The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the HourMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Christianity; Church history; Logos (Christian theology); Logos (Philosophy); Religion
With this I believe I have cleared up and refuted one of the objections
that my correspondents made, at any rate to the best of my ability.
Whoever is convinced that each individual, be it fish or bird, springs
from its own cell, knows _ipso facto_ that a human cell, however
undistinguishable it may be to the human eye from the cell of a catarrhine
ape, could never have been the cell of an ape. And what is true
ontogenetically, is of course true phylogenetically. For myself this
inquiry into the simian origin of man never had any great interest; I even
doubt whether the Horseherd would have laid great stress upon it. His
champions, however, plainly consider it one of the principal and
fundamental questions on which our whole view of the world must be
erected. In my opinion so little depends on our covering of flesh, that as
I have often said, I should instantly acknowledge an ape that could speak,
that is, think in concepts, as a man and brother, in spite of his hide, in
spite of his tail, in spite of his stunted brain. We are not that which is
buried or burned. We are not even the cell, but the inhabitant of the
cell. But this leads me to new questions and objections, which have been
made by the representatives and successors of the Horseherd, and to which
I hope to reply on some other occasion, assuming that my own somewhat
dilapidated cell holds out so long against wind and rain.
F. MAX MÜLLER.
FRASCATI, April, 1897.
CHAPTER IV.
Language And Mind
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