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[ Monistic Ethic. All Ethic, the theoretical as well as the practical doctrine of morals, as a "science of law" (Normwissenschaft), stands in immediate connection with the view that is taken of the world (Weltanschauung), and consequently with religion. This position I regard as exceedingly important, and have recently upheld in a paper on "Ethik und Weltanschauung," in opposition to the "Society for Ethical Culture" lately founded in Berlin, which would teach and promote ethics without reference to any view of the world or to religion. (Compare the new weekly journal, Die Zukunft, edited by Maximilian Harden, Berlin, 1892, Nos. V.-VII.). Just as I take the monistic to be the only rational basis for all science, I claim the same also for ethics. On this subject compare especially the ethical writings of Herbert Spencer and those of B. von Carneri—Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus (1871); Entwickelung und Glückseligkeit (1886); and more particularly, the latest of all, Der moderne Mensch (Bonn, 1891); further, Wilhelm Streeker, Welt und Menschheit (Leipsic, 1892); Harald Höffding, Die Grundlage der humanen Ethik (Bonn, 1880); and the recent large work of Wilhelm Wundt, Ethik, eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen und Gesetze des sittlichen Lebens (Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 1892).]
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[ Homotheism. Under the term homotheism (or anthropomorphism) we include all the various forms of religious belief which ascribe to a personal God purely human characteristics. However variously these anthropomorphic ideas may have shaped themselves in dualistic and pluralistic religions, all in common retain the unworthy conception that God (Theos) and man (homo) are organised similarly and according to the same type (homotype). In the region of poetry such personifications are both pleasing and legitimate. In the region of science they are quite inadmissible; they are doubly objectionable now that we know that only in late Tertiary times was man developed from pithecoid mammals. Every religious dogma which represents God as a "spirit" in human form, degrades Him to a "gaseous vertebrate" (General Morphology, 1866; Chap, xxx., God in Nature). The expression "homotheism" is ambiguous and etymologically objectionable, but more practical than the cumbersome word "Anthropotheism.">[
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[ Monistic Religion. Amongst the many attempts which have been made in the course of the last twenty years to reform religion in a monistic direction on the basis of advanced knowledge of nature, by far the most important is the epoch-making work of David Friedrich Strauss, entitled The Old Faith and the New: A Confession (11th ed., Bonn, 1881: Collected Writings, 1878). Compare M. J. Savage, Religion in the Light of the Darwinian Doctrine; John William Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science; Carl Friedrich Retzer, Die naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung und ihre Ideale, ein Ersatz fuer das religiöse Dogma (Leipsic, 1890); E. Koch, Natur und Menschengeist im Lichte der Entwickelungslehre (Berlin, 1891). For the phylogeny of religion see the interesting work of U. Van Ende, Histoire Naturelle de la Croyance (Paris, 1887).]
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[ Freedom in Teaching. The jubilee of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft des Osterlandes" was celebrated in Altenburg on October 9, 1892, contemporaneously with the commencement of the brilliant celebration of the golden wedding of the Grand Duke and Duchess in Weimar. As exceptional as the celebration are the characteristics which distinguish this august couple. The Grand Duke Carl Alexander has, during a prosperous reign of forty years, constantly shown himself an illustrious patron of science and art; as Rector Magnificentissimus of our Thüringian university of Jena, he has always afforded his protection to its most sacred palladium—the right of the free investigation and teaching of truth. The Grand Duchess Sophie, the heiress and guardian of the Goethe archives, has in Weimar prepared a fitting home for that precious legacy of our most brilliant literary period, and has anew made accessible to the German nation the ideal treasures of thought of her greatest intellectual hero. The history of culture will never forget the service which the princely couple have thereby rendered to the human mind in its higher development, and at the same time to true religion.]