Ultimate Questions: The Consequences of Monism

The uniform explanation of the world, that is, the monism we have described, derives the principles that it needs for the explanation of the world from human experience. In the same way, it looks for the sources of action within the world of observation, that is, in that part of human nature which is accessible to our self-knowledge, more particularly in moral imagination. Monism refuses to infer in an abstract way that the ultimate causes of the world that is presented to our perceiving and thinking are to be found in a region outside this world. For monism, the unity that thoughtful observation—which we can experience—brings to the manifold multiplicity of percepts is the same unity that man's need for knowledge demands, and through which it seeks entry into the physical and spiritual regions of the world. Whoever seeks another unity behind this one only proves that he does not recognize the identity of what is discovered by thinking and what is demanded by the urge for knowledge. The single human individual is not actually cut off from the universe. He is a part of it, and between this part and the totality of the cosmos there exists a real connection which is broken only for our perception. At first we take this part of the universe as something existing on its own, because we do not see the belts and ropes by which the fundamental forces of the cosmos keep the wheel of our life revolving.