II. Since the Christian faith takes a wholly dualistic view of the human organism and attributes to the immortal soul only a temporary sojourn in the mortal frame, it very naturally sets a much greater value on the soul than on the body. Hence results that neglect of the care of the body, of training, and of cleanliness which contrasts the life of the Christian Middle Ages so unfavorably with that of pagan classical antiquity. Christian ethics contains none of those firm commands as to daily ablutions which are theoretically laid down and practically fulfilled in the Mohammedan, Hindoo, and other religions. In many monasteries the ideal of the pious Christian is the man who does not wash and clothe himself properly, who never changes his malodorous gown, and who, instead of regular work, fills up his useless life with mechanical prayers, senseless fasts, and so forth. As a special outgrowth of this contempt of the body we have the disgusting discipline of the flagellants and other ascetics. III. One source of countless theoretical errors and practical blemishes, of deplorable crudity and privation, is found in the false anthropism of Christianity--that is, in the unique position which it gives to man, as the image of God, in opposition to all the rest of nature. In this way it has contributed, not only to an extremely injurious isolation from our glorious mother "nature," but also to a regrettable contempt of all other organisms. Christianity has no place for that well-known love of animals, that sympathy with the nearly related and friendly mammals (dogs, horses, cattle, etc.), which is urged in the ethical teaching of many of the older religions, especially Buddhism. Whoever has spent much time in the south of Europe must have often witnessed those frightful sufferings of animals which fill us friends of animals with the deepest sympathy and indignation. And when one expostulates with these brutal "Christians" on their cruelty, the only answer is, with a laugh: "But the beasts are not Christians." Unfortunately Descartes gave some support to the error in teaching that man only has a sensitive soul, not the animal. How much more elevated is our monistic ethics than the Christian in this regard! Darwinism teaches us that we have descended immediately from the primates, and, in a secondary degree, from a long series of earlier mammals, and that, therefore, they are "our brothers"; physiology informs us that they have the same nerves and sense-organs as we, and the same feelings of pleasure and pain. No sympathetic monistic scientist would ever be guilty of that brutal treatment of animals which comes so lightly to the Christian in his anthropistic illusion--to the "child of the God of love." Moreover, this Christian contempt of nature on principle deprives man of an abundance of the highest earthly joys, especially of the keen, ennobling enjoyment of nature.