The view that man is a wholly self-contained, free individuality stands
in apparent conflict with the facts, that he appears as a member of
a natural whole (race, tribe, nation, family, male or female sex),
and that he acts within a whole (state, church, etc.). He exhibits
the general characteristics of the community to which he belongs,
and gives to his actions a content which is defined by the place
which he occupies within a social whole.
This being so, is any individuality left at all? Can we regard man
as a whole in himself, in view of the fact that he grows out of a
whole and fits as a member into a whole?
The character and function of a member of a whole are defined by
the whole. A tribe is a whole, and all members of the tribe exhibit
the peculiar characteristics which are conditioned by the nature of
the tribe. The character and activity of the individual member are
determined by the character of the tribe. Hence the physiognomy and
the conduct of the individual have something generic about them. When
we ask why this or that in a man is so or so, we are referred from
the individual to the genus. The genus explains why something in the
individual appears in the form observed by us.
But man emancipates himself from these generic characteristics. He
develops qualities and activities the reason for which we can seek
only in himself. The generic factors serve him only as a means to
develop his own individual nature. He uses the peculiarities with
which nature has endowed him as material, and gives them a form which
expresses his own individuality. We seek in vain for the reason
of such an expression of a man's individuality in the laws of the
genus. We are dealing here with an individual who can be explained
only through himself. If a man has reached the point of emancipation
from what is generic in him, and we still attempt to explain all his
qualities by reference to the character of the genus, then we lack
the organ for apprehending what is individual.
It is impossible to understand a human being completely if one makes
the concept of the genus the basis of one's judgment. The tendency
to judge according to the genus is most persistent where differences
of sex are involved. Man sees in woman, woman in man, almost always
too much of the generic characteristics of the other's sex, and too
little of what is individual in the other. In practical life this does
less harm to men than to women. The social position of women is, in
most instances, so low because it is not determined by the individual
characteristics of each woman herself, but by the general ideas which
are current concerning the natural function and needs of woman. A
man's activity in life is determined by his individual capacity and
inclination, whereas a woman's activity is supposed to be determined
solely by the fact that she is just a woman. Woman is to be the slave
of the generic, of the general idea of womanhood. So long as men
debate whether woman, from her "natural disposition," is fitted for
this, that, or the other profession, the so-called Woman's Question
will never advance beyond the most elementary stage. What it lies in
woman's nature to strive for had better be left to woman herself to
decide. If it is true that women are fitted only for that profession
which is theirs at present, then they will hardly have it in them to
attain any other. But they must be allowed to decide for themselves
what is conformable to their nature. To all who fear an upheaval of
our social structure, should women be treated as individuals and not
as specimens of their sex, we need only reply that a social structure
in which the status of one-half of humanity is unworthy of a human
being stands itself in great need of improvement. [14]
Anyone who judges human beings according to their generic character
stops short at the very point beyond which they begin to be individuals
whose activity rests on free self-determination. Whatever lies short of
this point may naturally become matter for scientific study. Thus the
characteristics of race, tribe, nation, and sex are the subject-matter
of special sciences. Only men who are simply specimens of the genus
could possibly fit the generic picture which the methods of these
sciences produce. But all these sciences are unable to get as far
as the unique character of the single individual. Where the sphere
of freedom (thinking and acting) begins, there the possibility
of determining the individual according to the laws of his genus
ceases. The conceptual content which man, by an act of thought,
has to connect with percepts, in order to possess himself fully of
reality (cp. pp. 83 ff.), cannot be fixed by anyone once and for all,
and handed down to humanity ready-made. The individual must gain
his concepts through his own intuition. It is impossible to deduce
from any concept of the genus how the individual ought to think;
that depends singly and solely on the individual himself. So, again,
it is just as impossible to determine, on the basis of the universal
characteristics of human nature, what concrete ends the individual
will set before himself. Anyone who wants to understand the single
individual must penetrate to the innermost core of his being, and
not stop short at those qualities which he shares with others. In
this sense every single human being is a problem. And every science
which deals only with abstract thoughts and generic concepts is but
a preparation for the kind of knowledge which we gain when a human
individual communicates to us his way of viewing the world, and for
that other kind of knowledge which each of us gains from the content
of his own will. Wherever we feel that here we are dealing with a
man who has emancipated his thinking from all that is generic, and
his will from the grooves typical of his kind, there we must cease
to call in any concepts of our own making if we would understand
his nature. Knowledge consists in the combination by thought of a
concept and a percept. With all other objects the observer has to
gain his concepts through his intuition. But if the problem is to
understand a free individuality, we need only to take over into our
own minds those concepts by which the individual determines himself,
in their pure form (without admixture). Those who always mix their
own ideas into their judgment on another person can never attain to
the understanding of an individuality. Just as the free individual
emancipates himself from the characteristics of the genus, so our
knowledge of the individual must emancipate itself from the methods
by which we understand what is generic.
A man counts as a free spirit in a human community only to the degree
in which he has emancipated himself, in the way we have indicated, from
all that is generic. No man is all genus, none is all individuality;
but every man gradually emancipates a greater or lesser sphere of
his being, both from the generic characteristics of animal life,
and from the laws of human authorities which rule him despotically.
In respect of that part of his nature for which man is not able to
win this freedom for himself, he forms a member within the organism
of nature and of spirit. He lives, in this respect, by the imitation
of others, or in obedience to their command. But ethical value belongs
only to that part of his conduct which springs from his intuitions. And
whatever moral instincts man possesses through the inheritance of
social instincts, acquire ethical value through being taken up into
his intuitions. In such ethical intuitions all moral activity of men
has its root. To put this differently: the moral life of humanity is
the sum-total of the products of the moral imagination of free human
individuals. This is Monism's confession of faith.