The wonders of life : a popular study of biological philosophy / by Ernst Haeckel ; translated by Joseph McCabe.

  • Ernst Haeckel
Date:
1905
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The wonders of life : a popular study of biological philosophy / by Ernst Haeckel ; translated by Joseph McCabe. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    conflicts; yet reason in the life of the State suffers more than its special political complexion. In the science of law, too, we find the prevalence of the dualistic principles that have come down from the Middle Ages and antiquity, and have acquired a certain sacredness by blending with' the teaching of the Church. Kant’s dualism is again found to be at work, influencing the ideas of jurists and statesmen. With it we find in our codes many carefully preserved relics of medieval superstition. A great deal of harm is done by this religious in- fluence. Every day we read in the papers of curious deliverances in the lower and higher courts at which every thoughtful man can only shake his head. Here also there will be no solid improvement until the education of Jurists includes a thorough training in anthropology and psychology as well as in the code. Tlieology has stood at the head of the four venerable “ faculties ” at our universi- ties for centuries. It still holds this place of honour, as the Church, the organ of practical theology, continues to exercise a profound influence on life. In fact, most of the other branches of applied science— especially jurisprudence, politics, ethics, and pedagogics—are still more or less affected by religious prejudices. The chief of these is the idea of God conceived in some form or other as the Supreme Being ; as Goethe says, “ ICveryone calls the best he knows his God.” However, the idea of God is not the chief feature of all religions. 'I'he three greatest Asiatic religions—Ikidd- hism, Brahmanism, and Confucianism — were at first ])urely atheistic ; Buddhism was at once idealistic and pessimistic, whence Schopenhauer regarded it as the highest of all religions. On the other hand, belief in a personal God is the central feature of the three great Mediterranean religions. This anthropomorphic God is conceived in a hundred forms in the various sects of the Mosaic, Christian, and Moham- medan religions, but his existence remains one of the chief articles of faith. No evi- dence of his existence is to be found ; this was very ably shown by Kant, although he thought that practical reason postulated it. All that revelation is supposed to teach us on the matter belongs to the region of fic- tion. The whole field of theology, especially dogmatic theology, and the whole of the Church teaching Irased on it, are grounded on dualistic metaphysics and superstitious traditions. It is no longer a serious subject of scientific treatment. On the other hand, comparative religion is a very important branch of theoretical theology. It deals with the origin, development, and signifi- cance of religion on the basis of modern anthropology, ethnology, psychology, and history. When we study without prejudice the results of these sciences bearing on religion, theology turns out to be pantheism, in the sense of Spinoza and Goethe, and thus Monism becomes a connecting link between religion and science. This brief survey of the twenty chief branches of modern science and their relation to monism and dualism shows that we are still face to face with great contra- dictions, and that we are far from the harmonious and successful adjustment of these differences. They are partly due to a real antinomy of reason in the Kantist sense—an antithesis in ideas, in which the positive seems to be just as capable of proof as its contradictory. But, for the most part, this unfortunate antinomy in the sciences is connected with their historical development. Pure reason, the highest quality of civilised man, was gradually evolved from the intelligence of the savage, and this in turn from the instincts of the apes and lower mammals ; and many relics of its former lower condition remain to- day, and have, through practical reason, a most prejudicial iiifluence on science. These dualistic prejudices and irrational dogmas—intellectual residua of the primi- tive condition of the race, fossil ideas and rudimentary instincts—still pervade the whole of modern theology, jurisprudence, politics, ethics, psychology, and anthropo- logy. If we glance at the whole field of modern science at the beginning of the twentieth century in this connection, we can distribute its twenty sections into three groups—rational (purely monistic), semi- dogmatic (half-monistic), and dogmatic (predominantly dualistic) disciplines. The following maybe classed as rational or purely monistic sciences, in which no competent and thoroughly expert repre- sentative now admits dualistic considera- tions. Of the pure or theoretical sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, astro- nomy, and geology; of the applied or practical sciences, medicine, hygiene, and technology. On the other hand, in the semi-dogmatic sciences we still find a mix- ture of monistic and dualistic ideas in the appreciation of their aims and objects, one or the other prevailing according to the party position or personal training of the
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