The Riddle of the Universe quotes

… equal regret, that most of the representatives of what is called “exact science” are content with the special care of their own narrow branches of observation and experiment, and deem superfluous the deeper study of the universal connection of the phenomena they observe—that is, philosophy.

While these pure empiricists “do not see the wood for the trees,” the metaphysicians, on the other hand, are satisfied with the mere picture of the wood, and trouble not about its individual trees.

The idea of a “philosophy of nature,” to which both those methods of research, the empirical and the speculative, naturally converge, is even yet contemptuously rejected by large numbers of representatives of both tendencies.

My strength is no longer equal to the task, and many warnings of approaching age urge me to desist.

Indeed, I am wholly a child of the nineteenth century, and with its close I draw the line under my life’s work.

The vast extension of human knowledge which has taken place during the present century, owing to a happy division of labor, makes it impossible to-day to range over all its branches with equal thoroughness, and to show their essential unity and connection.

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;

It is not that the motives of the latter are to be attributed, as a rule, to pure self-interest; they spring partly from ignorance of the facts, and partly from an indolent acquiescence in tradition.

The most dangerous of the three great enemies of reason and knowledge is not malice; but ignorance, or, perhaps, indolence.

The gods themselves still strive in vain against these two latter influences when they have happily vanquished the first.

The interests of truth are far from promoted by these conditions and vacillations of emotion; on the contrary, such circumstances often disturb that reason which alone is adapted to the pursuit of truth, and frequently mar its perceptive power.

No cosmic problem is solved, or even advanced, by the cerebral function we call emotion.

And the same must be said of the so-called “revelation,” and of the “truths of faith” which it is supposed to communicate; they are based entirely on a deception, consciously or unconsciously, as we shall see in the sixteenth chapter.

these, again, the ova of the next, and so on in infinitum! On that basis the distinguished physiologist

Haller calculated that God had created together, 6000 years ago—on the sixth day of his creatorial labors—the germs of 200,000,000,000 men, and ingeniously packed them all in the ovary of our venerable mother Eve.

Even the gifted philosopher Leibnitz fully accepted this conclusion, and embodied it in his monadist theory; and as, on his theory, soul and body are in eternal, inseparable companionship, the consequence had to be accepted for the soul;

V. The soul of the old man or woman (the period of degeneration).

Man’s psychic life runs the same evolution—upward progress, full maturity, and downward degeneration—as every other vital activity in his organization.

Gradual Historical Evolution of the Human Soul from the Animal Soul—Methods of Phylogenetic Psychology—Four Chief Stages in the Phylogeny of the Soul: I. The Cell-Soul (Cytopsyche) of the Protist (Infusoria, Ova, etc.): Cellular Psychology; II.

“

Hence the psychic phenomena of the protists form a bridge that connects the chemical processes of the inorganic world with the psychic life of the highest animals

; they represent the germ of the highest psychic phenomena of the metazoa and of man.”

We could then catch the soul as it is “breathed out” at the moment of death, condense it, and exhibit it in a bottle as “immortal fluid” (Fluidum animae immortale).

By a further lowering of temperature and increase of pressure it might be possible to solidify it—to produce “soul-snow.” The experiment has not yet succeeded.

If athanatism were true, if, indeed, the human soul were to live for all eternity, we should have to grant the same privilege to the souls of the higher animals, at least to those of the nearest related mammals (apes, dogs, etc.).

If, then, the substance of the soul were really gaseous, it should be possible to liquefy it by the application of a high pressure at a low temperature.

We could then catch the soul as it is “breathed out” at the moment of death, condense it, and exhibit it in a bottle as “immortal fluid” (Fluidum animae immortale).

By a further lowering of temperature and increase of pressure it might be possible to solidify it—to produce “soul-snow.” The experiment has not yet succeeded.

the evangelical of North Europe longs for an immense Gothic cathedral, in which he can chant the praises of the Lord of Hosts for all eternity.

In a word, each believer really expects his eternal life to be a direct continuation of his individual life on earth, only in a “much improved and enlarged edition.”

We must lay special stress on the thoroughly materialistic character of Christian athanatism, which is closely connected with the absurd dogma of the “resurrection of the body.”

But, however gloriously we may depict this eternal life in Paradise, it remains endless in duration.

Do we realize what “eternity” means?—the uninterrupted continuance of our individual life forever!

The profound legend of the “wandering Jew,” the fruitless search for rest of the unhappy Ahasuerus, should teach us to appreciate such an “eternal life” at its true value.

Do we realize what “eternity” means?—the uninterrupted continuance of our individual life forever! The profound legend of the “wandering Jew,” the fruitless search for rest of the unhappy Ahasuerus, should teach us to appreciate such an “eternal life” at its true value.

The best we can desire after a courageous life, spent in doing good according to our light, is the eternal peace of the grave.

“Lord, give them an eternal rest.”

and in any case it would be greatly marred by the prospect of meeting the less agreeable acquaintances and the enemies who have troubled our existence here below. Even the closest family ties would involve many a difficulty.

There are plenty of men who would gladly sacrifice all the glories of Paradise if it meant the eternal companionship of their “better half” and their mother-in-law.

It is more than questionable whether Henry VIII. would like the prospect of living eternally with his six wives; or Augustus the Strong of Poland, who had a hundred mistresses and three hundred and fifty-two children.

The different relation of the various elements towards each other, which chemistry calls “affinity,” is one of the most important properties of ponderable matter; it is manifested in the different relative quantities or proportions of their combination in the intensity of its consummation.

Every shade of inclination, from complete indifference to the fiercest passion, is exemplified in the chemical relation of the various elements towards each other, just as we find in the psychology of man, and especially in the life of the sexes.

Goethe, in his classical romance, Affinities, compared the relations of pairs of lovers with the phenomenon of the same name in the formation of chemical combinations.

… discoveries as to the periodic decay and re-birth of cosmic bodies, which we owe to the most recent advance of physics and astronomy, associated with the law of substance, are especially important in giving us a clear insight into the universal cosmic process of evolution.

In their light our earth shrinks into the slender proportions of a “mote in the sunbeam,” of which unnumbered millions chase each other through the vast depths of space.

Our own “human nature,” which exalted itself into an image of God in its anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of a placental mammal, which has no more value for the universe at large than the ant, the fly of a summer’s day, the microscopic …

In their light our earth shrinks into the slender proportions of a “mote in the sunbeam,” of which unnumbered millions chase each other through the vast depths of space.

Our own “human nature,” which exalted itself into an image of God in its anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of a placental mammal, which has no more value for the universe at large than the ant, the fly of a summer’s day, the microscopic infusorium, or the smallest bacillus.

Humanity is but a transitory phase of the evolution of an eternal substance, a particular phenomenal form of matter and energy, the true proportion of which we soon perceive when we set it on the background of infinite space and eternal time.

… exalted itself into an image of God in its anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of a placental mammal, which has no more value for the universe at large than the ant, the fly of a summer’s day, the microscopic infusorium, or the smallest bacillus.

Humanity is but a transitory phase of the evolution of an eternal substance, a particular phenomenal form of matter and energy, the true proportion of which we soon perceive when we set it on the background of infinite space and eternal time.

Since Kant explained space and time to be merely “forms of perception”—space the form of external, time of internal, sensitivity—there has been a keen controversy, which still continues, over this important problem.

His epoch-making work on The Origin of Species by Natural Selection has transformed modern biology from its very foundations, in the course of the last forty years, and has raised it to a stage of development that yields to no other science in existence.

Darwin is the Copernicus of the organic world, as I said in 1868, and E. du Bois-Reymond repeated fifteen years afterwards.

[27]

This “cosmological nebular theory” was based entirely on the mechanical phenomena of gravitation. It was expanded and mathematically established later on by Laplace.

When the famous French astronomer was asked by Napoleon I. where God, the creator and sustainer of all things, came in in his system, he clearly and honestly replied: “Sire, I have managed without that hypothesis.”

That indicated the atheistic character which this mechanical cosmogony shares with all the other inorganic sciences. This is the more noteworthy because the theory of Kant and Laplace is now almost universally accepted; every attempt to supersede it has failed.

When, on the other hand, a misfortune is met with, or an ardent wish is not fulfilled, “Providence” is forgotten.

The wise ruler of the world slumbered—or refused his blessing.

In the extraordinary development of commerce of the nineteenth century the number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased beyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness. Thousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine accidents, etc.

In the extraordinary development of commerce of the nineteenth century the number of catastrophes and accidents has necessarily increased beyond all imagination; of that the journal is a daily witness. Thousands are killed every year by shipwreck, railway accidents, mine accidents, etc.

Thousands slay each other every year in war, and the preparation for this wholesale massacre absorbs much the greater part of the revenue in the highest civilized nations, the chief professors of “Christian charity.”

And among these hundreds of thousands of annual victims of modern civilization strong, industrious, courageous workers predominate. Yet the talk of a “moral order” goes on.

On the other hand, it must be carefully noted what confusion this obscure and mystic dogma of the Trinity must necessarily cause in the minds of our children even in the earlier years of instruction.

One morning they learn (in their religious instruction) that three times one are one, and the very next hour they are told in their arithmetic class that three times one are three.

I remember well the reflection that this confusion led me to in my early school-days.

generally as its creator, sustainer, and ruler. In most religions he has the additional character of personality, or, to put it more definitely still, God as a person is likened to man. “

In his gods man paints himself.

” This anthropomorphic conception of God as one who thinks, feels, and acts like man prevails with the great majority of theists, sometimes in a cruder and more naïve form, sometimes in a more refined and abstract degree.

Nevertheless, the psychic activity of this “pure spirit” remains just the same as that of the anthropomorphic God. In reality, even this immaterial spirit is not conceived to be incorporeal, but merely invisible, gaseous.

We thus arrive at the paradoxical conception of God as a gaseous vertebrate.

Pantheism teaches that God and the world are one. The idea of God is identical with that of nature or substance.

This “godless world-system” substantially agrees with the monism or pantheism of the modern scientist; it is only another expression for it, emphasizing its negative aspect, the non-existence of any supernatural deity. In this sense Schopenhauer justly remarks: “

Pantheism is only a polite form of atheism.

The truth of pantheism lies in its destruction of the dualist antithesis of God and the world, in its recognition that the world exists in virtue of its own inherent forces.

together with the thought-organs in the brain, they are nature’s most valuable gift to man. Very truly does Albrecht Rau say: “All science is sensitive knowledge in the ultimate analysis; it does not deny, but interpret, the data of the senses.

The senses are our first and best friends.

Long before the mind is developed the senses tell man what he must do and avoid.

it must demand the absolute submission of the cultured State, which, as such, defends the rights of reason and science.

True and enduring peace there cannot be until one of the combatants lies powerless on the ground.

Either the Church wins, and then farewell to all “free science and free teaching”—then are our universities no better than jails, and our colleges become cloistral schools;

that made light of the life of the family and the love of woman; that urged an exclusive concern as to the immaterial goods of eternal life?

The idea of a Christian art is a contradiction in terms—a contradictio in adjecto.

The wealthy princes of the Church who fostered it were candidly aiming at very different ideals, and they completely attained them.

Christianity attacks and despises egoism on principle. Yet that natural impulse is absolutely indispensable in view of self-preservation; indeed, one may say that even altruism, its apparent opposite, is only an enlightened egoism.

Nothing great or elevated has ever taken place without egoism, and without the passion that urges us to great sacrifices.

It is only the excesses of the impulse that are injurious. One of the Christian precepts that were impressed upon us in our early youth as of great importance, and that are glorified in millions of sermons, is:

To see the truth of this more clearly, let us cast a brief glance at the astonishing progress which the chief branches of science have made in this remarkable period.

The study of the heavens is the oldest, the study of man the youngest, of the sciences.

With regard to himself and the character of his being man only obtained a clear knowledge in the second half of the present century;

… motion” the infinite substance of the universe, the sum total of its matter and energy, remains eternally unchanged, and we have an eternal repetition in infinite time of the periodic dance of the worlds, the metamorphosis of the cosmos that ever returns to its starting-point.

Over all rules the law of substance.

The earth and its origin were much later than the heavens in becoming the object of scientific investigation.