chen und geistigen Organisation von den naturwissenschaftlichen
Grundlagen aus allgemein fasslich entwickelt" ("Soul and Spirit, or Origin,
Nature, and Form of Activity of Physical and Intellectual Organization,
Clearly Developed from a Scientific Basis"), Leipzig, Fues, 1871, and in
"Wahrheit und Flachheit des Darwinismus" ("Truth and Platitude of
Darwinism"), Noerdlingen, Beck, 1872, makes the "inner concentration" the
moving principle of the whole development of the world. He thinks that what
belongs to the organism and to the soul has originated and developed up to
man and his spiritual nature thus: that the creating centrum of the earth
produces individual centra on its periphery, which tend more and more to
bring into view the principle of {111} centralization, in its contrast to
the purely peripheral form of existence, until it reaches its goal in man,
with his centralizing spirit. We have no reason to reject the idea of a
principle of concentration in the world and its parts; it is confirmed by
observation, and shows itself fruitful in many respects. But in spite of
the many ingenious and often suggestive ideas in the works of Planck, we
have some doubt about a system which tries to explain the whole concrete
abundance of the richness of formations and life-forms in the world, rising
higher and higher up to spiritual existence and moral action, from the
single idea of concentration, and makes this principle the mystical and
mysteriously acting cause of a whole world and its contents. We doubt at
the outset the success of this argument. We have especially the strongest
objections to a philosophical system which submits all the contending
physical theories of the present to the measure of that concentration
principle, and from these purely metaphysical reasons takes side
exclusively with the one or the other of the theories, or establishes new
theories--from the theories of atoms and ether, of light and heat, down to
geological questions as to whether universal revolutions of the world or a
continual development took place. The solution of all these questions, in
their full extent, we do not attribute to philosophy, but to natural
science; although to a natural science which permits philosophy to define
the ideas with which it operates and the general principles to which it
comes. For this renunciation--which philosophy, however, can not at all
escape--it will be the more richly rewarded in this, that it obtains the