The German Genius Read online

  Blumenbach believed that the Bildungstrieb was teleological in character and “immanent” in the material constitution of the organism. In a way, of course, the Bildungstrieb doesn’t explain anything—it is merely a name for a mysterious process. But that is what appealed to Kant. For what he insisted upon was that, even if nature somehow uses mechanical means to construct organized bodies, humans can never understand that process even from a theoretical point of view. The problem for Kant was that human understanding can only construct scientific theories that use the “linear” mode of causation. In the organic realm, on the other hand, “cause and effect are so mutually interdependent that it is impossible to think of one without the other…This is a teleological mode of explanation, for it involves the notion of a ‘final cause.’” Kant became convinced that it is impossible to produce functional organisms by mechanical means—for example, by chemical combination. He was impressed by the examples of misbirth, for him powerful evidence to suggest that something analogous to “purpose” operates in the organic realm, “for the goal of constructing a functional organism is always visible in the products of organic nature, including its unsuccessful attempts.” For Kant, therefore, it was self-evident that the life sciences rested on a different set of principles from those of the physical sciences.44

  Johann Christian Reil (1759–1813) studied in Göttingen during 1779 and 1780 and came into contact with the young Blumenbach. Timothy Lenoir, in his study of early German biologists, says Reil was possibly more original than Blumenbach. His treatise “Von der Lebenskraft,” in which he introduced his own conception of the vital force within a Kantian framework, was published in 1795 in the first volume of the new professional journal Archiv für die Physiologie. Reil too believed that each organism shows “purposive organisation” (zweckmässige Form) and that this was determined by the chemical affinities between the organic materials, “just as the seed [Kern] of a salt crystal attracts particles according to a particular law in which the basis of its cubic shape is to be found.”45 This was, then, a sort of halfway-house theory, between Blumenbach’s and Kant’s. In Reil’s view the germ, in the mother, “slumbers without developing, probably because its organisation has too little irritability [Reizbarkeit]. The father enhances the animal force of the dormant germ perhaps through the addition of the fluid of his semen to the matter of the germ.”46

  Carl Friedrich Kielmeyer (1763–1844) moved from Stuttgart to Göttingen, where he also was a pupil of Blumenbach from 1786 to 1788. His contributions helped to establish Pflanzenchemie, the beginnings of organic chemistry. In the course he taught on comparative zoology Kielmeyer conceived what he called the Physik des Tierreichs, the aim of which was to uncover the laws of organic form by comparing the anatomy of birds, amphibians, fish, insects, and worms. Kielmeyer also broke new ground when he used embryological criteria to establish affinities between animal forms. He realized that the patterns revealed in embryological development were confirmation that the system of animal organization did not require “the assumption of a special directive force existing outside of the individual organism, through which the life and economy of organic nature is maintained.” (Italics added.) There was no need for any “supra-material” organizing force. Kielmeyer, like Blumenbach, was unimpressed by the traditional idea of a Great Chain of Being; instead, he became convinced that species were transformed into others, albeit in a distinctive way: “Many species have apparently emerged from other species, just as the butterfly emerges from the caterpillar…They were originally development stages and only later achieved the rank of independent species; they are transformed developmental stages. Others, on the other hand, are original children of the earth. Perhaps, however, all of these primitive ancestors have died out.” Kielmeyer noted that smaller organisms tended to have more offspring than larger ones, and from this concluded that there are “internal forces,” specific to species, that give rise to their characteristic structure and behavior.47

  In purely biological terms, then, these late eighteenth-century scientists and philosophers had three operating conclusions/beliefs.48 First, it was the task of the new fields of zoology and botany to reproduce in the organic realm what physics had done in the inorganic realm—namely “to investigate the most universal phenomena of matter and the special classes of phenomena which are not further reducible to others.”49 Second, they identified (or assumed) a Lebenskraft or Bildungstrieb as the shaping principle of every organized body. Finally, Kant emphasized that man’s reason was insufficient ever to discover these “natural purposes,” or “teleological agents,” in the organic realm.

  THE RISE OF EVOLUTIONISM

  This battle between mechanist thought and vitalist thought would continue throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and even up until the first quarter of the twentieth century. But, as Ernst Mayr points out, the years between the publication of the tenth edition of Linnaeus’s Systema Naturae in 1758 and Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 were a time of transition. During this transition period Lamarck published his theory of transformation, in 1809, which argued for an “intrinsic tendency of organisms to strive toward perfection” together with an ability to adjust to the environment (the inheritance of acquired characteristics). It was also during this transition period that “downward classification” was phased out, to be replaced by “upward classification.” In “downward classification,” the organic realm was divided/organized according to its internal logic, as it appeared to this or that theoretician, using his view of what nature actually consisted of, and in the belief that species differed in their very essence, an essence that reflected their eidos, their special substance. In “upward classification,” observations started with species, the irreducible basic building blocks, and then their similarities with other organisms were observed and codified, working upward to higher taxonomic groups.50

  But the very idea of classification was itself evolving. For centuries the scala naturae, the scale of perfection, had been virtually the only conceivable way of bringing order into diversity. The idea was less popular with botanists than with zoologists, however, since hardly any trend toward perfection was observable among plants, except for a general advance from algae to the phanerograms (the subkingdom of flowering plants). And so, other approaches to classification were tried. Organisms were placed on the scale of perfection according to their affinity with less perfect or more perfect neighbors.51 There was a conviction that similarity (of whatever kind) reflected an underlying causal relationship. Two kinds of similarity in particular were identified by German writers such as Friedrich Schelling and Lorenz Oken: true affinity and analogy. “Penguins are related to ducks by true affinity but to the aquatic mammals by analogy. Hawks show affinity with parrots and pigeons, but are analogous to the carnivores among the mammals.” Such a reconceptualization seems bizarre but this approach proved crucial in the ensuing history of biology, influencing Richard Owen in his ideas of homology and analogy, which came to dominate comparative anatomy.

  Without these developments in thinking about classification, the theory of evolution probably could not have developed. Yet there was still some way to go. The great problem with evolution was that it could not be observed directly, unlike the familiar phenomena of physics, such as falling stones or boiling water. Evolution, plainly, can only be inferred and only then can such evidence as fossils or stratification be adduced. 52

  To us, the time it took between the first glimmerings of evolutionism by Leibniz in his Protogaea (1694) and the full-blown theory of Lamarck in 1809 seems inordinately long. Like Buffon, who had flirted with evolutionism all his life, Lamarck was French, and Darwin himself, of course, was British. Yet evolutionism was far more popular in Germany than anywhere else.53 Just how widespread it was there has been explored by several historians. Henry Potonié, Otto Heinrich Schindewolf, and Oswei Temkin are just three who have rescued the names of numerous early German evolutionists from oblivion: besides Blumenbach, Reil
, and Kielmeyer, there were Friedrich Tiedemann, Reinecke, Voight, Tauscher, and Ballenstedt. Although it may come as a surprise that, with all these figures devoting their time to evolution, it should be an Englishman, Charles Darwin, who conceived the idea of natural selection, we should remember that, among the many people who set the stage for Darwin, the Viennese botanist Franz Unger stands out. Unger argued that the simpler aquatic and marine plants preceded the most complex varieties, that there must have been an original germ of all kinds of plants, that new species must have originated from already-existing ones and that all plants are united with each other “in a genetic manner.” Among Unger’s students was Gregor Mendel.54

  And so, in the late eighteenth century, in Germany, doubt, deism, Pietism, and the drive toward perfection—in history, in art, in biology—all came together to create a way of looking at the world, looking within, looking back, and looking forward all at the same time. It was a transitional period, when people were groping, tentatively attempting—perhaps without being aware of it—to replace the theological concept of mankind with a biological understanding.

  One man of influence who took up these ideas early was Wilhelm von Humboldt.55 Later on, Humboldt would be instrumental in the creation of the University of Berlin, an institution so important that it needs a chapter all to itself in any cultural history of Germany. To begin with, he was a student of Blumenbach and was much taken with his concepts of Bildung and Bildungstrieb.56 Nature, for Humboldt, consisted of specific individual centers of energy and activity, each center revealing its own character in the activity it displayed. Activity—sheer movement—was key here. In classical (Newtonian) physics, motion was always the result of some outside source. However, many thinkers, dissatisfied with the application of Newton’s science as an explanation for living systems, preferred what they called “the living order of nature,” where nothing stood still, where “self-generated motion” meant that every living part of nature was constantly in movement and, moreover, “this movement was not haphazard.” Matter, to them, contained an immanent principle of self-movement. “Unlike mechanical concepts of force (magnetism, electricity, gravitation), these internal powers were thought to operate directionally: they had an implicit goal towards self-realisation (Vervollkommnung).”57

  This revised definition of matter required a redefinition of nature. In this new view, there is in nature an inner character which speaks through it. “Nature’s telos could only be intuited, never fully revealed as transparent.”58 Humboldt’s gloss, which was essentially Blumenbach’s view, was that matter was composed of general and individual Kräfte (powers or forces), each having its own nature. The most important of these immanent qualities were the general forces of Bildung, generation (Zeugung), and habit (Trägheit or Gewohnheit). These qualities produced the individuals of which a nation was composed, making the nation an analog of an organized body. “Reality was defined as the striving of active powers or ideas to actualize themselves, that is to acquire form.”59

  Biology apart, the root concept of Bildung, a neologism of the eighteenth century, lay in Martin Luther’s use of Bild, meaning “image,” in two seminal biblical verses:

  And God said, Let us make man in our own image, after our own likeness…So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

  (GENESIS 1: 26–7)

  But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed unto the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

  (2 CORINTHIANS 3: 18).

  It was, of course, the Pietists who had introduced the idea. For them it had an exclusively religious sense, but during the reigns of Friedrich Wilhelm I and Friedrich the Great, Bildung was secularized without losing the subjective ideal of personal perfection. “Even for those who rejected revealed religion and scriptural authority, Bildung offered a means of secular salvation through culture.”60 Moreover, Bildung was open to everyone in a country where the public sphere was rapidly expanding (see Chapter 1).

  Bildung “was the culture of an emerging group that did not conceive of itself as bourgeois so much as it thought of itself as cultivated, learned and, most importantly, self-directing…a man or woman of Bildung was not merely learned, but was also a person of good taste, who had an overall educated grasp of the world around him or her and was thus capable of ‘self-direction’ that was at odds with the prevailing pressure for conformity.”61 Bildung was in effect a secular form of Pietism: both embodied Leibniz’s and Christian Wolff’s notion of perfection.

  Bildung, then, for someone like Humboldt, was partly a biological force, partly a spiritual necessity, partly an aspect of the natural world, like gravity. It also had religious overtones, in that it had grown out of Pietism: just as the Pietists could “improve on the Creation” and move closer to God by practically helping their neighbors in this world, so Bildung was an interior process whereby an individual could work on himself, or herself, to improve his or her self-consciousness, to move closer to perfection. The concept of genius—individuals whose creations offered glimpses of divine wisdom, glimpses of perfection—meant that self-cultivation, through studying the achievements of geniuses, offered the cultivated individual the prospect of achieving an approximation of divine wisdom right here on earth.

  This was very much a halfway house of ideas that could only have existed in the transitional time between Principia Mathematica and the Origin of Species, between doubt and Darwin. This historical/artistic/biological view of the world, within the framework of striving for perfection, was to shape many of Germany’s thinkers, not a few of whom were themselves the sons of Pietist pastors.62

  Bildung was, in its way, the most ingenious by-product of the development of doubt.

  PART II

  A THIRD RENAISSANCE, BETWEEN DOUBT AND DARWIN

  3.

  Winckelmann, Wolf, and Lessing: The Third Greek Revival and the Origins of Modern Scholarship

  The Italian Renaissance was a German idea. The man who formulated it most clearly, Jacob Burckhardt (1818–97), author of Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien (The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy; 1878), was born in Basel, Switzerland, in 1818, but studied at the University of Berlin, where he attended the seminars of the most famous historian of the time, Leopold von Ranke. Burckhardt returned to Basel in 1843 and began to lecture there at the university, as well as edit a newspaper, the Basler Zeitung. Growing disillusioned with journalism, he abandoned it for full-time historical research, a move that led to his first major book, Die Zeit Konstantins des Grossen (The Age of Constantine the Great; 1853), soon followed by a historical guide to the art treasures of Italy, Der Cicerone (The Cicerone; 1855). These two works were so well received that they earned him a chair—in architecture and art history—at Zurich Polytechnic when it opened in 1855. Three years later he returned to the university at Basel and remained there for the rest of his life, spurning the invitation to become Ranke’s successor at Berlin. It was from Basel that, in 1860, he published his most famous book.1

  Before Burckhardt, other writers and historians had introduced the phenomenon of the Renaissance. Petrarch (1304–74) was the first to recognize, on paper at least, the idea of the “Dark Ages,” that the thousand years—more or less—before he lived had been a period of decline, and that ancient history, poetry, and philosophy were “radiant examples” of a civilization that was the highest form of life before Christ appeared. Voltaire, Saverio Bettinelli, the French historian Jules Michelet, and Georg Voigt, professor of history at Munich, in his 1859 book Die Wiederbelebung des classischen Altertums: oder, das erste Jahrhundert des Humanismus (The Revival of Classical Antiquity, or the First Century of Humanism), had all drawn attention to Renaissance Italy. Burckhardt’s ideas did not come out of nowhere.

  Nevertheless, his understanding of the Renaissance was much more coherent and complete than that of any of his predecessors.2 It was Burckhardt who c
onfirmed that the Italian Renaissance was far more than the rediscovery of antiquity: it had seen the development of the individual, it was then that the lineaments of modernity first appeared. Burckhardt maintained that society was now a self-conscious—and therefore a secular—entity as it had never been before.

  As Peter Burke, the Cambridge historian of ideas, has emphasized, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy did not lack for critics. After 150 years of increasingly specialized research, he said, “it is easy to point out exaggerations, rash generalisations and other weaknesses.” But though Burckhardt’s view of the Renaissance may be flawed, Burke agreed that “it is also difficult to replace.” Perhaps the single most important revision of Burckhardt’s argument is that of Charles Homer Haskins, professor of history at Harvard in the early decades of the twentieth century. Haskins’s contention was that the essentially Platonic revival in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which gave rise to the Italian Renaissance, was in fact, the second such classical revival in the West. The first, associated with the rediscovery not of Plato but of Aristotle, took place in the twelfth century and was marked by, for example, the new science of law and a unified legal system, which promoted the idea of shared knowledge that could be argued over, the wider use of Latin, the development of universities, and the growth of organized skepticism in scholarship. With the philosophy of Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, which envisaged a secular world, came a unification of thought in theology and the liberal arts, giving rise to Summae, encyclopedic treatises aimed at synthesizing all knowledge, changes in worship, which promoted a rise in self-expression and individuality, and, perhaps most significant of all, the rise of the experimental method, giving birth to science as we know it. Among historians, then, if not yet among the general public, there were two renaissances, not one, with the first rather more important than the second.