The Riddle of the Universe at the close of the nineteenth centuryHaeckel, Ernst
Religion
The Riddle of the Universe at the close of the nineteenth century
Haeckel, Ernst
Evolution; Monism; Religion and science; Soul
Our education of the young is no more in harmony with modern scientific
progress than our legal and political world. Physical science, which
is so much more important than all other sciences, and which, properly
understood, really embraces all the so-called moral sciences, is still
regarded as a mere accessory in our schools, if not treated as the
Cinderella of the curriculum. Most of our teachers still give the
most prominent place to that dead learning which has come down from
the cloistral schools of the Middle Ages. In the front rank we have
grammatical gymnastics and an immense waste of time over a "thorough
knowledge" of classics and of the history of foreign nations. Ethics,
the most important object of practical philosophy, is entirely
neglected, and its place is usurped by the ecclesiastical creed. Faith
must take precedence over knowledge--not that scientific faith which
leads to a monistic religion, but the irrational superstition that
lays the foundation of a perverted Christianity. The valuable teaching
of modern cosmology and anthropology, of biology and evolution, is
most inadequately imparted, if not entirely unknown, in our higher
schools; while the memory is burdened with a mass of philological and
historical facts which are utterly useless, either from the point of
view of theoretical education or for the practical purposes of life.
Moreover, the antiquated arrangements and the distribution of faculties
in the universities are just as little in harmony with the point we
have reached in monistic science as the curriculum of the primary and
secondary schools.
The climax of the opposition to modern education and its foundation,
advanced natural philosophy, is reached, of course, in the Church. We
are not speaking here of ultramontane papistry, nor of the orthodox
evangelical tendencies, which do not fall far short of it in ignorance
and in the crass superstition of their dogmas. We are imagining
ourselves for the moment to be in the church of a liberal Protestant
minister, who has a good average education, and who finds room for
"the rights of reason" by the side of his faith. There, besides
excellent moral teaching, which is in perfect harmony with our own
monistic ethics, and humanitarian discussion of which we cordially
approve, we hear ideas on the nature of God, of the world, of man, and
of life which are directly opposed to all scientific experience. It
is no wonder that physicists and chemists, doctors and philosophers,
who have made a thorough study of nature, refuse a hearing to such
preachers. Our theologians and our politicians are just as ignorant
as our philosophers and our jurists of that elementary knowledge of
nature which is based on the monistic theory of evolution, and which is
already far exceeded in the triumph of our modern learning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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