_A._ Lower Barbarians. Dwellings: Simple huts, generally grouped into

villages and surrounded with plantations. Clothing worn regularly, but

very simple: the men often naked in hot climates or with shirt. Pottery

and cooking utensils, tools of stone, wood, or bone. Rudiments of

commerce by exchange. Groups of one thousand to five thousand persons

able to form larger communities; distinctions of rank and warfare.

Princes rule according to traditional laws. Of this group we have

in Asia many of the aboriginal inhabitants of India (Mundas, Khonds,

Paharias, Bheels, etc.), the Dyaks of Borneo, the Battaks of Sumatra,

Tunguses, Kirgises, etc.; in Africa the Kaffirs, Bechuanas, and

Basutos; in Australasia the aborigines of New Guinea, New Caledonia,

New Hebrides, New Zealand, etc.; and in America the Iroquois and

Thlinkets, and the inhabitants of Nicaragua and Guatemala.

_B._ Middle barbarians. Dwellings good and durable, generally of wood,

roofed with cane or straw, forming fine towns. Clothing general, though

nudity is not considered immoral. Pottery, weaving, and metal-work

pretty well developed. Commerce in regular markets, with the use of

money. States ruled by kings in accordance with traditional laws,

fixed distinctions of rank, communities up to one hundred thousand

persons. To these belong in Asia the Calmucks; in Africa many negro

races (Ashantis, Fantis, Fellahs, Shilluks, Mombuttus, Owampos, etc.);

in Polynesia the inhabitants of the Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Markesas

islands. In Europe the Lapps belonged to this class two hundred years

ago, the ancient Germans two thousand years ago, the Romans before

Numa, and the Greeks of the Homeric period.

_C._ Higher barbarians. Dwellings, usually solid stone buildings.

Clothing obligatory, weaving habitual occupation of the women,

metal-work far advanced, tools generally of iron. Restricted commerce,

with minted money, no rudder-ships. Crude judicature in fixed courts;

rudimentary writing. Masses of people, with progressive division of

labor and hereditary distinctions of rank, sometimes reaching half a

million souls, under an autonomous ruler. To this class belong in Asia

most of the Malays (in the large Sunda Islands and the peninsula of

Malacca), and the nomadic races of Tartars, Arabs, etc.; in Polynesia

the islanders of Tahiti and Hawaii; in Africa the Somalis and

Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of Zanzibar and Madagascar. Of the

historic peoples of antiquity we have the Greeks of the time of Solon,

the Romans at the beginning of the republic, the Jews under the Judges,

the Anglo-Saxons of the Heptarchy, and the Mexicans and Peruvians at

the time of the Spanish invasion.

III. CIVILIZED RACES.--Food and complex vital needs are easily

satisfied on account of the advanced division of labor and improvement

of instruments. Art and science are consequently developed more and

more. The increasing specialization brings about a great elaboration

of individual functions, and at the same time a great strengthening of

the whole body politic, as there is complete mutual dependence. The

citizens see that they must submit to the laws of the state.

_A._ Lower civilized races. Towns with stone walls; vast architectural

works in stone; use of the plough in agriculture. War is intrusted to

a particular class. Writing firmly established, primitive law-books,

fixed courts. Literature begins to develop. To this group belong

in Asia the inhabitants of Thibet, Bhutan, Nepaul, Laos, Annam,

Korea, Manchuria, and the settled Arabs and Turcomans; in Africa the

Algerians, Tunisians, Moors, Kabyles, Tuaregs, etc. Of historical races

we have the ancient Egyptians, Phœnicians, Assyrians, Babylonians,

Carthaginians, the Greeks after Marathon, the Romans of the time of

Hannibal, and the English under the Norman kings.

_B._ Middle civilized races. Beautiful temples and palaces, built

of stone and brick. Windows come into use, and sailing-ships.

Commerce expands. Writing and written books are general; the literary

instruction of the young is attended to. Militarism is further

developed; so are legislation and advocacy. Of these we have in Asia

the Persians, Afghans, Birmans, and Siamese; in Europe the Finns and

Magyars of the eighteenth century. Of historical peoples we must count

among them the Greeks of the age of Pericles, the Romans of the later

republic, the Jews under the Macedonian rule, France under the first

Capets, and England under the Plantagenets.

_C._ Higher civilized races. Stone houses general; streets paved;

chimneys, canals, water and wind mills. Beginnings of scientific

navigation and warfare. Writing general, written books widely

distributed, literature esteemed. The highly centralized state embraces

communities of ten millions or more. Fixed and written codes of law

are officially promulgated and applied by courts to particular cases.

Numbers of government officials have settled rank. To this group belong

in Asia the Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos; also the Turks and the

various republics of South America, etc. In history we have the Romans

of the empire, and the Italians, French, English, and Germans of the

fifteenth century.

IV. CULTIVATED RACES.--Food and other needs are artificially supplied

with the greatest ease and in abundance, human labor being replaced

by natural forces. The social organization grows and facilitates the

play of all the social forces, and man obtains a great freedom to

cultivate his mental and æsthetic qualities. Printing is in general

use, the education of the young one of the first duties. War becomes

less important; rank and fame depend less on military bravery than on

mental superiority. Legislation is influenced by representatives of the

people. Art and science are increasingly promoted by state aid.

Alexander Sutherland distinguishes three stages of development--the

lower, middle, and higher--in the fourth as well as in the preceding

classes. To the first stage he assigns "the leading nations of Europe

and their offshoots, such as the United States of North America."

For the second stage--middle cultured races--he gives a programme

that may be carried out in three or four hundred years' time, with

this definition: "All men are well fed and housed; war is universally

condemned, but breaks out now and again. Small armies and fleets of all

the nations co-operate as a sort of international police; commercial

and industrial life are directed according to the moral precepts of

sympathy; culture is general; crime and punishment rare." Of the third

and highest stage Sutherland merely says, "Too bold a subject for

prophecy, that may not come for one thousand to two thousand years

yet." This division seems to me too vague and unsatisfactory, in the

sense that it does not properly emphasize the civilization of the

nineteenth century in contrast with all preceding stages. It would

be better to distinguish _provisionally_ the following stages in

modern civilization: first, sixteenth to eighteenth century; second,

nineteenth century; and third, twentieth century and the future.

_A._ Lower cultured races (Europe, sixteenth to eighteenth century).

At the commencement of this period, the first half of the sixteenth

century, we notice the preparatory movements to the full growth of

mental life which was to achieve such great results in the following

periods: 1. The cosmic system of Copernicus (1543) maintained by

Galileo (1592). 2. The discovery of America by Columbus (1492) and of

the East Indies by Vasco da Gama (1498), the first circumnavigation

of the earth by Magellan (1520) and the evidence it afforded of the

rotundity of the earth. 3. The liberation of the mind of Europe

from the papal yoke by Martin Luther (1517) and the repulse of the

prevailing superstition by the spread of the Reformation. 4. The new

impulse to scientific investigation independently of scholasticism

and the Church and of the philosophy of Aristotle; the founding of

empirical science by Francis Bacon (1620). 5. The spread of scientific

knowledge by the press (Gutenberg, 1450) and wood-engraving. The way

was prepared for modern civilization by these and other advances in the

sixteenth century, and it quickly arose above the barbaric level of the

Middle Ages. However, it was confined at first within narrow limits, as

the reactionary civilization of the Middle Ages was still powerful in

political and social life, and the struggle against superstition and

unreason made slow progress. The French Revolution (1792) at last gave

a great impetus in practical directions.

_B._ Middle cultured races. This name may be given to the leading

nations of Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. We may

illustrate in the following achievements the great advance which this

"century of science" made as compared with all preceding ages: 1.

Deepening, experimental grounding, and general spread of a knowledge

of nature; independent establishment of many new branches of science;

founding of the cell-theory (1838), the law of energy (1845), and the

theory of evolution (1859). 2. Practical and comprehensive application

of this theoretical science to all branches of art and industry.

Especially 3. The overcoming of time and space by the extraordinary

speed of transit (steamboats, railways, telegraphs, electrotechnics).

4. Construction of the monistic and realistic philosophy, in opposition

to the prevailing dualistic and mystical views. 5. Increasing influence

of rational scientific instruction and abandonment of the religious

fiction of the Churches. 6. Increasing self-consciousness of the

nations on account of having a share in government and legislation;

extinction of the belief in the divine right of rulers. New distinction

of classes. However, these great advances, to which we children of the

nineteenth century may point with pride, are far from being universal;

they are struggling daily with reactionary views and powers in Church

and state, with militarism, and with ancient and venerable immorality

of every kind.

_C._ The higher culture which we are just beginning to glimpse will set

itself the task of creating as happy and contented a life as possible

for all men. A perfect ethic, free from all religious dogma and based

on a clear knowledge of natural law, will be found in the golden rule,

"Love thy neighbor as thyself." Reason tells us that a perfect state

must provide the greatest possible happiness for every individual that

belongs to it. The adjustment of a rational balance between egoism and

altruism is the aim of our monistic ethics. Many barbaric customs that

are still regarded as necessary--war, duelling, ecclesiastical power,

etc.--will be abolished. Legal decisions will suffice to settle the

quarrels of nations, as they now do of individuals. The chief interest

of the state will be, not the formation of as strong a military force

as possible, but the best possible instruction of its young, with

special attention to art and science. The improvement of technical

methods, owing to new discoveries in physics and chemistry, will bring

greater satisfaction of our needs of life. The artificial production of

albumin will provide plenty of food for all. A rational reform of the

marriage relations will increase the happiness of family life.

The darker sides of modern life, of which we are all more or less

sensitive, have been laid bare by Max Nordau in his _Conventional Lies

of Civilization_. They will be greatly altered if reason is permitted

to have its way in practical life, and the present evil customs, based

on antiquated dogmas, are suppressed. But, in spite of all these

shades, the luminous features of modern civilization are so great that

we look to the future with hope and confidence. We need only glance

back half a century, and compare life to-day with what it was then,

in order to realize the progress made. If we regard the modern state

as an elaborate organism (a "social individual of the first order"),

and compare its citizens to the cells of a higher tissue-animal, the

difference between the state of to-day and the crudest family groups

of savages is not less than that between a higher metazoon (such as a

vertebrate) and a cœnobium of protozoa. The progressive division

of labor, on the one hand, and the centralization of society, on the

other, prepare the social body for higher functions than in isolation,

and proportionately increase the worth of its life. To see this more

clearly, let us compare the personal and the social value of life in

the five chief fields of vital activity--nutrition, reproduction,

movement, sensation, and mental life.

The first need of the individual organism, self-maintenance, is met in

a much more perfect manner in the modern state than it was formerly.

The savage is satisfied with the raw products of nature--with hunting,

fishing, and the gathering of roots and fruits. Agriculture and

pasturage come later. Many stages of barbarism and lower civilization

must be passed before the conditions of feeding, housing, and clothing

provide a secure and comfortable existence for man, and permit the

addition of æsthetic and intellectual interests to the indispensable

search for food.

The feeding and condition of the social body as a whole have been

improved by modern civilization, just as in the case of the individual.

The progress of chemistry and agriculture has enabled us to produce

food in larger quantities. The ease and rapidity of transfer allow it

to be distributed over the whole earth. Scientific medicine and hygiene

have discovered many means of diminishing the dangers of disease and

preventing its occurrence. By means of public baths, gymnasiums,

popular restaurants, public gardens, etc., greater care is taken of

the health of the community. The arrangement of modern houses and

their heating and lighting have been immensely improved. Modern social

politics strives more and more to extend these benefits of civilization

to the lower classes. Philanthropic societies are busy supplying the

material and spiritual wants of various classes of sufferers. It is

true there is still a broad margin for the improvement of the national

well-being. But, on the whole, it cannot be denied that the provision

of food in the modern state is an immense advance upon that of the

Middle Ages and of the barbaric period.

The great value of modern civilization and its vast progress beyond

the condition of the savage is seen in no branch of physiology so

conspicuously as in the wonderful process of reproduction and the

maintenance of the species. In most savages and barbarians the

satisfaction of their powerful sexual impulse is at the same low stage

as in the ape and other mammals. The woman is merely an object of

lust to the man, or even a slave without rights, bought and exchanged

like all other property. Improvement is slow and gradual in the value

of this property, until it reaches a high guarantee of permanency in

the formal marriage. The family life proves a source of higher and

finer enjoyment for both parties. The position of woman advances with

civilization; her rights obtain further recognition, and in addition to

sensual love the psychic relation of man and wife begins to develop.

The common concern for the proper care and education of the children,

which we find to an extent even in the case of many animals, leads

to the further development of family life and the founding of the

school. With the advent of a higher stage of civilization begins the

refinement of sexual love, which finds its highest satisfaction, not in

the momentary gratification of the sex-impulse, but in the spiritual

relation of the sexes and their constant and intimate intercourse. The

beautiful then unites with the good and the true to form a harmonious

trinity. Hence love has been for thousands of years the chief source

of the æsthetic uplifting of man in every respect; the arts--poetry,

music, painting, and sculpture--have drawn inexhaustively from this

source. However, for the individual civilized human being this

higher love is of value, not only because it satisfies the natural

and irresistible sex-impulse in its noblest form, but also because

the mutual influence of the sexes, their complementary qualities and

their common enjoyment of the highest ideal good, has a great effect

upon individual character. A good and happy marriage--which is not

very common to-day--ought to be regarded, both psychologically and

physiologically, as one of the most important ends of life by every

individual of the higher nations.

As a pure marriage is the best form of family life and the most solid

foundation of the state, its high social value is at once evident. The

attraction and mutual devotion of the sexes fulfils in the highest

degree the ethical golden rule--the balance of egoism and altruism. As

Fritz Schultze very truly says in his _Comparative Psychology_

We must not seek the causes of this altruism in the transcendental

region of the supernatural, or in any metaphysical abstraction,

but must go back to the very real and natural qualities of the

organic being--and then there can be no question that the organic

sex-impulse, at once physical and psychical is the first and enduring

source of all love, however spiritual, and of all real ethical and

sympathetic feelings and the morality founded thereon. There are

two primitive instincts in all organisms: that of self-maintenance

and that of the maintenance of the species. The one is the strong

impulse of egoism, the other the spring of altruism: from the one

come all unfriendly and from the other all friendly feelings. Every

being seeks first to nourish and protect itself in virtue of its

instinct of self-maintenance. But soon the magic of the instinct for

the maintenance of the species works in it; it feels the sex-impulse,

and thinks it is only satisfying its egoistic lust in yielding to

it. In this it is wrong; it is not really serving itself, but the

whole, the species, the genus. The ardor of love burns in it; and

however sensual this love is at first, the new feeling is undeniably

a feeling of belonging to another and of mutual consideration,

looking not only to itself, but to another; not only to its own good,

but to that of another, and finding its own good only in that of the

other. And though this feeling at first only unites the two parents,

it enlarges when children enter into life, and is extended to them

in the form of parental love. Thus, out of the sex-impulse of the

maintenance of the species, with its strong physical and psychic

roots, is developed the love of spouses, of parents, of children,

and of neighbor. Disinterested egoism goes even to the extent of

sacrificing its own life for its young; in this organic and natural

family love, and in the sense of the family that comes of it, we find

the roots of all sympathetic and really ethical altruistic feelings;

from this it widens out to larger spheres. Hence, the family is

rightly held to be the chief source of all real moral feeling and

life, not only in the human, but also in the animal world.

The further ennoblement of family life in the advance of civilization

will give fresh proofs of the truth of this appreciation.

We now turn to consider the advantages that modern civilization offers

in the way of movement in contrast to the simple methods of locomotion

of the savage. We may point out first that the earliest men, like their

ancestors, the anthropoid apes, lived in trees, and only gradually

began to run on the ground. Some of the higher savages began to use

the horse for riding and to tame it. Many inhabitants of the coast or

islands began at an early period to make boats. Later the barbaric

tribes invented the wagon, and much later again streets were paved

and vehicles improved by civilized races. But the nineteenth century

brought the invaluable means of rapid and convenient travelling by

means of steamboats and railways. The whole problem of transit was

revolutionized, and in the last few decades further vast changes have

been made owing to the advance of electricity. Modern ideas of time

and space are quite different from those of our parents sixty years

ago, or our grandparents ninety years ago. In our expresses we cover

in an hour a stretch of country that the mail-coach took five times

and the foot-passenger ten times as long to cover. As the experiments

with the Berlin electric railway have lately shown, we can now travel

two hundred kilometres in an hour. The journey from Europe to India

now takes three weeks, whereas the earlier sailing-vessel took as

many months. The immense saving of time that we make is equivalent to

a lengthening of our own life. This applies also to the more rapid

transit provided by balloons, automobiles, bicycles, etc. It is easy

to estimate the value of these improvements; but it is only fully

appreciated by those who have lived long in an uncivilized country

without roads or among savages whose legs are their only means of

locomotion.

This progress in the means of transit is not less valuable socially

than personally. If we conceive the state as a unified organism of the

higher order, the development of its means of transit corresponds in

many ways to that of the circulation of the blood in the vertebrate

frame. The easy, rapid, and convenient transport of the means of

life from the centre to the most distant parts of the land, and the

corresponding development of the net-work of railways and steamboat

routes, are to a certain extent direct tests of the degree of

civilization. To this we must add the creation of a large number of

offices which provide steady employment and means of subsistence for

many thousands.

To compare the complex sensations of civilized man with the much

simpler ones of the savage we must consider first the functions of

the outer organs of sense and then the internal sense-processes in the

cortex of the brain. Fritz Schultze has pointed out in his _Psychology

of the Savage_, in regard to both sets of organs, that the savage is

a man of sense-life, the civilized human being a man of mind-life.

When we remember that our higher psychic functions (sensation, will,

presentation, and thought) are anatomically connected with the phronema

(the thought-organ in the cortex), and the inner sense-perception

with the central sensorium (in the sense-centres of the cortex), we

shall expect to find the latter more developed in the savage and the

former in civilized man. The external sense-action is more intense in

quantity, but weaker in quality, in the savage than in civilized man;

this is especially true of the finer and more complex sense-functions

which we call æsthetic sensations and regard as the source of art and

poetry. Most strongly developed of all in the savage is the power of

perceiving distant objects (sight, hearing, smell), as they warn him of

the dangers about him. It is just the reverse with the subjective and

proximate feelings that are excited by the immediate touch of objects

and are the special instruments of sensual enjoyment--taste, sex-sense,

touch, and feeling of temperature. But in both kinds of sense-action

the civilized man is far ahead of the savage in respect of the finer

shades of feeling and æsthetic education. Moreover, modern civilization

has provided man with various means of vastly increasing and improving

the natural power of his senses. We need only mention the fields of

knowledge that have been opened to us by the microscope and telescope,

the refined chemical methods of modern cooking, etc. The finer æsthetic

enjoyment which our advanced art affords--plastic art for the eye,

music for the ear, perfumery for the nose, cuisine for the tongue--is

generally unintelligible to the savage, although he can see much

farther, and hear and smell much more acutely, than civilized man. And

in the senses of near objects (taste, touch, temperature) the senses of

the savages are more coarse, and incapable of the fine gradations of

civilized man.

This more refined sense-life and the accompanying æsthetic enjoyment

have no less social than personal value. We have, in the first place,

the incalculable treasure of modern art and science, their promotion

by the state, and their embodiment in the training of the young. In

the future the higher races are likely to give more attention to this,

training the senses of children as well as their intelligence from the

earliest years, leading them to a closer observation of nature and

reproduction of its forms by drawing and painting. The art-sense must

also be fostered by the exhibition of models and by æsthetic exercises,

a larger place must be given to artistic education along with the

acquisition of real knowledge, and an appreciation of the beauties of

nature must be created by means of walks and travels. Then the children

of civilized races will have the inexhaustible sources of the finest

and noblest pleasures in life opened to them in good time.

The higher psychic activity that civilized man calls his "mental life,"

and that is so often regarded as a kind of miracle, is merely a higher

development of the psychic function we find at a lower level in the

savage, and is shared by him with the higher vertebrates. Comparative

psychology shows us, as I have explained in the seventh chapter of the

_Riddle_, the long scale of development, which leads from the simple

cell-soul of the protist up to the intelligence of man. I have already

dealt in various chapters with this point, and need not enlarge on

it any further to estimate the high personal value of mental life in

every civilized human being. It is enough to remind the reader of

the vast treasures of knowledge that lie open to every one of us at

the commencement of the twentieth century--treasures of which our

grandparents at the beginning of the last century had not the slightest

presentiment.

Just as the individual has experienced a great advance in the value

of his personal life by the higher culture of the nineteenth century,

so the modern state itself has benefited by it in many ways. The many

discoveries made in every branch of science and technical industry, the

great advance in commerce and industrial life, in art and science, were

bound to bring about a higher development of the whole mind of a modern

community. Never, in the whole of history, has true science risen to

such an astounding height as it has at the beginning of the twentieth

century. Never before did the human mind penetrate so deeply into the

darkest mysteries of nature, never did it rise so high to a sense of

the unity of nature and make such practical use of its knowledge. These

brilliant triumphs of modern civilization have, however, only been

made possible by the various forces co-operating in a vast division of

labor, and by the great nations utilizing their resources zealously for

the attainment of the common end.

But we are still far from the attainment of the ideal. The social

organization of our states is advanced only on one side; it is very

reactionary on other sides. Unfortunately, the words of Wallace which

I quoted in the _Riddle_ remain as true as ever. Our modern states

will only pass beyond this condition in the course of the twentieth

century if they adopt pure reason as their guide instead of faith and

traditional authority, and if they come at length to understand aright

"man's place in nature."

If we take a summary view of all that I have said on the increase in

the value of human life by the progress of civilization, there can be

no doubt that both the personal and the social value of life are now

far higher than they were in the days of our savage ancestors. Modern

life is infinitely rich in the high spiritual interests that attach

to the possession of advanced art and science. We live in peace and

comfort in orderly social and civic communities, which have every

care of person and property. Our personal life is a hundred times

finer, longer, and more valuable than that of the savage, because it

is a hundred times richer in interests, experiences, and pleasures.

It is true that within the limits of civilization the differences in

the value of life are enormous. The greater the differentiation of

conditions and classes in consequence of division of labor, the greater

become the differences between the educated and uneducated sections of

the community, and between their interests and needs, and, therefore,

the value of their lives. This difference is naturally most conspicuous

if we consider the leading minds and the greatest heights of the

culture of the century, and compare these with the average man and the

masses, which wander far below in the valley, treading their monotonous

and weary way in a more or less stupid condition.

The state thinks quite otherwise than the individual man does of the

personal worth of his life and that of his fellows. The modern state

often demands for its protection the military service of all its

citizens. In the eyes of our ministers of justice the value of life

is the same whether there be question of an embryo of seven months

or a new-born child (still without consciousness), an idiot or a

genius. This difference between the personal and the social estimate

of life runs through the whole of our moral principles. War is still

believed by highly civilized nations to be an unavoidable evil, just as

barbarians think of individual murder or blood-revenge; yet the murder

of masses for which the modern state uses its greatest resources is in

flagrant contradiction to the gentle doctrine of Christian charity

which it employs its priests to preach every Sunday with all solemnity.

The chief task of the modern state is to bring about a natural

harmony between the social and the personal estimate of human life.

For this purpose we need, above all, a thorough reform of education,

the administration of justice, and the social organization. Only

then can we get rid of that mediæval barbarism of which Wallace

speaks; to-day it finds expression triumphantly in our penal laws,

our caste-privileges, the scholastic nature of our education, and the

despotism of the Church.

For each individual organism the life of the individual is the first

aim and the standard of value. On this rests the universal struggle

for self-maintenance, which can be reduced in the inorganic world to

the physical law of inertia. To this subjective estimate of life is

opposed the objective, which proceeds on the value of the individual

to the outer world. This objective value increases as the organism

develops and presses into the general stream of life. The chief of

these relations are those that come of the division of labor among

individuals and their association in higher groups. This is equally

true of the cell-states which we call tissues and persons, of the

higher stocks of plants and animals, and of the herds and communities

of the higher animals and men. The more these develop by progressive

division of labor and the greater the mutual need of the differentiated

individuals, so much the higher rises the objective value of the life

of the latter for the whole, and so much the lower sinks the subjective

value of the individual. Hence arises a constant struggle between the

interests of individuals who follow their special life-aim and those of

the state, for which they have no value except as parts of the whole.

XVIII

MORALITY

Dualistic ethics--The categorical imperative--Monistic ethics--Morals

and adaptation--Variation and adaptation--Habit--Chemistry of

habit--Trophic stimuli--Habit in inorganic bodies--Instincts--Social

instincts--Instinct and morality--Right and duty--Morals and

morality--The good and the bad--Morals and fashions--Sexual

selection--Fashion and the feeling of shame--Fashion and

reason--Ceremonies and cults--Mysteries and sacraments--Baptism--The

Lord's Supper--Transubstantiation--The miracle of redemption--Papal

sacraments--Marriage--Modern fashions--Honor--Phylogeny of morals.

The practical life of man is, like that of all the social higher

animals, ruled by impulses and customs which we describe as "moral."

The science of morality, ethics, is regarded by the dualists as a

mental science, and closely connected with religion on the one hand and

psychology on the other. During the nineteenth century this dualistic

view retained its popularity especially because the great authority

of Kant, with his dogma of the categorical imperative, seemed to have

given it a solid foundation, and because it agreed admirably with the

teaching of the Church. Monism, on the other hand, regards ethics as

a natural science, and starts from the principle that morality is not

supernatural in origin, but has been built up by adaptation of the

social mammals to the conditions of existence, and thus may be traced

eventually to physical laws. Hence modern biology sees no metaphysical

miracle in morality, but the action of physiological functions.

Our whole modern civilization clings to the erroneous ideas which

traditional morality, founded on revelation, and closely connected

with ecclesiastical teaching, has imposed upon it. Christianity has

taken over the ten commandments from Judaism, and blended them with a

mystical Platonism into a towering structure of ethics. Kant especially

lent support to it in recent years with his _Critique of Practical

Reason_, and his three central dogmas. The close connection of these

three dogmas with each other, and their positive influence on ethics,

were particularly important through Kant formulating the further dogma

of the categorical imperative.

The great authority which Kant's dualist philosophy obtained is largely

owing to the fact that he subordinated pure reason to practical reason.

The vague moral law for which Kant claimed absolute universality is

expressed in his categorical imperative as follows: "So act that the

maxim (or the subjective principle of your will) may at the same time

serve as a general law." I have shown in the nineteenth chapter of the

_Riddle_ that this categorical imperative is, like the thing in itself,

an outcome of dogmatic, not critical, principles. As Schopenhauer says:

Kant's categorical imperative is generally quoted in our day under

the more modest and convenient title of "the moral law." The daily

writers of compendiums think they have founded the science of ethics

when they appeal to this apparently innate "moral law," and then

build on it that wordy and confused tissue of phrases with which

they manage to make the simplest and clearest features of life

unintelligible, without having ever seriously asked themselves

whether there really is any such convenient code of morality written

in our head, breast, or heart. This broad cushion is snatched from

under morality when we prove that Kant's categorical imperative

of the practical reason is _a wholly unjustified, baseless, and

imaginative assumption_.

Kant's categorical imperative is a mere dogma, and, like his whole

theory of practical reason, rests on dogmatic and not critical grounds.

It is a fiction of faith, and directly opposed to the empirical

principles of pure reason.

The notion of duty, which the categorical imperative represents as

a vague _a priori_ law implanted in the human mind--a kind of moral

instinct--can, as a matter of fact, be traced to a long series of

phyletic modifications of the phronema of the cortex. Duty is a

social sense that has been evolved _a posteriori_ as a result of the

complicated relations of the egoism of individuals and the altruism of

the community. The sense of duty, or conscience, is the amenability of

the will to the feeling of obligation, which varies very considerably

in individuals.

A scientific study of the moral law, on the basis of physiology,

evolution, ethnography, and history, teaches us that its precepts

rest on biological grounds, and have been developed in a natural way.

The whole of our modern morality and social and juridical order have

evolved in the course of the nineteenth century out of the earlier

and lower conditions which we now generally regard as things of the

past. The social morality of the eighteenth century proceeded, in its

turn, from that of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, and still

further from that of the Middle Ages, with its despotism, fanaticism,

Inquisition, and witch trials. It is equally clear from modern

ethnography and the comparative psychology of races that the morality

of barbarous races has been evolved gradually from the lower social

rules of savage tribes, and that these differ only in degree, not in

kind, from the instincts of the apes and other social vertebrates. The

comparative psychology of the vertebrates shows, further, that the

social instincts of the mammals and birds have arisen from the lower

stages of the reptiles and amphibia, and these in turn from those

of the fishes and the lowest vertebrates. Finally, the phylogeny of

the vertebrates proves that this highly developed stem has advanced

through a long series of invertebrate ancestors (chordonia, vermalia,

gastræada) from the protists by a process of gradual modification.

We find, even among these unicellulars (first protophyta, then

protozoa), the important principle which lies at the base of morality,

association, or the formation of communities. The adaptation of the

united cell-individuals to each other and to the common environment is

the physiological foundation of the first traces of morality among the

protists. All the unicellulars that abandon their isolated eremitic

lives, and unite to form communities, are compelled to restrict

their natural egoism, and make concessions to altruism in the common

interest. Even in the globular cœnobia of volvox and magosphæra the

special form and movement and mode of reproduction are determined by

the compromise between the egoistic instincts of the individual cells

and the altruistic need of the community.

Morality, whether we take it in the narrower or broader sense, can

always be traced to the physiological function of adaptation, which

is closely connected through nutrition with the self-maintenance of

the organism. The change in the plasm which adaptation brings about is

always based on the chemical energy of metabolism (chapter ix.). Hence

it will be as well to have a clear idea of the nature of adaptation. I

defined it as follows in my _General Morphology_:

Adaptation or variation is a general physiological function of

organisms, closely connected with their radical function of

nutrition. It expresses itself in the fact that every organism may

be modified by the influence of the environment, and may acquire

characters which were wanting in its ancestors. The causes of

this variability are chiefly found in a material correlation

between parts of the organism and the outer world. Variability or

adaptability is not, therefore, a special organic function, but

depends on the material, physico-chemical process of nutrition.

I have developed this conception of adaptation in the tenth chapter of

the _History of Creation_.

The nature of the adaptation and its relation to variation are often

conceived in different ways from that I have defined. Quite recently

Ludwig Plate has restricted the idea, and understood by adaptation only

variations that are _useful_ to the organism. He severely criticises

my broader definition, and calls it "a palpable error," suggesting

that I only retain it because I am not open to conviction. If I wanted

to return this grave charge, I might point to Plate's one-sided and

perverse treatment of my biogenetic law. Instead of doing this I will

only observe that I think the restriction of adaptation to useful

variations is untenable and misleading. There are in the life of man

and of other organisms thousands of habits and instincts that are

not useful, but either indifferent or injurious to the organism,

yet certainly come under the head of adaptation, are maintained by

heredity, and modify the form. We find adaptations of all sorts--partly

useful, partly indifferent, partly injurious (the result of education,

training, distortion, etc.)--in the life of man, and the domestic

animals and plants. I need only refer to the influence of fashion

and the school. Even the origin of the useless (and often injurious)

rudimentary organs depends on adaptation.

Habit is a second nature, says an old proverb. This is a profound

truth, the full appreciation of which came to us through Lamarck's

theory of descent. The formation of a habit consists in the frequent

repetition of one physiological act, and so is in principle reducible

to cumulative or functional adaptation. Through this frequent

repetition of one and the same act, which is closely connected with the

memory of the plasm, a permanent modification is caused, either in a

positive or a negative sense; _positively_ the organ is developed and

strengthened by exercise, _negatively_ it is atrophied or enfeebled

by disuse. When this accumulation of slight changes continues, the

effect of adaptation goes so far in time as to produce new organs

by progressive modification, or to cause actual organs to become

useless and rudimentary, and finally disappear, owing to regressive

metamorphosis.

When we make a careful study of the simpler processes of habit in the

lower organisms, we see that they depend, like all other adaptations,

on chemical changes in the plasm, and that these are provoked by

trophic stimuli--that is to say, by external action on the metabolism.

As Ostwald rightly says: "The most important function of organisms

is the conversion of the various chemical energies into each other.

The chemical energy that is taken into the organism as food is not

generally capable of being applied directly to its purposes, but needs

some further preparation. Every cell is a chemical laboratory, in

which the most varied reactions take place without fires and retorts.

The most frequently employed means in this is probably the catalytic

acceleration of the usable and the catalytic retardation of the useless

reactions. As a proof of this we have the regular presence of these

enzyma in all organisms." In this the greatest importance attaches to

memory, which I regard with Hering as a general property of living

substance, "in virtue of which certain processes in the living being

leave effects behind them that facilitate the repetition of the

processes." I agree with Ostwald that "the importance of this property

cannot be exaggerated. In its more general forms it effects adaptation

and heredity, in its highest development the conscious memory." While

the latter, and consciousness in general, reach the highest stage in

the mental life of civilized man, the adaptation of the monera remains

at the lowest stage. Among the latter the bacteria especially, which

have assumed the most varied and important relations to other organisms

in spite of the simplicity of their structure, show that this manifold

adaptation depends on the formation of habits in the plasm, and is

solely based on their chemical energy, or their invisible molecular

structure. Once more the monera form a connecting link between the

organic and inorganic; they fill up the deep gulf, from the point of

view of energy, that seems to yawn between "animated" organisms and

"lifeless" bodies.

According to the prevailing view, habit is a purely biological process,

but there are processes even in inorganic nature which come under this

head in the broader sense. Ostwald gives the following illustration:

If we take two equal tubes of thin nitric acid and dissolve a little

metallic copper in one of them, the liquid will acquire the power to

dissolve a second piece of the same metal more quickly than the one

that remains unchanged. The cause of this phenomenon--which may be

observed in the same way with mercury or silver and nitric acid--is

that the lower oxydes of nitrogen that are formed in dissolving the

metal accelerate the action of the nitric acid catalytically on the

fresh metal. The same effect is produced if you put part of these

oxydes in the acid; it then acts much more rapidly than pure acid.

The formation of a habit consists, therefore, in the production of a

catalytic acceleration during the reaction.

We may not only compare inorganic habit with organic adaptation, which

we call habit or practice, but also with "imitation," which implies a

catalytic transfer of habits to socially united living beings.

By instincts were formerly understood, as a rule, the unconscious

impulses of animals which led to purposive actions, and it was

believed that every species of animal had special instincts implanted

in it by the Creator. Animals were thought, according to Descartes's

view, to be unconscious machines whose actions proceed with unvarying

constancy in the particular form that God had ordained. Although

this antiquated theory of instinct is still taught by many dualistic

metaphysicians and theologians, it has long since been demolished

by the monistic theory of evolution. Lamarck had observed that most

instincts are formed by habit and adaptation, and then transmitted by

heredity. Darwin and Romanes especially showed afterwards that these

inherited habits are subject to the same laws of variation as other

physiological functions. However, Weismann has recently taken great

pains in his _Lectures on the Theory of Descent_ (xxiii.) to refute

this idea, and in general the hypothesis of an inheritance of acquired

characters, because it will not harmonize with his theory of the

germ-plasm. Ernst Heinrich Ziegler, who has recently (1904) published

a subtle analysis of former and present ideas of instinct, agrees with

Weismann that "all instincts are due to selection, and that they have

their roots not in the practice of the individual life, but in the

variations of the germ." But where else can we find the cause of these

"germ-variations" except in the laws of direct and indirect adaptation?

In my opinion, it is just the reverse; the remarkable phenomena of

instinct yield a mass of evidence of progressive heredity, completely

in the sense of Lamarck and Darwin.

The great majority of organisms live social lives, and so are united by

the link of common interests. Of all the relations which determine the

existence of the species, the chief are those which bind the individual

to other individuals of the species. This is at once clear from the

laws of sexual propagation. Moreover, the association of individuals is

a great advantage in the struggle for existence. In the case of the

higher animals this association becomes particularly important, because

it is accompanied by an extensive division of labor. Then arises the

antithesis of the personal egoism and the communal altruism; and in

human societies the opposition of the two instincts is all the greater

when reason recognizes that each has a right to satisfaction. Social

habits become moral habits, and their laws are afterwards taught as

sacred duties, and form the basis of the juridical order.

The morals of nations, so rich in psychological and sociological

interest, are nothing more than social instincts, acquired by

adaptation, and passed on from generation to generation by heredity.

An attempt has been made to distinguish between the two kinds of habit

by describing the instincts of animals as constant vital functions

based on their physical organization, and the habits or morals of human

beings as mental powers maintained by a spiritual tradition. This

distinction has, however, been excluded by the modern physiological

teaching that men's morals are, like all their other psychic functions,

based physiologically on the organization of their brain. The habits

of the individual man, which have been formed by adaptation to his

personal conditions, become hereditary in his family; and these family

usages can no more be sharply distinguished from the general morals of

the community than these can be from the precepts of the Church and the

laws of the state.

When a certain habit is regarded by all the members of a community

as important, its cultivation favored and its breach punished, it is

raised to the position of a duty. This is true even in the case of the

herds of mammals (apes, gregarious carnivora, and ungulates) and the

flocks of social birds (hens, geese, ducks). The laws which have been

formed in these cases by the higher development of social instincts

are particularly striking and equivalent to those of savage tribes

when conspicuous individuals (old or strong males) have acquired a

leadership of the troop, and successfully insure the observance of

the proper habits or duties. Many of these organized bands are in

some respects higher than the savages at the lowest stages who live

in isolated families, or only form loose temporary associations of a

few families. The great progress made by comparative psychology and

ethnology, and historical and prehistorical research, in the second

half of the nineteenth century, confirms us in the conviction that a

long scale of intermediate stages joins the rudiments of law in the

social primates and other mammals to the sense of law in the lower

savage, and this again to that of the barbarian and the civilized human

being--right up to the science of law in modern Europe.

Like civil laws, the commands of religion come originally from the

morals of the savage, and eventually from the social instincts of

the primates. The important province of mental life to which we give

the vague name of religion was developed at an early stage among the

prehistoric races from whom we all descend. When we study its origin

from the point of view of empirical psychology and monistic evolution,

we find that religion has arisen polyphyletically from different

sources--ancestor worship, the desire of personal immortality, the

craving for a causal explanation of phenomena, superstition of various

kinds, the strengthening of the moral law by the authority of a divine

law-giver, etc. According as the imagination of the savage or the

barbarian followed one or other of these lines it raised up hundreds

of religious forms. Only a few of them survived in the struggle for

existence, and acquired (at least outwardly) dominion over the modern

mind. But as independent and impartial science advances in our time,

religion is purified of superstition and turns more and more to

morality.

The obedience to the "divine commands" which religion demands of

its followers is often transferred by human society to rules that

have arisen from social customs of subordinate kinds. Thus we get

the familiar confusion of manners and morals, of conventional outer

deportment and real inner morality. The ideas of good and bad, morality

and immorality, are subjected to arbitrary definitions. In this a

great part is played by the moral pressure which is exercised by

conventional ideas in the social body on the conduct and minds of its

members. However clearly and rationally the individual thinks about the

important questions of practical life, he has to yield to the tyranny

of traditional and often quite irrational customs. As a matter of fact,

both in life and in the nature of the case practical reason does take

that precedence of pure reason which Kant claimed.

The tyranny of custom in practical life does not depend merely on the

authority of social usage, but also on the power of selection. Just as

natural selection insures the relative constancy of the specific form

in the origin of the animal and plant species, so it has a powerful

effect on the origin of morals and customs. An important factor in this

is mimetic adaptation, or mimicry, the aping or imitating of certain

forms or fashions by various classes of animals. This is unconscious in

the case of many orders of insects, butterflies, beetles, hymenoptera,

etc. When insects of a certain family come to resemble in their outer

form and color and design those of another family, they obtain the

protection or other advantages which these particular characters give

in the struggle for life. Darwin, Wallace, Weismann, Fritz Müller,

Bates, and others, have shown in numbers of instances how the origin

of these deceptive resemblances can be traced to natural selection,

and how important they are in the formation of the species. But many

customs and usages in human life arise in just the same way, partly by

conscious and partly by unconscious imitation. Of these the varying

external forms which we call "fashions" have a most important influence

in practical life. The phrase "fashion-ape," when used in a scientific

sense, is not merely an expression of contempt, but has also a profound

meaning; it correctly indicates the origin of fashions by imitation,

and also the peculiar resemblance we find in this respect between man

and his cousins, the apes. Sexual selection among the primates has a

good deal to do with this.

The great importance which Darwin ascribes in his _Descent of Man_

to the æsthetic selection of the respective sexes is equally true of

man and of all the higher vertebrates that have a feeling of beauty,

especially the amniotes (mammals, birds, and reptiles). The beautiful

coloring and marking and ornamentation which distinguish the males from

the females are due entirely to the careful individual selection of the

former by the latter. Thus the various kinds of ornamental hair (beard,

hair of head, etc.), the tint of the face, the peculiar form of the

lips, nose, ears, etc., are to be explained, as we find them in man and

the male ape; also the brilliant plumage of the humming-bird, the bird

of paradise, pheasant, etc. I have dealt fully with these interesting

facts in the eleventh chapter of the _History of Creation_, and must

refer the reader thereto. I will only point out here how valuable the

whole of this chapter of Darwinism is for the understanding of the

foundation of species on the one hand and men's fashions and customs on

the other. It is most closely connected with ethical problems.

The growth of fashion in civilized life is very important, not only for

the development of the sense of beauty and for the sexual selection

of the sexes, but also in connection with the origin of the feeling of

shame and the finer psychological traits that relate to it. The lower

savages have no more sense of shame than animals or children. They are

quite naked, and accomplish the sexual act without the slightest trace

of shame. The beginning of clothing which we find among the middle

savages is not due to a sense of shame, but partly to low temperature

(in the polar regions), partly to vanity and love of decoration (such

as ornamenting the ears, lips, nose, and sex-organs by the insertion

of shells, pieces of wood, flowers, stones, etc.). Afterwards the

sense of shame sets in, and we have the covering of certain parts of

the body with leaves, girdles, shirts, etc. In most nations the sexual

parts are the first to be covered; though some attach importance to the

veiling of the face. In many Oriental tribes (especially Mohammedan)

it is still the first precept of female chastity to veil the face (the

most characteristic part of the individual), while the rest of the body

may remain naked. Generally speaking, the æsthetic and psychological

relations of the sexes play the chief part in the higher development of

morals. Morality is often taken to be synonymous with the law of sexual

intercourse.

As the features of civilized life advance, the influence of reason

increases, and so does the power of hereditary tradition and the moral

ideas associated with it. The result is a severe conflict between the

two. Reason seeks to judge everything by its own standard, to learn

the causes of phenomena and direct practical life accordingly. On

the other hand tradition, or "good morals," looks at everything from

the point of view of our forefathers and other venerable laws and

religious precepts. It is indifferent to the independent discoveries

of reason and the real causes of things. It demands that the practical

life of every individual be framed in accordance with the hereditary

morality of the race or state. Thus we get the inevitable conflict

between reason and tradition, or science and religion, which continues

in our own day. Sometimes in the course of it a "new fashion" is

substituted for some sacred tradition, a transitory custom that

succeeds in imposing itself by its novelty or curiosity; and when this

has contrived to win general acceptance, or has gained the support of

Church or state to some extent, it is regarded in much the same light

as the older morality.

The lowest races of the present time (for instance, the pithecoid

pygmies, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Akkas of Central Africa) are very

little higher than their primate ancestors in mental development. This

is also true of their habits of life and morals. As their ideas are for

the most part concrete and sensual, their power of forming abstract

concepts is very little developed; they have hardly any religious ideas

to speak of. But with the middle savages we begin to find the craving

to know the causes of things and the idea of spirits that are concealed

behind the phenomena of sense. Dread of these leads to worship,

fetichism, and animism, the beginning of religion. Even at this early

stage of worship we find certain customs associated with the cult to

which a symbolical or mysterious meaning is given. These ceremonies

lead on in the higher races to the great religious festivities,

which the Greeks called "mysteries." Sensual images of various kinds

are mixed up in them with supersensual ideas and superstitions. The

festivals, processions, dances, hymns, and sacrifices of all sorts that

form part of the cult are more or less concerned with the mysterious,

and are therefore considered "holy." They are often made the pretext of

sensual gratifications, which end in gross immorality and orgies.

From the older pagan and Jewish religious usages were afterwards

developed in the Christian Church those parts of the cult which are

known as sacraments. These miraculous sacraments, by the mysterious

action of which man is supposed to be born again or regenerated, very

quickly became powerful instruments in the hand of the Church and

thorny problems for theologians, especially after Gregory the Great

introduced the dogmas of Purgatory and the relieving power of the Mass.

According to St. Thomas of Aquin, the sacraments are channels that

convey the grace of God to sinful man. The papal authorities fixed

their number at seven (baptism, eucharist, penance, confirmation,

matrimony, orders, and extreme unction) in the twelfth century. The

superstitious content of these sacraments was generally lost sight

of in the glamour of their ceremonious side, but their authority was

unshaken. Since the Reformation the Protestants have retained only the

two chief sacraments which were founded by Christ himself--Baptism and

the Lord's Supper.

Christian baptism is a continuation of the older ceremonies of

washing and purification that were in use thousands of years before

Christ among nations of the East and among the Greeks. They combined

the hygienic value of the bath with the idea of a regeneration of the

soul and spiritual purification. Augustine, who founded the dogma of

original sin, held that the baptism of children was necessary for the

salvation of their souls, and it then became general. It has since

given rise to a number of superstitious ideas and unfortunate family

troubles, but it is still regarded as a sacred ceremony. Millions of

Christians still believe that the child's soul is saved (though it

has no consciousness whatever when baptized) and delivered from the

power of the devil and the curse of sin by baptism.

The second sacrament that Luther retained is the Lord's Supper, or

the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. It was instituted by

Christ on the night before his death, and is a continuation of the

paschal supper of the Jews, in which the head of the house shared

bread and wine with his family with certain ritual ceremonies. In

this paschal supper the people of Israel celebrated their release

from the bondage of Egypt and their distinction as the "chosen

people." By connecting his "last supper" with the traditional

rite of the Jews, Christ sought on the one hand to found the new

dispensation on the old, and on the other hand to institute a

love-feast (communion or agape) among his followers. Like baptism,

the Lord's Supper led afterwards to the bitterest controversy among

theologians.

The differences of opinion as to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages

culminated at last in the opposition of the two reformers, Luther and

Zwingli. The latter, the founder of the Free Reformed Church, saw

in the Supper only a symbolical act and a commemoration of Christ.

Luther, however, adhered to the mysterious miracle that had been

defined in 1215 by the dogma of transubstantiation. Bread and wine

are believed on this view to be converted physically into the body

and blood of Christ! I was taught this in 1848 by the minister who

prepared me for confirmation, and to whom I was greatly attached. We

were actually to perceive this change when we assisted at the Supper

for the first time, if we did so with real faith. As I was quite

conscious of having this quality, I had great expectations of the

miracle. But I was very painfully disillusioned when I found only the

familiar taste of bread and wine, not the flesh and blood that faith

had desired. I had to regard myself (then a boy of fourteen years) as

an utterly abandoned sinner, and it was with the greatest difficulty

that my parents succeeded in pacifying me over my want of faith.

I have spoken somewhat fully in the seventeenth chapter of the

_Riddle_ of the view of the papacy and ultramontanism which modern

historical and anthropological science leads us to form. No one

who has any idea of history and of the metamorphoses of religion

can question that Romanism is a miserable caricature of primitive

Christianity; it retains the name, but has completely reversed the

principles. In the course of its domination, from the fourth to the

sixteenth century, the papacy has raised up the marvellous structure

of the Catholic hierarchy, but has departed farther and farther

from the stand-point of pure Christianity. The aim of Romanism is

to-day, as it was a thousand years ago, to dominate and exploit a

blindly believing humanity. It finds admirable instruments for this

in its mystic sacraments, to which it has ascribed an "indelible

character." From the cradle to the grave, from baptism to the last

anointing, in confirmation and penance, the believer must be reminded

that he must live as an obedient and self-sacrificing child; and the

sacrament of ordination must teach him that the priest, with his

higher inspiration, is the only intermediary between man and God. The

symbolical rites that are associated with these sacraments serve

to surround them with the magic of the mysterious and exclude the

penetration of reason. This is particularly true of the sacrament

that has had the greatest practical influence--matrimony.

In view of the extreme importance of the life of the family as a

foundation of social and civic life, it is advisable to consider

marriage from the biological point of view, as an orderly method of

reproduction. Here, as in all other sociological and psychological

questions, we must be careful not to accept the present features of

civilized life as a general standard of judgment. We have to take

a comparative view of its various stages, as we find them among

barbarians and savages. When we do this impartially, we see at once

that reproduction, as a purely physiological process having for its

end the maintenance of the species, takes place in just the same way

among uncultivated races as among the anthropoid apes. We may even say

that many of the higher animals, especially monogamous mammals and

birds, have reached a higher stage than the lower savages; the tender

relations of the two sexes towards each other, their common care of

their young, and their family life, have led to the development of

higher sexual and domestic instincts, to which we may fitly ascribe a

moral character. Wilhelm Bölsche has shown, in his _Life of Love in

Nature_, how a long series of remarkable customs has been developed

in the animal world by adaptation to various forms of reproduction.

Westermarck has pointed out, in his _History of Marriage_, how the

crude animal forms of marriage current among savages have been

gradually elevated as we rise to higher races. As the sensual pleasure

of generation is combined with the finer psychological feeling of

sympathy and psychic attachment, the latter gains constantly on the

former, and this refined love becomes one of the richest sources of the

higher spiritual functions, especially in art and poetry. Marriage

itself, of course, remains a physiological act, a wonder of life, with

the organic sex impulse as its chief foundation. As the conclusion

of marriage represents one of the most important moments in human

life, we find it accompanied by symbolic ceremonies and festive rites

even among lower tribes. The immense variety of marriage festivals

shows how this important act has appealed to the imagination. Priests

quickly recognized this, and decked out marriage with all kinds of

ceremonies and turned it to the advantage of their Church. While the

Catholic Church raised it to the status of a sacrament and ascribed to

it an "indelible" character, it declared that it was indissoluble when

performed according to ecclesiastical rite. This unwholesome influence

of Romanism, this dependence of matrimony on religious mysteries and

ceremonies, and difficulty of obtaining divorce, etc., still continue

in our day. It is only a short time since the German Reichstag, under

the influence of the Centre [Catholic] party, added laws to its civic

code which increase instead of lessening the difficulty of obtaining

divorce. Reason demands the liberation of marriage from ecclesiastical

pressure. It demands that matrimony be grounded on mutual love,

esteem, and devotion, and that it at the same time be counted a social

contract, and be protected, as civil marriage, by proper legislation.

But when the contracting parties find (as so often happens) that they

have mistaken each other's character, and that they do not suit each

other, they should be free to dissolve the bond. The pressure which

comes of marriage being regarded as a sacrament, and which prevents the

dissolution of unhappy marriages, is merely a source of vice and crime.

We find in many other features of our social life, besides marriage,

a contradiction between the demands of reason and the traditional

usages which modern civilization has taken over as a heritage from

earlier and lower nations, and partly from barbarians and savages. In

the public life of states this contradiction is much more striking

than in the private life of the family or the individual. Whereas the

milder teaching of the Christian religion--sympathy, love of one's

fellows, patience, and devotion--has had a good influence in many

ways, there can be no question of this in the international relations

of the nations; here we find pure egoism. Every nation seeks to take

advantage of others by cunning or force, and, wherever possible, to

subjugate them: if they will not consent, the brute force of war is

employed. Social misery of all kinds spreads wider and wider, almost in

proportion as civilization develops. Alexander Sutherland is right when

he characterizes "the leading nations of Europe and their offshoots"

(in the United States) as _lower_ civilized races. In some respects we

are still barbarians.

How far the bulk of modern nations still are from the ideal and

the reign of pure reason can be seen by a glance at the social,

juridical, and ecclesiastical condition of "these leading nations

of Europe," either Teutonic or Latin. We need only consider with an

unprejudiced mind the accounts in our journals of parliamentary and

legal proceedings, government measures and social relations, in order

to realize that the force of tradition and fashion is immense, and

resists the claims of reason on every side. This is most clearly seen

externally in the power of fashion, especially as regards clothing.

There is a good ground for the complaint about "the tyranny of

fashion." However unpractical, ridiculous, ugly, and costly a new

garment may be, it becomes popular if it is patronized by authority,

or some clever manufacturer succeeds in imposing it by specious

advertisements. We need only recall the crinoline of fifty years ago,

the bustle of twenty years ago, and the exposure of the breast and

back by low dresses (with the object of sexual excitement) which was

the fashion of forty years ago.[11] For centuries we have had the

pernicious fashion of the corset, an article that is as offensive from

the æsthetic as from the hygienic point of view. Thousands of women are

sacrificed every year to this pitiful fashion, through disease of the

liver or lungs; nevertheless, the craze for the hour-glass shape of the

female form continues, and the reform of clothing makes little headway.

It is just the same with numbers of fashions in the home and in

society, of devices in commerce and laws in the state. Everywhere the

demands of reason advance little in their struggle with the venerable

usages of tradition.

A false sense of honor dominates our social life, just as a false

sense of modesty controls our clothing. The true honor of man or woman

consists in their inner moral dignity, in the determination to do only

what they conceive to be good and right, not in the outer esteem of

their fellows or in the worthless praise of a conventional society.

Unfortunately, we have to admit that in this respect we are still

largely ruled by the foolish views of a lower civilization, if not of

crude barbarians.

In many other features of our life besides this false modesty and

false honor we perceive the force of social usage. Many of what are

thought to be honorable customs are relics of barbarism; much of our

morality is, in the light of pure reason, downright immorality. As

even the latter is due to adaptation, and as the same custom may be

at one time thought useful and fitting, at another time injurious

and bad, we see again that it is impossible to restrict the idea of

adaptation to useful variations. We may say the same of the changing

rules of education, commerce, legislation, and so on. The ideal in all

departments of life is pure reason; but it has to struggle long against

the current prejudices and customs, which find their chief support in

the superstitions of the Church and the conservative tendencies of the

state. In this state of Byzantine immorality, decorating itself so

often with the mantle of piety, practical materialism flourishes, while

monism, or theoretical materialism, is thrust aside.

If we sum up all that monistic science has taught us as to the origin

and development of morality, we may put it in the following series

of propositions: 1. By adaptation to different conditions of life

the simple plasm of the earliest organisms, the archigonous monera,

undergoes certain modifications. 2. As the living plasm reacts on

these influences, and the reaction is often repeated, a habit is

formed (as in the catalysis of certain inorganic chemical processes).

3. This habit is hereditary, the repeated impressions being fixed

in the nucleus (or caryoplasm) in the case of the unicellulars. 4.

When hereditary transmission lasts through many generations, and is

strengthened by cumulative adaptation, it becomes an instinct. 5. Even

in the protist cœnobia (the cell-communities of the protophyta and

protozoa) social instincts are formed by association of cells. 6.

The antithesis of the individual and social instinct, or of egoism

and altruism, increases in the animal kingdom in proportion to the

development of psychic activity and social life. 7. In the higher

social animals definite customs arise in this way, and these become

rights and duties when obedience to them is demanded by the society

(herd, flock, people) and the breach of them punished. 8. Savage races

at the lowest stage, without religion, are not differently related to

their customs than the higher social animals. 9. The higher savages

develop religious ideas, combine their superstitious practices

(fetichism and animism) with ethical principles, and transform their

empirical moral laws into religious commands. 10. Among barbaric, and

more particularly among civilized, races definite moral laws are formed

by the association of these hereditary religious, moral, and legal

ideas. 11. In the civilized races the Church formulates the religious

commands, and jurisprudence the legal commands, in more definitely

binding forms; the advancing mind remains, however, subject in many

respects to Church and state. 12. In the higher civilized nations pure

reason gains more and more influence on practical life, and thrusts

back the authority of tradition; on the basis of biological knowledge a

rational or monistic ethic is developed.

XIX

DUALISM

Dualistic systems of Kant I. and Kant II.--His

antinomies--Cosmological dualism--The two worlds--The world

of bodies and the world of spirits--Truth and fiction--Goethe

and Schiller--Realism and idealism--Anti-Kant--Law of

substance--Attributes of substance--Sensation and energy--Passive

and active energy--Trinity of substance: matter, force, and

sensation--Constancy of sensation--Psyche and physics--Reconciliation

of principles.

The history of philosophy shows how the mind of man has pressed along

many paths during the last two thousand years in pursuit of truth.

But, however varied are the systems in which its efforts have found

embodiment, we may, from a general point of view, arrange them all

in two conflicting series--monism, or the philosophy of unity; and

dualism, or the philosophy of the duality of existence. Lucretius

and Spinoza are distinguished and typical representatives of monism;

Plato and Descartes the great leaders of dualism. But besides the

consistent thinkers of each school there are a number of philosophers

who vacillate between the two, or who have held both views at different

periods of life. Such contradictions represent a personal dualism on

the part of the individual thinker. Immanuel Kant is one of the most

famous instances of this class; and as his critical philosophy has

had a profound influence, and I was compelled to contrast my chief

conclusions with those of Kant, I must once more deal briefly with his

ideas. This is the more necessary as one of the ablest of the many

attacks on the _Riddle_, the _Kant against Haeckel_ of Erich Adick, of

Kiel, belongs to this school.

In the _Creed of Pure Reason_, which I published as an appendix to

the popular edition of the _Riddle_ in 1903, I pointed out, in view

of this and similar Kantist criticisms, the clear inconsistency of

the great evolutionary principles of Kant, the natural philosopher,

with the mystic teaching which he afterwards made the foundation of

his theory of knowledge, and that is still greatly esteemed. Kant I.

explained the constitution and the mechanical origin of the universe

on Newtonian principles, and declared that mechanicism alone afforded

a real explanation of phenomena; Kant II. subordinated the mechanical

principle to the teleological, explaining everything as a natural

design. Kant I. convincingly proved that the three central dogmas

of metaphysics--God, freedom, and immortality--are inacceptable to

pure reason. Kant II. claimed that they are necessary postulates of

practical reason. This profound opposition of principles runs through

Kant's whole philosophic work from beginning to end, and has never been

reconciled. I had already shown in the _History of Creation_ that this

inconsistency has a good deal to do with Kant's position in regard to

evolution. However, this radical contradiction of Kant's views has

been recognized by all impartial critics. It has lately been urged

with great force by Paul Rée in his _Philosophy_ (1903). We need not,

therefore, linger in proving the fact, but may go on to consider the

causes of it.

A subtle and comprehensive thinker like Kant was naturally perfectly

conscious of the existence of this inconsistency of his dualistic

principles. He endeavored to meet it by his theory of antinomies,

declaring that pure reason is bound to land in contradictions when

it attempts to conceive the whole scheme of things as a connected

totality. In every attempt to form a unified and complete view

of things we encounter these unsolvable antinomies, or mutually

contradictory theses, for both of which sound proof is available.

Thus, for instance, physics and chemistry say that matter must consist

of atoms as its simplest particles; but logic declares that matter

is divisible _in infinitum_. On the one theory time and space are

infinite; on the other theory, finite. Kant attempted to reconcile

these contradictions by his transcendental idealism, by the assumption

that objects and their connection exist only in our imagination, and

not in themselves. In this way he came to frame the false theory of

knowledge which is honored with the title of "criticism," while as a

matter of fact it is only a new form of dogmatism. The antinomies are

not explained by it, but thrust aside; nor was there more truth in the

assertion that equal proof is available for theses and antitheses.

The famous work of Kant's earlier years, _The General Natural History

and Theory of the Heavens_ (1755), was purely monistic in its chief

features. It embodied a fine attempt "to explain the constitution

and mechanical origin of the universe on Newtonian principles." It

was mathematically established forty years afterwards by Laplace in

his _Exposition du système du monde_ (1796). This fearless monistic

thinker was a consistent atheist, and told Napoleon I. that there was

no room for "God" in his _Mécanique celeste_ (1799). Kant, however,

afterwards found that, though there was no rational evidence of the

existence of God, we must admit it on moral grounds. He said the same

of the immortality of the soul and the freedom of the will. He then

constructed a special "intelligible world" to receive these three

objects of faith; he declared that the moral sense compelled us to

believe in a supersensual world, although pure theoretical reason

is quite unable to form any distinct idea of it. The categorical

imperative was supposed to determine our moral sense and the

distinction between good and evil. In the further progress of his

ethical metaphysics Kant expressly urged that practical reason should

take precedence of theoretical--in other words, that faith is superior

to knowledge. In this way he enabled theology and irrational faith

to find a place in his system and claim supremacy over all rational

knowledge of nature.

The older Greek philosophy had been purely monistic, Anaximander and

his disciple Anaximenes (in the sixth century B.C.) conceiving the

world in the sense of our modern hylozoism, but Plato introduced (two

hundred years afterwards) the dualistic view of things. The world of

bodies is real, accessible to our sensible experience, changeable and

transitory; opposed to it is the world of spirits, only to be reached

by thought, supersensual, ideal, immutable, and eternal. Material

things, the objects of physics, are only transient symbols of the

eternal ideas, which are the subject of metaphysics. Man, the most

perfect of all things, belongs to both worlds; his material frame is

mortal, the prison of the immortal and invisible soul. The eternal

ideas are only embodied for a time in the world of bodies here below;

they dwell eternally in the world of spirits beyond, where the supreme

idea (God, or the idea of the good) controls all in perfect unity.

The human soul, endowed with free-will, is bound to develop the three

cardinal virtues (wisdom, fortitude, and prudence) by the cultivation

of its three chief moral faculties (thought, courage, and zeal). These

fundamental principles of Plato's teaching, systematically presented

by his pupil Aristotle, met with a very general acceptance, as they

could easily be combined with the teaching of Christianity which arose

four hundred years afterwards. The great majority of later philosophic

and religious systems followed the same dualistic paths. Even Kant's

metaphysics is only a new form of it; only its dogmatic character

is hidden by the ascription to it of the convenient title of the

"critical" system.

Modern science has opened out to us immense departments of the real

world that are accessible to observation and rational inquiry; but it

has not taught us a single fact that points to the existence of an

immaterial world. On the contrary, it has shown more and more clearly

that the supposed world beyond is a pure fiction, and only merits to be

treated as a subject for poetry. Physics and chemistry in particular

have proved that all phenomena that come under our observation depend

on physical and chemical laws, and that all can be traced to the

comprehensive and unified law of substance. Anthropogeny has taught us

the evolution of man from animal ancestors. Comparative anatomy and

physiology have shown that his mind is a function of the brain, and his

will not free; and that his soul, absolutely bound up with its material

organ, passes away at death like the souls of other mammals. Finally,

modern cosmology and cosmogony have found no trace whatever of the

existence and activity of a personal and extramundane God. All that

comes within the range of our knowledge is a part of the material world.

In his observations on the supersensual world Kant lays stress on the

fact that it lies beyond the range of experience, and is known only by

faith. Conscience, he thinks, assures us of its existence, but does

not give us any idea of its nature; and so the three central mysteries

of metaphysics are mere words without meaning. But, as nothing can

be done with mere words, Kant's followers have attempted to put a

positive substance into them, generally in relation to traditional

ideas and religious dogmas. Not only orthodox Kantians, but even

critical philosophers like Schleiden, have dogmatically asserted that

Kant and his disciples have established the transcendental ideas of

God, freedom, and immortality, just as Kepler, Newton, and Laplace

established the laws of celestial motion. Schleiden imagined that this

dogmatic affirmation would refute "the materialism of modern German

science." Lange has shown, on the contrary, that such dogmatism is

utterly foreign to the spirit of the _Critique of Pure Reason_, and

that Kant held the three ideas to be quite incapable of either positive

or negative proof, and so thrust them into the domain of practical

philosophy. Lange says: "Kant would not see, as Plato would not see

before him, that the intelligible world is a world of poetry, and has

no value except in this respect." But if these ideas are mere figments

of the poetic imagination, if we can form neither positive nor negative

idea of them, we may well ask: What has this imaginary spirit-world to

do with the pursuit of truth?

As I have raised the question of the limits of truth and fiction, I

may take the opportunity of pointing out the general importance of

this distinction. Undoubtedly man's knowledge is limited, from the

very nature of our faculties or the organization of our brain and

sense-organs. Hence, Kant is right when he says that we perceive only

the phenomena of things, and not their inner essence, which he calls

the "thing in itself." But he is wrong and altogether misleading

when he goes on to doubt the reality of the external world, and says

it exists only in our presentations--in other words, that life is a

dream. It does not follow, from the fact that our senses and phronema

can reach only a part of the properties of things, that we call into

question their existence in time and space. But our rational craving

for a knowledge of causes impels us to fill up the gaps in our

empirical knowledge by our imagination, and thus form an approximate

idea of the whole. This work of the imagination may be called

"fiction" in a broad sense--hypotheses when they are in science, faith

when they belong to religion. However, these imaginative constructions

must always take a concrete form. As a fact, the imagination that

constructs the ideal world is never content merely to assume its

existence, but always proceeds to form an image of it. But these forms

of faith have no theoretical value for philosophy if they contradict

scientific truth, or profess to be more than provisional hypotheses;

otherwise they may be of practical service, but are theoretically

useless. Hence we fully recognize the great ethical and pedagogical

value of poetry and myths, but are by no means disposed to give them

precedence of empirical knowledge in our quest of the truth. I agree

entirely with the excellent criticism of Kant which Albert Lange gives

in his _History of Materialism_ (vol. ii.); but I am unable to follow

him when he transfers his idealism from practical to theoretical

questions, and urges the erroneous theory of knowledge derived from it

in opposition to monism and realism. It is true that, as Lange says:

Kant did not lack the sense for the conception of this intelligible

world (as an imaginative world); but his whole education and the

period in which his mental life developed prevented him from

indulging it. As he was denied the liberty of giving a noble form,

free from all mediæval distortion, to the vast structure of his

ideas, his positive philosophy was never fully developed. His system,

with its Janus face, stands at the limit of two ages. He himself,

in spite of all the defects of his deductions, is a teacher of the

ideal. Schiller especially has grasped with prophetic insight the

very essence of his teaching, and purified it of its scholastic

dross. Kant held that we must only think, not see, the intelligible

world; though what he thinks must have objective reality. Schiller

has rightly brought the intelligible world visibly before us by

treating it as a poet, and thus following in the footsteps of Plato,

who, in contradiction to his own dialectic, reached his highest

thought when he allowed the supersensual to become a thing of sense

in the myth. Schiller, the poet of freedom, dared to carry freedom

openly into the land of dreams and of shadows; then there arose under

his hand the dreams and shadows of the ideal.

In view of the great influence that Schiller's idealism has had in

the spread of Kant's practical moral philosophy, we may for a moment

consider it in contrast with the realistic views of Goethe.

The profound opposition of the views of the two greatest poets of

the classical period of German literature is rooted deep in their

natures. This has been proved so often and so thoroughly, and has so

frequently been represented as the complementary quality of the two

poets, that I need merely recall it here. As for Goethe, I have, in my

_General Morphology_, shown his historical importance in connection

with the theory of evolution and the system of monism. With all his

versatile occupations, this great genius found time to devote to the

morphological study of organisms, and to establish his comprehensive

biological theories on this empirical basis. His discovery of the

metamorphosis of plants and his vertebral theory of the skull justify

us in classifying him as one of the chief forerunners of Darwin.

When I dealt with this in the fourth chapter of the _History of

Creation_, I pointed out how great an influence these morphological

studies, together with his idea of evolution, had on the realism of

his philosophy. They led him direct to monism and to an admiration of

Spinoza's monistic pantheism. Schiller had neither great interest nor

clear insight for these studies. His idealistic philosophy disposed

him rather to Kant's dualistic metaphysics and to an acceptance of

the three central mysteries--God, soul, and freedom. Both Schiller

and Goethe had a thorough knowledge of anthropology and psychology.

But the anatomic and physiological studies that Schiller made as a

military surgeon had very little influence on his transcendental

idealism, in which the ethical-æsthetic element preponderated. On the

other hand, Goethe's empirical realism was profoundly influenced by his

medical studies at Strasburg, and especially by his later comparative

anatomical and botanical investigations at Jena and Weimar.

The philosophic antithesis which we thus find in the biological

foundations of the views of Goethe and Schiller represents to an extent

the Janus face that the philosophic genius of the German people bears

to our own day. Goethe, the realist, penetrated deep into the empirical

study of the material world, and sought, with Spinoza, to establish

the unity of the universe. Schiller, the idealist, lives rather

in the spirit-world, and seeks, with Kant, to utilize its ethical

ideals--God, freedom, and immortality--for the education of the human

race. Both tendencies of thought have led the genius of Germany--like

the genius of Greece, two thousand years ago--to a great number of vast

intellectual achievements. Goethe wrought the ideal in his practical

life, Kant discovered it, Schiller proclaimed it to be the fittest aim

of the future.

It is wrong to conclude from isolated quotations from Goethe that he

occasionally betrayed the dualism of Schiller in his opinions. Some

of the remarks in this connection that Eckermann has left us from his

conversations with Goethe must be taken very carefully. Generally

speaking, this source is not reliable; many of the observations that

the mediocre Eckermann puts into the mouth of the great Goethe are

quite inconsistent with his character, and are more or less perverted.

Hence, when recent high-placed orators declare at Berlin that Goethe

saved the high ideals of God, freedom, and immortality, like Schiller,

and thus borrow a certain support for their Christian belief, they only

show how little they have grasped the profound antithesis of the views

of the two poets. Goethe notoriously described himself as a "renegade

non-Christian." The creed of the "great heathen" Goethe, as we find

it in _Faust_ and _Prometheus_ and _God and the World_, and a hundred

other magnificent poems, is pure monism, of the pantheistic character

which we take to be alone correct--hylozoism; he is equally far from

the one-sided materialism of Holbach or Carl Vogt and the extreme

dynamism of Leibnitz and Ostwald. Schiller by no means shared this

realistic view of things; his idealistic sense fled beyond nature into

the spirit world. However, our theoretic hylozoism does not exclude

practical idealism, as Goethe's whole life showed. On the other hand,

princes and priests often let us see how easily theoretical idealism

goes with practical materialism, or hedonism.

In the month of February, 1904, the centenary of the death of Kant was

celebrated throughout the world of culture. In numbers of academic

speeches and writings he was greeted as the greatest thinker of

Germany. He died on the same date (February 12th) on which Darwin

was born five years later. It is unquestionable that Kant has had

an immense influence on the whole development of German philosophy.

But while recognizing his extraordinary genius, we must not be blind

to the glaring contradictions and defects of his dualist system.

From the monistic point of view, we can only regard his profound

influence during the whole of the nineteenth century as mischievous.

Most certainly he had a quite exceptional talent for philosophic

speculation and penetrating thought, and he added to his great mental

qualities a blameless character and an undeniable sense of truth in

life (though not in thought). It was a serious misfortune for Kant and

for the philosophic school he led that his education prevented him

from acquiring a thorough knowledge and correct conception of the real

world. Shut up throughout life within the narrow bounds of his native

town, Königsberg, he never travelled beyond the frontier of Prussia,

and so did not obtain that knowledge of the world that comes of

travelling. In the study of nature he confined himself to the physics

of the inorganic world, in the study of man to the immortal soul. At

the close of his university studies Kant had to earn his living as a

house-teacher for nine years (from twenty-two to thirty-one), just

at the most important period of his life, in which the independent

development of the personal and scientific character is decided when

the academic studies are over.

In such adverse circumstances of mental adaptation a deep mystic trait,

which had been inherited from pious parents and confirmed by the

strictly religious training of his early years, was fixed in Kant's

character. Hence it was that faith in the three central mysteries came

upon him more and more in later years: he gave them precedence over all

the attainments of theoretical reason, while granting that we can form

neither a negative nor positive idea of them. But how can the belief

in God, freedom, and immortality determine one's whole view of life as

a postulate of practical reason if we cannot form any definite idea of

them?

Every philosophy that deserves the name must have clear ideas as

the bases of its thought-structure; it must have definite views in

connection with its fundamental conceptions. Hence most of Kant's

followers have not been content to follow his direction merely

to _believe_ in the three central mysteries; they have sought to

associate definite mental pictures with the empty concepts of God,

freedom, and immortality. In this they have drawn upon the religious

imagination, and have passed from the real knowledge of nature into the

transcendental realm of poetry. Monism, based on this real knowledge of

nature, has to keep clear of such dualism.

The extraordinary glorification of Kant that took place on the occasion

of his centenary must have seemed strange to many scientists who

recognize in his idealism one of the greatest hinderances to the spread

of the modern monistic philosophy of nature. But it is not difficult to

explain this. We must remember, in the first place, the contradictory

views that are embodied in Kant's system; every one could find in

Kant's works something to correspond to his own convictions--the

monistic physicist could read of the mechanical sway of natural law

throughout the whole knowable world, and the dualistic metaphysician of

the free play of the divine aim in the spiritual world. The physician

and physiologist would note with satisfaction that in his criticism of

pure reason Kant had been unable to find any evidence for the existence

of God, the immortality of the soul, or the freedom of the will. The

jurist and theologian would find with equal gratification that in the

practical reason Kant claims these three central dogmas as necessary

postulates. I have shown to some extent, in the sixth chapter of the

_Riddle_, how these irreconcilable contradictions in Kant's system are

due to a psychological metamorphosis.

It is just these very contradictions, which run through Kant's

philosophy from beginning to end, that maintain its popularity.

Educated people who desire to form a view of life rarely read Kant's

difficult (and often obscure) works in the original, but are content

to learn from extracts, or from a history of philosophy, that the

Königsberg thinker succeeded in squaring the circle, or in reconciling

natural science with the three central dogmas of metaphysics. The

"higher powers," who are particularly concerned to save the latter,

favor the teaching of Kant's dogmas, because it closes the way to real

explanation and prevents independent thinking. This is especially

true of the ministers of public instruction in the two chief German

states--Prussia and Bavaria. In their open attempt to subordinate the

school to the Church, they desire, above all, the primacy of practical

reason--that is to say, the subjection of pure reason to faith and

revelation. In German universities to-day belief in Kant is a sort of

ticket of admission to the study of philosophy. The reader who would

realize the pernicious effect of this official faith in Kant on the

advance of scientific knowledge will do well to read the able criticism

in the brilliant posthumous work of Paul Rée.

In the face of the dualism which still prevails in the academic

teaching of philosophy (especially in Germany) we must base our

monistic system on the universality of the law of substance. This

harmoniously combines the laws of the conservation of matter and of

energy. As I have fully explained my own conception of this law in

the twelfth chapter of the _Riddle_, I will only say here that its

validity is quite independent of any particular theory of the relations

of matter and force.[12] The materialism of Holbach and Büchner lays a

one-sided stress on the importance of matter: the dynamism of Leibnitz

and Ostwald on that of force. If we avoid these extremes, and conceive

matter and force as inseparable attributes of substance, we have pure

monism, as we find it in the systems of Spinoza and Goethe. We might

then substitute for the word "substance" as Hermann Cröll does, the

term "force-matter." The further question as to the correctness of any

particular physical conception of matter is quite independent of this.

The two knowable attributes or inalienable properties of substance,

without which it is unthinkable, were described by Spinoza as extension

and thought; we speak of them as matter and force. The "extended" (or

space-occupying) is matter; and in Spinoza "thought" does not mean a

particular function of the human brain, but energy in the broadest

sense. While hylozoistic monism conceives the human soul in this

sense as a special form of energy, the current dualism or vitalism

affirms, on the authority of Kant, that psychic and physical forces

are essentially different; that the former belong to the immaterial

and the latter to the material world. The theory of psycho-physical

parallelism, as developed especially by Wundt (1892), gives a very

sharp and definite expression to this dualism; it says that "physical

processes correspond to every psychic phenomenon, but the two are

completely independent of each other and have no natural causal

connection."

This wide-spread dualism finds its chief support in the difficulty of

directly connecting the processes of sensation with those of movement;

and so the one is regarded as a psychic and the other as a physical

form of energy. The conversion of the outer stimulus (waves of light,

sound, etc.) into an inner sensation (sight or hearing) is regarded

by monistic physiology as a conversion of force, a transformation of

photic or acoustic energy into specific nerve-energy. The important

theory of the specific energy of the sensory nerves, as formulated by

Johannes Müller, forms a bridge between the two worlds. But the idea

which these sensations evoke, the central process in the thought-organ

or phronema that brings the impressions into consciousness, is

generally regarded as an incomprehensible mystery. However, I have

endeavored to prove, in the tenth chapter of the _Riddle_, that

consciousness itself is only a special form of nervous energy, and

Ostwald has lately developed the theory in his _Natural Philosophy_.

The processes of movement which we observe in every change of one form

of energy into another, or every passage of potential into actual

energy, are subordinate to the general laws of mechanics. The dualist

metaphysic has rightly said that the mechanical philosophy does not

discover the inner causes of these movements. It would seek these in

psychic forces. On our monistic principles they are not immaterial

forces, but based on the general sensation of substance, which we

call _psychoma_, and add to energy and matter as a third attribute of

substance.

The difficulty of combining our monism with Spinoza's doctrine of

substance is met by detaching the idea of energy from sensation and

restricting it to mechanics, so as to make movement a third fundamental

property of substance with matter (the "extended") and sensation (the

"thinking"). We may also divide energy into active (= will in the sense

of Schopenhauer) and passive (= sensation in the broadest sense). As a

matter of fact, the energy to which modern energism would reduce all

phenomena has not an independent place in Spinoza's system besides

sensation; the attribute of thought (the psyche, soul, force) comprises

the two. I am convinced that sensation is, like movement, found in

all matter, and this trinity of substance provides the safest basis

for modern monism. I may formulate it in three propositions: (1) No

matter without force and without sensation. (2) No force without matter

and without sensation. (3) No sensation without matter and without

force. These three fundamental attributes are found inseparably united

throughout the whole universe, in every atom and every molecule. In

view of the great importance of this view for our hylonistic system of

monism, it may be well to consider each of these three attributes in

connection with the law of substance.

_A._ MATTER.--As extended substance, matter occupies infinite space,

and each individual body forms a part of the universe as real

substance. The law of the conservation of matter teaches us that the

sum of matter is eternal and unchangeable. This applies equally to

the various kinds of matter which we call the chemical elements, or

ponderable matter, and to the ether that fills the spaces between

the atoms and molecules, or imponderable matter. The mischievous

depreciation of matter (and the consequent disdain of materialism) and

its antithesis to "spirit" is partly due to the use of such phrases as

"raw" and "dead" matter, and partly to the deep-rooted mysticism we

have inherited from barbaric ancestors, and find it hard to shake off.

_B._ ENERGY.--All parts of the substance that fills infinite space

are in constant and eternal motion. Every chemical process and every

physical phenomenon is accompanied by a change in the position of the

particles which compose the matter. The law of the conservation of

energy teaches us that the sum of force or energy that is ever at work

in the universe is unchangeable. In the formation or decomposition of a

chemical compound the particles of matter move about, and so in every

mechanical, thermic, electric, and other process. The changes that

take place depend on a constant change of force, both in organic and

inorganic bodies; one form of force is converted into another without

a particle of the whole being lost. This law of the conservation of

force has lately been called, as a rule, the conservation of energy (or

the principle of energy) since the ideas of force and energy have been

more clearly distinguished in physics; energy is now usually defined as

the product of force and direction. It must be noted, however, that

the word "energy" (as an equivalent to "work" in the physical sense)

is still used in many different senses, as is also the word "force."

Others define energy as "work or all that comes of work and may be

converted into work." One particular school of voluntarism (Wundt)

reduces the motive-force of energy to will. Crusius said in 1744: "Will

is the dominating force in the world." And Schopenhauer defines the

world (or substance) as "will and presentation."

_C._ SENSATION.--In describing sensation (in the broadest sense) as

a third attribute of substance, and separating "sensitive substance"

from energy as "moving substance," I rely on the observations I made in

the thirteenth chapter of the _Riddle_ on sensation in the organic and

inorganic world. I cannot imagine the simplest chemical and physical

process without attributing the movements of the material particles to

unconscious sensation. In this sense the chemist speaks every day of a

sensitive reaction, and the photographer of a sensitive plate. The idea

of chemical affinity consists in the fact that the various chemical

elements perceive the qualitative differences in other elements,

experience "pleasure" or "revulsion" at contact with them, and execute

their specific movements on this ground. The sensitiveness of the plasm

to all kinds of stimuli, which is called "soul" in the higher animals,

is only a superior degree of the general irritability of substance.

Empedocles and the panpsychists spoke in the same sense of sensation

and effort in all things. As Nägeli said: "If the molecules possess

something that is related, however distantly, to sensation, it must

be comfortable to be able to follow their attractions and repulsions;

uncomfortable when they are forced to do otherwise. Thus we get a

common spiritual bond in all material phenomena. The mind of man is

only the highest development of the spiritual processes that animate

the whole of nature." These views of the distinguished botanist fully

agree with my monistic principles.

When sensation in the widest sense (as _psychoma_) is joined to matter

and energy as a third attribute of substance, we must extend the

universal law of the permanence of substance to all three aspects of

it. From this we conclude that the quantity of sensation in the entire

universe is also eternal and unchangeable, and that every change of

sensation means only the conversion of one form of psychoma into other

forms. If we start from our own immediate sensations and thoughts, and

look out on the whole mental life of humanity, we see through all its

continuous development the constancy of the psychoma, which has its

roots in the sensations of each individual. This highest achievement

of the work of the plasm in the human brain was, however, first

developed in the sensations of the lower animals, and these are in turn

connected by a long series of evolutionary stages with the simpler

forms of sensation that we find in the inorganic elements, and that

reveal themselves in chemical affinity. Albrecht Rau expressly says

in his excellent _Sensation and Thought_ (1896) that "perception or

sensation is a universal process in nature. This involves, moreover,

the possibility of reducing thought itself to this universal process."

Recently Ernst Mach has said, in his _Analysis of Sensation and the

Relation of the Physical to the Psychical_, that "sensations are the

common elements of all possible physical and psychic occurrences, and

consist simply in the different mode of the combination of the elements

and their dependence on each other." It is true that Mach, in his

one-sided emphasis of the subjective element of sensation, goes on to

form a similar psychomonism to that of Verworn, Avenarius, and other

recent dynamists; but the fundamental character of his system is purely

monistic, like the energism of Ostwald.

In thus uniting sensation with force and matter as an attribute of

substance, we form a monistic trinity, and are in a position to do away

with the antitheses that are rigidly maintained by dualists between the

psychic and the physical, or the material and the immaterial world.

Of the three great monistic systems materialism lays too narrow a

stress on the attribute of matter, and would trace all the phenomena

of the universe to the mechanics of the atoms or to the movements of

their ultimate particles. Spiritualism, with equal narrowness, builds

on the attribute of energy; it would either explain all phenomena by

motor forces or forms of energy (energism), or reduce them to psychic

functions, to sensation or psychic action (panpsychism). Our system of

hylonism (or hylozoism) avoids the faults of both extremes, and affirms

the identity of the psyche and the physis in the sense of Spinoza and

Goethe. It meets the difficulties of the older theory of identity by

dividing the attribute of thought (or energy) into two co-ordinate

attributes, sensation (psychoma) and movement (mechanics).

XX

MONISM

Defence of monism--Pure and applied science (theoretic and

practical reason)--Pure (theoretical) sciences: physics,

chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, geology; biology, anthropology,

psychology, philology, history--Applied (practical) sciences:

medicine, psychiatry, hygiene, technology, pedagogics, ethics,

sociology, politics, jurisprudence, theology--Antinomy of the

sciences--Rational and dogmatic disciplines--Correlation of the

sciences--Faculties--Reform of education--The ideal world--Harmony of

monism.

Now that we have reached the end of our long journey, we may take a

general survey of the path we have pursued, and say how far we owe our

progress to the monistic philosophy. In doing so, we shall at once

justify our own point of view and indicate the relation of biology to

the other sciences. I feel the more bound to do this as the present

volume is not only a necessary supplement to the _Riddle_, but at the

same time my last philosophic work. At the end of my seventieth year I

would supply some of the defects of the _Riddle_, answer some of the

most stringent criticisms directed against it, and as far as possible

complete the philosophy of life at which I worked for half a century.

In inviting my readers to accompany me once more through the broad

domain of the monistic philosophy I must, as their modest guide, show

scientific justification at the narrow entrance--produce, so to say,

the ticket of admission to this investigation. The academic philosophy

which still controls the German universities watches every door with

jealous eyes, and has an especial concern to keep out modern biology.

Official German philosophy is still for the most part taken up with

a mediæval metaphysic and the dualism of Kant, the openly dogmatic

character of which it greets as "criticism." In the course of the forty

years during which I have taught as ordinary professor of zoology at

Jena I have had occasion to assist at several hundred examinations of

doctors, teachers, etc., in which distinguished representatives of

philosophy were examiners. I saw that nearly always the chief stress

was laid on a kind of conceptual gymnastics and self-observation, and

on the correct knowledge of the innumerable errors which the (mainly

dualistic) leaders of ancient and modern philosophy have left us in

their vast literature. The central feature of the whole scheme is

Kant's theory of knowledge, the defects and one-sidedness of which I

have treated in the first and nineteenth chapters. In psychology a most

extensive knowledge of psychic powers on the basis of the introspective

method is demanded; the physiological analysis of the "soul" and the

anatomic study of the phronema are carefully avoided, as are also the

comparative and genetic study of the mind. Many of our metaphysicians

go even farther and regard philosophy as a separate science--a sublime

"mental science," quite independent of the common empirical sciences.

One is tempted to quote the saying of Schopenhauer: "It is a sure

sign of a philosopher that he is not a professor of philosophy." In

my opinion, every educated and thoughtful man who strives to form a

definite view of life is a philosopher. As queen of the sciences,

philosophy has the great task of combining the general results of the

other sciences, and of bringing their rays of light to a focus as in

a concave mirror. The various tendencies of thought that arise in

such numbers have all a right to scientific respect and discussion,

the monistic minority no less than the dualistic majority. We have to

inquire, then, how far monism has succeeded in gaining firm foothold

in the various fields of science, and we may begin with a distinction

between pure (theoretical) and applied (practical) science.

Pure philosophy aims at a knowledge of the truth by means of pure

reason, as I explained in the first chapter. However, this theoretical

philosophy finds itself in most of the sciences in direct and

frequently important relations to practical life, and so in the form

of applied philosophy becomes a weighty factor in civilization. In

this the real claims of practical life are often in contradiction to

the ideal tenets of the scientifically grounded theory. In such cases,

in my opinion, the pure pursuit of the truth must take precedence of

applied philosophy. I thus dissent entirely from the view of Kant,

who expressly gives precedence to practical reason, and subordinates

theoretical reason to it. Kant's error was fated to have a terrible

influence, because the dominant authorities in Church and state eagerly

embraced it to insure everywhere the supremacy of the dogmas of

practical reason over the attainments of pure critical reason.

From the point of view of natural monism we may take physics in the

wider sense as the fundamental science. The term _physis_ (the Greek

equivalent of the Latin "nature"), in its original meaning, comprises

the whole knowable world--Kant's _mundus sensibilis_. His supersensual

or "intelligible" world is, on his own definition, the object of

faith, not knowledge. It is very remarkable to find a thinker like

Kant contradicting himself already in his fundamental distinction

of the two worlds. How can the supersensual world, with its three

central mysteries (God, freedom, and immortality), be described as

intelligible (_i.e._, knowable) when it is proved by pure reason that

the human mind is incapable of knowing it, or of forming any positive

or negative idea of it? _Lucus a non lucendo!_ We may, therefore, leave

this supernatural metaphysical world to faith and fiction, and confine

our studies to the real physical world, nature. The idea of physics

as a comprehensive natural philosophy, as it was conceived in classic

Greece, has been more and more restricted in the course of time. To-day

it is generally taken to mean the science of the phenomena of inorganic

nature, their empirical determination by observation and experiment

(experimental physics), and their reduction to fixed natural laws and

mathematical formulæ (theoretical or mathematical physics). Of late a

distinction has been drawn between the physics of mass and the physics

of ether; the one deals with mechanics, the movement and equilibrium

of ponderable matter, of solid, fluid, and gaseous bodies (statics and

dynamics, gravitation, acoustics, meteorology); the other is occupied

with the phenomena of ether (or imponderable matter) and its relations

to mass (electricity, galvanism, magnetism, optics, and calorics).

In all these branches of inorganic physics the monistic view is now

generally received, and all attempt at dualistic explanation abandoned.

The vast department of chemistry, which has now become so important

both for theoretical and practical purposes, is really only a part of

physics. But while modern physics restricts itself to the study of

inorganic forms of energy and their conversions, chemistry, as the

science of matter, takes up the study of the qualitative differences

between the various kinds of ponderable matter. It divides ponderable

bodies into some seventy-eight elements, the relations of which to each

other have been determined in the periodic system of the elements, and

their probable common origin from some primitive matter (prothyl)

been shown. The constant features of chemical combinations which have

been established by the analysis and synthesis of the elements, and

especially the law of simple and multiple proportions discovered in

1808, led to the empirical determination of the atomic weight of the

elements and to the chemical theory of the atom. The acceptance of

these atoms (as space-filling separate particles of matter--however

we may regard them in other respects) is an indispensable hypothesis

in chemistry, like the hypothesis of the molecule in physics. Modern

dynamism (or energism) is wrong when it thinks it can dispense with

these hypotheses and replace the atoms by the notion of immaterial

non-spatial points of force. However, in both the dynamic and the

material school monism is retained in every department of chemistry.

Modern science considers the ultimate aim of all research to be

the exact determination of phenomena in measure and number, or the

reduction of all general knowledge to mathematically formulated laws.

As the great Laplace established his system mathematically, it has

lately been claimed that a comprehensive (ideal) Laplace-mind could

embrace the whole past, present, and future of the universe in a single

gigantic mathematical formula. Kant has expressed this exaggerated

estimate of mathematics in the phrase: "Every science is only true

science in proportion as it is amenable to mathematical treatment";

and to this he has added the second error that the mathematical axioms

(being necessary and universal truths) belong to the _a priori_

constitution of the mind, and are independent of experience (_a

posteriori_). However, John Stuart Mill and others have shown that

the fundamental ideas of mathematics are acquired originally, like

those of any other science, by abstraction from experience; and the

modern phylogeny of the mind has confirmed this empirical view. We

must remember, moreover, that mathematics deals only with quantitative

relations in time and space, and not with the qualitative features of

bodies. In fact, Kant himself showed that mathematics only answers for

the absolute _formal_ correctness of conclusions it draws from given

premises, and has no influence on the premises themselves. Hence,

when we examine the abstract thinking-power of the phronema in its

mathematical operations physiologically and phylogenetically, we find

that even this "exact fundamental science" is only accessible to pure

monism and excludes all dualism. The great regard which mathematics

enjoys as an exact science in all branches of knowledge is chiefly

due to its _formal accuracy_, and to the possibility of expressing

infallibly spatial and time quantities in number and mass.

Astronomy is one of the older sciences that took definite shape

thousands of years ago, and received a solid mathematical foundation.

Observations of the movements of the planets and eclipses of the

sun were conducted by the Chinese, Chaldeans, and Egyptians several

thousand years before Christ. Christ himself had no more suspicion of

these great cosmological discoveries than of the systems which the

Greek natural philosophers had built up three hundred to six hundred

years before his birth. After Copernicus had destroyed the geocentric

system in 1543, and Newton had provided a mathematical basis for

the new heliocentric system by his theory of gravitation in 1686,

cosmogony was firmly established in a monistic sense by the _General

Natural History of the Heavens_ of Kant, and the _Mécanique Céleste_ of

Laplace. Since that time there has been no question of the conscious

action of a Creator in any part of astronomy. Astrophysics has enlarged

our knowledge of the physical features, and astrochemistry (by means

of spectrum analysis) of the chemical nature of the other heavenly

bodies. The monism of the physical universe has now been established.

Geology was not developed into an independent science until towards

the end of the eighteenth century, and did not extinguish the earlier

notion of the creation of the earth until after 1830, when the

principle of continuity and evolution was established. The oldest

part of the science is mineralogy; the great practical value of the

rocks, and especially the metals obtained from them, having appealed to

man's interest thousands of years ago. In the Stone Age, Bronze Age,

Iron Age, etc., the material for weapons and tools was provided by

stone and metal. Afterwards the development of mining led to a closer

acquaintance with these metals. But no notice was taken of the fossil

remains of animals and plants until the close of the Middle Ages. It

was not until the eighteenth century that students began to perceive

the great significance of these "creation-medals," and at the beginning

of the nineteenth paleontology arose as an independent science, and

proved equally important to geology and biology. Other branches of

geology, such as crystallography, have also made considerable progress

during the last half-century, with the aid of physics and chemistry.

All these sections of geology, especially geogeny, or the science of

the natural development of the earth, are now recognized to be purely

monistic sciences.

In the five branches of science I have enumerated, pure monism has

been universally and exclusively admitted (as far as they relate to

inorganic nature) in the second half of the nineteenth century. There

is no question in them to-day of the wisdom and power of the Creator.

This is equally true of geology, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry,

and physics. It is otherwise with the remaining sciences which deal

with organic nature; in these we have not yet succeeded in giving a

physical explanation and mathematical formulation of all phenomena.

Hence vitalism enters with its dualistic notions, and splits the

science into two different branches--natural science (physics in the

wider sense) and mental science (metaphysics); fixed natural laws are

supposed to rule only in the former, while in the latter we still have

the "freedom" of the spirit and the supernatural. This applies, first

of all, to biology in the broadest sense (including anthropology and

all the sciences that relate to man). In the preceding chapters of

biological philosophy we have sought to refute vitalism in every form,

and to secure the exclusive acceptance of monism and mechanicism in

every branch of the science of life.

Anthropology is still, as it has been for centuries, taken in many

different senses. In the widest sense, it embraces the whole vast

science of man, just as zoology (in my opinion) deals with all

parts of the animal world. Since I regard anthropology as a part

of zoology, I naturally extend the principles of monism to both.

However, this general monistic conception of the science of man has

met with only a restricted acceptance up to the present. As a rule,

the term "anthropology" is restricted to the natural history of man,

which includes the anatomy and physiology of the human organism,

embryology, prehistoric research, and a small part of psychology. But

this "official anthropology," as most of our anthropological societies

(especially in Germany) conceive it, generally excludes phylogeny, the

greater part of psychology, and all the mental sciences, which are

regarded as metaphysical in the narrower sense. I endeavored to show in

my _Anthropogeny_ thirty years ago that man (as a placental mammal of

the order of primates) is no less unified an organism (with body and

soul) than any other vertebrate, and that, therefore, every aspect of

his being should be dealt with monistically.

As is well known, the views of experts and laymen alike are very much

divided as to the place of psychology in the scheme of the sciences.

The great majority of the professional psychologists, and of educated

people generally, adhere still to the antiquated dogma, with its

religious foundation, that man's soul is immortal and an independent

immaterial entity. This dualistic view has been supported in the

schools especially by the authority of Plato, Descartes, and Kant; in

religion by the authority of Christ, Paul, and Mohammed; in education

and the state by the authority of most governments; and in physiology

by most of the older, and even some recent, physiologists. On this

view, psychology is a special mental science, having only an external

and limited connection with natural science. But modern comparative

and genetic psychology, the anatomy and physiology of the brain,

have, in the course of the last forty years, established the monistic

view that psychology is a special branch of cerebral physiology, and

that therefore all its parts and their application belong to this

section of biology. The soul of man is a physiological function of

the phronema. As I have fully explained the monistic conception of

psychology in chapters vi.-xi. of the _Riddle_, and supported it with

all the arguments of anatomy, physiology, ontogeny, and phylogeny in my

_Anthropogeny_, I need not go further into the subject.

The science of language shares the fate of its sister, psychology;

by one section of its representatives it is taken monistically as a

natural science, and by another section it is dualistically conceived

as a branch of mental science. On the old metaphysical view, speech was

regarded as an exclusive property of man, either a gift of the gods or

an invention of social man. But in the course of the nineteenth century

the monistic and physiological position that speech is a function

of the organism, and has been gradually developed like all other

functions, has been established. The comparative psychology of the

higher animals showed that in various classes the thoughts, feelings,

and desires of the gregarious animals are communicated partly by signs

or touch, partly by sounds (the chirrup of the cricket, the cry of the

frog, the whistle of many reptiles, song of birds and singing-apes,

roaring of carnivora and ungulates, etc.). The ontogeny of speech

showed that its gradual development in the child is (in accordance

with the biogenetic law) a recapitulation of its phylogenetic process.

Comparative philology taught that the languages of the different races

have been formed polyphyletically, or independently of each other.

The experimental physiology and pathology of the brain showed that a

definite small region of the cortex (the Broca fissure) is the centre

of speech, and that this central organ, in conjunction with other

parts of the phronema and the larynx (the peripheral organ), produces

articulate speech.