Dualism

“ Just because this natural dualism with which we set out is a blunder, just because in fact the world is not rent in twain by our arbitrary distinction of object and subject, but is in deepest truth one united world, a single thought ”

“ The other is the view called Dualism. Dualism means the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad, and that this universe is the battlefield in which they fight out an endless war. I personally think that next to Christianity Dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market. But it has a catch in it.
The two powers, or spirits, or gods—the good one and the bad one—are supposed to be quite independent. They both existed from all eternity. ”

“ The real point that Der Menschliche Weltbegriff tries to answer is whether or not the systematic study or examination of our experience necessarily leads to dualism, say the dualism represented by the antithetical schemes of Idealism and Materialism. ”

“ Every such social condition must be formulated in a dualistic philosophy, if philosophy is to be a sincere account of experience. When it gets beyond dualism—as many philosophies do in form—it can only be by appeal to something higher than anything found in experience, by a flight to some transcendental realm. ”

“ If, for example, we say that all the good in the universe arises from one source which is good, and that all the evil arises from another source which is evil, and that these sources of good and evil cannot be subordinated one to the other, and that one does not arise out of the other, but both are co-ordinate and equally primeval and independent, that position would be a dualism. ”

“ Dualism, or Manichæism, the doctrine that there are two opposite and independently existing principles which go to constitute every concrete thing throughout the universe, such as a principle of good and a principle of evil, light and darkness, life and death, spirit and matter, ideal and real, yea and nay, God and Devil, Christ and Antichrist, Ormuzd and Ahriman. ”

“ You are aware that the world, as Dualism conceives it, is not acceptable to the philosophical Idealist. You are aware that I myself am an Idealist. You will see, then, that this whole conception of the external world as something divided from the verifying consciousness must appear to me an essentially unstable conception. ”

“ Dualism is sometimes defined as the doctrine that there are in the world two kinds of substances, matter and mind, which are different in kind and should be kept distinct. There are dualists who prefer to avoid the use of the word substance, and to say that the world of our experiences consists of physical phenomena and of mental phenomena, and that these two classes of facts should be kept separate. ”

“ The second view is not the mere negation of this dualism. That there is a dualism is a fact which it acknowledges. [2] All life and reality is manifested in dualism—in antithesis: but the life and the reality is one. Mind—Geist—actualised and [Pg 368] intelligent experience—is the one ultimate and essential reality. [3] In the face of its unity, mere matter is only a half-truth, and mere thought is only another. The reality, the unity, and the truth, is matter as formed, nature as reflected in mind. ”

“ The unity is considered as a duality, by the dualistic opinions of men; while on the other hand the belief in unity, destroys the conviction of dualism and plurality from the minds of men.
31. There is no duality or secondary being in the soul, which may be regarded as the supreme soul, because there is but one soul only, which is unchangeable and unperishable at all times and every where. ”

“ At the best it goes no further than to admit or assert that besides the one there is also the other. It establishes a see-saw, and is proud of it. This is Dualism. Its maxim is, Don't forget that there is an Other. ”

“ That the human mind can rest only in some kind of Monism, that Dualism must be regarded as a natural but a passing phase of thought, based on a hasty interpretation of certain aspects of man’s moral experience, would seem to follow from what has been urged previously from the a priori side of the question.141 Indeed, it may be doubted whether [Pg 197] there are any thinkers who seriously maintain the Dualistic view as a philosophic doctrine. ”

“ But Common Sense also may have its æsthetic demands, and among them may be a craving for unity. The spectacle of an ultimate and inexplicable dualism in the nature of things may be as unsatisfying as the obligation to calculate with heterogeneous terms. ”

“ Every form of epistemological dualism must involve the understanding in contradictions. The entire nature of the spirit, the whole field of its productions, forms a unity. As the understanding asserts that the objects of the sensibility do not exist in themselves, so must it also say: All of my products and objects must correspond to my nature and my laws ”

“ But a fuller consideration of the point at issue might possibly indicate a way out of the dilemma of free will and determinism into a morally satisfying form of dualism within the soul of man himself. ”

“ The dualism is a fundamental datum: Let no man join what God has put asunder.”
My reply to this is my last word, and I greatly grieve that to many it will sound materialistic. I can not help that, however, for I, too, have my intuitions and I must obey them. Let the case be what it may in others, I am as confident as I am of anything that, in [Pg 37] myself, the stream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically as a phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing. ”

“ Its dualism is that which, while recognizing an infinitely extended substance, the universe, unbounded and empty in no part, but everywhere filled with substance—it holds, nevertheless, that such substance exists in two principle modes, having some qualities in common, and in others being distinct ”

“ It is only the philosophical system of Dualism which holds differently, when it separates the absolutely inseparable, and when it believes to be thinking very profoundly after its thinking has utterly vanished into smoke. ”

“ Hence also the change of the physical dualism above mentioned into a moral dualism; the genii of light and darkness become respectively moral or immoral gods, good or bad counsellors, saviours or tempters; and in this period a faith in the superiority and definitive triumph of the good is firmly established. In short, the gods have as attributes first power, then intelligence, and lastly morality. ”

“ Thus Phenomenalism, when it has banished the notion of a substantial unity in things, has to identify the world of things, as we have already seen, with qualities in relation to one another. But now the question arises, How are we to understand the conception of qualities in relation? Can we, on the one hand, reduce all qualities to relations or all relations to qualities, or, on the other, can we form an intelligible idea of the way in which a single whole or system can be formed by the union of the two? ”

“ Here, then, we may see the impress of a Single Mind, in the unity and harmony which pervade the visible universe; while, at the same time, we discern the qualities of that Mind,—its Power, in the grandeur of the plan, its Wisdom in the perfectness of its beauty and order, and its Love in the presence of that great pervading force which draws into intimate connection and union its innumerable parts. ”

“ For in conceiving of all that is as a single whole, as the life, the meaning, and the consciousness of a single Self, we are not limited to merely universal considerations. Human thought has long been conscious of some aspects of the unity of Being. The world of ordinary experience, of common sense, and of science, has already its provisional unity, which our own idealism must view as a genuine, if fragmentary, hint of the final unity. ”

“ The second principle is the substratum or essence of the last three "qualities"—the tendencies toward unity, harmony, order, love, which he calls the light-principle. The third principle produces the union or synthesis of the other two—the principle of realization in body and form, the triumph over opposition of these two opposing principles in the exhibition of the real, the actual, the living, the conscious, where dark and light are both joined, but are dominated by another irreducible principle. ”

“ What is the characteristic of the psychical unities more especially? It is that of having, besides the consciousness of such perception, the feeling also of the relations that bind the whole together, and those faculties, more or less developed, which that consciousness and that perception imply. But why should these unities be any more perishable than the others? Why, if all these forces, all these activities, are eternal, should those alone not possess eternity which have this high privilege, that of knowing the infinite relations which the others sustain without knowing that they do so? ”

“ Let us name the higher and the purer one, the spirit of the soul; and call the other, the spirit of the flesh; for both are distinct from mere intellect, which each uses as an agent, as each gains the ascendancy, or appeals to as a judge when the struggle is nearly equal. It is upon this struggle between these two principles that turns the greater part of each man's moral history. ”

“ Let us make the moral relationships that we are to consider explicitly relationships amongst Selves of the type that we have been defining. Let A be one of these Selves; a conscious life, defined in its unity by its relation to some one ideal. Let B be another Self in the same world with A. From A’s point of view, from B’s point of view, and from the absolute point of view, these two lives are, first, distinct. ”

“ The apparent double being in us,—of which one part follows the impulses of sense, while the other reflects upon the nature and movements of its companion, and restrains it,—naturally arises from the (so to say) double nature and destiny of man, who is framed to live as an individual, and also as an integral part of society. ”

“ So men have said in effect throughout the ages, and where they have conceded reality or substantial character to manifoldness, the concession has simply concealed a reassertion, but with fuller and deeper meaning, of the intimacy of unity with reality. What makes for real unity or wholeness, then, must impart realistic character, giving actual contact and intimacy with just that of which, so to speak, the world is made. ”

“ When the relations of what we call a thing are told, no caput mortuum of intrinsicality, no 'nature,' is left. The relations soak up all there is of the thing; the 'items' of the world are but foci of relation with other foci of relation; and all the relations are necessary. ”

“ Under the other aspect, the entire action which sets forth the relations of all the characters involved, of their several courses of experience as elements in the working out of the joint result, has its unity in the constitution of the universe,—the impersonal order, that structure of being itself, which is independent of man's will, which is imposed upon him as a condition of existence, and which he must accept without appeal. ”

“ And thus if our understanding could ascend to the knowledge of all truths, and embrace them in their unity and in all the relations uniting them, it would see them after arriving at a certain height, notwithstanding their dispersion and divergence as now perceived by us, converge to a centre, in which they unite, like rays of light in the luminous object from which they issued. ”

“ The Threefold Form of the Conviction.—Sustained, now, by all these movements in natural science, psychology, philosophy, and Christianity, this thought of the mutual influence of men has taken three forms: that mutual influence is inevitable, isolation impossible; that mutual influence is desirable, isolation to be shunned; that mutual influence is indispensable, isolation blighting. ”

“ We can define the Other, the true Being, as that which, if present to us in this moment, would end our conflict. In so far it seems something desirable and desired, — an object of longing. On the other hand, we may, and often do, regard Being as that in terms of which our ideas are to be controlled, set right, or, if necessary, wholly set aside as useless. In so far Being appears as a sort of fate, or perhaps as a supreme authority, which judges our ideas and which may thwart them. ”

“ Such objections as these must, I think, arise in the mind of every one who ponders, for the first time, upon the conception of a single physical basis of life underlying all the diversities of vital existence; but I propose to demonstrate to you that, notwithstanding these apparent difficulties, a threefold unity—namely, a unity of power, or faculty, a unity of form, and a unity of substantial composition—does pervade the whole living world. ”

“ For it is precisely the wholeness, and not the mere fragmentariness, the presence, and not the mere absence of unity in our consciousness, the relative attainment, and not the mere postponement of our meanings, which, from this point of view, guides us towards a positive view of how the unity of Being is, in the midst of all the varieties, attained. ”

“ In this sense, one can then say, the Absolute Unity of Consciousness contains, involves, includes, not merely finite types of self-consciousness, not merely finite contrasts of Self and Other, but the contrasts and the consciousness of its own being as Thinker, Experiencer, Seer, and as Love, or Will, and all of these as essentially interrelated aspects of itself as Unity. ”

“ Now, on the contrary, the general inclination of consciousness is to maintain the difference, partly in order to mark itself out as implicitly free in opposition to its object—Being, nature, and God, and partly in order to recognize the unity in this opposition, and from the opposition itself to make the unity emerge. ”