[Strakhov]

Bad Signs(1)

Nikolai Strakhov

What a pitiful thing man would be if he did not strive for the superhuman. – Linnaeus

 On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. 1859.(2)

The present time is, at any rate, inscrutable and may be more inscrutable than any other. It's not infrequently compared with the epoch of the decline of the ancient world; it's said that we are living through a period of just such general decrepitude, just such a gradual and inexorable destruction of all the forms in which life had until now been expressed. Where and how new life will arise, what forms it'll take, are unknown.

Of course, it's very difficult to judge thoroughly and precisely questions of such a broad scope. The spirit of history, which is taking place around us, that deep life, which moves the development of mankind is, no doubt, the mind's greatest mystery. We ourselves are submerged in the stream of this life and are carried away by the course of this development; for that reason, we cannot look at this movement from the side, as observers with a firm foothold. It's more or less clear, but we sense that this force is at work within us, a force for which we do not constitute the full and complete manifestation; consequently, we can't quite take ourselves as its exact measure.

But thought, as everyone knows,tries to abandon temporary and particular conditions. By its very nature, it considers it possible to find within itself that fixed point, that origin, from which all phenomena, all distances and directions, are measured. For that reason, thought cannot renounce the right to measure even the course of its contemporary historical development.

So, let's suppose that we're going to try to grasp the course of this development. To that end, we'll note that of all the fields of human activity, the clearest and most accessible for understanding and appreciation is that of intellectual activity. So that of all spheres of development, the characteristics that depend on the spirit of the age can be revealed to us most directly and distinctly in this sphere; and from these characteristics it may be possible to get an idea of the state of the whole life of mankind.

What do we find in contemporary intellectual activity? Apparently barely anyone would dare to say that a decline or decrepitude has been noticed in this activity. Without a doubt never before on Earth have the sciences flourished as they do now: scientific activity is burgeoning on ever greater scales. What's more, the successes that the sciences are having do not confine the sciences or indicate their limits, but the further they go, the more their horizons broaden, and the more the field opens up for new successes.

Such is at least our usual idea of the course and movement of the sciences. But skeptical and nostalgic minds, as everyone knows, look at this differently. In this movement, so striking and swift, they find a fundamental falseness. They think that science has in many and namely the most important instances come to an internal contradiction, to its own negation. They assert therefore that science in these instances holds on and moves only by inertia,but that it no longer has a living faith in itself and that consequently sooner or later disaster will inevitably strike.

We're speaking here of a deep skepticism and nostalgia. Adjoining it, however, is the cheap and easy skepticism that always seems popular. In the opinion of many, usually not intimately acquainted with the sciences, the human mind repeats one and the same thing, only in different forms; every question seems to them debatable and they see in the increase in research and books only an increase in contradictions. In history they find the same mess of figures and events, in philosophy the same fog, and in our occupation with the ancients – empty amusement, an empty waste of time, everywhere a fruitless whirling of the mind, deceptive labor leading to nothing.

There are, however, sciences before which all skepticism, both superficial and deep, falls silent, sciences whose successes nobody would dare to deny, whose benefits and fruitfulness are clear. These are the natural sciences, and particularly those of them that have long enjoyed the honorable name of the hard sciences. If at present these sciences are acquiring more and more adherents and practitioners, then this depends for the most part on their certainty, which puts them above suspicion, and on their more or less clearly felt skeptical attitude toward the other sciences. The mind, of necessity, demands activity and seeks salvation where it feels self-assured, where it has firm ground beneath its feet.

In this regard, the natural sciences truly have a clear advantage over all the others. Their subject is so clear, their methods so simple and elementary that the solidity of the knowledge they have acquired cannot, it seems, be subject to any doubt. One has to be, apparently, either extremely dense or extremely careless to stray significantly from the truth when investigating a subject of the natural sciences. For that reason, naturalists all make up one school, without division, without sects; at the very least, they have so much in common that minor disagreements do not mean anything in comparison with generally accepted knowledge. Philosophy, on the other hand, is perpetually being divided into conflicting schools; historical views can be very different; whereas just as there is only one mathematics, there is also only one physics, one chemistry, one physiology, and so on. It's difficult to serve the other sciences that do not enter the natural sciences' orbit. A significant part of their activity goes to nothing, that is, proves to be labor that brings science no benefit. Everyone knows that a book with historical content may not have any value for history. A large part of books with philosophical titles represent still-born freaks and mean nothing for philosophy. But if someone starts to study nature on his own, then a firm path opens up right in front of him; every observation, insignificant fact, it all fits, it all quickly and correctly adheres to the whole of science; mistakes and oversights vanish and are corrected with the greatest ease and clarity so that they do not constitute any setback to the general flow of science forward.

This solidity of path -- this undoubted correctness of method -- is proven by the very results that the natural sciences achieve. One cannot imagine successes more magnificent, more all-embracing and promising. These successes are recognized by everybody, but naturalists alone know their true value and importance. A person, unacquainted with the natural sciences, will never imagine how bright and broad these new streams of light are, suddenly illuminating whole fields of the universe that until now had been, like chaos, covered in darkness and inaccessible to the mind. In two to three decades, entire sciences of amazing order and depth arise; such are, for example, paleontology and organic chemistry.

Now it's clear that the natural sciences believe in themselves, that they're full of life, joy, and that minds that are inclined to nostalgia and doubt seek joys in this bright field of knowledge. This is one of the features of the contemporary intellectual mood. No matter how we look at the course of other manifestations of the mind, it's impossible to see signs of decline in the natural sciences and one must recognize their utter vitality, their new and robust strength.

The natural sciences are something new, generally speaking. One can see in them one of the vital currents distinguishing our world from the ancient world. One cannot but be convinced of this, if we recall that the ancients were highly developed people who enjoyed profound intellectual activity. Their philosophy and poetry are eternal models for us. However, their knowledge of nature was in the full sense of the word nothing compared to ours. This can only be explained by one thing, namely a special, ancient mental attitude toward nature. It's astounding to us how they didn't notice the simplest, daily recurring laws and phenomena. Obviously in modern times the human spirit assumed a special, new attitude toward nature and that is why this new intellectual activity took place so quickly and successfully.

Thus, the current successes in the natural sciences necessarily presuppose some great revolution in the intellectual state of mankind. Usually this isn't noticed or acknowledged. No special depth or special merit can be seen in the methods of the study of nature. On the contrary, everyone knows that intellectuals look down on the activity of naturalists: it seems to them too trivial, too simple and crude. The mockery they make, in this sense, of naturalists is very common. As an interesting example proving, among other things, their antiquity, I will cite here the words of Malebranche,(3) who, as everyone knows, occupies an honored place in the history of philosophy. These words were uttered two hundred years ago, but at a time, when the natural sciences had already declared their first magnificent successes, the so-called "epoch of great discoveries." "[Men]" he says in his book The Search after Truth, "are not made to spend their lives studying flies and insects; and we do not highly approve the trouble certain persons have taken to inform us of how the lice of each species of animal are made, and how different worms are changed into flies and butterflies. We might divert ourselves with this for lack of something better to do…"(4)

The philosopher betrays an obvious misunderstanding here. The study of nature still seems to him to be to some extent a mystery. It's strange to him how one can seriously busy oneself with such trifles as bugs and worms; he finds it much better to discuss God. But the naturalist is completely within his rights to mock the philosopher, as soon as he manages to turn his work with bugs into a calculated scientific labor. In such a case, he completes the given intellectual activity that the philosopher does not understand and for that reason cannot appreciate. The naturalist has the right to mock the philosopher even more soif this activity gives him exact, rigorous results and leads him step by step forward whereas the philosopher, discussing God, may easily remain with no more than good intentions.

Malebranche's words are often repeated, even now. Obviously, there is a certain difficulty in properly understanding and appreciating the study of nature. Of course, at the present time, when this study's activity is highly developed, it's passed on and supported from one generation to the next. But to Malebranche, or some scholastic of the Middle Ages, or to an ancient Greek the attention and zeal, with which the naturalist spends whole years occupied with the anatomy of an insignificant animal or is dedicated to the most trifling and simplest analysis of some phenomenon and with inexhaustible patience repeats and verifies the given experiments, - all of these could seem something inhuman and irrational. Naturalists work diligently because they clearly see or are firmly convinced that they serve a cause. They didn't think of getting started on it and didn't attach any importance to it until this cause was clear or understandable.

Thus, there is apparently a truly robust, truly new, and truly fruitful element in contemporary intellectual activity, namely the study of nature. It constitutes the best, unmistakable sign of the vitality of contemporary development. And that is why the study of nature at the present time is surrounded by such a bright halo of hope and faith. Many expect everything from it and believe it's the solution of all problems, the source of all wisdom. The natural sciences are constantly referred to as an eternal authority; their methods and techniques are being transferred to other sciences and are becoming the rule for fields of knowledge that are apparently situated farthest from them thematically, for example, for history and philosophy.

Without a doubt all this constitutes the very good signs of the present time; all this attests to vital, robust development, to profound progress. So, the person who judges the state of the human spirit by life as revealed by the natural sciences will in no way agree with the idea of the decline of this spirit, of the destruction of contemporary civilization.

Doubt is still possible, however; indeed, can one really judge the contemporary life of the human spirit by the natural sciences? These sciences are, at any rate, an individual fact, an individual field of intellectual activity. Can one really look for salvation in them and find the firm foothold on which one can stand strongamid the surrounding destruction?

Much is needed to risk answering this question in the affirmative. Generally speaking, we know that the main center of gravity of historical movement does not coincide with the field of the natural sciences. Human life is guided and directed by other, deeper causes. If we look to the history of the natural sciences, then we're easily convinced that they were never themselves completely independent. It'd be easy to prove with numerous examples that in their views and aspirations they're usually subordinated to other, stronger influences, that the spirit of the time doesn't depend on them, but rather on the contrary, they depend on the spirit of the time. Having within themselves the makings of autonomous development, they gradually freed themselves from outside influences, gradually shed the traces of a spirit alien to them, but they were never at the head of the movement, never led the general intellectual mood. Those who hope that, with time, this will be the case, at any rate, ought to acknowledge that this has never been the case.

Thus, if we suppose that the study of nature does not constitute the main channel of the human mind, we ought to acknowledge that it won't save us when the main channel becomes shallow, when the main sources run dry. At the present time the natural sciences often make pretensions to supremacy and leadership. It's easiest to judge in these instances whether their pretensions and hopes are just. The person who undertakes a cause that is beyond his power reveals the feebleness of his powers.

Recently we encountered an interesting case of just such a kind. We lay it out for our readers as, it seems to us, one can find there the clear features of both the contemporary state of European life and the relation of the natural sciences to it.

Recently a great revolution took place in the study of organisms, that is, of plants and animals. This revolution was brought about by Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, whose title, along with the titles of its translations, appears at the beginning of our article. It fundamentally changed the main, most important notions that until now had been held with regard to organisms. To get some idea of the importance of this revolution, we will recall the view of things, the worldview that held fast in former times and from which we, of course, haven't completely freed ourselves, even now. It was supposed that all things have definite, unchanging characteristics, that these characteristics are inseparable from their essence and belong to them for all time. The world was viewed as a combination of such things, life and history as chance collisions of these eternal characteristics and unchanging things so that, in essence, life wasn't an accretion of the new, and no fundamental changes have taken place throughout history. This view, patently metaphysical, with deep origins in the human spirit, was transposed in its entirety to organisms. Every form of plant and animal, clearly differentiated from other forms, was called a particular species, to which all its characteristics and peculiarities belong from Creation. Species were considered immutable, that is, to invariably possess given characteristics as belonging to their essence. Naturalists were concerned with distinguishing, naming, and enumerating all species; there are, Linnaeus said, as many species as God created in the beginning.

The human mind in some way or other constantly returns to a view of fixed, immutable essences. But it used to be rigidly and consistently applied to everything man thought about. Knowledge itself was considered nothing more than a gradual discovery of the unchanging, eternal gems of truth. New discoveries only increased intellectual knowledge in number but did not essentially change things. Little by little, however, a swaying was noticed in the unshakable ground, on which people so firmly rested. Great must have been the amazement of those who first noticed this. Everything that was considered immovable and undoubtable swayed and moved; the Earth began to revolve around the sun; the greatest authorities were turned to dust, the ancient relations and links were broken; finally, thought itself changed its ways and began to operate differently: mankind vividly sensed that history is taking place within it, that not just random, ephemeral changes but actual, major changes were occurring in the world.

A new worldview has gradually been spreading more and more since then. Unchanging essences and their necessary characteristics have been relegated to the background. The conviction is gradually spreading that everything changes and that it isn't essences that are constant but the laws of their change. A belief in progress, development, and perfection replaced a belief in unchanging essences and eternal truths. We see the latest success of this view, its latest victory, in Darwin's book. This book refutes the so-called constancy of species, the dogma that was stubbornly defended until now by established naturalists. They thought that every species of animal and plant appeared originally with all its current characteristics; that when reproducing only a reiteration of the forms that are reproducing takes place and consequently the forms themselves remain unchanged. Every plant, every animal produces its like, and consequently species don't arise but have existed from time immemorial.

Quite remarkably, such a metaphysical view of the constancy of things held on longest and most firmly in the natural sciences. There were, to be sure, attempts to dislodge it, but naturalists looked on them with great contempt. For the most part these attempts belonged to the so-called Nature Philosophers, that is, to the people, in whose opinion, naturalists saw nothing but ravings.(5) If the constancy of species was rejected by some real naturalists, for example, by Lamarck and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,(6) then in the eyes of scientists this was a stain on the memory of these people, as too bold a hypothesis, a fantasy unworthy of science.(7) Hence, despite the fact that Darwin has long been known for his excellent works and went public with complete resoluteness and assurance, he had spent twenty years accumulating materials and reflections before declaring his view.

One cannot excuse the naturalists in this case for hewing closely to the facts: there aren't, nor can there be, facts proving the constancy of things. No matter how much time we spend observing things, we can't guarantee that they didn't change before our observations and that they won't change after them. Discovering immutability isn't possible, discovering mutability is.

In his book Darwin amassed a multitude of facts proving the mutability of species. In time we hope to talk more about this subject, but for now we will limit ourselves to just the results. Darwin found that species pass one into another, that they gradually transform from one form into another. Thus, a few different plants can arise in the long succession of generations from the seeds of one plant in various localities and circumstances. Different species of plants and animals gradually arise as a result of such a breaking-up of one form into several new ones. Organisms never produce their like in the exact sense of the word: children always differ from their parents, nor are children entirely similar to each other. Over the long course of generations, all the diversity of the plant and animal kingdoms came from the gradual accumulation of these differences.

Such is the great revolution that is Darwin's book. But this isn't actually his discovery. The idea of the transformation of species had been enunciated many times and bolstered with facts before him. It takes on its full weight with Darwin only because he succeeded in finding the properties of one of the laws according to which the change of species takes place. He called the law he found the law of natural selection or of the struggle for existence. It consists of the following:

In the next chapter the Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase, will be treated of. This is the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms. As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.(8)

Such is Darwin's law, which we have reproduced in his own words.(9) According to his investigations, natural selection makes up the main, if not the exclusive means of the successive change of organisms. The sense and importance of this great law demand many clarifications. We'll note only generally that because of this law the change of organisms -- the transformation and breaking-up of species -- depends not on anything extraneous but on the organisms themselves. Organisms reproduce vigorously, sometimes they acquire a more advantageous structure; they struggle amongst themselves for the means of existence; those are the three conditions on which the gradual transformation of species by means of natural selection depends. It's completely clear, this far from exhausts the laws of the development of organisms, though Darwin seems not to notice the insufficiency of his law; nevertheless, the great service of being the first to indicate an intrinsic law of the development of organisms belongs to him. For him all organic beings constitute a single domain and develop by an intrinsic interaction, as a result of reproduction, improvement, and struggle. The process of this intrinsic development is very complex, of course, and won't be clear to us anytime soon; but the properties that Darwin indicated are without a doubt completely precise and true.

From all of this the reader can see that Darwin's book marks great progress, a huge step in the movement of the natural sciences. It goes without saying that it immediately drew general attention. In England every year it appears in a new edition. Immediately after its publication it was translated into German and recently, according to custom a little later, into French. According to custom it elicited a strong opposition, particularly in England, particularly among the local clergy, which, of course, should have been expected. But among all the hubbub generated by Darwin's book, one cannot find anything stranger and more unexpected than the review the book's French translator wrote, which we've decided to point out to our readers. The book was translated into French by lady Clémence-Auguste Royer(10) who supplied the translation with a long foreword and notes. This lady, as can been seen from her foreword, gave a public lecture in Switzerland [titled] "A Philosophy of Nature and History." But that isn't all. Recently she wrote a work about taxes that was awarded a prize equal to Proudhon's(11) work on the same subject. Hence, we're dealing not with the average person but with a writer of success; judging by everything, she's a progressive person, a representative of the contemporary education of Europe. She took a deep interest in Darwin's ideas: according to her, they were in complete agreement with the view she had herself laid out in lectures.(12) And so she rushed to draw the most remote and most general consequences from the great revolution in the natural sciences. She's ready, as she says, to write even a whole book about them.

"Mr. Darwin's theory," says Miss Royer, "is particularly rich in humanitarian and moral consequences. Here I can only point out these consequences; they alone could fill an entire book, which I'd like to have the chance to write sometime. This theory constitutes a whole philosophy of nature and a whole philosophy of mankind. Never has a more sweeping view been taken in natural history: One could say that this is a general synthesis of economic laws, a natural social science, a codex of living beings of every kind and time. Here we find an explanation of our instincts, the long sought-after basis of our morals, the mysterious source of the notion of duty and its fundamental importance for the preservation of the species. From now on we'll possess the absolute criterion for what is good and what is bad, morally speaking, since the moral law of every species is the law that tends towards its preservation and multiplication, towards its progress, according to time and place."

This rapturous outpouring, we hope, won't make a particularly pleasant impression on the reader. To say that in 1859, the year when Darwin's book appeared, the absolute difference between good and evil has finally been found means to make a very bizarre supposition, and no less bizarre is the view that the notion of duty had until this year remained a mystery for mankind. But what miracles do take place on earth! Let's see what the new revelation will tell us.

"The generalization of Malthus's law that Darwin made proves most clearly how mistaken the conclusions are that Malthus himself drew from this law for the human race; since the perfectibility of every species depends on its abundant propagation, stopping this propagation means to obstruct its progress. From Mr. Darwin's book, it turns out finally that this law, apparently so crude, uncharitable, and deadly, apparently exposing nature's stinginess, spite, and impotence, is, on the contrary, the wise law of providence, the law of saving and abundance, the necessary guarantee of well-being and progress of all organic creation."

Indeed, what amazing discoveries! How important science is! When a family has a lot of children and nothing to eat, Malthus simple-heartedly takes this for a misfortune. Now we can see that the more children, the better, the more powerfully the beneficent law of competition can operate. The weak will die and only the naturally selected, the best, privileged members, will weather the struggle, so that progress occurs as a result – the improvement of the whole race.

 Such views are monstrous and unbelievable, but, as the reader can see, they do exist. Lady Royer undauntingly sees her thought through to the end and does not stop for any consequences. There's more:

"As soon as we apply the law of natural selection to mankind, we see with amazement and sorrow how false our political and civil laws were thus far, our religious morality, too. To be convinced of this, it's enough to point here to one of its most insignificant deficiencies, namely the exaggeration of the compassion, charity, and fraternity which our Christian era constantly imposes upon the ideal of social virtue; to point out the exaggeration of even self-sacrifice when everywhere and in everything the strong sacrifice for the weak, the good for the bad, those who possess rich gifts of spirit and body – for the immoral and sickly. What comes from this exclusive and irrational patronage shown to the weak, the sick, the incurable, even to the worst miscreants, in short, to everyone who has been aggrieved by nature? The fact is that the disasters that have wounded them, take root and multiply without end, that evil does not decrease but increases and grows at the expense of the good. Aren't there enough people on earth who can't live on their own, who put all their burden in healthy hands and are a burden to themselves and to other members of the society, in which they spend their sickly existence, and take up more space in the sun than three individuals of good countenance? Whereas these latter not only would live to the fullest for the satisfaction of their own needs but would produce a sum of delight exceeding what they themselves needed. Has this ever been thought about seriously?"

It doesn't matter to whom such speeches belong, even someone other than such a learned and progressive lady, the reader will agree that they're quite remarkable. In the present case it's clear that this isn't idle chatter but a logical, rigorous conclusion from the principles taken as a starting point. Miss Royer is simply bolder than others and justly reproaches our age for insufficient consistency, by saying that in time it'll be called the age of the timid.

She concluded very soundly that we're acting, as it were, unnaturally in our development, that we don't listen to nature. But in vain she supposes that mankind never seriously thought about this. No, this idea has been understood quite clearly and consciously. We consciously set for ourselves another law, another norm, another ideal than the laws and ideals that nature follows. We knew that we're at odds with nature and often complained about contradicting it because it isn't easy overcoming the contradiction. But, although we recognized this idea fairly clearly, lady Royer complains in vain as though we gave it too broad an application, too much dominance in life. It seems we didn't exaggerate compassion, charity, and self-sacrifice enough. For all our progress and development, we acted, of course, no worse than the plants and animals. We propagated enough and constantly led a fierce struggle not only for the means of existence but also for other benefits. If we look at the matter a little more carefully, then one can easily be convinced that this struggle was even stronger, more diverse, and more complex for us than it could be for the plants and animals. We always had the greatest struggle for existence and the law of natural selection constantly found the fullest application. The strong crushed the weak, the rich the poor, and generally extracted from the slightest advantage in this struggle the greatest benefit that it could afford. The victims died in droves. People who had no place at the banquet of life, in one way or another, had to leave the field of battle. Thus, the sovereigns of life and the possessors of the benefits always remained the naturally selected and progress in the improvement of the human race moved along quickly and unceasingly.

Finally, we cite the last conclusion that Darwin's translator draws from his theory. She finds strong grounds there against the doctrine of political equality, which she considers "impossible, harmful, and unnatural."

"Nothing is more obvious," she writes, "than the inequality of the various human races; nothing is clearer than this inequality among different individuals of the same race. The facts of the theory of natural selection leave no doubt that the higher races appeared gradually and that, as a result, because of the law of progress, they're destined in the long run to replace the lower races and not to mix and merge with them. Furthermore, they'd run the risk of being swallowed up by these races through crossbreeding that would lower the level of the whole race. In short, the human races aren't separate species but sharply defined and highly unequal varieties; one must think about this repeatedly before declaring political and civic freedom for a people made up of a minority of Indo-Germans and a majority of Indo-Europeans, Asians, and Africans.(13) Mr. Darwin's theory demands therefore that a multitude of questions that were too quickly solved be again subjected to serious investigation. People aren't naturally equal: that is the point from which one must proceed. They aren't equal individually, even in the purest races; and these inequalities between the various races take on such great proportions mentally that the lawmaker must never lose sight of this."

We'll note that in the present case lady Royer attributes much more importance and knowledge to Darwin's theory than it actually has. And even formerly, before the appearance of Darwin's book it was noticed that, if we look at people as animals, they're vastly unequal. It was reliably noted that people differ from each other in everything – by height, by fatness or thinness, by strength of muscles, by color of the skin, by greater or lesser acuity of the senses and even by intelligence. If the idea of equality existed despite these and other even more important differences, then this equality was recognized by no means in the zoological sense but from a completely special, strange, inscrutable, and mysterious point of view: people think that they're equal to each other precisely as people, and not as animals. This mark of human worth that belongs to everyone alike, an apparently elusive and immeasurable mark that isn't definable by any clear properties, was, however, so important, so great and significant in people's eyes that it trumped all obvious differences that separate the most ignorant of Africans(14) from the most educated of Europeans.

We don't plan, however, to solve or investigate any question whatsoever here. We sought only to clearly present an interesting fact about Western-European education to our readers and we hope that they'll realize themselves the impression that it makes on them.

One thing is completely obvious: we'll cease to understand human life, we'll let it lose meaning, as soon as we do not separate man from nature, as soon as we place him alongside its creations and start judging him from the same point of view as plants and animals. The secret of human life lies in life itself.

The study of nature is still not all we need. If a person looks at this study as at an active stream that can save the life of a decrepit civilization, then one can show him the conclusions that Miss Royer made from a great discovery about nature: these conclusions are completely proper to an era of decline.

We'll conclude our note with the words of the greatest of naturalists, which we put in the epigraph: "what a pitiful thing man would be if he did not strive for the superhuman"! This paradoxical exclamation belongs to Linnaeus, the naturalist who understood nature with an unparalleled gift and possessed, likely as a result of that gift, a deep poetic insight. Examining man alongside the animals and other creations of nature, he was vividly convinced that man is a pitiful thing. He found salvation from this nothingness in striving for the superhuman; but we're firmly convinced that what Linnaeus calls the superhuman is, in essence, the truly human.

[Editor's notes:]

(1) Nikolai Strakhov, "Durnye priznaki," Vremia, No. 11 (November, 1862): 158-172.

(2) Strakhov also lists here the German and French translations of On the Origin of Species. The bibliographic information for the German translation: Darwin, Charles. Über die Entstehung der Arten im Thier- und Pflanzen- Reich durch natürliche Züchtung, oder Erhaltung der vervollommneten Rassen im Kampfe um's Daseyn. Translated by Heinrich G. Bronn (Stuttgart: E. Schweizerbart, 1860). The bibliographic information for the French translation: Darwin, Charles. De l'origine des espèces, ou des lois du progress chez les êtres organisées. Translated by Clémence Royer (Paris: Guillaumin and Masson, 1862).

(3) Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a French Roman Catholic priest, theologian, and philosophical proponent of Cartesianism.

(4) Malebranche, Nicolas. The Search after Truth. Edited by Thomas M. Lennon and Paul J. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 297.

(5) "Naturphilosophie," a philosophy of nature that was influential in German thought from about 1790 to about 1830. It was an alternative to the atomistic and mechanistic outlook of the science of the time. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) were among its leading representatives.

(6) Strakhov listed his first name incorrectly as "Stephen." Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844) was a French morphologist. He is remembered for his belief that the structural plans of all animals are reducible to a single archetype.

(7) Jean-Baptiste-Pierre-Antoine de Monet, chevalier de Lamarck (1744-1828), known for the theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics through use and disuse, now simply called "Lamarckism."

(8) Charles, Darwin. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London: John Murray, 1859): 4-5. Strakhov translated this passage into Russian for his readers from the French edition cited above (xx-xxi).

(9) In fact, Strakhov slightly reworded the first sentence, saying, in effect, "There is a Struggle for Existence amongst all organic beings throughout the world, which inevitably follows from their high geometrical powers of increase."

(10) Clémence-Auguste Royer (1830-1902), a French author and economist, who published the first translation of On the Origin of Species in French.

(11) Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), a French socialist, philosopher, and journalist, whose doctrines were influential for the subsequent development of anarchism and were particularly popular among Russian radicals.

(12) For a review of the debate about whether Royer's evolutionism was Darwinian or Lamarckian, see: Joy Harvey's "Afterword: Clémence Royer and Her Biographers" in "Almost a Man of Genius": Clémence Royer, Feminism, and Nineteenth-Century Science (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997): 184-192.

(13) Literally, "Mongols and Negros"

(14) Literally, "Negros."