"He knew very well, and there was no lack of experienced and friendly colleagues to assure him, that, as things stood in Bavaria, a practising Catholic would have a hard time of it, and could not hope for position, reputation, or emolument. But the young scientist, full of courage and belief in himself, refused to abandon either his faith or his career, and determined to break down by zeal and industry the ban under which the Catholics of Bavaria had hitherto lain." 1

In India Waagen collected an immense mass of material, but his health was unequal to the climate. He was prostrated by catarrh, and on his recovery attempted to resume his work. But he fell ill again, and was compelled to return to Europe in 1872. In 1875 he made a fresh attempt at a thorough exploration of India, but with the same result. He was once more driven out of the country, and on the voyage home a still greater calamity befell him; the vessel to which all his collections, books, and papers, had been committed was wrecked off Ceylon and sank with all her cargo. It was impossible to obtain a position of any kind in Bavaria, and Waagen emigrated to Vienna. "The most distinguished audience", writes Uhlig, "that ever a Privat dosent had, assembled to hear his first lecture (1878–1879) on the geology of India. There were to be found in it Hermann Abich, the Nestor of Viennese geologists, Suess, Hauer, Neumayr . . . and all the younger men." Soon after Waagen became Professor at the German High School in Prague, and in 1883 he published a supplement to Barrande's great work. He received a call to the Academy of Mines of Prussia in 1886, but refused it out of gratitude to his adopted country, and

1 Beilage zur Augsburger Postzeitung Nr. 20, 7. April 1900, 133.

in 1890 he was raised to a Professorate in Vienna. "So rich was his Indian material that the classification of it absorbed almost his entire scientific activity at Prague and Vienna. The work in which he published his results is among the most noteworthy achievements of recent Palæontology." His laborious life came to a close on March 24th 1900. "His name", says Uhlig, "is inseparably bound up with Indian geological research."

"In Catholic circles in the Bavarian capital Waagen was, before his exile, a familiar figure. He took part in every phase of the Catholic revival which began there in the sixties1. "Among his writings we find a special paper in which he brings the Mosaic account of creation into comparison with the conclusions of Geology, and shows the complete agreement between them."

IX. PHYSIOLOGY.

"When Newton was setting about his study of the laws governing the movements of the heavenly bodies he is said to have exclaimed: 'O Physics, I appeal to you to preserve me from Metaphysics! Whoever nowadays sets out to investigate the functions and properties of the human mind may well invoke the protection of philosophy against physiology. Nevertheless it is not science that leads to materialism, but the misdirection and misuse of science. True science is no more responsible for the misuse, than a knife is for the death of a man who is stabbed with it."

1 Das Schöpfungsproblem, in Natur und Offenbarung XLIV, Münster 1898, 641-660 720-735.

This passage is taken from an address delivered by the great Austrian scientist, Andreas Von Baumgartner († 1865), in the Imperial Academy of Sciences 1. The dangers, which he signalises as arising from the study of Physiology, are not however to be ascribed to the actual facts brought to light by that science, but to the minds of certain observers who fail to construe these facts in their right relations. If an Ehrenberg, when questioned as to the impression made on his mind by the temples of Egypt, could reply that he had not noticed the temples, that he had gone into them simply to study bats, and had not bothered about anything else; if a Roberval could ask disgustedly at a tragedy, "What does that prove?" these are but naïve expressions of that concentration and narrowness which we so often find in specialists. A mathematician comes to despise and ignore everything that cannot be worked up into algebraic form, and a physiologist is in danger of becoming so absorbed in purely physiological processes as to overlook all facts of another order, including those which give token of the spirituality of the soul. Humanity has a profound conviction that its life proceeds on a plan altogether higher than that of the other animals. But this conviction is not based on anatomical or physiological considerations. It rests on obvious and fundamental differences of activity, achievement, and progress between man and the lower animals. No one is in greater danger of overlooking these differences than the specialist whose mind is constantly occupied, not with points of difference, but with points of resemblance. He falls very easily into the mistaken con

1 Almanach der Akademie IX, Wien 1859, 39 f.

clusion that man represents simply a higher stage of evolution, and differs from the other animals not in kind but only in degree.

The characteristic development of science towards the middle of the nineteenth century added to this first error a second no less obvious. The older school of Physiology was always too ready to ascribe all processes of vegetative life to the immediate action of the soul or "vital force", as it was called. They represented this mysterious vital force as the direct and proximate efficient cause of all physico-chemical processes. Such a theory was bound to provoke a reaction. It was shown that the simpler changes that take place in organisms are due to the operation of the forces investigated by the chemist in his laboratory. It was further shown that many processes previously explained by the hypothesis of vital force could be explained without recourse to any such hypothesis. Wöhler, Liebig, and Berthelot produced in the laboratory chemical compound after chemical compound which had hitherto been regarded as producible only in a living organism. Bernard showed that even after death the liver, so long as the tissue withstands disintegration, continues to secrete sugar. Other scientists demonstrated that the heart can be made to beat after death by the introduction of fresh blood. The inference drawn from these facts went, however, quite beyond the warrant of sound reasoning. Certain processes, said materialistic scientists, hitherto ascribed to the immediate action of the soul, have been explained in another way, consequently we no longer need the hypothesis of a soul to explain anything, not even sensation or cognition.

We have not space to enter more deeply into these questions1. We can only hope in these cursory remarks to show that Physiology stands in no more intimate relation to the cardinal questions of Philosophy than any other branch of science, and that the leaders of that science in the nineteenth century were very far indeed from being hostile to the Christian teaching on these questions.

The greatest physiologist of the first half of the nineteenth century is admitted on all hands to have been Johannes Müller (born July 14th 1801 at Coblenz, died April 28th 1858 at Berlin, where he had occupied the Chair of Anatomy and Physiology). "The first physiologist not merely of our day but of our century, indeed one of the greatest of all time", R. Wagner 2, calls him; "the Haller of our generation, the Cuvier of Germany", says Du Bois-Reymond 3. The extent and variety of his scientific works are simply astounding. It has been calculated that in 37 years he published

1 Cf. L. Dressel, Der belebte und der unbelebte Stoff, Freiburg 1883. H. Malfatti, Über Lebenskraft, in Natur und Offenbarung XLVI, Münster 1900, 727-733. The purely mechanical theory of the origin of life has found in recent times many opponents among the scientists. Cf. O. Hertwig, Die Entwicklung der Biologie im 19. Jahrhundert, Jena 1900, 24: “Ebenso unberechtigt wie der Vitalismus ist das mechanistische Dogma, daß das Leben mit allen seinen komplizierten Erscheinungen nichts anderes sei als ein chemischphysikalisches Problem. . . . Wenn es Aufgabe des Chemikers ist, die zahllosen Verbindungen der verschiedenartigen Atome zu Molekülen zu erforschen, so kann er, streng genommen, überhaupt nicht dem eigentlichen Lebensprobleme näher treten. Denn dieses beginnt ja

überhaupt erst da, wo seine Untersuchung aufhört etc."

2 Obituary Notice in the Allgemeine Zeitung, Augsburg 1858, 2029. 3 Reden. Zweite Folge, Leipzig 1887, 143.