The Wonders of Life: A Popular Study of Biological Philosophy. Ernst Haeckel
Читать онлайн книгу.
animals. Of art and science there is no question. Their impulse to discover causes is satisfied with the simplest association of phenomena which have a merely external connection, but no intimate relation to each other. Thus arises their fetichism, that irrational trust in fetiches which Fritz Schultze has traced to four distinct causes: their false estimate of the value of an object, their anthropomorphic conception of nature, the imperfect association of their ideas, and the strength of their emotions, especially hope and fear. Any favorite object, a stone or a bone, may work miracles as a fetich and exercise all kinds of good or evil influence, and is therefore honored, feared, and worshipped. At first the worship was paid to the invisible spirit that dwelt in the particular object; but it was often transferred afterwards to the dead object itself. Among the different savage races the belief in fetiches presents a number of stages, corresponding to the beginnings of reason. The lowest stage is found in the lowest races, such as the Veddahs of Ceylon, the Andaman Islanders, Bushmen, and Akkas (of New Guinea). A somewhat higher stage is met in the middle races (Australian negroes, Tasmanians, Hottentots, and Tierra del Fuegians); and a still higher intellectual development is shown by the next group (most of the Indians of North and South America, the aboriginal inhabitants of India, etc.). Modern comparative ethnography and evolution and prehistoric and anthropological research have shown us that our own ancestors, ten thousand and more years ago, were (like the prehistoric ancestors of all races of men) savages, and that their earliest belief in miracles was a crude fetichism.
By barbarians we understand the races that are found between savage and civilized peoples. They show the first beginnings of civilization, and are superior to savages chiefly in the possession of agriculture and the keeping of cattle. They make a provident use of the productive forces of organic nature, artificially produce large quantities of food, and are thus enabled by the abundance of food to turn their minds to other interests. We find that they have the rudiments of art and science. Their religion does not at first rise much above fetichism, but soon reaches the stage of animism, lifeless objects in nature being credited with souls. Worship is no longer paid to favorite dead objects (stones, bones, etc.), but generally to living things, trees and animals, and especially to images of gods which have the form of animals or men, and are believed to possess souls. As demons or spirits, these have a great influence on the fortunes of men. At first this soul is conceived to be purely material; it disappears at the death of the body and lives apart. As the breathing and the beat of the pulse and heart cease when a man dies, the seat of the soul is thought to be the lungs, heart, or some other part of the body. The idea of the immortality of the soul takes on innumerable forms among them, like the belief in the miracles which are worked by the gods, demons, spirits, etc. Evolution again points out a long gradation of forms of faith, if we compare the lower, middle, and higher races.
Civilized races are distinguished from barbaric by the formation of states with an extensive division of labor. The social organism is not only larger and more powerful, but is capable of a greater variety of achievements, the functions of the various states and classes of workers being more highly differentiated and mutually complementary (like the cells and tissues in the higher animal body of the metazoa). Nutrition is easier and more luxurious. Art and science are well developed. A great advance is seen in regard to religion, the numerous gods being generally conceived as manlike spirits, and finally subordinated to a chief god. The belief in miracles flourishes greatly in poetry; in philosophy it is more and more restricted. In the end, the working of miracles is limited monotheistically to one god, or to his priests and other men to whom he communicates the power.
Modern civilization in the narrower sense, as a contrast to the older civilization, opens, in my opinion, at the beginning of the sixteenth century. At that time took place some of the greatest achievements of human thought among civilized peoples, and these broke the chains of tradition and gave a fresh impetus to progress. Men's own mental outlook was widened by the system of Copernicus and the Reformation freed them from the yoke of the papacy. Shortly before, the discovery of the New World and the circumnavigation of the globe had convinced men of the rotundity of the earth; geography, natural history, medicine, and other sciences gained inspiration and independence; printing and engraving provided an important means of spreading the new knowledge. This fresh impetus was chiefly of service to philosophy, which now more and more rejected the dictation of the Church and superstition; though it was far from casting off the fetters altogether. This was not generally possible until the nineteenth century, when empirical science assumed an enormous importance, and in the ensuing period of speculation the physical conception of the world gained more and more on the metaphysical. Pure knowledge, thus grounded on science, entered into sharper conflict than ever with religious faith. If, as in the preceding cases, we distinguish three stages in the development of modern civilization, we recognize the progressive liberation from superstition by scientific knowledge.
When we compare the higher forms of religion of civilized nations we find the same emotional cravings and thought-processes constantly recurring, and the belief in miracles developing in much the same way. The three founders of the great monotheistic Mediterranean religion—Moses, Christ, and Mohammed—were equally regarded as wonder-working prophets, having direct intercourse with God in virtue of their special gifts, and transmitting his commands to men in the shape of laws. The extraordinary authority they enjoy, which has given so much prestige to the religions they founded, is grounded for ordinary people on their miraculous powers—the healing of the sick, the raising of the dead, the expulsion of devils, and so on. If we examine the miracles of Christ as they are given in the gospels, they run counter to the laws of nature and rational explanation just in the same way as the similar miracles of Buddha and Brahma in Hindoo mythology, or of Mohammed in the Koran. The same must be said of the belief in the miracle of the bread and wine in the Lord's supper, and the like. The Creed which was probably drawn up by the leaders of the Christian communities of the second century, and received its final and present form in the Church of South Gaul in the fourth and fifth centuries, has been obligatory for Christians for fifteen hundred years, and recognized by both Church and State as compulsory. This Apostles' Creed was also recognized in Luther's catechism to be fundamental, and is taught in all Protestant and Roman Catholic schools (though not in the Greek Catholic) as the foundation of religious instruction. This extraordinary prestige of the Apostles' Creed, and its great influence on the education of the young, no less than its glaring inconsistency with rational knowledge, compel us to devote a few pages to a critical examination of its three articles.
The first article of the Creed deals with creation, and runs: "I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth." The modern science of evolution has shown that there never was any such creation, but that the universe is eternal and the law of substance all-ruling. God himself is anthropomorphically conceived as an "Almighty Creator" and the Father of man; heaven (in the sense of the geocentric system) is imagined as a great blue vault spanning the earth. The notion of this "personal God" as an intelligent, immaterial being, creating the material world out of nothing, is wholly irrational and meaningless. That Luther accepted this childish and scientifically worthless idea is clear from his commentary on the first article—"What is that?"
The second article of the Creed deals with the dogma of salvation in the following words: "I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried, descended into hell, on the third day rose again from the dead, ascended into heaven, sitteth at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty, whence he will come to judge the living and the dead." As these dogmas of the second article contain the chief points of the redemption theory, and are still treasured by millions of educated people, it is necessary to point out their flagrant opposition to pure reason. The chief evil of such creeds is that children, who are yet incapable of reflecting, are forced to learn them by heart. They then remain unchallenged as revealed truths.
The myth of the conception and birth of Jesus Christ is mere fiction, and is at the same stage of superstition as a hundred other myths of other religions. Of the three persons who are mysteriously blended in the triune God, the son Christ is supposed to be begotten by both Father and Holy Ghost, parthenogenetically through the Virgin Mary. I have dealt with the physiology of parthenogenesis in the seventeenth chapter of the Riddle. The curious adventures of Christ after his death, the descent into hell, resurrection, and ascension,