188 Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path
But nowhere could we derive thenature of a subsequent
species from thenature of an ancestral species. It is true
that an individual’s ethical ideas evolve from those of his
or her predecessors, but it is equally true that individuals
are ethically sterile if they lack moral ideas of their own.
The same ethical individualism that I have developed
on the basis of the preceding views could also be derived
from the theory of evolution. The final conviction would
be the same. Only the path by which it was attained
would be different.
To the theory of evolution, the emergence of completely
new ethical ideas from moral imagination is no more
amazing than the development of a new animal species
from an old one. But, as a monistic worldview, evolution-
ary theory must reject—in ethics, as in science—every
merely inferred, otherworldly (metaphysical) influence
that cannot be experienced conceptually. In so doing, it is
following the same principle as when it seeks causes of
new organic forms without appeal to the interference of an
otherworldly being who—by supernatural influence—
summons each new species according to a new creative
thought. Just as monism cannot employ supernatural cre-
ative thoughts to explain living creatures, so likewise it
cannot derive the ethical order of the world from causes
lying outside the experienceable world. For monism, the
moral essence of someone’s will is never fully explained
- Out of this he formulated a philosophy ofmonism. In the early
twentieth century, this monism took a quasi-religious form in Ger-
many and meetings of monists were held throughout the country.
[12]
[13]
