Ernst Haeckel

“ Every year increases my belief that the dualism of Kant and the prevalent metaphysical school must give way to the monism of Goethe and the rising pantheistic tendency. In this we do not lose sight of our ideals. On the contrary, our "realist philosophy of life" teaches us that they are rooted deep in human nature. While occupying ourselves with the ideal world in art and poetry, and cultivating the play of emotion, we persist, nevertheless, in thinking that the real world, the object of science, can be truly known only by experience and pure reason. ”

“ All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world, taken as a whole or in its various parts. Substance alone is eternal and unchangeable, whether we call this all-embracing world-being Nature, or Cosmos, or God, or World-spirit. ”

“ In point of space the object is larger and richer than any of the individual objects in nature which are beautiful and interesting in themselves. The varying forms of the clouds and the water, the outline of the blue mountains in the background, the woods and meadows in the middle-distance, and the living figures in the foreground, excite in the mind of the spectator a number of different impressions which are woven together into a harmonious whole by a most elaborate association of ideas. ”

“ The law of substance teaches us that it reveals itself to us in an infinite variety of forms, but that its essential attributes, matter and energy, are constant. All individual forms of substance are doomed to destruction. That will be the fate of the sun and its encircling planets, and of the organisms that now people the earth—the fate of the bacterium and of man. Just as the existence of every organic individual had a beginning, it will also undeniably have an end. Life and death are irrevocably united. ”

“ When philosophy, as a search for truth in the highest sense, thus unites our isolated discoveries and seeks to weld them into one unified system of the world, it comes at length to state certain fundamental problems, the answer to which varies according to the degree of culture and the point of view of the inquirer. These final and highest objects of scientific inquiry have been of late comprehended under the title of The Riddle of the Universe, and I gave this name to the work I published in 1899, which dealt with them, in order to make its aim perfectly clear. ”

“ In the sense in which science usually employs the word "organism," and in which we employ it here, it is equivalent to "living thing" or "living body." The opposite to it, in the broad sense, is the anorganic or inorganic body. Hence the word "organism" belongs to physiology, and connotes essentially the visible life-activity of the body, its metabolism, nutrition, and reproduction.
However, in most organisms we find, when we examine their structure closely, that this consists of various parts, and that these parts are put together for the evident purpose of accomplishing the vital functions. ”

“ In the widest sense, it embraces the whole vast science of man, just as zoology (in my opinion) deals with all parts of the animal world. Since I regard anthropology as a part of zoology, I naturally extend the principles of monism to both. However, this general monistic conception of the science of man has met with only a restricted acceptance up to the present. As a rule, the term "anthropology" is restricted to the natural history of man, which includes the anatomy and physiology of the human organism, embryology, prehistoric research, and a small part of psychology. ”

“ Man, the most perfect of all things, belongs to both worlds; his material frame is mortal, the prison of the immortal and invisible soul. The eternal ideas are only embodied for a time in the world of bodies here below; they dwell eternally in the world of spirits beyond, where the supreme idea (God, or the idea of the good) controls all in perfect unity. ”

“ Modern civilization rose to importance about the end of the fifteenth century, when the invention of printing had made possible the spread of knowledge far and wide, the discovery of America and circumnavigation of the globe had widened the horizon, and the Copernican system had demolished the error of geocentricism. Then began the many-sided growth of civilization which has reached so marvellous a height in the nineteenth century through the extraordinary development of science. Then at last free reason could triumph over the prevailing mediæval superstition. ”

“ Modern anthropogeny shows us the intimate connection between the evolution of the human individual and that of the race; and by means of prehistoric and phylogenetic research it joins what is called the history of the world to the stem-history of the vertebrates.
Medicine belongs to the front rank of practical or applied sciences. In its long and interesting history it teaches how it is only a monistic knowledge of nature, not a dualistic notion of revelation, that affords the foundations of true science and the profitable application of this to the most important aspects of practical life. ”

“ When we conceive the phronema as the real "organ of the soul" in the strict sense—that is to say, as the central instrument of thought, knowledge, reason, and consciousness—we may at once lay down the principle that there is an anatomical unity of organ corresponding to the physiological and generally admitted unity of thought and consciousness. As we assign to this phronema a most elaborate anatomical structure, we may call it the organic apparatus of the soul, in the same sense in which we conceive the eye as a purposively arranged apparatus of vision. ”

“ The two most influential representatives of dualism, Plato and Kant, said that there were two totally distinct worlds. Nature, or the empirical world, is alone accessible to our experience, while the spiritual or transcendental world is not. The existence of the latter is known to us only by the emotions or by practical reason; but we can have no idea of its nature. The chief error of this theoretical idealism is the assumption that the soul is a peculiar, immaterial being, immortal and endowed with a priori knowledge. ”

“ Biogeny, or the science of the evolution of organisms, is also divided into two parts—the science of the individual (ontogeny) and of the stem or species (phylogeny) ; each follows its own peculiar methods and aims, but they are most intimately connected by the biogenetic law. Ontogeny deals with the development of the individual organism from the beginning of its existence to death; as embryology it observes the growth of the individual within the fœtal membranes ”

“ How can a just God condemn the criminal to the fires of hell when he himself has tainted the man with an hereditary bias, or has placed him in an environment in which, seeing the absence of free-will, crime was a necessity for him? ”

“ The great value of modern civilization and its vast progress beyond the condition of the savage is seen in no branch of physiology so conspicuously as in the wonderful process of reproduction and the maintenance of the species. In most savages and barbarians the satisfaction of their powerful sexual impulse is at the same low stage as in the ape and other mammals. The woman is merely an object of lust to the man, or even a slave without rights, bought and exchanged like all other property. ”

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

“ In many other features of our life besides this false modesty and false honor we perceive the force of social usage. Many of what are thought to be honorable customs are relics of barbarism; much of our morality is, in the light of pure reason, downright immorality. As even the latter is due to adaptation, and as the same custom may be at one time thought useful and fitting, at another time injurious and bad, we see again that it is impossible to restrict the idea of adaptation to useful variations. ”

“ If the official philosophers, whose formal duty it is to study truth and natural law, still cling to the belief in miracles in spite of all the advance of empirical science, we shall not be surprised to find this in the case of official theology. Nevertheless, the sense of truth has prompted many unprejudiced and honorable theologians to look critically at the venerable structure of dogma, and open their minds to the streaming light of modern science. ”

“ The practical life of man is, like that of all the social higher animals, ruled by impulses and customs which we describe as "moral." The science of morality, ethics, is regarded by the dualists as a mental science, and closely connected with religion on the one hand and psychology on the other. During the nineteenth century this dualistic view retained its popularity especially because the great authority of Kant, with his dogma of the categorical imperative, seemed to have given it a solid foundation, and because it agreed admirably with the teaching of the Church. ”

“ It has no practical moral value except for those who believe in personal immortality—a scientifically untenable dogma. Whoever builds on this empty promise of a better life beyond may soothe himself with this hope, and reconcile himself to the thousand ills and defects of this world. But the man who studies this life as it really is will not find that the belief in redemption has brought any real improvement. Want and misery and sin are as prevalent as ever; indeed, our modern civilization has, in many respects, increased them. ”

“ And then we are asked to believe in a loving Providence that has decreed the death of each of these poor mortals! We are asked to console ourselves in face of the tragedy with the hollow phrases: "God's will be done," or "God's ways are wonderful." Simple children and dull believers may soothe themselves with such phrases. They no longer impose on educated people in the twentieth century, who prefer a full and fearless knowledge of the truth. ”

“ Hence, Kant is right when he says that we perceive only the phenomena of things, and not their inner essence, which he calls the "thing in itself." But he is wrong and altogether misleading when he goes on to doubt the reality of the external world, and says it exists only in our presentations—in other words, that life is a dream. It does not follow, from the fact that our senses and phronema can reach only a part of the properties of things, that we call into question their existence in time and space. ”

“ We are now accustomed to regard man as a natural being, the most highly developed natural being that we know. The same "eternal iron laws" that rule the evolution of the whole cosmos control our own life. Monism teaches that the universe really deserves its name, and is an all-embracing unified whole—whether we call it God or Nature. Monistic anthropology has now established the fact that man is but a tiny part of this vast whole, a placental mammal, developed from a branch of the order of primates in the later Tertiary Period. ”

“ We must class as a traditional dogma the wide-spread belief that man is bound under all circumstances to maintain and prolong life, even when it has become utterly useless—a source of pain to the incurable and of endless trouble to his friends. Hundreds of thousands of incurables—lunatics, lepers, people with cancer, etc.—are artificially kept alive in our modern communities, and their sufferings are carefully prolonged, without the slightest profit to themselves or the general body. We have a strong proof of this in the statistics of lunacy and the growth of asylums and nerve-sanatoria. ”

“ From this thorough and unprejudiced appreciation of the biology of the phronema it follows that the knowledge of truth, the aim of all science, is a natural physiological process, and that it must have its organs like all other psychic functions. These organs have been revealed to us so fully in the advance of biology during the last half-century that we may be said to have a generally satisfactory idea of the natural character of their organization and action, though we are still far from enjoying a complete anatomical and physiological insight into their details. ”

“ In psychology a most extensive knowledge of psychic powers on the basis of the introspective method is demanded; the physiological analysis of the "soul" and the anatomic study of the phronema are carefully avoided, as are also the comparative and genetic study of the mind. Many of our metaphysicians go even farther and regard philosophy as a separate science—a sublime "mental science," quite independent of the common empirical sciences. One is tempted to quote the saying of Schopenhauer: "It is a sure sign of a philosopher that he is not a professor of philosophy." ”

“ Physics and chemistry in particular have proved that all phenomena that come under our observation depend on physical and chemical laws, and that all can be traced to the comprehensive and unified law of substance. Anthropogeny has taught us the evolution of man from animal ancestors. Comparative anatomy and physiology have shown that his mind is a function of the brain, and his will not free; and that his soul, absolutely bound up with its material organ, passes away at death like the souls of other mammals. ”

“ Hence in education we should impart a general outlook on all the sides of human life. Each should acquire the elements of science, not only of physics and chemistry, but also of biology and anthropology. On the other hand, the predominance of the classical training over modern ought to be restricted. Every student and every faculty should be occupied with only philosophy and science in the first sessions, and not take up special studies until afterwards. ”