Morality and Religion

Now every backward glance into time, i.e. universal history, as well as every look round us in space, i.e. ethnology, reveals the fact that there never has been, and also that there is not, a people destitute of every trace, every touch of morality and religion. The only question is, Is this natural capacity of mankind for morality and religion a veritable function of cognition ?

The essence of all cognition is the individual. Every act of cognition is always something individual, personal, pertaining to me alone. Were all men to cognize alike, the content of this cognition would still be the individual possession of each and every single person. Cognition separates.

Opposite to it stands another function of human nature emotion. Emotion unites. If things cognizable are the affair of the individual, things emotional have to do with the mass. Every natural capacity of mankind for morality and religion consists altogether of what pertains to the emotions. Here all morality is founded upon an instinctive feeling of correlation which finds expression in the well-known saying : What you would not men did to you, See that you do not them unto!

or in the maxim, “So conduct thyself towards others as thou wouldst wish that they should conduct themselves towards thee ! “

The unifying quality of emotion is made manifest in every form of compassion, which latter frequently rises to the pitch of an actual vegetative suffering with the afflicted person. Such facts, open to every one’s observation, awaken in all the instinctive feeling of an inner connection of beings, and yield a natural morality that is purely a function of emotion.

It may be asked, ” Could such a morality of emotion suffice humanity ? “

It would suffice a humanity whose development had only reached so far as the capacity for emotion. So soon, however, as a being passes from the stage of the emotional and enters upon the stage of the cognitive, the morality of emotion no longer suffices, as little so as the reasons one is accustomed to give to children suffice the grown man.

The emotional holds sway as long as an individual is not yet fully conscious of himself, not yet come to pure reflection. So soon as he is fully conscious, there arises also the need to understand ourselves as well as our morality and religion. Then only may I say that I have morality and religion when I have understood them, when both have become functions of my cognition. So long as this is not the case, so long are religion and morality things of emotion, and these are subject to every conceivable variation. Hence the endless diversity of moralities as well as of religions in the stage of the emotional.

Here both — to use the language of current speech — are mere matters of taste, lacking in all inner foundation. Hence also comes all that is unintelligible in the manners and customs connected with morality and religion among foreign peoples of ancient and of modern times. This is not the place to go into details. Every historical record, every account of civilization, furnishes abundant examples.

Whether upon our globe a state of affairs has ever prevailed in which morality and religion have been exclusively things of emotion, it is impossible to say. The fact remains that at the point where, in our glance backward over the history of the world, man first emerges, the purity of emotional morality and religion is no longer intact. Historical man, as first presented to us in the states of Egypt and Babylonia, already exhibits a morality and religion which are no longer pure functions of emotion, but have now become functions of reflection.

This necessity for reflection is given with the essential being of all that is real.

As already said, all that is, on the one hand, presents itself as “something that is,” i.e. a being; and, on the other hand, as “something that happens,” i.e. a becoming ; that is, as a process. Wherever something happens, an adequate cause must be present. And the world by its simple existence, by reason of its very nature as a process, is the standing incitement to comprehension, to reflection, inasmuch as the mind hankers after an adequate cause for all that occurs. ” The apparent changes in organic being all about me,” says Goethe in his Morphologic ; ” took a strong hold of my mind.

Imagination and nature seemed to strive with one another which of the two should stride forward with the bolder and firmer step.”

World Theory

There is present a something given, an actuality, which we designate by the collective name of “world.” The untutored person and the thinker alike make use of the same expression. This latter is indifferent, acquiring a definite meaning only with reference to a particular explanation that is, with reference to a view of the world.

The impulse to explain actuality, the need of a world -theory, a world -conception, is deeply embedded in every living being endowed with consciousness.

The moment any being has so far developed as to begin to think, it finds itself involved in a huge system within which it seeks to know its way, striving the while to understand it in its various details.

This system comes before it in a twofold aspect : on the one hand, as ” something that is,” i.e. things ; and on the other hand, as ” something that happens,” i.e. the play of events among things. A ” being ” without a ” happening ” attached, is as little to be found as a “happening” without a “being.” In other words : processes only exist.

Here two questions immediately arise. First, What is the world? And second, How does the play of events come about ?

Both sides of the world-picture, and therewith both questions, blend into one question the question as to adequate causes. As well the fact that ” something is here,” as the fact that ” something happens,” requires adequate causes. The adequate cause is the thotcght-necessity given with all mental life. The entire universe in all its parts and processes, is to the thinking man a species of marionette show. He sees the puppets dance but he does not see the strings, neither does he see that which pulls the strings. The incentive to a view of the world is the craving, so to speak, to get a peep behind the scenes, to spy out Nature’s secrets, and therewith seize upon the meaning and significance of life itself. This latter is the real object of every world-theory.

Now it is quite true, that if I do not perceive the meaning and significance of life I am but little better than the donkey that drags the full sacks to the mill and the empty ones back without knowing why, in the one case as in the other. I owe it to my dignity as a man to seek out the meaning and significance of life. But this is not all.

That I am here is a given fact. Were I not here, had I never been here, not for that would any breach have yawned in the structure of the world. But now that I am here, all turns upon how I conduct myself during this my existence. Not the fact that I am here, but how I employ this existence is the all-important thing.

This question as to the ” how ” can only be answered in any natural way through the “what.” I must know what I am, and what are the things and beings outside me ; I must learn my relations to the external world, I must apprehend the meaning and significance of life before I can possess a genuine canon and standard for my behaviour, for my morality. For all morality, whether it find expression in doing or in leaving undone, issues in acts of selflessness. This, however, requires that motives be brought forward, otherwise such an act is either a perverted form of self-seeking like all asceticism, or it is mere training, bearing, indeed, the outward semblance of morality, in reality, however, having nothing at all to do with it. It is only in virtue of cognition that any act acquires moral value. One can speak of real morality there only where it is a function of cognition. Hence there can be no morality without comprehension, without a world-conception.

This is the first reason why a world-theory is necessary.

But it behoves a being worthy the name of man also to know whether this life is merely a blind adventure, or whether it has aim and goal. The thinking man demands to know what he may expect after this life. He insists upon looking beyond this life. He claims an answer to the question, “Whence? Whither?”

This demand to look out beyond life, this questioning, as to the aim and goal of life, is called religion. As with the query, ” How must I conduct myself?” which permits of being answered in natural fashion then only when I know what I am, so is it with the question, ” Whence am I, and whither am I bound ? ” Only when I know what I am, can this question also find a natural reply. A genuine religion, like a genuine morality, has its roots in cognition. Both alike must be functions of cognition.

Such are the two reasons why for every thinking being a world-theory is not only a matter of giving honourable satisfaction to his dignity as a man, but also why it is a positive necessity. In their absence genuine morality and genuine religion alike are impossible.