The picture that we possess of the history of the Earth’s crust and of life is at present still dominated by the ideas which civilized[32] English thought has developed, since the Age of Enlightenment, out of the English habit of life--Lyell’s “phlegmatic” theory of the formation of the geological strata, and Darwin’s of the origin of species, are actually but derivatives of the development of England herself. In place of the incalculable catastrophes and metamorphoses such as von Buch and Cuvier[33] admitted, they put a methodical evolution over very long periods of time and recognize as causes only _scientifically calculable_ and indeed _mechanical utility-causes_.

This “English” type of causality is not only shallow, but also far too narrow. It limits possible causal connexions, in the first place, to those which work out their _entire_ course on the earth’s surface; but this immediately excludes all great cosmic relations between earthly life-phenomena and the events of the solar system and the stellar universe, and assumes the impossible postulate that the exterior face of the earth-ball is a completely insulated region of natural phenomena. And, secondly, it assumes that connexions which are not comprehensible by the means at present available to the human consciousness--namely, sensation refined by instruments and thought precised by theory--do not even exist.

It will be the characteristic task of the twentieth century, as compared with the nineteenth, to get rid of this system of superficial causality, whose roots reach back into the rationalism of the Baroque period, and to put in its place a pure physiognomic. We are sceptics in regard to any and every mode of thought which “explains” causally. We let things speak for themselves, and confine ourselves to sensing the Destiny immanent in them and contemplating the form-manifestations that we shall never penetrate. The extreme to which we can attain is the discovery of causeless, purposeless, purely existent forms underlying the changeful picture of nature. For the nineteenth century the word “evolution” meant progress in the sense of increasing fitness of life to purposes. For Leibniz--whose _Protogæa_ (1691), a work full of significant thought, outlines, on the basis of studies made in the Harz silver-mines, a picture of the world’s infancy that is Goethian through and through--and for Goethe himself it meant fulfilment in the sense of increasing connotation of the form. The two concepts, Goethe’s form-fulfilment and Darwin’s evolution, are in as complete opposition as destiny to causality, and (be it added) as German to English thought, and German to English history.

There is no more conclusive refutation of Darwinism than that furnished by palæontology. Simple probability indicates that fossil hoards can only be test samples. Each sample, then, should represent a different stage of evolution, and there ought to be merely “transitional” types, no definition and no species. Instead of this we find perfectly stable and unaltered forms persevering through long ages, forms that have not developed themselves on the fitness principle, but _appear suddenly and at once in their definitive shape_; that do not thereafter evolve towards better adaptation, but become rarer and finally disappear, while quite different forms crop up again. What unfolds itself, in ever-increasing richness of form, is the great classes and kinds of living beings which _exist aboriginally and exist still, without transition types_, in the grouping of to-day. We see how, amongst fish, the Selachians, with their simple form, appear first in the foreground of history and then slowly fade out again, while the Teleostians slowly bring a more perfected fish-type to predominance. The same applies to the plant-world of the ferns and horsetails, of which only the last species now linger in the fully developed kingdom of the flowering plants. But the assumption of utility-causes or other visible causes for these phenomena has no support of actuality.[34] It is a Destiny that evoked into the world life as life, the ever-sharper opposition between plant and animal, each single type, each genus, and each species. And along with this existence there is given also a definite _energy_ of the form--by virtue of which in the course of its self-fulfilment it keeps itself pure or, on the contrary, becomes dull and unclear or evasively splits into numerous varieties--and finally a _life-duration of this form_, which (unless, again, incident intervenes to shorten it) leads naturally to a senility of the species and finally to its disappearance.

As for mankind, discoveries of the Diluvial age indicate more and more pointedly that the man-forms existing then correspond to those living now; there is not the slightest trace of evolution towards a race of greater utilitarian “fitness.” And the continued failure to find man in the Tertiary discoveries indicates more and more clearly that the human life-form, like every other, originates in a sudden mutation (_Wandlung_) of which the “whence,” “how,” and “why” remain an impenetrable secret. If, indeed, there were evolution in the English sense of the word, there could be neither defined earth-strata nor specific animal-classes, but only a single geological mass and a chaos of living singular forms which we may suppose to have been left over from the struggle for existence. But all that we see about us impels us to the conviction that again and again profound and very sudden changes take place in the being of plants and animals, changes which are of a cosmic kind and nowise restricted to the earth’s surface, which are beyond the ken of human sense and understanding in respect of causes, if not indeed in all respects.[35] So, too, we observe that swift and deep changes assert themselves in the history of the great Cultures, without assignable causes, influences, or purposes of any kind. The Gothic and the Pyramid styles come into full being as suddenly as do the Chinese imperialism of Shi-hwang-ti and the Roman of Augustus, as Hellenism and Buddhism and Islam. It is exactly the same with the events in the individual life of every person who counts at all, and he who is ignorant of this knows nothing of men and still less of children. Every being, active or contemplative, strides on to its fulfilment by _epochs_ and we have to assume just such epochs in the history of solar systems and the world of the fixed stars. The origins of the earth, of life, of the free-moving animal _are_ such epochs, and, therefore, mysteries that we can do no more than accept.[36]