Chapter III: Part 3

MONISTIC THEORY OF LIFE │ DUALISTIC THEORY OF LIFE
(Biophysics) │ (Vitalism)
│
1. The phenomena of life are │ 1. The phenomena of life are
merely functions of plasm, │ wholly or partly independent
determined by the physical, │ of the plasm, and
chemical, and morphological │ determined by a special
character of the │ immaterial force, the vital
living matter. │ force (_vis vitalis_).
│
2. The energy of the plasm (as │ 2. The energy of the plasm is
the sum-total of the forces │ wholly or partly subject
which are connected with │ to the immaterial vital
the living matter) is subject │ force, which controls and
to the general laws of │ directs the physical and
physics and chemistry. │ chemical forces of the
│ living matter.
│
3. The obvious regularity of the │ 3. The general regularity in the
vital processes and the │ organization and in the
organization they produce │ vital processes it accomplishes
are the outcome of natural │ is the outcome of
evolution; their physiological │ conscious creation; it can
factors (heredity │ only be explained by intelligent
and adaptation) are subject │ immaterial forces
to the law of substance. │ which are not subject to
│ the law of substance.
│
4. All the various functions │ 4. All the various functions of
have thus been mechanically │ organisms have been produced
produced, orderly │ by design, the
structures having been │ historical evolution (or
created by adaptation and │ phyletic transformation)
transmitted to posterity │ being directed to a preconceived
by heredity. │ ideal end.
│
5. Nutrition is a physico-chemical │ 5. Nutrition is an inexplicable
process, the metabolism │ miracle of life, and cannot
of which has an │ be understood by chemical
analogy in inorganic catalysis. │ and physical processes.
│
6. Reproduction is a mechanical │ 6. Reproduction is an inexplicable
consequence of transgressive │ miracle of life,
growth, analogous │ without any analogy in
to the elective multiplication │ inorganic nature.
of crystals. │
│
7. The movement of organisms │ 7. The movement of organisms
is, in every form, not │ is an inexplicable metaphysical
essentially different from │ miracle of life,
the movements of inorganic │ specifically different from
dynamos. │ all inorganic movements.
│
8. Sensation is a general form │ 8. The sensation of organisms
of the energy of substance, │ can only be explained by
not specifically different │ ascribing a soul to them,
in sensitive organisms and │ an immaterial, immortal
irritable inorganic objects │ being that only dwells for
(such as powder, dynamite). │ a time in the body. After
There is no such │ death this spirit lives an
thing as an immaterial │ independent life.
soul. │

III

MIRACLES

Miracle and natural law--Belief in miracles of savages (fetichism), of semi-civilized (idolatry), of civilized (theism), and of educated people (dualism)--Religious belief in miracles--Apostles' Creed--Article relating to creation--Article relating to redemption--Article relating to immortality--Philosophic belief in miracles--Academic thinkers and Free-thinkers--Dualism of Plato and Kant--Belief in miracles in the nineteenth century, in modern metaphysics, theology, and politics.

In ordinary parlance the word "miracle" means a number of different things. We say a phenomenon is miraculous or wonderful[5] when we cannot explain it and trace its causes. But we say a natural object or a work of art is wonderful when it is unusually beautiful and imposing--when it passes the ordinary limits of our experience. In this work I do not take the word in this relative sense, but in the absolute sense in which a phenomenon is said to transcend the limits of natural law and lie beyond the range of rational explanation. In this sense it means the same as "supernatural" or "transcendental." We can know natural phenomena by our reason and bring them within our cognizance. The miraculous can only be accepted on faith.

The belief in supernatural miracles is in contradiction to pure reason, which lays the foundations of all science. Kant, who won so great a vogue for the term "pure reason," understood by this originally "reason as independent of experience." The phrase was used in a narrower sense subsequently to express independence of dogma and prejudice, as the base of pure and unprejudiced science. In this sense we oppose pure reason to superstition.

I have dealt in the sixteenth chapter of the _Riddle_ with the important question of the relations of knowledge and faith. But I must return to the subject here, as what I said has given rise to a good deal of misunderstanding and criticism. I by no means claimed, as my opponents allege, to "know everything," or to have solved every problem. In fact, I said repeatedly that there are narrow limits to our knowledge, and always will be. I had also expressly stated that the irresistible impulse to learn in the intelligent man, or reason's constant demand to know causes, presses us to fill up the gaps in our knowledge by faith. But I had at the same time pointed out the contrast between scientific (natural) and religious (supernatural) faith. The one leads us to form hypotheses and theories; the other ends in myths and superstition. Scientific faith fills the gaps in our knowledge of natural law with temporary hypotheses; but mystic religious faith contradicts natural law, and transcends its limits in the form of a belief in miracles.

The great triumph of the progress of science in the nineteenth century, its theoretical value in the formation of a rational philosophy of life, and its practical value on the various sides of modern civilization, consist, above all, in the absolute recognition of fixed natural laws. That relation of things to each other, which we call causation, makes it possible for us to understand and explain facts. We feel that our thirst for a knowledge of the causes of things is contented when science points out the "sufficient reason" of them. In the whole province of inorganic cosmology natural law is now generally recognized to be all-powerful; in astronomy, geology, physics, and chemistry all phenomena are reduced to fixed laws, and in the long-run to the all-embracing law of substance, the great law of the conservation of matter and force (_Riddle_, chapter xii.).

It is otherwise in biology, or the organic section of cosmology. Here we still find miracles set up in opposition to the law of substance, and the transgression of natural laws by supernatural forces. The belief in miracles of this kind, which pure reason calls superstition, is still very wide-spread--much more prevalent than is usually thought. For my part, I hold that superstition and unreason are the worst enemies of the human race, while science and reason are its greatest friends. Hence it is our duty and task to attack the belief in miracles wherever we find it, in the interest of the race. We have to prove that the reign of natural law extends over the whole world of phenomena as far as we can reach it. A general survey of the history of faith on the one hand and of science on the other clearly shows that the advance of the latter has always been accompanied by an increasing knowledge of fixed natural laws and the shrinking of superstition into an ever-lessening area. To-day we convince ourselves of this by an impartial examination of mental culture at the various stages of civilization. For this purpose I take the four chief stages of mental development which Fritz Schultze has given in his _Physiology of Uncivilized Races_, and Alexander Sutherland in his work, _On the Origin and Growth of the Moral Instinct_: 1, savages; 2, barbarians; 3, civilized races; 4, educated races (_cf._ chapter i.).

The mental life of savages rises little above that of the higher mammals, especially the apes, with which they are genealogically connected. Their whole interest is restricted to the physiological functions of nutrition and reproduction, or the satisfaction of hunger and thirst in the crudest animal fashion. Without fixed habitation, constantly struggling for existence, they live on the raw produce of nature--fruits, the roots of wild plants, and the animals they fish in the water or catch on land. Their intelligence moves within the narrowest bounds, and one can no more (or no less) speak of their reason than of that of the more intelligent animals. Of art and science there is no question. Their impulse to discover causes is satisfied with the simplest association of phenomena which have a merely external connection, but no intimate relation to each other. Thus arises their _fetichism_, that irrational trust in fetiches which Fritz Schultze has traced to four distinct causes: their false estimate of the value of an object, their anthropomorphic conception of nature, the imperfect association of their ideas, and the strength of their emotions, especially hope and fear. Any favorite object, a stone or a bone, may work miracles as a fetich and exercise all kinds of good or evil influence, and is therefore honored, feared, and worshipped. At first the worship was paid to the invisible spirit that dwelt in the particular object; but it was often transferred afterwards to the dead object itself. Among the different savage races the belief in fetiches presents a number of stages, corresponding to the beginnings of reason. The lowest stage is found in the lowest races, such as the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Andaman Islanders, Bushmen, and Akkas (of New Guinea). A somewhat higher stage is met in the middle races (Australian negroes, Tasmanians, Hottentots, and Tierra del Fuegians); and a still higher intellectual development is shown by the next group (most of the Indians of North and South America, the aboriginal inhabitants of India, etc.). Modern comparative ethnography and evolution and prehistoric and anthropological research have shown us that our own ancestors, ten thousand and more years ago, were (like the prehistoric ancestors of all races of men) savages, and that their earliest belief in miracles was a crude fetichism.

By barbarians we understand the races that are found between savage and civilized peoples. They show the first beginnings of civilization, and are superior to savages chiefly in the possession of agriculture and the keeping of cattle. They make a provident use of the productive forces of organic nature, artificially produce large quantities of food, and are thus enabled by the abundance of food to turn their minds to other interests. We find that they have the rudiments of art and science. Their religion does not at first rise much above fetichism, but soon reaches the stage of animism, lifeless objects in nature being credited with souls. Worship is no longer paid to favorite dead objects (stones, bones, etc.), but generally to living things, trees and animals, and especially to images of gods which have the form of animals or men, and are believed to possess souls. As demons or spirits, these have a great influence on the fortunes of men. At first this soul is conceived to be purely material; it disappears at the death of the body and lives apart. As the breathing and the beat of the pulse and heart cease when a man dies, the seat of the soul is thought to be the lungs, heart, or some other part of the body. The idea of the immortality of the soul takes on innumerable forms among them, like the belief in the miracles which are worked by the gods, demons, spirits, etc. Evolution again points out a long gradation of forms of faith, if we compare the lower, middle, and higher races.

Civilized races are distinguished from barbaric by the formation of states with an extensive division of labor. The social organism is not only larger and more powerful, but is capable of a greater variety of achievements, the functions of the various states and classes of workers being more highly differentiated and mutually complementary (like the cells and tissues in the higher animal body of the metazoa). Nutrition is easier and more luxurious. Art and science are well developed. A great advance is seen in regard to religion, the numerous gods being generally conceived as manlike spirits, and finally subordinated to a chief god. The belief in miracles flourishes greatly in poetry; in philosophy it is more and more restricted. In the end, the working of miracles is limited monotheistically to one god, or to his priests and other men to whom he communicates the power.

Modern civilization in the narrower sense, as a contrast to the older civilization, opens, in my opinion, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time took place some of the greatest achievements of human thought among civilized peoples, and these broke the chains of tradition and gave a fresh impetus to progress. Men's own mental outlook was widened by the system of Copernicus and the Reformation freed them from the yoke of the papacy. Shortly before, the discovery of the New World and the circumnavigation of the globe had convinced men of the rotundity of the earth; geography, natural history, medicine, and other sciences gained inspiration and independence; printing and engraving provided an important means of spreading the new knowledge. This fresh impetus was chiefly of service to philosophy, which now more and more rejected the dictation of the Church and superstition; though it was far from casting off the fetters altogether. This was not generally possible until the nineteenth century, when empirical science assumed an enormous importance, and in the ensuing period of speculation the physical conception of the world gained more and more on the metaphysical. Pure knowledge, thus grounded on science, entered into sharper conflict than ever with religious faith. If, as in the preceding cases, we distinguish three stages in the development of modern civilization, we recognize the progressive liberation from superstition by scientific knowledge.

When we compare the higher forms of religion of civilized nations we find the same emotional cravings and thought-processes constantly recurring, and the belief in miracles developing in much the same way. The three founders of the great monotheistic Mediterranean religion--Moses, Christ, and Mohammed--were equally regarded as wonder-working prophets, having direct intercourse with God in virtue of their special gifts, and transmitting his commands to men in the shape of laws. The extraordinary authority they enjoy, which has given so much prestige to the religions they founded, is grounded for ordinary people on their miraculous powers--the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the expulsion of devils, and so on. If we examine the miracles of Christ as they are given in the gospels, they run counter to the laws of nature and rational explanation just in the same way as the similar miracles of Buddha and Brahma in Hindoo mythology, or of Mohammed in the Koran. The same must be said of the belief in the miracle of the bread and wine in the Lord's supper, and the like. The Creed which was probably drawn up by the leaders of the Christian communities of the second century, and received its final and present form in the Church of South Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries, has been obligatory for Christians for fifteen hundred years, and recognized by both Church and State as compulsory. This Apostles' Creed was also recognized in Luther's catechism to be fundamental, and is taught in all Protestant and Roman Catholic schools (though not in the Greek Catholic) as the foundation of religious instruction. This extraordinary prestige of the Apostles' Creed, and its great influence on the education of the young, no less than its glaring inconsistency with rational knowledge, compel us to devote a few pages to a critical examination of its three articles.

The first article of the Creed deals with creation, and runs: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." The modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any such creation, but that the universe is eternal and the law of substance all-ruling. God himself is anthropomorphically conceived as an "Almighty Creator" and the Father of man; heaven (in the sense of the geocentric system) is imagined as a great blue vault spanning the earth. The notion of this "personal God" as an intelligent, immaterial being, creating the material world out of nothing, is wholly irrational and meaningless. That Luther accepted this childish and scientifically worthless idea is clear from his commentary on the first article--"What is that?"

The second article of the Creed deals with the dogma of salvation in the following words: "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, descended into hell, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead." As these dogmas of the second article contain the chief points of the redemption theory, and are still treasured by millions of educated people, it is necessary to point out their flagrant opposition to pure reason. The chief evil of such creeds is that children, who are yet incapable of reflecting, are forced to learn them by heart. They then remain unchallenged as revealed truths.

The myth of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ is mere fiction, and is at the same stage of superstition as a hundred other myths of other religions. Of the three persons who are mysteriously blended in the triune God, the son Christ is supposed to be begotten by both Father and Holy Ghost, parthenogenetically through the Virgin Mary. I have dealt with the physiology of parthenogenesis in the seventeenth chapter of the _Riddle_. The curious adventures of Christ after his death, the descent into hell, resurrection, and ascension, are also fantastic myths due to the narrow geocentric ideas of an uneducated people. Troelslund has admirably explained the strong influence they have had in his interesting book, _The Idea of Heaven and of the World_.[6] The idea of the "last judgment," with Christ sitting on the right hand of the Father, as many famous mediæval pictures represent (notably Michael Angelo's in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican), is another outcome of a thoroughly childish and anthropomorphic attitude.

It is remarkable that this second article of the Creed says nothing about "redemption," which forms its heading [in Germany]. Luther has dealt with it in his commentary. Christ is believed to have suffered a painful death, like many thousand other martyrs, for his conviction of the truth of his faith and teaching--which reminds one of the more than a hundred thousand men who were done to death by the Inquisition and in the religious wars of the Middle Ages; but not one of the millions of ministers who preach on it every Sunday seems to have shown a rational causal connection of this death with the alleged redemption from sin and death. The whole of this story of redemption has sprung from the primitive, obscure, ethical ideas of uneducated races, especially the crude belief in the propitiatory power of human sacrifice. It has no practical moral value except for those who believe in personal immortality--a scientifically untenable dogma. Whoever builds on this empty promise of a better life beyond may soothe himself with this hope, and reconcile himself to the thousand ills and defects of this world. But the man who studies this life as it really is will not find that the belief in redemption has brought any real improvement. Want and misery and sin are as prevalent as ever; indeed, our modern civilization has, in many respects, increased them.

The third and last article of the Apostles' Creed runs: "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting." In the curious commentary that Luther made on this article in his catechism, he said that "man cannot believe of his own reason in Jesus Christ"--which is very true--but the Holy Ghost must lead him thereto with his grace; but how the third person of the Trinity effects this enlightenment and sanctification he did not explain. What is meant by the "communion of saints" and the "holy Catholic Church" must be gathered in the light of their history--especially the history of Romanism. This most powerful and still influential section of the Christian Church, which especially claims the title of Catholic and "the one ark of salvation," is really a most pitiful caricature of pure primitive Christianity. It has, with consummate skill, succeeded in preaching the beneficent teaching of Christ in theory and doing just the opposite in practice; we need only recall the Inquisition, the dark history of the Middle Ages, and the political hierarchy which still dominates so much of civilization.

However, by far the most important clause in the third article is the final expression of belief in "the resurrection of the body and life everlasting." That this greatest "wonder of life" was originally conceived in a purely material form is evident from thousands of pictures in which famous painters have realistically depicted the resurrection of the dead, the aërial flight of the happy souls of the blessed, and the torments of the damned in hell. It is thus conceived still by the majority of believers who take eternal life to be an "enlarged and improved edition" of life here below. This is equally true of Christian and Mohammedan pictures and of the athanatist ideas that prevailed in other religions long before Christ was born, even of the first rudiments of the belief in primitive races. As long as the geocentric theory prevailed, and the heavens were thought to be a sort of blue glass bell, illumined by thousands of little stars and the lamp of the sun, arching like a vault over the flat earth, and the fires of hell burned in the cellars below, this barbaric notion of a resurrection of the body and a last judgment could easily be maintained. But its roots were destroyed when Copernicus refuted the geocentric theory in 1545; and athanatism became quite untenable when Darwin shattered the dogma of anthropocentricism. Not only the crude older materialistic idea of eternal life, but also the refined new spiritualistic version, has been rendered untenable by the progress of science in the nineteenth century. I have shown this in the eleventh chapter of the _Riddle_, which closes with the words: "If we take a comprehensive glance at all that modern anthropology, psychology, and cosmology teach with regard to athanatism, we are forced to this definite conclusion. The belief in the immortality of the human soul is in hopeless contradiction with the most solid empirical truths of modern science."[7]

The great influence which has been exercised on civilized nations by the Christian beliefs, supported by the practical exigencies of the state, for thousands of years, was chiefly seen in the crude superstition of the mass of the people. Confessions of faith became as much a matter of routine as the latest fashion in dress or the latest custom, etc. But even the majority of the philosophers were more or less subordinated to the influence. It is true that a few great thinkers freed themselves by the use of pure reason at an early date from the prevalent superstition, and framed systems apart from tradition and the priests. But most philosophers could not rise to the altitude of these brave Free-thinkers; they remained "school-men" in the literal sense, dependent on the dictation of authority, the traditions of the school, and the dogmas of the Church. Philosophy was the "handmaid" of theology and ecclesiasticism. If we examine the history of philosophy in this light, we find in it a struggle for twenty-five hundred years between two great tendencies--the dualism of the majority (with theological and mystic leanings) and the monism of the minority (with rationalistic and naturalistic disposition).

Especially notable are those great Free-thinkers of classic antiquity who taught a monistic view of life in the sixth century before Christ--the Ionic natural philosophers, Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes; and a little later, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Democritus. They made the first thorough attempt to explain the world on rational principles, independently of all mythological tradition and theological dogmas. However, these remarkable efforts to found a primitive monism, which found so finished an expression in the _De rerum natura_ of the great poet-philosopher, Lucretius Carus (98-54 B.C.), were shortly thrust out by the spread--through Plato's curious dualism--of the belief in the immortality of the soul and the transcendental world of ideas.

The Eleatics, Parmenides and Zeno, had foreshadowed in the fifth century the division of philosophy into two branches; but Plato and his pupil Aristotle (in the fourth century B.C.) succeeded in gaining general acceptance for this dualism and antithesis of physics and metaphysics. Physics devoted itself on the ground of experience to the study of the phenomena of things, leaving their real essences (or noumena) that lay behind the phenomena to metaphysics. These inner essences are transcendental and inaccessible to empirical research; they form the metaphysical world of eternal ideas, which is independent of the real world, and has its highest unity in God, as the Absolute. The soul, an eternal idea that dwells for a time in the passing human body, is immortal. This consistent dualism of Plato's system, with its sharp antithesis of this world and the next, of body and soul, of world and God, is its chief characteristic. It became all the more influential when Plato's pupil Aristotle blended it with his empirical metaphysics, based on ample scientific experience, and pointed out the idea in the entelechy, or purposively acting principle, of every being; and especially when Christianity (three hundred years afterwards) found in this dualism a welcome philosophic support of its own transcendental tendency.

In the course of the thousand years which historians call the Middle Ages, and which are usually dated from the fall of the Roman Empire (476) to the discovery of America (1492), the superstition of civilized races reached its highest development. The authority of Aristotle was paramount in philosophy; it was used by the dominant Church for its own purposes. But the influence of the Christian faith, with all the gay coloring which the fairy-tales of the Bible added to its structure of dogmas, was seen much more in practical life. In the foreground of belief were the three central dogmas of metaphysics, to which Plato had first given complete expression--the personal God as creator of the world, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the human will. As Christianity laid the greatest theoretical stress on the first two dogmas and the greatest practical stress on the third, metaphysical dualism soon prevailed on all sides. Especially inimical to scientific inquiry was the Christian contempt of nature and its belittlement of earthly life in view of the eternal life to come. As long as the light of philosophical criticism in any form was extinguished, the flower-garden of religious poetry flourished exceedingly and the idea of miracle was taken as self-evident. We know what the practical result of this superstition was from the ghastly history of the Middle Ages, with its Inquisition, religious wars, instruments of torture, and drowning of witches. In the face of the current enthusiasm for the romantic side of mediævalism, the Crusades and Church art, we cannot lay too much stress on these dark and bloody pages of its chronicles.

An impartial study of the immense progress made by science in the course of the nineteenth century shows convincingly that the three central metaphysical dogmas established by Plato have become untenable for pure reason. Our clear modern insight into the regularity and causative character of natural processes, and especially our knowledge of the universal reign of the law of substance, are inconsistent with belief in a personal God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will. If we find this threefold superstition still widely prevalent, and even retained by academic philosophers as an unshakable consequence of "critical philosophy," we must trace this remarkable fact chiefly to the great prestige of Immanuel Kant. His so-called critical system--really a hybrid product of the crossing of pure reason with practical superstition--has enjoyed a greater popularity than any other philosophy, and we must stop to consider it for a moment.

I have described in chapters xiv. and xx. of the _Riddle_ the profound opposition between my monistic system and Kant's dualistic philosophy. In the appendix to the popular edition, especially, I have pointed out the glaring contradictions of his system, which other philosophers have often detected and criticised. Whenever there is question of his teaching one must ask: "Which Kant do you mean? Kant I., the founder of the monistic cosmogony, the critical formulator of pure reason; or Kant II., the author of the dualistic criticism of judgment, the dogmatic discoverer of practical reason?" These contradictions are partly due to the psychological metamorphoses which Kant underwent (_Riddle_, chapter vi.), partly to the perennial conflict between his scientific bias towards a mechanical explanation of this world and his religious craving (an outcome of heredity and education) and mystic belief in a life beyond. This culminates in the distinction between the world of sense and the world of spirit. The sense world (_mundus sensibilis_) lies open to our senses and our intellect, and is empirically knowable within certain limits. But behind it there is the spiritual world (_mundus intelligibilis_) of which we know, and can know, nothing; its existence (as the thing in itself) is, however, assured by our emotional needs. In this transcendental world dwells the power of mysticism.

It is said to be the chief merit of Kant's system that he first clearly stated the problem: "How is knowledge possible?" In trying to solve this problem introspectively, by a subtle analysis of his own mental activity, he reached the conviction that the most important and soundest of all knowledge--namely, mathematical--consists of synthetic _a priori_ judgments, and that pure science is only possible on condition that there are strict _a priori_ ideas, independent of all experience, without _a posteriori_ judgments. Kant regarded this highest faculty of the human mind as innate, and made no inquiry into its development, its physiological mechanism, and its anatomic organ, the brain. Seeing the very imperfect knowledge which human anatomy had of the complicated structure of the brain at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was impossible to have at that time a correct idea of its physiological function.

What seems to us to-day to be an innate capacity, or an _a priori_ quality, of our phronema, is really a phylogenetic result of a long series of brain-adaptations, formed by _a posteriori_ sense-perceptions and experiences.

Kant's much-lauded critical theory of knowledge is therefore just as dogmatic as his idea of "the thing in itself," the unintelligible entity that lurks behind the phenomena. This dogma is erroneously built on the correct idea that our knowledge, obtained through the senses, is imperfect; it extends only so far as the specific energy of the senses and the structure of the phronema admit. But it by no means follows that it is a mere illusion, and least of all that the external world exists only in our ideas. All sound men believe, when they use their senses of touch and space, that the stone they feel fills a certain part of space, and this space does really exist. When all men who can see agree that the sun rises and sets every day, this proves a relative motion of the two heavenly bodies, and so the real existence of time. Space and time are not merely necessary forms of intuition for human knowledge, but real features of things, existing quite independently of perception.

The increasing recognition of fixed natural laws which accompanied the growth of science in the nineteenth century was bound to restrict more and more the blind faith in miracles. There are three chief reasons why we find this, nevertheless, still so prevalent--the continued influence of dualistic metaphysics, the authority of the Christian Church, and the pressure of the modern state in allying itself with the Church. These three strong bulwarks of superstition are so hostile to pure reason and the truth it seeks that we must devote special attention to them. It is a question of the highest interests of humanity. The struggle against superstition and ignorance is a fight for civilization. Our modern civilization will only emerge from it in triumph, and we shall only eliminate the last barbaric features from our social and political life, when the light of true knowledge has driven out the belief in miracles and the prejudices of dualism.

The remarkable history of philosophy in the nineteenth century, which has not yet been written with complete impartiality and knowledge, shows us in the first place an ever-increasing struggle between the rising young sciences and the paramount authority of tradition and dogma. In the first half of the century the various branches of biology made progress without coming into direct collision with natural philosophy. The great advance of comparative anatomy, physiology, embryology, paleontology, the cell-theory, and classification, provided scientists with such ample material that they attached little importance to speculative metaphysics. It was otherwise in the second half of the nineteenth century. Soon after its commencement the controversy about the immortality of the soul broke out, in which Moleschott (1852), Büchner, and Carl Vogt (1854) contended for the physiological dependence of the soul on the brain, while Rudolph Wagner endeavored to maintain the prevailing metaphysical idea of its supernatural character. Then Darwin especially initiated in 1859 that vast reform in biology which brought to light the natural origin of species and shattered the miracle of creation. When the application of the theory of descent and the biogenetic law to man was made by anthropogeny (1874), and his evolution from a series of other mammals was proved, the belief in the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, and an anthropomorphic deity lost its last support. Nevertheless, these three fundamental dogmas continued to find favor in academic philosophy, which mostly followed the paths opened out by Kant. Most of the representatives of philosophy at the universities are narrow metaphysicians and idealists, who think more of the fiction of the "intelligible world" than of the truth of the world of sense. They ignore the vast progress made by modern biology, especially in the science of evolution; and they endeavor to meet the difficulties which it creates for their transcendental idealism by a sort of verbal gymnastic and sophistry. Behind all these metaphysical struggles there is still the personal element--the desire to save one's immortality from the wreck. In this it comes into line with the prevailing theology, which again builds on Kant. The pitiful condition of modern psychology is a characteristic result of this state of things. While the empirical physiology and pathology of the brain have made the greatest discoveries, the comparative anatomy and histology of the brain have thrown light on the details of its elaborate structure, and the ontogeny and phylogeny of the brain have proved its natural origin, the speculative philosophy of the schools stands aside from it all, and in its introspective analysis of the functions of the brain will not hear a word about the brain itself. It would explain the working of a most complicated machine without paying any attention to its structure. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that the dualistic theories established by Kant flourish at our universities as they did in the Middle Ages.

If the official philosophers, whose formal duty it is to study truth and natural law, still cling to the belief in miracles in spite of all the advance of empirical science, we shall not be surprised to find this in the case of official theology. Nevertheless, the sense of truth has prompted many unprejudiced and honorable theologians to look critically at the venerable structure of dogma, and open their minds to the streaming light of modern science. In the first third of the nineteenth century a rationalistic section of the Protestant Church attempted to rid itself of the fetters of dogma and reconcile its ideas with pure reason. Its chief leader, Schleiermacher, of Berlin, though an admirer of Plato and his dualist metaphysics, approached very close to modern pantheism. Subsequent rationalistic theologians, especially those of the Tübingen school (Baur, Zeller, etc.), devoted themselves to the historical study of the gospels and their sources and development, and thus more and more destroyed the base of Christian superstition. Finally, the radical criticism of David Friedrich Strauss showed, in his _Life of Jesus_ (1835), the mythological character of the whole Christian system. In his famous work, _The Old and New Faith_ (1872), this honorable and gifted theologian finally abandoned the belief in miracles, and turned to natural knowledge and the monistic philosophy for the construction of a rational view of life on the basis of critical experience. This work has lately been continued by Albert Kalthoff. Moreover, many modern theologians (such as Savage, Nippold, Pfleiderer, and other liberal Protestants) have endeavored in various ways to obtain a certain recognition for the claims of progressive science, and reconcile them with theology, while discarding the belief in the miraculous. However, these rationalistic efforts, based on monistic or pantheistic views, are still isolated and apparently without effect. The great majority of modern theologians adhere to the traditional teaching of the Church, whose columns and windows are still everywhere adorned with miracles. While a few liberal Protestants restrict their faith to the three fundamental dogmas, most of them still believe in the myths and legends which fill the pages of the gospels. This orthodoxy is, moreover, encouraged of late by the conservative and reactionary attitude taken up by many governments on political grounds.

Most modern governments maintain the connection with the Church in the idea that the traditional belief in the miraculous is the best security for their own continuance. Throne and altar must protect and support each other. However, this conservative-Christian policy meets two obstacles in an increasing measure. On the one hand, the ecclesiastical hierarchy is always trying to set its spiritual power above the secular and make the state serve its own purposes; and, on the other hand, the modern right of popular representation affords an opportunity to make the voice of reason heard and oppose the reactionary conservatives with opportune reforms. The chief rulers and the ministers of public instruction, who have a great influence in this struggle, generally favor the teaching of the Church, not out of conviction of its truth, but because they think knowledge brings unrest, and because docile and ignorant subjects are easier to rule than educated and independent citizens. Hence it is that we now hear so much on every occasion, in speeches from the throne and at banquets, at the opening of churches and the unveiling of monuments, from able and influential speakers, of the value of faith. They would give the palm to faith in its struggle with knowledge. Thus we get this paradoxical situation in educated countries (such as Prussia), that encouragement is given at once to modern science and technical training and to the orthodox Church, which is its deadly enemy. As a rule, it is not stated in these florid orations to how many and what kind of miracles this precious faith must extend. Nevertheless, we may yet, in view of the spread of intellectual reaction in Germany, see it made obligatory for at least all priests, teachers, and other servants of the state to profess a belief in the three fundamental mysteries--the triune God of the catechism, the personal immortality of the soul, and the absolute freedom of the human will--and even in many of the other miracles which are found in the gospels, sacred legends, and religious journals of our time.

The refined belief in the miraculous embodied in Kant's practical philosophy assumed many different forms among his followers, the Neo-Kantians, approaching sometimes more and sometimes less to the conventional beliefs. Through a long series of variations, which still continue to develop, it is gradually passing into the cruder form of superstition which we find popular to-day as spiritism, and which provides the basis for what is called occultism. Kant himself, in spite of his subtle and clear critical faculty, had a decided leaning to mysticism and positive dogmatism, which showed itself especially in his later years. He thought a good deal of Swedenborg's idea of the spirit world forming a universe apart, and compared this to his _mundus intelligibilis_. Among the natural philosophers of the first half of the nineteenth century, Schelling (in his later writings), Schubert (in his _History of the Soul_ and _Observations on the Dark Side of Science_), and Perty (in his mystic anthropology) especially investigated the mysterious phenomena of mental action, and sought to connect them with the physiological functions of the brain on the one hand and supernatural spiritual agencies on the other. Modern spook-seeking has no more value than mediæval magic, cabalism, astrology, necromancy, dream-interpretation, and invocation of the devil.

We must put at the same stage of superstition the spiritism and occultism we find mentioned so much in modern literature. There are always thousands of credulous folk in educated countries who are taken in by the performances of the spiritists and their media, and are ready to believe the unbelievable. Spirit-rapping, table-turning, spirit-writing, the materialization and photographing of deceased souls, find credit, not only among the uneducated masses, but even among the most cultured, and sometimes among imaginative scientists. It has been proved without avail by numbers of impartial observations and experiments that these occultist performances depend partly on conscious fraud and partly on careless self-deception. _Mundus vult decipi_--"the world wishes to be taken in"--as the old saying has it. This spiritistic fraud is particularly dangerous when it clothes itself with the mantle of science, makes use of the physiological phenomena of hypnotism, and even assumes a monistic character. Thus, for instance, one of the best-known occultist writers, Karl du Prel, has written, not only a _Philosophy of Mysticism and Studies of Scientific Subjects_, but also (1888) a _Monistic Psychology_, which is dualistic from beginning to end. In these popular writings lively imagination and brilliant presentation are combined with a most flagrant lack of critical sense and of knowledge of the elements of biology (_cf._ chapter xvi. of the _Riddle_). It seems that the hereditary bias towards mysticism and superstition is not yet eliminated even from the educated mind of our time. It is to be explained phylogenetically by inheritance from prehistoric barbarians and savages, in whom the earliest religious ideas were wholly dominated by animism and fetichism.

IV

THE SCIENCE OF LIFE

Object of biology--Relation to the other sciences--General and special biology--Natural philosophy--Monism: hylozoism, materialism, dynamism--Naturalism--Nature and spirit--Physics--Metaphysics--Dualism--Freedom and natural law--God in biology--Realism--Idealism--Branches of biology--Morphology and physiology--Anatomy and biogeny--Ergology and perilogy.

The broad realm of science has been vastly extended in the course of the nineteenth century. Many new branches have established themselves independently; many new and most fruitful methods of research have been discovered, and have been applied with the greatest practical success in furthering the advance of modern thought. But this enormous expansion of the field of knowledge has its disadvantages. The extensive division of labor it has involved has led to the growth of a narrow specialism in many small sections; and in this way the natural connection of the various provinces of knowledge, and their relation to the comprehensive whole, have been partly or wholly lost sight of. The importation of new terms which are used in different senses by one-sided workers in the various fields of science has caused a good deal of misunderstanding and confusion. The vast structure of science tends more and more to become a tower of Babel, in the labyrinthic passages of which few are at their ease and few any longer understand the language of other workers. In these circumstances, it seems advisable, at the commencement of our philosophic study of "the wonders of life," to form a clear idea of our task. We must carefully define the place of biology among the sciences, and the relation of its various branches to each other and to the different systems of philosophy.

In the broadest sense in which we can take it, biology is the whole study of organisms or living beings. Hence not only botany (the science of plants) and zoology (the science of animals), but also anthropology (the science of man), fall within its domain. We then contrast with it all the sciences which deal with inorganic or lifeless bodies, which we may collectively call abiology (or anorganology); to this belong astronomy, geology, mineralogy, hydrology, etc. This division of the two great branches of science does not seem difficult in view of the fact that the idea of life is sharply defined physiologically by its metabolism and chemically by its plasm; but when we come to study the question of abiogenesis (chapter xv.) we shall find that this division is not absolute, and that organic life has been evolved from inorganic nature. Moreover, biology and abiology are connected branches of cosmology, or the science of the world.

While the idea of biology is now usually taken in this broad sense in most scientific works and made to embrace the whole of living nature, we often find (especially in Germany) a narrower application of the term. Many authors (mostly physiologists) understand by it a section of physiology--namely, the science of the relations of living organisms to the external world, their habitat, customs, enemies, parasites, etc. I proposed long ago to call this special part of biology œcology (the science of home-relations), or bionomy. Twenty years later others suggested the name of ethology. To call this special study any longer biology in the narrower sense is very undesirable, because it is the only name we have for the totality of the organic sciences.

Like every other science, biology has a general and a special part. General biology contains general information about living nature; this is the subject of the present study of the wonders of life. We might also describe it as biological philosophy, since the aim of true philosophy must be the comprehensive survey and rational interpretation of all the general results of scientific research. The innumerable discoveries of detailed facts which observation and experiment give us, and which are combined into a general view of life in philosophy, form the subject of empirical science. As the latter, on the side of the organic world, or as empirical biology, forms the first object of the science of life, and seeks to effect in the system of nature a logical arrangement and summary grouping of the countless special forms of life, this special biology is often wrongly called the science of classification.

The first comprehensive attempt to reduce to order and unity the ample biological material which systematic research had accumulated in the eighteenth century was made by what we call "the older natural philosophy" at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Reinhold Treviranus (of Bremen) had made a suggestive effort to accomplish this difficult task on monistic principles in his _Biology, or Philosophy of Living Nature_ (1802). Special importance attaches to the year 1809, in which Jean Lamarck (of Paris) published his _Philosophie Zoologique_, and Lorentz Oken (of Jena) his _Manual of Natural Philosophy_. I have fully appreciated the service of Lamarck, the founder of the theory of descent, in my earlier writings. I have also recognized the great merit of Lorentz Oken, who not only aroused a very wide interest in this science by his _General Natural History_, but also put forward some general observations of great value. His "infamous" theory of a primitive slime, and the development of infusoria out of it, is merely the fundamental idea of the theory of protoplasm and the cell which was long afterwards fully recognized. These and other services of the older natural philosophy were partly ignored and partly overlooked, because they went far beyond the scientific horizon of the time, and their authors to an extent lost themselves in airy and fantastic speculations. The more scientists confined themselves in the following half-century to empirical work and the observation and description of separate facts, the more it became the fashion to look down on all "natural philosophy." The most paradoxical feature of the situation was that purely speculative philosophy and idealist metaphysics had a great run at the same time, and their castles in the air, utterly destitute of biological foundation, were much admired.

The magnificent reform of biology which Darwin initiated in 1859 by his epoch-making _Origin of Species_ gave a fresh impulse to natural philosophy. As this work not only used the rich collection of facts already made in proof of the theory of descent, but gave it a new foundation in the theory of selection (Darwinism properly so called), everything seemed to call for the embodiment of the new conception of nature in a monistic system. I made the first effort to do this in my _General Morphology_ (1866). As this found few supporters among my colleagues, I undertook in my _History of Creation_ (1868) to make the chief points of the system accessible to the general reader. The remarkable success of this book (a tenth edition of it appearing in 1902) emboldened me at the end of the nineteenth century to state the general principles of my monistic philosophy in my _Riddle of the Universe_. About the same time (1899) there appeared the work of the Kiel botanist, Johannes Reinke, _The World as Reality_; and two years afterwards he followed it up with a supplementary volume, _Introduction to Theoretic Biology_. As Reinke treats the general problems of natural philosophy from a purely mystic and dualistic point of view, his ideas are diametrically opposed to my monistic and naturalistic principles.

The history of philosophy describes for us the infinite variety of ideas that men have formulated during the last three thousand years on the nature of the world and its phenomena. Überweg has given us, in his excellent _History of Philosophy_, a thorough and impartial account of these various systems. Fritz Schultze has published a clear and compendious "tabulated outline" of them in thirty tables in his genealogical tree of philosophy, and at the same time shown the phylogeny of ideas. When we survey this enormous mass of philosophic systems from the point of view of general biology, we find that we can divide them into two main groups. The first and smaller group contains the monistic philosophy, which traces all the phenomena of existence to one single common principle. The second and larger group, to which most philosophic systems belong, constitutes the dualistic philosophy, according to which there are two totally distinct principles in the universe. These are sometimes expressed as God and the world, sometimes as the spiritual world and material world, sometimes as mind and matter, and so on. In my opinion, this antithesis of monism and dualism is the most important in the whole history of philosophy. All other systems are only variations of one or the other of these, or a more or less obscure combination of the two.

The form of monism which I take to be the most complete expression of the general truth, and which I have advocated in my writings for thirty-eight years, is now generally called hylozoism. This expresses the fact that all substance has two fundamental attributes; as matter (_hyle_) it occupies space, and as force or energy it is endowed with sensation (_cf._ chapter xix.). Spinoza, who gave the most perfect expression to this idea in his "philosophy of identity," and most clearly treated the notion of substance (as the all-embracing essence of the world), clothes it with two general attributes--extension and thought. Extension is identical with real space, and thought with (unconscious) sensation. The latter must not be confused with conscious human thought; intelligence is not found in substance, but is a special property of the higher animals and man. Spinoza identifies his substance with nature and God, and his system is accordingly called pantheism; but it must be understood that he rejects the anthropomorphic, personal idea of deity.

A good deal of the infinite confusion that characterizes the conflicts of philosophers over their systems is due to the obscurity and ambiguity of many of their fundamental ideas. The words "substance" and "God," "soul" and "spirit," "sensation" and "matter," are used in the most different and changing senses. This is especially true of the word "materialism," which is often wrongly taken to be synonymous with monism. The moral bias of idealism against _practical_ materialism (or pure selfishness and sensualism) is forthwith transferred to theoretical materialism, which has nothing to do with it; and the strictures which are justly urged against the one are most unjustifiably applied to the other. Hence it is important to distinguish very carefully between these two meanings of materialism.