Chapter Five—
Mechanism and Vitalism

New Challenges and Controversies

In 1894 M. M. Filippov wrote in Science Review (Nauchnoe obozrenie ), the journal he edited, that at the time of his writing the main theoretical interests of Russian biologists were not the same as those of Western biologists. While Western biologists were deeply involved in a feud between neo-Darwinism and neo-Lamarckism, the Russian biologists continued to be split into Darwinists and anti-Darwinists. Obviously, he took the Spencer-Weismann controversy over the inheritance of acquired characteristics as an apt representation of the Western situation. At the same time, he took the writing of K. A. Timiriazev, who divided all biologists into Darwinists and anti-Darwinists, as representative of the prevalent thinking among Russian biologists. Filippov contended that a typical Russian biologist had not yet been accustomed to thinking that the future of his science was neither in inflexible Darwinism nor in blind anti-Darwinism but somewhere between the two extremes.

Filippov gave forthright advice to Timiriazev: instead of wasting energy in fighting "third-rate anti-Darwinists," the time had come to take note of new developments in biology and to make these developments the base for a scientific reevaluation of Darwin's ideas. It was for this purpose that he made Science Review a vehicle for the diffusion of new biological ideas, particularly in the disciplines concerned with the evolutionary process. The journal went so far as to publish, in installments, a Russian translation of A. de Quatrefages's Les émules de Darwin, which presented the Russian readers with rich information on two kinds of naturalists: those who viewed evolution from non-Darwinian

positions and those who "tried to perfect the doctrine of the master." Darwin's friends Huxley, Haeckel, and Romanes received as much attention as Darwin's sworn enemies Richard Owen and George Mivart. In summing up his appraisal of the achievements in evolutionary thought, de Quatrefages, relying on du Bois-Reymond's labels, preferred the term ignoramus to the term ignorabimus .^[1] While welcoming the critical spirit of the "new biology," Filippov wanted to make it clear that evolutionary biologists had made enviable progress because they stood on the shoulders of Darwin, a giant among scientists.^[2]

During the 1890s Russian Darwinism was a deeply rooted and consolidated theory of organic evolution. It was the reigning power in biological theory at university centers, and it commanded the primary attention of the popular mind. Moscow and St. Petersburg universities were Darwinian fortresses. They were the primary institutional factors in assuring Darwinism of general supremacy in and outside the scientific community. All this did not mean that Darwinism did not encounter powerful challenges from new developments in biology. The state of Darwinism during the 1890s and the main currents of biological thought challenging Darwinian orthodoxy are the central topics of this chapter.

Darwinism in the 1890s:
New Heights and Expectations

In 1895, in an encyclopedia article on Lamarckism, N. M. Knipovich spoke for a majority of Russian biologists when he noted that Darwinism was clearly the strongest orientation in contemporary biology. Regardless of differences in the explanation of the origin of variation, a "vast majority" of biologists, he wrote, accepted natural selection as "the main factor of evolution."^[3] A year later, the journal Russian Wealth offered an important clue for the general assessment of the current state of Russian Darwinism:

During the last year two publishers have announced simultaneously their decisions to bring out new translations of Darwin's Origin of Species, Descent of Man, Expression of the Emotions, Voyage of the Beagle, and Autobiography . These announcements testify to a significant interest among Russian readers in the works of the famous thinker and biologist. Although the Origin of Species does not, and cannot, account for all the progress after 1859 in the study of the evolution of organic forms, it is, and will continue to be, a work of extraordinary significance. To an amateur it offers the path to familiarity with the basic elements of organic transformation; it even offers a

brief historical review of the evolutionary theory. . . . The specialist sees in it a work that has laid the foundations for an entire school in biology. The Origin of Species contains a great number of facts that will forever constitute a solid foundation for evolutionary theory.^[4]

In 1897 the geologist A. P. Pavlov noted that the recent decades represented an important epoch in the history of science, distinguished by brilliant undertakings, unceasing struggles, and solid achievements in the study of evolutionary processes. He identified the four decades following the publication of the Origin of Species as an epoch of the triumphant victory of evolutionary thought in many disciplines. Evolutionary theory, he noted, transformed paleontology from an auxiliary of geology to a distinct discipline, paleobiology, expected to provide the key for the understanding of some of the most fundamental questions of biology.^[5] Vladimir Vagner, an expert in zoopsychology, observed that Darwinism had taken deep roots in "philosophy, history, ethics, and aesthetics."^[6]

In 1890 F. A. Brockhaus (a German publisher) and I. A. Efron (a Russian publisher) undertook the publication of Encyclopedic Dictionary, a cultural event of monumental proportions and a magnificent achievement. The content of the new encyclopedia was actually a combination of articles translated from the German edition of Conversations Lexicon and new articles contributed by Russian experts. The encyclopedia was particularly strong in the coverage of Russian topics, all subject to freshly written articles. All Darwinian topics—including natural selection and the struggle for existence—were covered by new articles written by Russian experts. The articles related to the general topic of "transformism" made the clear impression that contemporary biologists were preoccupied with adding the finishing touches to the edifice of Darwinian thought. They agreed that Darwin deserved the main credit for the full demise of the static view of living nature, and for building an indestructible base for the scientific study of the evolution of life.

With the exception of new vitalism, the encyclopedia articles did not negate the new theoretical and methodological orientations in evolutionary biology. This did not prevent their authors from placing the primary emphasis on Darwin's thought and from taking serious note of the growing number of disciplines affiliated with Darwinian evolutionism. At first the evolutionary idea, according to V. M. Shimkevich, the author of the article on transformism, was an abstract idea, a product of sheer speculation. Then, thanks to Darwin, it found a secure home in

biology, where it received precise theoretical formulation and rich empirical backing. Finally, it spread to the other sciences and became a new philosophy. In essence, the triumph of the theory of natural selection was the triumph of Darwinism in modern biological thought. The triumph of Darwinism, in turn, was the triumph of two great evolutionary ideas: the idea of the gradual transformation of species and the idea of the common origin of all forms of life.

As might have been expected, the strongest and most eloquent description of the triumphs of mature Darwinism came from Kliment Timiriazev. In a paper read before the Eighth Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians in 1890, Timiriazev asserted that Darwin's theory not only continued to dominate evolutionary biology but had ascended new heights of achievement. In his estimate, it had also gained strong recognition in the countries, like France, that were at first openly antagonistic to it.^[7] Aware of the growing criticism of Darwin's theory, Timiriazev found himself constrained to respond to the claim of philosophers Hartmann and Spencer and scientists E. D. Cope and Karl von Nögeli that Darwinism dealt with the conservation, but not the origin, of the forms of life best adapted to external conditions.

Timiriazev noted that modern biology handled two major problems: the step-by-step development of organisms which holds the key to unveiling the secrets of the emergence of new forms of life, and the adaptation of existing forms to the changing conditions of life. While the first problem required an experimental method and a "physical" explanation, the second problem depended exclusively on a "historical" approach. The first problem belonged to the domain of "experimental morphology," or "experimental embryology"; the second problem was the rightful and exclusive domain of Darwinism. He saw no point in criticizing Darwinism for ignoring a problem that was outside its competence and interest in the first place. At no time did he try to explore the close relation between experimental morphology (or embryology) and Darwinism. Unperturbed by the gathering storm, he asserted boldly that Darwinism had grown into a full body of theoretical and empirical knowledge without encountering serious opposition.

Darwinism, Timiriazev wrote at this time, was not only a legitimate division of science but also a consistent and far-reaching philosophy built on mechanistic principles. On philosophical grounds, it received strong support from current studies based on the ideas of the unity of the inorganic and organic worlds and of the superiority of the physicochemical analysis of biotic phenomena. This kind of orientation en-

abled V. V. Dokuchaev to study types of soil as unique historical configurations of inorganic and organic constituents, helped M. V. Nentskii, a Pole by origin, produce challenging data on the basic similarity between chlorophyll and hemoglobin, and made it possible for N. S. Vinogradskii, subsequently a member of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, to explain the role of microorganisms in supplying soil with various inorganic nutrients.^[8]

Another group of scientists pointed out the possibility of making the chemical analysis of vegetal matter a tool in the study of the evolution of plant species. E. A. Shatskii showed that the chemical characteristics of alkaloid extracted from plants that belonged to the same family were so similar that they could be taken as an indicator of genetic affinity. S. L. Ivanov pointed out in 1914 that genetically related plant families produced chemically similar oily substances.^[9] This and related information prompted V. L. Komarov to assert that biochemical characteristics underlie the pure morphological features that help identify and classify plant species on genealogical grounds. Chemical analysis became an important tool in the study of phylogenetic affinities in the plant universe. All this, in turn, supported Timiriazev's contention that the future progress of biological disciplines would come from a heavier and more diversified reliance on mechanical models and guides.

As Darwinism grew in breadth and depth so did anti-Darwinism. The power and prestige of Darwinism compelled the critics to exercise special care in advancing their arguments on substantive, logical, and philosophical levels. Although there were exceptions, anti-Darwinists could no longer depend on moral pathos and on blind adherence to autocratic ideology. The case of I. A. Chemena made this change very clear. In 1892 he published a tome on Darwinism with the sole purpose of assembling and coordinating anti-Darwinian statements of the leading critics of the evolutionary theory.^[10] He went from one discipline to another—from ethnography, anthropology, and sociology to psychology and mathematics—with the exclusive purpose of distilling anti-Darwinian arguments. While scientific journals chose to ignore the book, popular journals devoted much attention to it and, without exception, attacked it as a product of careless and incompetent scholarship. The journal Russian Thought accused the author of fabricating "information" and of peddling biased ideas. It attacked his disregard for the rules of grammar. Writing for Theological Herald, S. S. Glagolev, a theological scholar, wrote that Chemena's book contributed to Darwinism by showing the ignorance of anti-Darwinists.^[11]

New Competition

During the 1890s five distinct currents competed with Darwinian orthodoxy for a preeminent position in evolutionary biology. The representatives of all these orientations paid homage to Darwin's contributions to the triumph of the evolutionary idea in biology and also digressed—sometimes extensively—from his scientific views, usually on a selective basis.

The first orientation went under the generic name of neo-Lamarckism, divided into specific modes of expression, depending on the French evolutionist's ideas selected for special emphasis and elaboration. The supporters of neo-Lamarckism ranged from down-to-earth toilers in "folk science" to highly erudite metaphysicists propelled by cosmic vision.

The second orientation, known as neo-Darwinism, was guided by the powerful figure of August Weismann. It eliminated the role of external environment from the factors of evolution, but it gave prominence to a modified version of natural selection. It served as a historical link between Darwinism and modern genetics.

The third orientation was known as neovitalism, a label used more by antagonists than by advocates. It was preoccupied with metaphysical excursions into the realm of secrets that belonged exclusively to the living world. It emphasized the aspects of the biological order not open to experimental study. In the view of its champions, the very essence of life, and the evolution of the forms of life, belonged to a reality inaccessible to the analytical models of inductive science. The historical role of neovitalism during the early decades of the twentieth century was to provide criticism of, rather than a substitute for, the heavy dependence of many branches of biology on the methods and styles of physics and chemistry.

The fourth orientation may be termed behavioral evolutionism. It differed from neovitalism and various metaphysically oriented branches of panpsychism in groping for a rigorously scientific approach to the evolutionary role of mental activity. It was this tradition that laid the foundations for the subsequent emergence of ethology as a distinct discipline. Some of the early representatives of this orientation distinguished themselves more as advocates than as practitioners of experimental research in plant and animal behavior.

Haeckelism, the fifth orientation, was unique. Named after the German scientist-philosopher Ernst Haeckel, it recognized the basic principles that gave Darwin's theory a distinct place in evolutionary biology,

but it built these principles into a metaphysical system that had little in common with Darwin's scientific views and aspirations.

The five orientations became fully formed during the 1890s. Each appeared not only as a unique commentary on the Darwinian revolution in science and world outlook, but also as a distinct reaction to rapid advances in experimental biology. Collectively, they echoed both the shifts in the strategy of scientific research and the rising vigor of the philosophical controversies of the day.

Neo-Lamarckism

During the 1890s a revival of Lamarckian ideas became a strong component of the general upsurge in biological thought. Characteristically, the conditions and expressions of the revival varied from one country to another. In Great Britain the Lamarckian scene was dominant by Herbert Spencer's thunderous attack on August Weismann's equally thunderous rejection of the Lamarckian notion of the inheritance of acquired characteristics as a motor of organic evolution. In the United States the situation was dominated by Edward Drinker Cope's heavy reliance on Lamarck's ideas in a frontal attack on the randomness of Darwin's idea of evolution. In France, Edmond Perrier represented a strong group of biologists eager to show that Lamarck's evolutionary theory should be treated not as a rival of Darwin's theory but as an "indispensable base" upon which Darwin built his theoretical edifice.^[12] Alfred Giard made Lamarck's views the basic component of an elaborate evolutionary theory in which the environmental determinants occupied the primary position, and in which Darwin's natural selection was recognized only as one of "the secondary factors."^[13] He pointed out that Bossuet, Montesquieu, and Buffon, the illustrious French thinkers in the eighteenth century, had recognized climate and other physical features of the environment as a direct and primary factor of organic transformation.^[14] Y. Delage and M. Goldsmith noted that many biologists were actually "shy Lamarckists."^[15] Felix le Dantec, the Sorbonne biologist-philosopher, went back to Lamarck to help Darwin's theory become a legitimate part of the Newtonian picture of the world.

In no country was the revival of Lamarckian thought more widespread and intensive than in Germany. Among many strains of resurrected Lamarckism, two stood out because of the unusual strength of their influence and the clear delineation of their interests. One group concentrated on the experimental study of the direct influence of exter-

nal environment on the evolutionary process and on the inheritance of acquired characteristics. This orientation reached the culminating point in the experimental work of Max Standfuss, E. Fischer, Hans Przibram, and Paul Kammerer.^[16] The Russian commentators on modern developments in biology preferred to identify this orientation as mechanical Lamarckism or mechano-Lamarckism, a term used by Ludwig Plate in his classic Selektionsprinzip, primarily because of its goal to reduce vital processes to physicochemical explanations.^[17] The second group elaborated on Lamarck's idea of an internal impulse for perfection as the basic motor of organic evolution. Whereas the first group emphasized the external causation of evolution, the second group attributed the primary significance to internal causation. Whereas the first group sought a physicochemical explanation of evolution, the second group was concerned primarily with psychological explanations.^[18] For this reason it earned the title psychological Lamarckism.

The mechanical orientation in Russia was for a long time inspired by the wide publicity given to Shmankevich's experimental study of the transformation of Artemia salina into Artemia Mühlhausenii . Shmankevich interpreted this unique "transformation" as a result of the direct influence of changes in the salinity and temperature of water in the Odessa lagoons. The experimental research of this kind became so popular that two eminent observers—A. N. Beketov and A. N. Severtsov—went so far as to claim that Lamarckism was the dominant orientation in evolutionary biology during the 1890s.^[19] Beketov and Severtsov did not document their claims, and in the specific reference to Russia, they could not have documented them. During this period Russia did not produce a single Lamarckian scholar capable of attracting the attention of the scientific community. Intense and far-reaching, most Lamarckian thought was submerged in Darwinism.

During the 1890s Shmankevich's reputation waned rapidly. The results of accumulated experimental research contradicted the results of the Odessa studies and helped undermine one of the prize claims of experimental Lamarckism. Challenges to Shmankevich's claims came first from the West. Alfred Russel Wallace argued that Shmankevich's study did not explain "the cumulative effects" of external influences on "the very lowest organisms."^[20] A true Darwinist, he knew that to give in to the Lamarckian emphasis on the "direct influence" of environmental conditions would mean to give up on natural selection as the key factor of organic evolution. As early as 1894 William Bateson claimed that A. salina and A. Mühlhausenii were not different species, as Shmankevich

had claimed, but varieties of the same species.^[21] In 1898 V. P. Anikin, curator of the Zoological Museum of Tomsk University, reported that the "transformations" Shmankevich claimed to have observed were actually pathological effects of a drastic change in the environment. He also found that A. Mühlhausenii appeared in an unusually large number of varieties. Three years later P. N. Buchinskii reported to the Eleventh Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians that his long and tedious experiments with the same species and in the same environment did not induce anything resembling the transformation Shmankevich had reported.^[22] Shmankevich came under attack not so much because he was preoccupied with the direct influence of the environment on the transformation of species but because his claims were too extravagant. The rise of Weismann's neo-Darwinism encouraged experimental ventures that contradicted Lamarckian claims. The collapse of the Shmankevich "school" made it much more difficult for the Russian Lamarckists to become a distinct community of scholars.

V. V. Zalenskii, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, noted that the direct influence of the environment on the process of evolution continued to be an open and unanswered question. After surveying a fair sample of contemporary Western studies of the influence of specific environmental factors on the transformation of species, he concluded in 1896 that the paucity of experimental data made it impossible to draw conclusions of a more general nature. He could not point out a single scientific contribution of this type of research which found a practical application in animal husbandry.^[23] He commended Shmankevich for the precision and originality of his research, but he continued to be generally skeptical about relating experimental findings of environmental studies to the laws of evolution.

Psychologically oriented Lamarckism was dominated by the German botanists-philosophers August Pauly and Raoul Francé.^[24] L. Plate stated that the views of these two scholars could be termed "psycho-Lamarckism."^[25] Yves Delage and Marie Goldsmith named this orientation "vitalistic or teleological neo-Lamarckism."^[26] The psycho-Lamarckians built their evolutionary theories on the idea of an innate "striving for progress," characteristic for all animals regardless of the complexity of their organization. It made no difference to them that this claim did not originate with Lamarck but was attributed to him first by Cuvier and then by Darwin.^[27] No doubt, psycho-Lamarckians were attracted to the idea of "inherent impulse" because it invited and legitimated a psychological approach to evolution. They also preferred

Lamarck over Darwin because he presented, they thought, a picture of the living world that was ordered, purposeful, and harmonious with the universal aspects of human society and culture. Lamarck lived in an age in which the line separating biology from metaphysics was neither precise nor fixed.

Theodor Eimer, a noted German zoologist, was generally recognized as an immediate ancestor of the psychological branch of neo-Lamarckism. His studies made many appreciative references to Lamarck's and Cope's statements on the external environment as the primary factor of evolution. He linked a minute empirical study of the wing patterns of two large groups of butterflies to a general theory of evolution. Instead of Darwin's random variation, Eimer presented a picture of organic transformation as a one-directional process, which he named orthogenesis. This theory assumed the existence of an "internal constitution," responsible for making the transformation of organic forms an ordered and purposeful process. It lent support to the cosmology of the day built on two pillars: evolution and progress.

In Russia, Eimer's ideas attracted the attention of popular commentators on the current state of evolutionary theory much more than they attracted the attention of the members of the scientific community engaged in research. They pleased anti-Darwinists without offending Darwinists. Anti-Darwinists appreciated Eimer's firm criticism of Darwin's random variation and close affiliation with the Newtonian world view. Darwinists appreciated the massive proportions of his collection of empirical data sustaining the notion of evolution.^[28]

Psycho-Lamarckians represented one of the best-known wings of a large aggregate of schools of thought that went under the general name of "panpsychism"—an effort to treat every plant and every animal as a full system of intertwined and intricate mental acts. Adaptation, a vehicle of transformation, results, in the eyes of psycho-Lamarckians, from mental activities of living beings. It comes about as a result of the innate ability of organisms to act in accordance with a "principle" expressing definite "purposes" of evolutionary processes.^[29] Behavior makes plants and animals active participants in their own evolution. A typical supporter of psycho-Lamarckism argued that Darwin attributed to plants and animals only a passive role in the process of organic evolution.

In the opinion of Raoul Francé, Darwin's recognition of evolution as a key to the full scientific understanding of the dynamics of life was a great and indelible contribution to modern thought. Darwin's explana-

tion of the inner workings of evolution, however, was inadequate and did not belong to the realm of science. It was too closely tied to mechanistic philosophy—and to philosophical materialism—to penetrate the bewildering complexity of life processes. One of the basic tasks of twentieth-century biology was to modernize Darwinism by freeing it from mechanistic and materialistic controls and by making it an integral part of modern idealism. In the Current State of Darwinism, Francé noted that science had reached the heights of perfection by recognizing the primacy of the psychological factor in living nature. He referred to his ideas as animation theory (Beseelungslehre ), which he presented as the twentieth-century replacement for the nineteenth-century science built on mechanistic principles.^[30] The modern study of evolution shifted the emphasis from external (physicochemical) to internal (psychological) causation.^[31]

Psycho-Lamarckism found little support in the Russian scientific community. A typical biologist viewed the theories presented by Francé, Pauly, and other psycho-Lamarckians as unwholesome mixtures of Lamarckian science and vitalist metaphysics. The defenders of both orthodox and moderate Darwinism in the scientific community were obviously convinced that psycho-Lamarckism was an eclectic movement with little promise for crossfertilization with other orientations in evolutionary biology. Vladimir Vagner argued that all efforts to equate the innate "impulse for progress" with the "vital force" postulated by idealistic philosophers produced a morass of metaphysical speculation and contradicted Lamarck's evolutionary theory in the first place. Metaphysical intrusion, in his view, produced one major result: it exaggerated the difference between the evolutionary views of Lamarck and Darwin. Psycho-Lamarckism was much closer to the vitalistic leanings of Naturphilosophie than to Lamarck's theoretical views.^[32] According to V. V. Lunkevich, Francé's and Pauly's version of panpsychism was no less one-sided and "primitive" than the extreme materialism of Vogt, Büchner and Moleschott.^[33]

While the experimentalist and psychological branches of Lamarckism showed only faint signs of existence in the Russian biological thought, the presence of classical Lamarckism was all too clearly noticeable. In Russia classical Lamarckism had three general characteristics: it found expression in scattered and fragmented ideas rather than in systematic theory and elaborate experimental research; it showed a more conciliatory attitude toward Darwinism than was the case in Germany; and it placed much stronger emphasis on the direct influence of the environ-

ment on the transformation process and on the inheritance of acquired characteristics than on "the internal impulse for perfection."

There was a strong tendency among Russian biologists to minimize the differences between classical Lamarckism and Darwinism. Quite often a Lamarckian scholar worked within a modified framework of Darwinism. Nor was it uncommon to encounter Darwinian scholars who were eager to point out fundamental similarities between Darwin and Lamarck, particularly in interpreting the evolutionary role of the external environment and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Before becoming distinct entities, the theories of Lamarck and Darwin, according to Menzbir, were made out of similar parts. Menzbir wrote:

Like Lamarck, Darwin finds it impossible to set a limit on variation in plants and animals. He, too, explains variation by resorting to heredity which is responsible for transmitting inborn and acquired characteristics from parents to children. Again like Lamarck, Darwin recognizes the possibility of strengthening individual characteristics in cases where they are equally shared by parents. He, too, looks at variation as a product of changes in the external conditions and of use and disuse of organs, which Lamarck viewed as key factors of evolution. In everything else, however, Darwin appears as a fully independent scientist and follows a path that is completely his own.^[34]

M. M. Filippov, a mathematician who wrote popular articles on scientific, literary, and philosophical themes, was also firmly convinced of the fundamental similarity in the views of Lamarck and Darwin. Both scientists, he wrote, clung steadfastly to the idea of the purposiveness of vital processes as products of natural causes, even though they provided different specifics in explaining it. Neither Darwin nor Lamarck made use of vitalistic conjectures. Both believed in the inheritance of acquired characteristics. And both recognized the direct role of the environment in the evolutionary process, even though not with the same degree of firmness.^[35] Despite these similarities, Filippov did not overlook the critical differences between the two theories. In general, however, he believed that the future of evolutionary biology lay in a firmer and more comprehensive synthesis of Lamarck's and Darwin's views.

V. V. Lunkevich, a careful and informed observer of current developments in biology, diagnosed the situation correctly when he stated that to understand Darwinism and classical Lamarckism was to understand them as complementary, rather than as mutually exclusive, biological orientations.^[36] The botanist V. L. Komarov, with strong Lamarckian leanings, observed that in the study of the origin of species the question of the hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics was not re-

solved. He also noted that it did not make much difference whether the biologists emphasized direct or indirect influence of the environment on the evolution of species. Nor did it make much difference whether they placed the primary emphasis on the emergence of new characteristics or on natural selection.^[37] In their views on the evolutionary role of the environment, Mikhail Menzbir and Aleksei Severtsov, the staunch defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy, showed strong Lamarckian tendencies but only on a most generalized level.

There were also biologists who accepted the idea of a fundamental affinity of Darwinism with neo-Lamarckism, even in its psychological variety. After an analysis of the psychological branch of neo-Lamarckism, M. M. Novikov drew two general conclusions. First, unlike other neovitalist orientations, neo-Lamarckians agreed with Darwinism in accepting evolution as the pivotal notion of biology. A typical neovitalist, by contrast, thought that the time had come to remove evolution from the strategic heights of biological research. In his limited reference to evolution, Driesch, for example, relied exclusively on paleontological and zoogeographical data. Second, neo-Lamarckians and Darwinists accepted the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In this respect, neo-Lamarckism and Darwinism were united against Weismann's neo-Darwinism, their common enemy.^[38]

All this, however, did not mean that revived Lamarckism was not exposed to growing attacks from varied sources. Neo-Darwinism, the archenemy of environmental determinism in organic evolution, became the leading force in the anti-Lamarckian movement. Kholodkovskii, a moderate Darwinist, wrote in 1891 that it was much easier to show the influence of a specific environmental factor on the emergence of new characteristics than to prove the transmissibility of these characteristics by the mechanism of heredity.^[39] Shmankevich's study of the Artemia and Branchipus, he said, presented a conclusive picture of the active role of the salinity and temperature of Odessa lagoons in inducing morphological changes, but it presented an inconclusive picture of the relationship of these changes to the system of heredity.

Kliment Timiriazev, in his persistent defense of Darwinian theory, did not take the trouble to attack individual branches of neo-Lamarckism: he limited his attack to classical Lamarckism. Lamarck erred, he said, in making generalizations that had no empirical base, particularly in claiming the environment as the direct source of changes in races and species and the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In 1909 Timiriazev went a step further by rejecting Lamarck's notion of adaptation.

Darwin, he wrote, opposed Lamarck's tendency to identify every morphological change as an adaptation to the environment and as a "progressive step" in the evolution of species.^[40] Nor did Lamarck succeed in giving a precise explanation of the work of purposiveness in nature, an effort in which Darwin, according to Timiriazev, was eminently successful. Darwin criticized Lamarck's "unfortunate effort" to treat "mental" or "volitional" activities of animals as a driving force of evolution; he did not criticize Lamarck's claim that the environment is the primary cause of modifications in living forms. Timiriazev saw the future of evolutionary biology in a combination of Lamarck's views on the evolutionary role of the environment and Darwin's views on natural selection.^[41]

In the search for the unity of Lamarckism and Darwinism, A. N. Beketov occupied a particularly strong and appealing position. In this effort he never digressed from the idea that the environment was the primary and direct cause of variation in species.^[42] At the end of the nineteenth century, he wrote, the ideas of Lamarck and É. Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire had taken a "preeminent place" in the theory of evolution. In Beketov's view, only the study of the external causes of variation can raise the theory of evolution to the level of exact science. In other words, only a Lamarckian approach could lead to a "mechanical" (physico-chemical) study of living nature, the only one science admits. Beketov recognized natural selection as a factor of evolution but placed a stronger emphasis on "mutual aid."^[43] Despite his extensive and consistent identification with Lamarck's theory, Beketov made no effort to comment on current developments in various neo-Lamarckian schools. He clearly wanted to be known as a Darwinist with strong Lamarckian leanings. More than any other biologist, he helped nurture a strong Lamarckian tradition in Russia—not as a fully crystallized school of thought but as a reservoir of suggestive ideas that formed a distinct enclave in the mainstream of Darwinian tradition. The rapidly unfolding developments in experimental biology that led to the rise of genetics as a special science and a key discipline concerned with organic evolution found no echo in his scientific contributions.

It was not until 1911 that Lamarck's main work, La philosophic zoologique, was published in a Russian translation. In his introduction V. Karpov made an earnest effort not only to give an unbiased analysis of the translated work but also to discuss its significance within a broader intellectual and historical perspective. He thought that Lamarck viewed organic evolution as a specific ramification of the cosmic evolution, a self-evident process that required no special explanation. A Pri -

roda reviewer noted that "despite the important role Lamarckism has played in modern biology, very few biologists have read Lamarck in the original."^[44] By this time Darwin's major works were available in several Russian translations.

The plant physiologist Ivan Borodin was correct when he asserted in 1910 that the widespread influence of Lamarckism at the turn of the century owed much to the dual appeal of Lamarck's theoretical legacy. The Lamarckian ideas of the direct influence of the environment on morphological modifications and of the inheritance of acquired characteristics appealed to the defenders of mechanistic views in biology. The Lamarckian emphasis on the evolutionary role of an inner—mental—impulse for perfection appealed to many adherents of vitalism and panpsychism.^[45]

Neo-Darwinism

As it was understood during the 1890s, neo-Darwinism differed from neo-Lamarckism in one important respect: it was the creation of one man—August Weismann. Ernst Mayr found no problem in identifying neo-Darwinism as Weismannism.^[46] Weismann's cytological theory of heredity rests on two general principles: "the continuity of the germ plasm," and "the all-sufficiency of natural selection."^[47] All inheritable variation, as he saw it, is a result of recombinations of microscopic "determinants" contained in the germ plasm; adaptations to the environment do not result in heritable characteristics. Natural selection takes place in the germ plasm itself and is an outcome of the struggle among "determinants" of various characteristics for the limited supply of nourishment. It is the main factor that advances or suppresses variation caused by recombinations of "determinants." The first principle made Weismann a forerunner of genetics; the second principle made him one of the staunchest defenders of Darwinism.

M. A. Menzbir, a leading Russian defender of Darwinian orthodoxy, was on the mark when he stated that "after Ernst Haeckel, August Weismann occupied the first place among the popularizers of Darwinism in Germany."^[48] Another writer gave a somewhat different interpretation. In his view, a notable difference separated Darwin from neo-Darwinists: while Darwin regarded natural selection as a primary factor of evolution, neo-Darwinists, led by Weismann, regarded it as an exclusive factor of evolution.^[49] In this specific case, "neo-Darwinists were more ardent Darwinists than Darwin himself."

Few Western biologists at this time had attracted more attention than Weismann. A contributor to the journal Russian Thought noted in 1896 that Weismann's neo-Darwinism was the most widely recognized biological orientation of the day because it answered a "much larger number of questions" than any other theory.^[50] In his essay on the achievements of nineteenth-century biology, V. I. Taliev noted in 1900 that Weismann's theory was so well known that it required no detailed discussion for a Russian audience.^[51] N. A. Kholodkovskii observed that Weismann's theory "not only does not contradict the theory of natural selection but goes further than Darwin's theory in emphasizing its primary role" in the evolutionary process.^[52] He was pleased to record that Wallace, in Darwinism, gave full support to Weismann's theoretical views.^[53] Weismann's heated debate with Spencer in the early 1890s—in which he defended the idea of the noninheritance of acquired characteristics—found a strong echo in Russia. In assessing Weismann's scientific work, a typical Russian commentator had something to agree with and something to disagree with. There was no general consensus on the scientific merit of Weismann's scientific work. Taliev contended that Weismann's rejection of Lamarck's idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics was justified. He thought that Weismann's acceptance of the notion of random occurrence of heritable adaptive variation was "contrary to the laws of logic."^[54]

At the end of December 1909 the Twelfth Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians convened in Moscow. At the opening meeting of the zoological section, N. Iu. Zograf, lecturer in zoology at Moscow University, read a paper on "the most recent developments in biology." He opened the paper by paying homage to Darwin as the founder of a great tradition in science—particularly in embryology, comparative anatomy, and paleontology—which came to be known as Darwinism. From the very beginning Darwinism attracted wide attention by its reliance on facts and by its sense of reality, which clearly distinguished it from "the hazy and speculative theories that sprang up during the second quarter of the nineteenth century."^[55] In time, the empirical view of science prevented evolutionary biologists from extending their research to previously unexplored domains of living nature. The most singular contribution of August Weismann was in carrying evolutionary research far beyond the established limits. His work marked the beginning not only of a break with narrow empiricism in evolutionary research but also of a broad experimental attack on the riddle of variation and heredity.

Russian scholars quickly recognized Weismann's two major contributions. First, he received credit for playing a major role in laying the foundations for "nuclear biology," a new branch of knowledge that helped pave the way for the rediscovery of Mendel's theory, the cornerstone of modern genetics. Second, he injected a Darwinian strain into the "nuclear" theory of heredity, which made him an early harbinger of the synthetic theory of evolution.

The famous Spencer-Weismann debate in 1893 brought Lamarckism into open conflict with the biological view that stressed autogenesis and the stability of hereditary factors. In an article published in Contemporary Review, Weismann reiterated the two major positions in his theory: the claim that the germ plasm was the corporeal basis of heredity; and the assertion that acquired characteristics were not heritable. Within a few months the same journal carried Spencer's response attacking both the idea of the internal causes of variation and the postulate of the noninheritance of acquired characteristics. In Russia the response to the debate was heated and penetrating. Some critics leaned more toward Spencer and some more toward Weismann; a large majority appeared to have been eager to point out the possibility of a reconciliation of the classical evolutionary theory, grounded in the ideas of Lamarck and Darwin, and modern efforts to anchor the study of evolution in a "nuclear" approach to heredity. Most critics agreed with Spencer that the inheritance of acquired characteristics was a strong factor of evolution, but under the spell of Weismann's arguments they were reluctant to abandon the idea of the internal causes of variation altogether. A typical commentator saw the feud as an internal Darwinian affair.

The debate started by Weismann and Spencer proceeded in several directions. At the one extreme was Timiriazev, who viewed Weismann's theory and Darwinism as irreconcilable opposites. At the other extreme, V. M. Shimkevich and M. S. Ganin thought that Weismann had opened a new domain of critical and promising research, even though his arguments appeared as logical constructions rather than as empirically supported scientific statements. Ganin made a strong impression on the scientific community with a systematic survey of developments in "nuclear biology," as he called the current effort to reach the depths of the cellular—or molecular—base of heredity. The future of the theory of evolution, he said, belonged to the experimental study of the paniculate agents of heredity and to the study of cell division. He thought that the problem of the material carriers of heredity had not yet been clearly formulated, let alone resolved. In his opinion, the most

promising were the theories that assumed that all cells were carriers of heredity. He preferred the generality of Darwin's theory of pangenesis to more recent theories that assumed the existence of specific structural units of the germ plasm, such as Nägeli's "idioplasm." Ganin sided with the experts who saw the hereditary substance in both the "nucleus of the cell" and the "protoplasm."^[56]

Ganin's survey of scientific literature showed that the study of the cellular basis of heredity had grown into a scientific enterprise of massive proportions—an enterprise that actually started in 1875 when Oscar Hertwig conducted research on fertilization among sea urchins and received a particularly strong impetus from Nägeli's introduction of the idea of idioplasm. The Weismann-Spencer debate led to far-reaching consequences. It helped the pressure to amalgamate Darwin's evolutionary theory with experimental studies of the material causes of heredity become a strong factor in Russian biology. It influenced the Russian community of biologists to engage in research that led to the revival of Mendelian laws in 1900 and to the emergence of modern genetics. The Russian biologists now agreed generally that Darwin's gemmules were the solid beginning of an active concern with the physical aspects of the transmission of heritable characteristics that led to Nägeli's idioplasm, Weismann's biophores, and de Vries's pangens.

Weismann appealed to many biologists not only because he advanced a paniculate approach to the experimental study of heredity, but also because he argued that biology should not be totally dependent on the methods of physics and chemistry. In this effort, he succeeded in raising his research above the limited vision and narrow methodological perspectives of mechanical models. According to M. M. Filippov, however, Weismann's main contribution was in preparing the ground for a future "molecular biology."^[57] Weismann drew criticism for advancing cytogenetic generalizations unsupported by experimental data; he was praised as a man who laid the groundwork for experimental biology. His support of natural selection made him a particularly attractive figure in the circles caught in the Darwinian whirlwind of evolutionary thought.^[58]

Vladimir Vagner advanced the thesis that neo-Lamarckism (with Spencer closely allied with it) and neo-Darwinism (with Weismann as its chief architect) were "two branches of the same tree, two orientations built on Darwin's theory." It should be remembered also that both Weismann and Spencer were firmly identified as Darwinists. The major difference between the two orientations was that each emphasized a distinct aspect of Darwin's legacy: neo-Lamarckism regarded direct adapta-

tion to the environment as a primary factor of evolution; neo-Darwinism explored the suggestive ideas offered by Darwin's view of pangenesis. In Vagner's view, the neo-Lamarckians built upon a principle that Darwin considered of primary significance; the neo-Darwinists, by contrast, built on a principle that Darwin treated as "secondary" or "tertiary" in importance.^[59] Only by abandoning their more extravagant claims could the two schools become productive partners in the common search for new evolutionary light. Vagner resented the neo-Lamarckian flirting with vitalism and the neo-Darwinist, particularly Weismann's, propensity for overelaborated structures of abstract thought.

Neovitalism

The neovitalists came from two different intellectual backgrounds: from philosophy and from science. Henri Bergson was the best-known and most influential neovitalist with a home base in philosophy; Hans Driesch was the most distinguished neovitalist to come from and to operate within the realm of science. The philosopher-neovitalists depended primarily on metaphysical rhetoric; the scientist-neovitalists made maximum use of the most modern biological language. The rise of philosopher-neovitalists received a strong boost from the revival of metaphysics at the end of the nineteenth century; the scientist-neovitalists benefited from the growing opposition in the scientific community to the absolute reign of mechanistic principles in science.

The two groups were united in a strong belief that life is a reality sui generis, irreducible to physicochemical analysis and only partially conducive to laboratory experimentation. Both groups, each in its own way, saw the future of biology in surrendering its key domains to metaphysics. When at the beginning of the twentieth century Henri Bergson talked about élan vital and Hans Driesch about entelechy, they gave names to a substratum of life, an all-permeating and integrating force of life that could not be fathomed with the tools of science alone. In defining the ontological uniqueness of life, the neovitalists gave preference to teleology over causality, to internal influences over external influences, and to holism over atomism. Philosopher-neovitalists thought that the dilemma of life could be resolved by making biology a subsidiary of metaphysics; scientist-neovitalists thought that the best solution lay in emancipating biology from the fetters of the mechanistic paradigm—in creating a new biology qua science. Like a strong wing of neo-Lamarckians, neovitalists emphasized the psychological foundations of

organic evolution. They saw the future of biology in a union of evolutionary theory and psychology.

Neovitalism, in both major varieties, was essentially a metaphysical reaction to mechanistic philosophy. The philosopher-neovitalists allowed little room for Newtonian explanations and models in biology. Eduard Hartmann, one of the more uncompromising philosophers of neovitalism, stated that the new study of life depended on an integration of causal and teleological explanations of life processes. Causal explanation, as he envisaged it, emphasized strict determinism; teleological explanation was indeterministic and was based on the notion of the freedom of the will.^[60] In the proposed synthesis of the two types of explanation, Hartmann attached primary importance to teleology and underlined the preeminence of idealistic metaphysics. He showed no reluctance in treating vitalistic philosophy as superscience. His main arguments concentrated on the impotence of "deterministic" and "materialistic" science—and of science in general—in explaining the very essence of life. Consistent and relentless attacks on the mechanistic bent of traditional biology represented the most distinguishing feature of this group. Friedrich Lange noted that no philosopher of his day talked more on behalf of and contributed less to science than Hartmann.

The scientist-neovitalists showed more tolerance toward mechanistic views in biology, but they too assigned them a secondary position in the overall system of organized research. In their effort to create a new biology, they depended heavily on metaphysical metaphors, which they tried to elevate to the level of science. They encountered serious opposition from contemporary developments in experimental biology which were no less "deterministic" and "materialistic" than Newtonian biology. While the philosopher-neovitalists emphasized the impotence of science to answer the crucial questions of life, the scientist-neovitalists stressed the need for making selected metaphysical notions a key part of scientific methodology. The differences between the two groups were more in the mode of expression than in substantive arguments.

The neovitalists did not exercise strong influence on the development of evolutionary biology, because they were far more concerned with spelling out the weaknesses of Darwin's Newtonianism than with providing a coherent and balanced theory of their own. As George Gaylord Simpson has pointed out, the modern vitalists did not search for a scientific explanation of evolution: their main task was to show that the experimental method was inapplicable to the study of evolution.^[61]

In Russia, no less than in the West, the label neovitalism was often

used in a derogatory sense. A typical Russian scientist-neovitalist tried to point out the reasons why this label did not refer to his particular orientation. This, however, did not prevent him from relying heavily on standard neovitalist arguments. Only a relatively small number of Russian scientists were actively engaged in defending the principles of neovitalism. Among the champions of these principles, however, there was a nucleus of eminent scientists, including several members of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Most of these scientists did not write more than one article on the subject. None allowed the identification with neovitalism to influence his engagement in empirical research.

In 1902 the noted physiological psychologist V. M. Bekhterev made an effort to set down the record of the early history of neovitalist thought in Russian biology.^[62] He noted S. I. Korzhinskii's address at Tomsk University in 1888; I. P. Borodin's paper "Protoplasm and Vitalism," delivered in 1894 before the members of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists; Aleksandr Danilevskii's article "The Living Substance," published in 1896; and A. S. Famintsyn's long essay "Modern Natural Science and Psychology," published in 1898. Not one of these scientists identified himself as a neovitalist, but all recognized the pertinence of neovitalist criticism. All saw the future of biology in a synthesis of mechanism and vitalism, based on the mutual acceptance of the universal validity of the law of the conservation of energy.

Aleksandr Danilevskii, a recognized biochemist working on the molecular structure of protein, gave the most vivid and forceful presentation of neovitalist arguments, modified to match his particular views on the critical dilemmas of contemporary science. He noted the basic philosophical division of science into two major orientations: materialism and vitalism.

The first of these orientations does not see anything in the living substance except perceptible matter and its forces, as well as regularity in the links between various kinds of material changes. The second, vitalistic, orientation does not overlook the material foundations of life, but it also recognizes the presence of characteristics that do not obey the mechanical principles of the interaction of atomic particles and invite a recognition of forces that are not dependent on matter.^[63]

Like many Western supporters of neovitalism, Danilevskii worked primarily on "distilling a healthy kernel" from vitalist thought as a basis for new biology. While not denying the physicochemical attributes of the molecular basis of life, he argued that the real power of the protoplasm lay in its role as a "physiological" phenomenon endowed with

a "vital force." Danilevskii made an effort to reconcile mechanism and neovitalism, but he did not hide his belief that the real essence of life began where the current style of physicochemical analysis ended. The explanation of life required recognition of the existence of a "special factor" beyond the comprehension of chemists and physicists. Relying on a mechanistic analogy, Danilevskii thought that just as "cosmic ether" kept the inorganic world in an ordered and predictable balance, so "biogenic ether"—an entity governed by purposefulness rather than by causality—assured the existence and the functioning of the living world. Only the existence of "biogenic ether," or a similar substance, can explain why protein substances, unstable outside of organisms, are very stable and durable within organisms.^[64] The biogenic ether protects the protoplasm from disintegration by supplying it uninterruptedly with new molecules. What Danilevskii named "biogenic ether" was neither more nor less than the "vital force" of the old vitalists.^[65]

Flirting with neovitalism did not affect Danilevskii's reputation as a biochemist: he kept his experimental research in the biochemistry of protein at a safe distance from his forays into the domain of neovitalist speculation. In a way, his philosophical discourse was aimed not at denying the primacy of matter in scientific inquiry but at redefining it. His discussion of biogenic ether both expanded and narrowed the notion of matter as advanced by Newtonian science: it expanded it by adding "living substance" as a new scientific category; it narrowed it by refusing to accept causality as the universal mode of scientific explanation. Danilevskii thought that present-day science was ready to undertake initial steps in advancing an experimental approach to biogenic ether.^[66]

Danilevskii did not mention Darwin's views on evolution, nor did he have to. His description of vitalism as a scientific orientation of the future made it clear that he looked at Darwinism, with its Newtonian stamp, as a science that belonged to the past. The future transformist theory, he thought, would eliminate the view of evolution as a mechanical aggregate of synchronized physicochemical forces and as a dynamic network of cause-effect sequences. In the future, the notion of evolution would cover the transformation not only of the forms of life but also of the "vital substance," "vital energy," or "biogenic ether," the cornerstone of neovitalist thought.

Many Russian biologists found little use for neovitalist ideas. N. A. Kholodkovskii, a prominent St. Petersburg parasitologist and biological theorist, spoke for this majority when he criticized Driesch's effort to

make a revived version of Aristotelian entelechies the core of a teleologically oriented system of biological ideas. He gave Driesch's ideas a fair airing in Russia, but he also expressed a firm opposition to every metaphysical intervention with biological research. Teleology, according to Kholodkovskii, is a "philosophical notion," and natural scientists must reject it as "unnecessary" and "useless."^[67]

N. D. Vinogradov noted that neovitalism erred in identifying biological mechanism with philosophical materialism. Philosophical materialism, he contended, was built on the premise that all natural phenomena, organic no less than inorganic, could be explained exclusively as functions of material objects. Biological mechanism, by contrast, was guided by the general assumption that all vital processes obeyed the same laws of mechanics that applied to the inorganic world.^[68] Following the arguments advanced by F. Lange, he rejected philosophical materialism and expressed a general approval of biological mechanism, which he also identified as an application of the methods of physics and chemistry to the study of living phenomena. Although neovitalism was justified as a critique of the excesses of mechanistic orientation in biology, it proved actually inadequate as a source of positive suggestions for a new theoretical and methodological orientation in biology.

In the Meaning of Life, V. A. Fausek, professor of zoology at Moscow University, presented a collection of Western essays on the theoretical conflict between mechanism and neovitalism in contemporary biology.^[69] By allocating the most space to a selection from Die Welt als Tat by J. Reinke, he showed clearly that his main interest was in publicizing neovitalist ideas. He, too, recognized neovitalism as a source of criticism of mechanism rather than as a system of acceptable theoretical principles and methodological designs for a major reorientation in contemporary biology. In none of his empirical studies did he make an effort to apply neovitalist guidelines and interpretive schemes. He helped popularize neovitalism as a formulation of challenging questions that could not be answered within the mechanistic framework and that promised to help biology reach new heights of scientific achievement. He did not have much faith in neovitalism alone to achieve this goal.^[70]

V. V. Lunkevich, a competent commentator on the major developments in contemporary biology, expressed a typical opinion when he stated that neovitalism must be welcome only insofar as it pointed out the gaps in the mechanistic world view, and that biology must depend not only on physics and chemistry but also on its own theory, expressing the ontological uniqueness of the living substance. He stated also

that "heretic mechanists" supplied particularly sharp criticism of mechanistic epistemology. Lunkevich placed Ernst Mach among the "heretics" ready to admit that physics, despite its "inordinate power," did not answer all the needs of the scientific study of the living world. Mach's pronouncements achieved two ends: as antimetaphysical statements they challenged the ontological basis of vitalism, and as epistemological clarifications they narrowed, but did not eliminate, the idea of "mechanics, physics, and chemistry" as the sole sources of models for biological studies.^[71]

Lunkevich saw no future for neovitalist efforts to substitute teleology for causality. "Every scientific explanation is and will forever remain a causal explanation; teleology is allowed only as a transitory or preparatory method, and only when it is unavoidable—when it presents the best way to approach a problem." What Lunkevich did not mention, however, was that Darwinists, now more than ever before, were willing to treat "purposiveness"—a more neutral term for teleology—as an important explanatory principle in biology. To make "purposiveness" more realistic, however, the Darwinists made it a special mechanism of historical dynamics, unrelated to the whims of a supernatural authority.

M. A. Antonovich, author of Darwin and Our Time, claimed that one of Darwin's greatest contributions was in reducing purposiveness of the living world to natural causes—by showing that the purposiveness of the organic universe does not require an assumption of developmental goals predetermined by a higher intelligence.^[72] This view received help from Mach's interpretation of the study of purposiveness as a preliminary step in the study of causality. In an article published in 1892, N. N. Strakhov acknowledged the pertinence of the vitalist criticism of the dominance of mechanical principles in contemporary science, but he was equally ready to admit that the spokesmen for vitalism did not produce firm and clearly stated arguments.^[73]

The Progress of Science, a multivolume survey of the achievements of modern science published in 1912, noted that such leaders of neovitalism as Driesch, Reinke, Hartmann, Pauly, and Bergson were "great and original thinkers" who gave a clear formulation of the most critical questions in biological theory. The chapter on the origin of life stated that "neovitalism is a fresh current, the need for which was felt strongly during the last decade of the nineteenth century, when biology found itself in a blind alley, not knowing where to turn for new ideas." It also

noted that, aside from asking pertinent questions, neovitalism was generally a negative development. It was an escape into such abstract notions as "entelechies," "dominants," and "vital principles," which satisfied metaphysicists but provided no help for natural scientists.^[74]

It is not difficult to assess the role of neovitalism in the history of Russian evolutionary thought. Although its principles attracted much attention, it did not have strong and consistent representatives. All its supporters in the scientific community continued to do their empirical work in laboratories and other scientific workshops that made no use of its principles. Part of a general criticism of the mechanical orientation of nineteenth-century science, neovitalism represented a unique echo of idealistic metaphysics and its war on the "materialism" of Newtonian thought. The neovitalist criticism of biological materialism climaxed at the time when experimental biology made the paniculate basis of heredity its major concern.

A typical Russian spokesman for neovitalism made his reputation not as a master of a distinct set of philosophical principles but as a scholar deeply engaged in experimental research focused on the physicochemical attributes of life. While zoologists provided the chief defenders of Darwinism, botanists, including a relatively large group of plant physiologists, were the bastions of neovitalism. In criticizing the cognitive limitations of mechanical approaches to living nature, Russian neovitalists were actually involved in self-criticism. Spurred by the revival of idealistic metaphysics, on the one hand, and by the rapid growth of a new physics critical of the basic principles of the Newtonian-Laplacian paradigm, on the other, the advocates of neovitalism worked in an atmosphere that encouraged the search for new theoretical orientations and research strategies. They invited metaphysical ideas, not to replace the established research procedures in biology but to complement them. Most biologists, however, resented every effort to inject vitalist "mysticism" into biology. The academic philosophers, by contrast, saw little promise in the efforts to dissociate the new vitalism from metaphysical idealism.

In 1897 the New Word , a popular journal devoting much attention to current developments in science, published a Russian translation of Max Verworn's "Vitalism," an effort to clarify the crisis caused by the neovitalist ideas. Verworn's conclusions reaffirmed the views of a solid majority of Russian biologists: "The future of biology is in no way connected with, or dependent on, the streams of neovitalist thought."

The future of biology—he referred primarily to physiology—lay in advancing the techniques for a more efficient study of the physics and chemistry of the corporeal basis of life.^[75]

N. K. Kol'tsov, a Darwinist and true pioneer of molecular biology, gave a fairly accurate description of the mechanism-neovitalism controversy:

Persons who have a natural inclination to pursue research and to conduct experiments cannot remain convinced vitalists for long. It is true that every success in natural science adds to a negation of vitalism. . . . Many unknown factors—factors of supersensory, teleological, irrational, and mystic nature—have been eventually explained and subordinated to causal regularity. In the struggle between vitalism and mechanism the latter has preserved its great importance as a superb working hypothesis: only mechanism gives us faith in the omnipotence of science.^[76]

A. N. Severtsov, the most original and productive Darwinian scholar in Russia, considered neovitalism a real threat to both Darwinism and evolutionary studies in general. Speaking at the joint session of the Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians and the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists on January 3, 1910, he unleashed a furious attack on Hans Driesch, who claimed that the study of animal phylogeny had produced nothing but "fictitious constructions," and that the study of evolution did not have a base in empirical facts and would forever continue to be a science of "inferior" quality. Severtsov blamed neovitalists particularly for their growing commitment to nonevolutionary embryology.^[77] He found neovitalists guilty of making biology a home for all kinds of metaphysical notions that had no affinity with science.

Darwinism found no need to compromise with neovitalism. After reaching a high point in the work of Hans Driesch and Henri Bergson during the first decade of the twentieth century, neovitalism lost much of its zeal and resilience; it was a victim not of Darwinian "Newtonianism" but of the streams of new biological thought emitted by experimental biology which in due time made the triumph of molecular biology possible.

Russian biologists limited their concern with neovitalism primarily to comments on Western developments. They were divided into two clearly separated groups. One group, represented most eminently by Aleksandr Danilevskii, advocated an expansion of biology beyond the rigid limits imposed by the mechanistic orientation. To achieve this goal, it was willing to seek answers to questions that traditionally constituted an ex-

clusine domain of metaphysics. Clearly, it sought to widen the domain of biology by blurring the border line between science and metaphysics. It criticized the mechanistic orientation in biology for its failure to search for answers to questions pertaining to the origin of life and consciousness and to the inner workings of teleology in organic nature.

The second group, represented by the cytologist S. M. Luk'ianov, demanded that biologists make a concerted effort to refrain from asking questions that did not fall within the competence of science—that they surrender difficult questions to other modes of inquiry. Science, in his opinion, must withdraw from all efforts to explain the cellular basis of mental activity, the cellular origin of life, and the work of purposiveness at cellular and organismic levels.^[78] Darwin's effort to explain the place of teleology in the living world, for example, did not produce worthwhile knowledge, for the simple reason that it relied exclusively on the scientific method. Under the spell of the current revival of idealistic metaphysics and its challenge to science, Luk'ianov wanted the scientific community to recognize neovitalism as both a valid critique of the intellectual limitations of science and an extrascientific effort to answer the basic questions related to the origin, organization, and evolution of life. In his effort to deny science the right to study certain aspects of life, Luk'ianov acted as an ideologue rather than as a scientist. In addition to violating the ethos of science, which recognizes no limitation on scientific inquiry, Luk'ianov erred in identifying the limitations of mechanistic orientation in science as limitations of science in general.

Behavioral Evolutionism:
A. S. Famintsyn and V. A. Vagner

A. S. Famintsyn, a member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, and V. A. Vagner, a privatdocent at Moscow University, were the best-known representatives of a growing effort to place the psychological study of the phenomena of life on a solid scientific base. The major goal of this orientation was to avoid the strangulating effects of mechanical models in biological studies without inviting metaphysical interference. Famintsyn worked primarily on the epistemological foundations of the new orientation. Vagner, by contrast, concentrated on giving the new orientation an integrated methodological apparatus. Of the two scientists, only Vagner engaged in empirical research. Both scholars, each in his own way, helped build a scientific tradition that served as a base for the emergence of ethology as a distinct discipline.

A broad-minded and erudite scholar, Famintsyn fought on three main fronts in the cause of liberalism: he participated in the zemstvo movement, a grand experiment in local self-government and independent activity; he wrote articles explaining the urgent need for broader guaranties of academic autonomy; and he signed petitions demanding extensive reforms in the structure of the Russian government. In 1879 he served four days in jail—a sentence imposed by local police for "pernicious influence on students." In March 1896 and February 1899 he took an active part in student demonstrations against the policies of the Ministry of Public Education.^[79]

The evolution of Famintsyn's views on Darwin's theory went through three distinct phases. During the first phase he clung closely to the basic principles Darwin had built into the foundations of his theory. His public lecture at the University of St. Petersburg in 1874 marked the high point of his allegiance to Darwinism.^[80] At this time Famintsyn had no reservations in viewing Darwin's legacy as the main source of ideas for the future development of biology. In Metabolism and the Transformation of Energy, a bulky monograph published in 1883, he did not deal directly with the problems of organic evolution. He did, however, endorse one of Darwin's guiding ideas: the unity of the organic world.^[81] He undertook a detailed analysis of the basic similarities of plant and animal life, endowed with the same metabolism, chemical composition, cellular structure, excitation mechanisms, and respiration processes.^[82]

During the second phase Famintsyn gave prominence to the argument that Darwin's theory did not tackle some of the key questions of organic evolution. While continuing to recognize natural selection as the primary factor in the mechanism of adaptation to the external environment, he now placed a strong emphasis on the close cooperation of experimental psychology and evolutionary theory for the benefit of both. In this effort he was particularly determined to point out the inadequacies of mechanical models and physicochemical methods in the scientific study of vital processes.

During the third phase Famintsyn argued in favor of a systematic and experimental study of symbiosis as an evolutionary mechanism producing more complex forms of life. His theory of symbiogenesis broadened the role of biochemistry in recasting the general theory of evolution. He worked much more on collecting empirical data illustrating the work of symbiogenesis than on advancing a clearly stated and elaborate theory.^[83] Particularly interesting and challenging was Famintsyn's notion of the cell as a "symbiotic complex." Vegetal cells, according to him, are prod-

uets of the evolution of a symbiosis of two simple "organisms": a green organism with one or more chloroplasts, and a colorless, amoeboid organism consisting of a plasm and a nucleus. The basic organelles of the cell did not arise through differentiation of the plasm but were independent symbiotic structures, "cells within a cell." Famintsyn thought that the symbiogenetic theory provided an example of progressive evolution, expressed in the growing complexity of organisms, a problem to which Darwin did not devote much attention.^[84] He intended his symbiogenetic theory to complement rather than to negate the Darwinian factors of evolution.

Famintsyn is remembered mainly for the ideas he advanced during the second phase in the evolution of his scientific and philosophical views. He opened this phase with a report to the Eighth Congress of Russian Naturalists and Physicians, held in St. Petersburg in 1890, in which he tried to show that the "mental" factor was a key evolutionary element even among "the lowest forms of life."^[85] In 1898 he published a long essay, "Modern Natural Science and Psychology," in which he presented an assortment of philosophical and methodological arguments in favor of a psychological approach to the essential attributes of life and its evolution. Not a model of logically precise presentation of theoretical arguments, the study was an effort to blend vitalism and mechanism by eliminating the excesses of both.

In writing his essay, Famintsyn was inspired by the ideas the German biochemist Gustav Bunge had advanced in a special chapter of his popular textbook in "physiological and pathological chemistry." In this chapter Bunge advocated a new orientation in biology which would assign a key role to the principles of vitalism. The main target of his attack was the reign of physicochemical analysis in the scientific study of life processes. He wrote: "The more we strive to undertake a detailed, wellrounded, and basic study of the phenomena of life, the more we become convinced that the phenomena we thought we could explain on physical and chemical grounds are too complex to be limited to mechanical explanations."^[86] Bunge assumed the existence of an "internal sense," reminiscent of Johannes Müller's "specific energy of senses" as the mainspring of vital processes.^[87] He treated introspection as the only effective method of penetrating the innermost secrets of life.^[88] Psychology held the keys to the understanding of the mainsprings of physiological processes.

In Russia, more than in Germany, Bunge was widely known as a leading defender of neovitalism, an honor he did not cherish. In his ar-

ticle on vitalism, published in the well-known Brockhaus-Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary in 1895, Ivan Tarkhanov, an eminent professor of physiology at the Academy of Military Medicine, dealt exclusively with Bunge's ideas.^[89] Small wonder, then, that Famintsyn, who gave Bunge fullhearted support, became also known as a champion of neovitalism. Famintsyn resented this label and was anxious to point out his full opposition to making biology a discipline open to metaphysical speculation. He went out of his way to disown every idea of a vital force not governed by the laws of nature.^[90]

Obviously encouraged by the profusion of signs indicating a rising attack on the extensive and growing dependence of biology on the methods of physics and chemistry, Famintsyn directed his offensive against orthodox Darwinists who, he thought, believed in the superiority of "mechanical" models in biology.^[91] He readily admitted that the laws of physics and chemistry are uniform and universal—that is, that they apply to both inorganic and organic nature. This did not prevent him, however, from claiming that these laws cannot explain the very essence of life. In addition to physicochemical laws, biology must search for laws of nature that are uniquely its own. Famintsyn did not criticize Darwin's theory directly: he criticized it as the most notable expression of the mechanical orientation in biology. While the inorganic world, in Famintsyn's view, can be studied only from an "external" perspective, vital phenomena can and should be studied from both "external" and "internal" sides, and must recognize the "internal" side as preeminent. To approach vital processes from an "internal" perspective amounted to grounding biology in psychological methodology. He took it for granted that a scientific study of behavior can explain the deepest secrets of life.^[92] Lamarck, in his view, made an immortal contribution to science by recognizing the active role of habits, inclinations, and ideas in the phylogeny of animals and men.

In an elaborate criticism of the philosophical views of John Stuart Mill, Famintsyn found an opportunity to state his views on the role and the nature of evolution in modern biology:

Mill and his philosophical followers erred in not allowing for a theory of the evolution of species and for a closely related theory of the evolution of mental life. Little did they know that in the future such a theory would become a point of departure for all biological research. They ignored the phylogeny of sensory organs, as well as the generally accepted view of biologists on the role of these organs as mechanisms for preserving life and ensuring procreation. The philosopher-psychologists have not come around to recog-

nizing the biological interpretation of sensory organs as the most powerful tools in the struggle for existence.^[93]

A contemporary writer offered a fair and balanced interpretation of Famintsyn's position between the extremes of vitalism and mechanism:

Famintsyn is not a metaphysicist: materialism, spiritualism—and even dualism—are to him purely arbitrary categories. He sees them as philosophical constructions without particular significance for science. He rejects all efforts to deduce the entire world from a metaphysical notion of matter or a metaphysical notion of spirit, independent of matter. "The question whether spirit emanates from matter, or matter from spirit, differs little from the question which came first, the chicken or the egg." "Material and spiritual phenomena are different only in methods by which we perceive them. They may appear merely as different sides of the same reality." "Mental life" is not reducible to "the laws of mechanics." Every effort to explain perception and consciousness by the motion of atoms is a sterile effort, and equally sterile is every effort to deduce the origin of life from a "vital force." The mechanistic world view, which reigns supreme at the present time, suffers from a major deficiency: it fully ignores the role of a capital factor in the variation and development of plants and animals. That factor is "mental life" (psikhika ), understood in the broadest meaning of the term. Psikhika constitutes the essential characteristic of every living organism, regardless of its composition. Its development reflects the growing complexity of the organism, and its beginnings are in rudimentary sensations and flickers of consciousness at the lower stages of life. In other words, morphological evolution and psychological evolution are inseparable.^[94]

In choosing to emphasize the behavioral basis of organic evolution, Famintsyn was influenced much more by a current fad than by carefully thought out theoretical considerations. At this time, the tendency to reduce all scientific and philosophical knowledge to psychological elements found many enthusiastic advocates in both the Russian and Western worlds of scholarship. In 1887 N. K. Mikhailovskii informed the readers of Russian Wealth about the growing interest in the psychological reality of organic nature. To prove his point, he mentioned Mechnikov's decision to attribute a "protozoic psychic activity" to phagocytes, Haeckel's assertion that every atom has a soul, Nägeli's reference to "an intellect of cosmic systems," and the current interest in "cellular psychology."^[95] At the same time, sociology was moving rapidly from biological analogies to psychological formulas: Leon Petrazhitskii had established a flourishing "psychological school" in jurisprudence; A. S. Lappo-Danilevskii explored the psychological underpinnings of the "methodology of history"; and Boehm-Bawerk's theory of limited util-

ity, based on a psychological examination of market behavior, found many supporters in Russia.^[96]

The Psychological Society in Moscow, founded at the very end of the 1880s, grew rapidly into an important center of intellectual exchange and influence. Among the founders of this society was a small contingent of scholars with positivist leanings who supported the development of experimental psychology as a promising branch of natural science. Timiriazev, Vernadskii, and M. M. Kovalevskii, the leaders of this group, quickly became powerless in shaping the society's interests and philosophical views. Taken over by the philosophy professors, the society quickly became a bastion of antipositivism and idealistic metaphysics.^[97] With much ardor, it worked on strengthening the institutional base of the ongoing revival of academic metaphysics. As described by Aleksandr Vvedenskii, the work of the society was responsible for a "resounding victory" of idealism and spiritualism over materialism and positivism.^[98] The society had such a high respect for Eduard Hartmann, a leading metaphysical critic of Darwinism, that it elected him an honorary member.

Without giving details, Famintsyn endorsed the current fad of relying on hypnotism as an experimental method of psychological analysis.^[99] He favored the psychological legacy of W. Wundt, particularly its antimetaphysical stance and its emphasis on experiment, concrete experience, and comparative method. Famintsyn's thinking contained two major flaws: he assumed that to emphasize the physicochemical study of life processes means an automatic acceptance of the reign of the mechanistic orientation in biology, and he thought that every psychological study was automatically antimechanistic. He overlooked the prospering schools in psychology dedicated to building their discipline on the models borrowed from physics and chemistry.

Famintsyn did not go much beyond marshaling philosophical arguments in favor of a psychological approach to organic evolution.^[100] He was much more concerned with showing the futility of rapidly expanding efforts to make "physicochemical analysis" the sole approach to the dynamics of living nature than with setting up an empirical and systematic evolutionary study based on psychology. He collected numerous examples illustrating, but not analyzing, mental activities among plants and animals occupying the lowest rungs on the ladder of evolution. At a time when psychology had begun to develop a firmer basis in scientific methodology, his research interest shifted to the theory of symbiogenesis.^[101] Particularly as presented by K. S. Merezhkovskii, this theory con-

sidered symbiosis a basic—but not an exclusive—mode of the origin of species.

Despite extensive criticism of its "oversights," Famintsyn stayed close to Darwin's theory: he considered evolution a core notion of biological theory; he attributed an important role to natural selection as a mechanism of organic evolution; and he subscribed to, and elaborated, the general theory of the psychic unity of animal species, including man. In his opinion, "most natural scientists have accepted Darwin's theory" and "considered anti-Darwinian sectarianism" harmful.^[102] He thought that Darwin's theory of organic evolution had not yet received incontrovertible empirical confirmation. But he also thought that, in its general principles, this theory was basically correct and had already made substantial contributions to science. His major objection to Darwinism was in its viewing plant and animal organisms as "passive" rather than as "active" agents of organic evolution. According to Famintsyn, if Darwin had only examined the parameters of behavior more seriously he would have hit upon the idea of organisms as active makers of their own evolution.

Vladimir Vagner, a prolific writer in comparative psychology, went far beyond Famintsyn in advancing the cause of behavioral evolutionism. At first, he argued that zoopsychology—the field of his major concern—should be built on factual material obtained with the help of a "subjective method" and an "objective method," an idea he borrowed from George Romanes and Wilhelm Wundt.^[103] The subjective method, as he defined it, was anthropocentric: it looked at animal behavior through the prism of human psychology. The objective method followed a reverse procedure: it proceeded from amoeba to man. The latter approach, he thought, called for a scientific study of the physiological underpinnings of behavior.^[104] Romanes provided him with enough arguments to defend the idea of instinct as a component of "intelligent" behavior and as a starting point of mental evolution.^[105] To both Vagner and Romanes, instinct always involves mental operations; reflex action, by contrast, is a "non-mental" and "neuro-muscular" adaptation to specific stimuli.^[106] The domain of psychology begins not with reflexes but with instincts. Physiology, rather than metaphysical speculation, explains the threshold of consciousness as a foundation of mental life and a vehicle of organic evolution. Vagner gave the clear impression that he fully accepted Darwin's idea of the interaction of "free intelligence" and "instincts" as the foundation of more elaborate complexes of behavior.^[107]

In his later work, particularly after 1910, Vagner abandoned his

original position on the complementary relations of "subjective" and "objective" methods in zoopsychology.^[108] Now he became more directly involved in zoopsychology as a comparative or evolutionary discipline and was ready to reject both anthropocentric subjectivism as an approach "from above" and physiological objectivism as an approach "from below." His comparative psychology saw no usefulness in comparing the behavior of amoeba with that of man, or of man with that of amoeba; it allowed only for a comparative study of the mental life of closely related species.^[109] It promised to give psychology what Darwin gave to biology: a firm base in natural-science methodology and a consistent historical perspective. Vagner worked on two fronts: he carried evolution to psychology (his main task), and he carried psychology to evolution. On the latter front he joined Famintsyn as a Russian pioneer in the scientific study of the psychological motors of organic evolution.

Vagner is remembered primarily for his effort to advance a theoretical framework for the comparative and evolutionary study of zoopsychological phenomena. He identified evolutionary zoopsychology as a "paleontology of instincts," concerned with the origin and evolution of instinctive and "rational" behavior, both with historical roots in reflexes. In his empirical research Vagner was guided by the idea that every phase in the evolution of animal behavior represents a distinct adaptation to changes in the struggle for existence. The St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences published his monograph on the changing instinctive base of the nest-building techniques among city swallows (Chelidon urbica ) in a district of Moscow. He observed and described the changes in nest-building from a "hanging" type (attached to a vertical surface) to a "sitting" type (placed on a horizontal surface) and the role of this change in the struggle for existence of this particular bird. The "sitting" type ran virtually no risk of becoming detached from the surface, and it produced a much higher survival rate of chicks.^[110] This was one of the rare concrete studies of the struggle for existence in operation. Vagner described the architectural "improvements" that accompanied the change from "hanging" to "sitting" nests.

Vagner was clearly one of the most original and productive Russian evolutionary biologists of his age.^[111] He was the only scholar to make an extensive and sustained effort to apply a psychological method to the study of the evolutionary process. His influence on contemporary thought, however, was rather limited. As a privatdocent he occupied too low a rung on the academic ladder to become the leader of a scientific school. He worked at Moscow University, dominated by Timiriazev and

Menzbir, who provided little encouragement for the type of evolutionary research he preferred. Nor was he helped by the unsettled nature of his theoretical and methodological views and by the excesses of his outlook on the instinctive basis of human behavior.

Vagner tried to present an ordered and unified picture of the psychologically relevant empirical material available in his time. In gathering empirical data, he depended both on existing studies and on the results of his own research. If his effort to crystallize a systematic approach to the psychological aspect of evolution did not produce more impressive results, the reason must be sought in the general underdevelopment of psychology. In his time most of psychology was highly speculative and, particularly in Russia, was dominated by philosophers imbued with a cosmic view steeped in spiritualism and mysticism. The so-called scientific psychology, still in the embryonic stage, was too narrow and too detached from the problems of evolution: it dealt mainly with instincts and reflexes as building blocks of consciousness. Full-blown ethology was still to come.

In most of his works—but primarily in The Descent of Man, The Expression of the Emotions, and The Formation of Vegetable Mould —Darwin made comprehensive and empirically supported statements on animal behavior. Michael T. Ghiselin has observed that "one may trace out the systematic development of a comprehensive system of neurophysiological theory, from its roots in the hypotheses of the Origin of Species, to its application as a fundamental component in the arguments of the Descent of Man ."^[112] Although he did not make a deliberate effort to establish an evolutionary discipline of behavior, Darwin produced a veritable treasure of suggestive insights and astute observations on the dynamics of plant and animal psychology.^[113] Both Famintsyn and Vagner referred extensively to Darwin's psychological comments, but Vagner was much more systematic and thorough. He also showed a more intimate familiarity with current work in experimental psychology, often building on Darwin's suggestive ideas. Vagner's studies in zoopsychological theory may rightfully be considered an effort to present a systematic study of Darwin's leadership in building the conceptual foundations for a psychological study of organic evolution.^[114]

Haeckelism

Haeckelism stands for an unusual brand of Darwinism. It combines a high respect for the entire set of Darwinian principles and a most liberal

reliance on these principles in building a philosophical and ideological system of views and maxims that have little in common with the intellectual legacy of the English naturalist. No person had supported Darwin and spread his fame as energetically and enthusiastically as had Ernst Haeckel; nor did any scientist surpass Haeckel in recasting Darwin's theoretical principles to make them cornerstones of a personal philosophy.

Although Haeckel did not follow every detail of Darwin's scientific arguments, he became widely recognized as one of Darwin's most loyal followers. In his speech at Cambridge commemorating the onehundredth anniversary of Darwin's birth, he expressed his true sentiments when he stated that "the monumental greatness of Charles Darwin, who surpasses every other student of science in the nineteenth century by the loftiness of his monistic conception of nature and the progressive influence of his ideas, is perhaps best seen in the fact that not one of his many successors has succeeded in modifying his theory of descent in any essential point or in discovering an entirely new standpoint in the interpretation of the organic world."^[115] Darwin had credited Haeckel for making Germany a bastion of the new evolutionary theory, and in The Descent of Man he went out of his way to acknowledge his indebtedness to Haeckel's suggestive ideas.^[116]

For several decades Haeckel was one of the better-known foreign popularizers of Darwin's theory in Russia. In 1869 I. I. Mechnikov produced a condensed Russian translation of his principal work, The General Morphology of Organisms . In the mid-1870s the newly founded journal Priroda (Nature) published Russian translations of two of Haeckel's essays dealing explicitly with the theory of evolution. The purpose of the periodical was to inform the rapidly growing reading public about current developments in science. By 1890 Russians could read at least six of Haeckel's major studies in their own language, including The Natural History of Creation .

After the publication of The Descent of Man in 1871 the criticism of Haeckel's theoretical views came from both Darwinists and anti-Darwinists. All anti-Darwinists were automatically anti-Haeckelians. During the early 1870s Strakhov and Pogodin, the most volatile anti-Darwinists, led a most scurrilous attack on Haeckel's efforts to carry Darwin's ideas to the general public. Darwinists had mixed feelings about Haeckel: they respected his defense of Darwin's theory, but they did not favor the way he went about it. Some paid more attention to his great loyalty to Darwin, others concentrated on his digressions from Darwin's theory and on his flirting with metaphysics.

In a long essay published in the journal Znanie (Knowledge) in 1875, V. D. Vol'fson offered one of the most thorough and systematic early Russian inquiries into Haeckel's effort in the popularization of Darwin's scientific ideas. He deliberately avoided any discussion of Haeckel's involvement in building a system of philosophical monism rooted in Darwin's contributions to the triumph of evolutionary thought in biology and in a mechanistic view of the universe. As Vol'fson presented him, Haeckel was the first scientist to make a broad and methodical effort to add "to all branches of biological knowledge," to construct genealogical tables of animal species, and to carry Darwin's laws to their logical conclusions.^[117] Haeckel's works, he said, stood out as a monumental expression of the most sublime achievements of contemporary biology. His numerous studies were instructive even when they contained unfounded generalizations and misdirected suggestions. Vol'fson was among the very first Russian commentators who tried to integrate V. O. Kovalevskii's paleontological work into the mainstream of evolutionary thought. He relied on Kovalevskii in rejecting Haeckel's suggestion that the two-toed Anoplotheridae of the Eocene formations represented the original ancestor of ungulates. In general, Haeckel performed a historical role in transforming the "chaos" of pre-Darwinian biology into the systematic and integrated thought of modern biology.

I. F. Tsion was the leading anti-Darwinist who waged a total war on Haeckel. His criticism of Haeckel was actually directed at Darwin: Haeckel did not so much distort Darwin's theoretical ideas as carry them to their logical conclusions. He stated explicitly some of the more radical—and unsupportable—ideas that were implicit in Darwin's theory. Darwin, according to Tsion, presented natural selection as a hypothesis; Haeckel presented it as a universal law of living nature.^[118] Tsion's decision not to carry a direct attack on Darwin was a concession to the scientific community, which was heavily pro-Darwinian.

Few Russian Darwinian biologists emulated the sweep and the firmness of Borzenkov's opposition to Haeckel. The influence of Haeckelism, Borzenkov wrote in 1881 and 1884, could best be compared with that of Naturphilosophie during the first half of the nineteenth century: both made general statements based on a low quality of observation, and both relied heavily on sheer "fantasy."^[119] Haeckel, as Borzenkov saw him, digressed from the measured style and high standards of Darwin's work in two regards. First, he was careless and superficial in handling empirical material without which Darwin's theory could not have become the mainstay of modern biology. He had more flair for the cosmic range of metaphysical speculation than for a scrupulous handling of em-

pirical data. Second, he sought to establish a universal genealogical tree of the animal world without waiting for carefully assembled products of empirical research.^[120] As a result, his genealogical links were often based not only on inadequate but also on erroneous data. While Darwin tried to bring biology to the level of scientific realism, Haeckel trudged in the morass of metaphysical speculation. While Darwin consistently acknowledged the weak components of his theory, Haeckel had no reservations about placing the law of natural selection on the same plane of exactitude with Newton's law of gravitation.

In his major works of early vintage—General Morphology and The Natural History of Creation —Haeckel showed clearly that he was interested not only in achieving a scientific synthesis of evolutionary thought but also in advancing a new synthesis of philosophical thought which he identified as monism. This philosophy rejected idealism, a "dualistic" view that recognized both spirit and matter, but assigned the former a reigning position in the configuration of cosmic forces. It rejected materialism which also recognized the dualism of spirit and matter, but, in contrast to idealism, assigned matter the role of ontological primacy. Monism was built on the idea of the unity and inseparability of matter and spirit. This did not prevent it from reducing all science to the laws of physics and chemistry, from preaching atheism, and from making the struggle for existence a supreme law not only of organic nature but of human society as well.

During the 1870s Haeckel developed also a strong flair for social and political criticism. This became particularly clear in his bitter feud with Rudolf Virchow, a powerful figure among German biologists. At the Congress of German Naturalists and Physicians held in Munich in 1877 Virchow told his listeners that Haeckel's writings about the anthropoid descent of man represented an attack on the moral foundations of human society, and that the theory of evolution should not be taught in public schools. Haeckel retorted with a passionate plea for unrestricted scientific inquiry into the secrets of nature. He commended Darwinian evolution as one of the most advanced scientific ideas of the age, promising to fertilize an entire series of sciences and to strengthen the scientific foundations of a new "moral doctrine," independent of the whimsical power of revelation. The debate attracted much attention, primarily because it treated Darwinism within a political context. Virchow's speech, entitled "The Freedom of Science in the Life of the Modern State," found strong echoes in Russia.^[121] It not only supplied conservative writers with anti-Darwinian arguments, but it also provided a

new justification for the current effort of the Ministry of Public Education to introduce stricter controls over the teaching of the natural sciences in universities and gymnasiums.

Prior to 1890 Haeckel did not allow philosophical and social criticism to interfere with his productivity on the scientific front. He made a strong impression on the scientific community with his ideas on the embryological evidence in favor of evolution, on the origin of multicellular animals, on the tectological hierarchies that explain the morphological unity of the animal universe, and on the problems of a universal genealogy of animal forms. In addition to efforts to synthesize the rapidly growing knowledge on organic evolution—such as the two-volume Anthropogenie, published in 1874—he produced serious monographs on specific taxonomic groups. He also wrote a series of articles for the explicit purpose of widening the base of popular support for the idea of evolution.

During the 1890s Russian commentators were divided in their views on Haeckel's place in evolutionary thought. At the beginning of the decade, the zoologist N. M. Knipovich represented the prevalent tendency in the scientific community to emphasize Haeckel's contributions to science and to ignore his rapidly growing involvement in a militant philosophical movement. Knipovich admitted, however, that some of Haeckel's more daring theoretical ventures did not receive support from empirical data, and that some of them had subsequently proven to be "either untrue or one-sided."^[122] According to Knipovich, Haeckel deserved much credit for his effort to illumine many key questions in the theory of evolution and for stimulating a lively discussion in zoological circles. The philosopher N. N. Strakhov held an opposite view. He thought that Borzenkov's criticism of Haeckel's metaphysical distortions of the scientific approach to organic evolution was essentially correct. He thought that this criticism applied to Darwin's theoretical constructions as well. While Borzenkov tried to protect the purity of Darwinian thought from the Haeckelian assault, Strakhov saw nothing but misguided thought in both Darwin's and Haeckel's theoretical structures. Indeed, Strakhov depended on Borzenkov's attack on Haeckel to rekindle and reinforce his own deeply rooted animosity toward Darwin.^[123] While Knipovich was unwilling to look into Haeckel's philosophical elaborations, Strakhov could do no better than accuse Haeckel of repeating the errors of Darwinian thought.

During the second half of the 1890s, Haeckel became much more aggressive and belligerent in his philosophical and ideological pronounce-

ments. First, he wrote and lectured ecstatically about Pithecanthropus erectus, the newly discovered "link" between man and ape. One of his key lectures on the subject was translated into Russian in 1899. Second, in 1896 he was the leading figure in establishing the Foundation of Monists in Germany, an organization responsible for arranging congresses of his followers and for publishing papers presented at these gatherings. Third, he placed the primary emphasis on expanding and publicizing monist philosophy. This philosophy was essentially an effort to integrate Darwin's theory of evolution, as he interpreted it, into a unified scientific world view built upon mechanistic principles and firmly opposed to teleological intrusions of any kind. The Riddle of the Universe, the most notable product of this effort, was published in 1899. It quickly sold over 400,000 copies, a sure sign of the "immense impression" it had made on contemporaries.^[124]

All these developments produced strong echoes in Russia. From now on, Haeckel attracted increasing attention for his philosophy no less than for his science. The encyclopedia articles made certain to record his philosophical engagement. The contributor to a new encyclopedia stated that Haeckel's philosophical ideas in no way differed from those of Democritus and Goldbach. Haeckel was presented as a man who "rejected the world of transcendental reality and defended the mechanistic world outlook from all kinds of teleological explanations." He treated consciousness as a function of the nervous system, rejected the freedom of will and the idea of immortality, and placed morality on biological and sociological foundations.^[125] The Russian readers were duly informed about the founding of the Kepler Society in Germany with the primary purpose of combatting Haeckelian animosity toward organized religion.

With the exception of Miklukho-Maklai, well-known for his ethnographic explorations in New Guinea, Haeckel did not have personal friends in Russia. Miklukho-Maklai was Haeckel's student at Jena University during the late 1860s and participated in Haeckel's biological fieldwork on the Canary Islands. In a letter to Darwin, reporting on his research activities, Haeckel made direct reference to Miklukho-Maklai, one of the more important early funnels for the flow of Darwinian ideas to Russia.^[126] Miklukho-Maklai died in 1888, leaving Haeckel without a close link to Russia. This was the reason why he went unnoticed when he attended the international congress of geologists (and paleontologists) held in St. Petersburg in 1897, after which he made a trip through Rus-

sia which took him to the Volga region, the Caucasus, the Crimea, and the city of Odessa.^[127] His signature on a letter in which a group of foreign visitors thanked their Russian hosts for their hospitality was the only concrete record of his visit to Russia.

During the 1890s—and particularly after 1900—Haeckel's works were translated into Russian with increasing rapidity, and his views became topics of heated and controversial discussion. In addition to books, a selected array of his essays—usually reports given at scholarly gatherings—appeared as pamphlets in Russian translations. Among the most popular were Present-Day Knowledge of the Phylogenetic Development of Man, The Origin of Man, The Struggle for the Evolutionary Idea, and World Views of Darwin and Lamarck . The publishers of these and related pamphlets presented Haeckel as a person who occupied a place of honor among the pioneers in evolutionary theory and as a most outstanding representative of Darwinian orthodoxy.

Most Russian biologists who supported Darwinism concentrated on Haeckel's scientific work, fully ignoring his elaborations of philosophical materialism and monism. Although he was Russia's most consistent defender of the "mechanistic" base of Darwin's theory, and was known as the leading spokesman for "natural science materialism," Timiriazev concentrated on Haeckel's work directly related to Darwin's views on evolution. He made little effort to distill a philosophical message from Haeckel's work. Nor did Menzbir go into Haeckel's monistic elaborations. He differed from Timiriazev, however, in taking a much more critical view of Haeckel's scientific work. His basic criticisms were that Haeckel made little effort to give empirical support to his theoretical claims and that he indiscriminately embellished Darwin's theory with pure guesswork. Menzbir did find Haeckel's more specialized studies to be solid additions to the mainstream of evolutionary biology.

In a comparison of Darwin and Haeckel—of their style of work, philosophical inclinations, and temperaments—Menzbir found that they stood at opposite poles. He hailed Darwin as an inductive scholar ready to back up his generalizations with a rich assortment of empirical data. In Darwin's methodology he saw an elaboration and application of the principles Bacon had set forth at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Haeckel depended on deductive reasoning—on logical constructions not easily related to empirical substance. Menzbir identified him with Oken and Schelling, the architects of Naturphilosophie, in style of thought if not in metaphysical loyalty. Darwin,

according to Menzbir, drew sharp lines between "theoretical" and "hypothetical" pans of his biological thought; Haeckel, by contrast, proceeded directly from general assumptions to a construction of nature in the spirit of Naturphilosophie . Haeckel's entire General Morphology is nothing but "a chain of unproven general propositions."^[128] Even when he produced firmly documented ideas, his mode of thinking was metaphysical rather than scientific. Menzbir represented the defenders of Darwinian science who expressed an ambivalent attitude toward Haeckel. While giving Haeckel great credit for a valiant and dedicated defense of the evolutionary principle built on natural selection, he attacked him for his major digressions from Darwinian thought.

The ideological overtones of his monistic philosophy, steeped in materialism, made Haeckel very unpopular in some circles. In 1903 the popular journal God's World published in Russian translation a German article on contemporary philosophy which considered Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe a national disgrace for the land of Kant, Goethe, and Schopenhauer. Written by Külpe, a well-known psychologist and historian of philosophy, the article found Haeckel's treatment of the "soul" as a function of the "brain" particularly objectionable because it placed a primary emphasis on the neurophysiological approach to mental phenomena.^[129] O. D. Khvol'son, the Russian author of a widely used textbook in physics, wrote a book in the German language for the purpose of refuting Haeckel's arguments.^[130] He focused his criticism on Haeckel's gross misrepresentation of the laws of physics. Because it carried its criticism too far, this book made little impression on Russian contemporaries.

Despite criticism, the translation of Haeckel's works increased at a rapid pace. At the end of the tsarist era, Russians could read all the major and most of the minor works in their own language. While some read Haeckel to satisfy their scientific curiosity, others read him to quench their ideological thirst. All learned that Haeckelism was a unique prism refracting the rays of Darwinian light. Haeckel commanded two powerful sources of popular appeal: he wrote in simple prose but with the authority of a recognized scientist, and he carried out a persistent and vigorous attack on social ills.^[131]

Favorable comments on Haeckel's ideas came from many sources. In 1909 V. I. Lenin stated that Haeckel's Riddle of the Universe had two major features: it revealed the partisan [ideological] character of philosophy, and it showed the key questions related to the struggle between

materialism and idealism. The book went through many reprintings because its "materialism"—Lenin was annoyed that Haeckel preferred the term "monism"—appealed to the "masses" of new readers. According to Lenin, "this little book became a weapon in the class struggle."^[132] Haeckel made Darwin's theory an organic part of a philosophically articulated ideology. Lenin chose to overlook Haeckel's reputation as an outspoken enemy of socialism.

In that same year, A. Genkel' informed the readers of Education (Obrazovanie) , a popular journal with liberal leanings, about the colossal proportions of Haeckel's engagement in science as a body of knowledge, a philosophical strategy, and an ideology. He asserted that the theory of organic evolution was the most sublime achievement of nineteenth-century science and that Lamarck, Darwin, and Haeckel stood out as the main architects of this triumph.^[133] Genkel' tried to show that Haeckel would have been immortalized even if he had limited his activities to pure scientific scholarship. Haeckel, he wrote, occupied a particularly important position in the history of the German commitment to science: he served as a link between the national flair for synthetic thought, dominant during the first half of the nineteenth century, and the strong national preoccupation with analytical approaches, dominant during the second half of the nineteenth century.

N. K. Kol'tsov, a noted pioneer in experimental biology, placed Haeckel among the giants of Darwinian science and among the most successful popularizers of the evolutionary view. Haeckel showed that embryology outstripped morphology as a rich source of evolutionary links in the world of plants and animals. His biogenetic law strengthened the historical orientation in the Darwinian legacy. This law, according to Kol'tsov, contributed to making comparative embryology one of the most attractive and challenging branches of zoology. Thanks to Haeckel, phylogeny bcame a key factor in systematizing zoological and botanical knowledge. Only when Haeckel moved from creating a new system of science to creating a new system of the world did he enter the slippery area of philosophical speculation that brought him sharp criticism from many quarters. As if apologizing for Haeckel, Kol'tsov stated that the monistic philosophy of the German naturalist was not intended to be scientific in the first place; it concentrated on answering questions that reached beyond the competence of science. After all, "Haeckel's monism, like any religion, addresses itself not only to the intellect but also to the sentiment."^[134] Even though he found a comfort-

able home in philosophy, Haeckel earned plaudits as one of the leading contributors to the popularization of science in general and of Darwinism in particular.

A representative group of leading Russian Darwinists showed a generally favorable attitude toward Haeckel's biogenetic law, according to which ontogeny is a brief recapitulation of phytogeny. An old idea in biology, the first suggestion of this law came from K. F. Kielmeyer and É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Fritz Muller made it an integral part of Darwinian thought, and Haeckel popularized it and gave it an explicit formulation. V. M. Shimkevich thought that Aleksandr Kovalevskii's analysis of the role of "retrogression"—or "simplification"—in the development of lancelets and ascidians provided "an impressive argument in favor of the Haeckelian biogenetic law."^[135]

The botanist V. L. Komarov was another representative of the Russian scientific community ready to acknowledge Haeckel's significant role in the advancement and popularization of Darwin's ideas. He commended Haeckel for reinforcing the theory of evolution with "rich material from embryology and comparative anatomy that had escaped Darwin's attention."^[136] Haeckel's elaborate theoretical structures and philosophical involvements stayed outside Komarov's concern with evolutionary thought. Komarov did not hesitate to consider Wallace, Huxley, and Haeckel the leading Darwinian scholars.

A. N. Severtsov, Russia's most distinguished expert in evolutionary morphology, belonged to the group of Russian biologists who made certain that Haeckel received due recognition for his original contributions to science. The biogenetic law, in Severtsov's view, was Haeckel's indelible contribution to the triumph of the evolutionary view in biology. Although it required major revisions and reinforcements, this law, he said, must be counted among the leading explanatory principles of organic evolution. Equally great, according to Severtsov, was Haeckel's pioneering work on the genealogical tree of contemporary animals, an undertaking that required sustained and elaborate work in phylogenetic analysis. This work laid the groundwork for the advancement of evolutionary ideas beyond the general theoretical outlines Darwin had formulated in the Origin of Species . Generally confirmed by succeeding generations of paleontologists and morphologists, Haeckel's genealogical tree, according to Severtsov, laid a solid foundation for the phylogenetic study of organic nature. Haeckel's influence, however, was not all blessing. It led zoologists to place much more emphasis on "the evo-

lution of individual groups of animals and their organs" than on "the morphological laws of evolution."^[137]

No Russian scholar had undertaken a systematic and comprehensive elaboration of Haeckel's unique and exciting mixture of science and philosophy. Russia did produce many scientific and ideological commentators who gave Haeckel's thought an inordinately wide circulation in the country. Without Haeckel's powerful and catalytic influence Russian Darwinism would not have been the same.