20 
HUGO MUNSTERBERG 
And emptier still is the naïve belief that man is free. Do we not 
profit from decades of psychological labor, whereby the finest struc¬ 
ture of the brain has been discovered, wherein the psychological laws 
have been studied with the exactitude of a natural science, wherein 
we have studied the mental life of animals and children, and have 
observed the illusions of freedom in the hypnotized man and in the 
insane? Yes, we know to-day that every mental act, that every 
psychological process is the absolutely necessary outcome of the 
given circumstances; that the functions of the cells in the cortex of 
the brain determine every decision and volition, and that man’s deed 
is as necessary as the falling of the stone when its support is taken 
away. Yes, modern psychology does not even allow the will as an 
experience of its own kind; it has shown with all the means of its 
subtle analysis that all which we feel as our will is only a special com¬ 
bination of sensations which accompany certain movement-impulses 
in our body. Can we still take it seriously, when the philosopher steps 
in and pushes sovereignly aside all the exact knowledge of mankind, 
and declares simply “Man’s will is free!” 
Finally, the claim for the over-personal, absolute consciousness in 
man. It is a triumph of modern science to understand how the duties 
and ideals have grown up in the history of civilization. What one 
nation calls moral is perhaps indifferent or immoral for another people 
or for another time; what the one calls beautiful is ugly for the other; 
what one period admires as truth is absurdity for another; there is 
no absolute truth, no absolute beauty, no absolute religion, no abso¬ 
lute morality; and sociology shows how it was necessary that just 
these ideals and just these obligations should have grown up under 
a given climate and soil, a given temperament of the race, a given set 
of economical conditions, a given accumulation of technical achieve¬ 
ments. Man has made his Absolute, not the Absolute made man, 
and whatever hopes and fears make men believe, the scholarly mind 
cannot doubt that these beliefs and idealizations are merely the 
products of the feelings and emotions of individuals bound together 
by equal conditions of life. . Leave it to the raptures of the mystic 
to ignore all scientific truth, to get over-soul connection beyond all 
experience. In short, to accept Emerson’s philosophy, the scientist 
would say, means to be a poet where Nature is concerned, means to 
be ignorant where man is concerned, and means to be a mystic where 
moral and religious, aesthetic and logical ideals are concerned. Can 
such be the herald of modem philosophy ? 
But those who are so proud and so quick are not aware that the