Page:On the Fourfold Root, and On the Will in Nature.djvu/285

 ANATOMY. 253

In Pander and d'Alton's admirable illustrated work l we find: "Just as all that is characteristic in the formation of bones springs from the character of the animals, so does that character, on the other hand, develop out of their tendencies and desires. These tendencies and desires of animals, which are so vividly expressed in their whole organisation and of which that organisation only appears to be the medium, cannot be explained by special primary forces, since we can only deduce their inner reason from the general life of Nature." By this last turn the author shows indeed that he has arrived at the point where, like all other investigators of Nature, he is brought to a stand still by the metaphysical; but he also shows, that up to this point beyond which Nature eludes investigation, tendencies and desires (i. e. will) were the utmost thing knowable. The shortest expression for his last conclusion about animals would be "As the animals will, so they are."

The learned and thoughtful Burdach, 2 when treating of the ultimate reason of the genesis of the embryo in his great work on Physiology, bears witness no less explicitly to the truth of my view. I must not, unfortunately, conceal the fact that in a weak moment, misled Heaven knows by what or how, this otherwise excellent man brings in just here a few sentences taken from that utterly worthless, tyrannically imposed pseudo-philosophy, about thought being what is primary (it is just what is last and most conditioned of all) yet no representation (that is to say, a wooden iron). Immediately after however, under the returning influence of his own better self, he proclaims the real truth (p. 710): "The brain curves itself outwards to the retina, because the central part of the embryo desires

1 Pander and d'Alton, Über die Skelette der Raubtiere, [On the skeletons of predatory animals], 1822, p. 7.

2 Burdach, Physiologie, vol. 2, § 474.

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