VII The ‘Religion’ of the Modern Age

of things, dimensions and weight, which are easily measurable, from their secondary qualities, form, colour, odour which cannot be measured. The quantitative was separated from the qualitative. This mistake had momentous consequences. In man, the things, which are not measurable, are more important than those, which are measurable. The existence of thought is as fundamental as, for instance, the physico-chemical equilibria of blood serum. The separation of the qualitative from the quantitative grew still wider when Descartes created the dualism of the body and the soul. Then the manifestations of the mind became inexplicable. The material was definitely isolated from the spiritual. Organic structures and physiological mechanisms assumed a far greater reality than thought, pleasure, sorrow, and beauty. This error switched civilization to the road, which led science to triumph and man to degradation. In order to find again the right direction we must return in thought to the men of the Renaissance. We should reject the dualism of Descartes. Mind will be replaced in matter. The soul will no longer be distinct from the body. As much importance should be given to feelings as to thermodynamics. It will be difficult to get rid of a doctrine which, during more than three hundred years, has dominated the intelligence of the civilized. If scientific civilization should leave the road that it has followed since the Renaissance, strange events would immediately take place. Matter would lose its supremacy. Mental activities would become as important as physiological ones. The study of moral, aesthetic, and religious functions, would appear as indispensable as that of mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Hygienists would be asked why they concern themselves exclusively with the prevention of organic diseases, and not with that of mental and nervous disturbances, why they pay no attention to spiritual health—Pathologists would be induced to study the lesions of the humours as well as those of the organs, to take into account the influence of the mental upon the tissues, and vice versa. (p. 256)