The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological PhilosophyHaeckel, Ernst
Philosophy
The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy
Haeckel, Ernst
Biology; Evolution (Biology); Life -- Origin
The comparative anatomy, physiology, and pathology of the brain, in
concurrence with the results of ontogeny and phylogeny, have led
us to form the sound monistic principle that the human mind is a
function of the phronema, and that the neurona of the latter, or the
phronetal cells, are the real elementary organs of mental life. Hence
modern energism is perfectly justified in regarding mental energy
(in all its forms) from the same point of view as all other forms of
nervous energy, and in fact all manifestations of energy in organic
or inorganic nature. Fechner's psychophysics had already shown that a
part of this nervous energy is measurable and mathematically reducible
to the mechanical laws of physics (_Riddle_, chapter vi.) Ostwald
has, in his _Natural Philosophy_, lately emphasized the fact that all
the manifestations of mental life, not only sensation and will, but
even thought and consciousness, can be reduced to nervous energy.
Hence we may distinguish what are called mental forces from the other
expressions of nervous energy as _phronetic energy_. The monistic
research of Ostwald on the energy-processes in mental life (chapter
xviii.), consciousness (chapter xix.), and will (chapter xx.) is very
notable, and confirms the views I advanced in the second part of the
_Riddle_ (chapters vi., x., and xi.). Ostwald has, however, caused
some misunderstanding by insisting on substituting his idea of energy
for the pure notion of substance (as Spinoza had formulated it), and
by rejecting the other attribute of substance, matter. His supposed
"Refutation of Materialism" is a mere attack on windmills; his energism
(the consistent dynamism of Leibnitz, etc.) is just as one-sided as its
apparent opposite, the consistent materialism of Democritus, Holbach,
etc. The latter makes matter precede force; the former regards matter
as the product of force. Monism escapes the one-sidedness of both
systems, and, as hylozoism, refuses to separate the two attributes of
substance, space-filling matter and active energy. This applies to
mental life just as to any other natural process; our mental forces or
phronetic energies are just as much bound up with the neuroplasm, the
living plasm of the neurona in the cortex, as the mechanical energy
of our muscles is with the contractile myoplasm, the living muscular
substance.
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