There is present a something given, an actuality, which we designate by
the collective name of “world.” The untutored person and the thinker
alike make use of the same expression. This latter is indifferent,
acquiring a definite meaning only with reference to a particular
explanation--that is, with reference to a view of the world.
The impulse to explain actuality, the need of a world-theory, a
world-conception, is deeply embedded in every living being endowed with
consciousness.
The moment any being has so far developed as to begin to think, it
finds itself involved in a huge system within which it seeks to know
its way, striving the while to understand it in its various details.
This system comes before it in a twofold aspect: on the one hand,
as “something that is,” _i.e._ things; and on the other hand, as
“something that happens,” _i.e._ the play of events among things. A
“being” without a “happening” attached, is as little to be found as a
“happening” without a “being.” In other words: processes only exist.
Here two questions immediately arise. First, _What is the world?_ And
second, _How does the play of events come about?_
Both sides of the world-picture, and therewith both questions, blend
into one question--the question as to adequate causes. As well the
fact that “something is here,” as the fact that “something happens,”
requires adequate causes. _The adequate cause is the thought-necessity
given with all mental life._ The entire universe in all its parts and
processes, is to the thinking man a species of marionette show. He sees
the puppets dance but he does not see the strings, neither does he see
that which pulls the strings. The incentive to a view of the world is
the craving, so to speak, to get a peep behind the scenes, to spy out
Nature’s secrets, and therewith seize upon the meaning and significance
of life itself. This latter is the real object of every world-theory.
Now it is quite true, that if I do not perceive the meaning and
significance of life I am but little better than the donkey that drags
the full sacks to the mill and the empty ones back without knowing why,
in the one case as in the other. I owe it to my dignity as a man to
seek out the meaning and significance of life. But this is not all.
That I am here is a given fact. Were I not here, had I never been here,
not for that would any breach have yawned in the structure of the
world. But now that I am here, all turns upon _how I conduct myself
during this my existence_. Not the fact _that_ I am here, but _how_ I
employ this existence is the all-important thing.
This question as to the “_how_” can only be answered in any natural
way through the “_what_.” I must know what I am, and what are the
things and beings outside me; I must learn my relations to the external
world, I must apprehend the meaning and significance of life before
I can possess a genuine canon and standard for my behaviour, for my
morality. For all morality, whether it find expression in doing or
in leaving undone, issues in acts of selflessness. This, however,
requires that motives be brought forward, otherwise such an act is
either a perverted form of self-seeking like all asceticism, or it is
mere training, bearing, indeed, the outward semblance of morality, in
reality, however, having nothing at all to do with it. It is only in
virtue of cognition that any act acquires moral value. One can speak
of real morality there only where it is a function of cognition.
Hence there can be no morality without comprehension, without a
world-conception.
This is the first reason why a world-theory is necessary.
But it behoves a being worthy the name of man also to know whether
this life is merely a blind adventure, or whether it has aim and goal.
The thinking man demands to know what he may expect after this life.
He insists upon looking beyond this life. He claims an answer to the
question, “Whence? Whither?”
This demand to look out beyond life, this questioning, as to _the aim
and goal of life_, is called _religion_. As with the query, “How must
I conduct myself?” which permits of being answered in natural fashion
then only when I know what I am, so is it with the question, “Whence
am I, and whither am I bound?” Only when I know what I am, can this
question also find a natural reply. A genuine religion, like a genuine
morality, has its roots in cognition. _Both alike must be functions of
cognition._
Such are the two reasons why for every thinking being a world-theory is
not only a matter of giving honourable satisfaction to his dignity as a
man, but also why it is a positive necessity. _In their absence genuine
morality and genuine religion alike are impossible._
Now every backward glance into time, _i.e._ universal history, as
well as every look round us in space, _i.e._ ethnology, reveals the
fact that there never has been, and also that there is not, a people
destitute of every trace, every touch of morality and religion. The
only question is, Is this natural capacity of mankind for morality and
religion a veritable function of cognition?
The essence of all cognition is the individual. Every act of cognition
is always something individual, personal, pertaining to me alone. Were
all men to cognize alike, the content of this cognition would still be
the individual possession of each and every single person. _Cognition
separates._
Opposite to it stands another function of human nature--emotion.
_Emotion unites._ If things cognizable are the affair of the
individual, things emotional have to do with the mass. Every natural
capacity of mankind for morality and religion consists altogether
of what pertains to the emotions. Here all morality is founded upon
an instinctive feeling of correlation which finds expression in the
well-known saying:--
What you would not men did to you,
See that you do not them unto!
or in the maxim, “So conduct thyself towards others as thou wouldst
wish that they should conduct themselves towards thee!”
The unifying quality of emotion is made manifest in every form of
compassion, which latter frequently rises to the pitch of an actual
vegetative suffering with the afflicted person. Such facts, open to
every one’s observation, awaken in all the instinctive feeling of an
inner connection of beings, and yield a natural morality that is purely
a function of emotion.
It may be asked, “Could such a morality of emotion suffice humanity?”
It would suffice a humanity whose development had only reached so far
as the capacity for emotion. So soon, however, as a being passes from
the stage of the emotional and enters upon the stage of the cognitive,
the morality of emotion no longer suffices, as little so as the reasons
one is accustomed to give to children suffice the grown man.
The emotional holds sway as long as an individual is not yet fully
conscious of himself, not yet come to pure reflection. So soon as he is
fully conscious, there arises also the need to understand ourselves as
well as our morality and religion. Then only may I say that I _have_
morality and religion when I have understood them, when both have
become functions of my cognition. So long as this is not the case,
so long are religion and morality things of emotion, and these are
subject to every conceivable variation. Hence the endless diversity
of moralities as well as of religions in the stage of the emotional.
Here both--to use the language of current speech--are mere matters of
taste, lacking in all inner foundation. Hence also comes all that is
unintelligible in the manners and customs connected with morality and
religion among foreign peoples of ancient and of modern times. This
is not the place to go into details. Every historical record, every
account of civilization, furnishes abundant examples.
Whether upon our globe a state of affairs has ever prevailed in which
morality and religion have been exclusively things of emotion, it is
impossible to say. The fact remains that at the point where, in our
glance backward over the history of the world, man first emerges,
the purity of emotional morality and religion is no longer intact.
Historical man, as first presented to us in the states of Egypt and
Babylonia, already exhibits a morality and religion which are no longer
pure functions of emotion, but have now become functions of reflection.
This necessity for reflection is given with the essential being of all
that is real.
As already said, all that is, on the one hand, presents itself as
“_something that is_,” _i.e._ a being; and, on the other hand, as
“something that happens,” _i.e._ a becoming; that is, as a process.
Wherever something happens, an adequate cause must be present. And
the world by its simple existence, by reason of its very nature as a
process, is the standing incitement to comprehension, to reflection,
inasmuch as the mind hankers after an adequate cause for all that
occurs. “The apparent changes in organic being all about me,”
says Goethe in his _Morphologie_, “took a strong hold of my mind.
Imagination and nature seemed to strive with one another which of the
two should stride forward with the bolder and firmer step.”
The search after adequate causes is everywhere given as a necessity of
thought wherever mental life is found. An adequate cause is required
for “that which is,” just as much as for “that which happens”; it is
that which both presume. _To possess a world-theory and therewith a
world-conception means to comprehend adequate causes._
According to the attitude assumed by mental life toward the question
of adequate causes, does it separate off in two main directions: the
direction of faith and the direction of science.