[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.