Part 2 of 4
79a
Every cloud has a contractility; it must be held together by some internal force, so that it does not entirely disintegrate and dissolve into the atmosphere. Now such a force may be electrical, or mere cohesion, gravitation, or something else. But the more active and effective this force is, the more firmly does it tie up from within the cloud which thus receives a sharper contour and generally a more massive appearance. This is the case with the cumulus, and rain is unlikely; rain clouds, on the other hand, have blurred contours. With regard to thunder, I have hit upon a hypothesis which is very bold and may perhaps be called extravagant. I myself am not convinced of it, and yet I cannot make up my mind to set it aside, but will submit it to those who are mainly concerned with physics, so that they may first test the possibility of the thing. If this were once settled, its reality could hardly be doubted. We are still not quite clear about the immediate cause of thunder, since current explanations are inadequate, especially when, with the cracking of a spark from a conductor, we conjure up in our minds the loud report of thunder. And so we might venture to put forward the bold and even reckless hypothesis that the electrical tension in the cloud electrolyses water, that the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen thus formed produces little bubbles from the remaining part of the cloud, and that these are afterwards ignited by the electric spark. The loud report of thunder corresponds exactly to such a detonation and the heavy downpour that often immediately follows a violent thunder-clap could also be explained in this way. Electric shocks in the cloud without previous electrolysis of the water would be sheet lightning and generally lightning without thunder.*
H. Scoutetten delivered a memoire sur l' electricite atmospherique before the Academie des Sciences, an extract of which appeared in the Comptes rendus of 18 August 1856. Relying on experiments he had conducted, he states that the vapour that rises from water and plants during sunlight and forms clouds, consists of microscopically small bubbles whose content is electrified oxygen and whose envelope is water. Of the hydrogen that corresponds to this oxygen he says nothing. But at any rate, here we should have had to assume in the cloud the one element of the explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen even without an electrolysis of water.**
During the electrolysis of the atmospheric water into two gases, a great deal of heat necessarily becomes latent. From the resultant cold it might be possible to explain hail that is still so problematical; it occurs most frequently as the accompaniment of a thunder-storm as is seen on page 138 of the Reich der Wolken. Naturally, it arises only in consequence of a complicated set of circumstances, and therefore rarely. Here we see only the source of the cold that is required to freeze raindrops in the hot summer season.
§ 80
No branch of knowledge impresses the masses so much as does astronomy. Accordingly, astronomers, who for the most part have mere calculating minds and are in other respects of second-rate ability, as is usually the case with such men, frequently assume very great airs with their' sublimest of all the sciences', and so on. Even Plato ridiculed these claims of astronomy and recalled the fact that what looks upwards is not exactly what is called sublime (Republic, lib. VII, pp. 156, 157, ed. Bip.). The almost idolatrous worship enjoyed by Newton, especially in England, is beyond all belief. Even quite recently in The Times he was called 'the greatest of human beings' and in another article of the same paper the attempt was made to console us again by assuring us that after all he was only human! In 1815 (according to an account in the weekly publication The Examiner and reprinted in the Galignani of 11 January 1853), one of Newton's teeth was sold to a peer for £730 who had it set in a ring, a circumstance that reminds one of the Buddha's sacred tooth. This ludicrous veneration of the great arithmetician is now due to the fact that people take as the measure of his merit the magnitude of the masses whose motion he traced to their laws and these to the natural force that operates in it. (Moreover, this was not even his discovery but Robert Hooke's, which he merely authenticated by calculation.) Otherwise, it is inconceivable why more veneration is due to him than to anyone else who traces given effects to the manifestation of a definite force of nature, and why, for example, Lavoisier should not be just as highly esteemed. On the contrary, the problem of explaining given phenomena from many kinds of co-operating natural forces, and even of discovering such forces from these phenomena, is much more difficult than is the one that has to consider only two such simply and uniformly operating forces as gravitation and inertia in non-resisting space. It is precisely on this incomparable simplicity or scantiness of its material that the mathematical certainty, trustworthiness, and precision of astronomy rest, by virtue whereof it astonishes the world through its ability to announce the existence even of planets that have not yet been seen. This may have been admirable, yet, when closely considered, it is only the same intellectual operation that is carried out every time we determine a cause, as yet unseen, from its effect that now manifests itself. It is the same operation that was carried out to an even more admirable degree by that connoisseur of wine who, from a glass of wine, knew with certainty that there must be leather in the barrel. This was denied until after the barrel was finally emptied when a key was found lying at the bottom with a small leather strap attached. The intellectual operation here occurring is the same as that taking place in the discovery of Neptune, and the difference is merely in the application and thus in the object; it differs merely in the substance, certainly not in the form. Daguerre's invention, on the other hand, unless perhaps it was due largely to chance, as some assert, so that Arago had afterwards to think out the theory,* is a hundred times more ingenious than the much admired discovery of Leverrier. But as I have said, the awe of the crowd is due to the magnitude of the masses in question and to the immense distances. I would like to take this opportunity to say that many physical and chemical discoveries can be of incalculable value and benefit to the whole human race, whereas it needed very little wit to make them, so little that occasionally chance alone performed the function thereof. And so there is a great difference between the intellectual and material values of such discoveries.
From the point of view of philosophy, we might compare astronomers to those who attend the performance of a great opera. Without allowing themselves to be diverted by the music or the contents of the piece, they merely pay attention to the machinery of the decorations and are so pleased when they find out all about its working and the sequence of its operations.
§ 81
The signs of the zodiac are mankind's family coat of arms; for they are found as the same pictures and in the same order among the Hindus, Chinese, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and so on, and there is some dispute as to their origin. Ideler, Ueber den Ursprung des Thierkreises, 1838, does not venture to give a decision as to where it was first found. Lepsius asserted that it first occurs on monuments between Ptolemaic and Roman times. But Uhlemann, Grundzuge der Astronomie und Astrologie der Alten, besonders der Aegypter, 1857, states that the signs of the zodiac are found even in the royal tombs of the sixteenth century B.C.
§ 82
In regard to the Pythagorean harmony of the spheres, we should work out what chord would result if we grouped and combined a sequence of tones in proportion to the different velocities of the planets, so that Neptune provided the bass and Mercury the soprano. In this connection, see Scholia in Aristotelem, collegit Brandis, p. 496.
§ 83
According to the present state of our knowledge and as Leibniz and Buffon have also maintained, it seems that the earth was once in a state of intense heat and fusion and in fact still is, since only its surface has cooled and hardened. Before this it was, therefore, like everything intensely hot, also luminous. As the large planets were also luminous and for an even longer period, the sun at that time must have been represented by the astronomers of more remote and ancient worlds as a double, threefold, or even fourfold star. Now the cooling of the earth's surface occurs so slowly that not the slightest increase in this respect is noticeable in historic times; in fact according to Fourier's calculations, such cooling no longer takes place to any appreciable extent, since just as much heat as is radiated yearly by the earth is received back by it from the sun. Therefore, in the volume of the sun which is 1,384,472 times that of the earth and of which the earth was once an integral part, the cooling down must take place the more gradually in proportion to this difference in volume, although without compensation from outside. Accordingly, the radiance and heat of the sun are then explained from the fact that it is still in the condition in which the world once was; but their decline proceeds far too slowly for its influence to be felt even after thousands of years. That its atmosphere should really be luminous might be explained indeed from the sublimation of the hottest parts. The same holds good of the fixed stars; of these the double stars are those that have planets still in a state of self-luminosity. In consequence of this assumption, however, all incandescence would gradually be extinguished and, after billions of years, the whole world would inevitably be submerged in cold rigidity and darkness; unless in the meantime new fixed stars condense from the luminous nebula, and thus another kalpa is ushered in.
§ 84
The following teleological consideration could be deduced from physical astronomy.
The time necessary to cool or heat a body in a medium of different temperature increases rapidly in proportion to the size of the body; accordingly, Buffon attempted to calculate this in respect of the different masses of the planets which were assumed to be hot; yet in our day this has been done more thoroughly and successfully by Fourier. We see this on a small scale in glaciers that no summer is capable of melting, and even in the ice in a cellar where a sufficiently large mass of it is kept. Incidentally, divide et impera [7] would appear to have its best illustration in the effect of summer heat on ice.
The four large planets receive extremely little heat from the sun; for example, according to Humboldt, the illumination on Uranus is only 1/368 of that received by the earth. Consequently, for the maintenance of life on their surface they are dependent entirely on their internal heat, whereas the earth depends almost entirely on the external heat coming from the sun, if one can rely on Fourier's calculations according to which the effect of the very intense heat of the earth's interior on its surface amounts to only a minimum. With the sizes of the four major planets, varying as they do from eighty to thirteen hundred times that of the earth, the time necessary for their cooling down is now incalculably long. Within historic times, we have not the slightest trace of a cooling of the earth that is so small in comparison with the major planets. This was most ingeniously demonstrated by a Frenchman from the fact that, in relation to the earth's rotation, the moon does not move more slowly than it did in the earliest times of which we have information. Thus if the earth had become any cooler, it would necessarily have contracted to that extent, in which case an acceleration of its rotation would have arisen, whereas the motion of the moon remained unaltered. According to this, it seems exceedingly appropriate that the major planets are remote from the sun, the minor, on the other hand, are nearer, and the smallest nearest of all. For these will gradually lose their internal heat, or at any rate will become so thickly encrusted, that such heat no longer penetrates to the surface;* and so they need the external source of heat. As the mere fragments of an exploded planet, the asteroids are something entirely fortuitous and abnormal and so are not considered here. But, of course, in and by itself, this accident is gravely antiteleological. Let us hope the catastrophe took place before the planet was inhabited. Nevertheless, we know of nature's lack of consideration; I cannot vouch for anything. Now this extremely probable hypothesis, which was advanced by Olbers, is again being questioned and the reasons for this may be just as much theological as astronomical.
However, for the proposed teleology to be complete, the four major planets would have to be so arranged that the largest was the farthest from, and the smallest the nearest to, the sun; but in point of fact the reverse is rather the case. It might also be urged that their mass is much lighter and thus less dense than that of the minor planets, yet this is not nearly enough to account for the enormous difference in size. Perhaps it is so merely in consequence of their internal heat.
The obliquity of the ecliptic is the object of quite special teleological admiration, since without it no seasonal changes would occur, but perpetual spring would reign on earth. Therefore fruits could never ripen and thrive, and consequently the earth could not be inhabited everywhere almost as far as the poles; and so the physico-theologians see in the obliquity of the ecliptic the wisest of all provisions and the materialists the happiest of all accidents. This admiration, with which Herder in particular is inspired (Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte, vol. i, chap. 4), is, however, on closer consideration, a little ingenuous. For if eternal spring reigned as suggested, the plant world would certainly not have failed to adapt its nature accordingly, so that a less intense heat, albeit always constant and equable, would be suitable to it, just as the now fossilized flora of the primeval world were adapted to an entirely different state of the planet and flourished marvellously during it, no matter in what way this was caused.
That on the moon no atmosphere is discernible through refraction is a necessary consequence of its small mass that amounts to only 1/88 that of our planet. Accordingly, it exerts so small a force of attraction that our atmosphere placed on it would retain only 1/88 of its density. Consequently, it could not produce any noticeable refraction and would inevitably be just as feeble and impotent in other respects.
Here may be the place for a hypothesis concerning the lunar surface, for I cannot make up my mind to discard it, although I am well aware of the difficulties to which it is exposed; I regard it only as a daring conjecture and offer it as such. It is that the water of the moon is not absent but frozen, since through lack of an atmosphere an almost absolute cold is produced which does not permit even the evaporation of the ice to take place, an evaporation that would otherwise be promoted by that lack of an atmosphere. Thus on account of the smallness of the moon, 1/49 the volume and 1/88 the mass of the earth, we must regard its internal source of heat as exhausted, or at any rate as no longer affecting the surface. From the sun it receives no more heat than does the earth. For although once a month it comes nearer to the sun by an amount equal to its distance from us, in which case it invariably exposes to the sun only the face that is always turned away from us, this face thereby receives, according to Madler, merely an illumination (and consequently also a heating) that is brighter in the ratio of 101 to 100 than that received by the face that is turned towards us. This never happens to the latter face even in the opposite case when, after fourteen days, the moon has again become more distant from the sun by an amount equal to its distance from us. We have, therefore, to assume that the influence of solar heat on the moon is no stronger than that of such heat on the earth; in fact it is even weaker, as it lasts a fortnight naturally for each face, but is then interrupted by a night that lasts two weeks and prevents the cumulative effect of that influence. But now all heating by sunlight is dependent on the presence of an atmosphere; for it takes place only by virtue of the metamorphosis of light into heat; and this occurs when light strikes an opaque body, in other words, one that is impervious to it as light. Thus it cannot with its lightning rectilinear speed penetrate an opaque body as it can one which is transparent and through which it passes to reach the other body. It is then converted into heat that ascends and radiates in all directions. Now as this is absolutely without weight (imponderable), it must be restrained and held together by the pressure of an atmosphere, otherwise it is dissipated at the moment it is formed. For however instantaneously light in its original radiating nature cuts through the atmosphere, its passage is very slow when, converted into heat, it has to overcome the weight and resistance of this very atmosphere which, as we know, is the worst of all conductors of heat. On the other hand, if the air is rarefied, the heat escapes more easily; and if there is no air at all, it escapes at once. Therefore high mountains, where the pressure of the atmosphere is reduced to half, are covered with eternal snow, whereas deep valleys, if they are wide, are the warmest places. What must it be like then when there is no atmosphere at all? And so as regards temperature, we should have to assume without hesitation that all the water on the moon is frozen. But then there arises the difficulty that, as rarefaction of the atmosphere facilitates ebullition and lowers the boiling-point, its total absence must greatly accelerate generally the process of evaporation, whereupon the frozen water of the moon must have long ago evaporated. Now this difficulty is met by the consideration that all evaporation, even that in a vacuum, takes place only by virtue of a very considerable quantity of heat that becomes latent precisely through such evaporation. But such heat is lacking on the moon where the cold must be wellnigh absolute, since the heat formed by the immediate effect of the sun's rays instantly passes away, and the little evaporation that is thereby induced is again stopped at once by the cold, like hoarfrost.* For however much in itself rarefaction of the air promotes evaporation, it prevents this even more by the fact that it causes the heat necessary for such evaporation to escape and we also see this in the Alpine snows which as little disappear through evaporating as through melting. Now with a total absence of air, the instantaneous disappearance of the heat that is formed will in equal proportion be more unfavourable to evaporation than the lack of air pressure in itself is favourable thereto. As a result of this hypothesis, we should have to regard all the water on the moon as converted into ice and in particular the whole mysterious grey part of its surface, always described as maria (seas), as frozen water.** Its many unevennesses will then no longer cause any difficulty and the conspicuous, deep, and often straight furrows that intersect it could be explained as yawning crevices in the splintered ice; for their shape greatly favours this explanation.***
Generally speaking, it is not entirely safe to infer an absence of life from a lack of air and water. Such a conclusion might even be called narrow and parochial, in so far as it rests on the assumption of a partout comme chez nous. [8] The phenomenon of animal life might easily be brought about by means other than respiration and blood circulation; for the essential point of all life is simply the constant change of matter with permanence of form. Of course, we can imagine this as happening only through the medium of what is fluid and vaporous. But matter generally is the mere visibility of the will which, however, everywhere aims at the enhancement step by step of its phenomenal appearance. The forms, ways, and means of attaining this may be very varied. On the other hand, it should again be borne in mind that most probably the chemical elements not only on the moon, but also on all the planets, are the same as those on the earth. For the whole system has been evolved from the same primordial luminous nebula to which the present sun once extended. This certainly permits one to surmise a similarity also of the higher phenomena of the will.
§ 85
The extremely ingenious cosmogony, i.e. theory of the origin of the planetary system, which Kant first gave in his Naturgeschichte des Himmels, 1755, and then more completely in the seventh chapter of his 'only possible argument', 1763, was developed with greater astronomical knowledge and established on a firmer foundation almost fifty years later by Laplace (Exposition du systeme du monde, vol. v, p. 2). However, its truth rests not only on the basis of the spatial relation which was insisted on by Laplace, namely that forty-five heavenly bodies collectively circulate in one direction and simultaneously rotate in precisely the same direction; but it has an even firmer support in the temporal relation. This is expressed by Kepler's second and third laws, in so far as such laws state the fixed rule and exact formula whereby all the planets in a strictly natural ratio circulate the more rapidly, the nearer they are to the sun. In the case of the sun itself, however, mere rotation has taken the place of circulation and now stands as the maximum of velocity of that progressive ratio. When the sun still extended as far as Uranus, it rotated once in eighty-four years; but now, after undergoing an acceleration through each of its contractions, it rotates once in twenty-five and a half days.
Thus if the planets were not remnants of a once very large central body, but each had originated in a different way and by itself, one could not possibly understand how it had come exactly into the position that it must precisely occupy according to the last two laws of Kepler if it is not either to fall into, or flyaway from, the sun in consequence of Newton's laws of gravitation and centrifugal force. The truth of the Kant-Laplace cosmogony depends primarily on this. Thus if, with Newton, we regard the circulation of the planets as the product of gravitation and a counteracting centrifugal force, then, taking each planet's existing centrifugal force as fixed and given, there is for it only one position where its gravitation is in exact equilibrium with this force, and it accordingly keeps to its orbit. Therefore it must have been one and the same cause that gave to each planet its position and at the same time its velocity. The nearer a planet is to the sun, the more rapidly it must move in its orbit and hence the more centrifugal force it must acquire, if it is not to fall into the sun. The farther a planet is from the sun, the less must its centrifugal force become in proportion as its gravitation is thereby reduced, otherwise it will flyaway from the sun. Thus a planet could have its position anywhere if only a cause existed which imparted to it the centrifugal force that is exactly suited to each position and is thus precisely in equilibrium with the gravitation at that point. Now as we find that each planet actually has just the velocity necessary for it to be where it is, this can be explained only from the fact that the same cause that gave it its position also determined simultaneously the degree of its velocity. Now this can be understood only from the cosmogony in question; for it makes the central body contract intermittently and thus detach a ring that is afterwards formed into a planetary ball. In consequence of Kepler's second and third laws, the rotation of the central body must be vigorously accelerated after each contraction and it bequeathes the velocity thus determined to the planet that is detached at the place where the next contraction occurs. Now it can detach the planet at any point of its sphere, for the planet always acquires exactly the right centrifugal force for this spot, but for no other. This force proves to be the stronger, the nearer that spot is to the central body and thus the more intense the effect of gravitation which attracts it to that body and against which that centrifugal force has to act. For the speed of rotation of the body that successively detaches planets had been increased by an amount that was exactly requisite for this. Moreover, whoever would like to have a graphic illustration of this necessary acceleration of rotation in consequence of contraction, will obtain a delightful example from a large burning Catherine wheel. At first it rotates slowly; and then the smaller it becomes, the more rapidly it turns.
In his second and third laws Kepler has expressed merely the actual relation between a planet's distance from the sun and the velocity of its orbital motion. Now it may concern one and the same planet at different times or two different planets. By ultimately assuming Robert Hooke's fundamental idea which he had at first rejected, Newton deduced this relation from gravitation and its opposing centrifugal force and from this showed that it must be so and why. Thus it must be so because, at such a distance from the central body, the planet must have precisely such velocity in order not to fall into, or flyaway from, it. Indeed in the descending causal series this is the causa efficiens; but in the ascending it is only the causa finalis. Now only the Kant-Laplace cosmogony tells us how the planet came to acquire precisely at this spot just the necessary velocity, or even how, with this given velocity, it was placed precisely at the very spot where gravitation is in equilibrium with that velocity; only this cosmogony tells us about this cause, this causa efficiens that lies still higher.
The approximately regular arrangement of the planets will once more make this clear, so that we shall no longer understand it as being merely regular, but as conforming to law, in other words, as having followed from a natural law. Something of the kind is indicated by the following arrangement which was known even a hundred years before the discovery of Uranus and depends on our always doubling the number in the upper row and then adding four to form a number in the lower. The latter then gives the approximate average distances of the planets which agree tolerably well with the figures that are accepted at the present time:
0 / 3 / 6 / 12 / 24 / 48 / 96 / 192 / 384
4 / 7 / 10 / 16 / 28 / 52 / 100 / 196 / 388
[x] / [x] / [x] / [x] / Asteroids / [x] / [x] / [x] / [x]
The regularity of this arrangement is unmistakable, although only approximately so. Perhaps there is for each planet a position in its orbit between the perihelion and aphelion where the rule proves to be absolutely correct; this could then be regarded as its proper and original position. In any case, this more or less precise regularity must have been the result of forces that were active at each successive contraction of the central body, as well as of the nature of the primordial substance that formed their very basis. Each new contraction of the primordial nebulous mass was a result of the acceleration of rotation which was brought about by previous contractions. Now the outer zone could no longer follow this accelerated rotation and therefore tore itself off and remained where it was. In this way, a repetition of the contraction took place, which again produced an acceleration, and so on. As the central body thus became intermittently smaller and smaller, so each time the amount of contraction was less in proportion, namely something under half the one that preceded it, since each time the central body contracted by half its existing dimensions (- 2). However, it is remarkable that a catastrophe overtook the very middle planet in consequence whereof only its fragments still exist. It was the boundary between the four major and the four minor planets.
A corroboration of the theory is also to be found in the fact that, on the whole, the planets are larger, the farther they are from the sun, because the zone from which they were formed into globes was so much greater, although some irregularities have here crept in in consequence of the accidental differences in the width of such zones.
A different corroboration of the Kant-Laplace cosmogony is the fact that the density of the planets decreases approximately in proportion to their distance from the sun. For this is explained from the fact that the most distant planet is a remnant of the sun at the time when this was at its maximum extension and consequently at its minimum density; thereupon the sun contracted and thus became denser, and so on. The same thing is confirmed by the fact that the moon later originated in the same way through the contraction of the earth which was still vaporous, but, because of this, reached as far as the present moon, and also that the moon has only 5/9 of the earth's density. However, the sun itself is not the densest of all the bodies of the system; and this is explained by the fact that each planet came into existence from the subsequent formation of a whole ring into a globe, but that the sun is merely the residuum of that central body which has not been further compressed after its last contraction. Yet another special corroboration of the cosmogony we are considering is furnished by the circumstance that, whereas the inclination of all the planetary orbits to the ecliptic (earth's orbit) varies between 3/4 and 3-1/2 degrees, that of Mercury amounts to 7° 0' 6". But this is almost equal to the inclination of the sun's equator to the ecliptic, which amounts to 7° 30'. This can be explained from the fact that the last ring that was detached by the sun remained almost parallel to that body's equator whence it was severed; whereas the previously detached planets were thrown more out of equilibrium, or the sun shifted its axis of rotation after they were detached from it. Venus, as the last but one, has an inclination of 3-1/2 degrees; all the others are even under two with the exception of Saturn which has 2-1/2 degrees. (See Humboldt's Kosmos, vol. iii, p. 449.) The very' strange motion of our moon, where rotation and revolution are one and the same and thus the same face is always presented to us, can also be understood solely from the fact that this is precisely the motion of a ring circulating round the earth. From the contraction of such a ring, the moon subsequently came into being; but then it was not, like the planets, set in more rapid rotation by some accidental impulse.
These cosmogonical considerations primarily give rise to two metaphysical observations. First in the true essence of all things a harmony is established by virtue whereof the primordial, blind, crude, and lowest forces of nature, guided by the most rigid laws, through their conflict in the matter that is equally at the mercy of them all, and through the accidental consequences accompanying such conflict-such forces, I say, produce nothing less than the very foundations of a world that is arranged with admirable appropriateness to be the birthplace and haunt of living beings. These forces produce to perfection a world such as could have been achieved only by the most astute deliberation under the guidance of the most penetrating intellect and the keenest and precisest calculation. And so we see here in the most astonishing way how the causa efficiens and the causa finalis, the [x] and the [x] of Aristotle, each marching along independently of the other, combine in the result. The discussion of this observation and the explanation of its underlying phenomenon from the principles of my metaphysics are found in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 25. I mention it here merely to point out that it suggests to us a scheme wherein we can see by analogy, or at any rate in general, how all the chance events, that intervene and clash in the course of an individual's life, nevertheless accord with one another in a secret and pre-established harmony. We can see how they do all this in order to evolve, in reference to the individual's character and to his true ultimate well-being, a totality just as appropriately harmonious, as if everything existed only for his sake, as a mere phantasmagoria for him alone. To throw more light on this question was the task of the essay to be found in the first volume and entitled' On the apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual'.
The second metaphysical observation raised by that cosmogony is that even so far-reaching a physical explanation of the origin of the world can never do away with the need for a metaphysical, or take the place thereof. On the contrary, the more we have found out about the phenomenon, the more clearly do we observe that we are concerned with this alone and not with the essence of things-in-themselves. With this, then, we feel the need for metaphysics as a counterbalance to the physics that has been carried to such lengths. For at bottom, all the materials, from which this world has been built up in the presence of our understanding, are just so many unknown quantities and appear precisely as the riddles and problems of metaphysics. Thus we have the inner essence of those forces of nature whose blind operation here so appropriately constructs the framework of the world. Then there is the inner essence of the elements, chemically different and accordingly acting on one another; from their conflict that has been most perfectly described by Ampere, the individual nature of the separate planets has arisen; geology is concerned with the demonstration of this in the traces of that conflict. Finally, there is also the inner essence of the force which ultimately shows itself as organizing, and produces on the outermost surface of the planet, like a coating or mildew, vegetation and animal life. With animal life, consciousness and thus knowledge first appear, the latter again being the condition of the whole course of events that has so far developed. For all the things of which these events consist exist only for and in such knowledge and have reality only in reference thereto. In fact, the events and changes themselves could appear only in virtue of the forms (time, space, causality) that are peculiar to knowledge and therefore exist also only relatively for the intellect.
Thus, on the one hand, it must be admitted that all those physical, cosmogonical, chemical, and geological events existed even before the appearance of a consciousness and so outside this since, as conditions, they were necessarily bound to precede such an appearance by a long interval of time. Yet, on the other hand, it cannot be denied that, as those events first appear in and through the forms of a consciousness, they are absolutely nothing outside it and are not even conceivable. In any case, it might be said that, by virtue of its forms, consciousness is the condition of the physical events in question, but that again these condition it by virtue of their matter. At bottom, however, all those events that cosmogony and geology urge us to assume as having occurred long before the existence of any knowing creature are themselves only a translation into the language of our intuitively perceiving intellect from the essence-in-itself of things which to it is incomprehensible. For those events have never had an existence-in-itself, any more than have present events. But with the aid of the principles a priori of all possible experience and following a few empirical data, the regressus leads back to them; it is itself, however, only the concatenation of a series of mere phenomena that have no absolute existence.* Therefore even in their empirical existence, in spite of all the mechanical accuracy and mathematical precision of the determination of their appearance, those events still always retain an obscure and enigmatical core, like an inscrutable mystery lurking in the background. Thus we see it in the natural forces that manifest themselves in those events, in the primordial matter that bears these, and in the necessarily beginningless and hence incomprehensible existence of such forces. To explain this obscure and enigmatical core on the empirical path is impossible. Here, then, metaphysics must appear which, in the will in our own true nature, makes us acquainted with the kernel and core of all things. In this sense, Kant has also said that' the primary sources of the effects of nature must obviously be dealt with entirely by metaphysics.' (Van der wahren Schatzung der lebendigen Krafte, § 51.)
And so from the standpoint which we are here considering and is that of metaphysics, the physical explanation of the world which is acquired by such an expenditure of effort and ingenuity appears to be inadequate. In fact, it seems superficial and, to a certain extent, becomes a mere pretence at explanation, because it consists in a reduction to unknown quantities, to qualitates occultae. It is comparable to a mere superficial force, something like electricity, that does not penetrate the inner essence of things. Indeed it is even like paper-money which has only a relative value that is based on the assumption of a different kind of money. Here I refer to the more detailed discussion of this relation to be found in the second volume of my chief work, chapter 17. There are in Germany shallow empiricists who try to make their public believe that, speaking generally, there is nothing except nature and her laws. But this will not do, for nature is not a thing-in-itself, and her laws are not absolute.
If we place in an imaginary row the Kant-Laplace cosmogony, geology from Deluc down to Elie de Beaumont, and finally the original generation of the vegetable and animal kingdoms with the commentary of their results, namely botany, zoology, and physiology, then we have before us a complete history of nature, since we survey in all its sequence and continuity the entire phenomenon of the empirically given world. This, however, at the outset constitutes the problem of metaphysics. If mere physics were capable of solving it, it would already have been well on the way to solution; but this is for ever impossible. The two points already mentioned, namely the essence-in-itself of natural forces and the fact that the objective world is conditioned by the intellect and also the a priori certain beginninglessness of both the causal chain and matter, deprive physics of all independence, or are the stem whereby the lotus of physics is rooted to the soil of metaphysics.
Moreover, the relation between the latest results of geology and my metaphysics could be expressed briefly in the following way. In the very first period of the terrestrial globe which preceded granite, the objectification of the will-to-livc was restricted to its lowest stages, to the forces of inorganic nature. Here, however, it manifested itself on the grandest scale and with blind violence, since the elements, already differentiated chemically, entered into a conflict whose scene was not the mere surface but the whole mass of the planet, and whose phenomena must have been so colossal as to be quite beyond the powers of one's imagination to describe. The evolutions of light accompanying those gigantic chemical processes must have been visible from every planet of our system, whereas the detonations which took place and would have shattered any ear naturally could not pass beyond the atmosphere. After this titanic conflict had died down and the granite as a tombstone had covered the combatants, the will-to-live, after a suitable pause and the interlude of the Neptunian deposits of rock, finally manifested itself at the next higher stage and in the strongest contrast, in the mute and still life of a mere plant world. This also appeared on a colossal scale with its towering and interminable forests whose remains supply us, after millions of years, with an inexhaustible quantity of coal. This plant world gradually removed the carbon dioxide from the air which then first became fit for animal life. Till then, the long and profound peace of that period of no animals lasted and finally ended through a natural revolution which destroyed that plant paradise by engulfing the forests. Now as the air had become pure, the will-to-live entered the third great stage of objectification, the animal world. In the sea were fish and cetacea, but on land there were still only reptiles, yet these were colossal. Again the curtain fell on the scene and there followed the higher objectification of the will in the life of warm-blooded land animals, although the genera of these no longer exist and most of them were pachydermata. After another upheaval of the earth's surface with every living thing thereon, life was once more kindled afresh. The will-to-live now objectified itself in an animal world which offered a far greater number and variety of forms and whose genera still exist, although naturally the species are no longer to be found. This objectification of the will-to-live became more perfect through such multiplicity and variety of forms and ascended as far as the ape. But even this last primeval world of ours had to perish in order to make way for the present inhabitants on a restored soil, where the objectification reached the stage of mankind. Accordingly, the earth can be compared to a palimpsest that has been written on four times. Incidentally, a secondary consideration of interest is to visualize how each of the planets that revolve round the innumerable suns in space, although still at the chemical stage where it is the scene of a fearful conflict of the most violent forces or is passing through an interval of peace, nevertheless conceals mysterious forces within its interior. From these there will one day come into existence the plant and animal worlds with all the inexhaustible variety of their forms. To such forces that conflict is only the prelude, since it prepares for them their scene of action and arranges for the conditions of their appearance. In fact, we can hardly help assuming that what rages in those seas of fire and tempestuous torrents of water and will later endow those flora and fauna with life, is one and the same thing. But in my opinion the stage where mankind is reached must be the last because here there has already occurred to man the possibility of denying the will and thus of turning back from all the ways of the world, whereby this divina commedia then comes to an end. Accordingly, although there are no physical grounds for guaranteeing that another world-catastrophe will not occur, there is nevertheless against it a moral one, namely that such a catastrophe would now be to no purpose, since the inner essence of the world needs no higher objectification for the possibility of its salvation from the world. What is moral, however, is the kernel or ground-bass of the matter, however little inclined are mere physicists to grasp this.