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MONISM AS CONNECTING RELIGION AND SCIENCE
_A MAN OF SCIENCE_
By Ernst Haeckel
Translated From The German By J. Gilchrist, M.A., B.Sc., Ph.D.
PREFACE
The following lecture on Monism is an informal address delivered
extemporaneously on October 9, 1892, at Altenburg, on the seventy-fifth
anniversary of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft des Osterlandes." The
immediate occasion of it was a previous address delivered by Professor
Schlesinger of Vienna on "Scientific Articles of Faith." This
philosophical discourse contained, with reference to the weightiest and
most important problems of scientific investigation, much that was
indisputable; but it also contained some assertions that challenged
immediate rejoinder and a statement of the opposite view. As I had for
thirty years been very closely occupied with these problems of the
philosophy of nature, and had set forth my convictions with respect to
them in a number of writings, a wish was expressed by several members of
the Congress that on this occasion I should give a summary account of
these. It was in compliance with this wish that the following "Scientific
Confession of Faith" was uttered. The substance of it, as written from
recollection on the day after its delivery, first appeared in the
_Altenburger Zeitung of_ 19th October 1892. This was reproduced, with one
or two philosophical additions, in the November number _of_ the _Freie
Bühne für den Entwickelungskampf der Zeit_ (Berlin). In its present form
the Altenburg address is considerably enlarged, and some parts have been
more fully worked out. In the notes (p. 9 I) several burning questions of
the present day _have_ been dealt with from the monistic point of view.
The purpose of this candid confession of monistic faith is twofold.
First, it is my desire to give expression to that rational view of the
world which is being forced upon us with such logical rigour by the
modern advancements in our knowledge of nature as a unity, a view in
reality held by almost all unprejudiced and thinking men of science,
although but few have the courage (or the need) to declare it openly.
Secondly, I would fain establish thereby a bond between religion and
science, and thus contribute to the adjustment of the antithesis so
needlessly maintained between these, the two highest spheres in which the
mind of man can exercise itself; in monism the ethical demands of the
soul are satisfied, as well as the logical necessities of the
understanding.
The rising flood of pamphlets and books published on this subject,
demonstrates that such a natural union of faith and knowledge, such a
reasonable reconciliation of the feelings and the reason, are daily
becoming a more pressing necessity for the educated classes. In North
America (in Chicago), there has been published for several years a weekly
journal devoted to this purpose: _The Open Court: A Weekly Journal
devoted to the Work of Conciliating Religion and Science_. Its worthy
editor, Dr. Paul Carus (author of _The Soul of Man_, 1891), devotes also
to the same task a quarterly journal under the title _The Monist_. It is
in the highest degree desirable that so worthy endeavours to draw
together the empirical and speculative views of nature, realism and
idealism, should have more attention and encouragement than they have
hitherto received, for it is only through a natural union of the two that
we can approach a realisation of the highest aim of mental activity-the
blending of religion and science in monism.
ERNST HAECKEL. JENA, _October_ 31, 1892
MONISM
A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot
celebrate its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of
its highest general problems. It must be regarded, therefore, with
satisfaction that the speaker on such an august occasion as this--the
seventy-fifth anniversary of your Society--has selected as the subject of
his address a theme of the highest general importance. Unfortunately, it
is becoming more and more the custom on such occasions, and even at the
general meetings of the great "Association of German Naturalists and
Physicians," to take the subject of address from a narrow and specialised
territory of restricted interest. If this growing custom is to be excused
on the grounds of increasing division of labour and of diverging
specialisation in all departments of work, it becomes all the more
necessary that, on such anniversaries as the present, the attention of
the audience should be invited to larger matters of common interest.
Such a topic, supreme in its importance, is that concerning "Scientific
Articles of Faith," upon which Professor Schlesinger has already
expounded his views.[1] I am glad to be able to agree with him in many
important points, but as to others I should like to express some
hesitation, and to ask consideration for some views which do not coincide
with his. At the outset, I am entirely at one with him as to that
unifying conception of nature as a whole which we designate in a single
word as Monism. By this we unambiguously express our conviction that
there lives "one spirit in all things," and that the whole cognisable
world is constituted, and has been developed, in accordance with one
common fundamental law. We emphasise by it, in particular, the essential
unity of inorganic and organic nature, the latter having been evolved
from the former only at a relatively late period.[2] We cannot draw a
sharp line of distinction between these two great divisions of nature,
any more than we can recognise an absolute distinction between the animal
and the vegetable kingdom, or between the lower animals and man.
Similarly, we regard the whole of human knowledge as a structural unity;
in this sphere we refuse to accept the distinction usually drawn between
the natural and the spiritual. The latter is only a part of the former
(or _vice versa_); both are one. Our monistic view of the world belongs,
therefore, to that group of philosophical systems which from other points
of view have been designated also as mechanical or as pantheistic.
However differently expressed in the philosophical systems of an
Empedocles or a Lucretius, a Spinoza or a Giordano Bruno, a Lamarck or a
David Strauss, the fundamental thought common to them all is ever that of
the oneness of the cosmos, of the indissoluble connection between energy
and matter, between mind and embodiment--or, as we may also say, between
God and the world--to which Goethe, Germany's greatest poet and thinker,
has given poetical expression in his _Faust_ and in the wonderful series
of poems entitled _Gott und Welt_.
That we may rightly appreciate what this Monism is, let us now, from a
philosophico-historical point of view cast a comprehensive glance over
the development in time of man's knowledge of nature. A long series of
varied conceptions and stages of human culture here passes before our
mental vision. At the lowest stage, the rude--we may say animal--phase of
prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the
tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his
immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive
stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the
rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to
conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilisation,
and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise
little by little to the more highly civilised nations. To these alone--of
the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian--are
we indebted for what is usually called "universal history." This last,
extending over somewhat less than six thousand years, represents a period
of infinitesimal duration in the long millions of years of the organic
world's development.
Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who
immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge of
nature. The rude primitive child of nature at this lowest stage of
development is as yet far from being the restless _Ursachenthier_
(cause-seeking animal) of Lichtenberg; his demand for causes has not yet
risen above that of apes and dogs; his curiosity has not yet mounted to
pure desire of knowledge. If we must speak of "reason" in connection with
pithecoid primitive man, it can only be in the same sense as that in
which we use the expression with reference to those other most highly
developed Mammals, and the same remark holds true of the first beginnings
of religion.[3]
It is indeed still not infrequently the custom to deny absolutely to the
lower animals reason and religion. An unprejudiced comparison, however,
convinces us that this is wrong. The slow and gradual process towards
completeness which, in the course of thousands of years, civilised life
has been working in the soul of man, has not passed away without leaving
some trace on the soul of our highest domestic animals also (above all,
of dogs and horses). Constant association with man, and the steady
influence of his training, have gradually, and by heredity, developed in
their brain higher associations of ideas and a more perfect judgment.
Drill has become instinct, an undeniable example of "the transmission of
acquired characters."[4]
Comparative psychology teaches us to recognise a very long series of
successive steps in the development of soul in the animal kingdom. But it
is only in the most highly developed vertebrates-birds and mammals--that
we discern the first beginnings of reason, the first traces of religious
and ethical conduct. In them we find not only the social virtues common
to all the higher socially-living animals,--neighbourly love, friendship,
fidelity, self-sacrifice, etc.,--but also consciousness, sense of duty,
and conscience; in relation to man their lord, the same obedience, the
same submissiveness, and the same craving for protection, which primitive
man in his turn shows towards his "gods." But in him, as in them, there
is yet wanting that higher degree of consciousness and of reason, which
strives after a _knowledge_ of the surrounding world, and which marks the
first beginning of philosophy or "wisdom." This last is the much later
attainment of civilised races; slowly and gradually has it been built up
from lower religious conceptions.
At all stages of primitive religion and early philosophy, man is as yet
far removed from monistic ideas. In searching out the causes of
phenomena, and exercising his understanding thereon, he is in the first
instance prone in every case to regard personal beings--in fact,
anthropomorphic deities--as the agents at work. In thunder and lightning,
in storm and earthquake, in the circling of sun and moon, in every
striking meteorological and geological occurrence, he sees the direct
activity of a personal god or spirit, who is usually thought of in a more
or less anthropomorphic way. Gods are distinguished as good and bad,
friendly and hostile, preserving and destroying, angels and devils.
This becomes true in a yet higher degree when the advancing pursuit of
knowledge begins to take into consideration the more complicated
phenomena of organic life also, the appearance and disappearance of
plants and animals, the life and death of man. The constitution of
organised life, so suggestive as it is of art and purpose, leads one at
once to compare it with the deliberately designed works of man, and thus
the vague conception of a personal god becomes transformed into that of a
creator working according to plan. As we know, this conception of organic
creation as the artistic work of an anthropomorphic god--of a divine
mechanic--generally maintained its ground almost everywhere, down even to
the middle of our own century, in spite of the fact that eminent thinkers
had demonstrated its untenability more than two thousand years ago. The
last noteworthy scientist to defend and apply this idea was Louis Agassiz
(died 1873). His notable _Essay on Classification_, 1857, developed that
theosophy with logical vigour, and thereby reduced it to an absurdity.[5]
All these older religious and teleological conceptions, as well as the
philosophical systems (such as those of Plato and of the Church fathers)
which sprang from them, are antimonistic; they stand in direct antithesis
to our monistic philosophy of nature. Most of them are dualistic,
regarding God and the world, creator and creature, spirit and matter, as
two completely separated substances. We find this express dualism also in
most of the purer church-religions, especially in the three most
important forms of monotheism which the three most renowned prophets of
the eastern Mediterranean--Moses, Christ, and Mohammed--founded. But
soon, in a number of impure varieties of these three religions, and yet
more in the lower forms of paganism, the place of this dualism is taken
by a philosophical pluralism, and over against the good and
world-sustaining deity (Osiris, Ormuzd, Vishnu), there is placed a wicked
and destroying god (Typhon, Ahriman, Siva). Numerous demi-gods or saints,
good and bad, sons and daughters of the gods, are associated with these
two chief deities, and take part with them in the administration and
government of the cosmos.
In all these dualistic and pluralistic systems the fundamental idea is
that of anthropomorphism, or the humanising of God; man himself, as
godlike (or directly descended from God), occupies a special position in
the world, and is separated by a great gulf from the rest of nature.
Conjoined with this, for the most part, is the anthropocentric idea, the
conviction that man is the central point of the universe, the last and
highest final cause of creation, and that the rest of nature was created
merely for the purpose of serving man. In the Middle Ages there was
associated at the same time with this last conception the geocentric
idea, according to which the earth as the abode of man was taken for the
fixed middle point of the universe, round which sun, moon, and stars
revolve. As Copernicus (1543) gave the death-blow to the geocentric
dogma, so did Darwin (1859) to the anthropocentric one closely associated
with it.[6] A broad historical and critical comparison of religious and
philosophical systems, as a whole, leads as a main result to the
conclusion that every great advance in the direction of profounder
knowledge has meant a breaking away from the traditional dualism (or
pluralism) and an approach to monism. Ever more clearly are we compelled
by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the
material world as an external being, but must be placed as a "divine
power" or "moving spirit" within the cosmos itself. Ever clearer does it
become that all the wonderful phenomena of nature around us, organic as
well as inorganic, are only various products of one and the same original
force, various combinations of one and the same primitive matter. Ever
more irresistibly is it borne in upon us that even the human soul is but
an insignificant part of the all-embracing "world-soul"; just as the
human body is only a small individual fraction of the great organised
physical world.
The great general principles of theoretical physics and chemistry are now
in a position to afford to this unifying conception of nature an exact,
to a certain extent, indeed, a mathematical confirmation. In establishing
the law of the "conservation of energy," Robert Mayer and Helmholtz
showed that the energy of the universe is a constant unchangeable
magnitude; if any energy whatever seems to vanish or to come anew into
play, this is only due to the transformation of one form of energy into
another. In the same way Lavoisier's law of the "conservation of matter"
shows us that the material of the cosmos is a constant unchangeable
magnitude; if any body seems to vanish (as, for example, by burning), or
to come anew into being (as, for example, by crystallisation), this also
is simply due to change of form or of combination. Both these great
laws--in physics, the fundamental law of the conservation of energy, and
in chemistry, of the conservation of matter--may be brought under one
philosophical conception as the law of the conservation of substance;
for, according to our monistic conception, energy and matter are
inseparable, being only different inalienable manifestations of one
single universal being-substance.[7] In a certain sense we can regard the
conception of "animated atoms" as essentially partaking of the nature of
this pure monism--a very ancient idea which more than two thousand years
ago Empedocles enunciated in his doctrine of "hate and love of the
elements." Modern physics and chemistry have indeed in the main accepted
the atomic hypothesis first enunciated by Democritus, in so far as they
regard all bodies as built up of atoms, and reduce all changes to
movements of these minutest-discrete particles. All these changes,
however, in organic as well as in inorganic nature, become truly
intelligible to us only if we conceive these atoms not as dead masses,
but as living elementary particles endowed with the power of attraction
and repulsion. "Pleasure" and "pain," and "love" and "hate," as
predicates of atoms are only other expressions for this power of
attraction and repulsion.
Although, however, monism is on the one hand for us an indispensable and
fundamental conception in science, and although, on the other hand, it
strives to carry back all phenomena, without exception, to the mechanism
of the atom, we must nevertheless still admit that as yet we are by no
means in a position to form any satisfactory conception of the exact
nature of these atoms, and their relation to the general space-filling,
universal ether. Chemistry long ago succeeded in reducing all the various
natural substances to combinations of a relatively small number of
elements; and the most recent advances of that science have now made it
in the highest degree probable that these elements or the (as yet)
irreducible primitive materials are themselves in turn only different
combinations of a varying number of atoms of one single original element.
But in all this we have not as yet obtained any further light as to the
real nature of these original atoms or their primal energies.
A number of the acutest thinkers have, so far in vain, endeavoured to
grapple more closely with this fundamental problem of the philosophy of
nature, and to determine more exactly the nature of atoms as well as
their relation to the space-filling ether. And the idea steadily gains
ground that no such thing as empty space exists, and that everywhere the
primitive atoms of ponderable matter or heavy "mass" are separated from
each other by the homogeneous ether which extends throughout all space.
This extremely light and attenuated (if not imponderable) ether causes,
by its vibrations, all the phenomena of light and heat, electricity and
magnetism. We can imagine it either as a continuous substance occupying
the space between the mass-atoms, or as composed of separate particles;
in the latter case we might perhaps attribute to these ether-atoms an
inherent power of repulsion in contrast to the immanent attracting power
of the heavy mass-atoms, and the whole mechanism of cosmic life would
then be reducible to the attraction of the latter and the repulsion of
the former. We might also place the "vibrations of the cosmic ether"
alongside of the "operation of space in general," in the sense in which
these words are used by Professor Schlesinger.
At any rate, theoretical physics has in recent years made an advance of
fundamental importance and widest reach in our knowledge of nature, in
that it has come nearer to a knowledge of this cosmic ether, and has
forced the question of its essence, its structure, and its motion into
the foreground of monistic nature-philosophy. Only a few years ago the
cosmic ether was to the majority of scientists an imponderable something,
of which, strictly speaking, absolutely nothing was known, and which
could be admitted provisionally only as a precarious working hypothesis.
All this was changed when Heinrich Hertz (1888) demonstrated the nature
of electrical energy, by his beautiful experiments establishing the
conjecture of Faraday that light and heat, electricity and magnetism, are
closely related phenomena of one single set of forces, and depend on
transverse vibrations of the ether. Light itself--whatever else it be--is
always and everywhere an electrical phenomenon. The ether itself is no
longer hypothetical; its existence can at any moment be demonstrated by
electrical and optical experiment. We know the length of the light wave
and the electric wave. Indeed, some physicists believe that they can even
determine approximately the density of ether. If by means of the airpump
we remove from a bell-jar the atmospheric air (except an insignificant
residue), the quantity of light within it remains unchanged; it is the
vibrating ether we see.[9] These advances in our knowledge of the ether
mean an immense gain for monistic philosophy. For they do away with the
erroneous ideas of empty space and _actio in distans_; the whole of
infinite space, in so far as it is not occupied by mass-atoms
("ponderable matter"), is filled by the ether. Our ideas of space and
time are quite other than those taught by Kant a hundred years ago; the
"critical" system of the great Koenigsberg philosopher exhibits in this
respect, as well as in his teleological view of the organic world and in
his metaphysics, dogmatic weaknesses of the most pronounced kind.[8] And
religion itself, in its reasonable forms, can take over the ether theory
as an article of faith, bringing into contradistinction the mobile cosmic
ether as creating divinity, and the inert heavy mass as material of
creation.[11] From this successfully scaled height of monistic knowledge
there open up before our joyously quickened spirit of research and
discovery new and surprising prospects, which promise to bring us still
nearer to the solution of the one great riddle of the world. What is the
relation of this light mobile cosmic ether to the heavy inert "mass," to
the ponderable matter which we chemically investigate, and which we can
only think of as constituted of atoms? Our modern analytical chemistry
remains for the present at a standstill, in presence of some seventy
irreducible elements, or so-called primary substances. But the reciprocal
relation of these elements, the affinity of their combinations, their
spectroscopic behaviour, and so forth, make it in the highest degree
probable that they are all merely historical products of an evolutionary
process, having their origin in various dispositions and combinations of
a varying number of original atoms.
To these original or mass-atoms--the ultimate discrete particles of inert
"ponderable matter"--we can with more or less probability ascribe a
number of eternal and inalienable fundamental attributes; they are
probably everywhere in space, of like magnitude and constitution.
Although possessing a definite finite magnitude, they are, by virtue of
their very nature, indivisible. Their shape we may take to be spherical;
they are inert (in the physical sense), unchangeable, inelastic, and
impenetrable by the ether. Apart from the attribute of inertia, the most
important characteristic of these ultimate atoms is their chemical
affinity--their tendency to apply themselves to one another and combine
into small groups in an orderly fashion. These fixed groups (fixed, that
is to say, under the present physical conditions of existence of the
earth) of primitive atoms are the atoms of the elements--the well-known
"indivisible" atoms of chemistry. The qualitative, and, so far as our
present empirical knowledge goes, unchangeable distinctions of our
chemical elements are therefore solely conditioned by the varying number
and disposition of the similar primitive atoms of which they are
composed. Thus, for example, the atom of carbon (the real "maker" of the
organic world) is in all probability a tetrahedron made up of four
primitive atoms.
After Mendelejeff and Lothar Meyer had discovered (1869) the "periodic
law" of the chemical elements, and founded on it a "natural system" of
these elements, this important advance in theoretical chemistry was
subsequently put to profitable use by Gustav Wendt from an evolutionary
point of view. He endeavoured to show that the various elements are
products of evolution or of historically originating combinations of
seven primary elements, and that these last again are historical products
of one single primitive element This hypothetical original matter had
been already designated by Crookes, in his _Genesis of the Elements_, as
primary material or protyl.[10] The empirical proof of the existence of
this original matter lying at the foundation of all ponderable material
is perhaps only a question of time. Its discovery would probably realise
the alchemists' hope of being able to produce gold and silver
artificially out of other elements. But then arises the other great
question: "How is this primary mass related to the cosmic ether? Do these
two original substances stand in fundamental and eternal antithesis to
one another? Or was it the mobile ether itself, perhaps, that originally
engendered the heavy mass?"[11]
In answer to this great and fundamental question, various physical
hypotheses have been put forward. But, like the various atomic theories
of chemistry, they have not as yet been clearly established, and the same
appears to me to be the case also with the ingenious hypothesis which the
lecturer has unfolded to us with reference to the Influence of Space. As
he himself rightly says, in all these endeavours after a philosophy of
nature we are still, for the present, dealing with "scientific articles
of faith," concerning the validity of which different persons, according
to their subjective judgment and stage of culture, may have widely
divergent views. I believe that the solution of these fundamental
questions still lies as yet beyond the limits of our knowledge of nature,
and that we shall be obliged, for a long time yet to come, to content
ourselves with an "Ignoramus"--if not even with an "Ignorabimus."
The case is very different, however, if we turn from these atomistic
element hypotheses and direct our attention to the historical conditions
of the evolution of the world, as these have been revealed to us by the
magnificent advances in our knowledge of nature which have been made
within the last thirty years. An immense new territory has here been
opened up to us in the realms of knowledge--a territory in which a series
of most important problems, formerly held to be insoluble, has been
answered in the most surprising manner.[12]
Among the triumphs of the human mind the modern doctrine of evolution
takes a foremost place. Guessed at by Goethe a hundred years ago, but not
expressed in definite form until formulated by Lamarck in the beginning
of the present century, it was at last, thirty years ago, decisively
established by Charles Darwin, his theory of selection filling up the gap
which Lamarck in his doctrine of the reciprocal influence of heredity and
adaptation had left open. We now definitely know that the organic world
on our earth has been as continuously developed, "in accordance with
eternal iron laws," as Lyell had in 1830 shown to be the case for the
inorganic frame of the earth itself; we know that the innumerable
varieties of animals and plants which during the course of millions of
years have peopled our planet are all simply branches of one single
genealogical tree; we know that the human race itself forms only one of
the newest, highest, and most perfect offshoots from the race of the
Vertebrates.
An unbroken series of natural events, following an orderly course of
evolution according to fixed laws, now leads the reflecting human spirit
through long aeons from a primeval chaos to the present "order of the
cosmos." At the outset there is nothing in infinite space but mobile
elastic ether, and innumerable similar separate particles--the primitive
atoms--scattered throughout it in the form of dust; perhaps these are
themselves originally "points of condensation" of the vibrating
"substance," the remainder of which constitutes the ether. The atoms of
our elements arise from the grouping together in definite numbers of the
primitive atoms or atoms of mass. As the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis
has it, the rotating heavenly bodies separate themselves out from that
vibrating primeval cloud. A single unit among many thousands of celestial
bodies is our sun, with its planets, which originated by being
centrifugally thrown off from it. Our insignificant earth is a single
planet of our solar system; its entire individual life is a product of
the sunlight. After the glowing sphere of the earth has cooled down to a
certain degree, drops of fluid water precipitate themselves on the
hardened crust of its surface--the first preliminary condition of organic
life. Carbon atoms begin their organism-engendering activity, and unite
with the other elements into plasma-combinations capable of growing. One
small plasma-group oversteps the limits of cohesion and individual
growth; it falls asunder into two similar halves. With this first moneron
begins organic life and its most distinctive function, heredity. In the
homogeneous plasma of the monera, a firmer central nucleus is separated
from a softer outer mass; through this differentiation of nucleus and
protoplasm arises the first organic cell. For a long time our planet was
inhabited solely by such Protista or single-celled primitive creatures.
From coenobia or social unions of these afterwards arose the lowest
histones, multicellular plants and animals.
By the sure help of the three great empirical "records of creation,"
palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny, the history of descent
now leads us on step by step from the oldest Metazoa, the simplest
pluricellular animals, up to man.[13] At the lowest root of the common
genealogy of the Metazoa stand the Gastraeadae and Spongidae; their whole
body consists, in the simplest case, solely of a round digestive sac, the
thin wall of which is formed by two layers of cells--the two primitive
germinal layers. A corresponding germinal condition, the two-layered
gastrula, occurs transitorily in the embryological history of all the
other Metazoa, from the lowest Cnidaria and Vermes up to man. From the
common stock of the Helminthes, or simple worms, there develop as
independent main branches the four separate stems of the Molluscs,
Star-fishes, Arthropods, and Vertebrates. It is only these last whose
bodily structure and development in all essential respects coincide with
those of man. A long series of lower aquatic Vertebrates (lancelets,
lampreys, fishes) precedes the lungbreathing Amphibians, which appear for
the first time in the Carboniferous period. The Amphibians are followed
in the Permian period by the first Amniota, the oldest reptiles; from
these develop later, in the Triassic period, the Birds on the one hand,
and the Mammals on the other. That man in his whole bodily frame is a
true mammal, becomes obvious as soon as the natural unity of this highest
class of animals is recognised. The simplest comparison must have
convinced the unprejudiced observer of the close constitutional
relationship between man and the ape, which of all the Mammals comes
nearest him. Comparative anatomy, with its deeper vision, showed that all
differences in bodily structure between man and the Anthropoidea
(gorilla, chimpanzee, orang) are less important than the corresponding
differences in bodily structure between these anthropoid apes and the
lower apes. The phylogenetic significance of this fact, first emphasised
by Huxley, is quite clear. The great question of the origin of the human
race, or of "man's place in Nature," the "question of all questions," was
then scientifically answered: "Man is descended from a series of ape-like
Mammals." The descent of man (anthropogeny) discloses the long series of
vertebrate ancestors, which preceded the late origin of this, its most
highly developed offshoot.[13]
The incalculable importance of the light cast over the whole field of
human knowledge of nature by these results is patent to everyone. They
are destined every year increasingly to manifest their transforming
influence in all departments of knowledge, the more the conviction of
their irrefragable truth forces its way. And it is only the ignorant or
narrow-minded who can now doubt their truth. If, indeed, here and there,
one of the older naturalists still disputes, the foundation on which they
rest, or demands proofs which are wanting (as happened a few weeks ago on
the part of a famous German pathologist at the Anthropological Congress
in Moscow), he only shows by this that he has remained a stranger to the
stupendous advances of recent biology, and above all of anthropogeny. The
whole literature of modern biology, the whole of our present zoology and
botany, morphology and physiology, anthropology and psychology, are
pervaded and fertilised by the theory of descent.[14]
Just as the natural doctrine of development on a monistic basis has
cleared up and elucidated the whole field of natural phenomena in their
physical aspect, it has also modified that of the phenomena of mind,
which is inseparably connected with the other. Our human body has been
built up slowly and by degrees from a long series of vertebrate
ancestors, and this is also true of our soul; as a function of our brain
it has gradually been developed in reciprocal action and re-action with
this its bodily organ. What we briefly designate as the "human soul," is
only the sum of our feeling, willing, and thinking--the sum of those
physiological functions whose elementary organs are constituted by the
microscopic ganglion-cells of our brain. Comparative anatomy and ontogeny
show us how the wonderful structure of this last, the organ of our human
soul, has in the course of millions of years been gradually built up from
the brains of higher and lower vertebrates. Comparative psychology
teaches us how, hand in hand therewith, the soul itself, as function of
the brain, has been developed. The last-named science teaches us also
that a primitive form of soul-activity is already present even in the
lowest animals, the single-celled primitive animals, Infusoria and
Rhizopoda. Every scientific man who has long observed the life-activity
of these single-celled Protista, is positively convinced that they also
possess a soul; that this "cell-soul" also consists of a sum of
sensations, perceptions, and volitions; the feeling, thinking, and
willing of our human soul differ from these only in degree. In like
manner there is present in the egg-cell (as potential energy) a
hereditary cell-soul, out of which man, like every other animal, is
developed.[15]
The first task of a truly scientific psychology will therefore be, not,
as hitherto, idle speculation about an independent immaterial
soul-existence and its puzzling temporary connection with the animal
body, but rather the comparative investigation of the organs of the soul
and the experimental examination of their psychical functions. For
scientific psychology is a part of physiology, the doctrine of the
functions and the life-activities of organisms. The psychology and
psychiatry of the future, like the physiology and pathology of to-day,
must take the form of a cellular study, and in the first instance
investigate the soul-functions of the cells. Max Verworn, in his fine
_Psycho-physiological Protistastudies_, has lately shown us what
important disclosures such a cellular psychology can make, even in
dealing with the lowest grades of organic life, in the single-celled
Protista (especially Rhizopoda and Infusoria).
These same main divisions of soul-activity, which are to be met with in
the single-celled organism,--the phenomena of irritability, sensation,
and motion,--can be shown to exist in all multicellular organisms as
functions of the cells of which their bodies are composed. In the lowest
Metazoa, the invertebrate sponges and polyps, there are, just as in
plants, no special soul-organs developed, and all the cells of the body
participate more or less in the "soul-life." It is only in the higher
animals that the soul-life is found to be localised and connected with
special organs. As a consequence of division of labour, there have here
been developed various sense-organs as organs of specific sensibility,
muscles as organs of motion and volition, nerve-centres or ganglia as
central co-ordinating and regulating organs. In the most highly developed
families of the animal kingdom, these last come more and more into the
foreground as independent soul-organs. In correspondence with the
extraordinarily complicated structure of their central nervous system
(the brain with its wonderful complex of ganglion-cells and
nerve-fibres), the many-sided activity of such animals attains a
wonderful degree of development.
It is only in these most highly-developed groups of the animal kingdom
that we can with certainty establish the existence of those most perfect
operations of the central nervous system, which we designate as
consciousness. As we know, it is precisely this highest brain-function
that still continues to be looked upon as a completely enigmatical
phenomenon, and as the best proof for the immaterial existence of an
immortal soul. It is usual at the same time to appeal to Du
Bois-Reymond's well-known "Ignorabimus address on the Boundaries of
Natural Knowledge" (1872). It was by a peculiar irony of fate that the
famous lecturer of the Berlin Academy of Science, in this much-discussed
address of twenty years ago, should be representing consciousness as an
incomprehensible marvel, and as presenting an insuperable barrier to
further advances of knowledge, at the very moment that David Friedrich
Strauss, the greatest theologian of our century, was showing it to be the
opposite. The clear-sighted author of _The Old Faith and the New_ had
already clearly perceived that the soul-activities of man, and therefore
also his consciousness, as functions of the central nervous system, all
spring from a common source, and, from a monistic point of view, come
under the same category. The "exact" Berlin physiologist shut this
knowledge out from his mind, and, with a short-sightedness almost
inconceivable, placed this special neurological question alongside of the
one great "world-riddle," the fundamental question of substance, the
general question of the connection between matter and energy.[16]
As I long ago pointed out, these two great questions are not two separate
"world-riddles." The neurological problem of consciousness is only a
special case of the all comprehending cosmological problem, the question
of substance. "If we understood the nature of matter and energy, we
should also understand how the substance underlying them can under
certain conditions feel, desire, and think." Consciousness, like feeling
and willing, among the higher animals is a mechanical work of the
ganglion-cells, and as such must be carried back to chemical and physical
events in the plasma of these. And by the employment of the genetic and
comparative method we reach the conviction that consciousness, and
consequently reason also, is not a brain-function exclusively peculiar to
man; it occurs also in many of the higher animals, not in Vertebrates
only, but even in Articulates. Only in degree, through a higher stage of
cultivation, does the consciousness of man differ from that of the more
perfect lower animals, and the same is true of all other activities of
the human soul.
By these and other results of comparative physiology our whole psychology
is placed on a new and firm monistic basis. The older mystical conception
of the soul, as we find it amongst primitive peoples, but also in the
systems of the dualistic philosophers of to-day, is refuted by them.
According to these systems, the soul of man (and of the higher animals)
is a separate entity, which inhabits and rules the body only during its
individual life, but leaves it at death. The widespread "piano-theory"
(_Claviertheorie_) compares the "immortal soul" to a pianist who executes
an interesting piece--the individual life--on the instrument of the
mortal body, but at death withdraws into the other world. This "immortal
soul" is usually represented as an immaterial being; but in fact it is
really thought of as quite material, only as a finer invisible being,
aerial or gaseous, or as resembling the mobile, light, and thin substance
of the ether, as conceived by modern physics. The same is true also for
most of the conceptions which rude primitive peoples and the uneducated
classes among the civilised races have, for thousands of years, cherished
as to spectral "ghosts" and "gods." Serious reflection on the matter
shows that here--as in modern spiritualism--it is not with really
immaterial beings, but with gaseous, invisible bodies, that we are
dealing. And further, we are utterly incapable of imagining a truly
immaterial being. As Goethe clearly said, "matter can never exist or act
apart from spirit, neither can spirit apart from matter."
As regards immortality, it is well known that this important idea is
interpreted and applied in a great variety of ways. It is often made a
reproach against our Monism that it altogether denies immortality; this,
however, is erroneous. Rather do we hold it, in a strictly scientific
sense, as an indispensable fundamental conception of our monistic
philosophy of nature. Immortality in a scientific sense is conservation
of substance, therefore the same as conservation of energy as defined by
physics, or conservation of matter as defined by chemistry. The cosmos as
a whole is immortal. It is just as inconceivable that any of the atoms of
our brain or of the energies of our spirit should vanish out of the
world, as that any other particle of matter or energy could do so. At our
death there disappears only the individual form in which the
nerve-substance was fashioned, and the personal "soul" which represented
the work performed by this. The complicated chemical combinations of that
nervous mass pass over into other combinations by decomposition, and the
kinetic energy produced by them is transformed into other forms of
motion.
"Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw."
On the other hand, the conception of a personal immortality cannot be
maintained. If this idea is still widely held, the fact is to be
explained by the physical law of inertia; for the property of persistence
in a state of rest exercises its influence in the region of the
ganglion-cells of the brain, as well as in all other natural bodies.
Traditional ideas handed down through many generations are maintained
with the greatest tenacity by the human brain, especially if, in early
youth, they have been instilled into the childish understanding as
indisputable dogmas. Such hereditary articles of faith take root all the
more firmly, the further they are removed from a rational knowledge of
nature, and enveloped in the mysterious mantle of mythological poesy. In
the case of the dogma of personal immortality, there comes into play also
the interest which man fancies himself to have in his individual future
existence after death, and the vain hope that in a blessed world to come
there is treasured up for him a compensation for the disappointed hopes
and the many sorrows of his earthly life.
It is often asserted by the numerous advocates of personal immortality
that this dogma is an innate one, common to all rational men, and that it
is taught in all the more perfect forms of religion. But this is not
correct. Neither Buddhism nor the religion of Moses originally contained
the dogma of personal immortality, and just as little did the majority of
educated people of classical antiquity believe it, at any rate during the
highest period of Greek culture. The monistic philosophy of that time,
which, five hundred years before our era, had reached speculative heights
so remarkable, knew nothing of any such dogma. It was through Plato and
Christ that it received its further elaboration, until, in the Middle
Ages, it was so universally accepted, that only now and then did some
bold thinker dare openly to gainsay it. The idea that a conviction of
personal immortality has a specially ennobling influence on the moral
nature of man, is not confirmed by the gruesome history of mediaeval
morals, and as little by the psychology of primitive peoples.[17]
If any antiquated school of purely speculative psychology still continues
to uphold this irrational dogma, the fact can only be regarded as a
deplorable anachronism. Sixty years ago such a doctrine was excusable,
for then nothing was accurately known either of the finer structure of
the brain, or of the physiological functions of its separate parts; its
elementary organs, the microscopic ganglion-cells, were almost unknown,
as was also the cell-soul of the Protista; very imperfect ideas were held
as to ontogenetic development, and as to phylogenetic there were none at
all.
This has all been completely changed in the course of the last
half-century. Modern physiology has already to a great extent
demonstrated the localisation of the various activities of mind, and
their connection with definite parts of the brain; psychiatry has shown
that those psychical processes are disturbed or destroyed if these parts
of the brain become diseased or degenerate. Histology has revealed to us
the extremely complicated structure and arrangement of the
ganglion-cells. But, for the settlement of this momentous question, the
discoveries of the last ten years with regard to the more minute
occurrences in the process of fertilisation are of decisive importance.
We now know that this process essentially consists simply in the
copulation or fusion of two microscopical cells, the female egg-cell and
the male sperm-cell. The fusion of the nuclei of these two sexual cells
indicates with the utmost precision the exact moment at which the new
human individual arises. The newly-formed parent-cell, or fertilised
egg-cell, contains potentially, in their rudiments, all the bodily and
mental characteristics which the child inherits from both parents. It is
clearly against reason to assume an eternal and unending life for an
individual phenomenon whose beginning in time we can determine to a
hair's breadth, by direct observation. Judging of human spiritual life
from a rational point of view, we can as little think of our individual
soul as separated from our brain, as we can conceive the voluntary motion
of our arm apart from the contraction of its muscles, or the circulation
of our blood apart from the action of the heart.