IV.—THE PSEUDO-CHRISTIANITY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
As the fourth and last stage in the history of Christianity we oppose our nineteenth century to all its predecessors. It is true that the enlightenment of preceding centuries had promoted critical thought in every direction, and the rise of science itself had furnished powerful empirical weapons; yet it seems to us that our progress along both lines has been quite phenomenal during the nineteenth century. It has inaugurated an entirely new period in the history of the human mind, characterized by the development of the monistic philosophy of nature. At its very commencement the foundations were laid of a new anthropology (by the comparative anatomy of Cuvier) and of a new biology (by the Philosophie Zoologique of Lamarck). The two great French scientists were quickly succeeded by two contemporary German scholars—Baer, the founder of the science of evolution, and Johannes Müller, the founder of comparative morphology and physiology. A pupil of Müller, Theodor Schwann, created the far-reaching cellular theory in 1838, in conjunction with M. Schleiden. Lyell had already traced the evolution of the earth to natural causes, and thus proved the application to our planet of the mechanical cosmogony which Kant had sketched with so much insight in 1755. Finally, Robert Mayer and Helmholtz established the principle of energy in 1842—the second, complementary half of the great law of substance, the first half of which (the persistence of matter) had been previously discovered by Lavoisier. Forty years ago Charles Darwin crowned all these profound revelations of the intimate nature of the universe by his new theory of evolution, the greatest natural-philosophical achievement of our century.
What is the relation of modern Christianity to this vast and unparalleled progress of science? In the first place, the deep gulf between its two great branches, conservative Romanism and progressive Protestantism, has naturally widened. The ultramontane clergy (and we must associate with them the orthodox “evangelical alliance”) had naturally to offer a strenuous opposition to this rapid advance of the emancipated mind; they continued unmoved in their rigid literal belief, demanding the unconditional surrender of reason to dogma. Liberal Protestantism, on the other hand, took refuge in a kind of monistic pantheism, and sought a means of reconciling two contradictory principles. It endeavored to combine the unavoidable recognition of the established laws of nature, and the philosophic conclusions that followed from them, with a purified form of religion, in which scarcely anything remained of the distinctive teaching of faith. There were many attempts at compromise to be found between the two extremes; but the conviction rapidly spread that dogmatic Christianity had lost every foundation, and that only its valuable ethical contents should be saved for the new monistic religion of the twentieth century. As, however, the existing external forms of the dominant Christian religion remained unaltered, and as, in spite of a progressive political development, they are more intimately than ever connected with the practical needs of the State, there has arisen that widespread religious profession in educated spheres which we can only call “pseudo-Christianity”—at the bottom it is a “religious lie” of the worst character. The great dangers which attend this conflict between sincere conviction and the hypocritical profession of modern pseudo-Christians are admirably described in Max Nordau’s interesting work on The Conventional Lies of Civilization.
In the midst of this obvious falseness of prevalent pseudo-Christianity there is one favorable circumstance for the progress of a rational study of nature: its most powerful and bitterest enemy, the Roman Church, threw off its mask of ostensible concern for higher mental development about the middle of the nineteenth century, and declared a guerre à l’outrance against independent science. This happened in three important challenges to reason, for the explicitness and resoluteness of which modern science and culture cannot but be grateful to the “Vicar of Christ.” (1) In December, 1854, the pope promulgated the dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary. (2) Ten years afterwards—in December, 1864—the pope published, in his famous encyclica, an absolute condemnation of the whole of modern civilization and culture; in the syllabus that accompanied it he enumerated and anathematized all the rational theses and philosophical principles which are regarded by modern science as lucid truths. (3) Finally, six years afterwards—on July 13, 1870—the militant head of the Church crowned his folly by claiming infallibility for himself and all his predecessors in the papal chair. This triumph of the Roman curia was communicated to the astonished world five days afterwards, on the very day on which France declared war with Prussia. Two months later the temporal power of the pope was taken from him in consequence of the war.
These three stupendous acts of the papacy were such obvious assaults on the reason of the nineteenth century that they gave rise, from the very beginning, to a most heated discussion even within orthodox Catholic circles. When the Vatican Council proceeded to define the dogma of infallibility on July 13, 1870, only three-fourths of the bishops declared in its favor, 451 out of 601 assenting; many other bishops, who wished to keep clear of the perilous definition, were absent from the council. But the shrewd pontiff had calculated better than the timid “discreet Catholics”: even this extraordinary dogma was blindly accepted by the credulous and uneducated masses of the faithful.
The whole history of the papacy, as it is substantiated by a thousand reliable sources and accessible documents, appears to the impartial student as an unscrupulous tissue of lying and deceit, a reckless pursuit of absolute mental despotism and secular power, a frivolous contradiction of all the high moral precepts which true Christianity enunciates—charity and toleration, truth and chastity, poverty and self-denial. When we judge the long series of popes and of the Roman princes of the Church, from whom the pope is chosen, by the standard of pure Christian morality, it is clear that the great majority of them were pitiful impostors, many of them utterly worthless and vicious. These well-known historical facts, however, do not prevent millions of educated Catholics from admitting the infallibility which the pope has claimed for himself; they do not prevent Protestant princes from going to Rome, and doing reverence to the pontiff (their most dangerous enemy); they do not prevent the fate of the German people from being intrusted to-day to the hands of the servants and followers of this “pious impostor” in the Reichstag—thanks to the incredible political indolence and credulity of the nation.
The most interesting of the three great events by which the papacy has endeavored to maintain and strengthen its despotism in the nineteenth century is the publication of the encyclica and the syllabus in December, 1864. In these remarkable documents all independent action was forbidden to reason and science, and they were commanded to submit implicitly to faith—that is, to the decrees of the infallible pope. The great excitement which followed this sublime piece of effrontery in educated and independent circles was in proportion with the stupendous contents of the encyclica. Draper has given us an excellent discussion of its educational and political significance in his History of the Conflict between Science and Religion.
The dogma of the immaculate conception seems, perhaps, to be less audacious and significant than the encyclica and the dogma of the infallibility of the pope. Yet not only the Roman hierarchy, but even some of the orthodox Protestants (the Evangelical Alliance, for instance), attach great importance to this thesis. What is known as the “immaculate oath”—that is, the confirmation of faith by an oath taken on the immaculate conception of Mary—is still regarded by millions of Christians as a sacred obligation. Many believers take the dogma in a twofold application; they think that the mother of Mary was impregnated by the Holy Ghost as well as Mary herself. Comparative and critical theology has recently shown that this myth has no greater claim to originality than most of the other stories in the Christian mythology; it has been borrowed from older religions, especially Buddhism. Similar myths were widely circulated in India, Persia, Asia Minor, and Greece several centuries before the birth of Christ. Whenever a king’s unwedded daughter, or some other maid of high degree, gave birth to a child, the father was always pronounced to be a god, or a demi-god; in the Christian case it was the Holy Ghost.
The special endowments of mind or body which often distinguished these “children of love” above ordinary offspring were thus partly explained by “heredity.” Distinguished “sons of God” of this kind were held in high esteem both in antiquity and during the Middle Ages, while the moral code of modern civilization reproaches them with their want of honorable parentage. This applies even more forcibly to “daughters of God,” though the poor maidens are just as little to blame for their want of a father. For the rest, every one who is familiar with the beautiful mythology of classical antiquity knows that these sons and daughters of the Greek and Roman gods often approach nearest to the highest ideal of humanity. Recollect the large legitimate family, and the still more numerous illegitimate offspring, of Zeus.
To return to the particular question of the impregnation of the Virgin Mary by the Holy Ghost, we are referred to the gospels for testimony to the fact. The only two evangelists who speak of it, Matthew and Luke, relate in harmony that the Jewish maiden Mary was betrothed to the carpenter Joseph, but became pregnant without his co-operation, and, indeed, “by the Holy Ghost.” As we have already related, the four canonical gospels which are regarded as the only genuine ones by the Christian Church, and adopted as the foundation of faith, were deliberately chosen from a much larger number of gospels, the details of which contradict each other sometimes just as freely as the assertions of the four. The fathers of the Church enumerate from forty to fifty of these spurious or apocryphal gospels; some of them are written both in Greek and Latin—for instance, the gospel of James, of Thomas, of Nicodemus, and so forth. The details which these apocryphal gospels give of the life of Christ, especially with regard to his birth and childhood, have just as much (or, on the whole, just as little) claim to historical validity as the four canonical gospels.
Now we find in one of these documents an historical statement, confirmed, moreover, in the Sepher Toldoth Jeschua, which probably furnishes the simple and natural solution of the “world-riddle” of the supernatural conception and birth of Christ. The author curtly gives us in one sentence the remarkable statement which contains this solution: “Josephus Pandera, the Roman officer of a Calabrian legion which was in Judæa, seduced Miriam of Bethlehem, and was the father of Jesus.” Other details given about Miriam (the Hebrew name for Mary) are far from being to the credit of the “Queen of Heaven.”
Naturally, these historical details are carefully avoided by the official theologian, but they assort badly with the traditional myth, and lift the veil from its mystery in a very simple and natural fashion. That makes it the more incumbent on impartial research and pure reason to make a critical examination of these statements. It must be admitted that they have much more title to credence than all the other statements about the birth of Christ. When, on familiar principles of science, we put aside the notion of supernatural conception through an “overshadowing of the Most High” as a pure myth, there only remains the widely accepted version of modern rational theology—that Joseph, the Jewish carpenter, was the true father of Christ. But this assumption is explicitly contradicted by many texts of the gospels; Christ himself was convinced that he was a “Son of God,” and he never recognized his foster-father, Joseph, as his real parent. Joseph, indeed, wanted to leave his betrothed when he found her pregnant without his interference. He gave up this idea when an angel appeared to him in a dream and pacified him. As it is expressly stated in the first chapter of Matthew (vv. 24, 25), there was no sexual intercourse between Joseph and Mary until after Jesus was born.
The statement of the apocryphal gospels, that the Roman officer, Pandera, was the true father of Christ, seems all the more credible when we make a careful anthropological study of the personality of Christ. He is generally regarded as purely Jewish. Yet the characteristics which distinguish his high and noble personality, and which give a distinct impress to his religion, are certainly not Semitical; they are rather features of the higher Arian race, and especially of its noblest branch, the Hellenes. Now, the name of Christ’s real father, “Pandera,” points unequivocally to a Greek origin; in one manuscript, in fact, it is written “Pandora.” Pandora was, according to the Greek mythology, the first woman, born of the earth by Vulcan and adorned with every charm by the gods, who was espoused by Epimetheus, and sent by Zeus to men with the dread “Pandora-box,” containing every evil, in punishment for the stealing of divine fire from heaven by Prometheus.
And it is interesting to see the different reception that the love-story of Miriam has met with at the hands of the four great Christian nations of civilized Europe. The stern morality of the Teutonic races entirely repudiates it; the righteous German and the prudish Briton prefer to believe blindly in the impossible thesis of a conception “by the Holy Ghost.” It is well known that this strenuous and carefully paraded prudery of the higher classes (especially in England) is by no means reflected in the true condition of sexual morality in high quarters. The revelations which the Pall Mall Gazette, for instance, made on the subject twelve years ago vividly recalled the condition of Babylon.
The Romantic races, which ridicule this prudery and take sexual relations less seriously, find Mary’s Romance attractive enough; the special cult which “Our Lady” enjoys in France and Italy is often associated with this love-story with curious naïveté. Thus, for example, Paul de Regla (Dr. Desjardin), author of Jesus of Nazareth considered from a Scientific, Historical, and Social Standpoint (1894), finds precisely in the illegitimate birth of Christ a special “title to the halo that irradiates his noble form.”
It seemed to me necessary to enter fully into this important question of the origin of Christ in the sense of impartial historical science, because the Church militant itself lays great emphasis on it, and because it regards the miraculous structure which has been founded on it as one of its strongest weapons against modern thought. The highest ethical value of pure primitive Christianity and the ennobling influence of this “religion of love” on the history of civilization are quite independent of those mythical dogmas. The so-called “revelations” on which these myths are based are incompatible with the firmest results of modern science.
[CHAPTER XVIII]
OUR MONISTIC RELIGION
Monism as a Connecting Link between Religion and Science—The Cultur-Kampf—The Relations of Church and State—Principles of the Monistic Religion—Its Three-fold Ideal: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful—Contradiction between Scientific and Christian Truth—Harmony of the Monistic and the Christian Idea of Virtue—Opposition between Monistic and Christian Views of Art—Modern Expansion and Enrichment of Our Idea of the World—Landscape-Painting and the Modern Enjoyment of Nature—The Beauties of Nature—This World and Beyond—Monistic Churches
Many distinguished scientists and philosophers of the day, who share our monistic views, consider that religion is generally played out. Their meaning is that the clear insight into the evolution of the world which the great scientific progress of the nineteenth century has afforded us will satisfy, not only the causal feeling of our reason, but even our highest emotional cravings. This view is correct in the sense that the two ideas, religion and science, would indeed blend into one if we had a perfectly clear and consecutive system of monism. However, there are but a few resolute thinkers who attain to this most pure and lofty conception of Spinoza and Goethe. Most of the educated people of our time (as distinct from the uncultured masses) remain in the conviction that religion is a separate branch of our mental life, independent of science, and not less valuable and indispensable.
If we adopt this view, we can find a means of reconciling the two great and apparently quite distinct branches in the idea I put forward in “Monism, as a Connecting-Link between Religion and Science,” in 1892. In the preface to this Confession of Faith of a Man of Science I expressed myself in the following words with regard to its double object: “In the first place, I must give expression to the rational system which is logically forced upon us by the recent progress of science; it dwells in the intimate thoughts of nearly every impartial and thoughtful scientist, though few have the courage or the disposition to avow it. In the second place, I would make of it a connecting-link between religion and science, and thus do away with the antithesis which has been needlessly maintained between these two branches of the highest activity of the human mind. The ethical craving of our emotion is satisfied by monism no less than the logical demand for causality on the part of reason.”
The remarkable interest which the discourse enkindled is a proof that in this monistic profession of faith I expressed the feeling not only of many scientists, but of a large number of cultured men and women of very different circles. Not only was I rewarded by hundreds of sympathetic letters, but by a wide circulation of the printed address, of which six editions were required within six months. I had the more reason to be content with this unexpected success, as this “confession of faith” was originally merely an occasional speech which I delivered unprepared on October 9, 1892, at Altenburg, during the jubilee of the Scientific Society of East Germany. Naturally there was the usual demonstration on the other side; I was fiercely attacked, not only by the ultramontane press, the sworn defenders of superstition, but also by the “liberal” controversialists of evangelical Christianity, who profess to defend both scientific truth and purified faith. In the seven years that have ensued since that time the great struggle between modern science and orthodox Christianity has become more threatening; it has grown more dangerous for science in proportion as Christianity has found support in an increasing mental and political reaction. In some countries the Church has made such progress that the freedom of thought and conscience, which is guaranteed by the laws, is in practice gravely menaced (for instance, in Bavaria). The great historic struggle which Draper has so admirably depicted in his Conflict between Religion and Science is to-day more acute and significant than ever. For the last twenty-seven years it has been rightly called the “cultur-kampf.”
The famous encyclica and syllabus which the militant pope, Pius IX., sent out into the entire world in 1864 were a declaration of war on the whole of modern science; they demanded the blind submission of reason to the dogmas of the infallible pope. The enormity of this crude assault on the highest treasures of civilization even roused many indolent minds from the slumber of belief. Together with the subsequent promulgation of the papal infallibility (1870), the encyclica provoked a deep wave of irritation and an energetic repulse which held out high hopes. In the new German empire, which had attained its indispensable national unity by the heavy sacrifices of the wars of 1866 and 1871, the insolent attacks of the pope were felt to be particularly offensive. On the one hand, Germany is the cradle of the Reformation and the modern emancipation of reason; on the other hand, it unfortunately has in its 18,000,000 Catholics a vast host of militant believers, who are unsurpassed by any other civilized people in blind obedience to their chief shepherd.
The dangers of such a situation were clearly recognized by the great statesman who had solved the political “world-riddle” of the dismemberment of Germany, and had led us by a marvellous statecraft to the long-desired goal of national unity and power. Prince Bismarck began the famous struggle with the Vatican, which is known as the cultur-kampf, in 1872, and it was conducted with equal ability and energy by the distinguished Minister of Worship, Falk, author of the May laws of 1873. Unfortunately, Bismarck had to desist six years afterwards. Although the great statesman was a remarkable judge of men and a realistic politician of immense tact, he had underestimated the force of three powerful obstacles—first, the unsurpassed cunning and unscrupulous treachery of the Roman curia; secondly, the correlative ingratitude and credulity of the uneducated Catholic masses, on which the papacy built; and, thirdly, the power of apathy, the continuance of the irrational, simply because it is in possession. Hence, in 1878, when the abler Leo XIII. had ascended the pontifical throne, the fatal “To Canossa” was heard once more. From that time the newly established power of Rome grew in strength; partly through the unscrupulous intrigues and serpentine bends of its slippery Jesuitical politics, partly through the false Church-politics of the German government and the marvellous political incompetence of the German people. We have, therefore, at the close of the nineteenth century to endure the pitiful spectacle of the Catholic “Centre” being the most important section of the Reichstag, and the fate of our humiliated country depending on a papal party, which does not constitute numerically a third part of the nation.
When the cultur-kampf began in 1872, it was justly acclaimed by all independent thinkers as a political renewal of the Reformation, a vigorous attempt to free modern civilization from the yoke of papal despotism. The whole of the Liberal press hailed Bismarck as a “political Luther”—as the great hero, not only of the national unity, but also of the rational emancipation of Germany. Ten years afterwards, when the papacy had proved victorious, the same “Liberal press” changed its colors, and denounced the cultur-kampf as a great mistake; and it does the same thing to-day. The facts show how short is the memory of our journalists, how defective their knowledge of history, and how poor their philosophic education. The so-called “Peace between Church and State” is never more than a suspension of hostilities. The modern papacy, true to the despotic principles it has followed for the last sixteen hundred years, is determined to wield sole dominion over the credulous souls of men; it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured State, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science. True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground. Either the Church wins, and then farewell to all “free science and free teaching”—then are our universities no better than jails, and our colleges become cloistral schools; or else the modern rational State proves victorious—then, in the twentieth century, human culture, freedom, and prosperity will continue their progressive development until they far surpass even the height of the nineteenth century.
In order to compass these high aims, it is of the first importance that modern science not only shatter the false structures of superstition and sweep their ruins from the path, but that it also erect a new abode for human emotion on the ground it has cleared—a “palace of reason,” in which, under the influence of our new monistic views, we do reverence to the real trinity of the nineteenth century—the trinity of “the true, the good, and the beautiful.” In order to give a tangible shape to the cult of this divine ideal, we must first of all compare our position with the dominant forms of Christianity, and realize the changes that are involved in the substitution of the one for the other. For, in spite of its errors and defects, the Christian religion (in its primitive and purer form) has so high an ethical value, and has entered so deeply into the most important social and political movements of civilized history for the last fifteen hundred years, that we must appeal as much as possible to its existing institutions in the establishment of our monistic religion. We do not seek a mighty revolution, but a rational reformation, of our religious life. And just as, two thousand years ago, the classic poetry of the ancient Greeks incarnated their ideals of virtue in divine shapes, so may we, too, lend the character of noble goddesses to our three rational ideals. We must inquire into the features of the three goddesses of the monist—truth, beauty, and virtue; and we must study their relation to the three corresponding ideals of Christianity which they are to replace.
I. The preceding inquiries (especially those of the first and third sections) have convinced us that truth unadulterated is only to be found in the temple of the study of nature, and that the only available paths to it are critical observation and reflection—the empirical investigation of facts and the rational study of their efficient causes. In this way we arrive, by means of pure reason, at true science, the highest treasure of civilized man. We must, in accordance with the arguments of our [sixteenth chapter], reject what is called “revelation,” the poetry of faith, that affirms the discovery of truth in a supernatural fashion, without the assistance of reason. And since the entire structure of the Judæo-Christian religion, like that of the Mohammedan and the Buddhistic, rests on these so-called revelations, and these mystic fruits of the imagination directly contradict the clear results of empirical research, it is obvious that we shall only attain to a knowledge of the truth by the rational activity of genuine science, not by the poetic imagining of a mystic faith. In this respect it is quite certain that the Christian system must give way to the monistic. The goddess of truth dwells in the temple of nature, in the green woods, on the blue sea, and on the snowy summits of the hills—not in the gloom of the cloister, nor in the narrow prisons of our jail-like schools, nor in the clouds of incense of the Christian churches. The paths which lead to the noble divinity of truth and knowledge are the loving study of nature and its laws, the observation of the infinitely great star-world with the aid of the telescope, and the infinitely tiny cell-world with the aid of the microscope—not senseless ceremonies and unthinking prayers, not alms and Peter’s Pence. The rich gifts which the goddess of truth bestows on us are the noble fruits of the tree of knowledge and the inestimable treasure of a clear, unified view of the world—not belief in supernatural miracles and the illusion of an eternal life.
II. It is otherwise with the divine ideal of eternal goodness. In our search for the truth we have entirely to exclude the “revelation” of the churches, and devote ourselves solely to the study of nature; but, on the other hand, the idea of the good, which we call virtue, in our monistic religion coincides for the most part with the Christian idea of virtue. We are speaking, naturally, of the primitive and pure Christianity of the first three centuries, as far as we learn its moral teaching from the gospels and the epistles of Paul; it does not apply to the Vatican caricature of that pure doctrine which has dominated European civilization, to its infinite prejudice, for twelve hundred years. The best part of Christian morality, to which we firmly adhere, is represented by the humanist precepts of charity and toleration, compassion and assistance. However, these noble commands, which are set down as “Christian” morality (in its best sense), are by no means original discoveries of Christianity; they are derived from earlier religions. The Golden Rule, which sums up these precepts in one sentence, is centuries older than Christianity. In the conduct of life this law of natural morality has been followed just as frequently by non-Christians and atheists as it has been neglected by pious believers. Moreover, Christian ethics was marred by the great defect of a narrow insistence on altruism and a denunciation of egoism. Our monistic ethics lays equal emphasis on the two, and finds perfect virtue in the just balance of love of self and love of one’s neighbor (cf. [chap. xix].).
III. But monism enters into its strongest opposition to Christianity on the question of beauty. Primitive Christianity preached the worthlessness of earthly life, regarding it merely as a preparation for an eternal life beyond. Hence it immediately followed that all we find in the life of man here below, all that is beautiful in art and science, in public and in private life, is of no real value. The true Christian must avert his eyes from them; he must think only of a worthy preparation for the life beyond. Contempt of nature, aversion from all its inexhaustible charms, rejection of every kind of fine art, are Christian duties; and they are carried out to perfection when a man separates himself from his fellows, chastises his body, and spends all his time in prayer in the cloister or the hermit’s cell.
History teaches us that this ascetical morality that would scorn the whole of nature had, as a natural consequence, the very opposite effect to that it intended. Monasteries, the homes of chastity and discipline, soon became dens of the wildest orgies; the sexual commerce of monks and nuns has inspired shoals of novels, as it is so faithfully depicted in the literature of the Renaissance. The cult of the “beautiful,” which was then practised, was in flagrant contradiction with the vaunted “abandonment of the world”; and the same must be said of the pomp and luxury which soon developed in the immoral private lives of the higher ecclesiastics and in the artistic decoration of Christian churches and monasteries.
It may be objected that our view is refuted by the splendor of Christian art, which, especially in the best days of the Middle Ages, created works of undying beauty. The graceful Gothic cathedrals and Byzantine basilicas, the hundreds of magnificent chapels, the thousands of marble statues of saints and martyrs, the millions of fine pictures of saints, of profoundly conceived representations of Christ and the madonna—all are proofs of the development of a noble art in the Middle Ages, which is unique of its kind. All these splendid monuments of mediæval art are untouched in their high æsthetic value, whatever we say of their mixture of truth and fancy. Yes; but what has all that to do with the pure teaching of Christianity—with that religion of sacrifice that turned scornfully away from all earthly parade and glamour, from all material beauty and art; that made light of the life of the family and the love of woman; that urged an exclusive concern as to the immaterial goods of eternal life? The idea of a Christian art is a contradiction in terms—a contradictio in adjecto. The wealthy princes of the Church who fostered it were candidly aiming at very different ideals, and they completely attained them. In directing the whole interest and activity of the human mind in the Middle Ages to the Christian Church and its distinctive art they were diverting it from nature and from the knowledge of the treasures that were hidden in it, and would have conducted to independent science. Moreover, the daily sight of the huge images of the saints and of the scenes of “sacred history” continually reminded the faithful of the vast collection of myths that the Church had made. The legends themselves were taught and believed to be true narratives, and the stories of miracles to be records of actual events. It cannot be doubted that in this respect Christian art has exercised an immense influence on general culture, and especially in the strengthening of Christian belief—an influence which still endures throughout the entire civilized world.
The diametrical opposite of this dominant Christian art is the new artistic tendency which has been developed during the present century in connection with science. The remarkable expansion of our knowledge of nature, and the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, which it includes, have awakened quite a new æsthetic sense in our generation, and thus given a new tone to painting and sculpture. Numerous scientific voyages and expeditions for the exploration of unknown lands and seas, partly in earlier centuries, but more especially in the nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed abundance of new organic forms. The number of new species of animals and plants soon became enormous, and among them (especially among the lower groups that had been neglected before) there were thousands of forms of great beauty and interest, affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, sculpture, architecture, and technical art. In this respect a new world was revealed by the great advance of microscopic research in the second half of the century, and especially by the discovery of the marvellous inhabitants of the deep sea, which were first brought to light by the famous expedition of the Challenger (1872-76). Thousands of graceful radiolaria and thalamophora, of pretty medusæ and corals, of extraordinary molluscs, and crabs, suddenly introduced us to a wealth of hidden organisms beyond all anticipation, the peculiar beauty and diversity of which far transcend all the creations of the human imagination. In the fifty large volumes of the account of the Challenger expedition a vast number of these beautiful forms are delineated on three thousand plates; and there are millions of other lovely organisms described in other great works that are included in the fast-growing literature of zoology and botany of the last ten years. I began on a small scale to select a number of these beautiful forms for more popular description in my Art Forms in Nature (1899).
However, there is now no need for long voyages and costly works to appreciate the beauties of this world. A man needs only to keep his eyes open and his mind disciplined. Surrounding nature offers us everywhere a marvellous wealth of lovely and interesting objects of all kinds. In every bit of moss and blade of grass, in every beetle and butterfly, we find, when we examine it carefully, beauties which are usually overlooked. Above all, when we examine them with a powerful glass or, better still, with a good microscope, we find everywhere in nature a new world of inexhaustible charms.
But the nineteenth century has not only opened our eyes to the æsthetic enjoyment of the microscopic world; it has shown us the beauty of the greater objects in nature. Even at its commencement it was the fashion to regard the mountains as magnificent but forbidding, and the sea as sublime but dreaded. At its close the majority of educated people—especially they who dwell in the great cities—are delighted to enjoy the glories of the Alps and the crystal splendor of the glacier world for a fortnight every year, or to drink in the majesty of the ocean and the lovely scenery of its coasts. All these sources of the keenest enjoyment of nature have only recently been revealed to us in all their splendor, and the remarkable progress we have made in facility and rapidity of conveyance has given even the less wealthy an opportunity of approaching them. All this progress in the æsthetic enjoyment of nature—and, proportionately, in the scientific understanding of nature—implies an equal advance in higher mental development and, consequently, in the direction of our monistic religion.
The opposite character of our naturalistic century to that of the anthropistic centuries that preceded is especially noticeable in the different appreciation and spread of illustrations of the most diverse natural objects. In our own days a lively interest in artistic work of that kind has been developed, which did not exist in earlier ages; it has been supported by the remarkable progress of commerce and technical art which have facilitated a wide popularization of such illustrations. Countless illustrated periodicals convey along with their general information a sense of the inexhaustible beauty of nature in all its departments. In particular, landscape-painting has acquired an importance that surpassed all imagination. In the first half of the century one of our greatest and most erudite scientists, Alexander Humboldt, had pointed out that the development of modern landscape-painting is not only of great importance as an incentive to the study of nature and as a means of geographical description, but that it is to be commended in other respects as a noble educative medium. Since that time the taste for it has considerably increased. It should be the aim at every school to teach the children to enjoy scenery at an early age, and to give them the valuable art of imprinting on the memory by a drawing or water-color sketch.
The infinite wealth of nature in what is beautiful and sublime offers every man with open eyes and an æsthetic sense an incalculable sum of choicest gifts. Still, however valuable and agreeable is the immediate enjoyment of each single gift, its worth is doubled by a knowledge of its meaning and its connection with the rest of nature. When Humboldt gave us the “outline of a physical description of the world” in his magnificent Cosmos forty years ago, and when he combined scientific and æsthetic consideration so happily in his standard Prospects of Nature, he justly indicated how closely the higher enjoyment of nature is connected with the “scientific establishment of cosmic laws,” and that the conjunction of the two serves to raise human nature to a higher stage of perfection. The astonishment with which we gaze upon the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we trace the marvellous working of energy in the motion of matter, the reverence with which we grasp the universal dominance of the law of substance throughout the universe—all these are part of our emotional life, falling under the heading of “natural religion.”
This progress of modern times in knowledge of the true and enjoyment of the beautiful expresses, on the one hand, a valuable element of our monistic religion, but is, on the other hand, in fatal opposition to Christianity. For the human mind is thus made to live on this side of the grave; Christianity would have it ever gaze beyond. Monism teaches that we are perishable children of the earth, who for one or two, or, at the most, three generations, have the good fortune to enjoy the treasures of our planet, to drink of the inexhaustible fountain of its beauty, and to trace out the marvellous play of its forces. Christianity would teach us that the earth is “a vale of tears,” in which we have but a brief period to chasten and torment ourselves in order to merit the life of eternal bliss beyond. Where this “beyond” is, and of what joys the glory of this eternal life is compacted, no revelation has ever told us. As long as “heaven” was thought to be the blue vault that hovers over the disk of our planet, and is illumined by the twinkling light of a few thousand stars, the human imagination could picture to itself the ambrosial banquets of the Olympic gods above or the laden tables of the happy dwellers in Valhalla. But now all these deities and the immortal souls that sat at their tables are “houseless and homeless,” as David Strauss has so ably described; for we know from astrophysical science that the immeasurable depths of space are filled with a prosaic ether, and that millions of heavenly bodies, ruled by eternal laws of iron, rush hither and thither in the great ocean, in their eternal rhythm of life and death.
The places of devotion, in which men seek the satisfaction of their religious emotions and worship the objects of their reverence, are regarded as sacred “churches.” The pagodas of Buddhistic Asia, the Greek temples of classical antiquity, the synagogues of Palestine, the mosques of Egypt, the Catholic cathedrals of the south, and the Protestant cathedrals of the north, of Europe—all these “houses of God” serve to raise man above the misery and the prose of daily life, to lift him into the sacred, poetic atmosphere of a higher, ideal world. They attain this end in a thousand different ways, according to their various forms of worship and their age. The modern man who “has science and art”—and, therefore, “religion”—needs no special church, no narrow, enclosed portion of space. For through the length and breadth of free nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to the whole universe or to any single part of it, he finds, indeed, the grim “struggle for life,” but by its side are ever “the good, the true, and the beautiful”; his church is commensurate with the whole of glorious nature. Still, there will always be men of special temperament who will desire to have decorated temples or churches as places of devotion to which they may withdraw. Just as the Catholics had to relinquish a number of churches to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, so a still larger number will pass over to “free societies” of monists in the coming years.
[CHAPTER XIX]
OUR MONISTIC ETHICS
Monistic and Dualistic Ethics—Contradiction of Pure and Practical Reason in Kant—His Categorical Imperative—The Neo-Kantians—Herbert Spencer—Egoism and Altruism—Equivalence of the Two Instincts—The Fundamental Law of Ethics: the Golden Rule—Its Antiquity—Christian Ethics—Contempt of Self, the Body, Nature, Civilization, the Family, Woman—Roman Catholic Ethics—Immoral Results of Celibacy—Necessity for the Abolition of the Law of Celibacy, Oral Confession, and Indulgences—State and Church—Religion a Private Concern—Church and School—State and School—Need of School Reform
The practical conduct of life makes a number of definite ethical claims on a man which can only be duly and naturally satisfied when they are in complete harmony with his view of the world. In accordance with this fundamental principle of our monistic philosophy, our whole system of ethics must be rationally connected with the unified conception of the cosmos which we have formed by our advanced knowledge of the laws of nature. Just as the infinite universe is one great whole in the light of our monistic teaching, so the spiritual and moral life of man is a part of this cosmos, and our naturalistic ordering of it must also be monistic. There are not two different, separate worlds—the one physical and material, and the other moral and immaterial.
The great majority of philosophers and theologians still hold the contrary opinion. They affirm, with Kant, that the moral world is quite independent of the physical, and is subject to very different laws; hence a man’s conscience, as the basis of his moral life, must also be quite independent of our scientific knowledge of the world, and must be based rather on his religious faith. On that theory the study of the moral world belongs to practical reason, while that of nature, or of the physical world, is referred to pure or theoretical reason. This unequivocal and conscious dualism of Kant’s philosophy was its greatest defect; it has caused, and still causes, incalculable mischief. First of all the “critical Kant” had built up the splendid and marvellous palace of pure reason, and convincingly proved that the three great central dogmas of metaphysics—a personal God, free will, and the immortal soul—had no place whatever in it, and that no rational proof could be found of their reality. Afterwards, however, the “dogmatic Kant” superimposed on this true crystal palace of pure reason the glittering, ideal castle in the air of practical reason, in which three imposing church-naves were designed for the accommodation of those three great mystic divinities. When they had been put out at the front door by rational knowledge they returned by the back door under the guidance of irrational faith.
The cupola of his great cathedral of faith was crowned by Kant with his curious idol, the famous “categorical imperative.” According to it, the demand of the universal moral law is unconditional, independent of any regard to actuality or potentiality. It runs: “Act at all times in such wise that the maxim (or the subjective law of thy will) may hold good as a principle of a universal law.” On that theory all normal men would have the same sense of duty. Modern anthropology has ruthlessly dissipated that pretty dream; it has shown that conceptions of duty differ even more among uncivilized than among civilized nations. All the actions and customs which we regard as sins or loathsome crimes (theft, fraud, murder, adultery, etc.) are considered by other nations in certain circumstances to be virtues, or even sacred duties.
Although the obvious contradiction of the two forms of reason in Kant’s teaching, the fundamental antagonism of pure and practical reason, was recognized and attacked at the very beginning of the century, it is still pretty widely accepted. The modern school of neo-Kantians urges a “return to Kant” so pressingly precisely on account of this agreeable dualism; the Church militant zealously supports it because it fits in admirably with its own mystic faith. But it met with an effective reverse at the hands of modern science in the second half of the nineteenth century, which entirely demolished the theses of the system of practical reason. Monistic cosmology proved, on the basis of the law of substance, that there is no personal God; comparative and genetic psychology showed that there cannot be an immortal soul; and monistic physiology proved the futility of the assumption of “free will.” Finally, the science of evolution made it clear that the same eternal iron laws that rule in the inorganic world are valid too in the organic and moral world.
But modern science gives not only a negative support to practical philosophy and ethics in demolishing the Kantian dualism, but it renders the positive service of substituting for it the new structure of ethical monism. It shows that the feeling of duty does not rest on an illusory “categorical imperative,” but on the solid ground of social instinct, as we find in the case of all social animals. It regards as the highest aim of all morality the re-establishment of a sound harmony between egoism and altruism, between self-love and the love of one’s neighbor. It is to the great English philosopher, Herbert Spencer, that we owe the founding of this monistic ethics on a basis of evolution.
Man belongs to the social vertebrates, and has, therefore, like all social animals, two sets of duties—first to himself, and secondly to the society to which he belongs. The former are the behests of self-love or egoism, the latter of love for one’s fellows or altruism. The two sets of precepts are equally just, equally natural, and equally indispensable. If a man desire to have the advantage of living in an organized community, he has to consult not only his own fortune, but also that of the society, and of the “neighbors” who form the society. He must realize that its prosperity is his own prosperity, and that it cannot suffer without his own injury. This fundamental law of society is so simple and so inevitable that one cannot understand how it can be contradicted in theory or in practice; yet that is done to-day, and has been done for thousands of years.
The equal appreciation of these two natural impulses, or the moral equivalence of self-love and love of others, is the chief and the fundamental principle of our morality. Hence the highest aim of all ethics is very simple—it is the re-establishment of “the natural equality of egoism and altruism, of the love of one’s self and the love of one’s neighbor.” The Golden Rule says: “Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.” From this highest precept of Christianity it follows of itself that we have just as sacred duties towards ourselves as we have towards our fellows. I have explained my conception of this principle in my Monism, and laid down three important theses. (1) Both these concurrent impulses are natural laws, of equal importance and necessity for the preservation of the family and the society; egoism secures the self-preservation of the individual, altruism that of the species which is made up of the chain of perishable individuals. (2) The social duties which are imposed by the social structure of the associated individuals, and by means of which it secures its preservation, are merely higher evolutionary stages of the social instincts, which we find in all higher social animals (as “habits which have become hereditary”). (3) In the case of civilized man all ethics, theoretical or practical, being “a science of rules,” is connected with his view of the world at large, and consequently with his religion.
From the recognition of the fundamental principle of our morality we may immediately deduce its highest precept, that noble command, which is often called the Golden Rule of morals, or, briefly, the Golden Rule. Christ repeatedly expressed it in the simple phrase: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Mark adds that “there is no greater commandment than this,” and Matthew says: “In these two commandments is the whole law and the prophets.” In this greatest and highest commandment our monistic ethics is completely at one with Christianity. We must, however, recall the historical fact that the formulation of this supreme command is not an original merit of Christ, as the majority of Christian theologians affirm and their uncritical supporters blindly accept. The Golden Rule is five hundred years older than Christ; it was laid down as the highest moral principle by many Greek and Oriental sages. Pittacus, of Mylene, one of the seven wise men of Greece, said six hundred and twenty years before Christ: “Do not that to thy neighbor that thou wouldst not suffer from him.” Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher and religious founder (who rejected the idea of a personal God and of the immortality of the soul), said five hundred years B.C.: “Do to every man as thou wouldst have him do to thee; and do not to another what thou wouldst not have him do to thee. This precept only dost thou need; it is the foundation of all other commandments.” Aristotle taught about the middle of the fourth century B.C.: “We must act towards others as we wish others to act towards us.” In the same sense, and partly in the same words, the Golden Rule was given by Thales, Isocrates, Aristippus, Sextus, the Pythagorean, and other philosophers of classic antiquity—several centuries before Christ. From this collection it is clear that the Golden Rule had a polyphyletic origin—that is, it was formulated by a number of philosophers at different times and in different places, quite independently of each other. Otherwise it must be assumed that Jesus derived it from some other Oriental source, from ancient Semitic, Indian, Chinese, or especially Buddhistic traditions, as has been proved in the case of most of the other Christian doctrines.
As the great ethical principle is thus twenty-five hundred years old, and as Christianity itself has put it at the head of its moral teaching as the highest and all-embracing commandment, it follows that our monistic ethics is in complete harmony on this important point, not only with the ethics of the ancient heathens, but also with that of Christianity. Unfortunately this harmony is disturbed by the fact that the gospels and the Pauline epistles contain many other points of moral teaching, which contradict our first and supreme commandment. Christian theologians have fruitlessly striven to explain away these striking and painful contradictions by their ingenious interpretations. We need not enter into that question now, but we must briefly consider those unfortunate aspects of Christian ethics which are incompatible with the better thought of the modern age, and which are distinctly injurious in their practical consequences. Of that character is the contempt which Christianity has shown for self, for the body, for nature, for civilization, for the family, and for woman.
I. The supreme mistake of Christian ethics, and one which runs directly counter to the Golden Rule, is its exaggeration of love of one’s neighbor at the expense of self-love. Christianity attacks and despises egoism on principle. Yet that natural impulse is absolutely indispensable in view of self-preservation; indeed, one may say that even altruism, its apparent opposite, is only an enlightened egoism. Nothing great or elevated has ever taken place without egoism, and without the passion that urges us to great sacrifices. It is only the excesses of the impulse that are injurious. One of the Christian precepts that were impressed upon us in our early youth as of great importance, and that are glorified in millions of sermons, is: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” It is a very ideal precept, but as useless in practice as it is unnatural. So it is with the counsel, “If any man will take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also.” Translated into the terms of modern life, that means: “When some unscrupulous scoundrel has defrauded thee of half thy goods, let him have the other half also.” Or, again, in the language of modern politics: “When the pious English take from you simple Germans one after another of your new and valuable colonies in Africa, let them have all the rest of your colonies also—or, best of all, give them Germany itself.” And, while we touch on the marvellous world-politics of modern England, we may note in passing its direct contradiction of every precept of Christian charity, which is more frequently on the lips of that great nation than of any other nation in the world. However, the glaring contradiction between the theoretical, ideal, altruistic morality of the human individual and the real, purely selfish morality of the human community, and especially of the civilized Christian state, is a familiar fact. It would be interesting to determine mathematically in what proportion among organized men the altruistic ethical ideal of the individual changes into its contrary, the purely egoistic “real politics” of the state and the nation.
II. Since the Christian faith takes a wholly dualistic view of the human organism and attributes to the immortal soul only a temporary sojourn in the mortal frame, it very naturally sets a much greater value on the soul than on the body. Hence results that neglect of the care of the body, of training, and of cleanliness which contrasts the life of the Christian Middle Ages so unfavorably with that of pagan classical antiquity. Christian ethics contains none of those firm commands as to daily ablutions which are theoretically laid down and practically fulfilled in the Mohammedan, Hindoo, and other religions. In many monasteries the ideal of the pious Christian is the man who does not wash and clothe himself properly, who never changes his malodorous gown, and who, instead of regular work, fills up his useless life with mechanical prayers, senseless fasts, and so forth. As a special outgrowth of this contempt of the body we have the disgusting discipline of the flagellants and other ascetics.
III. One source of countless theoretical errors and practical blemishes, of deplorable crudity and privation, is found in the false anthropism of Christianity—that is, in the unique position which it gives to man, as the image of God, in opposition to all the rest of nature. In this way it has contributed, not only to an extremely injurious isolation from our glorious mother “nature,” but also to a regrettable contempt of all other organisms. Christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals, that sympathy with the nearly related and friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.), which is urged in the ethical teaching of many of the older religions, especially Buddhism. Whoever has spent much time in the south of Europe must have often witnessed those frightful sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the deepest sympathy and indignation. And when one expostulates with these brutal “Christians” on their cruelty, the only answer is, with a laugh: “But the beasts are not Christians.” Unfortunately Descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only has a sensitive soul, not the animal.
How much more elevated is our monistic ethics than the Christian in this regard! Darwinism teaches us that we have descended immediately from the primates, and, in a secondary degree, from a long series of earlier mammals, and that, therefore, they are “our brothers”; physiology informs us that they have the same nerves and sense-organs as we, and the same feelings of pleasure and pain. No sympathetic monistic scientist would ever be guilty of that brutal treatment of animals which comes so lightly to the Christian in his anthropistic illusion—to the “child of the God of love.” Moreover, this Christian contempt of nature on principle deprives man of an abundance of the highest earthly joys, especially of the keen, ennobling enjoyment of nature.
IV. Since, according to Christ’s teaching, our planet is “a vale of tears,” and our earthly life is valueless and a mere preparation for a better life to come, it has succeeded in inducing men to sacrifice all happiness on this side of eternity and make light of all earthly goods. Among these “earthly goods,” in the case of the modern civilized man, we must include the countless great and small conveniences of technical science, hygiene, commerce, etc., which have made modern life cheerful and comfortable; we must include all the gratifications of painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, which flourished exceedingly even during the Middle Ages (in spite of its principles), and which we esteem as “ideal pleasures”; we must include all that invaluable progress of science, especially the study of nature, of which the nineteenth century is justly proud. All these “earthly goods,” that have so high a value in the eyes of the monist, are worthless—nay, injurious—for the most part, according to Christian teaching; the stern code of Christian morals should look just as unfavorably on the pursuit of these pleasures as our humanistic ethics fosters and encourages it. Once more, therefore, Christianity is found to be an enemy to civilization, and the struggle which modern thought and science are compelled to conduct with it is, in this additional sense, a “cultur-kampf.”
V. Another of the most deplorable aspects of Christian morality is its belittlement of the life of the family, of that natural living together with our next of kin which is just as necessary in the case of man as in the case of all the higher social animals. The family is justly regarded as the “foundation of society,” and the healthy life of the family is a necessary condition of the prosperity of the State. Christ, however, was of a very different opinion: with his gaze ever directed to “the beyond,” he thought as lightly of woman and the family as of all other goods of “this life.” Of his infrequent contact with his parents and sisters the gospels have very little to say; but they are far from representing his relations with his mother to have been so tender and intimate as they are poetically depicted in so many thousands of pictures. He was not married himself. Sexual love, the first foundation of the family union, seems to have been regarded by Jesus as a necessary evil. His most enthusiastic apostle, Paul, went still farther in the same direction, declaring it to be better not to marry than to marry: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” If humanity were to follow this excellent counsel, it would soon be rid of all earthly misery and suffering: it would be killed off by such a “radical cure” within half a century.
VI. As Christ never knew the love of woman, he had no personal acquaintance with that refining of man’s true nature that comes only from the intimate life of man with woman. The intimate sexual union, on which the preservation of the human race depends, is just as important on that account as the spiritual penetration of the two sexes, or the mutual complement which they bring to each other in the practical wants of daily life as well as in the highest ideal functions of the soul. For man and woman are two different organisms, equal in worth, each having its characteristic virtues and defects. As civilization advanced, this ideal value of sexual love was more appreciated, and woman held in higher honor, especially among the Teutonic races; she is the inspiring source of the highest achievements of art and poetry. But Christ was as far from this view as nearly the whole of antiquity; he shared the idea that prevailed everywhere in the East—that woman is subordinate to man, and intercourse with her is “unclean.” Long-suffering nature has taken a fearful revenge for this blunder; its sad consequences are written in letters of blood in the history of the papal Middle Ages.
The marvellous hierarchy of the Roman Church, that never disdained any means of strengthening its spiritual despotism, found an exceptionally powerful instrument in the manipulation of this “unclean” idea, and in the promotion of the ascetic notion that abstinence from intercourse with women is a virtue of itself. In the first few centuries after Christ a number of priests voluntarily abstained from marriage, and the supposed value of this celibacy soon rose to such a degree that it was made obligatory. In the Middle Ages the seduction of women of good repute and of their daughters by Catholic priests (the confessional was an active agency in the business) was a public scandal: many communities, in order to prevent such things, pressed for a license of concubinage to be given to the clergy. And it was done in many, and sometimes very romantic, ways. Thus, for instance, the canon law that the priest’s cook should not be less than forty years old was very cleverly “explained” in the sense that the priest might have two cooks, one in the presbytery, another without; if one was twenty-four and the other eighteen, that made forty-two together—two years above the prescribed age. At the Christian councils, at which heretics were burned alive, the cardinals and bishops sat down with whole troops of prostitutes. The private and public debauchery of the Catholic clergy was so scandalous and dangerous to the commonwealth that there was a general rebellion against it before the time of Luther, and a loud demand for a “reformation of the church in head and members.” It is well known that these immoral relations still continue in Roman Catholic lands, although more in secret. Formerly proposals were made from time to time for the definitive abrogation of celibacy, as was done, for instance, in the chambers of Baden, Bavaria, Hesse, Saxony, and other lands; but they have, unfortunately, hitherto proved unavailing. In the German Reichstag, in which the ultramontane Centre is now proposing the most ridiculous measures for the suppression of sexual immorality, there is now no party that will urge the abolition of celibacy in the interest of public morality. The so-called “Freethought” Party and the utopian social democracy coquette with the favor of the Centre.
The modern state that would lift not only the material, but the moral, life of its people to a higher level is entitled, and indeed bound, to sweep away such unworthy and harmful conditions. The obligatory celibacy of the Catholic clergy is as pernicious and immoral as the practice of auricular confession or the sale of indulgences. All three have nothing whatever to do with primitive Christianity. All three are directly opposed to true Christian morality. All three are disreputable inventions of the papacy, designed for the sole purpose of strengthening its despotic rule over the credulous masses and making as much material profit as possible out of them.
The Nemesis of history will sooner or later exact a terrible account of the Roman papacy, and the millions who have been robbed of their happiness by this degenerate religion will help to give it its death-blow in the coming twentieth century—at least, in every truly civilized state. It has been recently calculated that the number of men who lost their lives in the papal persecutions of heretics, the Inquisition, the Christian religious wars, etc., is much more than ten millions. But what is this in comparison with the tenfold greater number of the unfortunate moral victims of the institutions and the priestly domination of the degenerate Christian Church—with the unnumbered millions whose higher mental life was extinguished, whose conscience was tortured, whose family life was destroyed, by the Church? We may with truth apply the words of Goethe in his Bride of Corinth:
“Victims fall, nor lambs nor bulls,
But human victims numberless.”
In the great cultur-kampf, which must go on as long as these sad conditions exist, the first aim must be the absolute separation of Church and State. There shall be “a free Church in a free State”—that is, every Church shall be free in the practice of its special worship and ceremonies, and in the construction of its fantastic poetry and superstitious dogmas—with the sole condition that they contain no danger to social order or morality. Then there will be equal rights for all. Free societies and monistic religious bodies shall be equally tolerated, and just as free in their movements as Liberal Protestant and orthodox ultramontane congregations. But for all these “faithful” of the most diverse sects religion will have to be a private concern. The state shall supervise them, and prevent excesses; but it must neither oppress nor support them. Above all, the ratepayers shall not be compelled to contribute to the support and spread of a “faith” which they honestly believe to be a harmful superstition. In the United States such a complete separation of Church and State has been long accomplished, greatly to the satisfaction of all parties. They have also the equally important separation of the Church from the school; that is, undoubtedly, a powerful element in the great advance which science and culture have recently made in America.
It goes without saying that this exclusion of the Church from the school only refers to its sectarian principles, the particular form of belief which each Church has evolved in the course of its life. This sectarian education is purely a private concern, and should be left to parents and tutors, or to such priests or teachers as may have the personal confidence of the parents. Instead of the rejected sectarian instruction, two important branches of education will be introduced—monistic or humanist ethics and comparative religion. During the last thirty years an extensive literature has appeared dealing with the new system of ethics which has been raised on the basis of modern science—especially evolutionary science. Comparative religion will be a natural companion to the actual elementary instruction in “biblical history” and in the mythology of Greece and Rome. Both of these will remain in the curriculum. The reason for that is obvious enough; the whole of our painting and sculpture, the chief branches of monistic æsthetics, are intimately blended with the Christian, Greek, and Roman mythologies. There will only be this important difference—that the Christian myths and legends will not be taught as truths, but as poetic fancies, like the Greek and Roman myths; the high value of the ethical and æsthetical material they contain will not be lessened, but increased, by this means. As regards the Bible, the “book of books” will only be given to the children in carefully selected extracts (a sort of “school Bible”); in this way we shall avoid the besmirching of the child’s imagination with the unclean stories and passages which are so numerous in the Old Testament.
Once the modern State has freed itself and its schools from the fetters of the Church, it will be able to devote more attention to the improvement of education. The incalculable value of a good system of education has forced itself more and more upon us as the many aspects of modern civilized life have been enlarged and enriched in the course of the century. But the development of the educational methods has by no means kept pace with life in general. The necessity for a comprehensive reform of our schools is making itself felt more and more. On this question, too, a number of valuable works have appeared in the course of the last forty years. We shall restrict ourselves to making a few general observations which we think of special importance.
1. In all education up to the present time man has played the chief part, and especially the grammatical study of his language; the study of nature was entirely neglected.
2. In the school of the future nature will be the chief object of the study; a man shall learn a correct view of the world he lives in; he will not be made to stand outside of and opposed to nature, but be represented as its highest and noblest product.
3. The study of the classical tongues (Latin and Greek), which has hitherto absorbed most of the pupils’ time and energy, is indeed valuable; but it will be much restricted, and confined to the mere elements (obligatory for Latin, optional for Greek).
4. In consequence, modern languages must be all the more cultivated in all the higher schools (English and French to be obligatory, Italian optional).
5. Historical instruction must pay more attention to the inner mental and spiritual life of a nation, and to the development of its civilization, and less to its external history (the vicissitudes of dynasties, wars, and so forth).
6. The elements of evolutionary science must be learned in conjunction with cosmology, geology must go with geography, and anthropology with biology.
7. The first principles of biology must be familiar to every educated man; the modern training in observation furnishes an attractive introduction to the biological sciences (anthropology, zoology, and botany). A start must be made with descriptive system (in conjunction with ætiology or bionomy); the elements of anatomy and physiology to be added later on.
8. The first principles of physics and chemistry must also be taught, and their exact establishment with the aid of mathematics.
9. Every pupil must be taught to draw well, and from nature; and, wherever it is possible, the use of water-colors. The execution of drawings and of water-color sketches from nature (of flowers, animals, landscapes, clouds, etc.) not only excites interest in nature and helps memory to enjoy objects, but it gives the pupil his first lesson in seeing correctly and understanding what he has seen.
10. Much more care and time must be devoted than has been done hitherto to corporal exercise, to gymnastics and swimming; but it is especially important to have walks in common every week, and journeys on foot during the holidays. The lesson in observation which they obtain in this way is invaluable.
The chief aim of higher education up to the present time, in most countries, has been a preparation for the subsequent profession, and the acquisition of a certain amount of information and direction for civic duties. The school of the twentieth century will have for its main object the formation of independent thought, the clear understanding of the knowledge acquired, and an insight into the natural connection of phenomena. If the modern state gives every citizen a vote, it should also give him the means of developing his reason by a proper education, in order to make a rational use of his vote for the commonweal.
[CHAPTER XX]
SOLUTION OF THE WORLD-PROBLEMS
A Glance at the Progress of the Nineteenth Century in Solving Cosmic Problems—I. Progress of Astronomy and Cosmology—Physical and Chemical Unity of the Universe—Cosmic Metamorphoses—Evolution of the Planetary System—Analogy of the Phylogenetic Processes on the Earth and on Other Planets—Organic Inhabitants of Other Heavenly Bodies—Periodic Variation in the Making of Worlds—II. Progress of Geology and Palæontology—Neptunism and Vulcanism—Theory of Continuity—III. Progress of Physics and Chemistry—IV. Progress of Biology—Cellular Theory and Theory of Descent—V. Anthropology—Origin of Man—General Conclusion
At the close of our philosophic study of the riddles of the universe we turn with confidence to the answer to the momentous question, How nearly have we approached to a solution of them? What is the value of the immense progress which the passing nineteenth century has made in the knowledge of nature? And what prospect does it open out to us for the future, for the further development of our system in the twentieth century, at the threshold of which we pause? Every unprejudiced thinker who impartially considers the solid progress of our empirical science, and the unity and clearness of our philosophic interpretation of it, will share our view: the nineteenth century has made greater progress in knowledge of the world and in grasp of its nature than all its predecessors; it has solved many great problems that seemed insoluble a hundred years ago; it has opened out to us new provinces of learning, the very existence of which was unsuspected at the beginning of the century. Above all, it has put clearly before our eyes the lofty aim of monistic cosmology, and has pointed out the path which alone will lead us towards it—the way of the exact empirical investigation of facts, and of the critical genetic study of their causes. The great abstract law of mechanical causality, of which our cosmological law—the law of substance—is but another and a concrete expression, now rules the entire universe, as it does the mind of man; it is the steady, immovable pole-star, whose clear light falls on our path through the dark labyrinth of the countless separate phenomena. To see the truth of this more clearly, let us cast a brief glance at the astonishing progress which the chief branches of science have made in this remarkable period.