Chapter XV: Part 15

To compare the complex sensations of civilized man with the much simpler ones of the savage we must consider first the functions of the outer organs of sense and then the internal sense-processes in the cortex of the brain. Fritz Schultze has pointed out in his _Psychology of the Savage_, in regard to both sets of organs, that the savage is a man of sense-life, the civilized human being a man of mind-life. When we remember that our higher psychic functions (sensation, will, presentation, and thought) are anatomically connected with the phronema (the thought-organ in the cortex), and the inner sense-perception with the central sensorium (in the sense-centres of the cortex), we shall expect to find the latter more developed in the savage and the former in civilized man. The external sense-action is more intense in quantity, but weaker in quality, in the savage than in civilized man; this is especially true of the finer and more complex sense-functions which we call æsthetic sensations and regard as the source of art and poetry. Most strongly developed of all in the savage is the power of perceiving distant objects (sight, hearing, smell), as they warn him of the dangers about him. It is just the reverse with the subjective and proximate feelings that are excited by the immediate touch of objects and are the special instruments of sensual enjoyment--taste, sex-sense, touch, and feeling of temperature. But in both kinds of sense-action the civilized man is far ahead of the savage in respect of the finer shades of feeling and æsthetic education. Moreover, modern civilization has provided man with various means of vastly increasing and improving the natural power of his senses. We need only mention the fields of knowledge that have been opened to us by the microscope and telescope, the refined chemical methods of modern cooking, etc. The finer æsthetic enjoyment which our advanced art affords--plastic art for the eye, music for the ear, perfumery for the nose, cuisine for the tongue--is generally unintelligible to the savage, although he can see much farther, and hear and smell much more acutely, than civilized man. And in the senses of near objects (taste, touch, temperature) the senses of the savages are more coarse, and incapable of the fine gradations of civilized man.

This more refined sense-life and the accompanying æsthetic enjoyment have no less social than personal value. We have, in the first place, the incalculable treasure of modern art and science, their promotion by the state, and their embodiment in the training of the young. In the future the higher races are likely to give more attention to this, training the senses of children as well as their intelligence from the earliest years, leading them to a closer observation of nature and reproduction of its forms by drawing and painting. The art-sense must also be fostered by the exhibition of models and by æsthetic exercises, a larger place must be given to artistic education along with the acquisition of real knowledge, and an appreciation of the beauties of nature must be created by means of walks and travels. Then the children of civilized races will have the inexhaustible sources of the finest and noblest pleasures in life opened to them in good time.

The higher psychic activity that civilized man calls his "mental life," and that is so often regarded as a kind of miracle, is merely a higher development of the psychic function we find at a lower level in the savage, and is shared by him with the higher vertebrates. Comparative psychology shows us, as I have explained in the seventh chapter of the _Riddle_, the long scale of development, which leads from the simple cell-soul of the protist up to the intelligence of man. I have already dealt in various chapters with this point, and need not enlarge on it any further to estimate the high personal value of mental life in every civilized human being. It is enough to remind the reader of the vast treasures of knowledge that lie open to every one of us at the commencement of the twentieth century--treasures of which our grandparents at the beginning of the last century had not the slightest presentiment.

Just as the individual has experienced a great advance in the value of his personal life by the higher culture of the nineteenth century, so the modern state itself has benefited by it in many ways. The many discoveries made in every branch of science and technical industry, the great advance in commerce and industrial life, in art and science, were bound to bring about a higher development of the whole mind of a modern community. Never, in the whole of history, has true science risen to such an astounding height as it has at the beginning of the twentieth century. Never before did the human mind penetrate so deeply into the darkest mysteries of nature, never did it rise so high to a sense of the unity of nature and make such practical use of its knowledge. These brilliant triumphs of modern civilization have, however, only been made possible by the various forces co-operating in a vast division of labor, and by the great nations utilizing their resources zealously for the attainment of the common end.

But we are still far from the attainment of the ideal. The social organization of our states is advanced only on one side; it is very reactionary on other sides. Unfortunately, the words of Wallace which I quoted in the _Riddle_ remain as true as ever. Our modern states will only pass beyond this condition in the course of the twentieth century if they adopt pure reason as their guide instead of faith and traditional authority, and if they come at length to understand aright "man's place in nature."

If we take a summary view of all that I have said on the increase in the value of human life by the progress of civilization, there can be no doubt that both the personal and the social value of life are now far higher than they were in the days of our savage ancestors. Modern life is infinitely rich in the high spiritual interests that attach to the possession of advanced art and science. We live in peace and comfort in orderly social and civic communities, which have every care of person and property. Our personal life is a hundred times finer, longer, and more valuable than that of the savage, because it is a hundred times richer in interests, experiences, and pleasures. It is true that within the limits of civilization the differences in the value of life are enormous. The greater the differentiation of conditions and classes in consequence of division of labor, the greater become the differences between the educated and uneducated sections of the community, and between their interests and needs, and, therefore, the value of their lives. This difference is naturally most conspicuous if we consider the leading minds and the greatest heights of the culture of the century, and compare these with the average man and the masses, which wander far below in the valley, treading their monotonous and weary way in a more or less stupid condition.

The state thinks quite otherwise than the individual man does of the personal worth of his life and that of his fellows. The modern state often demands for its protection the military service of all its citizens. In the eyes of our ministers of justice the value of life is the same whether there be question of an embryo of seven months or a new-born child (still without consciousness), an idiot or a genius. This difference between the personal and the social estimate of life runs through the whole of our moral principles. War is still believed by highly civilized nations to be an unavoidable evil, just as barbarians think of individual murder or blood-revenge; yet the murder of masses for which the modern state uses its greatest resources is in flagrant contradiction to the gentle doctrine of Christian charity which it employs its priests to preach every Sunday with all solemnity.

The chief task of the modern state is to bring about a natural harmony between the social and the personal estimate of human life. For this purpose we need, above all, a thorough reform of education, the administration of justice, and the social organization. Only then can we get rid of that mediæval barbarism of which Wallace speaks; to-day it finds expression triumphantly in our penal laws, our caste-privileges, the scholastic nature of our education, and the despotism of the Church.

For each individual organism the life of the individual is the first aim and the standard of value. On this rests the universal struggle for self-maintenance, which can be reduced in the inorganic world to the physical law of inertia. To this subjective estimate of life is opposed the objective, which proceeds on the value of the individual to the outer world. This objective value increases as the organism develops and presses into the general stream of life. The chief of these relations are those that come of the division of labor among individuals and their association in higher groups. This is equally true of the cell-states which we call tissues and persons, of the higher stocks of plants and animals, and of the herds and communities of the higher animals and men. The more these develop by progressive division of labor and the greater the mutual need of the differentiated individuals, so much the higher rises the objective value of the life of the latter for the whole, and so much the lower sinks the subjective value of the individual. Hence arises a constant struggle between the interests of individuals who follow their special life-aim and those of the state, for which they have no value except as parts of the whole.

XVIII

MORALITY

Dualistic ethics--The categorical imperative--Monistic ethics--Morals and adaptation--Variation and adaptation--Habit--Chemistry of habit--Trophic stimuli--Habit in inorganic bodies--Instincts--Social instincts--Instinct and morality--Right and duty--Morals and morality--The good and the bad--Morals and fashions--Sexual selection--Fashion and the feeling of shame--Fashion and reason--Ceremonies and cults--Mysteries and sacraments--Baptism--The Lord's Supper--Transubstantiation--The miracle of redemption--Papal sacraments--Marriage--Modern fashions--Honor--Phylogeny of morals.

The practical life of man is, like that of all the social higher animals, ruled by impulses and customs which we describe as "moral." The science of morality, ethics, is regarded by the dualists as a mental science, and closely connected with religion on the one hand and psychology on the other. During the nineteenth century this dualistic view retained its popularity especially because the great authority of Kant, with his dogma of the categorical imperative, seemed to have given it a solid foundation, and because it agreed admirably with the teaching of the Church. Monism, on the other hand, regards ethics as a natural science, and starts from the principle that morality is not supernatural in origin, but has been built up by adaptation of the social mammals to the conditions of existence, and thus may be traced eventually to physical laws. Hence modern biology sees no metaphysical miracle in morality, but the action of physiological functions.

Our whole modern civilization clings to the erroneous ideas which traditional morality, founded on revelation, and closely connected with ecclesiastical teaching, has imposed upon it. Christianity has taken over the ten commandments from Judaism, and blended them with a mystical Platonism into a towering structure of ethics. Kant especially lent support to it in recent years with his _Critique of Practical Reason_, and his three central dogmas. The close connection of these three dogmas with each other, and their positive influence on ethics, were particularly important through Kant formulating the further dogma of the categorical imperative.

The great authority which Kant's dualist philosophy obtained is largely owing to the fact that he subordinated pure reason to practical reason. The vague moral law for which Kant claimed absolute universality is expressed in his categorical imperative as follows: "So act that the maxim (or the subjective principle of your will) may at the same time serve as a general law." I have shown in the nineteenth chapter of the _Riddle_ that this categorical imperative is, like the thing in itself, an outcome of dogmatic, not critical, principles. As Schopenhauer says:

Kant's categorical imperative is generally quoted in our day under the more modest and convenient title of "the moral law." The daily writers of compendiums think they have founded the science of ethics when they appeal to this apparently innate "moral law," and then build on it that wordy and confused tissue of phrases with which they manage to make the simplest and clearest features of life unintelligible, without having ever seriously asked themselves whether there really is any such convenient code of morality written in our head, breast, or heart. This broad cushion is snatched from under morality when we prove that Kant's categorical imperative of the practical reason is _a wholly unjustified, baseless, and imaginative assumption_.

Kant's categorical imperative is a mere dogma, and, like his whole theory of practical reason, rests on dogmatic and not critical grounds. It is a fiction of faith, and directly opposed to the empirical principles of pure reason.

The notion of duty, which the categorical imperative represents as a vague _a priori_ law implanted in the human mind--a kind of moral instinct--can, as a matter of fact, be traced to a long series of phyletic modifications of the phronema of the cortex. Duty is a social sense that has been evolved _a posteriori_ as a result of the complicated relations of the egoism of individuals and the altruism of the community. The sense of duty, or conscience, is the amenability of the will to the feeling of obligation, which varies very considerably in individuals.

A scientific study of the moral law, on the basis of physiology, evolution, ethnography, and history, teaches us that its precepts rest on biological grounds, and have been developed in a natural way. The whole of our modern morality and social and juridical order have evolved in the course of the nineteenth century out of the earlier and lower conditions which we now generally regard as things of the past. The social morality of the eighteenth century proceeded, in its turn, from that of the seventeenth and sixteenth centuries, and still further from that of the Middle Ages, with its despotism, fanaticism, Inquisition, and witch trials. It is equally clear from modern ethnography and the comparative psychology of races that the morality of barbarous races has been evolved gradually from the lower social rules of savage tribes, and that these differ only in degree, not in kind, from the instincts of the apes and other social vertebrates. The comparative psychology of the vertebrates shows, further, that the social instincts of the mammals and birds have arisen from the lower stages of the reptiles and amphibia, and these in turn from those of the fishes and the lowest vertebrates. Finally, the phylogeny of the vertebrates proves that this highly developed stem has advanced through a long series of invertebrate ancestors (chordonia, vermalia, gastræada) from the protists by a process of gradual modification. We find, even among these unicellulars (first protophyta, then protozoa), the important principle which lies at the base of morality, association, or the formation of communities. The adaptation of the united cell-individuals to each other and to the common environment is the physiological foundation of the first traces of morality among the protists. All the unicellulars that abandon their isolated eremitic lives, and unite to form communities, are compelled to restrict their natural egoism, and make concessions to altruism in the common interest. Even in the globular cœnobia of volvox and magosphæra the special form and movement and mode of reproduction are determined by the compromise between the egoistic instincts of the individual cells and the altruistic need of the community.

Morality, whether we take it in the narrower or broader sense, can always be traced to the physiological function of adaptation, which is closely connected through nutrition with the self-maintenance of the organism. The change in the plasm which adaptation brings about is always based on the chemical energy of metabolism (chapter ix.). Hence it will be as well to have a clear idea of the nature of adaptation. I defined it as follows in my _General Morphology_:

Adaptation or variation is a general physiological function of organisms, closely connected with their radical function of nutrition. It expresses itself in the fact that every organism may be modified by the influence of the environment, and may acquire characters which were wanting in its ancestors. The causes of this variability are chiefly found in a material correlation between parts of the organism and the outer world. Variability or adaptability is not, therefore, a special organic function, but depends on the material, physico-chemical process of nutrition.

I have developed this conception of adaptation in the tenth chapter of the _History of Creation_.

The nature of the adaptation and its relation to variation are often conceived in different ways from that I have defined. Quite recently Ludwig Plate has restricted the idea, and understood by adaptation only variations that are _useful_ to the organism. He severely criticises my broader definition, and calls it "a palpable error," suggesting that I only retain it because I am not open to conviction. If I wanted to return this grave charge, I might point to Plate's one-sided and perverse treatment of my biogenetic law. Instead of doing this I will only observe that I think the restriction of adaptation to useful variations is untenable and misleading. There are in the life of man and of other organisms thousands of habits and instincts that are not useful, but either indifferent or injurious to the organism, yet certainly come under the head of adaptation, are maintained by heredity, and modify the form. We find adaptations of all sorts--partly useful, partly indifferent, partly injurious (the result of education, training, distortion, etc.)--in the life of man, and the domestic animals and plants. I need only refer to the influence of fashion and the school. Even the origin of the useless (and often injurious) rudimentary organs depends on adaptation.

Habit is a second nature, says an old proverb. This is a profound truth, the full appreciation of which came to us through Lamarck's theory of descent. The formation of a habit consists in the frequent repetition of one physiological act, and so is in principle reducible to cumulative or functional adaptation. Through this frequent repetition of one and the same act, which is closely connected with the memory of the plasm, a permanent modification is caused, either in a positive or a negative sense; _positively_ the organ is developed and strengthened by exercise, _negatively_ it is atrophied or enfeebled by disuse. When this accumulation of slight changes continues, the effect of adaptation goes so far in time as to produce new organs by progressive modification, or to cause actual organs to become useless and rudimentary, and finally disappear, owing to regressive metamorphosis.

When we make a careful study of the simpler processes of habit in the lower organisms, we see that they depend, like all other adaptations, on chemical changes in the plasm, and that these are provoked by trophic stimuli--that is to say, by external action on the metabolism. As Ostwald rightly says: "The most important function of organisms is the conversion of the various chemical energies into each other. The chemical energy that is taken into the organism as food is not generally capable of being applied directly to its purposes, but needs some further preparation. Every cell is a chemical laboratory, in which the most varied reactions take place without fires and retorts. The most frequently employed means in this is probably the catalytic acceleration of the usable and the catalytic retardation of the useless reactions. As a proof of this we have the regular presence of these enzyma in all organisms." In this the greatest importance attaches to memory, which I regard with Hering as a general property of living substance, "in virtue of which certain processes in the living being leave effects behind them that facilitate the repetition of the processes." I agree with Ostwald that "the importance of this property cannot be exaggerated. In its more general forms it effects adaptation and heredity, in its highest development the conscious memory." While the latter, and consciousness in general, reach the highest stage in the mental life of civilized man, the adaptation of the monera remains at the lowest stage. Among the latter the bacteria especially, which have assumed the most varied and important relations to other organisms in spite of the simplicity of their structure, show that this manifold adaptation depends on the formation of habits in the plasm, and is solely based on their chemical energy, or their invisible molecular structure. Once more the monera form a connecting link between the organic and inorganic; they fill up the deep gulf, from the point of view of energy, that seems to yawn between "animated" organisms and "lifeless" bodies.

According to the prevailing view, habit is a purely biological process, but there are processes even in inorganic nature which come under this head in the broader sense. Ostwald gives the following illustration:

If we take two equal tubes of thin nitric acid and dissolve a little metallic copper in one of them, the liquid will acquire the power to dissolve a second piece of the same metal more quickly than the one that remains unchanged. The cause of this phenomenon--which may be observed in the same way with mercury or silver and nitric acid--is that the lower oxydes of nitrogen that are formed in dissolving the metal accelerate the action of the nitric acid catalytically on the fresh metal. The same effect is produced if you put part of these oxydes in the acid; it then acts much more rapidly than pure acid. The formation of a habit consists, therefore, in the production of a catalytic acceleration during the reaction.

We may not only compare inorganic habit with organic adaptation, which we call habit or practice, but also with "imitation," which implies a catalytic transfer of habits to socially united living beings.

By instincts were formerly understood, as a rule, the unconscious impulses of animals which led to purposive actions, and it was believed that every species of animal had special instincts implanted in it by the Creator. Animals were thought, according to Descartes's view, to be unconscious machines whose actions proceed with unvarying constancy in the particular form that God had ordained. Although this antiquated theory of instinct is still taught by many dualistic metaphysicians and theologians, it has long since been demolished by the monistic theory of evolution. Lamarck had observed that most instincts are formed by habit and adaptation, and then transmitted by heredity. Darwin and Romanes especially showed afterwards that these inherited habits are subject to the same laws of variation as other physiological functions. However, Weismann has recently taken great pains in his _Lectures on the Theory of Descent_ (xxiii.) to refute this idea, and in general the hypothesis of an inheritance of acquired characters, because it will not harmonize with his theory of the germ-plasm. Ernst Heinrich Ziegler, who has recently (1904) published a subtle analysis of former and present ideas of instinct, agrees with Weismann that "all instincts are due to selection, and that they have their roots not in the practice of the individual life, but in the variations of the germ." But where else can we find the cause of these "germ-variations" except in the laws of direct and indirect adaptation? In my opinion, it is just the reverse; the remarkable phenomena of instinct yield a mass of evidence of progressive heredity, completely in the sense of Lamarck and Darwin.

The great majority of organisms live social lives, and so are united by the link of common interests. Of all the relations which determine the existence of the species, the chief are those which bind the individual to other individuals of the species. This is at once clear from the laws of sexual propagation. Moreover, the association of individuals is a great advantage in the struggle for existence. In the case of the higher animals this association becomes particularly important, because it is accompanied by an extensive division of labor. Then arises the antithesis of the personal egoism and the communal altruism; and in human societies the opposition of the two instincts is all the greater when reason recognizes that each has a right to satisfaction. Social habits become moral habits, and their laws are afterwards taught as sacred duties, and form the basis of the juridical order.

The morals of nations, so rich in psychological and sociological interest, are nothing more than social instincts, acquired by adaptation, and passed on from generation to generation by heredity. An attempt has been made to distinguish between the two kinds of habit by describing the instincts of animals as constant vital functions based on their physical organization, and the habits or morals of human beings as mental powers maintained by a spiritual tradition. This distinction has, however, been excluded by the modern physiological teaching that men's morals are, like all their other psychic functions, based physiologically on the organization of their brain. The habits of the individual man, which have been formed by adaptation to his personal conditions, become hereditary in his family; and these family usages can no more be sharply distinguished from the general morals of the community than these can be from the precepts of the Church and the laws of the state.

When a certain habit is regarded by all the members of a community as important, its cultivation favored and its breach punished, it is raised to the position of a duty. This is true even in the case of the herds of mammals (apes, gregarious carnivora, and ungulates) and the flocks of social birds (hens, geese, ducks). The laws which have been formed in these cases by the higher development of social instincts are particularly striking and equivalent to those of savage tribes when conspicuous individuals (old or strong males) have acquired a leadership of the troop, and successfully insure the observance of the proper habits or duties. Many of these organized bands are in some respects higher than the savages at the lowest stages who live in isolated families, or only form loose temporary associations of a few families. The great progress made by comparative psychology and ethnology, and historical and prehistorical research, in the second half of the nineteenth century, confirms us in the conviction that a long scale of intermediate stages joins the rudiments of law in the social primates and other mammals to the sense of law in the lower savage, and this again to that of the barbarian and the civilized human being--right up to the science of law in modern Europe.

Like civil laws, the commands of religion come originally from the morals of the savage, and eventually from the social instincts of the primates. The important province of mental life to which we give the vague name of religion was developed at an early stage among the prehistoric races from whom we all descend. When we study its origin from the point of view of empirical psychology and monistic evolution, we find that religion has arisen polyphyletically from different sources--ancestor worship, the desire of personal immortality, the craving for a causal explanation of phenomena, superstition of various kinds, the strengthening of the moral law by the authority of a divine law-giver, etc. According as the imagination of the savage or the barbarian followed one or other of these lines it raised up hundreds of religious forms. Only a few of them survived in the struggle for existence, and acquired (at least outwardly) dominion over the modern mind. But as independent and impartial science advances in our time, religion is purified of superstition and turns more and more to morality.

The obedience to the "divine commands" which religion demands of its followers is often transferred by human society to rules that have arisen from social customs of subordinate kinds. Thus we get the familiar confusion of manners and morals, of conventional outer deportment and real inner morality. The ideas of good and bad, morality and immorality, are subjected to arbitrary definitions. In this a great part is played by the moral pressure which is exercised by conventional ideas in the social body on the conduct and minds of its members. However clearly and rationally the individual thinks about the important questions of practical life, he has to yield to the tyranny of traditional and often quite irrational customs. As a matter of fact, both in life and in the nature of the case practical reason does take that precedence of pure reason which Kant claimed.

The tyranny of custom in practical life does not depend merely on the authority of social usage, but also on the power of selection. Just as natural selection insures the relative constancy of the specific form in the origin of the animal and plant species, so it has a powerful effect on the origin of morals and customs. An important factor in this is mimetic adaptation, or mimicry, the aping or imitating of certain forms or fashions by various classes of animals. This is unconscious in the case of many orders of insects, butterflies, beetles, hymenoptera, etc. When insects of a certain family come to resemble in their outer form and color and design those of another family, they obtain the protection or other advantages which these particular characters give in the struggle for life. Darwin, Wallace, Weismann, Fritz Müller, Bates, and others, have shown in numbers of instances how the origin of these deceptive resemblances can be traced to natural selection, and how important they are in the formation of the species. But many customs and usages in human life arise in just the same way, partly by conscious and partly by unconscious imitation. Of these the varying external forms which we call "fashions" have a most important influence in practical life. The phrase "fashion-ape," when used in a scientific sense, is not merely an expression of contempt, but has also a profound meaning; it correctly indicates the origin of fashions by imitation, and also the peculiar resemblance we find in this respect between man and his cousins, the apes. Sexual selection among the primates has a good deal to do with this.

The great importance which Darwin ascribes in his _Descent of Man_ to the æsthetic selection of the respective sexes is equally true of man and of all the higher vertebrates that have a feeling of beauty, especially the amniotes (mammals, birds, and reptiles). The beautiful coloring and marking and ornamentation which distinguish the males from the females are due entirely to the careful individual selection of the former by the latter. Thus the various kinds of ornamental hair (beard, hair of head, etc.), the tint of the face, the peculiar form of the lips, nose, ears, etc., are to be explained, as we find them in man and the male ape; also the brilliant plumage of the humming-bird, the bird of paradise, pheasant, etc. I have dealt fully with these interesting facts in the eleventh chapter of the _History of Creation_, and must refer the reader thereto. I will only point out here how valuable the whole of this chapter of Darwinism is for the understanding of the foundation of species on the one hand and men's fashions and customs on the other. It is most closely connected with ethical problems.

The growth of fashion in civilized life is very important, not only for the development of the sense of beauty and for the sexual selection of the sexes, but also in connection with the origin of the feeling of shame and the finer psychological traits that relate to it. The lower savages have no more sense of shame than animals or children. They are quite naked, and accomplish the sexual act without the slightest trace of shame. The beginning of clothing which we find among the middle savages is not due to a sense of shame, but partly to low temperature (in the polar regions), partly to vanity and love of decoration (such as ornamenting the ears, lips, nose, and sex-organs by the insertion of shells, pieces of wood, flowers, stones, etc.). Afterwards the sense of shame sets in, and we have the covering of certain parts of the body with leaves, girdles, shirts, etc. In most nations the sexual parts are the first to be covered; though some attach importance to the veiling of the face. In many Oriental tribes (especially Mohammedan) it is still the first precept of female chastity to veil the face (the most characteristic part of the individual), while the rest of the body may remain naked. Generally speaking, the æsthetic and psychological relations of the sexes play the chief part in the higher development of morals. Morality is often taken to be synonymous with the law of sexual intercourse.

As the features of civilized life advance, the influence of reason increases, and so does the power of hereditary tradition and the moral ideas associated with it. The result is a severe conflict between the two. Reason seeks to judge everything by its own standard, to learn the causes of phenomena and direct practical life accordingly. On the other hand tradition, or "good morals," looks at everything from the point of view of our forefathers and other venerable laws and religious precepts. It is indifferent to the independent discoveries of reason and the real causes of things. It demands that the practical life of every individual be framed in accordance with the hereditary morality of the race or state. Thus we get the inevitable conflict between reason and tradition, or science and religion, which continues in our own day. Sometimes in the course of it a "new fashion" is substituted for some sacred tradition, a transitory custom that succeeds in imposing itself by its novelty or curiosity; and when this has contrived to win general acceptance, or has gained the support of Church or state to some extent, it is regarded in much the same light as the older morality.

The lowest races of the present time (for instance, the pithecoid pygmies, the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Akkas of Central Africa) are very little higher than their primate ancestors in mental development. This is also true of their habits of life and morals. As their ideas are for the most part concrete and sensual, their power of forming abstract concepts is very little developed; they have hardly any religious ideas to speak of. But with the middle savages we begin to find the craving to know the causes of things and the idea of spirits that are concealed behind the phenomena of sense. Dread of these leads to worship, fetichism, and animism, the beginning of religion. Even at this early stage of worship we find certain customs associated with the cult to which a symbolical or mysterious meaning is given. These ceremonies lead on in the higher races to the great religious festivities, which the Greeks called "mysteries." Sensual images of various kinds are mixed up in them with supersensual ideas and superstitions. The festivals, processions, dances, hymns, and sacrifices of all sorts that form part of the cult are more or less concerned with the mysterious, and are therefore considered "holy." They are often made the pretext of sensual gratifications, which end in gross immorality and orgies.

From the older pagan and Jewish religious usages were afterwards developed in the Christian Church those parts of the cult which are known as sacraments. These miraculous sacraments, by the mysterious action of which man is supposed to be born again or regenerated, very quickly became powerful instruments in the hand of the Church and thorny problems for theologians, especially after Gregory the Great introduced the dogmas of Purgatory and the relieving power of the Mass. According to St. Thomas of Aquin, the sacraments are channels that convey the grace of God to sinful man. The papal authorities fixed their number at seven (baptism, eucharist, penance, confirmation, matrimony, orders, and extreme unction) in the twelfth century. The superstitious content of these sacraments was generally lost sight of in the glamour of their ceremonious side, but their authority was unshaken. Since the Reformation the Protestants have retained only the two chief sacraments which were founded by Christ himself--Baptism and the Lord's Supper.

Christian baptism is a continuation of the older ceremonies of washing and purification that were in use thousands of years before Christ among nations of the East and among the Greeks. They combined the hygienic value of the bath with the idea of a regeneration of the soul and spiritual purification. Augustine, who founded the dogma of original sin, held that the baptism of children was necessary for the salvation of their souls, and it then became general. It has since given rise to a number of superstitious ideas and unfortunate family troubles, but it is still regarded as a sacred ceremony. Millions of Christians still believe that the child's soul is saved (though it has no consciousness whatever when baptized) and delivered from the power of the devil and the curse of sin by baptism.

The second sacrament that Luther retained is the Lord's Supper, or the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. It was instituted by Christ on the night before his death, and is a continuation of the paschal supper of the Jews, in which the head of the house shared bread and wine with his family with certain ritual ceremonies. In this paschal supper the people of Israel celebrated their release from the bondage of Egypt and their distinction as the "chosen people." By connecting his "last supper" with the traditional rite of the Jews, Christ sought on the one hand to found the new dispensation on the old, and on the other hand to institute a love-feast (communion or agape) among his followers. Like baptism, the Lord's Supper led afterwards to the bitterest controversy among theologians.

The differences of opinion as to the Eucharist in the Middle Ages culminated at last in the opposition of the two reformers, Luther and Zwingli. The latter, the founder of the Free Reformed Church, saw in the Supper only a symbolical act and a commemoration of Christ. Luther, however, adhered to the mysterious miracle that had been defined in 1215 by the dogma of transubstantiation. Bread and wine are believed on this view to be converted physically into the body and blood of Christ! I was taught this in 1848 by the minister who prepared me for confirmation, and to whom I was greatly attached. We were actually to perceive this change when we assisted at the Supper for the first time, if we did so with real faith. As I was quite conscious of having this quality, I had great expectations of the miracle. But I was very painfully disillusioned when I found only the familiar taste of bread and wine, not the flesh and blood that faith had desired. I had to regard myself (then a boy of fourteen years) as an utterly abandoned sinner, and it was with the greatest difficulty that my parents succeeded in pacifying me over my want of faith.

I have spoken somewhat fully in the seventeenth chapter of the _Riddle_ of the view of the papacy and ultramontanism which modern historical and anthropological science leads us to form. No one who has any idea of history and of the metamorphoses of religion can question that Romanism is a miserable caricature of primitive Christianity; it retains the name, but has completely reversed the principles. In the course of its domination, from the fourth to the sixteenth century, the papacy has raised up the marvellous structure of the Catholic hierarchy, but has departed farther and farther from the stand-point of pure Christianity. The aim of Romanism is to-day, as it was a thousand years ago, to dominate and exploit a blindly believing humanity. It finds admirable instruments for this in its mystic sacraments, to which it has ascribed an "indelible character." From the cradle to the grave, from baptism to the last anointing, in confirmation and penance, the believer must be reminded that he must live as an obedient and self-sacrificing child; and the sacrament of ordination must teach him that the priest, with his higher inspiration, is the only intermediary between man and God. The symbolical rites that are associated with these sacraments serve to surround them with the magic of the mysterious and exclude the penetration of reason. This is particularly true of the sacrament that has had the greatest practical influence--matrimony.

In view of the extreme importance of the life of the family as a foundation of social and civic life, it is advisable to consider marriage from the biological point of view, as an orderly method of reproduction. Here, as in all other sociological and psychological questions, we must be careful not to accept the present features of civilized life as a general standard of judgment. We have to take a comparative view of its various stages, as we find them among barbarians and savages. When we do this impartially, we see at once that reproduction, as a purely physiological process having for its end the maintenance of the species, takes place in just the same way among uncultivated races as among the anthropoid apes. We may even say that many of the higher animals, especially monogamous mammals and birds, have reached a higher stage than the lower savages; the tender relations of the two sexes towards each other, their common care of their young, and their family life, have led to the development of higher sexual and domestic instincts, to which we may fitly ascribe a moral character. Wilhelm Bölsche has shown, in his _Life of Love in Nature_, how a long series of remarkable customs has been developed in the animal world by adaptation to various forms of reproduction. Westermarck has pointed out, in his _History of Marriage_, how the crude animal forms of marriage current among savages have been gradually elevated as we rise to higher races. As the sensual pleasure of generation is combined with the finer psychological feeling of sympathy and psychic attachment, the latter gains constantly on the former, and this refined love becomes one of the richest sources of the higher spiritual functions, especially in art and poetry. Marriage itself, of course, remains a physiological act, a wonder of life, with the organic sex impulse as its chief foundation. As the conclusion of marriage represents one of the most important moments in human life, we find it accompanied by symbolic ceremonies and festive rites even among lower tribes. The immense variety of marriage festivals shows how this important act has appealed to the imagination. Priests quickly recognized this, and decked out marriage with all kinds of ceremonies and turned it to the advantage of their Church. While the Catholic Church raised it to the status of a sacrament and ascribed to it an "indelible" character, it declared that it was indissoluble when performed according to ecclesiastical rite. This unwholesome influence of Romanism, this dependence of matrimony on religious mysteries and ceremonies, and difficulty of obtaining divorce, etc., still continue in our day. It is only a short time since the German Reichstag, under the influence of the Centre [Catholic] party, added laws to its civic code which increase instead of lessening the difficulty of obtaining divorce. Reason demands the liberation of marriage from ecclesiastical pressure. It demands that matrimony be grounded on mutual love, esteem, and devotion, and that it at the same time be counted a social contract, and be protected, as civil marriage, by proper legislation. But when the contracting parties find (as so often happens) that they have mistaken each other's character, and that they do not suit each other, they should be free to dissolve the bond. The pressure which comes of marriage being regarded as a sacrament, and which prevents the dissolution of unhappy marriages, is merely a source of vice and crime.

We find in many other features of our social life, besides marriage, a contradiction between the demands of reason and the traditional usages which modern civilization has taken over as a heritage from earlier and lower nations, and partly from barbarians and savages. In the public life of states this contradiction is much more striking than in the private life of the family or the individual. Whereas the milder teaching of the Christian religion--sympathy, love of one's fellows, patience, and devotion--has had a good influence in many ways, there can be no question of this in the international relations of the nations; here we find pure egoism. Every nation seeks to take advantage of others by cunning or force, and, wherever possible, to subjugate them: if they will not consent, the brute force of war is employed. Social misery of all kinds spreads wider and wider, almost in proportion as civilization develops. Alexander Sutherland is right when he characterizes "the leading nations of Europe and their offshoots" (in the United States) as _lower_ civilized races. In some respects we are still barbarians.

How far the bulk of modern nations still are from the ideal and the reign of pure reason can be seen by a glance at the social, juridical, and ecclesiastical condition of "these leading nations of Europe," either Teutonic or Latin. We need only consider with an unprejudiced mind the accounts in our journals of parliamentary and legal proceedings, government measures and social relations, in order to realize that the force of tradition and fashion is immense, and resists the claims of reason on every side. This is most clearly seen externally in the power of fashion, especially as regards clothing. There is a good ground for the complaint about "the tyranny of fashion." However unpractical, ridiculous, ugly, and costly a new garment may be, it becomes popular if it is patronized by authority, or some clever manufacturer succeeds in imposing it by specious advertisements. We need only recall the crinoline of fifty years ago, the bustle of twenty years ago, and the exposure of the breast and back by low dresses (with the object of sexual excitement) which was the fashion of forty years ago.[11] For centuries we have had the pernicious fashion of the corset, an article that is as offensive from the æsthetic as from the hygienic point of view. Thousands of women are sacrificed every year to this pitiful fashion, through disease of the liver or lungs; nevertheless, the craze for the hour-glass shape of the female form continues, and the reform of clothing makes little headway. It is just the same with numbers of fashions in the home and in society, of devices in commerce and laws in the state. Everywhere the demands of reason advance little in their struggle with the venerable usages of tradition.

A false sense of honor dominates our social life, just as a false sense of modesty controls our clothing. The true honor of man or woman consists in their inner moral dignity, in the determination to do only what they conceive to be good and right, not in the outer esteem of their fellows or in the worthless praise of a conventional society. Unfortunately, we have to admit that in this respect we are still largely ruled by the foolish views of a lower civilization, if not of crude barbarians.

In many other features of our life besides this false modesty and false honor we perceive the force of social usage. Many of what are thought to be honorable customs are relics of barbarism; much of our morality is, in the light of pure reason, downright immorality. As even the latter is due to adaptation, and as the same custom may be at one time thought useful and fitting, at another time injurious and bad, we see again that it is impossible to restrict the idea of adaptation to useful variations. We may say the same of the changing rules of education, commerce, legislation, and so on. The ideal in all departments of life is pure reason; but it has to struggle long against the current prejudices and customs, which find their chief support in the superstitions of the Church and the conservative tendencies of the state. In this state of Byzantine immorality, decorating itself so often with the mantle of piety, practical materialism flourishes, while monism, or theoretical materialism, is thrust aside.

If we sum up all that monistic science has taught us as to the origin and development of morality, we may put it in the following series of propositions: 1. By adaptation to different conditions of life the simple plasm of the earliest organisms, the archigonous monera, undergoes certain modifications. 2. As the living plasm reacts on these influences, and the reaction is often repeated, a habit is formed (as in the catalysis of certain inorganic chemical processes). 3. This habit is hereditary, the repeated impressions being fixed in the nucleus (or caryoplasm) in the case of the unicellulars. 4. When hereditary transmission lasts through many generations, and is strengthened by cumulative adaptation, it becomes an instinct. 5. Even in the protist cœnobia (the cell-communities of the protophyta and protozoa) social instincts are formed by association of cells. 6. The antithesis of the individual and social instinct, or of egoism and altruism, increases in the animal kingdom in proportion to the development of psychic activity and social life. 7. In the higher social animals definite customs arise in this way, and these become rights and duties when obedience to them is demanded by the society (herd, flock, people) and the breach of them punished. 8. Savage races at the lowest stage, without religion, are not differently related to their customs than the higher social animals. 9. The higher savages develop religious ideas, combine their superstitious practices (fetichism and animism) with ethical principles, and transform their empirical moral laws into religious commands. 10. Among barbaric, and more particularly among civilized, races definite moral laws are formed by the association of these hereditary religious, moral, and legal ideas. 11. In the civilized races the Church formulates the religious commands, and jurisprudence the legal commands, in more definitely binding forms; the advancing mind remains, however, subject in many respects to Church and state. 12. In the higher civilized nations pure reason gains more and more influence on practical life, and thrusts back the authority of tradition; on the basis of biological knowledge a rational or monistic ethic is developed.

XIX

DUALISM

Dualistic systems of Kant I. and Kant II.--His antinomies--Cosmological dualism--The two worlds--The world of bodies and the world of spirits--Truth and fiction--Goethe and Schiller--Realism and idealism--Anti-Kant--Law of substance--Attributes of substance--Sensation and energy--Passive and active energy--Trinity of substance: matter, force, and sensation--Constancy of sensation--Psyche and physics--Reconciliation of principles.

The history of philosophy shows how the mind of man has pressed along many paths during the last two thousand years in pursuit of truth. But, however varied are the systems in which its efforts have found embodiment, we may, from a general point of view, arrange them all in two conflicting series--monism, or the philosophy of unity; and dualism, or the philosophy of the duality of existence. Lucretius and Spinoza are distinguished and typical representatives of monism; Plato and Descartes the great leaders of dualism. But besides the consistent thinkers of each school there are a number of philosophers who vacillate between the two, or who have held both views at different periods of life. Such contradictions represent a personal dualism on the part of the individual thinker. Immanuel Kant is one of the most famous instances of this class; and as his critical philosophy has had a profound influence, and I was compelled to contrast my chief conclusions with those of Kant, I must once more deal briefly with his ideas. This is the more necessary as one of the ablest of the many attacks on the _Riddle_, the _Kant against Haeckel_ of Erich Adick, of Kiel, belongs to this school.

In the _Creed of Pure Reason_, which I published as an appendix to the popular edition of the _Riddle_ in 1903, I pointed out, in view of this and similar Kantist criticisms, the clear inconsistency of the great evolutionary principles of Kant, the natural philosopher, with the mystic teaching which he afterwards made the foundation of his theory of knowledge, and that is still greatly esteemed. Kant I. explained the constitution and the mechanical origin of the universe on Newtonian principles, and declared that mechanicism alone afforded a real explanation of phenomena; Kant II. subordinated the mechanical principle to the teleological, explaining everything as a natural design. Kant I. convincingly proved that the three central dogmas of metaphysics--God, freedom, and immortality--are inacceptable to pure reason. Kant II. claimed that they are necessary postulates of practical reason. This profound opposition of principles runs through Kant's whole philosophic work from beginning to end, and has never been reconciled. I had already shown in the _History of Creation_ that this inconsistency has a good deal to do with Kant's position in regard to evolution. However, this radical contradiction of Kant's views has been recognized by all impartial critics. It has lately been urged with great force by Paul Rée in his _Philosophy_ (1903). We need not, therefore, linger in proving the fact, but may go on to consider the causes of it.