the essay on the | souls of animals, which declared that (the | celebrated phrase of Cabanis), was not suffered to pass | without the proper correction. Vogt had to explain that he | did not mean what he said. Indeed, he was too good a | physiologist not to know that thought can never be | regarded as a substance secreted by a gland, | as the bile is; and he declared his meaning to be no more | than what all physiologists have long held ~~ namely, that | thought is the function of which a brain is the | organ. | The strife grew bitter. At length, Wagner published a book | on Faith and Knowledge (Glauben und Wissen, 1954) | in which, besides treating many subordinate | questions, he opened what we have what called the | principal point in the present quarrel. Before, however, | continuing these historical notices, we must give our | readers some general idea of the position held by Wagner | in the above-named work; and this we shall attempt on a | future occasion.