X. Monism and the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity

Monism perceives clearly that a being acting under physical or moral compulsion cannot be truly moral. It regards the stages of automatic action (in accordance with natural urges and instincts), and of obedient action (in accordance with moral norms), as necessary preparatory stages for morality, but it understands that it is possible for the free spirit to transcend both these transitory stages. Monism emancipates the truly moral world-view in general from all the internal fetters of the maxims of naive morality, and from all the externally imposed maxims of speculative Metaphysicians. The former Monism can as little eliminate from the world as it can eliminate percepts. The latter it rejects, because it looks for all principles of elucidation of the phenomena of the world within that world and not outside it. Just as Monism refuses even to entertain the thought of cognitive principles other than those applicable to men (p. 96), so it rejects also the thought of moral maxims other than those applicable to men. Human morality, like human knowledge, is conditioned by human nature, and just as beings of a different order will mean by knowledge something very different from what we mean by it, so other beings will have a very different morality. For Monists, morality is a specifically human quality, and spiritual activity (freedom) the human way of being moral.