MONISM 



God." However, the idea of God is not the chief feat- 

 ure of all religions. The three greatest Asiatic relig- 

 ions — Buddhism, Brahmanisni, and Confucianism — 

 were at first purely atheistic; Buddhism was at once 

 idealistic and pessimistic, whence Schopenhauer regard- 

 ed it as the highest of all religions. On the other hand, 

 belief in a personal God is the central feature of the 

 three great Mediterranean religions. This anthropo- 

 morphic God is conceived in a hundred forms in the 

 various sects of the Mosaic, Christian, and Mohammedan 

 religions, but his existence remains one of the chief ar- 

 ticles of faith. No evidence of his existence is to be 

 found; this was very ably shown by Kant, although he 

 thought that practical reason postulated it. All that 

 revelation is supposed to teach us on the matter belongs 

 to the region of fiction. The whole field of theology, 

 especially dogmatic theology, and the whole of the 

 Church teaching based on it, are based on dualistic 

 metaphysics and superstitious traditions. It is no long- 

 er a serious subject of scientific treatment. On the other 

 hand, comparative religion is a very important branch of 

 theoretical theology. It deals with the origin, develop- 

 ment, and significance of religion on the basis of modern 

 anthropology, ethnology, psychology, and history. When 

 we study without prejudice the results of these sciences 

 bearing on religion, theology turns out to be pantheism, 

 in the sense of Spinoza and Goethe, and thus monism 

 becomes a connecting link between religion and science. 

 This brief survey of the twenty chief branches of 

 modern science and their relation to monism and dual- 

 ism shows that we are face to face with great contra- 

 dictions, and that we are still far from the harmonious 

 and successful adjustment of these differences. Thev 

 are partly due to a real antinomy of reason in the 

 Kantist sense — an antithesis in ideas, in which the posi- 

 tive seems to be just as capable of j^roof as its contra- 



469 



