Monism as Connecting Religion and Science by Ernst Haeckel
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Ernst Haeckel >> Monism as Connecting Religion and Science
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MONISM AS CONNECTING RELIGION AND SCIENCE
_A MAN OF SCIENCE_
BY
ERNST HAECKEL
TRANSLATED FROM THE GERMAN BY J. GILCHRIST, M.A., B.Sc., PH.D.
PREFACE
The following lecture on Monism is an informal address delivered
extemporaneously on October 9, 1892, at Altenburg, on the seventy-fifth
anniversary of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft des Osterlandes." The
immediate occasion of it was a previous address delivered by Professor
Schlesinger of Vienna on "Scientific Articles of Faith." This
philosophical discourse contained, with reference to the weightiest and
most important problems of scientific investigation, much that was
indisputable; but it also contained some assertions that challenged
immediate rejoinder and a statement of the opposite view. As I had for
thirty years been very closely occupied with these problems of the
philosophy of nature, and had set forth my convictions with respect to
them in a number of writings, a wish was expressed by several members of
the Congress that on this occasion I should give a summary account of
these. It was in compliance with this wish that the following "Scientific
Confession of Faith" was uttered. The substance of it, as written from
recollection on the day after its delivery, first appeared in the
_Altenburger Zeitung of_ 19th October 1892. This was reproduced, with one
or two philosophical additions, in the November number _of_ the _Freie
Buehne fuer den Entwickelungskampf der Zeit_ (Berlin). In its present form
the Altenburg address is considerably enlarged, and some parts have been
more fully worked out. In the notes (p. 9 I) several burning questions of
the present day _have_ been dealt with from the monistic point of view.
The purpose of this candid confession of monistic faith is twofold.
First, it is my desire to give expression to that rational view of the
world which is being forced upon us with such logical rigour by the
modern advancements in our knowledge of nature as a unity, a view in
reality held by almost all unprejudiced and thinking men of science,
although but few have the courage (or the need) to declare it openly.
Secondly, I would fain establish thereby a bond between religion and
science, and thus contribute to the adjustment of the antithesis so
needlessly maintained between these, the two highest spheres in which the
mind of man can exercise itself; in monism the ethical demands of the
soul are satisfied, as well as the logical necessities of the
understanding.
The rising flood of pamphlets and books published on this subject,
demonstrates that such a natural union of faith and knowledge, such a
reasonable reconciliation of the feelings and the reason, are daily
becoming a more pressing necessity for the educated classes. In North
America (in Chicago), there has been published for several years a weekly
journal devoted to this purpose: _The Open Court: A Weekly Journal
devoted to the Work of Conciliating Religion and Science_. Its worthy
editor, Dr. Paul Carus (author of _The Soul of Man_, 1891), devotes also
to the same task a quarterly journal under the title _The Monist_. It is
in the highest degree desirable that so worthy endeavours to draw
together the empirical and speculative views of nature, realism and
idealism, should have more attention and encouragement than they have
hitherto received, for it is only through a natural union of the two that
we can approach a realisation of the highest aim of mental activity-the
blending of religion and science in monism.
ERNST HAECKEL. JENA, _October_ 31, 1892
* * * * *
MONISM
A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot
celebrate its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of
its highest general problems. It must be regarded, therefore, with
satisfaction that the speaker on such an august occasion as this--the
seventy-fifth anniversary of your Society--has selected as the subject of
his address a theme of the highest general importance. Unfortunately, it
is becoming more and more the custom on such occasions, and even at the
general meetings of the great "Association of German Naturalists and
Physicians," to take the subject of address from a narrow and specialised
territory of restricted interest. If this growing custom is to be excused
on the grounds of increasing division of labour and of diverging
specialisation in all departments of work, it becomes all the more
necessary that, on such anniversaries as the present, the attention of
the audience should be invited to larger matters of common interest.
Such a topic, supreme in its importance, is that concerning "Scientific
Articles of Faith," upon which Professor Schlesinger has already
expounded his views.[1] I am glad to be able to agree with him in many
important points, but as to others I should like to express some
hesitation, and to ask consideration for some views which do not coincide
with his. At the outset, I am entirely at one with him as to that
unifying conception of nature as a whole which we designate in a single
word as Monism. By this we unambiguously express our conviction that
there lives "one spirit in all things," and that the whole cognisable
world is constituted, and has been developed, in accordance with one
common fundamental law. We emphasise by it, in particular, the essential
unity of inorganic and organic nature, the latter having been evolved
from the former only at a relatively late period.[2] We cannot draw a
sharp line of distinction between these two great divisions of nature,
any more than we can recognise an absolute distinction between the animal
and the vegetable kingdom, or between the lower animals and man.
Similarly, we regard the whole of human knowledge as a structural unity;
in this sphere we refuse to accept the distinction usually drawn between
the natural and the spiritual. The latter is only a part of the former
(or _vice versa_); both are one. Our monistic view of the world belongs,
therefore, to that group of philosophical systems which from other points
of view have been designated also as mechanical or as pantheistic.
However differently expressed in the philosophical systems of an
Empedocles or a Lucretius, a Spinoza or a Giordano Bruno, a Lamarck or a
David Strauss, the fundamental thought common to them all is ever that of
the oneness of the cosmos, of the indissoluble connection between energy
and matter, between mind and embodiment--or, as we may also say, between
God and the world--to which Goethe, Germany's greatest poet and thinker,
has given poetical expression in his _Faust_ and in the wonderful series
of poems entitled _Gott und Welt_.
That we may rightly appreciate what this Monism is, let us now, from a
philosophico-historical point of view cast a comprehensive glance over
the development in time of man's knowledge of nature. A long series of
varied conceptions and stages of human culture here passes before our
mental vision. At the lowest stage, the rude--we may say animal--phase of
prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the
tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his
immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive
stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the
rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to
conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilisation,
and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise
little by little to the more highly civilised nations. To these alone--of
the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian--are
we indebted for what is usually called "universal history." This last,
extending over somewhat less than six thousand years, represents a period
of infinitesimal duration in the long millions of years of the organic
world's development.
Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who
immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge of
nature. The rude primitive child of nature at this lowest stage of
development is as yet far from being the restless _Ursachenthier_
(cause-seeking animal) of Lichtenberg; his demand for causes has not yet
risen above that of apes and dogs; his curiosity has not yet mounted to
pure desire of knowledge. If we must speak of "reason" in connection with
pithecoid primitive man, it can only be in the same sense as that in
which we use the expression with reference to those other most highly
developed Mammals, and the same remark holds true of the first beginnings
of religion.[3]
It is indeed still not infrequently the custom to deny absolutely to the
lower animals reason and religion. An unprejudiced comparison, however,
convinces us that this is wrong. The slow and gradual process towards
completeness which, in the course of thousands of years, civilised life
has been working in the soul of man, has not passed away without leaving
some trace on the soul of our highest domestic animals also (above all,
of dogs and horses). Constant association with man, and the steady
influence of his training, have gradually, and by heredity, developed in
their brain higher associations of ideas and a more perfect judgment.
Drill has become instinct, an undeniable example of "the transmission of
acquired characters."[4]
Comparative psychology teaches us to recognise a very long series of
successive steps in the development of soul in the animal kingdom. But it
is only in the most highly developed vertebrates-birds and mammals--that
we discern the first beginnings of reason, the first traces of religious
and ethical conduct. In them we find not only the social virtues common
to all the higher socially-living animals,--neighbourly love, friendship,
fidelity, self-sacrifice, etc.,--but also consciousness, sense of duty,
and conscience; in relation to man their lord, the same obedience, the
same submissiveness, and the same craving for protection, which primitive
man in his turn shows towards his "gods." But in him, as in them, there
is yet wanting that higher degree of consciousness and of reason, which
strives after a _knowledge_ of the surrounding world, and which marks the
first beginning of philosophy or "wisdom." This last is the much later
attainment of civilised races; slowly and gradually has it been built up
from lower religious conceptions.
At all stages of primitive religion and early philosophy, man is as yet
far removed from monistic ideas. In searching out the causes of
phenomena, and exercising his understanding thereon, he is in the first
instance prone in every case to regard personal beings--in fact,
anthropomorphic deities--as the agents at work. In thunder and lightning,
in storm and earthquake, in the circling of sun and moon, in every
striking meteorological and geological occurrence, he sees the direct
activity of a personal god or spirit, who is usually thought of in a more
or less anthropomorphic way. Gods are distinguished as good and bad,
friendly and hostile, preserving and destroying, angels and devils.
This becomes true in a yet higher degree when the advancing pursuit of
knowledge begins to take into consideration the more complicated
phenomena of organic life also, the appearance and disappearance of
plants and animals, the life and death of man. The constitution of
organised life, so suggestive as it is of art and purpose, leads one at
once to compare it with the deliberately designed works of man, and thus
the vague conception of a personal god becomes transformed into that of a
creator working according to plan. As we know, this conception of organic
creation as the artistic work of an anthropomorphic god--of a divine
mechanic--generally maintained its ground almost everywhere, down even to
the middle of our own century, in spite of the fact that eminent thinkers
had demonstrated its untenability more than two thousand years ago. The
last noteworthy scientist to defend and apply this idea was Louis Agassiz
(died 1873). His notable _Essay on Classification_, 1857, developed that
theosophy with logical vigour, and thereby reduced it to an absurdity.[5]
All these older religious and teleological conceptions, as well as the
philosophical systems (such as those of Plato and of the Church fathers)
which sprang from them, are antimonistic; they stand in direct antithesis
to our monistic philosophy of nature. Most of them are dualistic,
regarding God and the world, creator and creature, spirit and matter, as
two completely separated substances. We find this express dualism also in
most of the purer church-religions, especially in the three most
important forms of monotheism which the three most renowned prophets of
the eastern Mediterranean--Moses, Christ, and Mohammed--founded. But
soon, in a number of impure varieties of these three religions, and yet
more in the lower forms of paganism, the place of this dualism is taken
by a philosophical pluralism, and over against the good and
world-sustaining deity (Osiris, Ormuzd, Vishnu), there is placed a wicked
and destroying god (Typhon, Ahriman, Siva). Numerous demi-gods or saints,
good and bad, sons and daughters of the gods, are associated with these
two chief deities, and take part with them in the administration and
government of the cosmos.
In all these dualistic and pluralistic systems the fundamental idea is
that of anthropomorphism, or the humanising of God; man himself, as
godlike (or directly descended from God), occupies a special position in
the world, and is separated by a great gulf from the rest of nature.
Conjoined with this, for the most part, is the anthropocentric idea, the
conviction that man is the central point of the universe, the last and
highest final cause of creation, and that the rest of nature was created
merely for the purpose of serving man. In the Middle Ages there was
associated at the same time with this last conception the geocentric
idea, according to which the earth as the abode of man was taken for the
fixed middle point of the universe, round which sun, moon, and stars
revolve. As Copernicus (1543) gave the death-blow to the geocentric
dogma, so did Darwin (1859) to the anthropocentric one closely associated
with it.[6] A broad historical and critical comparison of religious and
philosophical systems, as a whole, leads as a main result to the
conclusion that every great advance in the direction of profounder
knowledge has meant a breaking away from the traditional dualism (or
pluralism) and an approach to monism. Ever more clearly are we compelled
by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the
material world as an external being, but must be placed as a "divine
power" or "moving spirit" within the cosmos itself. Ever clearer does it
become that all the wonderful phenomena of nature around us, organic as
well as inorganic, are only various products of one and the same original
force, various combinations of one and the same primitive matter. Ever
more irresistibly is it borne in upon us that even the human soul is but
an insignificant part of the all-embracing "world-soul"; just as the
human body is only a small individual fraction of the great organised
physical world.
The great general principles of theoretical physics and chemistry are now
in a position to afford to this unifying conception of nature an exact,
to a certain extent, indeed, a mathematical confirmation. In establishing
the law of the "conservation of energy," Robert Mayer and Helmholtz
showed that the energy of the universe is a constant unchangeable
magnitude; if any energy whatever seems to vanish or to come anew into
play, this is only due to the transformation of one form of energy into
another. In the same way Lavoisier's law of the "conservation of matter"
shows us that the material of the cosmos is a constant unchangeable
magnitude; if any body seems to vanish (as, for example, by burning), or
to come anew into being (as, for example, by crystallisation), this also
is simply due to change of form or of combination. Both these great
laws--in physics, the fundamental law of the conservation of energy, and
in chemistry, of the conservation of matter--may be brought under one
philosophical conception as the law of the conservation of substance;
for, according to our monistic conception, energy and matter are
inseparable, being only different inalienable manifestations of one
single universal being-substance.[7] In a certain sense we can regard the
conception of "animated atoms" as essentially partaking of the nature of
this pure monism--a very ancient idea which more than two thousand years
ago Empedocles enunciated in his doctrine of "hate and love of the
elements." Modern physics and chemistry have indeed in the main accepted
the atomic hypothesis first enunciated by Democritus, in so far as they
regard all bodies as built up of atoms, and reduce all changes to
movements of these minutest-discrete particles. All these changes,
however, in organic as well as in inorganic nature, become truly
intelligible to us only if we conceive these atoms not as dead masses,
but as living elementary particles endowed with the power of attraction
and repulsion. "Pleasure" and "pain," and "love" and "hate," as
predicates of atoms are only other expressions for this power of
attraction and repulsion.
Although, however, monism is on the one hand for us an indispensable and
fundamental conception in science, and although, on the other hand, it
strives to carry back all phenomena, without exception, to the mechanism
of the atom, we must nevertheless still admit that as yet we are by no
means in a position to form any satisfactory conception of the exact
nature of these atoms, and their relation to the general space-filling,
universal ether. Chemistry long ago succeeded in reducing all the various
natural substances to combinations of a relatively small number of
elements; and the most recent advances of that science have now made it
in the highest degree probable that these elements or the (as yet)
irreducible primitive materials are themselves in turn only different
combinations of a varying number of atoms of one single original element.
But in all this we have not as yet obtained any further light as to the
real nature of these original atoms or their primal energies.
A number of the acutest thinkers have, so far in vain, endeavoured to
grapple more closely with this fundamental problem of the philosophy of
nature, and to determine more exactly the nature of atoms as well as
their relation to the space-filling ether. And the idea steadily gains
ground that no such thing as empty space exists, and that everywhere the
primitive atoms of ponderable matter or heavy "mass" are separated from
each other by the homogeneous ether which extends throughout all space.
This extremely light and attenuated (if not imponderable) ether causes,
by its vibrations, all the phenomena of light and heat, electricity and
magnetism. We can imagine it either as a continuous substance occupying
the space between the mass-atoms, or as composed of separate particles;
in the latter case we might perhaps attribute to these ether-atoms an
inherent power of repulsion in contrast to the immanent attracting power
of the heavy mass-atoms, and the whole mechanism of cosmic life would
then be reducible to the attraction of the latter and the repulsion of
the former. We might also place the "vibrations of the cosmic ether"
alongside of the "operation of space in general," in the sense in which
these words are used by Professor Schlesinger.
At any rate, theoretical physics has in recent years made an advance of
fundamental importance and widest reach in our knowledge of nature, in
that it has come nearer to a knowledge of this cosmic ether, and has
forced the question of its essence, its structure, and its motion into
the foreground of monistic nature-philosophy. Only a few years ago the
cosmic ether was to the majority of scientists an imponderable something,
of which, strictly speaking, absolutely nothing was known, and which
could be admitted provisionally only as a precarious working hypothesis.
All this was changed when Heinrich Hertz (1888) demonstrated the nature
of electrical energy, by his beautiful experiments establishing the
conjecture of Faraday that light and heat, electricity and magnetism, are
closely related phenomena of one single set of forces, and depend on
transverse vibrations of the ether. Light itself--whatever else it be--is
always and everywhere an electrical phenomenon. The ether itself is no
longer hypothetical; its existence can at any moment be demonstrated by
electrical and optical experiment. We know the length of the light wave
and the electric wave. Indeed, some physicists believe that they can even
determine approximately the density of ether. If by means of the airpump
we remove from a bell-jar the atmospheric air (except an insignificant
residue), the quantity of light within it remains unchanged; it is the
vibrating ether we see.[9] These advances in our knowledge of the ether
mean an immense gain for monistic philosophy. For they do away with the
erroneous ideas of empty space and _actio in distans_; the whole of
infinite space, in so far as it is not occupied by mass-atoms
("ponderable matter"), is filled by the ether. Our ideas of space and
time are quite other than those taught by Kant a hundred years ago; the
"critical" system of the great Koenigsberg philosopher exhibits in this
respect, as well as in his teleological view of the organic world and in
his metaphysics, dogmatic weaknesses of the most pronounced kind.[8] And
religion itself, in its reasonable forms, can take over the ether theory
as an article of faith, bringing into contradistinction the mobile cosmic
ether as creating divinity, and the inert heavy mass as material of
creation.[11] From this successfully scaled height of monistic knowledge
there open up before our joyously quickened spirit of research and
discovery new and surprising prospects, which promise to bring us still
nearer to the solution of the one great riddle of the world. What is the
relation of this light mobile cosmic ether to the heavy inert "mass," to
the ponderable matter which we chemically investigate, and which we can
only think of as constituted of atoms? Our modern analytical chemistry
remains for the present at a standstill, in presence of some seventy
irreducible elements, or so-called primary substances. But the reciprocal
relation of these elements, the affinity of their combinations, their
spectroscopic behaviour, and so forth, make it in the highest degree
probable that they are all merely historical products of an evolutionary
process, having their origin in various dispositions and combinations of
a varying number of original atoms.
To these original or mass-atoms--the ultimate discrete particles of inert
"ponderable matter"--we can with more or less probability ascribe a
number of eternal and inalienable fundamental attributes; they are
probably everywhere in space, of like magnitude and constitution.
Although possessing a definite finite magnitude, they are, by virtue of
their very nature, indivisible. Their shape we may take to be spherical;
they are inert (in the physical sense), unchangeable, inelastic, and
impenetrable by the ether. Apart from the attribute of inertia, the most
important characteristic of these ultimate atoms is their chemical
affinity--their tendency to apply themselves to one another and combine
into small groups in an orderly fashion. These fixed groups (fixed, that
is to say, under the present physical conditions of existence of the
earth) of primitive atoms are the atoms of the elements--the well-known
"indivisible" atoms of chemistry. The qualitative, and, so far as our
present empirical knowledge goes, unchangeable distinctions of our
chemical elements are therefore solely conditioned by the varying number
and disposition of the similar primitive atoms of which they are
composed. Thus, for example, the atom of carbon (the real "maker" of the
organic world) is in all probability a tetrahedron made up of four
primitive atoms.
After Mendelejeff and Lothar Meyer had discovered (1869) the "periodic
law" of the chemical elements, and founded on it a "natural system" of
these elements, this important advance in theoretical chemistry was
subsequently put to profitable use by Gustav Wendt from an evolutionary
point of view. He endeavoured to show that the various elements are
products of evolution or of historically originating combinations of
seven primary elements, and that these last again are historical products
of one single primitive element This hypothetical original matter had
been already designated by Crookes, in his _Genesis of the Elements_, as
primary material or protyl.[10] The empirical proof of the existence of
this original matter lying at the foundation of all ponderable material
is perhaps only a question of time. Its discovery would probably realise
the alchemists' hope of being able to produce gold and silver
artificially out of other elements. But then arises the other great
question: "How is this primary mass related to the cosmic ether? Do these
two original substances stand in fundamental and eternal antithesis to
one another? Or was it the mobile ether itself, perhaps, that originally
engendered the heavy mass?"[11]