Moral Imagination 189by tracing it back to some continuous supernatural influ-
ence on ethical life (divine world rule from without), to a
specific temporal revelation (transmission of the ten com-
mandments), or to the appearance of God on earth
(Christ). What happens in a human being and to a human
being by means of these becomes ethical only if is appro-
priated in human experience by individuals who make it
their own. For monism, ethical processes are products of
the world like everything else that exists, and their causes
must be sought in the world—that is to say, in human be-
ings, because humans are the bearers of morality.
Thus, ethical individualism becomes the pinnacle of the
edifice that Darwin and Haeckel sought to build for natu-
ral science. It is spiritualized evolutionary theory, trans-
ferred to moral life.
Those who narrow-mindedly confine the concept of
what is natural to an arbitrarily limited region easily
reach the point of not being able to find any room there
for free individual action. Consistent, systematic evolu-
tionists cannot fall into any such narrow-mindedness.
They cannot close the natural path of evolution with the
apes, and then give humanity a “supernatural” origin.
Evolutionists must seek the spirit, too, in nature, even in
the search for natural human ancestors. They cannot stop
at human organic processes, finding those alone to be nat-
ural. They must also regard the morally free life as a spir-
itual continuation of organic life.
According to their fundamental principles, theorists of
evolution can claim only that present ethical behavior fol-
lows from other kinds of occurrences in the world. To