An explanation of Nature on a single principle, or, in other
words, Monism, derives from human experience all the material
which it requires for the explanation of the world. In the
same way, it looks for the springs of action also within the
world of observation, i.e., in that human part of Nature which
is accessible to our self-observation, and more particularly in
the moral imagination. Monism declines to seek outside that world
the ultimate grounds of the world which we perceive and think. For
Monism, the unity which reflective observation adds to the manifold
multiplicity of percepts, is identical with the unity which the human
desire for knowledge demands, and through which this desire seeks
entrance into the physical and spiritual realms. Whoever looks for
another unity behind this one, only shows that he fails to perceive
the coincidence of the results of thinking with the demands of
the instinct for knowledge. A particular human individual is not
something cut off from the universe. He is a part of the universe,
and his connection with the cosmic whole is broken, not in reality,
but only for our perception. At first we apprehend the human part
of the universe as a self-existing thing, because we are unable to
perceive the cords and ropes by which the fundamental forces of the
cosmos keep turning the wheel of our life.
All who remain at this perceptual standpoint see the part of the
whole as if it were a truly independent, self-existing thing,
a monad which gains all its knowledge of the rest of the world in
some mysterious manner from without. But Monism has shown that we can
believe in this independence only so long as thought does not gather
our percepts into the network of the conceptual world. As soon as this
happens, all partial existence in the universe, all isolated being,
reveals itself as a mere appearance due to perception. Existence as
a self-contained totality can be predicated only of the universe as a
whole. Thought destroys the appearances due to perception and assigns
to our individual existence a place in the life of the cosmos. The
unity of the conceptual world which contains all objective percepts,
has room also within itself for the content of our subjective
personality. Thought gives us the true structure of reality as a
self-contained unity, whereas the multiplicity of percepts is but
an appearance conditioned by our organisation (cp. pp. 178 ff.). The
recognition of the true unity of reality, as against the appearance
of multiplicity, is at all times the goal of human thought. Science
strives to apprehend our apparently disconnected percepts as a unity by
tracing their inter-relations according to natural law. But, owing to
the prejudice that an inter-relation discovered by human thought has
only a subjective validity, thinkers have sought the true ground of
unity in some object transcending the world of our experience (God,
will, absolute spirit, etc.). Further, basing themselves on this
prejudice, men have tried to gain, in addition to their knowledge
of inter-relations within experience, a second kind of knowledge
transcending experience, which should reveal the connection between
empirical inter-relations and those realities which lie beyond
the limits of experience (Metaphysics). The reason why, by logical
thinking, we understand the nexus of the world, was thought to be that
an original creator has built up the world according to logical laws,
and, similarly, the ground of our actions was thought to lie in the
will of this original being. It was overlooked that thinking embraces
in one grasp the subjective and the objective, and that it communicates
to us the whole of reality in the union which it effects between
percept and concept. Only so long as we contemplate the laws which
pervade and determine all percepts, in the abstract form of concepts,
do we indeed deal only with something purely subjective. But this
subjectivity does not belong to the content of the concept which, by
means of thought, is added to the percept. This content is taken, not
from the subject, but from reality. It is that part of reality which
is inaccessible to perception. It is experience, but not the kind of
experience which comes from perception. Those who cannot understand
that the concept is something real, have in mind only the abstract
form, in which we fix and isolate the concept. But in this isolation,
the concept is as much dependent solely on our organisation as is
the percept. The tree which I perceive, taken in isolation by itself,
has no existence; it exists only as a member in the immense mechanism
of Nature, and is possible only in real connection with Nature. An
abstract concept, taken by itself, has as little reality as a percept
taken by itself. The percept is that part of reality which is given
objectively, the concept that part which is given subjectively (by
intuition; cp. pp. 90 ff.). Our mental organisation breaks up reality
into these two factors. The one factor is apprehended by perception,
the other by intuition. Only the union of the two, which consists of
the percept fitted according to law into its place in the universe, is
reality in its full character. If we take mere percepts by themselves,
we have no reality but only a disconnected chaos. If we take the laws
which determine percepts by themselves, we have nothing but abstract
concepts. Reality is not to be found in the abstract concept. It is
revealed to the contemplative act of thought which regards neither
the concept by itself nor the percept by itself, but the union of both.
Even the most orthodox Idealist will not deny that we live in the
real world (that, as real beings, we are rooted in it); but he will
deny that our knowledge, by means of its ideas, is able to grasp
reality as we live it. As against this view, Monism shows that
thought is neither subjective nor objective, but a principle which
holds together both these sides of reality. The contemplative act of
thought is a cognitive process which belongs itself to the sequence of
real events. By thought we overcome, within the limits of experience
itself, the one-sidedness of mere perception. We are not able by means
of abstract conceptual hypotheses (purely conceptual speculation)
to puzzle out the nature of the real, but in so far as we find for
our percepts the right concepts we live in the real. Monism does not
seek to supplement experience by something unknowable (transcending
experience), but finds reality in concept and percept. It does not
manufacture a metaphysical system out of pure concepts, because it
looks upon concepts as only one side of reality, viz., the side which
remains hidden from perception, but is meaningless except in union
with percepts. But Monism gives man the conviction that he lives in
the world of reality, and has no need to seek beyond the world for a
higher reality. It refuses to look for Absolute Reality anywhere but
in experience, because it recognises reality in the very content of
experience. Monism is satisfied with this reality, because it knows
that our thought points to no other. What Dualism seeks beyond the
world of experience, that Monism finds in this world itself. Monism
shows that our knowledge grasps reality in its true nature, not in a
purely subjective image. It holds the conceptual content of the world
to be identical for all human individuals (cp. pp. 84 ff.). According
to Monistic principles, every human individual regards every other
as akin to himself, because it is the same world-content which
expresses itself in all. In the single conceptual world there are
not as many concepts of "lion" as there are individuals who form the
thought of "lion," but only one. And the concept which A adds to the
percept of "lion" is identical with B's concept except so far as,
in each case, it is apprehended by a different perceiving subject
(cp. p. 85). Thought leads all perceiving subjects back to the ideal
unity in all multiplicity, which is common to them all. There is but
one ideal world, but it realises itself in human subjects as in a
multiplicity of individuals. So long as man apprehends himself merely
by self-observation, he looks upon himself as this particular being,
but so soon as he becomes conscious of the ideal world which shines
forth within him, and which embraces all particulars within itself,
he perceives that the Absolute Reality lives within him. Dualism fixes
upon the Divine Being as that which permeates all men and lives in them
all. Monism finds this universal Divine Life in Reality itself. The
ideal content of another subject is also my content, and I regard it
as a different content only so long as I perceive, but no longer when I
think. Every man embraces in his thought only a part of the total world
of ideas, and so far, individuals are distinguished one from another
also by the actual contents of their thought. But all these contents
belong to a self-contained whole, which comprises within itself the
thought-contents of all men. Hence every man, in so far as he thinks,
lays hold of the universal Reality which pervades all men. To fill
one's life with such thought-content is to live in Reality, and at
the same time to live in God. The thought of a Beyond owes its origin
to the misconception of those who believe that this world cannot have
the ground of its existence in itself. They do not understand that,
by thinking, they discover just what they demand for the explanation
of the perceptual world. This is the reason why no speculation has
ever produced any content which has not been borrowed from reality
as it is given to us. A personal God is nothing but a human being
transplanted into the Beyond. Schopenhauer's Will is the human will
made absolute. Hartmann's Unconscious, made up of idea and will,
is but a compound of two abstractions drawn from experience. Exactly
the same is true of all other transcendent principles.
The truth is that the human mind never transcends the reality in which
it lives. Indeed, it has no need to transcend it, seeing that this
world contains everything that is required for its own explanation. If
philosophers declare themselves finally content when they have deduced
the world from principles which they borrow from experience and then
transplant into an hypothetical Beyond, the same satisfaction ought
to be possible, if these same principles are allowed to remain in this
world to which they belong anyhow. All attempts to transcend the world
are purely illusory, and the principles transplanted into the Beyond do
not explain the world any better than the principles which are immanent
in it. When thought understands itself, it does not demand any such
transcendence at all, for there is no thought-content which does not
find within the world a perceptual content, in union with which it can
form a real object. The objects of imagination, too, are contents which
have no validity, until they have been transformed into ideas that
refer to a perceptual content. Through this perceptual content they
have their place in reality. A concept the content of which is supposed
to lie beyond the world which is given to us, is an abstraction to
which no reality corresponds. Thought can discover only the concepts of
reality; in order to find reality itself, we need also perception. An
Absolute Being for which we invent a content, is a hypothesis which
no thought can entertain that understands itself. Monism does not
deny ideal factors; indeed, it refuses to recognise as fully real
a perceptual content which has no ideal counterpart, but it finds
nothing within the whole range of thought that is not immanent within
this world of ours. A science which restricts itself to a description
of percepts, without advancing to their ideal complements, is, for
Monism, but a fragment. But Monism regards as equally fragmentary
all abstract concepts which do not find their complement in percepts,
and which fit nowhere into the conceptual net that embraces the whole
perceptual world. Hence it knows no ideas referring to objects lying
beyond our experience and supposed to form the content of purely
hypothetical Metaphysics. Whatever mankind has produced in the way
of such ideas Monism regards as abstractions from experience, whose
origin in experience has been overlooked by their authors.
Just as little, according to Monistic principles, are the ends of our
actions capable of being derived from the Beyond. So far as we can
think them, they must have their origin in human intuition. Man does
not adopt the purposes of an objective (transcendent) being as his
own individual purposes, but he pursues the ends which his own moral
imagination sets before him. The idea which realises itself in an
action is selected by the agent from the single ideal world and made
the basis of his will. Consequently his action is not a realisation
of commands which have been thrust into this world from the Beyond,
but of human intuitions which belong to this world. For Monism there
is no ruler of the world standing outside of us and determining the
aim and direction of our actions. There is for man no transcendent
ground of existence, the counsels of which he might discover, in order
thence to learn the ends to which he ought to direct his action. Man
must rest wholly upon himself. He must himself give a content to his
action. It is in vain that he seeks outside the world in which he lives
for motives of his will. If he is to go at all beyond the satisfaction
of the natural instincts for which Mother Nature has provided, he must
look for motives in his own moral imagination, unless he finds it more
convenient to let them be determined for him by the moral imagination
of others. In other words, he must either cease acting altogether,
or else act from motives which he selects for himself from the world
of his ideas, or which others select for him from that same world. If
he develops at all beyond a life absorbed in sensuous instincts and
in the execution of the commands of others, then there is nothing
that can determine him except himself. He has to act from a motive
which he gives to himself and which nothing else can determine for
him except himself. It is true that this motive is ideally determined
in the single world of ideas; but in actual fact it must be selected
by the agent from that world and translated into reality. Monism can
find the ground for the actual realisation of an idea through human
action only in the human being himself. That an idea should pass
into action must be willed by man before it can happen. Such a will
consequently has its ground only in man himself. Man, on this view,
is the ultimate determinant of his action. He is free.