The places of devotion, in which men seek the satisfaction of their religious emotions and worship the objects of their reverence, are regarded as sacred "churches." The pagodas of Buddhistic Asia, the Greek temples of classical antiquity, the synagogues of Palestine, the mosques of Egypt, the Catholic cathedrals of the south, and the Protestant cathedrals of the north, of Europe--all these "houses of God" serve to raise man above the misery and the prose of daily life, to lift him into the sacred, poetic atmosphere of a higher, ideal world. They attain this end in a thousand different ways, according to their various forms of worship and their age. The modern man who "has science and art"--and, therefore, "religion"--needs no special church, no narrow, enclosed portion of space. For through the length and breadth of free nature, wherever he turns his gaze, to the whole universe or to any single part of it, he finds, indeed, the grim "struggle for life," but by its side are ever "the good, the true, and the beautiful"; his church is commensurate with the whole of glorious nature. Still, there will always be men of special temperament who will desire to have decorated temples or churches as places of devotion to which they may withdraw. Just as the Catholics had to relinquish a number of churches to the Reformation in the sixteenth century, so a still larger number will pass over to "free societies" of monists in the coming years. CHAPTER XIX OUR MONISTIC ETHICS Monistic and Dualistic Ethics--Contradiction of Pure and Practical Reason in Kant--His Categorical Imperative--The Neo-Kantians--Herbert Spencer--Egoism and Altruism--Equivalence of the Two Instincts--The Fundamental Law of Ethics: the Golden Rule--Its Antiquity--Christian Ethics--Contempt of Self, the Body, Nature, Civilization, the Family, Woman--Roman Catholic Ethics--Immoral Results of Celibacy--Necessity for the Abolition of the Law of Celibacy, Oral Confession, and Indulgences--State and Church--Religion a Private Concern--Church and School--State and School--Need of School Reform The practical conduct of life makes a number of definite ethical claims on a man which can only be duly and naturally satisfied when they are in complete harmony with his view of the world. In accordance with this fundamental principle of our monistic philosophy, our whole system of ethics must be rationally connected with the unified conception of the cosmos which we have formed by our advanced knowledge of the laws of nature. Just as the infinite universe is one great whole in the light of our monistic teaching, so the spiritual and moral life of man is a part of this cosmos, and our naturalistic ordering of it must also be monistic. There are not two different, separate worlds--the one physical and material, and the other moral and immaterial.