If the Self is conceived as a monon, i.e. something "alone" like an atomic unit, it can have no evolution. Evolution is change of form through the production of new configurations. A monon or an isolated unit considered by itself cannot evolve. It is as it ever has been and will be—a monon.
If this is Prof, Max Müller's meaning, we must ask, How does he know that the self is a monon and that objects are mona? Do they not, if so conceived, become highly mysterious entities? New mona are constantly born into this world. Whence do they come? Is every birth of a child the new creation of another monon by the creator, who so distributes the babes in the world that like babes are given to like parents thus producing the wrong impression of heredity as well as of a continuity of evolution? The idea of explaining all the activities of the mind by the postulate of a conscious monon is very simple indeed, but the problems which would arise from this postulate are extremely complex, and it seems to us that after all the proposition of evolution is by far the simplest solution of all the difficulties.[1]
Mind as we conceive it is the product of evolution. Mind has been evolved in a world which (judging from its product) must be conceived as being freighted not only with energy but also with the
- ↑ Prof. Max Müller is a great admirer of Kant and so am I. But it appears to me that we differ greatly in what we accept as the essential teachings of the master; and I grant willingly that Prof. Max Müller has preserved the doctrines of Kant more faithfully than I. I have attempted to modernise Kant. If I am called a Kantian (and I do not object to the name, on the contrary I am proud of it) it is because I proceed from Kant and I attempt to preserve the spirit of Kant's philosophy rather than his doctrines. For the sake of the spirit of Kantian philosophy I have seen myself urged to surrender the idea of the thing-in-itself as something unknowable. Prof. Max Müller has preserved in his philosophy (for such is the Science of Thought) the Ding-an-sich theory. Believing in things-in-themselves he must consistently believe in a self or monon, for this monon is nothing but the thing-in-itself of the soul.
I have limited myself in the present article to the principle of continuity in evolution as a point of divergence between Prof. Max Müller and the views defended by The Monist. If I attempted at present to enter into the philosophical problem of things-in-themselves, I should be obliged to tax too much the patience of my readers. But as I am convinced that the reason of our difference with Prof. Max Müller concerning the continuity of evolution lies deeper still, I intend to treat the subject of things-in-themselves in a future number.
