Chapter Three—
Waves of Criticism

During the 1870s and early 1880s, Darwinism became firmly entrenched in a wide spectrum of natural and social sciences, as well as in philosophical thought. It also became a target for relentless attacks by critics representing the major categories of intellectual endeavor, ranging from science to religious philosophy. The critics were united in a determined effort to expose the flaws in both the substance and the logic of Darwin's evolutionary theory. They shared a belief that Darwinism was an ally of positivism and materialism and that it represented an antithesis to the dominant values of Russian society. The critics ranged from Karl von Baer, a giant among scientists, to marginal journalists, always ready to translate autocratic values into ideological slogans.

A Synthesis of Anti-Darwinian Arguments:
Karl von Baer in the 1870s

The most powerful criticism of Darwin's theory originating in Russia came from Karl von Baer, who added new logical and substantive arguments and a heightened sense of urgency to the war on the new evolutionary theory.

Von Baer retired from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1862 at the age of seventy. To pay homage to one of its most honored members the Academy established the Karl von Baer Prize to be given periodically for outstanding work in biology by Russian scientists. In 1867 he moved to Dorpat, Estonia, where his scholarly activity con-

tinued unabated. A concerted effort to deepen and consolidate anti-Darwinian arguments clearly dominated his research activities.^[1] He died in 1876, the year of the publication of "Über Darwins Lehre," his most noted and most comprehensive critique of Darwin's theory on scientific, philosophical, and moral grounds. This study impressed contemporaries as an effort to point out the unexplored complexities of biological evolution and to broaden the scope of evolutionary philosophy. Von Baer did not belong to the group of scientists, typified by Kölliker, who both criticized Darwin and advanced their own theories of evolution. He was too busy criticizing Darwin to carry his own theory of organic evolution beyond a clearly articulated, but sketchy, analysis.

In 1873 the Memoirs of the St. Petersburg Academy of Science published von Baer's long and unrelenting attack on A. O. Kovalevskii and German embryologist C. Kupffer, who had written about the ascidians as a species linking the invertebrates with the vertebrates. Von Baer expressed bitter resentment over Darwin's enthusiastic endorsement, in The Descent of Man, of the great promise of Kovalevskii's embryological research. Aware of the current criticism of Kovalevskii's and Kupffer's views of ascidians as "forefathers of man," his arguments relied much more on logical deductions than on substantive analysis. Clearly angered about the ascidian affair, he unleashed a bitter attack on the growing ranks of "dilettantes," whose transmutarionist ideas "had no basis in science." As on several other occasions, von Baer made it known that he did not criticize organic transmutation "as a general principle." He limited his criticism to unsupportable claims by transmutarionist "dilettantes."^[2]

In the same year, von Baer summed up his anti-Darwinian arguments in an article published in Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung .^[3] Addressing himself to the general public, he relied primarily on logical arguments in expressing his ideas about the nonsimian origins of man, the teleological functioning of the living world, and the legitimacy of religious explanations of the mysteries of nature inaccessible to science. He was particularly disturbed about the Darwinian view of evolution as a "blind force," free of predetermined "goal-directedness" (Zielstrebigkeit ) This time von Baer was much more interested in articulating a generalized argument against the possibility of a full scientific explanation of evolution than in lodging a scientific attack on the basic conceptions of Darwin's theory. This article showed clearly that von Baer's assault on Darwin's theory was part of a general war against scientific materialism as a fountain of atheistic ideas.

"Über Darwins Lehre," taking up 245 pages in volume 2 of von Baer's Addresses,^[4] showed that von Baer was fully aware of contemporary criticism of Darwin's transformist ideas; but it also showed that in discussing the anti-Darwinian arguments, he depended much more on his own constructions than on mechanical summations of borrowed ideas. But whatever he did, he produced one of the first systematic and comprehensive critiques of Darwin's thought. He made it easier for philosophers, theologians, and free-lance contributors to popular journals to select and elaborate antievolutionist themes and give the anti-Darwinian campaign inner unity and common purpose. Jane Oppenheimer stood on firm ground when she asserted that in "Über Darwins Lehre" von Baer directed his heaviest guns at three components of Darwin's theory: the explanation of the general nature of evolutionary processes; the ethical implication of the disregard of teleology; and the uniformitarian orientation in the explanation of the causes of transformation. There was a strong possibility, von Baer argued, that in the distant past "a much stronger formative force must have prevailed on earth than we know now."^[5]

In the Introduction to the Origin of Species Darwin acknowledged von Baer's pioneering contribution to evolutionary thought in biology. Without mentioning its title, Darwin referred specifically to von Baer's "Über Papuas und Alfuren," published in the fall of 1859 by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, a few months before the publication of the Origin of Species . He gave von Baer credit for expressing "his conviction, chiefly grounded on the laws of geographical distribution, that forms now perfectly distinct have descended from a single parent-form."^[6] In fact, this was the article von Baer had mentioned in a letter to Thomas Huxley in which he stated that he "expressed the same ideas on the transformation of types or origin of species as Mr. Darwin."^[7] In The Descent of Man Darwin repeated his reference to von Baer as a supporter of the common origin of animal forms. In his 1876 essay von Baer was eager to make it clear that he was never an evolutionist in the Darwinian sense, particularly that he never abandoned the idea of transformation taking place only within the preset limits of each of the four types of animals. He analyzed his own earlier work for the purpose of showing that he was never close to the idea of monogenetic evolution.^[8]

Von Baer is recorded in the annals of science as a leading anti-Darwinist of his day. But his own noted contributions to science showed that Darwin was absolutely correct in treating him as one of his precursors. In several of his major works von Baer elaborated the transformist

idea in much more than a casual manner. Although some of his suggestions had a clear Darwinian ring, he advanced a theory of the origin of species which avoided a radical break with crearionism. He stuck closely to three general principles: no species can evolve beyond the general limits of the type to which it belongs; within every type there are two categories of species, those that are independent creations and those that are the results of evolution; and all transmutations are caused by the interaction of living forms and the environment—geography is the only factor of evolution.^[9]

With his record cleared of suggested Darwinian admixtures, von Baer undertook the task of dismantling the theoretical edifice of his eminent foe. He proceeded with the wrecking job only after making it clear that he did not question Darwin's qualifications as an established scholar. In addition to recognizing the contributions of the Voyage of the Beagle to natural history, he noted its author's sagacity in formulating a feasible theory of the origin of coral islands.^[10] He made no effort to examine every salient ramification of the general theory Darwin had advanced. The idea of natural selection did not attract much of his attention. His main criticism was directed at the treatment of all existing species as transitional stages in the infinite succession of the forms of life, and at the suggestion that all these forms stemmed from common ancestors, with the human species as no exception.^[11] Von Baer assembled three types of arguments: those that, in his opinion, invalidated the idea of common origin and the unity of the evolutionary process; those that helped him refute Darwin's claim that his theory had nothing in common with atheism; and those that worked against Darwin's alleged effort to become the Newton of biology by extending the mechanical principles of the physical world to the domain of life. Newton solved the riddle of the physical world by explaining the motion of celestial bodies as the work of "a mathematical-physical law" that brings "mass" and "force" into causal relationship. The problems of life, which Darwin tried to answer in the Newtonian spirit, differ fundamentally from the problems of physical reality. The riddles of heredity and adaptation are problems of a completely different order, for their understanding requires a concern with teleology rather than with causality.^[12] Von Baer also argued that Darwin had made the unpardonable error of trying to explain organic evolution at a time when science was not in a position to explain the origin of life, the starting point of the transmutation process.

In marshaling arguments against Darwinian transformism, von Baer

injected compounded uncertainties into his own theoretical edifice. He did not want to accept a single cardinal argument Darwin had advanced; yet he did not want to abandon the idea of transformism altogether. In at least one place, he said that transformism was not only a universal law of organic nature but also a process free of supernatural interference.^[13] To abandon transformism, he said, would mean to abandon a legitimate area of scientific inquiry. In general, von Baer was much more successful in pointing out specific flaws in the elaborate structure of Darwin's theory than in presenting an adequate and scientifically promising substitute for it. Throughout his long essay he followed an unwavering line of attack: the idea of transmutation was most probably correct, but it continued to be an unfathomable riddle of nature. Darwin's "solution" of this riddle must be fully rejected, for it depended on the blind materialism of contemporary natural science rather than on a scientifically rigorous empirical analysis. Darwin's theory, according to von Baer, violated the principles of scientific methodology, the inductive-empirical orientation of modern natural science, and verification standards and procedures. He ended his essay with this advice to scientists:

I want to offer only one thought to scientists: a hypothesis may be necessary and valuable only if it is treated as a hypothesis, that is, if one takes its basic premises as topics of special inquiry. But a hypothesis may be unnecessary and harmful if, by disregarding proofs, we treat it as an end product of our search for knowledge. Our knowledge is fragmentary. Some persons may find satisfaction in filling in the gaps in scientific knowledge by relying on presuppositions, but that is not science.^[14]

Although von Baer's essay lacks precision, consistency, and theoretical clarity, it is a work of notable historical value. As B. E. Raikov has pointed out, it is a basic document for an understanding of von Baer's complex and extensively ramified world view, which reflected a dedicated search for a middle ground between the new ideas in biology and the echoes of the old science born in the early decades of the nineteenth century.^[15] It is also the most thorough synthesis of early anti-Darwinian arguments advanced by the representatives of various branches of biology. Even though it opened the doors for a systematic and thorough criticism of Darwin's transformist ideas, its Russian contemporaries received it with inexplicable silence, a fact that caused much grief to Strakhov.^[16] Written in German and not translated into Russian, von Baer's major anti-Darwinian arguments were actually accessible only to a small segment of interested writers.

It was for his past achievements, particularly in comparative embryology, that both Darwinists and anti-Darwinists recognized von Baer as a leading figure of nineteenth-century science—and that he was awarded the Copley Medal by the Royal Society of London. The idea of teleology that dominated von Baer's criticism of Darwin was not part of a surrender to metaphysical speculation and theological dictates; it was part of an earnest search for an empirical account of "concrete purposiveness" in the dynamics of living nature. Von Baer's teleology was a rightful ancestor of twentieth-century teleonomy. His faith in the power of science was pure and undeviating. Science, he wrote, is built on an eternal fountain; its authority is not limited in space and time, its full compass goes beyond the reach of measurement, and its goal is unachievable.^[17] In Stephen Jay Gould's general assessment:

Despite shifting emphases, von Baer's general opinion changed very little during his long life. He was a teleologist: he disliked the mechanistic aspects of Darwinian theory. He allowed for limited physical evolution within types, but no transformation among them. His early words on general advance in the universe refer not to physical descent, but to the same ideal progress that Schelling and other anti-evolutionists took as the universal law of nature.^[18]

Timothy Lenoir is correct in considering Darwin and von Baer the leading representatives of the two main nineteenth-century theories of evolution, each built upon unique philosophical suppositions: whereas Darwin's theory is firmly fastened to the mechanistic orientation of contemporary natural science, von Baer's theory is dominated by a clearly postulated, logically argued, and vehemently defended teleological principle.^[19]

Von Baer's writing quickly became recognized as a rich source of ideas that helped the critics of Darwinism bolster their arguments. Particularly in Russia, very few scholars tried to challenge von Baer's anti-Darwinian crusade. Russian scientists preferred to limit their references to the pre-Darwinian work that made von Baer a most illustrious leader in nineteenth-century embryology. They were unanimous in considering von Baer an eminent member of the Russian scientific community and a great national asset. Vladimir Vernadskii carried this attitude into the twentieth century when he stated that von Baer had played a significant role in the development of modern Russian culture.^[20] Even D. I. Pisarev, the iconoclast leader of the nihilists and one of Darwin's most uncritical admirers, referred to von Baer with the utmost respect.

Among the rare scientists who responded to von Baer's criticism by taking Darwin's side, Georg Seidlitz occupied a most prominent posi-

tion. He was a professor at Dorpat University at the time when von Baer resided in the town of Dorpat—present-day Tartu—after retiring from the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Born, in St. Petersburg to a Baltic-German family—his father was a professor at the Medical-Surgical Academy—Seidlitz graduated in zoology from Dorpat University in 1862. As a student he developed a strong interest in Darwin's theory and corresponded with Haeckel. After intensive study in Germany, he earned a doctorate at Dorpat University in 1868. The dissertation dealt with the morphology and systematics of beetles and showed a clear and profound influence of Darwinian thought. In 1869 he was appointed a privatdocent at his alma mater. His research branched out in many directions, but his general emphasis was on the Baltic fauna. In 1871 he published The Darwinian Theory, a broadly conceived effort to present Darwinism as a system of evolutionary principles, a culminating point in the history of transformist ideas, and a most satisfactory method for an integrated study of life.^[21] The book offered the first Darwinian bibliography to appear in Russia. For its time, this was generally one of the most systematic and extensive bibliographies of studies related to Darwinism.^[22] It mentioned only a few contributions by Russian biologists. Omitting the embryological work of I. I. Mechnikov was one of its major flaws. No studies in the Russian language were cited. The book made no mention of the Russian forerunners of Darwin.

Von Baer's essay "Über Darwins Lehre"—a tightly woven assemblage of arguments against Darwin's evolutionary conception—appeared in 1876. In the same year Seidlitz published a 160-page essay entitled "Baer and Darwinian Theory."^[23] Just as von Baer was convinced that Darwin's theory was built on shaky foundations, so Seidlitz was determined to show that von Baer's attack was scientifically unfounded and philosophically misdirected. Certain components of von Baer's criticism seemed to him to have applied less to Darwin than to Oken, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann, or, in some instances, to Lamarck, É. Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire, and most of all, Haeckel. Relying on natural history facts and on logic, Seidlitz was particularly eager to show that purposiveness in living nature was a "product" rather than a "cause" of organic evolution. He also tried to show that von Baer gave his individual notions contradictory definitions and that he deliberately distorted Darwin's ideas to make them easier targets for attack. Von Baer's anti-Darwinian effort convinced Seidlitz that there was a pressing need for a "dictionary of the theory of descent" that would help in making Darwinian studies more precise, systematic, and productive.^[24] Seidlitz himself contributed

to a clarification of the lines of reasoning that separated Darwin's evolutionary ideas from Lamarck's views, particularly with regard to the evolutionary role of external environment and the meaning of "adaptation." He agreed with August Weismann's claim that only adaptation related to natural selection can throw light on the process of organic transformation.^[25] Von Baer, he said, agreed with Haeckel in accepting the Lamarckian idea of "adaptation" as "accommodation." Seidlitz observed that the elimination of organisms that did not pass the test of environmental adaptation took place in conformity with the laws of nature and could be expressed mathematically with the help of the calculus of probability. His prophetic suggestion found its first solid expression in the twentieth century—in the work of S. Wright and R. A. Fisher.^[26]

The conservative university administration brought a quick end to Seidlitz's course on Darwin's theory. A few years after he published his essay on von Baer's criticism of Darwin's theory, the besieged scholar found it advantageous to take a minor university position in Germany. In The Descent of Man, Darwin cited Seidlitz's comment on reindeer antlers as sexual characters.^[27]

Criticism from Many Sides

During the 1870s the attacks on Darwin's theory were very much on the upswing. They came from many quarters and in many forms. The publication of The Descent of Man in 1871 brought new recruits to the anti-Darwinian camp and gave new breadth and added vigor to the general war on transformist ideas. Inspired by von Baer and Western criticism, Russian antievolutionists made their campaign against Darwin a sustained and elaborate effort. Attacks on Darwin came from professional defenders of autocratic ideology, conservative scientists, idealistic philosophers, alert theologians, and commentators on the current dilemmas of Russian society. Most attacks on Darwinism at this time were much stronger in emotional appeal than in methodical and documented analysis.

Mikhail Pogodin, without peer in his loyalty to autocratic values and institutions, was among the first to react. He did not read Darwin, nor did he have to: all the anti-Darwinian arguments he needed were provided by the conservative journal Russian Herald, currently engaged in publishing selected English antievolutionist essays in Russian translation. One of these essays contained John Tyndall's attack on the theory of pangenesis and on the idea of the origin of all species from a single

"primordial embryo."^[28] He also depended on his ideological sensitivities and instinctive repugnance for the growing "materialism" of contemporary science. The simultaneous publication of three Russian translations of The Descent of Man within a year after the appearance of the English original helped only to heighten his apprehension about the persistence of the pernicious role of Darwinism in shaping the thought of the rebellious intelligentsia. Pogodin was particularly disturbed by the deliberate efforts of "nihilists" and "positivists" to make Darwinian evolutionism a vital part of antiautocratic ideology.

Spread over 152 pages in a collection of Pogodin's essays collectively entitled Simple Words about Wise Things, "Darwin's System" is a biting and rambling paper made up mainly of running comments on numerous excerpts from The Descent of Man, and of sarcastic attacks on "materialists" and "positivists." His analysis of Pisarev's lengthy comment on the Origin of Species consists mainly of casual, and often petty, comments on selected excerpts. Pisarev, he said, was so preoccupied with "minute modifications" in nature that he fully ignored such macroscopic phenomena as the origin of life.^[29] Not equipped to handle the subtleties and intricacies of scientific analysis, he relied on sarcasm as the main weapon in his war on Darwin and his allies. He also concentrated on Darwin's work as a classic example of science as a distinct expression of national character. Darwin's ideas were both incorrect in substance and non-Russian in their soul.

Pogodin's acrimonious attack concentrated on two features of Darwin's alleged identification with positivist philosophy: the treatment of science as a culminating point of man's intellectual endeavor, and the belief that every advance in science represented a corresponding decline in religious and metaphysical thought. Pogodin found Darwin guilty not only of giving the wrong answers to the questions he had raised but also of leaving many questions both unraised and unanswered. Neither Darwin nor science in general was in a position to answer the fundamental ontological questions related to the creation of matter, the origin of life, and the nature of space. Most contemporaries, particularly the growing ranks of scientists and the more astute leaders of the intelligentsia, read Pogodin's acrid writings with much trepidation. They interpreted them as a declaration of war on science as a free, autonomous, and critical study of nature and society. They knew that the campaign against Darwinism had become a campaign against science and the scientific world outlook. Few contemporaries showed signs of readiness to

accept Pogodin's manner of argumentation, built on rhetorical bombast and saturated with sarcasm.

In preparing the manuscript for publication, Pogodin asked an unnamed naturalist for a critical appraisal of his main arguments. The anonymous naturalist found little in the paper to agree with and was particularly unhappy about Pogodin's vicious and reckless attack on science.^[30] He commented that science was not incompatible with religion, and that it could develop only in societies that protected it from attacks by malicious and destructive forces outside the scientific community. Pogodin welcomed the response only because it gave him another chance to attack Darwin. And again he concluded with the statement that Darwin had not come anywhere near to answering the crucial question of the origin of life. Darwin had failed, he said, because he did not have the vaguest idea where to start his study of organic evolution. Pogodin did not respond to the statement of the naturalist-critic that "the early Russian enthusiasm for Darwin has passed, and, at the present time, even the young people have begun to view Darwinism in a more subdued and sober manner."^[31]

Pogodin did not have to look far to find out that the enthusiasm for Darwin among the representatives of critical thought was very much alive, even though it was tempered by the rising intensity of the anti-Darwinian campaign. He was no doubt familiar with A. P. Shchapov's new book—Social and Educational Conditions of the Intellectual Development of Russia, published in 1870—which lamented the painfully slow development of rationalist tradition in Russia and argued in favor of natural science as the only salvation for Russia. The progress of Russian society, he said, depended on substituting a forward-looking involvement in natural science, which alone could solve the grave problems of the present day, for the "archeological" orientation, and its overcommitted involvement in reconstructing and romanticizing the medieval past. The supporters of "archeological" orientations were interested in preserving the ideology of autocracy rather than in creating a basis for modern institutions and scientific technology. In Shchapov's nomenclature, Pogodin's activities provided a graphic example of a thorough commitment to the archeological style of thought. Shchapov never failed to mention Darwin among the towering figures of natural science, who showed the path to a higher level of human existence and social values.^[32]

For a variety of reasons, a goodly number of erstwhile Darwinists

began to voice criticism about the major postulates of evolutionary thought. S. A. Rachinskii, who became famous as the first translator of the Origin of Species into Russian, and who used his lectures in botany at Moscow University to popularize the evolutionary ideas, became a determined foe of Darwinism.

N. N. Strakhov, one of the first writers to popularize Darwin's theory in Russia, was now a confirmed and uncompromising anti-Darwinist. He criticized the evolutionary theory as a clear illustration of the intellectual myopia of natural science and fought for a revival of philosophical idealism, untrammeled by the rigidity and formalism of the scientific method. He was more than Darwin's adversary: he organized and led a general antievolutionary movement. In his anti-Western crusade, which did not subside until the 1890s, he treated Darwin's theory as a sweeping and reckless negation of the ideals of humanity built into Russian culture. In Darwin's ideas he saw a triumph of "Western nihilism" that combined a materialistic position in philosophy with a rapid erosion of moral principles, particularly after the irreversible collapse of Cuvier's antitransformism.^[33] As he saw it, Darwinism was a unique expression of skepticism bequeathed by Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and other masters of the English theory of knowledge and moral philosophy. Darwinism, he noted, was a child of modern science, based on Newtonian mechanical models. Even if it did meet the standards of science, it did not ascend the heights of philosophical vision. In 1878 Strakhov wrote to Leo Tolstoy that he was sufficiently familiar with science to grasp its limitations and to avoid becoming one of its "superstitious worshippers."'^[34]

In Strakhov's opinion, Darwin's view of variation as a random occurrence was not an empirical fact in science but a logical deduction from a materialistic philosophy that denied the role of a supreme intelligence in upholding the harmony and inner order of nature and in ensuring the regularity and predictability of natural processes. Darwinism was a pseudoscience and a materialistic conspiracy, for it eliminated the role of divine powers in maintaining the regularity of natural processes. "The weakness of Darwin's theory," he wrote, "is in that, like any theory that places the primary emphasis on random change, it cannot encompass natural phenomena in their full magnitude and explain their very essence."^[35]

Strakhov's attack on Darwin was part of a broader attack on the scientific community—and on science. Strakhov fought what he believed to be the two major "superstitions" of the scientific community: the belief that science alone was in a position to resolve the greatest mysteries

of nature, and the habit of certifying scientific knowledge by relying on the consensus of scholarly opinion rather than on the weight of empirical proof.^[36] He also attacked nihilist ideology, which, in his view, supported the intellectual imperialism of science. Strakhov contended that Darwinism belonged to the currents of modern scientific thought responsible for a massive decline of idealistic metaphysics.

Strakhov's attitude toward the scientific community was full of animosity and cynical negation. He conducted bitter attacks on science as an archenemy of the sacred values of Russian culture. It came as no surprise to him that naturalists accepted Darwin's theory in such large numbers; after all, he said, it was well known that the scientific community produced more "materialists, pantheists, and individuals who rejected every notion of supernatural interference with the order of nature" than any other group. Cuvier's nontransformist views, in Strakhov's judgment, were rejected, not under the pressure of accumulated scientific facts, but by a sudden shift in the "beliefs" of the scientific community unrelated to true science.^[37] It was not enough to point out that Darwinism was moored in the contaminated waters of "materialism" and "pantheism"; Strakhov found it important to note that, among its many other frailties, Darwinism was non-Russian. To prove his point, he relied on the recently published Russia and Europe, a much-noted book by N. Ia. Danilevskii, which argued in favor of a national character of science. Danilevskii made it known that in order to reach the inner depths of Darwin's mystique it was necessary above everything else to note that his works, including the Origin of Species, were products and expressions of English cultural and social values, scientific traditions, and methodological preferences. "Every nation and every epoch," Strakhov wrote, "prefers certain theories not because of the power of their logical development but because of their moral appeal."^[38] Darwin's theory, no less than Hobbes's views on the state and Adam Smith's orientation in political economy, is a reflection of the moral makeup of the English nation. Russia must reject Darwinism on two grounds: it does not agree with "established" (Cuvier's) science, and it is the product of a moral atmosphere that placed strong emphasis on "skepticism" and "empiricism," totally alien to the moral matrix of Russian thought.

Strakhov and Pogodin briefed the high officials in the Ministry of Public Education about Darwinism as an open attack on the sacred values of tsarist autocracy. In 1871 D. A. Tolstoi, Minister of Public Education, responded to their warnings by promulgating new statutory regulations for gymnasiums. The classical gymnasium was now recognized

as the only direct institutional path to university education. Forty percent of the curriculum concentrated on classical languages. Biology was not represented in the new curriculum. The new curriculum was one of the most potent mechanisms the government had employed in its effort to stem the tide of "natural science materialism," interpreted as a major enemy of autocratic institutions. Pogodin and Strakhov were the leading interpreters of Darwinism as one of the chief pillars on which the new materialism was erected.

At first the criticism of Darwin's theory was a mere trickle. The writings of Strakhov and Pogodin helped accelerate the growth of the anti-Darwinian movement and make it a force of great consequence. The growing criticism came from many sources: from disgruntled naturalists and the new breed of theological scholars, from the pioneers of idealistic metaphysics, and from self-styled patriots eager to ward off the corrupting influences of Western materialism. The towering figure of von Baer stood in the background, providing a constant flow of comments on which the growing breed of critics relied to strengthen or embellish their anti-Darwinian arguments.

I. F. Tsion was one such critic. A graduate of Berlin University and a professor of physiology at the Medical-Surgical Academy and, on a part-time basis, at St. Petersburg University, he distinguished himself by work in the physiology of blood circulation and the nervous system. He wrote on the experimental methodology of physiology and produced the first Russian textbook in physiology. Provocative expressions of conservative political views brought him into constant conflict with both students and peers. A student demonstration in 1875 led to his dismissal from the medical academy.^[39] From 1875 to 1891 he lived in Paris, representing the Russian Finance Ministry.

In 1878 Tsion chose a unique way to vent his anti-Darwinian views: instead of attacking Darwin directly, he chastised Ernst Haeckel, at that time generally considered one of the most enthusiastic—and the most uncritical—of the supporters of the new evolutionary theory. The choice of target was different, but the effect was the same, the more so because his article appeared in the Russian Herald, a widely read "thick journal," and was written in dynamic and lucid prose. Tsion made sure to create an air of objectivity by pointing out both the greatness and the weakness of Darwin's theory. Darwin, he said, deserved credit for transforming a whole array of descriptive and diffuse biological disciplines into theoretically integrated bodies of knowledge. Darwin's success in making "the theory of transformism" a solid part of modern science

earned him "a place among the greatest naturalists."^[40] Even if Darwin had done nothing else but collect the vast stores of empirical material, his name would have been enshrined among those of the leading masters of natural science.

After paying homage to Darwin's scientific stature in a few short passages, Tsion devoted the remainder of his 66-page article to a harsh criticism of Haeckel's interpretation of the basic principles of Darwin's theory. The criticism of Haeckel, however, was only a ploy; the main intent of the article was to undermine the very foundations on which Darwin built his theoretical edifice. Combining his own logical constructions with critical hints supplied by the writings of von Baer, de Quatrefages, Kölliker, and other contemporary critics, he concluded that natural selection had no empirical support. Even worse, it was a sterile hypothesis, for it had no chance of receiving empirical verification of any kind.^[41] "No scholar," he said, "ever thought of placing Darwin's theory on the same plane with the law of gravitation and the law of the conservation of energy." It was not Darwin, according to Tsion, but Haeckel who transformed a dubious hunch about the struggle for existence into a general law of nature.^[42]

Criticism emanating from theological quarters became more common than during the 1860s, and it also became less dependent on outright translations or summaries of Western anti-Darwiniana. During the 1860s the theologians concentrated on marshaling religious and moral arguments against the more disagreeable components of Darwin's theory. At this time they were not ready to make a systematic use of arguments raised by Darwin's critics in the scientific community. The publication of the three Russian translations of The Descent of Man gave theological criticism a new sense of urgency and a more precise challenge. During the 1870s theological criticism adopted two distinct modes of operation. One group of theologians, depending mainly on Western translations, worked on rewriting natural history to bring it in tune with scriptural explanations and to make it a source of authoritative arguments against Darwin's theory. The second group concentrated on analyzing and systematizing anti-Darwinian arguments advanced by such eminent scientists as von Baer, Wigand, and Kölliker. Both groups depended almost exclusively on theological journals for publication of critical essays.

The first group—the contributors to a new natural theology—categorized its activity as "scientific-theological research," or as an effort to advance that part of theology that was "particularly close to natural sci-

ence."^[43] The "scientific" branch of theology dealt with the biblical history of the independent creation of individual forms of life. It directly opposed Darwin's theory, which dealt with the history of continuous transformation of species and which treated the origin of new species as a result of long evolutionary activities. Darwin's categorical claim of the anthropoid origin of homo sapiens gave theological writers both a most critical target to attack and a most difficult generalization to refute. Although theological naturalists made extensive use of suitable citations from the scientific literature, syllogistic constructions, and philosophical arguments, they depended on scriptural teachings as the highest and most reliable source of information on the structure and the dynamics of the universe. This type of criticism proved ineffective and compelled theological scholars to search for other modes of operation. The most learned theologians quickly gave up on the idea of creating a theologically acceptable natural history as a systematic body of knowledge. They did not give up on expanding their interests in, and their comments on, the burning theoretical developments in modern science. The attack on Darwin's theory did not lose momentum; it merely moved to another ground.

The second group of critics, who shifted the emphasis from theological to scientific grounds, relied on a strategy that called for protecting science, rather than theology, from the Darwinian plague. These critics kept in touch with the proliferating anti-Darwinian literature produced by recognized scientists. A. P. Lebedev, professor at the Moscow Theological Academy, was one of the better-known early representatives of this group. In 1873 he published a lengthy article in the Russian Herald which summarized the antievolutionary views of the leading contemporary critics of Darwin's theory. Presenting his essay as a philosophical discourse based on logic and science, Lebedev dwelt on the "weaknesses" of Darwin's "naturalist deism," the narrow use of empirical data, and excessive dependence on philosophical materialism. But the main thrust of his attack depended on anti-Darwinian statements by recognized biologists. Lebedev advanced his arguments calmly and methodically, with all the trimmings of an objective academic discourse. His conclusions, however, stayed completely within the realm of expectations: he relegated the theories of both the Origin and the Descent to the realm of fictitious knowledge. He saw no reason to challenge von Baer's assertion that Darwin's transformist thesis was "a product of phantasy without any basis in real observation."^[44]

Lebedev's critique marked a turning point in the history of Russian

theological criticism of Darwin's theory. His predecessors limited their criticism primarily to refuting Darwin's atheism by recounting the scriptural interpretation of the creation of the world. Lebedev, by contrast, concentrated on two novel lines of attack: the incompatibility of Darwin's arguments with the established facts of modern science—or, rather, the facts he chose to regard as established—and the flaws in Darwin's theoretical reasoning. Although he directed his main arguments at The Descent of Man and its specific concern with the origin of moral norms, he relied heavily on von Baer's attack on the Origin of Species, which avoided a discussion of human evolution. By a careful selection of citations from the works of Charles Lyell and Thomas Huxley, he tried to create an impression that these two naturalists had serious doubts about the new theory. The two groups of theological writers relied on different strategies in examining Darwin's biological legacy, but they produced identical results: without exception, both groups rejected every part of Darwinian thought.

The mushrooming criticism of Darwin's evolutionary theory was not unexpected. Unexpected was the tangible increase in the number of theologians who commanded well-grounded knowledge about the scientific arguments centered on evolutionism. The emergence of theological criticism of Darwinism marked the beginning of a concerted and systematic effort of religious scholars to make the major developments in modern science topics of learned theological commentaries and to involve the church in the discussion of modern knowledge. Theologians preferred to write about scientific developments that threatened the orthodoxy of theological thought, and showed no interest in a synthesis of scientific and theological ideas. A reconciliation of scientific and religious thought was outside the realm of their intellectual concerns.

Theological writers did not limit their activity to attacks on the arguments Darwin had used in building his theoretical edifice. They also disseminated information about noteworthy developments in the West which provided a background for anti-Darwinian criticism. In 1880, for example, the journal Christian Readings reported extensively on the bitter dispute between the Darwinist Haeckel and the anti-Darwinist Virchow at the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians, held in Munich in 1877.^[45] While reporting the details of the argument, the journal did not hide its full concurrence with Virchow's views. Dispassionate readers, however, benefited from the report's survey of ideological questions related to Darwin's theoretical structures.

Mainly in a roundabout way, Darwin came under attack also from

representatives of religious philosophy, which at this time was experiencing a strong revival. In 1874 the twenty-one-year-old Vladimir Sergeevich Solov'ev completed his magisterial thesis at Moscow University, an event that marked a turning point in the history of philosophy taught in Russian universities.^[46] An insightful and forceful analysis of Western philosophy, particularly as represented by Schopenhauer and Hartmann, led Solov'ev to announce the beginning of a new era in the growth of philosophical thought, which he interpreted as a meeting point of "rational knowledge" in the West and the spiritual legacy of the East.^[47] The new philosophy represented a fusion of "the logical perfection of Western forms" with the "substantive fullness of spiritual contemplation" in the East. In this work, as well as in his doctoral dissertation, "The Abstract Principles of Philosophy," he attacked positivism as a philosophy closely associated with science. The future, as he saw it, belonged to a unity of philosophy and religion, not to a unity of philosophy and science. In science he saw a repository of shallow and fragmented knowledge. Metaphysics alone can lead to fundamental and absolute truth and to a universally integrated body of knowledge.^[48]

Under Solov'ev's strong influence, Russian professors of philosophy, without exception, followed a strategy of playing down the role of science in the intellectual conquests of modern man. Their attacks concentrated on the "mechanistic" and "materialistic" foundations of Newtonian science, which, of course, included Darwinism. The philosophers showed a strong inclination to interpret the spreading crisis in Newtonian science as a rapid and irretrievable decline of the intellectual authority of science in general. In their eagerness to point out the narrow horizons of scientific knowledge, Solov'ev and his university followers were actually engaged in a war against the ghost of nihilism, a philosophy that denigrated all nonscientific modes of inquiry and types of knowledge.

The writings of Lebedev and Solov'ev were the fountainheads of two notable anti-Darwinian traditions anchored in religious thought. Lebedev was a progenitor of the theological tradition that made extensive use of arguments advanced by anti-Darwinian scientists. Theological writers helped in diffusing the ideas of such astute critics of Darwin's theory as Wigand, Kölliker, Nägeli, de Quatrefages, and von Baer. Solov'ev, by contrast, was the chief progenitor of a philosophicalreligious tradition that contributed to the anti-Darwinian movement by concentrating on the cognitive inadequacies of science in general, rather than on the contestable specifics of Darwin's theory. Solov'ev's followers

operated on the assumption that, by its very definition, science cannot avoid a close alliance with the guiding principles of "mechanism" and "materialism."

Boris Chicherin, a Hegelian who defended the superiority of idealistic metaphysics over science, lost no time in adopting von Baer's anti-Darwinian arguments and in making them the subject of a general public discourse. In Science and Religion (1879) he concentrated on two major "flaws" in Darwin's theory. First, he thought that Darwin's method was illogical: it tried to explain life, a purposive natural phenomenon, by relying on mechanistic models that implied a rejection of every kind of purposiveness. The element of purposiveness, in Chicherin's view, falls completely outside the competence of science; it is a problem that can be handled successfully only on philosophical grounds. Second, Darwin based his theory on inadequate empirical data; for example, he did not marshal sufficient evidence in support of adaptation as a mechanism of organic evolution. This deficiency, according to Chicherin, forced many Darwinists to resort to fabricated ideas that often had nothing in common with reality and confused "science" with Naturphilosophie .^[49]

The main criticism of Darwinism came from three sources: from the scientific community, from an expanding group of theological commentators on the main currents of scientific development, and from the representatives of new stirrings in idealistic philosophy. But it also came from individuals who did not belong to any one of these easily recognizable groups. Among these individuals the most noted were general commentators on the state of Russian society, who defended autocracy from three real or imaginary enemies: democracy in politics, materialism in science and philosophy, and utilitarianism in ethics. N. N. Novosel'skii, the author of Russia's Social Problems, published in 1881, was a typical commentator of this order. He wrote about local government, the zemstvo movement, incipient industrialization, labor, and many other topics, always with an eye on the developments he considered inimical to the growth of the nation. He was also interested in the intellectual stirrings of the day and in the compatibility of their general orientations with the spirit of Russia.

Evolutionism in general and Darwinism in particular did not escape Novosel'skii's attention. He devoted forty pages to an analysis of Rudolf Virchow's attack on Darwinism—particularly on Haeckel's brand of it—at the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians, held in Munich at the end of September 1877. His book represented the first systematic effort to alert the government to possible ties between Darwinism and

socialism. Novosel'skii devoted much attention to arguments showing the fundamental incompatibility of the evolutionary theory with Christian beliefs. Biological evolutionism, he said, is based on a mechanistic orientation in science and a materialistic orientation in philosophy, the leading enemies of religious beliefs and moral principles. He differed from other antievolutionists in one important respect: he openly suggested that the Russian government undertake sweeping police and censorship measures to wipe out the new heresy.^[50]

As Darwinian ideas and attitudes became a recognized topic of public debate, the literary figures of the age could not escape taking notice of the new source of heretical ideas. In At Daggers Drawn, an antinihilist novel published in installments in the conservative Russian Herald in 1870—71, the novelist Nikolai Leskov had room only for a contemptuous attitude toward the moral code of the negilisty, a lingering offshoot of the rapidly waning nihilist movement. Unlike the nigilisty of the early 1860s, the negilisty of the late 1860s believed in the Hobbesian principle of homo homini lupus as built into Darwin's theory of the struggle for existence. "Gobble up others lest they gobble up you. . . . Living with wolves, act in a wolflike fashion and hang on to what you hold in hand."^[51] The aim of Leskov's antinihilist novel was clearly to lend support to the conservative view of Darwinism as an attack on the humanistic base of moral principles.

F. M. Dostoevsky—in the novel The Possessed, among others—made use of Darwinian metaphors. He took note of the rapid spread of Darwin's ideas. In 1876 he remarked—in The Diary of a Writer —that there was a fundamental difference between Western and Russian attitudes toward Darwin's contributions to science; while in the West Darwin's theory was viewed as a "brilliant hypothesis," in Russia it quickly acquired the authority of an "axiom."^[52] Perhaps Dostoevsky's extensive, and often biting, use of naturalist allegories owed some debt to Darwin's suggestive ideas.

Echoes of Philosophical Criticism in Germany

German philosophers wasted no time in responding to the intellectual challenges of Darwin's theory. The most noted comments came from Eduard Hartmann and Friedrich Albert Lange, who advanced distinct philosophical interpretations that helped shape contemporary thought in and outside the community of philosophers. The main works

of both went through several editions and reached an unusually broad cross section of the reading public. Both were noted in Russia and added potent fuel to the fire of Darwinian debate. They helped give sharper focus to the philosophical inquiry into the theoretical structure of evolutionary thought and to the criticism of various general aspects of Darwinism.

In the Philosophy of the Unconscious (1869) Hartmann undertook the arduous task of showing that the alliance of science and spiritualistic metaphysics was an absolute necessity for both modes of inquiry. He pointed out the intellectual futility of the reigning alliance of science and materialistic—mechanistic—metaphysics. In a sweeping attack on the "materialism" of nineteenth-century science, Hartmann did not overlook Darwin. He thought that Darwin's principles could be accepted on the most general level but that "the philosophy of the unconscious"—a metaphysical amalgam of Schopenhauer's "Will" and Hegel's "Reason"—could give them more depth and a much broader perspective. Darwin's theory, he argued, recognized the teleological aspects of the evolutionary process, but it limited teleology to an empirical and inductive level. He stressed the need for a metaphysically comprehended teleology, not bound by the narrow limits of empirical knowledge. To achieve this goal meant to bridge the chasm between idealistic metaphysics, with its traditional unconcern with reality, and the empirical sciences, and their distaste for immaterial absolutes. It was clearly for this reason that Nietzsche labeled him an "amalgamist."

This orientation found a particularly clear expression in the Truth and Error of Darwinism, an effort to find a middle ground between Darwin's ideas and the views of Darwin's principal opponents, particularly von Baer, Wigand, Kölliker, and Nägeli. Hartmann developed a strategy that subsequently became particularly attractive to the leaders of neovitalism: the mechanistic orientation of general biology, particularly of Darwinian theory, should not be rejected but should be recognized only as the beginning of a more intensive search for deeper meanings of evolution. This orientation made it necessary to combine "mechanical causality" (a scientific concept) and "teleology" (a metaphysical notion) into a "higher principle of logical necessity" that explains both the organic and the inorganic universe.^[53] In all this, Hartmann clung steadfastly to the view that "teleology," rather than "mechanical causality," provided the safest path to the innermost depths of the evolutionary riddle. His world outlook was dominated by a belief in the superiority of idealistic metaphysics over empirical science. He

directed his basic criticism at the widely held opinion that Darwin's major contribution was in freeing biology from metaphysical speculation and in making natural science the only legitimate source of knowledge on the infinite complexities of organic evolution.

Hartmann's philosophical position evoked varied reactions in Russia. Vladimir Solov'ev, at the dawn of his illustrious philosophical career, praised Hartmann for his assault on the "narrow" vision of modern science and his sustained effort to revive idealistic metaphysics as a source of the most sublime wisdom. Despite all the flattery, however, Solov'ev could not accept Hartmann's mode of philosophical thinking, particularly his ambitious—and unrealistic—effort to build a metaphysical system upon empirical foundations and inductive method. Solov'ev resented Hartmann's effort to create a system of philosophical thought without resorting to mysticism. He heartily approved of Hartmann's merciless attack on "science materialism."

In 1878 N. N. Flerovskii, the well-known author of the ABC of the Social Sciences, published the Philosophy of the Unconscious, Darwinism, and Realism, an unwieldy and hastily written effort to draw the main lines of a modern world view. His reference to the work of Darwin and Hartmann had only one purpose: to help him give his own philosophical views sharper focus and more depth. His own philosophical position was built on two premises describing the unity of the universe. The first principle emphasized knowledge—"information" in the more modern parlance—as the basic regulative force embracing the entire universe. He gave this force extensive philosophical and scientific treatment. The second principle emphasized solidarity as a centripetal force operating on the cosmic level. Whereas Darwin's work, in his opinion, suffered from a lack of clear and articulate philosophical vision, Hartmann's work, by contrast, represented a paradoxical effort to build a metaphysical system by relying on the inductive method of the natural sciences.^[54]

Flerovskii thought that both Hartmann and Darwin erred in placing too strong an emphasis on the struggle for existence as a universal law of nature. He contended that this emphasis justified immorality as a norm of human behavior. Not competition, fostered by Western industrial societies, but cooperation, deeply ingrained in the inner fabric of the Russian obshchina, he saw as the sound basis for social progress.^[55] Darwin, according to Flerovskii, erred also in placing too much emphasis on the evolutionary role of adaptation. As a mechanism of evolutionary progress, adaptation is contradicted by the "known fact" that the

simpler forms of life achieve more nearly perfect adjustment to the environment.^[56] Nor did Darwin's theory explain man's involvement in the dual process of adaptation to nature and to society. To bring organic evolution in tune with his principle of cosmic solidarity, Flerovskii went so far as to recognize an "internal impulse" as "the main and primordial cause of organic development."^[57]

With the exception of a few introductory remarks, Flerovskii made no effort to compare Darwin's science and Hartmann's philosophy. He showed clearly that his familiarity with and reference to Hartmann's ideas exceeded by far his familiarity and concern with Darwin's contributions. In Hartmann's philosophical ideas he saw a deliberate effort to blunt the intensity of Darwin's influence on modern thought and to ensure a triumph for German philosophy over English and French science.^[58] While disagreeing with individual principles built into Darwin's theory, he judged Darwin's general contribution to science equal to Newton's greatest achievements. Abstruse and unstructured, Flerovskii's study attracted an unusually small number of readers.

N. K. Mikhailovskii, the intellectual leader of populism, agreed with Flerovskii's contention that Hartmann's "philosophy of the unconscious" represented an effort to replace Darwin's theory of evolution as a guiding force in modern science. Hartmann's effort, he thought, was part of a rising movement, particularly in German philosophical circles, to reaffirm the intellectual supremacy of metaphysics over science. Hartmann's metaphysical notion of the "unconscious" was intended to be a response to Darwin's scientific notion of "evolution." History has borne out Mikhailovskii's prophetic statement that "the philosophy of the unconscious" was only a passing attraction. During the first ten years after its publication, he said, Hartmann's book caused much excitement among philosophers, but despite its primary intent, it made no impact on scientific thought. In Darwin's theory of evolution, by contrast, Mikhailovskii saw a development of epochal significance. He thought that Darwin's theory was built on solid scientific foundations and exercised a strong influence on all the sciences. It not only precipitated a revolution in biology but also exercised a strong influence on psychology and linguistics. "It received support from physics, gave birth to such new disciplines as comparative study of culture, and, in a most resolute fashion, it knocked on the door of all the social sciences."^[59]

Hartmann, as Mikhailovskii saw him, created a system of sterile thought: his philosophical system neither achieved an effective synthesis of contemporary thought nor opened new vistas for research. Darwin,

by contrast, created both a new scientific orientation and a solid foundation for philosophy. Mikhailovskii disagreed with individual principles of Darwin's theory, but he did not challenge Darwin's revolutionary role in broadening the vision of both science and philosophy. He showed no reticence in criticizing various aspects of Darwin's theory—particularly the excesses of Social Darwinism—but he never failed to acknowledge the immense intellectual resources of evolutionary thought. In his opinion, the differences between Darwin's and Hartmann's views had deep roots in the unique features of English and German cultures. While Darwin tied his science to the English tradition in empirical philosophy, Hartmann limited his "science" to the German tradition in metaphysical thought of an idealistic orientation. By expressing a preference for the Darwinian method, Mikhailovskii reaffirmed the antimetaphysical stance of Russian populism.

F. A. Lange commented on Darwinism in his classic History of Materialism, particularly in the second edition, published in 1875. The publication of the Russian translation of this work in 1881—83 acquainted the general reading public with a German interpretation of Darwin's thought which differed markedly from Hartmann's criticism. Lange and Hartmann took radically different positions. Hartmann thought that the future belonged to the unity of science and metaphysics, with metaphysics serving as the chief and most competent judge of scientific contributions. Philosophy, in Hartmann's view, should serve as a clearing house for scientific ideas.^[60] Lange, by contrast, believed that science and metaphysics are separate modes of inquiry and that they have no point of contact. Science is knowledge; metaphysics is a specific form of poetic expression. Metaphysics has no right to oversee or interfere with the development of science. Hartmann declared war on materialism in both science and metaphysics; both materialisms, he thought, have the same makeup. Lange had no argument with materialism in science; in philosophy, however, he considered materialism a crippling force of major magnitude. He accepted materialism in science as long as it appeared as an empirical rather than as a metaphysical phenomenon. In the principle of causality, the backbone of Newtonian "materialism," he saw an empirical phenomenon and a legitimate domain of the scientific method.

The Russian translation of the History of Materialism was of the third German edition, published in 1877. It retained all the elaborations and revisions that went into the second edition, including a sizable expansion of the chapter on Darwin. The Russian translator was Nikolai

Strakhov, who at that time had firmly established himself as a leading Russian anti-Darwinist. In 1899 the book appeared in a second Russian edition, a clear indication of persisting interest in its contents.

Lange operated on two levels. On one level, he tried to draw a sharp line separating science from metaphysics and teleology and to show that scientific knowledge and metaphysical learning are incommensurable. On another level, and quite independently of his philosophical stance, he pointed out what he considered to be the weak points in Darwin's theory of evolution. On both levels, he discussed the relevant problems with calmness and persevering thoroughness, depending on both documentary support and logical deduction.

As a philosopher, Lange thought as a true Kantian. Science, he said, deals with particular creations of the human mind; it does not deal with the thing-in-itself, the reality unpierceable even by the sharpest instruments of scientific inquiry. Metaphysics deals with the thing-in-itself, but it depends on poetic constructions rather than on empirically grounded methods of inquiry.^[61] It deals with unverifiable products of imagination, not with tested knowledge. With one sweep, Lange acknowledged the legitimacy of metaphysical speculation and denied the right of metaphysics to interfere with the work of the scientific community. He viewed Hartmann's unrealistic effort to establish a mastery of metaphysics over science as "a national philosophy of the first rank," but also as a sure symptom of the intellectual decadence of his time.^[62] He responded clearly and significantly to Hartmann's effort to construct a metaphysical system by relying on a flagrant abuse of the inductive method. "It would be difficult," he said, "to find another modern book with so much natural-scientific material that stands in sharp contrast to all the essential principles of the scientific method."^[63]

The Russian translation of the History of Materialism appeared at the time of a rapidly growing confrontation of science and philosophy. It did not influence the university professors of philosophy who, to a man, chose to go along with Hartmann's effort to make science a secondary force in the organized search for knowledge. It helped reinforce the growing tendency of the scientific community to seek isolation from all metaphysical currents of the day and to make epistemology its major concern. At no time in history did Russian scientists show more interest in philosophy than during the last three decades of tsarist rule, and at no other time did they show so much distaste for metaphysical exhortations.

How did the change in the relations of science to philosophy affect

the Darwinian studies? The scientific community learned quickly to disregard the metaphysical criticism of the evolutionary theory. The rare scientists who lent support to neovitalism—and its attitude toward organic evolution—made a deliberate and strenuous effort to dissociate themselves from spiritualistic metaphysics, usually by defining teleology as an empirical—rather than as a transcendental—force. Lange did not create this shift; he merely helped give it a stronger impetus and a clearer vision. He showed the Darwinian scholars a way to disregard the speculation of metaphysics and still maintain an intensive contact with philosophy. The scientific community learned to appreciate both the right of metaphysical scholarship to conduct a war on Darwinism, and its own privilege to ignore metaphysical criticism.

Despite its title, Lange's philosophical treatise dealt with both materialistic and idealistic metaphysics. In the chapter on Darwin he dealt extensively with the pitfalls of idealistic metaphysics. While attacking teleology, as vitalistic metaphysics interpreted it, he joined the Newtonian camp by praising Darwinism for a "thorough application of the principle of causality"—and by considering the principle of causality the most rational prescription for an understanding of the work of nature.^[64] Nor did Lange eliminate teleology altogether. He discarded the "anthropomorphic form of teleology"—which relied on human attributes in interpreting the purposiveness of natural processes—and accepted the natural or empirical form of purposiveness, detached from human predilections and intellectual and emotional biases. Whereas Hartmann made causality a weak ancillary of "anthropomorphic teleology," Lange made teleology, trimmed of metaphysical excesses, a ramification of causality. The problem of teleology versus causality, particularly in its relation to the theory of evolution, in general, and Darwin's transformist views, in particular, became one of the central philosophical topics that engaged the attention of Russian naturalists. Such Russian biologists as S. I. Korzhinskii, I. P. Borodin, A. la. Danilevskii and A. S. Famintsyn, who entered the field of philosophy during the late 1880s or the 1890s, did not necessarily accept Lange's specific suggestions for separating teleology from metaphysics, but they did accept Lange's claim that the relationship of causality to teleology represented a key epistemological problem of contemporary evolutionary biology. They also accepted Lange's warning that their scientific explanations should under no condition take refuge "in a mystically interfering teleological force."

Lange accepted the Newtonian base of the Darwinian theory; he had

no serious quarrel with the materialism and mechanism of Darwin's scientific outlook. This did not prevent him, however, from challenging individual propositions that became the building blocks of this theory. While essentially correct, Darwinism needed much refinement and additional ramifications. Lange objected to the tendency of Darwinian scholars to treat the species as a precisely defined group of animals, disregarding considerable overlapping of key characteristics, particularly among the lower forms. He thought that the Darwinian notion of "imperceptible slowness" did not give a full explanation of variation and that "rapid change" should also be recognized. In all this criticism, Lange relied on scientific arguments and metaphors and avoided metaphysical involvement. He tried to provide examples illustrating the working of the time-honored rule that only the scientific community has the methodological tools and the moral authority to certify scientific knowledge. More than any previously published book, Lange's study gave Russian scientists a clear warning that the future of Darwinism was not in a defense of orthodoxy but in the ability to adjust to the onrush of new developments in evolutionary biology.