Men differ greatly in their capacity for intuition. In one person ideas bubble up easily, while another person has to acquire them with much labor. The situation in which men live, which is the scene of their actions, is no less different. How a man acts will therefore depend on the way his capacity for intuition functions in the face of a given situation. The sum of ideas active within us, the actual content of our intuitions, is what, for all the universality of the idea-world, is individually const.i.tuted in each human being. Insofar as this intuitive content is directed toward action, it is the moral content of the individual.
To let this content come to expression is the highest moral driving force and also the highest motive for the one who has recognized that ultimately all other moral principles unite in this content. This standpoint can be called ethical individualism.
The discovery of the quite individual intuition which corresponds to the situation, is the deciding factor in an intuitively determined action. At this level of morality one can speak only of general concepts of morality (norms, laws) insofar as these result from the generalization of individual impulses. General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be derived. But facts must first be produced by human deeds. When we look for the laws (concepts) underlying the conduct of individuals, peoples and epochs, we obtain a system of ethics, not as a science of moral rules, but as a natural philosophy of morality. It is true that laws obtained in this way are related to human conduct, as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. But they are not at all identical with the impulses upon which we base our conduct. If one wants to grasp the means by which man"s action springs from his moral will, then one must first consider the relation of this will to the action. One must first select actions where this relation is the determining factor. If I, or someone else, reflect on such an action later, then can be discovered upon what principle of morality the action is based. While I am acting I am moved to act by the moral principle insofar as it lives in me intuitively; the moral principle is united with my love for what I want to accomplish by my deed. I ask no man and no code, Shall I do this? - rather I do it the moment I have grasped the idea of it. This alone makes it my action. The deeds of a person who acts solely because he acknowledges a definite moral standard, come about as a result of a principle which is part of his moral code. He is merely the agent. He is a higher kind of automaton. If some impulse to action enters his consciousness, then at once the clockwork of his moral principle will be set in motion and run to rule, in order to bring about a deed which is Christian, or humane, or is deemed unselfish, or to further the progress of culture. Only when I follow my love for the object is it I myself who acts. At this level of morality I do not act because I acknowledge a ruler over me, an external authority, or a so-called inner voice. I do not acknowledge any external principle for my conduct, because I have found the source of my conduct within myself, namely, my love for the deed. I do not prove intellectually whether my deed is good or bad; I do it out of my love for it. My action will be "good" if my intuition, immersed in love, exists in the right way within the relationship between things; this can be experienced intuitively; the action will be "bad"
if this is not the case. Nor do I ask myself: How would another person act in my place? - rather I act, as I, as this particular individuality, find my will motivated to act. I am not guided directly by what happens to be the usual thing, the general habit, some general human code or moral standard, but solely by my love for this deed. I feel no compulsion - neither the compulsion of nature which rules me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of moral commands. Rather, I simply carry out what lies within me.
Those who defend general moral standards will perhaps object: If each person strives to express and do only what he pleases, then there is no difference between a good deed and a crime; every depraved impulse in me has the same right to express itself as has the intention to do my best. The fact that I have a deed in mind, according to an idea, cannot set my standard as a moral human being, but only the test as to whether it is a good or evil deed. Only if it is good should I carry it out.
My reply to this obvious objection, which nonetheless is based on a misunderstanding of what is meant here, is this: One who wants to understand the nature of human will must differentiate between the path which brings this will to a certain degree of development, and the unique character which the will a.s.sumes as it approaches its goal. On the way toward this goal standards do play their justified part. The goal consists in the realization of aims of morality, grasped purely intuitively. Man attains such aims to the degree that he is at all able to raise himself to the intuitive idea-content of the world. In particular instances such aims are usually mixed with other elements, either as driving force or as motive. Nevertheless, in the human will intuition can be the determining factor, wholly or in part. A person does what he ought to do, he provides the stage upon which "ought"
becomes deed; it is absolutely his own deed which he brings to expression. The impulse here can only be completely individual. And, in fact, only an act of will which springs from intuition can be individual. To call the acts of criminals and what is evil an expression of the individuality, in the same sense as the embodiment of pure intuition, is only possible if blind urges are reckoned as part of the human individuality. But the blind urge which drives a person to crime does not spring from intuition and does not belong to what is individual in man, but rather to what is most general in him, to what is equally valid in all men, and out of which man works his way by means of what is individual in him. What is individual in me is not my organism with its urges and feelings, but rather the universal world of ideas which lights up within this organism. My urges, instincts, pa.s.sions confirm nothing more than that I belong to the general species, man; the fact that something ideal comes to expression in a particular way within these urges, pa.s.sions and feelings, confirms my individuality. Through my instincts and urges I am a person of whom there are twelve to the dozen; through the particular form of the idea, by means of which I name myself "I" within the dozen, I am an individual. Only a being other than myself could distinguish me from others by the difference in my animal nature; through my thinking, that is, through the active grasp of what expresses itself as an ideal within my organism, do I distinguish myself from others. Therefore one definitely cannot say that the action of a criminal springs from the idea in him. Indeed, this is just what is characteristic of a criminal deed: it stems from elements in man which are external to the ideal-element in him.
An action is felt to be free insofar as the reason for it springs from the ideal part of my individual being; any other part of an action, irrespective of whether it is carried out under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation of a moral code, is felt to be unfree.
Man is free insofar as he is able, in every moment of his life, to follow himself. A moral deed is my deed only if it can be called free in this sense. What here have to be considered are the presuppositions necessary for a willed action to be felt as free; how this purely ethically grasped idea of freedom realizes itself in human nature, will be seen in what follows.
A deed done out of freedom does not at all exclude, but includes moral laws, but it will be a deed done from a higher sphere compared with those dictated solely by such laws.
Why should my deed serve the general welfare any less when it is done out of love, than when I do it solely for the reason that I feel that to serve the general welfare is a duty?
The concept of mere duty excludes freedom because it does not include what is individual, but demands subjection of the individual to a general standard. Freedom of action is thinkable only from the standpoint of ethical individualism.
But how is it possible for people to live in a community if each person strives to a.s.sert only his own individuality? This objection is characteristic of misunderstood moralism. A person holding this viewpoint believes that a community of people is possible only if all men are united by general fixed moral rules. He simply does not understand the oneness and harmony of the idea-world. He does not realize that the idea-world which is active in me is none other than the one active in my fellow-man. This unity of ideas is indeed nothing but a result of men"s experience of life.47 Only this can it be. For if the unity of the idea-world could be recognized by any means other than by individual observation, then general rules and not personal experience would be valid in its sphere. Individuality is possible only when each individual is acquainted with others through individual observation alone. The difference between me and my fellow men is not at all because we live in two quite different spiritual worlds, but because from the world of ideas which we share, he receives different intuitions from mine. He wants to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both really draw from the idea, and are not obeying any external impulses (physical or spiritual), then we cannot but meet in the same striving, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash between men who are morally free, is out of the question. Only the morally unfree who follow natural instincts or some accepted command of duty, turn away from a fellow-man if he does not follow the same instinct and the same command as themselves. To live in love of the action and to let live, having understanding for the other person"s will, is the fundamental principle of free human beings. They know no other "ought" than that with which their will is intuitively in accord; how they shall will in a particular instance, their power of ideation will tell them.
If human nature were not fundamentally social, no external laws could make it so! Only because individual human beings are one in the spiritual part of their being, can they live out their lives side by side. The free man is confident that others who are free belong to the same spiritual world as he does, and that they will meet him in their intentions. The free man does not demand agreement from his fellow men, but he expects it, because it lies in human nature. This does not refer to the existing necessity for this or that external arrangement, but rather to the disposition, the att.i.tude of soul through which man, in his experience of himself among fellow men for whom he cares, comes nearest to doing justice to human dignity.
There are many who will say that the concept of a free human being outlined here is a chimera, is nowhere to be found as a reality, and that we have to deal with real people from whom one can hope for morality only when they obey some moral law, when they regard their moral mission as a duty, and do not freely follow their inclinations and preferences. - I certainly do not doubt this. Only a blind man could do so. But then, away with all hypocrisy of morality if this is to be the ultimate conclusion. Then simply say: Human nature must be compelled as long as it is not free. Whether the unfreedom is dealt with by physical means or through moral laws, whether man is unfree because he follows his immeasurable s.e.xual instinct, or because he is hemmed in by the fetters of conventional morality, is quite immaterial from a certain point of view. But one should not maintain that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, for he is driven to them by external powers. But there are human beings who raise themselves above all these compelling rules, free spirits who find their own self in the jumble of habits, regulations, religious observance, etc. They are free insofar as they follow only themselves; unfree insofar as they submit themselves. Which of us can say that he is really free in all that he deed But in each of us exists a higher being in whom the free man comes to expression.
Our life is composed of free and unfree deeds. But we cannot complete the concept of man without including the free spirit as the purest characteristic of human nature. After all, we are truly human only insofar as we are free.
That is an ideal, many will say. Without doubt - but it is an ideal which works itself to the surface from within our nature as a reality. It is no "thought out" or imagined ideal, but one in which there is life, one which clearly announces its presence even in its least perfect form of existence. If man were merely a product of nature, the search for ideals, that is, for ideas which for the moment are inactive but whose realization we demand, would not be possible. In the case of external objects the idea is determined by the perception. We have done our share when we have recognized the connection between idea and perception. But with man this is not so. His content is not determined without him; his true concept as a moral being (free spirit) is not objectively united with the perceptual picture "man" from the start merely in order to be confirmed by knowledge later. By his own activity man must unite his concept with the perception, man. Concept and perception only coincide here if man himself brings it about. But he cannot do this till he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, his own concept. In the objective world a line of division is drawn by our organization between perception and concept; cognition overcomes this division. In our subjective nature this division is no less present; man overcomes it in the course of his development by bringing his concept to expression in his outward existence. Both man"s intellectual as well as his moral life point to his twofold nature: perceiving (direct experience) and thinking. In the intellectual life the two-foldness is overcome through knowledge; in the moral life through actually bringing the free spirit to realization. Every being has its inborn concept (the law of its existence and activity), but in external objects the concept is indivisibly connected with the perception and separated from it only within our spiritual organism. In man concept and perception are to begin with, actually apart, to be united by him just as actually. One could object: To our perception of a man a definite concept corresponds at every moment of his life, just as is the case with everything else. I can form a concept of a typical man, and I may also find such a man given to me as a perception. If to this I also bring the concept of the free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object.
This line of thought is one-sided. As perceptual object I am subjected to perpetual change. As a child I was one thing, another as a youth, yet another as a man. In fact, at every moment the perceptual picture of myself is different from what it was a moment ago. These changes may take place in such a way that either it is always the same (the typical) man who expresses himself in them, or they become the expression of the free spirit. The perceptual object of my action is subjected to these changes.
In the perceptual object "man" the possibility of transformation is given, just as in the plant-seed there lies the possibility of becoming a fully developed plant. The plant transforms itself because of the objective laws which are inherent in it; man remains in his imperfect state unless he takes hold of the substance to be transformed within him and transforms it through his own power. Nature makes man merely into a product of nature; society makes him into a being who acts rationally, but he alone can make himself into a free being. At a definite stage in his development nature releases man from its fetters; society carries his development a stage further; the final polish he can only apply himself.
Therefore, from the standpoint of free morality it is not a.s.serted that as free spirit is the only form in which a man can exist. Free spirituality is the ultimate stage of man"s development. And it is not denied that conduct according to rules has its justification as a stage of development. However, this cannot be acknowledged as the highest level of morality. But the free spirit in man overcomes rules in the sense that he does not accept only commands as motives, but also regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions).
When Kant says of duty:48 "Duty! You sublime, you great name, you encompa.s.s nothing beloved or endearing, but you demand submission," you "lay down a law ... before which all inclinations become silent, even if in secret they also go against it," then man, conscious of the free spirit, answers: "Freedom! You friendly, humane name, you encompa.s.s all that is morally beloved, all that is most worthy of my humanity, you make me no one"s servant, you do not merely lay down a law, but wait for what my moral love will of itself recognize as law, because it feels unfree when faced with any law simply forced upon it."
This is the contrast between mere law-abiding morality and morality born of freedom.
The philistine who sees morality embodied in some external rule, may perhaps even regard the free spirit as a dangerous person. But this is simply because his view is limited to a certain period of time. If he were able to see beyond this, he would soon find that the free spirit need go beyond the laws of his state as seldom as the philistine himself, and is never in any real opposition to them. For all the laws of the state have sprung from the intuitions of free spirits, just as have all other objective laws of morality. No law is exercised through a family authority which was not at some time intuitively grasped and laid down by an ancestor. Similarly the conventional laws of morality were first laid down by definite people and so too the laws of the state first arise in the head of a statesman. These individualities have established laws over other people, and only he is unfree who forgets this origin and either looks upon these laws as extra-human commands, that is, as objective moral concepts of duty independent of man, or turns them into the commanding voice thought of - in a falsely mystical way - as compelling him in his own inner being. However, he who does not forget the origin of such laws, but looks for it in man, will reckon with them as belonging to the same idea-world as that from which he too draws his moral intuitions. If he believes his own intuitions to be better, then he will try to replace those in existence with his own; but if he finds the existing ones justified, he will act in accordance with them as if they were his own.
The formula must not be coined: Man is meant to realize a moral world order which exists independent of him. Insofar as knowledge of man is concerned, one maintaining this stands at the point where natural science stood when it believed that the goat has horns in order to be able to b.u.t.t. Fortunately natural scientists have rejected such a concept of purpose as a dead theory. It is more difficult to get rid of such theories in ethics. However, just as horns do not exist because of b.u.t.ting, but b.u.t.ting exists through horns, so man does not exist because of morality, but morality exists through man. The free human being acts morally because he has a moral idea, but he does not act in order that morality may come about. Human individuals, with the moral ideas belonging to their nature, are the presupposition for a moral world-order.
The human individual is the source of all morality and the center of earthly life. State and society have come about only because they are the necessary results of life shared by individual human beings. That state and society should react in turn upon the life of the individual is understandable, just as it is understandable that b.u.t.ting, which exists through the horns, reacts in turn upon the further development of the goat"s horns, which would waste away by prolonged disuse. Similarly, the individual would waste away if he led a separate existence outside a human community. This is just why the social order arises, so that it can react favorably upon the individual.
PHILOSOPHY OF FREEDOM (SPIRITUAL ACTIVITY) AND MONISM.
The naive man who regards as real only what he can see with his eyes and grasp with his hands, also needs to have motives for his moral life that are perceptible to the senses. He needs someone who will impart these motives to him in a way that he can understand by means of his senses. He will let them be dictated to him as commands by a person whom he considers wiser and more powerful than himself, or whom he acknowledges, for some other reason, to be a power standing above him. In this way the moral principles already mentioned come about through being prescribed by authority of family, state, society, church, or the Divinity. An undeveloped person still trusts in the authority of a single individual; a somewhat more advanced person lets his moral conduct be dictated by a majority (state, society). But it is always perceptible powers upon which he relies. When at last the conviction dawns upon him that fundamentally all these are weak human beings just like himself, then he will seek guidance from a higher power, from a divine Being, whom, however, he endows with sense-perceptible qualities. He lets the conceptual content of his moral life be dictated to him by this Being, again in a perceptible way, for example when G.o.d appears in the burning bush, or moves among men in bodily human form and in a manner perceptible to their ears tells them what to do and what not to do.
The highest level of development of naive realism in the moral sphere is reached when the moral command (moral idea) has been separated from every foreign ent.i.ty, and is hypothetically thought of as an absolute force in one"s own inner being. What at first is sensed as the external voice of G.o.d, is now sensed as an independent power within man, and is spoken of in a way that shows the inner power to be identified with the voice of conscience. When this happens, the level of naive consciousness has been abandoned and we enter the region where moral laws become independent rules. They no longer have a bearer, but have become metaphysical ent.i.ties, existing by themselves. They are similar to the invisible-visible forces of the metaphysical realist who does not look for the reality of things in the human soul"s partic.i.p.ation in this reality through thinking, but who hypothetically imagines reality as an addition to actual experience. Extra-human moral rules, therefore, always accompany metaphysical realism. Metaphysical realism cannot do otherwise than seek the origin of morality too in a sphere beyond human reach. And here there are several possibilities. If the presupposed Being is thought of as in itself unthinking, acting according to purely mechanical laws, as materialism thinks of it, then out of itself it must also produce, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. The consciousness of freedom can then be only an illusion.
For while I believe myself to be the creator of my deeds, it is the material substances of which I am composed, together with their processes, that are at work within me. I believe myself to be free, whereas in reality all my actions are but results of the material processes which are the foundation of my bodily and spiritual organism. According to this point of view, it is simply because we do not know the motives compelling us, that we have the feeling of freedom. "We must emphasize that the feeling of freedom is due to the absence of external compelling motives." "Our actions as well as our thinking are subject to necessity."49 Another possibility is that the extra-human absolute is seen as a spiritual Being behind the world of phenomena. Then the impulse to action will also be sought in such a spiritual power. The moral principles to be found in man"s reason will be regarded as issuing from this Being-in-itself, which has its own particular intentions with regard to man. Moral laws appear to such a dualist as dictated by the Absolute, and through his reason, man simply has to discover and carry out these decisions of the Absolute Being.
The moral world-order appears to the dualist as the perceptible reflection of a higher order that stands behind it. Earthly morality is the manifestation of the extra-human world order. It is not man that matters in this moral order, but the Being-in-itself, the extra- human Being. Man ought to do what this Being wills. Eduard von Hartmann, who sees the Being-in-itself as the G.o.dhead whose very existence is suffering, believes that this divine Being has created the world in order that through the world he will be redeemed from his infinitely great pain. This philosopher therefore regards the moral development of mankind as a process which exists for the purpose of redeeming the G.o.dhead.
"Only through the building up of a moral world-order by sensible, responsible individuals can the aim of the world-process be carried through...." "Existence in its reality is the incarnation of the G.o.dhead - the world process is the Pa.s.sion of the G.o.d becoming flesh, and at the same time the path of redemption of Him who was crucified in the flesh; and morality is the co-operation in the shortening of this path of suffering and redemption."50 Here man does not act because he wills, but he ought to act because it is G.o.d"s will to be redeemed. Just as the materialistic dualist makes man into an automaton whose conduct is merely the result of purely mechanical laws, so the spiritualistic dualist (that is, he who sees the Absolute, the Being-in-itself, as a spiritual ent.i.ty in which man has no conscious share) makes him into a slave of the will of the Absolute. Freedom is out of the question in materialism as well as in one-sided spiritualism, in fact in any kind of metaphysical realism which does not experience, but infers something extra-human as the true reality.
Naive as well as metaphysical realism, in order to be consistent, must deny freedom for one and the same reason, since they regard man as being simply the agent or executor of principles which are forced upon him by necessity. Naive realism kills freedom through subjection to the authority either of a perceptible being or of an ent.i.ty thought of as similar to a perceptible being, or else through submission to the authority of the abstract inner voice which is interpreted as "conscience;" the metaphysical realist, who merely infers something extra-human, cannot acknowledge freedom because he lets man be determined, mechanically or morally, by a "Being-in-itself."
Monism must acknowledge the partial justification of naive realism because it acknowledges the justification of the world of perceptions. Someone who is incapable of bringing forth moral ideas through intuition, will have to receive them from others.
Insofar as a man receives his moral principles from outside, he is positively unfree. But monism ascribes equal significance to the idea compared with perception. And the idea can come to manifestation in the human individual. Insofar as man follows the impulses coming from this side, he feels free. But monism denies all justification to a metaphysics which merely draws inferences, and consequently also to impulses of action stemming from a so-called "Being-in-itself," According to the monistic view, man"s action is unfree when he obeys some perceptible external compulsion; it is free when he obeys himself.
Monism cannot acknowledge any kind of unconscious compulsion hidden behind perception and concept. When someone maintains that a fellow man was not free when he performed an action, it must be possible to prove the existence within the perceptible world of the thing, the person, or the inst.i.tution that made the man act; but if an appeal is made to causes for the action lying outside the sphere of physical and spiritual reality, then monism cannot enter the discussion.
According to monism, in his activity man is partly unfree, partly free. He is unfree in the world of perceptions, but brings the free spirit to realization in himself.
The moral commands which the metaphysical realist merely infers and cannot but consider as issuing from a higher power, for the monist are thoughts of men; for the monist the moral world order is neither a copy of a purely mechanical natural order, nor of an extra-human world order, but entirely a free undertaking of man. Man does not have to carry out the will of some Being existing beyond his reach; he carries out his own will; he does not bring to realization the decisions and intentions of another Being, but brings his own to realization. Monism does not see the purpose of a foreign rulership behind man, determining him from outside, but rather that insofar as they bring intuitive ideas to realization, human beings pursue solely their own human purposes. And indeed, each individual pursues his own particular purpose. For the world of ideas expresses itself not in a community of men, but only in the individual man. The common goal of a group of men is nothing but the result of the separate will-activities of the individual persons, and usually of a few outstanding ones whom the rest follow as their authorities. Each one of us is destined to become a free spirit, just as every rose seed is destined to become a rose.
The monistic view, in the sphere of truly moral conduct, is a philosophy of freedom. And as it is also a philosophy of reality, it rejects metaphysical and unreal restrictions of man"s free spirit just as it acknowledges physical and historical (naively real) restrictions of the naive man. Since monism does not regard man as a finished product, as a being who at every moment of his life unfolds his full nature, it seems futile to discuss whether man, as such, is free or not. Man is seen as a being in the process of self-development, and one may ask whether, in the course of this development the stage of the free spirit can be attained.
Monism knows that nature does not release man from its care complete and finished as a free spirit, but it leads him up to a certain level from which, still unfree, he continues to develop until he reaches the point where he finds his own self.
To monism it is obvious that a being acting under physical or moral compulsion cannot be moral in a real sense. It regards the level of transition through automatic conduct (according to natural urges and instincts) and through obedient conduct (according to moral rules) as necessary preliminary stages of morality, but it also recognizes the possibility for man to overcome both transitory levels through his free spirit. A truly moral world view is released by monism, both from the fetters of naive moral principles in man"s inner world, and from the moral principles of the speculating metaphysicist in the external world. The naive principles of morality can be eliminated from the world as little as can perceptions. The metaphysical view is rejected because monism seeks all the factors for explaining world-phenomena within the world, and none outside it. Just as monism finds it unnecessary to entertain thoughts of principles of knowledge other than those inherent in man, (p. 140) so it also definitely finds it unnecessary to entertain thoughts of principles of morality other than those inherent in man. Human morality, like human knowledge, is determined through human nature. And just as knowledge would mean something quite different to beings other than man, so other beings would also have a different morality. Morality for the monist is a specifically human quality, and freedom is the form in which human morality finds expression.
First Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918. Difficulty in judging what is presented in the two preceding chapters may arise because one believes oneself to be confronted by a contradiction. On the one hand, the experience of thinking is spoken of as having a general significance of equal value for every human consciousness; on the other hand, it is shown that though the ideas realized in moral life are of the same kind as those worked out by thinking, they come to expression in each human consciousness in an individual way. If one cannot overcome seeing a "contradiction," in this, and cannot recognize that it is just in a living experience of this actually present contrast that a glimpse into man"s true being is revealed, then it is also impossible to see either the idea of knowledge or the idea of freedom in their true light. For those who think of concepts as merely drawn (abstracted) from the sense-world, and who do not give full recognition to intuitions, the thought presented here as the reality must seem a "mere contradiction." For an insight that recognizes how ideas are intuitively experienced as a self-sustaining reality, it is clear that in the sphere of the world of ideas man penetrates in cognition into something which is universal for all men, but when he derives from that same idea world the intuitions for his acts of will, then he individualizes a member of this idea world by means of the same activity which, as a general human one, he unfolds in the spiritual ideal process of cognition. For this reason what appears as a logical contradiction, namely the universal character of cognitive ideas and the individual character of moral ideas, when experienced in its true reality, becomes a living concept. A characteristic feature of human nature consists in the fact that what can be intuitively grasped oscillates in man like a living pendulum between knowledge which is universally valid, and the individual experience of this universal element. For the man who cannot recognize one swing of the pendulum in its reality, thinking will remain merely a subjective human activity; for the one who cannot recognize the other swing, all individual life appears to cease in man"s activity of thinking. To the first person, cognition is unintelligible, to the second, moral life is unintelligible. Both will call in all sorts of representations in order to explain the one or the other, all of which miss the point, because both persons, fundamentally, either do not recognize that thinking can be experienced, or take it to be an activity which merely abstracts.
Second Addition to the Revised Edition, 1918. On page 189, materialism was referred to.
I am well aware that there are thinkers like the above-mentioned Th. Ziehen, who do not in the least consider themselves materialists, but who must nevertheless be described as such from the point of view expressed in this book. It is not a matter that someone says that for him the world is not restricted to merely material existence and therefore he is not a materialist. It is a matter of whether or not he develops concepts which are applicable only to a material existence. One who says: "Our conduct, like our thinking, is necessitated," expresses a concept applicable only to material processes, but applicable neither to actions nor to existence; and if he thinks his concepts through, he will have to think materialistically. That he does not do this is only the outcome of that inconsistency which is so often the result of a thinking not carried through. - One often hears it said nowadays that the materialism of the nineteenth century no longer plays a part in science.
But in reality this is not so at all. It is only that at present it is often not noticed that no other ideas are available than those which can be applied only to something material.
This veils present day materialism, whereas in the second half of the nineteenth century it was plain for all to see. And present day veiled materialism is no less intolerant of a view that grasps the world spiritually than was the openly-admitted materialism of the last century. However, it deceives many who believe they must reject a comprehension of the world which includes spirit, because after all, the natural scientific comprehension of the world "has long ago abandoned materialism."
WORLD PURPOSE AND LIFE PURPOSE (THE DESTINATION OF MAN).
Among the many currents of thought pursued in the cultural life of mankind, it is possible to trace one which can be described as the overcoming of the concept of purpose in those spheres to which it does not belong. Purpose belongs to a special sequence of phenomena. In reality one can only speak of purpose when, in contrast to the relation between cause and effect where an earlier event determines a later one, the reverse is the case and the later event influences the earlier. This applies only to human action. Man carries out a deed which he represents to himself first of all, and he lets the representation determine his action. The later, the deed, with the help of the representation influences the earlier, the person who acts. This detour through the act of representing is always necessary for a connection to have purpose.
In a process which can be divided into cause and effect, perception must be distinguished from concept. The perception of the cause precedes the perception of the effect; cause and effect would simply remain side by side in our consciousness if we were not able to connect them with one another through their corresponding concepts. The perception of an effect can follow only upon the perception of the cause. The effect can have a real influence upon the cause only through the conceptual factor. For the perceptual factor of the effect is simply not present prior to the perceptual factor of the cause. If someone says that the blossom is the purpose of the root, that is, that the blossom influences the root, then he can say this only concerning that factor in the blossom which he confirms in it through his thinking. The perceptual factor of the blossom had as yet no existence at the time the root came into being. For a connection of things to have purpose it is necessary to have not merely an ideal connection (the law in it) of the later with the earlier, but also the concept (the law) of the effect must really, i.e. by means of a perceptible process, influence the cause. However, a perceptible influence of a concept upon something else is to be observed only in human actions. This is therefore the only sphere in which the concept of purpose is applicable. Naive consciousness, which regards as real only what is perceptible, attempts - as we said before - to place something perceptible where only ideal factors are to be recognized. In perceptible events it also looks for perceptible connections, or, if it does not find them, imagines them to be there. The concept of purpose, valid for subjective actions, is an element that easily lends itself to such imaginary connections. The naive man knows how he brings about an event, and from this he concludes that nature must do likewise. In the purely ideal connections of nature he sees not only imperceptible forces but also imperceptible real purposes. Man makes his tools to fit a purpose; on the same pattern, the naive realist lets the Creator build up all organisms. Only very gradually does this mistaken concept of purpose disappear from the sciences. In philosophy, even today, it still does a great deal of mischief. The purpose of the world is thought to exist outside the world, and man"s destination (therefore also his purpose) outside man, and so on.
Monism rejects the concept of purpose in every sphere, with the sole exception of human action. It looks for laws of nature, but not for purposes of nature. Purposes of nature are arbitrary a.s.sumptions, just like the imperceptible forces (p. 138). And from the standpoint of monism, life purposes that man does not set himself are unjustifiable a.s.sumptions.
Only that is purposeful which man has first made so, for only through the realization of an idea does a purpose arise. And ideas are effective in a realistic sense in man alone.
Therefore human life has only the purpose and the destination that the human being gives it. To the question: What is man"s task in life? monism can only answer: The task he sets himself. My mission in the world is not predetermined, but at every moment is the one I choose. I do not begin life along a fixed route.
Only by human beings are ideas realized according to purpose. It is therefore inadmissible to speak of the embodiment of ideas through history. All such phrases as: "History is the development of mankind toward freedom," or the realization of the moral world order, and so on, are untenable from the monistic point of view.
The adherents of the concept of purpose believe that by abandoning it they would also have to abandon all order and uniformity in the world. Listen, for example, to Robert Hamerling:50a "As long as there are instincts in nature, it is foolish to deny purposes in it.
Just as the structure of a limb of the human body is not determined and conditioned by an idea of this limb, floating in the air, but by the connection with the greater totality, the body, to which the limb belongs, so the structure of every being in nature, be it plant, animal, or man, is not determined and conditioned by an idea of it floating in the air, but by the formative principle of the great totality of nature which expresses and organizes itself according to a purpose."
And on page 191 of the same volume: "The theory of purpose maintains only that in spite of the thousand discomforts and miseries of the life of creatures, lofty purpose and plan are unmistakably present in the formations and in the development of nature. - A purpose and a plan, however, that come to realization only within the bounds of natural laws, and cannot aim at a Utopia in which life is not confronted by death, growth by decay, with all the more or less unpleasant, but quite unavoidable intermediary stages between them.
When the opponents of the concept of purpose bring a laboriously-collected rubbish-heap of partial or complete, imaginary or real examples showing lack of purpose, against a world full of wonders of purpose such as nature shows in all its realms, then I find it just as droll." - What is it that here is called purpose? A concordance of perceptions that form a totality.
But since all perceptions are based on laws (ideas) which we discover by means of our thinking, it follows that the planned concord between single parts of a perceptual totality is just the ideal concord between the single parts of the idea totality contained in the perceptual totality. When it is said that an animal or a man is not determined by an idea floating in the air, then this is a misleading way of putting it, and the condemned view ceases to be absurd when rightly formulated. Certainly an animal is not determined by an idea floating in the air, but indeed is determined by an idea inborn in it and const.i.tuting the law of its nature. It is just because the idea is not outside of the object, but is effective in it as its nature, that one cannot speak of purpose. Just those who deny that the beings of nature are determined from outside (whether by an idea floating in the air or existing outside the creature in the mind of a world Creator, is immaterial in this context) should admit that these beings are not determined by purpose and plan from outside, but by cause and law from within. I construct a machine according to a purpose when I bring its parts in connection with one another in a way that they did not acquire from nature. The purpose contained in the arrangement consists in the fact that I have placed the idea of the working of the machine into its foundation. The machine thereby becomes a perceptual object with a corresponding idea. The beings of nature are also ent.i.ties of this kind. One who says that something contains purpose because it is built according to laws can use the same description for the beings of nature, if he likes. However, the laws at work in nature must not be confused with the purposes in subjective human action. For a purpose to be present, it is always necessary that the effective cause is a concept, and indeed it must be the concept of the effect. But nowhere in nature are concepts in evidence as causes; concepts always appear only as the ideal connection between cause and effect.
Causes are present in nature only in the form of perceptions.
Dualism speaks of world purpose and nature purpose. Where, for perception, a link can be seen between cause and effect according to law, there the dualist a.s.sumes that one sees only the copy of a connection in which the absolute Being has realized its purposes. For monism, along with the absolute Being that cannot be experienced and is only inferred, the reason for a.s.suming any world purpose also falls away.
Addition to the Revised Version, 1918. No one who thinks through without prejudice what is presented here, could come to the conclusion that the author rejects the concept of purpose for all facts not produced by man, because his view is similar to that of those thinkers who, by rejecting this concept, create the possibility of presenting, first, everything except human action - and then human action too - as being only a natural process. The fact that thinking is presented here as a purely spiritual process should be a protection against such misunderstanding. The reason for here rejecting the concept of purpose for the spiritual world also, insofar as it lies outside human action, is because in that world something higher is revealed than purpose realized in human life. And when the purpose of mankind"s destination, thought of on the pattern of human purpose, is referred to here as a mistaken concept, it is meant that the individual human beings set themselves purposes, and the result of these is the total activity of mankind. This result is then something higher than its parts, the single human purposes.
MORAL IMAGINATION (DARWINISM AND MORALITY).
A free spirit acts according to his impulses; these are intuitions chosen by means of thinking from the totality of his world of ideas. The reason an unfree spirit singles out a particular intuition from his idea world in order to use it as a basis for a deed, lies in the world of perception given to him, i.e., in his past experience. Before making a decision he recalls what someone else has done or recommended as suitable in a similar instance, or what G.o.d has commanded to be done in such a case and so on, and he acts accordingly.
For a free spirit these preconditions are not the only impulses to action. He makes an absolutely original decision. In doing so he worries neither about what others have done in such an instance, nor what commands they have laid down. He has purely ideal reasons which move him to single out from the sum of his concepts a particular one and to transform it into action. But his action will belong to perceptible reality. What he brings about will therefore be identical with a quite definite perceptual content. The concept will be realized in a particular concrete event. As concept, it will not contain this particular event. It would be related to the event only in the same way as a concept in general is related to a perception, for example, as the concept, lion is related to a particular lion. The link between concept and perception is the representation (cp. p. 124, f.). For the unfree spirit this intermediate link is given from the outset. At the outset the motives are present in his consciousness as representations. When he wants to do something he does it as he has seen it done or as he is told to do it in the particular instance. Here authority is most effective by way of examples, that is, by conveying quite definite particular actions to the consciousness of the unfree spirit. The Christian, as unfree spirit, acts less on the teaching than on the example of the Redeemer. Rules have less value when they refer to positive deeds than when they refer to what should not be done. Laws appear in the form of general concepts only when they forbid something, not when they bid things to be done. Laws concerning what he should do must be given to the unfree spirit in a quite concrete form: Clean the walk in front of your door! Pay your taxes in such and such an amount to the Treasury Department, etc. Laws which are meant to prevent deeds take on conceptual form: Thou shalt not steal! Thou shalt not commit adultery! But these laws also influence the unfree spirit only through reference to a concrete representation such as that of the corresponding earthly punishment, the pangs of conscience, eternal d.a.m.nation, and so on.
As soon as the impulse to action is present in general conceptual form (for example: Thou shalt do good to thy fellow men! Thou shalt live in a way that best furthers thy welfare!), then in each case must be found first of all the concrete representation of the deed (the relation of the concept to a perceptual content). For the free spirit, who is driven neither by any example nor by fear of punishment, etc., it is always necessary to transform the concept into a representation.
By means of imagination representations are produced by man out of his world of ideas.
Therefore what the free spirit needs in order to carry out his ideas, in order to bring them to fruition, is moral imagination. Moral imagination is the source from which the free spirit acts. Hence, only people with moral imagination are also morally productive in the real sense of the word. Those who merely preach morality, that is, people who devise moral rules without being able to condense them into concrete representations, are morally unproductive. They are like those critics who know how to explain rationally what a work of art should be like, but are incapable of any artistic creation themselves.
In order to produce a representation, man"s moral imagination must set to work in a definite sphere of perception. Men"s deeds do not create perceptions, but transform already existing perceptions, that is, impart a new form to them. In order to be able to transform a definite perceptual object, or a sum of such objects, in accordance with a moral representation, one must have grasped the laws at work in the perceptual picture (the way it has worked hitherto, to which one now wants to give a new form or a new direction). Further, one must find a way by which these laws can be transformed into new ones. This part of moral activity depends on a knowledge of the sphere of phenomena with which one has to do. It must therefore be sought in a branch of general scientific knowledge. Hence moral deeds presuppose not only the faculty of moral ideation as well as moral imagination, but also the ability to transform the sphere of perceptions without breaking the laws of their natural connection. [footnote: Only superficiality could find in the use of the word "faculty" in this and other pa.s.sages, a reversion to the teachings of older psychology concerning soul faculties. The exact meaning of this word, as used here, will be seen when compared with what is said on pp. 113-114.] This ability is moral technique. It can be learned in the sense in which science in general can be learned.
Because people usually are better able to find the concepts for the already created world than productively out of imagination to decide future deeds, not yet in existence, it very well may be possible that persons without moral imagination receive moral representations from others, and skillfully imprint these into actual reality. The opposite may also occur: that persons with moral imagination are without the technical skill, and therefore must make use of others for carrying out their representations.
Insofar as knowledge of the objects in the sphere of our activity is necessary, our action will depend upon this knowledge. What must be considered here are laws of nature. Here we have to do with natural science, not with ethics.
Moral imagination and the faculty of moral ideation can become objects of knowledge only after they have been produced by the individual. By then they no longer regulate life, but have already regulated it. They must be explained in the same way as all other effective causes (they are purposes only for the subject). We therefore deal with them as with a natural philosophy of moral representations.
In addition to the above, one cannot have ethics in the form of a science of standards.
The standardized character of moral laws has been retained at least insofar as to enable one to explain ethics in the same sense as dietetics, which deduce general rules from the life-condition of the organism in order that on this basis they can influence the body in a particular way.51 This comparison is mistaken, because our moral life is not comparable with the life of the organism. The function of the organism takes place without our doing anything about it; we find its laws present, ready-made, and therefore can investigate them and then apply what we discover. But moral laws are first created by us. We cannot apply them until they have been created. The mistake arises through the fact that moral laws, insofar as their content is concerned, are not newly created at every moment, but are handed over. Those that we take over from our ancestors appear as given, like the natural laws of the organism. But they can never be applied by a later generation with the same rights as can dietetic rules. For they apply to individuals and not, like natural laws, to examples of a species. As an organism I am such an example of a species, and I shall live in accordance with nature if I apply the natural laws of the species to my particular case. As a moral being I am an individual and have laws which are wholly my own.51a This view seems to contradict the fundamental teaching of modern natural science described as the theory of evolution. But it only seems to do so. By evolution is meant the real development of the later out of the earlier in accordance with natural law. By evolution in the organic world is meant that the later (more perfect) organic forms are real descendents of the earlier (imperfect) forms, and have developed from them in accordance with natural laws. According to his view, the adherent of the theory of organic evolution would have to represent to himself that there was once a time on earth when it would have been possible to watch the gradual development of reptiles out of proto-amniotes,52 if one could have been present there as observer and had been endowed with a sufficiently long span of life. He also would have to represent to himself that it would have been possible to observe the development of the solar system out of the Kant-Laplace primerdial nebula53 if, during that infinitely long time, one could have occupied a suitable spot out in the world-ether. The fact that in such a representation, both the nature of protoamniotes and that of the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula would have to be thought of in a way other than that of the materialistic thinker, will not be considered here. But it should not occur to any evolutionist to maintain that he can extract from his concept of the proto-amniote the concept of the reptile with all its characteristics, if he had never seen a reptile. And just as little could one extract the solar system from the Kant-Laplace primordial nebula, if this concept is thought of as being determined only from the direct perception of the primordial nebula. In other words, this means: if the evolutionist thinks consistently, then he is able to maintain only that out of earlier phases of evolution later ones come about as real facts, that if we are given the concept of the imperfect and the concept of the perfect, we can recognize the connection; but never should he say that the concept derived from what was earlier suffices to develop from it what came later. In the sphere of ethics this means that one can recognize the connection of later moral concepts with earlier ones, but not that as much as a single new moral idea could be extracted from earlier ones. As a moral being, the individual produces his own content. This content which he produces is for ethics something given, just as reptiles are something given for natural science. Reptiles have evolved out of proto-amniotes, but from the concept of the protoamniote the natural scientist cannot extract the concept of the reptile. Later moral ideas develop out of earlier ones, but from the moral concepts of an earlier cultural epoch ethics cannot extract those for a later one.
The confusion arises because when we investigate nature the facts are there before we gain knowledge of them, whereas in the case of moral action we ourselves first produce the facts which we afterwards cognize. In the evolutionary process of the moral world order we do what nature does at a lower level: we alter something perceptible. As we have seen, an ethical rule cannot be cognized straight away like a law of nature; it must first be created. Only when it is present can it become the object of cognition.
But can we not make the old the standard for the new? Is it not necessary for man to measure by the standard of earlier moral rules what he produces through his moral imagination? For something that is to reveal itself as morally productive, this would be as impossible as it would be to measure a new species in nature by an old one and say, Because reptiles do not harmonize with the protoamniotes, their form is unjustified (diseased). Ethical individualism then, is not in opposition to an evolutionary theory if rightly understood, but is a direct continuation of it. It must be possible to continue Haeckel"s genealogical tree,54 from protozoa to man as organic being, without interruption of the natural sequence, and without a breach in the uniform development, right up to the individual as a moral being in a definite sense. But never will it be possible to deduce the nature of a later species from the nature of an ancestral species. True as it is that the moral ideas of the individual have perceptibly evolved out of those of his ancestors, it is also true that an individual is morally barren if he himself has no moral ideas.
The same ethical individualism that I have built up on the foundation of the preceding consideration, could also be derived from an evolutionary theory. The final result would be the same, only the path by which it was reached would be different.
The appearance of completely new moral ideas through moral imagination is, in relation to an evolutionary theory, no more of a marvel than is the appearance of a new kind of animal from previous ones. Only such a theory must, as monistic world view, reject in moral life and also in science, every influence from a Beyond (metaphysical) which is merely inferred and cannot be experienced by means of ideas. This approach would then be following the same principle which urges man on when he seeks to discover the causes for new organic forms and in doing so does not call upon any interference by some Being from outside the world, who is to call forth every new kind according to a thought of a new creation, by means of supernatural influence. Just as monism has no need of supernatural thoughts of creation for explaining living organisms, neither does it derive the morality of the world from causes which do not lie within the world we can experience. The monist does not find that the nature of a will impulse, as a moral one, is exhausted by being traced back to a continuous supernatural influence upon moral life (divine world rulership from outside), to a particular revelation at a particular moment in time (giving of the Ten Commandments), or to the appearance of G.o.d on the earth (Christ). Everything that happens to and in man through all this becomes a moral element only if within human experience it becomes an individual"s own. For monism, moral processes are products of the world like everything else in existence, and their causes must be sought in the world, i.e., in man, since man is the bearer of morality.
Ethical individualism, therefore, is the crowning of that edifice to which Darwin55 and Haeckel aspired for natural science. It is spiritualized science of evolution carried over into moral life.
Whoever from the outset restricts the concept natural within an arbitrary boundary, in a narrow-minded manner, may easily fail to find any room in it for the free individual deed.
The consistent evolutionist is in no danger of remaining at such a narrow-minded view.
He cannot let natural development come to an end with the ape, while granting to man a "supernatural" origin; in his search for man"s ancestors he must seek spirit already in nature; also, he cannot remain at the organic functions of man and consider only these to be natural; he cannot but consider the free, moral life of man to be the spiritual continuation of organic life. In accordance with his fundamental principles the evolutionist can maintain only that a new moral deed comes about through a kind of process other than a new species in nature; the characteristic feature of the deed, that is, its definition as a free deed, he must leave to direct observation of the deed. So, too, he only maintains that men have developed out of not yet human ancestors. How men are const.i.tuted must be determined by observation of men themselves. The results of this observation cannot possibly contradict a true history of evolution. Only if it were a.s.serted that the results exclude a natural development would it contradict recent tendencies in natural science. [footnote: We are ent.i.tled to speak of thoughts (ethical ideas) as objects of observation. For, although the products of thinking do not enter the field of observation, so long as thinking goes on, they may well become objects of observation subsequently, and in this way we can come to know the characteristic feature of the deed.]
Ethical individualism, then, cannot be opposed by natural science when the latter is properly understood; observation shows freedom to be characteristic of the perfect form of human conduct. This freedom must be attributed to the human will, insofar as this will brings purely ideal intuitions to realization. For these do not come about through external necessity, but exist through themselves. When we recognize an action to be an image of such an ideal intuition, we feel it to be free. In this characteristic feature of a deed lies its freedom.
From this point of view, how do matters stand with regard to the distinction, mentioned earlier (p. 41 f.) between the two statements: "To be free means to be able to do what one wants," and the other: "To be able, to desire or not to desire, as one pleases, is the real meaning of the dogma of free will"? Hamerling bases his view of free will on just this distinction and declares the first statement to be correct, the second to be an absurd tautology. He says: "I can do what I want. But to say, I can will what I want, is an empty tautology." Now whether I can do, that is, transform into reality what I want, what I have set before me as the idea of my doing, depends on external circ.u.mstances and on my technical skill (cp. p. 208). To be free means to be able to determine for oneself by moral imagination the representations (impulses) on which the action is based. Freedom is impossible if something external to me (mechanical processes or a merely inferred G.o.d whose existence cannot be experienced) determines my moral representations. In other words, I am free only if I produce these representations myself, not when I am only able to carry out the impulse which someone else has induced in me. A free being is someone who is able to will what he considers right. One who does something other than what he wills, must be driven to it by motives which do not lie within himself. Such a man is unfree in his action. Therefore, to be able to will what one considers right or not right, as one pleases, means to be free or unfree, as one pleases. This, of course, is just as absurd as it is to see freedom in the ability to be able to do what one is forced to will. But the latter is what Hamerling maintains when he says: "It is perfectly true that the will is always determined by motives, but it is absurd to say that it is therefore unfree; for a greater freedom one can neither w