X. Monism and the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity

This conception, however, takes us already beyond the level of the naive consciousness into the sphere where moral laws have become independent norms. They are there no longer transmitted by a carrier, but are turned into self-existent metaphysical entities. They are analogous to the visible-invisible forces of Metaphysical Realism, which seek reality, not through the part which human nature, through its thinking, plays in this reality, but which hypothetically adds it to the facts of experience. Hence these extra-human moral norms always appear as accompanying Metaphysical Realism. For this theory is bound to look for the origin of morality likewise in the sphere of extra-human reality. There are different views possible. If the supposed extra-human being is conceived to be unthinking and acts according to purely mechanical laws, as modern Materialism conceives that it does, then it must also produce out of itself, by purely mechanical necessity, the human individual and all that belongs to him. On that view the consciousness of freedom can be nothing more than an illusion. For whilst I consider myself the author of my action, it is the matter of which I am composed and the movements which are going on in it that work within me. I imagine myself free, but actually all my actions are nothing but the effects of the material processes which are the basis of my physical and mental organization. It is only because we do not know the motives which compel us that we have the feeling of freedom. “We must emphasize that the feeling of freedom is caused by the absence of external compelling motives.” “Our actions are as much subject to necessity as our thoughts” (Ziehen, Leitfaden der Physiologischen Psychologie, pp. 207, ft.).[^2]