Religion and Science
7. The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age
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When man does not, of his own volition adhere to
the highest code of conduct, there is no scientific
law whose application can cause him to mend his
ways. Entire electrical installations spring to life by
the mere throwing of a switch at the powerhouse,
but no such system exists whereby the actions of
men can be so directed. Man can act, or refrain from
action, only by willing himself to do so, a process in
which external intervention would normally play
little or no part.
4. This point of view supposes that immorality,
dishonesty and criminal tendencies are kinds of
mental and nervous “diseases” which can be
“cured” like colds and fevers. He writes:
Moral sense, like intellectual activity,
apparently depends on certain structural and
functional states of the body. These states
result from the immanent constitution of our
tissues and our minds, and also from factors,
which have acted upon us during our
development. In his essay on the foundation
of Ethics, presented at the Royal Society of
Sciences of Copenhagen, Schopenhauer
