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.

Historical science is, like philology or psychology, still conceived
in different senses by experts. Very often history is wrongly taken
to mean the record of events that have occurred in the course of the
development of civilized life--the history of peoples and states
(humorously described as "the history of the world"), of civilization,
of morals, etc. This is merely an anthropocentric feeling that in
the strictly scientific sense "history" can only be used for the
record of man's doings. In this sense history is opposed to nature,
the one dealing with the province of morally free phenomena (with
preconceived aim), and the other comprising the province of natural
law (without preconceived aim). As if there were no "natural history,"
or as if cosmogony, geology, ontogeny, and phytogeny were not
historical sciences! Although this dualistic and anthropistic view
still prevails in our universities, and state and Church protect the
venerable tradition, there can be no doubt that sooner or later it
will be replaced by a purely monistic philosophy of history. Modern
anthropogeny shows us the intimate connection between the evolution of
the human individual and that of the race; and by means of prehistoric
and phylogenetic research it joins what is called the history of the
world to the stem-history of the vertebrates.

Medicine belongs to the front rank of practical or applied sciences. In
its long and interesting history it teaches how it is only a monistic
knowledge of nature, not a dualistic notion of revelation, that affords
the foundations of true science and the profitable application of
this to the most important aspects of practical life. Medicine was
originally the business of the priests, and for thousands of years
it was under the influence of mystic and superstitious ideas which
were connected with religious dogmas. However, two thousand years ago
the great physicians of classic antiquity made a serious effort to
provide a solid base for medical practice by a thorough anatomic and
physiological study of the human frame. But in the general reaction
of the Middle Ages superstitious and miraculous ideas once more
defeated independent scientific investigation. Disease was supposed
to be the work of evil spirits (as Christ thought) which had to be
exorcised. Miracles are still thought to take place, even in cultured
circles. I need only mention the wonders of patent medicines, magnetic
cures, Christian Science, and other charlatanry. However, the great
development of science in the nineteenth century, especially the
astonishing advance of biology about the middle of the century,
gradually shaped medicine into the monistic science which assuages so
much pain and suffering in humanity to-day. Pathology, the science
of disease, and therapeutics, the rational science of healing, are
grounded now on the safe methods of physics and chemistry and a
thorough knowledge of the human organism. Disease is no longer regarded
as a special entity that comes on the body like an evil spirit or
mysterious organism, but is conceived as a baneful disturbance of its
normal activity. Pathology is only a branch of physiology; it studies
the changes that take place in the tissues and cells under abnormal and
dangerous conditions. When the causes of these changes are poisons or
foreign organisms (such as bacteria or amœbæ), the art of healing
has to remove them and restore the normal equilibrium of the functions.

The science of mental disease is a special branch of medicine; it has
the same relation to it as psychology has to physiology. However, as
pathological psychology it deserves special consideration, not only
on account of its extreme practical importance, but also because of
its theoretical interest. The misleading dualist idea of body and soul
that has perverted our notions of mental life from the oldest times
has led people to regard mental disorders as special phenomena, at one
time directly as evil spirits that enter from without into the human
body, at another time as mysterious dynamic occurrences affecting the
mystic being of the soul (independently of the body). These dualistic
and still wide-spread and mischievous errors have caused the most
fatal mistakes in the treatment of mental disease; they have had the
most unfortunate effect on juristic and social and other aspects of
practical life. But the ground has been cut from under these irrational
and superstitious ideas by modern psychiatry, which regards all mental
disease as a disorder of the brain, and traces it to changes in the
cortex that lie at the root of all psychoses (delusions, lunacy,
etc.). As we call this central organ of mind the phronema, we may say:
Psychiatry is the pathology and therapeutics of the phronema. In many
disorders we have already succeeded in anatomically and chemically
tracing the changes in the psychic or phronetal cells (the neurona
in the phronema). These acquisitions of the pathological anatomy and
physiology of the phronema have a great philosophic interest, because
they throw a good deal of light on the monistic conception of psychic
life. As the greater part (sixty to ninety per cent.) of these diseases
are hereditary, and they have mostly been acquired gradually by the
ancestors of the patient, they also afford clear proof of progressive
heredity, or the inheritance of acquired characters.

Thousands of years ago, when barbaric races began to adapt themselves
to civilized life, they had a concern for their bodily health and
strength. In classic antiquity the care of the body by baths, gymnastic
exercises, etc., was greatly developed, and connected with religious
ceremonies. The splendid aqueducts and baths of Greece and Rome show
how much importance they attached to the external and internal use of
water. The Middle Ages brought reaction in this province like so many
others. As Christianity depreciated this life and said it was merely a
preparation for the life to come, it led to a disdain of culture and
of nature; and as it regarded man's body only as the temporary prison
of his immortal soul, it attached no importance to the care of it. The
frightful plagues that swept away millions of men in the Middle Ages
were only fought with prayer, processions, and other superstitious
devices, instead of with rational hygienic and sanitary measures. We
have only gradually learned to discard this superstition. It was not
until the second half of the nineteenth century that a sound knowledge
of the physiological functions and environment of the organism induced
people once more to have a concern for bodily culture. All that modern
hygiene now does for the public health, especially the improvement of
the dwellings and food of the poorer classes, the prevention of disease
by healthier habits, baths, athletics, etc., can be traced to the
monistic teaching or reason, and is altogether opposed to the Christian
belief in Providence and the dualism connected therewith. The maxim of
modern hygiene is: God helps those who help themselves.

The remarkable progress of technical science in the nineteenth
century, which has stamped our age as "an age of machinery," is a
direct consequence of the immense advance of theoretical science.
All the privileges and comforts which modern life gives us are due
to scientific discoveries, especially in physics and chemistry.
We need only recall the enormous importance of steam and electric