Monism as Connecting Religion and Science | Page 6

atoms is their chemical affinity--their tendency to apply themselves to one another and combine into small groups in an orderly fashion. These fixed groups (fixed, that is to say, under the present physical conditions of existence of the earth) of primitive atoms are the atoms of the elements--the well-known "indivisible" atoms of chemistry. The qualitative, and, so far as our present empirical knowledge goes, unchangeable distinctions of our chemical elements are therefore solely conditioned by the varying number and disposition of the similar primitive atoms of which they are composed. Thus, for example, the atom of carbon (the real "maker" of the organic world) is in all probability a tetrahedron made up of four primitive atoms.
After Mendelejeff and Lothar Meyer had discovered (1869) the "periodic law" of the chemical elements, and founded on it a "natural system" of these elements, this important advance in theoretical chemistry was subsequently put to profitable use by Gustav Wendt from an evolutionary point of view. He endeavoured to show that the various elements are products of evolution or of historically originating combinations of seven primary elements, and that these last again are historical products of one single primitive element This hypothetical original matter had been already designated by Crookes, in his Genesis of the Elements, as primary material or protyl.[10] The empirical proof of the existence of this original matter lying at the foundation of all ponderable material is perhaps only a question of time. Its discovery would probably realise the alchemists' hope of being able to produce gold and silver artificially out of other elements. But then arises the other great question: "How is this primary mass related to the cosmic ether? Do these two original substances stand in fundamental and eternal antithesis to one another? Or was it the mobile ether itself, perhaps, that originally engendered the heavy mass?"[11]
In answer to this great and fundamental question, various physical hypotheses have been put forward. But, like the various atomic theories of chemistry, they have not as yet been clearly established, and the same appears to me to be the case also with the ingenious hypothesis which the lecturer has unfolded to us with reference to the Influence of Space. As he himself rightly says, in all these endeavours after a philosophy of nature we are still, for the present, dealing with "scientific articles of faith," concerning the validity of which different persons, according to their subjective judgment and stage of culture, may have widely divergent views. I believe that the solution of these fundamental questions still lies as yet beyond the limits of our knowledge of nature, and that we shall be obliged, for a long time yet to come, to content ourselves with an "Ignoramus"--if not even with an "Ignorabimus."
The case is very different, however, if we turn from these atomistic element hypotheses and direct our attention to the historical conditions of the evolution of the world, as these have been revealed to us by the magnificent advances in our knowledge of nature which have been made within the last thirty years. An immense new territory has here been opened up to us in the realms of knowledge--a territory in which a series of most important problems, formerly held to be insoluble, has been answered in the most surprising manner.[12]
Among the triumphs of the human mind the modern doctrine of evolution takes a foremost place. Guessed at by Goethe a hundred years ago, but not expressed in definite form until formulated by Lamarck in the beginning of the present century, it was at last, thirty years ago, decisively established by Charles Darwin, his theory of selection filling up the gap which Lamarck in his doctrine of the reciprocal influence of heredity and adaptation had left open. We now definitely know that the organic world on our earth has been as continuously developed, "in accordance with eternal iron laws," as Lyell had in 1830 shown to be the case for the inorganic frame of the earth itself; we know that the innumerable varieties of animals and plants which during the course of millions of years have peopled our planet are all simply branches of one single genealogical tree; we know that the human race itself forms only one of the newest, highest, and most perfect offshoots from the race of the Vertebrates.
An unbroken series of natural events, following an orderly course of evolution according to fixed laws, now leads the reflecting human spirit through long aeons from a primeval chaos to the present "order of the cosmos." At the outset there is nothing in infinite space but mobile elastic ether, and innumerable similar separate particles--the primitive atoms--scattered throughout it in the form of dust; perhaps these are themselves originally "points of condensation" of the vibrating "substance," the remainder of which constitutes the ether.