Part 13

The greatness of this statement lies in its truly scientific exactitude, in its purely mechanistic apprehension of things. Just as the physicist, when he speaks of force and mass, intentionally eliminates everything of the actual--he simply cannot work until first all that is actual is eliminated, and pure relation-values established--so Darwin eliminates everything actual and sets to work with pure relation-values. Otherwise put: His teaching is nothing but a new system of measurement for actuality; and his greatness consists in this, that he was the first to take biology and apply to it the methods of the physicist. He it was who first approached the biological facts from the standpoint of differences of tension, differences of potentiality. His doctrine of the survival of the fittest is simply a kind of biological measure of force. What would one say of a man who made it a matter of reproach in connection with a yard-stick that it did not also at the same time indicate the nature and origin of the object measured by it? Only when it is independent of all such questions can anything serve as a standard of measurement. Where would the physicist find himself were he to say, “I will not concern myself with forces until I really know what force is?” He does not wish to know what force is. Were one to tell him he would stop his ears. He wants to make use of force, to be able to measure it; nothing more. In the same way Darwin does not in the least want to know and tell what living beings are. Should one say, “They are from God,” another, “They are from the devil,” he, Darwin, happens to be of the former opinion; but that has nothing to do with the problem before him. As the physicist lays hold of the pendulum in its swing and says, “If now I let it go, such and such phenomena must occur,” so Darwin--figuratively speaking of course--lays hold of the biological pendulum and says, “If now I let it go, this and this must happen.” The physicist so arranges his preliminary conditions that he can measure what occurs, and so also does Darwin. As the physical resultant is measured in the form of work, so Darwin measures the biological resultant in the form of the law of the survival of the fittest. Previous to him, biology stood much on the same level as the Ptolemaic universe which is based solely upon observation. Observation indeed permits of measurements of mass but not of measurements of force. At one bound Darwin leaps to an apprehension and treatment of biology strictly after the fashion of energetics, and thereby makes good his claim to rank with Robert Mayer and his successors. Comprehension, science, can only be carried on where there is flux, where there is change. It is the glory of the Darwinian theory that it sufficiently fluidized for thought, the world of living beings, broke up the rigid conception of species, the belief in single acts of creation, as to render them accessible to a physical mode of apprehension; the which always amounts to a mechanistic mode, to a falling, even where it calls itself the mode of energetics. His theory of natural selection is, in the strictest sense of the words, a liquidation of the inventory of antiquated ideas. But be it well noted: like the greatness of every mechanistic view, the greatness of the Darwinian thought resides in its purely re-active quality, in the fact that it only furnishes biological relation-values.

I incline to look upon the reception and interpretation which the Darwinian teaching has received at the hands of science as one of the hugest jokes world-history--taken in the biological, not the historical sense--has ever indulged in at the expense of the human mind. It is more than a joke; it is a stroke of wit! In all seriousness men wrangle as to whether Darwin’s doctrine is true or false; which is the same as if they disputed, for example, about the truth or falsity of the decimal system. Men find that the longer the theory of natural selection is tested, the more frequently does it fail them; which is the same as if a man bent upon measuring everything regardless of distinctions with a yard-stick, should find, the longer he proceeds, an ever increasing number of things that do not admit of being measured by such a scale. In fine, men so comport themselves, that oftentimes one could almost wish to live sufficiently long to hear the helpless laughter of posterity. And, with it all, what erudition!

It is unfailingly interesting and instructive to observe the difference between biology and physics. In the latter is found a sort of well-bred _savoir vivre_, a clear perception of the relativity of all knowledge-values--Pontius Pilate’s query translated with all the refinements of mechanistics into physicist phraseology. In the former, in modern monism, is heard the droning, “A mighty stronghold is our God,” sung in unison by shepherd and sheep; wherein, to be sure, by the word “God” one does not mean that jealous God who visits the sins of the fathers upon the children, but that abstract creature of air, “the law of evolution” which in retrospective wise, seeks to avenge the follies of the children upon the fathers.

Yet once more be it said, The doctrine of the evolution of life out of one primordial form to forms that mount by degrees ever higher and higher, is of purely symbolical significance, as indeed every law is of purely symbolical significance, inasmuch as it furnishes nothing save the possibility of grouping together in one definite connection a large, nay, a limitless number of phenomena.

Of course men point to the fact that modern biology is able to bring about actual and genuine modifications in living creatures. Nothing is further from my intention than to call in question the facts connected with breeding. Daily life sufficiently proves them, and the laboratory demonstrates them under a variety of elegant and surprising forms. But what does one breed? One breeds peculiar conditions under which some life-process or other runs its course--never by any means the process itself--in the selfsame way that the physicist “breeds” the sunbeam as a spectrum, as a polarised ray, as interference, and so forth. Never yet has breeding brought about the transmutation of one life-form into another higher in the scale of being.

Now comes the moment when the evolution theorist plays out his last and highest trump. “Very good!” he says. “Let it be that in consequence of our hitherto still defective technique we have not yet succeeded in transmuting one species into a higher, nevertheless, in the facts that have been grouped together under the name of the fundamental biogenetic law and in rudimentary formations, Nature shows us that she herself has actually come this way.”

Of a surety the Buddha knew of no fundamental biogenetic law, probably also had no idea of so-called rudimentary formations; but I simply cannot imagine anything that more conclusively proves the truth of his thought than these same facts. For, to him who has learned of the Buddha, these facts do not say that which the modern biologist imputes to them; they testify to the existence of _actual_ associations between living beings right down into what we call the lowest stages. They bring immediately before our eyes the competency of human Kamma to find foothold outside the human kingdom also. As a traveller bears about with him this and the other trace of the dirt of the roads along which he has journeyed, so does the embryo in the various stages of its development exhibit the traces of Samsāra, demonstrate its power to take hold in the heights and in the deeps, exactly according as its Kamma is attuned, and demonstrate also that it _has taken_ hold in the heights and deeps, exactly according as its Kamma _was_ attuned. The embryonal forms show--to use the language of physics--the tremendous amplitude of vibration of the _I_-process. They show _that we all eat out of the one dish_.

I am quite prepared to find interpretations such as these evoke nothing but merriment among orthodox men of science. But I address myself as little to the slaves of science as to the slaves outside it. I address myself to men who think with sufficient independence and possess sufficient sense of actuality to allow facts to have unbiassed weight with them.

The following is also worthy of consideration:--

The fundamental biogenetic law, as interpreted by Haeckel is a complete contradiction of the very nature of the theory of Natural Selection. Like every purely scientific mode of envisaging things, the latter comes in on an unaccented beat, so to speak. It starts out with a given difference of potentiality, with respect to which one does nothing but observe the symptoms furnished by the process of compensation; refraining, however, from every interpretation of how these differences could ever have arisen. In the interpretation of the evolutionist, on the other hand, the facts upon which the fundamental biogenetic law is based of necessity point in the direction of a first beginning; they converge upon the idea of the “setting in of life.” Hence they constrain to a scientific form of faith, which necessitates acrimonious warfare against the church-form of the same, if one cannot agree that the primordial cell, existing all complete, and the “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” may be regarded simply as different attempts at the definition of one and the same occurrence. It is the feud betwixt dog and wolf. In the dusk they might pass for mates, were it not that each is busy trying to take a bite out of the other’s throat. But, like all atheists from the most ancient times, modern monism, too, forgets that to challenge the _bon dieu_ to single combat is, as politicians would say, to “recognize him in principle,” and that at bottom this duel can be nothing but a _modus vivendi_ for both parties.

Darwin’s original position entirely obviates such a strait as this. It is, as all science should be, strictly a-moral. With disconcerting--or if one likes, refreshing--coolness, the biological pieces are set up on the cosmic chess-board, and a game begun. The first move of the opening is already made, and now move after move follows of simple necessity. Where, for example, Darwin speaks of the cuckoo’s instinct, he makes no attempt to account for the same by itself. He rather begins, “Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird’s nest ...” and so on;[26] which simply means: the game is already in full swing, and so one move follows from the other.

Darwin might be called the grand master of the art of biological chess. Nothing was further from his mind--originally at least--than turning the game to earnest; from the fact that a biological game is in progress, to seek to deduce an answer to the question as to _how_ such a thing could ever have come about. That would only mean spoiling the whole game. And as a matter of fact, by none has it been more completely spoiled for him than by his own followers. To them it is that Bunge’s words are directed: “The Darwinians teach that everything is cleared up, that only the riddle of heredity yet remains to be solved. But it is precisely this riddle of heredity which makes up the riddle the Darwinians imagine they have explained. What, then, is inherited? In the case of man there is inherited the capacity to evolve a man out of a cell. For as long as one remains unable to solve this riddle--the riddle of ontogeny--one remains still less able to solve the riddle of phylogeny.”[27]

Darwin himself so chose his position that at all times he could look his God in the face. The unalleviated insipidity of his position is precisely the proof of the exact scientific form in which he--the first to do so--laid hold of the biological problem. But in this mode of laying hold of it, the fundamental biogenetic law with its various perspectives has no place whatever.

But neither do the rudimentary formations admit of being read by the Darwinian formula. They must have arisen through persistent disuse. In the mechanistic world-view, however, an arising through disuse is a sheer contradiction. Every disuse implies the presence of an arbitrary impulsion. In the strictly mechanistic apprehension of things, the whole universe in each of its impulsions is to be apprehended as the relapse of some other impulsion, that is, as process of compensation; and every deficiency of activity in this never-resting process of compensation, practically as well as theoretically, would be a miracle. As in the mechanical cosmogony of the physicist, so also in the Darwinian cosmogony, the single active impulsion in the whole mechanism remains the diversity given with the various forms of life; and as above the physical, so also here the biological event becomes simply the compensation of these countless single diversities. Hence every theory of disuse is synonymous with the introduction of a foreign, non-mechanical impulsion.

The Darwinian formula lays hold of the phenomena of life only in a certain medial tract. Somewhat as a scale of temperature-measurement lays hold of the phenomena of heat only in a certain medial tract, and above and below that tract is of no service, so the theory of natural selection is of no service as regards the fundamental biogenetic law on the one hand, and the rudimentary formations on the other.

The third and weightiest consideration, however, is this, that the fact of the formation of hybrids lies neither above nor below the scale, but altogether outside of it; following our metaphor, to apply the Darwinian idea to them would mean to seek somehow to apply the heat-scale to electric or magnetic phenomena. So soon as the evolution theory attempts to bring the fact of the formation of hybrids within its sphere of operation, it annihilates the possibility of its own existence. Natural selection is only possible in self-copulation. A self-copulation to the point of sterility is a contradiction in itself; hence Darwin himself is here obliged to have recourse to unknown impulsions. “The general sterility of crossed species may safely be looked at, not as a special acquirement or endowment, but as incidental on changes of an unknown nature in their sexual elements.”[28] Again, “The extinction of species has been involved in the most gratuitous mystery.... We need not wonder at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the existence of each species depends.”[29] This, however, means nothing but putting the question, “Who says we have a right to inquire into everything?” And that, again, means nothing but to be a good Christian.

That, of course, is not the slightest disparagement to the teaching, so long as one takes it for what it really is--a standard of measurement for the facts, a formula by means of which one may more easily express them. It would be passing sentence of death upon it, as also upon the law of the conservation of energy, if, apprehending it in childish wise, one interpreted it as a genuine world-conception, as a law that should not merely supply a _reading_ of the facts, but account for these facts themselves.

When modern biology inclines to set aside the Darwinian teaching in favour of the more novel theories of mutation, it is acting like that countryman who bought himself a pair of spectacles, expecting them not only to make print clear to his eyes but also teach him how to read, and who then made complaint that the glasses did not do their duty. The theory of natural selection, as well as every other theory, may be likened to reading-glasses. It reveals the facts in such a way as to lighten the labour for weakly eyes, but it does not teach one to understand the facts themselves. And as with glasses, so with theories; one has to change them, on an average, every five years.

But let us return to our subject proper.

Here also the Buddha supplies a single concept in the place of two miracles. That to which science gives the name of rudimentary organs are here not the results of continuous disuse--once more I ask, how in a purely mechanical apprehension of things disuse can ever set in at all--but, precisely the same as the facts of the fundamental biogenetic law, they are witnesses to a beginningless journey up and down throughout the entire domain of living creatures. In the place of the double miracle--a threatened absolute beginning in the facts of the fundamental biogenetic law, and a threatened absolute end in the fact of rudimentary organs--one single concept! And the formation of hybrids is here robbed of all its danger. Beings are neither heirs of their progenitors nor bequeathers to their posterity; they are heirs of themselves.

In such a mode of apprehending life, that which we basely and vulgarly call co-ition acquires a meaning of its own. Again there is that delicate irony that comes only of commanding height of position. The intercourse of the sexes is only the _attempt_ at co-ition, at coming together. In plain truth, both man and woman are nothing but the surrogates of nature, which makes use of them in order to render possible the real co-ition, the conflux of Kamma and its material. Hence, species and sub-species count for nothing. Such a “something” as species is nowhere to be found in actuality. It is nothing but a way of apprehending the phenomena of life.

It may be rejoined, “But as a matter of fact beings are so constituted as to admit of their being grouped together into species. This is so in the scientific apprehension of things, where the new being is exclusively derived from the material of the parents, in accordance with nature. But in the Buddhistic apprehension of things, there is no reason whatever why two living beings, so far as form is concerned, should be like one another at all.”

To this, reply may be made, Two living beings exactly alike as to form are not to be found. Groupings, of no matter what kind, are always matters of accommodation; which means that they are only made possible by the neglecting of trifling divergencies. The fool in _King Lear_, informing us why the Pleiades has seven stars, says, “Because there are not eight of them.” There are not eight of them, however, not because an eighth is not there, but just because we leave out the remainder, do not count them in. So also is it with species. Of course, I am never in any doubt as to what it is that I name man, dog, cow, and so forth, for these concepts have first been settled by myself. But as that which I comprehend with my horizon changes content at every step I take, so also do the concepts man, dog, and so forth. Everything is comprehended in an uninterrupted self-accommodation, self-attunement, each after other, that only runs its course with sufficient sluggishness, provisionally to render possible and justify the groupings of natural science in order to better understanding. To ask why precisely there are the forms that there are, is to ask why in general there is anything given at all. It simply is so! The question would have some meaning were stationary forms here present from eternity and to eternity. But all these forms are nothing but a perpetual forming itself into itself from beginninglessness down to the present moment. To say that there is a world, a reality at all, is to say that there _must_ be resemblances. Otherwise a self-attunement of energy and material were utterly impossible. The resemblances, and therewith in the second place the possibility of classific syntheses are real and conceptual _preliminary condition_ of all actuality--yea, actuality itself.

Another objection which every thinking man must make is one that out of prudence is raised by the theory of descent itself. It is this: “How can the theory of a gradual unbroken ascent in the evolutional series be reconciled with the simultaneous existence of the lowest alongside of the highest forms?” Here the theory of descent is unable even to make an attempt at a satisfactory explanation. Darwin himself on this point says, “Such objections as the above would be fatal to my view, if it included advance in organization as a necessary contingent.”[30] This declaration throws a flood of clearest light upon Darwin’s whole attitude towards the theory of evolution, and at the same time upon the arbitrariness with which he has been interpreted by his followers.

Now let us consider the other side. The Buddha-thought, regarded from the physiological position, is based upon the insight that every living being is a singly determined existence. The question is, Are there facts in nature which would contradict this one and single determination?

I confine myself to the most promising instance, that of the amœba multiplying themselves by fission. This fact, interpreted according to science, would mean that here energy divides itself, exists alongside itself, since Weismann says that at the moment of partition neither of the two cells, if “endowed with self-consciousness,” could say which was mother and which daughter. “I have no doubt that each half would look upon the other as the daughter, and itself as the original individual,” he says in his _Dauer des Lebens_.

Were there any real necessity to compel such an interpretation, then the single determination of energies would be riddled through and through. But there is no compelling necessity, nay, nor even possibility, of interpreting what happens after such a fashion. One is equally entitled to say that in the sundered sections a new energy lays hold. That this daughter-section continues its movements without a break is no proof of the orthodox conception of what takes place. The human sperm-cell, after its expulsion from the old organism, also for a longer time retains its own particular movements. It works itself towards the ovum against the vibratory movements of the epithelium; thus, so to speak, against the stream.

Incidentally it may be remarked that this fact alone, interpreted according to physiology, would give rise to a difficulty that must render insoluble the entire problem of fecundation. For this movement of the sperm-cell renders necessary the question, “When precisely does the actual moment of fecundation occur? Is it at the first signs of conception? or at the moment when the sperm-cell penetrates the sheath of the ovum? or at the moment of their first mutual contact? or has not fecundation already virtually set in with this endeavour of the sperm-cell to get to the ovum-cell?” One might then inquire, after the fashion of jurists: “At what moment precisely is the deed born? Is it when I carry it out? or when I get ready to carry it out? or when I form the resolve to carry it out?” Such are the difficulties that arise when one seizes the problem of procreation in a purely materialistic way. And one is bound to seize it in a purely materialistic way if one would seize it scientifically.

A single fact which contradicts the unique determination of a living being is not to be found, and never can be found. For this, it would be necessary that energy itself should be accessible, seizable by sense; and that is a contradiction in itself. One energy only is accessible--my consciousness. And this is _the_ uniquely determined.