OUR MONISTIC RELIGION
Monism as a Connecting Link between Religion and Science--The
_Cultur-Kampf_--The Relations of Church and State--Principles
of the Monistic Religion--Its Three-fold Ideal: the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful--Contradiction between Scientific and
Christian Truth--Harmony of the Monistic and the Christian Idea
of Virtue--Opposition between Monistic and Christian Views
of Art--Modern Expansion and Enrichment of Our Idea of the
World--Landscape-Painting and the Modern Enjoyment of Nature--The
Beauties of Nature--This World and Beyond--Monistic Churches
Many distinguished scientists and philosophers of the day, who share
our monistic views, consider that religion is generally played out.
Their meaning is that the clear insight into the evolution of the world
which the great scientific progress of the nineteenth century has
afforded us will satisfy, not only the causal feeling of our reason,
but even our highest emotional cravings. This view is correct in the
sense that the two ideas, religion and science, would indeed blend
into one if we had a perfectly clear and consecutive system of monism.
However, there are but a few resolute thinkers who attain to this most
pure and lofty conception of Spinoza and Goethe. Most of the educated
people of our time (as distinct from the uncultured masses) remain in
the conviction that religion is a separate branch of our mental life,
independent of science, and not less valuable and indispensable.
If we adopt this view, we can find a means of reconciling the two
great and apparently quite distinct branches in the idea I put forward
in "Monism, as a Connecting-Link between Religion and Science,"
in 1892. In the preface to this _Confession of Faith of a Man of
Science_ I expressed myself in the following words with regard to
its double object: "In the first place, I must give expression to
the rational system which is logically forced upon us by the recent
progress of science; it dwells in the intimate thoughts of nearly every
impartial and thoughtful scientist, though few have the courage or
the disposition to avow it. In the second place, I would make of it a
connecting-link between religion and science, and thus do away with
the antithesis which has been needlessly maintained between these two
branches of the highest activity of the human mind. The ethical craving
of our emotion is satisfied by monism no less than the logical demand
for causality on the part of reason."
The remarkable interest which the discourse enkindled is a proof that
in this monistic profession of faith I expressed the feeling not only
of many scientists, but of a large number of cultured men and women
of very different circles. Not only was I rewarded by hundreds of
sympathetic letters, but by a wide circulation of the printed address,
of which six editions were required within six months. I had the more
reason to be content with this unexpected success, as this "confession
of faith" was originally merely an occasional speech which I delivered
unprepared on October 9, 1892, at Altenburg, during the jubilee of the
Scientific Society of East Germany. Naturally there was the usual
demonstration on the other side; I was fiercely attacked, not only by
the ultramontane press, the sworn defenders of superstition, but also
by the "liberal" controversialists of evangelical Christianity, who
profess to defend both scientific truth and purified faith. In the
seven years that have ensued since that time the great struggle between
modern science and orthodox Christianity has become more threatening;
it has grown more dangerous for science in proportion as Christianity
has found support in an increasing mental and political reaction. In
some countries the Church has made such progress that the freedom
of thought and conscience, which is guaranteed by the laws, is in
practice gravely menaced (for instance, in Bavaria). The great historic
struggle which Draper has so admirably depicted in his _Conflict
between Religion and Science_ is to-day more acute and significant than
ever. For the last twenty-seven years it has been rightly called the
"_cultur-kampf_."
The famous encyclica and syllabus which the militant pope, Pius IX.,
sent out into the entire world in 1864 were a declaration of war on
the whole of modern science; they demanded the blind submission of
reason to the dogmas of the infallible pope. The enormity of this
crude assault on the highest treasures of civilization even roused
many indolent minds from the slumber of belief. Together with the
subsequent promulgation of the papal infallibility (1870), the
encyclica provoked a deep wave of irritation and an energetic repulse
which held out high hopes. In the new German empire, which had attained
its indispensable national unity by the heavy sacrifices of the wars
of 1866 and 1871, the insolent attacks of the pope were felt to be
particularly offensive. On the one hand, Germany is the cradle of
the Reformation and the modern emancipation of reason; on the other
hand, it unfortunately has in its 18,000,000 Catholics a vast host of
militant believers, who are unsurpassed by any other civilized people
in blind obedience to their chief shepherd.
The dangers of such a situation were clearly recognized by the
great statesman who had solved the political "world-riddle" of the
dismemberment of Germany, and had led us by a marvellous statecraft
to the long-desired goal of national unity and power. Prince Bismarck
began the famous struggle with the Vatican, which is known as the
_cultur-kampf_, in 1872, and it was conducted with equal ability and
energy by the distinguished Minister of Worship, Falk, author of the
May laws of 1873. Unfortunately, Bismarck had to desist six years
afterwards. Although the great statesman was a remarkable judge of men
and a realistic politician of immense tact, he had underestimated the
force of three powerful obstacles--first, the unsurpassed cunning and
unscrupulous treachery of the Roman _curia_; secondly, the correlative
ingratitude and credulity of the uneducated Catholic masses, on which
the papacy built; and, thirdly, the power of apathy, the continuance
of the irrational, simply because it is in possession. Hence, in 1878,
when the abler Leo XIII. had ascended the pontifical throne, the fatal
"To Canossa" was heard once more. From that time the newly established
power of Rome grew in strength; partly through the unscrupulous
intrigues and serpentine bends of its slippery Jesuitical politics,
partly through the false Church-politics of the German government and
the marvellous political incompetence of the German people. We have,
therefore, at the close of the nineteenth century to endure the
pitiful spectacle of the Catholic "Centre" being the most important
section of the Reichstag, and the fate of our humiliated country
depending on a papal party, which does not constitute numerically a
third part of the nation.
When the _cultur-kampf_ began in 1872, it was justly acclaimed by
all independent thinkers as a political renewal of the Reformation,
a vigorous attempt to free modern civilization from the yoke of
papal despotism. The whole of the Liberal press hailed Bismarck as a
"political Luther"--as the great hero, not only of the national unity,
but also of the rational emancipation of Germany. Ten years afterwards,
when the papacy had proved victorious, the same "Liberal press" changed
its colors, and denounced the _cultur-kampf_ as a great mistake; and
it does the same thing to-day. The facts show how short is the memory
of our journalists, how defective their knowledge of history, and how
poor their philosophic education. The so-called "Peace between Church
and State" is never more than a suspension of hostilities. The modern
papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last
sixteen hundred years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the
credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of
the cultured State, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and
science. True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the
combatants lies powerless on the ground. Either the Church wins, and
then farewell to all "free science and free teaching"--then are our
universities no better than jails, and our colleges become cloistral
schools; or else the modern rational State proves victorious--then,
in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will
continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the
height of the nineteenth century.
In order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that
modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition
and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new
abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared--a "palace of
reason," in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do
reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century--the trinity of
"the true, the good, and the beautiful." In order to give a tangible
shape to the cult of this divine ideal, we must first of all compare
our position with the dominant forms of Christianity, and realize
the changes that are involved in the substitution of the one for the
other. For, in spite of its errors and defects, the Christian religion
(in its primitive and purer form) has so high an ethical value, and
has entered so deeply into the most important social and political
movements of civilized history for the last fifteen hundred years,
that we must appeal as much as possible to its existing institutions
in the establishment of our monistic religion. We do not seek a mighty
_revolution_, but a rational _reformation_, of our religious life. And
just as, two thousand years ago, the classic poetry of the ancient
Greeks incarnated their ideals of virtue in divine shapes, so may
we, too, lend the character of noble goddesses to our three rational
ideals. We must inquire into the features of the three goddesses of the
monist--truth, beauty, and virtue; and we must study their relation
to the three corresponding ideals of Christianity which they are to
replace.
I. The preceding inquiries (especially those of the first and third
sections) have convinced us that truth unadulterated is only to be
found in the temple of the study of nature, and that the only available
paths to it are critical observation and reflection--the empirical
investigation of facts and the rational study of their efficient
causes. In this way we arrive, by means of pure reason, at true
science, the highest treasure of civilized man. We must, in accordance
with the arguments of our sixteenth chapter, reject what is called
"revelation," the poetry of faith, that affirms the discovery of truth
in a supernatural fashion, without the assistance of reason. And since
the entire structure of the Judæo-Christian religion, like that of the
Mohammedan and the Buddhistic, rests on these so-called revelations,
and these mystic fruits of the imagination directly contradict the
clear results of empirical research, it is obvious that we shall
only attain to a knowledge of the truth by the rational activity of
genuine science, not by the poetic imagining of a mystic faith. In this
respect it is quite certain that the Christian system must give way
to the monistic. The goddess of truth dwells in the temple of nature,
in the green woods, on the blue sea, and on the snowy summits of the
hills--not in the gloom of the cloister, nor in the narrow prisons of
our jail-like schools, nor in the clouds of incense of the Christian
churches. The paths which lead to the noble divinity of truth and
knowledge are the loving study of nature and its laws, the observation
of the infinitely great star-world with the aid of the telescope, and
the infinitely tiny cell-world with the aid of the microscope--not
senseless ceremonies and unthinking prayers, not alms and Peter's
Pence. The rich gifts which the goddess of truth bestows on us are the
noble fruits of the tree of knowledge and the inestimable treasure of a
clear, unified view of the world--not belief in supernatural miracles
and the illusion of an eternal life.
II. It is otherwise with the divine ideal of eternal goodness. In our
search for the truth we have entirely to exclude the "revelation" of
the churches, and devote ourselves solely to the study of nature; but,
on the other hand, the idea of the good, which we call virtue, in
our monistic religion coincides for the most part with the Christian
idea of virtue. We are speaking, naturally, of the primitive and
pure Christianity of the first three centuries, as far as we learn
its moral teaching from the gospels and the epistles of Paul; it
does not apply to the Vatican caricature of that pure doctrine which
has dominated European civilization, to its infinite prejudice, for
twelve hundred years. The best part of Christian morality, to which we
firmly adhere, is represented by the humanist precepts of charity and
toleration, compassion and assistance. However, these noble commands,
which are set down as "Christian" morality (in its best sense), are by
no means original discoveries of Christianity; they are derived from
earlier religions. The Golden Rule, which sums up these precepts in
one sentence, is centuries older than Christianity. In the conduct of
life this law of natural morality has been followed just as frequently
by non-Christians and atheists as it has been neglected by pious
believers. Moreover, Christian ethics was marred by the great defect
of a narrow insistence on altruism and a denunciation of egoism. Our
monistic ethics lays equal emphasis on the two, and finds perfect
virtue in the just balance of love of self and love of one's neighbor
(cf. chap. xix.).
III. But monism enters into its strongest opposition to Christianity
on the question of beauty. Primitive Christianity preached the
worthlessness of earthly life, regarding it merely as a preparation
for an eternal life beyond. Hence it immediately followed that all we
find in the life of man here below, all that is beautiful in art and
science, in public and in private life, is of no real value. The true
Christian must avert his eyes from them; he must think only of a worthy
preparation for the life beyond. Contempt of nature, aversion from all
its inexhaustible charms, rejection of every kind of fine art, are
Christian duties; and they are carried out to perfection when a man
separates himself from his fellows, chastises his body, and spends all
his time in prayer in the cloister or the hermit's cell.
History teaches us that this ascetical morality that would scorn the
whole of nature had, as a natural consequence, the very opposite effect
to that it intended. Monasteries, the homes of chastity and discipline,
soon became dens of the wildest orgies; the sexual commerce of monks
and nuns has inspired shoals of novels, as it is so faithfully depicted
in the literature of the Renaissance. The cult of the "beautiful,"
which was then practised, was in flagrant contradiction with the
vaunted "abandonment of the world"; and the same must be said of the
pomp and luxury which soon developed in the immoral private lives of
the higher ecclesiastics and in the artistic decoration of Christian
churches and monasteries.
It may be objected that our view is refuted by the splendor of
Christian art, which, especially in the best days of the Middle Ages,
created works of undying beauty. The graceful Gothic cathedrals and
Byzantine basilicas, the hundreds of magnificent chapels, the thousands
of marble statues of saints and martyrs, the millions of fine pictures
of saints, of profoundly conceived representations of Christ and the
madonna--all are proofs of the development of a noble art in the Middle
Ages, which is unique of its kind. All these splendid monuments of
mediæval art are untouched in their high æsthetic value, whatever we
say of their mixture of truth and fancy. Yes; but what has all that
to do with the pure teaching of Christianity--with that religion of
sacrifice that turned scornfully away from all earthly parade and
glamour, from all material beauty and art; that made light of the life
of the family and the love of woman; that urged an exclusive concern as
to the immaterial goods of eternal life? The idea of a Christian art
is a contradiction in terms--a _contradictio in adjecto_. The wealthy
princes of the Church who fostered it were candidly aiming at very
different ideals, and they completely attained them. In directing the
whole interest and activity of the human mind in the Middle Ages to the
Christian Church and its distinctive art they were diverting it _from
nature_ and from the knowledge of the treasures that were hidden in it,
and would have conducted to independent science. Moreover, the daily
sight of the huge images of the saints and of the scenes of "sacred
history" continually reminded the faithful of the vast collection of
myths that the Church had made. The legends themselves were taught
and believed to be true narratives, and the stories of miracles to be
records of actual events. It cannot be doubted that in this respect
Christian art has exercised an immense influence on general culture,
and especially in the strengthening of Christian belief--an influence
which still endures throughout the entire civilized world.
The diametrical opposite of this dominant Christian art is the new
artistic tendency which has been developed during the present century
in connection with science. The remarkable expansion of our knowledge
of nature, and the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life,
which it includes, have awakened quite a new æsthetic sense in our
generation, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture.
Numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration
of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more
especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed
abundance of new organic forms. The number of new species of animals
and plants soon became enormous, and among them (especially among the
lower groups that had been neglected before) there were thousands
of forms of great beauty and interest, affording an entirely new
inspiration for painting, sculpture, architecture, and technical
art. In this respect a new world was revealed by the great advance
of microscopic research in the second half of the century, and
especially by the discovery of the marvellous inhabitants of the
deep sea, which were first brought to light by the famous expedition
of the _Challenger_ (1872-76). Thousands of graceful radiolaria and
thalamophora, of pretty medusæ and corals, of extraordinary molluscs,
and crabs, suddenly introduced us to a wealth of hidden organisms
beyond all anticipation, the peculiar beauty and diversity of which
far transcend all the creations of the human imagination. In the
fifty large volumes of the account of the _Challenger_ expedition a
vast number of these beautiful forms are delineated on three thousand
plates; and there are millions of other lovely organisms described in
other great works that are included in the fast-growing literature of
zoology and botany of the last ten years. I began on a small scale to
select a number of these beautiful forms for more popular description
in my _Art Forms in Nature_ (1899).
However, there is now no need for long voyages and costly works to
appreciate the beauties of this world. A man needs only to keep his
eyes open and his mind disciplined. Surrounding nature offers us
everywhere a marvellous wealth of lovely and interesting objects of all
kinds. In every bit of moss and blade of grass, in every beetle and
butterfly, we find, when we examine it carefully, beauties which are
usually overlooked. Above all, when we examine them with a powerful
glass or, better still, with a good microscope, we find everywhere in
nature a new world of inexhaustible charms.
But the nineteenth century has not only opened our eyes to the æsthetic
enjoyment of the microscopic world; it has shown us the beauty of
the greater objects in nature. Even at its commencement it was the
fashion to regard the mountains as magnificent but forbidding, and
the sea as sublime but dreaded. At its close the majority of educated
people--especially they who dwell in the great cities--are delighted
to enjoy the glories of the Alps and the crystal splendor of the
glacier world for a fortnight every year, or to drink in the majesty
of the ocean and the lovely scenery of its coasts. All these sources
of the keenest enjoyment of nature have only recently been revealed
to us in all their splendor, and the remarkable progress we have
made in facility and rapidity of conveyance has given even the less
wealthy an opportunity of approaching them. All this progress in the
æsthetic enjoyment of nature--and, proportionately, in the scientific
understanding of nature--implies an equal advance in higher mental
development and, consequently, in the direction of our monistic
religion.
The opposite character of our _naturalistic_ century to that of the
_anthropistic_ centuries that preceded is especially noticeable in
the different appreciation and spread of illustrations of the most
diverse natural objects. In our own days a lively interest in artistic
work of that kind has been developed, which did not exist in earlier
ages; it has been supported by the remarkable progress of commerce
and technical art which have facilitated a wide popularization of
such illustrations. Countless illustrated periodicals convey along
with their general information a sense of the inexhaustible beauty of
nature in all its departments. In particular, landscape-painting has
acquired an importance that surpassed all imagination. In the first
half of the century one of our greatest and most erudite scientists,
Alexander Humboldt, had pointed out that the development of modern
landscape-painting is not only of great importance as an incentive
to the study of nature and as a means of geographical description,
but that it is to be commended in other respects as a noble educative
medium. Since that time the taste for it has considerably increased.
It should be the aim at every school to teach the children to enjoy
scenery at an early age, and to give them the valuable art of
imprinting on the memory by a drawing or water-color sketch.
The infinite wealth of nature in what is beautiful and sublime offers
every man with open eyes and an æsthetic sense an incalculable sum of
choicest gifts. Still, however valuable and agreeable is the immediate
enjoyment of each single gift, its worth is doubled by a knowledge of
its meaning and its connection with the rest of nature. When Humboldt
gave us the "outline of a physical description of the world" in his
magnificent _Cosmos_ forty years ago, and when he combined scientific
and æsthetic consideration so happily in his standard _Prospects of
Nature_, he justly indicated how closely the higher enjoyment of nature
is connected with the "scientific establishment of cosmic laws," and
that the conjunction of the two serves to raise human nature to a
higher stage of perfection. The astonishment with which we gaze upon
the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe
with which we trace the marvellous working of energy in the motion of
matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of
the law of substance throughout the universe--all these are part of our
emotional life, falling under the heading of "natural religion."
This progress of modern times in knowledge of the true and enjoyment
of the beautiful expresses, on the one hand, a valuable element of our
monistic religion, but is, on the other hand, in fatal opposition to
Christianity. For the human mind is thus made to live on this side of
the grave; Christianity would have it ever gaze beyond. Monism teaches
that we are perishable children of the earth, who for one or two,
or, at the most, three generations, have the good fortune to enjoy
the treasures of our planet, to drink of the inexhaustible fountain
of its beauty, and to trace out the marvellous play of its forces.
Christianity would teach us that the earth is "a vale of tears," in
which we have but a brief period to chasten and torment ourselves in
order to merit the life of eternal bliss beyond. Where this "beyond"
is, and of what joys the glory of this eternal life is compacted, no
revelation has ever told us. As long as "heaven" was thought to be the
blue vault that hovers over the disk of our planet, and is illumined
by the twinkling light of a few thousand stars, the human imagination
could picture to itself the ambrosial banquets of the Olympic gods
above or the laden tables of the happy dwellers in Valhalla. But now
all these deities and the immortal souls that sat at their tables are
"houseless and homeless," as David Strauss has so ably described; for
we know from astrophysical science that the immeasurable depths of
space are filled with a prosaic ether, and that millions of heavenly
bodies, ruled by eternal laws of iron, rush hither and thither in the
great ocean, in their eternal rhythm of life and death.
The places of devotion, in which men seek the satisfaction of their
religious emotions and worship the objects of their reverence, are
regarded as sacred "churches." The pagodas of Buddhistic Asia, the
Greek temples of classical antiquity, the synagogues of Palestine,
the mosques of Egypt, the Catholic cathedrals of the south, and the
Protestant cathedrals of the north, of Europe--all these "houses of
God" serve to raise man above the misery and the prose of daily life,
to lift him into the sacred, poetic atmosphere of a higher, ideal
world. They attain this end in a thousand different ways, according
to their various forms of worship and their age. The modern man who
"has science and art"--and, therefore, "religion"--needs no special
church, no narrow, enclosed portion of space. For through the length
and breadth of free nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to the whole
universe or to any single part of it, he finds, indeed, the grim
"struggle for life," but by its side are ever "the good, the true, and
the beautiful"; his church is commensurate with the whole of glorious
nature. Still, there will always be men of special temperament who will
desire to have decorated temples or churches as places of devotion
to which they may withdraw. Just as the Catholics had to relinquish a
number of churches to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, so a
still larger number will pass over to "free societies" of monists in
the coming years.