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.