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    <h1>
      MONISM AS CONNECTING RELIGION AND SCIENCE
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    <h2>
      <i>A MAN OF SCIENCE</i>
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    <h2>
      By Ernst Haeckel
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    <h3>
      Translated From The German By J. Gilchrist, M.A., B.Sc., Ph.D.
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    <p>
      <b>CONTENTS</b>
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    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_PREF"> PREFACE </a>
    </p>
    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> MONISM </a>
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    <p class="toc">
      <a href="#link2H_NOTE"> NOTES </a>
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      <a name="link2H_PREF"> </a>
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    <h2>
      PREFACE
    </h2>
    <p>
      The following lecture on Monism is an informal address delivered
      extemporaneously on October 9, 1892, at Altenburg, on the seventy-fifth
      anniversary of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft des Osterlandes." The
      immediate occasion of it was a previous address delivered by Professor
      Schlesinger of Vienna on "Scientific Articles of Faith." This
      philosophical discourse contained, with reference to the weightiest and
      most important problems of scientific investigation, much that was
      indisputable; but it also contained some assertions that challenged
      immediate rejoinder and a statement of the opposite view. As I had for
      thirty years been very closely occupied with these problems of the
      philosophy of nature, and had set forth my convictions with respect to
      them in a number of writings, a wish was expressed by several members of
      the Congress that on this occasion I should give a summary account of
      these. It was in compliance with this wish that the following "Scientific
      Confession of Faith" was uttered. The substance of it, as written from
      recollection on the day after its delivery, first appeared in the <i>Altenburger
      Zeitung of</i> 19th October 1892. This was reproduced, with one or two
      philosophical additions, in the November number <i>of</i> the <i>Freie
      Bühne für den Entwickelungskampf der Zeit</i> (Berlin). In its present
      form the Altenburg address is considerably enlarged, and some parts have
      been more fully worked out. In the notes (p. 9 I) several burning
      questions of the present day <i>have</i> been dealt with from the monistic
      point of view.
    </p>
    <p>
      The purpose of this candid confession of monistic faith is twofold. First,
      it is my desire to give expression to that rational view of the world
      which is being forced upon us with such logical rigour by the modern
      advancements in our knowledge of nature as a unity, a view in reality held
      by almost all unprejudiced and thinking men of science, although but few
      have the courage (or the need) to declare it openly. Secondly, I would
      fain establish thereby a bond between religion and science, and thus
      contribute to the adjustment of the antithesis so needlessly maintained
      between these, the two highest spheres in which the mind of man can
      exercise itself; in monism the ethical demands of the soul are satisfied,
      as well as the logical necessities of the understanding.
    </p>
    <p>
      The rising flood of pamphlets and books published on this subject,
      demonstrates that such a natural union of faith and knowledge, such a
      reasonable reconciliation of the feelings and the reason, are daily
      becoming a more pressing necessity for the educated classes. In North
      America (in Chicago), there has been published for several years a weekly
      journal devoted to this purpose: <i>The Open Court: A Weekly Journal
      devoted to the Work of Conciliating Religion and Science</i>. Its worthy
      editor, Dr. Paul Carus (author of <i>The Soul of Man</i>, 1891), devotes
      also to the same task a quarterly journal under the title <i>The Monist</i>.
      It is in the highest degree desirable that so worthy endeavours to draw
      together the empirical and speculative views of nature, realism and
      idealism, should have more attention and encouragement than they have
      hitherto received, for it is only through a natural union of the two that
      we can approach a realisation of the highest aim of mental activity-the
      blending of religion and science in monism.
    </p>
    <p>
      ERNST HAECKEL. JENA, <i>October</i> 31, 1892
    </p>
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    <hr />
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      <a name="link2H_4_0002"> </a>
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    <h2>
      MONISM
    </h2>
    <p>
      A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot celebrate
      its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of its highest
      general problems. It must be regarded, therefore, with satisfaction that
      the speaker on such an august occasion as this&mdash;the seventy-fifth
      anniversary of your Society&mdash;has selected as the subject of his
      address a theme of the highest general importance. Unfortunately, it is
      becoming more and more the custom on such occasions, and even at the
      general meetings of the great "Association of German Naturalists and
      Physicians," to take the subject of address from a narrow and specialised
      territory of restricted interest. If this growing custom is to be excused
      on the grounds of increasing division of labour and of diverging
      specialisation in all departments of work, it becomes all the more
      necessary that, on such anniversaries as the present, the attention of the
      audience should be invited to larger matters of common interest.
    </p>
    <p>
      Such a topic, supreme in its importance, is that concerning "Scientific
      Articles of Faith," upon which Professor Schlesinger has already expounded
      his views.<a href="#linknote-1" name="linknoteref-1" id="noteref-1"><small>1</small></a>
      I am glad to be able to agree with him in many important points, but as to
      others I should like to express some hesitation, and to ask consideration
      for some views which do not coincide with his. At the outset, I am
      entirely at one with him as to that unifying conception of nature as a
      whole which we designate in a single word as Monism. By this we
      unambiguously express our conviction that there lives "one spirit in all
      things," and that the whole cognisable world is constituted, and has been
      developed, in accordance with one common fundamental law. We emphasise by
      it, in particular, the essential unity of inorganic and organic nature,
      the latter having been evolved from the former only at a relatively late
      period.<a href="#linknote-2" name="linknoteref-2" id="noteref-2"><small>2</small></a>
      We cannot draw a sharp line of distinction between these two great
      divisions of nature, any more than we can recognise an absolute
      distinction between the animal and the vegetable kingdom, or between the
      lower animals and man. Similarly, we regard the whole of human knowledge
      as a structural unity; in this sphere we refuse to accept the distinction
      usually drawn between the natural and the spiritual. The latter is only a
      part of the former (or <i>vice versa</i>); both are one. Our monistic view
      of the world belongs, therefore, to that group of philosophical systems
      which from other points of view have been designated also as mechanical or
      as pantheistic. However differently expressed in the philosophical systems
      of an Empedocles or a Lucretius, a Spinoza or a Giordano Bruno, a Lamarck
      or a David Strauss, the fundamental thought common to them all is ever
      that of the oneness of the cosmos, of the indissoluble connection between
      energy and matter, between mind and embodiment&mdash;or, as we may also
      say, between God and the world&mdash;to which Goethe, Germany's greatest
      poet and thinker, has given poetical expression in his <i>Faust</i> and in
      the wonderful series of poems entitled <i>Gott und Welt</i>.
    </p>
    <p>
      That we may rightly appreciate what this Monism is, let us now, from a
      philosophico-historical point of view cast a comprehensive glance over the
      development in time of man's knowledge of nature. A long series of varied
      conceptions and stages of human culture here passes before our mental
      vision. At the lowest stage, the rude&mdash;we may say animal&mdash;phase
      of prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the
      tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his
      immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive
      stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the rudest
      of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to conceive.
      These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilisation, and from
      these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise little by
      little to the more highly civilised nations. To these alone&mdash;of the
      twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian&mdash;are
      we indebted for what is usually called "universal history." This last,
      extending over somewhat less than six thousand years, represents a period
      of infinitesimal duration in the long millions of years of the organic
      world's development.
    </p>
    <p>
      Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who
      immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge of
      nature. The rude primitive child of nature at this lowest stage of
      development is as yet far from being the restless <i>Ursachenthier</i>
      (cause-seeking animal) of Lichtenberg; his demand for causes has not yet
      risen above that of apes and dogs; his curiosity has not yet mounted to
      pure desire of knowledge. If we must speak of "reason" in connection with
      pithecoid primitive man, it can only be in the same sense as that in which
      we use the expression with reference to those other most highly developed
      Mammals, and the same remark holds true of the first beginnings of
      religion.<a href="#linknote-3" name="linknoteref-3" id="noteref-3"><small>3</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      It is indeed still not infrequently the custom to deny absolutely to the
      lower animals reason and religion. An unprejudiced comparison, however,
      convinces us that this is wrong. The slow and gradual process towards
      completeness which, in the course of thousands of years, civilised life
      has been working in the soul of man, has not passed away without leaving
      some trace on the soul of our highest domestic animals also (above all, of
      dogs and horses). Constant association with man, and the steady influence
      of his training, have gradually, and by heredity, developed in their brain
      higher associations of ideas and a more perfect judgment. Drill has become
      instinct, an undeniable example of "the transmission of acquired
      characters."<a href="#linknote-4" name="linknoteref-4" id="noteref-4"><small>4</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      Comparative psychology teaches us to recognise a very long series of
      successive steps in the development of soul in the animal kingdom. But it
      is only in the most highly developed vertebrates-birds and mammals&mdash;that
      we discern the first beginnings of reason, the first traces of religious
      and ethical conduct. In them we find not only the social virtues common to
      all the higher socially-living animals,&mdash;neighbourly love,
      friendship, fidelity, self-sacrifice, etc.,&mdash;but also consciousness,
      sense of duty, and conscience; in relation to man their lord, the same
      obedience, the same submissiveness, and the same craving for protection,
      which primitive man in his turn shows towards his "gods." But in him, as
      in them, there is yet wanting that higher degree of consciousness and of
      reason, which strives after a <i>knowledge</i> of the surrounding world,
      and which marks the first beginning of philosophy or "wisdom." This last
      is the much later attainment of civilised races; slowly and gradually has
      it been built up from lower religious conceptions.
    </p>
    <p>
      At all stages of primitive religion and early philosophy, man is as yet
      far removed from monistic ideas. In searching out the causes of phenomena,
      and exercising his understanding thereon, he is in the first instance
      prone in every case to regard personal beings&mdash;in fact,
      anthropomorphic deities&mdash;as the agents at work. In thunder and
      lightning, in storm and earthquake, in the circling of sun and moon, in
      every striking meteorological and geological occurrence, he sees the
      direct activity of a personal god or spirit, who is usually thought of in
      a more or less anthropomorphic way. Gods are distinguished as good and
      bad, friendly and hostile, preserving and destroying, angels and devils.
    </p>
    <p>
      This becomes true in a yet higher degree when the advancing pursuit of
      knowledge begins to take into consideration the more complicated phenomena
      of organic life also, the appearance and disappearance of plants and
      animals, the life and death of man. The constitution of organised life, so
      suggestive as it is of art and purpose, leads one at once to compare it
      with the deliberately designed works of man, and thus the vague conception
      of a personal god becomes transformed into that of a creator working
      according to plan. As we know, this conception of organic creation as the
      artistic work of an anthropomorphic god&mdash;of a divine mechanic&mdash;generally
      maintained its ground almost everywhere, down even to the middle of our
      own century, in spite of the fact that eminent thinkers had demonstrated
      its untenability more than two thousand years ago. The last noteworthy
      scientist to defend and apply this idea was Louis Agassiz (died 1873). His
      notable <i>Essay on Classification</i>, 1857, developed that theosophy
      with logical vigour, and thereby reduced it to an absurdity.<a
      href="#linknote-5" name="linknoteref-5" id="noteref-5"><small>5</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      All these older religious and teleological conceptions, as well as the
      philosophical systems (such as those of Plato and of the Church fathers)
      which sprang from them, are antimonistic; they stand in direct antithesis
      to our monistic philosophy of nature. Most of them are dualistic,
      regarding God and the world, creator and creature, spirit and matter, as
      two completely separated substances. We find this express dualism also in
      most of the purer church-religions, especially in the three most important
      forms of monotheism which the three most renowned prophets of the eastern
      Mediterranean&mdash;Moses, Christ, and Mohammed&mdash;founded. But soon,
      in a number of impure varieties of these three religions, and yet more in
      the lower forms of paganism, the place of this dualism is taken by a
      philosophical pluralism, and over against the good and world-sustaining
      deity (Osiris, Ormuzd, Vishnu), there is placed a wicked and destroying
      god (Typhon, Ahriman, Siva). Numerous demi-gods or saints, good and bad,
      sons and daughters of the gods, are associated with these two chief
      deities, and take part with them in the administration and government of
      the cosmos.
    </p>
    <p>
      In all these dualistic and pluralistic systems the fundamental idea is
      that of anthropomorphism, or the humanising of God; man himself, as
      godlike (or directly descended from God), occupies a special position in
      the world, and is separated by a great gulf from the rest of nature.
      Conjoined with this, for the most part, is the anthropocentric idea, the
      conviction that man is the central point of the universe, the last and
      highest final cause of creation, and that the rest of nature was created
      merely for the purpose of serving man. In the Middle Ages there was
      associated at the same time with this last conception the geocentric idea,
      according to which the earth as the abode of man was taken for the fixed
      middle point of the universe, round which sun, moon, and stars revolve. As
      Copernicus (1543) gave the death-blow to the geocentric dogma, so did
      Darwin (1859) to the anthropocentric one closely associated with it.<a
      href="#linknote-6" name="linknoteref-6" id="noteref-6"><small>6</small></a> A
      broad historical and critical comparison of religious and philosophical
      systems, as a whole, leads as a main result to the conclusion that every
      great advance in the direction of profounder knowledge has meant a
      breaking away from the traditional dualism (or pluralism) and an approach
      to monism. Ever more clearly are we compelled by reflection to recognise
      that God is not to be placed over against the material world as an
      external being, but must be placed as a "divine power" or "moving spirit"
      within the cosmos itself. Ever clearer does it become that all the
      wonderful phenomena of nature around us, organic as well as inorganic, are
      only various products of one and the same original force, various
      combinations of one and the same primitive matter. Ever more irresistibly
      is it borne in upon us that even the human soul is but an insignificant
      part of the all-embracing "world-soul"; just as the human body is only a
      small individual fraction of the great organised physical world.
    </p>
    <p>
      The great general principles of theoretical physics and chemistry are now
      in a position to afford to this unifying conception of nature an exact, to
      a certain extent, indeed, a mathematical confirmation. In establishing the
      law of the "conservation of energy," Robert Mayer and Helmholtz showed
      that the energy of the universe is a constant unchangeable magnitude; if
      any energy whatever seems to vanish or to come anew into play, this is
      only due to the transformation of one form of energy into another. In the
      same way Lavoisier's law of the "conservation of matter" shows us that the
      material of the cosmos is a constant unchangeable magnitude; if any body
      seems to vanish (as, for example, by burning), or to come anew into being
      (as, for example, by crystallisation), this also is simply due to change
      of form or of combination. Both these great laws&mdash;in physics, the
      fundamental law of the conservation of energy, and in chemistry, of the
      conservation of matter&mdash;may be brought under one philosophical
      conception as the law of the conservation of substance; for, according to
      our monistic conception, energy and matter are inseparable, being only
      different inalienable manifestations of one single universal
      being-substance.<a href="#linknote-7" name="linknoteref-7" id="noteref-7"><small>7</small></a>
      In a certain sense we can regard the conception of "animated atoms" as
      essentially partaking of the nature of this pure monism&mdash;a very
      ancient idea which more than two thousand years ago Empedocles enunciated
      in his doctrine of "hate and love of the elements." Modern physics and
      chemistry have indeed in the main accepted the atomic hypothesis first
      enunciated by Democritus, in so far as they regard all bodies as built up
      of atoms, and reduce all changes to movements of these minutest-discrete
      particles. All these changes, however, in organic as well as in inorganic
      nature, become truly intelligible to us only if we conceive these atoms
      not as dead masses, but as living elementary particles endowed with the
      power of attraction and repulsion. "Pleasure" and "pain," and "love" and
      "hate," as predicates of atoms are only other expressions for this power
      of attraction and repulsion.
    </p>
    <p>
      Although, however, monism is on the one hand for us an indispensable and
      fundamental conception in science, and although, on the other hand, it
      strives to carry back all phenomena, without exception, to the mechanism
      of the atom, we must nevertheless still admit that as yet we are by no
      means in a position to form any satisfactory conception of the exact
      nature of these atoms, and their relation to the general space-filling,
      universal ether. Chemistry long ago succeeded in reducing all the various
      natural substances to combinations of a relatively small number of
      elements; and the most recent advances of that science have now made it in
      the highest degree probable that these elements or the (as yet)
      irreducible primitive materials are themselves in turn only different
      combinations of a varying number of atoms of one single original element.
      But in all this we have not as yet obtained any further light as to the
      real nature of these original atoms or their primal energies.
    </p>
    <p>
      A number of the acutest thinkers have, so far in vain, endeavoured to
      grapple more closely with this fundamental problem of the philosophy of
      nature, and to determine more exactly the nature of atoms as well as their
      relation to the space-filling ether. And the idea steadily gains ground
      that no such thing as empty space exists, and that everywhere the
      primitive atoms of ponderable matter or heavy "mass" are separated from
      each other by the homogeneous ether which extends throughout all space.
      This extremely light and attenuated (if not imponderable) ether causes, by
      its vibrations, all the phenomena of light and heat, electricity and
      magnetism. We can imagine it either as a continuous substance occupying
      the space between the mass-atoms, or as composed of separate particles; in
      the latter case we might perhaps attribute to these ether-atoms an
      inherent power of repulsion in contrast to the immanent attracting power
      of the heavy mass-atoms, and the whole mechanism of cosmic life would then
      be reducible to the attraction of the latter and the repulsion of the
      former. We might also place the "vibrations of the cosmic ether" alongside
      of the "operation of space in general," in the sense in which these words
      are used by Professor Schlesinger.
    </p>
    <p>
      At any rate, theoretical physics has in recent years made an advance of
      fundamental importance and widest reach in our knowledge of nature, in
      that it has come nearer to a knowledge of this cosmic ether, and has
      forced the question of its essence, its structure, and its motion into the
      foreground of monistic nature-philosophy. Only a few years ago the cosmic
      ether was to the majority of scientists an imponderable something, of
      which, strictly speaking, absolutely nothing was known, and which could be
      admitted provisionally only as a precarious working hypothesis. All this
      was changed when Heinrich Hertz (1888) demonstrated the nature of
      electrical energy, by his beautiful experiments establishing the
      conjecture of Faraday that light and heat, electricity and magnetism, are
      closely related phenomena of one single set of forces, and depend on
      transverse vibrations of the ether. Light itself&mdash;whatever else it be&mdash;is
      always and everywhere an electrical phenomenon. The ether itself is no
      longer hypothetical; its existence can at any moment be demonstrated by
      electrical and optical experiment. We know the length of the light wave
      and the electric wave. Indeed, some physicists believe that they can even
      determine approximately the density of ether. If by means of the airpump
      we remove from a bell-jar the atmospheric air (except an insignificant
      residue), the quantity of light within it remains unchanged; it is the
      vibrating ether we see.<a href="#linknote-9" name="linknoteref-9" id="noteref-9"><small>9</small></a>
      These advances in our knowledge of the ether mean an immense gain for
      monistic philosophy. For they do away with the erroneous ideas of empty
      space and <i>actio in distans</i>; the whole of infinite space, in so far
      as it is not occupied by mass-atoms ("ponderable matter"), is filled by
      the ether. Our ideas of space and time are quite other than those taught
      by Kant a hundred years ago; the "critical" system of the great
      Koenigsberg philosopher exhibits in this respect, as well as in his
      teleological view of the organic world and in his metaphysics, dogmatic
      weaknesses of the most pronounced kind.<a href="#linknote-8" name="linknoteref-8"
      id="noteref-8"><small>8</small></a> And religion itself, in its reasonable
      forms, can take over the ether theory as an article of faith, bringing
      into contradistinction the mobile cosmic ether as creating divinity, and
      the inert heavy mass as material of creation. From this successfully
      scaled height of monistic knowledge there open up before our joyously
      quickened spirit of research and discovery new and surprising prospects,
      which promise to bring us still nearer to the solution of the one great
      riddle of the world. What is the relation of this light mobile cosmic
      ether to the heavy inert "mass," to the ponderable matter which we
      chemically investigate, and which we can only think of as constituted of
      atoms? Our modern analytical chemistry remains for the present at a
      standstill, in presence of some seventy irreducible elements, or so-called
      primary substances. But the reciprocal relation of these elements, the
      affinity of their combinations, their spectroscopic behaviour, and so
      forth, make it in the highest degree probable that they are all merely
      historical products of an evolutionary process, having their origin in
      various dispositions and combinations of a varying number of original
      atoms.
    </p>
    <p>
      To these original or mass-atoms&mdash;the ultimate discrete particles of
      inert "ponderable matter"&mdash;we can with more or less probability
      ascribe a number of eternal and inalienable fundamental attributes; they
      are probably everywhere in space, of like magnitude and constitution.
      Although possessing a definite finite magnitude, they are, by virtue of
      their very nature, indivisible. Their shape we may take to be spherical;
      they are inert (in the physical sense), unchangeable, inelastic, and
      impenetrable by the ether. Apart from the attribute of inertia, the most
      important characteristic of these ultimate atoms is their chemical
      affinity&mdash;their tendency to apply themselves to one another and
      combine into small groups in an orderly fashion. These fixed groups
      (fixed, that is to say, under the present physical conditions of existence
      of the earth) of primitive atoms are the atoms of the elements&mdash;the
      well-known "indivisible" atoms of chemistry. The qualitative, and, so far
      as our present empirical knowledge goes, unchangeable distinctions of our
      chemical elements are therefore solely conditioned by the varying number
      and disposition of the similar primitive atoms of which they are composed.
      Thus, for example, the atom of carbon (the real "maker" of the organic
      world) is in all probability a tetrahedron made up of four primitive
      atoms.
    </p>
    <p>
      After Mendelejeff and Lothar Meyer had discovered (1869) the "periodic
      law" of the chemical elements, and founded on it a "natural system" of
      these elements, this important advance in theoretical chemistry was
      subsequently put to profitable use by Gustav Wendt from an evolutionary
      point of view. He endeavoured to show that the various elements are
      products of evolution or of historically originating combinations of seven
      primary elements, and that these last again are historical products of one
      single primitive element This hypothetical original matter had been
      already designated by Crookes, in his <i>Genesis of the Elements</i>, as
      primary material or protyl.<a href="#linknote-10" name="linknoteref-10"
      id="noteref-10"><small>10</small></a> The empirical proof of the existence
      of this original matter lying at the foundation of all ponderable material
      is perhaps only a question of time. Its discovery would probably realise
      the alchemists' hope of being able to produce gold and silver artificially
      out of other elements. But then arises the other great question: "How is
      this primary mass related to the cosmic ether? Do these two original
      substances stand in fundamental and eternal antithesis to one another? Or
      was it the mobile ether itself, perhaps, that originally engendered the
      heavy mass?"<a href="#linknote-11" name="linknoteref-11" id="noteref-11"><small>11</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      In answer to this great and fundamental question, various physical
      hypotheses have been put forward. But, like the various atomic theories of
      chemistry, they have not as yet been clearly established, and the same
      appears to me to be the case also with the ingenious hypothesis which the
      lecturer has unfolded to us with reference to the Influence of Space. As
      he himself rightly says, in all these endeavours after a philosophy of
      nature we are still, for the present, dealing with "scientific articles of
      faith," concerning the validity of which different persons, according to
      their subjective judgment and stage of culture, may have widely divergent
      views. I believe that the solution of these fundamental questions still
      lies as yet beyond the limits of our knowledge of nature, and that we
      shall be obliged, for a long time yet to come, to content ourselves with
      an "Ignoramus"&mdash;if not even with an "Ignorabimus."
    </p>
    <p>
      The case is very different, however, if we turn from these atomistic
      element hypotheses and direct our attention to the historical conditions
      of the evolution of the world, as these have been revealed to us by the
      magnificent advances in our knowledge of nature which have been made
      within the last thirty years. An immense new territory has here been
      opened up to us in the realms of knowledge&mdash;a territory in which a
      series of most important problems, formerly held to be insoluble, has been
      answered in the most surprising manner.<a href="#linknote-12" name="linknoteref-12"
      id="noteref-12"><small>12</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      Among the triumphs of the human mind the modern doctrine of evolution
      takes a foremost place. Guessed at by Goethe a hundred years ago, but not
      expressed in definite form until formulated by Lamarck in the beginning of
      the present century, it was at last, thirty years ago, decisively
      established by Charles Darwin, his theory of selection filling up the gap
      which Lamarck in his doctrine of the reciprocal influence of heredity and
      adaptation had left open. We now definitely know that the organic world on
      our earth has been as continuously developed, "in accordance with eternal
      iron laws," as Lyell had in 1830 shown to be the case for the inorganic
      frame of the earth itself; we know that the innumerable varieties of
      animals and plants which during the course of millions of years have
      peopled our planet are all simply branches of one single genealogical
      tree; we know that the human race itself forms only one of the newest,
      highest, and most perfect offshoots from the race of the Vertebrates.
    </p>
    <p>
      An unbroken series of natural events, following an orderly course of
      evolution according to fixed laws, now leads the reflecting human spirit
      through long aeons from a primeval chaos to the present "order of the
      cosmos." At the outset there is nothing in infinite space but mobile
      elastic ether, and innumerable similar separate particles&mdash;the
      primitive atoms&mdash;scattered throughout it in the form of dust; perhaps
      these are themselves originally "points of condensation" of the vibrating
      "substance," the remainder of which constitutes the ether. The atoms of
      our elements arise from the grouping together in definite numbers of the
      primitive atoms or atoms of mass. As the Kant-Laplace nebular hypothesis
      has it, the rotating heavenly bodies separate themselves out from that
      vibrating primeval cloud. A single unit among many thousands of celestial
      bodies is our sun, with its planets, which originated by being
      centrifugally thrown off from it. Our insignificant earth is a single
      planet of our solar system; its entire individual life is a product of the
      sunlight. After the glowing sphere of the earth has cooled down to a
      certain degree, drops of fluid water precipitate themselves on the
      hardened crust of its surface&mdash;the first preliminary condition of
      organic life. Carbon atoms begin their organism-engendering activity, and
      unite with the other elements into plasma-combinations capable of growing.
      One small plasma-group oversteps the limits of cohesion and individual
      growth; it falls asunder into two similar halves. With this first moneron
      begins organic life and its most distinctive function, heredity. In the
      homogeneous plasma of the monera, a firmer central nucleus is separated
      from a softer outer mass; through this differentiation of nucleus and
      protoplasm arises the first organic cell. For a long time our planet was
      inhabited solely by such Protista or single-celled primitive creatures.
      From coenobia or social unions of these afterwards arose the lowest
      histones, multicellular plants and animals.
    </p>
    <p>
      By the sure help of the three great empirical "records of creation,"
      palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny, the history of descent
      now leads us on step by step from the oldest Metazoa, the simplest
      pluricellular animals, up to man.<a href="#linknote-13" name="linknoteref-13"
      id="noteref-13"><small>13</small></a> At the lowest root of the common
      genealogy of the Metazoa stand the Gastraeadae and Spongidae; their whole
      body consists, in the simplest case, solely of a round digestive sac, the
      thin wall of which is formed by two layers of cells&mdash;the two
      primitive germinal layers. A corresponding germinal condition, the
      two-layered gastrula, occurs transitorily in the embryological history of
      all the other Metazoa, from the lowest Cnidaria and Vermes up to man. From
      the common stock of the Helminthes, or simple worms, there develop as
      independent main branches the four separate stems of the Molluscs,
      Star-fishes, Arthropods, and Vertebrates. It is only these last whose
      bodily structure and development in all essential respects coincide with
      those of man. A long series of lower aquatic Vertebrates (lancelets,
      lampreys, fishes) precedes the lungbreathing Amphibians, which appear for
      the first time in the Carboniferous period. The Amphibians are followed in
      the Permian period by the first Amniota, the oldest reptiles; from these
      develop later, in the Triassic period, the Birds on the one hand, and the
      Mammals on the other. That man in his whole bodily frame is a true mammal,
      becomes obvious as soon as the natural unity of this highest class of
      animals is recognised. The simplest comparison must have convinced the
      unprejudiced observer of the close constitutional relationship between man
      and the ape, which of all the Mammals comes nearest him. Comparative
      anatomy, with its deeper vision, showed that all differences in bodily
      structure between man and the Anthropoidea (gorilla, chimpanzee, orang)
      are less important than the corresponding differences in bodily structure
      between these anthropoid apes and the lower apes. The phylogenetic
      significance of this fact, first emphasised by Huxley, is quite clear. The
      great question of the origin of the human race, or of "man's place in
      Nature," the "question of all questions," was then scientifically
      answered: "Man is descended from a series of ape-like Mammals." The
      descent of man (anthropogeny) discloses the long series of vertebrate
      ancestors, which preceded the late origin of this, its most highly
      developed offshoot.
    </p>
    <p>
      The incalculable importance of the light cast over the whole field of
      human knowledge of nature by these results is patent to everyone. They are
      destined every year increasingly to manifest their transforming influence
      in all departments of knowledge, the more the conviction of their
      irrefragable truth forces its way. And it is only the ignorant or
      narrow-minded who can now doubt their truth. If, indeed, here and there,
      one of the older naturalists still disputes, the foundation on which they
      rest, or demands proofs which are wanting (as happened a few weeks ago on
      the part of a famous German pathologist at the Anthropological Congress in
      Moscow), he only shows by this that he has remained a stranger to the
      stupendous advances of recent biology, and above all of anthropogeny. The
      whole literature of modern biology, the whole of our present zoology and
      botany, morphology and physiology, anthropology and psychology, are
      pervaded and fertilised by the theory of descent.<a href="#linknote-14"
      name="linknoteref-14" id="noteref-14"><small>14</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      Just as the natural doctrine of development on a monistic basis has
      cleared up and elucidated the whole field of natural phenomena in their
      physical aspect, it has also modified that of the phenomena of mind, which
      is inseparably connected with the other. Our human body has been built up
      slowly and by degrees from a long series of vertebrate ancestors, and this
      is also true of our soul; as a function of our brain it has gradually been
      developed in reciprocal action and re-action with this its bodily organ.
      What we briefly designate as the "human soul," is only the sum of our
      feeling, willing, and thinking&mdash;the sum of those physiological
      functions whose elementary organs are constituted by the microscopic
      ganglion-cells of our brain. Comparative anatomy and ontogeny show us how
      the wonderful structure of this last, the organ of our human soul, has in
      the course of millions of years been gradually built up from the brains of
      higher and lower vertebrates. Comparative psychology teaches us how, hand
      in hand therewith, the soul itself, as function of the brain, has been
      developed. The last-named science teaches us also that a primitive form of
      soul-activity is already present even in the lowest animals, the
      single-celled primitive animals, Infusoria and Rhizopoda. Every scientific
      man who has long observed the life-activity of these single-celled
      Protista, is positively convinced that they also possess a soul; that this
      "cell-soul" also consists of a sum of sensations, perceptions, and
      volitions; the feeling, thinking, and willing of our human soul differ
      from these only in degree. In like manner there is present in the egg-cell
      (as potential energy) a hereditary cell-soul, out of which man, like every
      other animal, is developed.<a href="#linknote-15" name="linknoteref-15"
      id="noteref-15"><small>15</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      The first task of a truly scientific psychology will therefore be, not, as
      hitherto, idle speculation about an independent immaterial soul-existence
      and its puzzling temporary connection with the animal body, but rather the
      comparative investigation of the organs of the soul and the experimental
      examination of their psychical functions. For scientific psychology is a
      part of physiology, the doctrine of the functions and the life-activities
      of organisms. The psychology and psychiatry of the future, like the
      physiology and pathology of to-day, must take the form of a cellular
      study, and in the first instance investigate the soul-functions of the
      cells. Max Verworn, in his fine <i>Psycho-physiological Protistastudies</i>,
      has lately shown us what important disclosures such a cellular psychology
      can make, even in dealing with the lowest grades of organic life, in the
      single-celled Protista (especially Rhizopoda and Infusoria).
    </p>
    <p>
      These same main divisions of soul-activity, which are to be met with in
      the single-celled organism,&mdash;the phenomena of irritability,
      sensation, and motion,&mdash;can be shown to exist in all multicellular
      organisms as functions of the cells of which their bodies are composed. In
      the lowest Metazoa, the invertebrate sponges and polyps, there are, just
      as in plants, no special soul-organs developed, and all the cells of the
      body participate more or less in the "soul-life." It is only in the higher
      animals that the soul-life is found to be localised and connected with
      special organs. As a consequence of division of labour, there have here
      been developed various sense-organs as organs of specific sensibility,
      muscles as organs of motion and volition, nerve-centres or ganglia as
      central co-ordinating and regulating organs. In the most highly developed
      families of the animal kingdom, these last come more and more into the
      foreground as independent soul-organs. In correspondence with the
      extraordinarily complicated structure of their central nervous system (the
      brain with its wonderful complex of ganglion-cells and nerve-fibres), the
      many-sided activity of such animals attains a wonderful degree of
      development.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is only in these most highly-developed groups of the animal kingdom
      that we can with certainty establish the existence of those most perfect
      operations of the central nervous system, which we designate as
      consciousness. As we know, it is precisely this highest brain-function
      that still continues to be looked upon as a completely enigmatical
      phenomenon, and as the best proof for the immaterial existence of an
      immortal soul. It is usual at the same time to appeal to Du Bois-Reymond's
      well-known "Ignorabimus address on the Boundaries of Natural Knowledge"
      (1872). It was by a peculiar irony of fate that the famous lecturer of the
      Berlin Academy of Science, in this much-discussed address of twenty years
      ago, should be representing consciousness as an incomprehensible marvel,
      and as presenting an insuperable barrier to further advances of knowledge,
      at the very moment that David Friedrich Strauss, the greatest theologian
      of our century, was showing it to be the opposite. The clear-sighted
      author of <i>The Old Faith and the New</i> had already clearly perceived
      that the soul-activities of man, and therefore also his consciousness, as
      functions of the central nervous system, all spring from a common source,
      and, from a monistic point of view, come under the same category. The
      "exact" Berlin physiologist shut this knowledge out from his mind, and,
      with a short-sightedness almost inconceivable, placed this special
      neurological question alongside of the one great "world-riddle," the
      fundamental question of substance, the general question of the connection
      between matter and energy.<a href="#linknote-16" name="linknoteref-16"
      id="noteref-16"><small>16</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      As I long ago pointed out, these two great questions are not two separate
      "world-riddles." The neurological problem of consciousness is only a
      special case of the all comprehending cosmological problem, the question
      of substance. "If we understood the nature of matter and energy, we should
      also understand how the substance underlying them can under certain
      conditions feel, desire, and think." Consciousness, like feeling and
      willing, among the higher animals is a mechanical work of the
      ganglion-cells, and as such must be carried back to chemical and physical
      events in the plasma of these. And by the employment of the genetic and
      comparative method we reach the conviction that consciousness, and
      consequently reason also, is not a brain-function exclusively peculiar to
      man; it occurs also in many of the higher animals, not in Vertebrates
      only, but even in Articulates. Only in degree, through a higher stage of
      cultivation, does the consciousness of man differ from that of the more
      perfect lower animals, and the same is true of all other activities of the
      human soul.
    </p>
    <p>
      By these and other results of comparative physiology our whole psychology
      is placed on a new and firm monistic basis. The older mystical conception
      of the soul, as we find it amongst primitive peoples, but also in the
      systems of the dualistic philosophers of to-day, is refuted by them.
      According to these systems, the soul of man (and of the higher animals) is
      a separate entity, which inhabits and rules the body only during its
      individual life, but leaves it at death. The widespread "piano-theory" (<i>Claviertheorie</i>)
      compares the "immortal soul" to a pianist who executes an interesting
      piece&mdash;the individual life&mdash;on the instrument of the mortal
      body, but at death withdraws into the other world. This "immortal soul" is
      usually represented as an immaterial being; but in fact it is really
      thought of as quite material, only as a finer invisible being, aerial or
      gaseous, or as resembling the mobile, light, and thin substance of the
      ether, as conceived by modern physics. The same is true also for most of
      the conceptions which rude primitive peoples and the uneducated classes
      among the civilised races have, for thousands of years, cherished as to
      spectral "ghosts" and "gods." Serious reflection on the matter shows that
      here&mdash;as in modern spiritualism&mdash;it is not with really
      immaterial beings, but with gaseous, invisible bodies, that we are
      dealing. And further, we are utterly incapable of imagining a truly
      immaterial being. As Goethe clearly said, "matter can never exist or act
      apart from spirit, neither can spirit apart from matter."
    </p>
    <p>
      As regards immortality, it is well known that this important idea is
      interpreted and applied in a great variety of ways. It is often made a
      reproach against our Monism that it altogether denies immortality; this,
      however, is erroneous. Rather do we hold it, in a strictly scientific
      sense, as an indispensable fundamental conception of our monistic
      philosophy of nature. Immortality in a scientific sense is conservation of
      substance, therefore the same as conservation of energy as defined by
      physics, or conservation of matter as defined by chemistry. The cosmos as
      a whole is immortal. It is just as inconceivable that any of the atoms of
      our brain or of the energies of our spirit should vanish out of the world,
      as that any other particle of matter or energy could do so. At our death
      there disappears only the individual form in which the nerve-substance was
      fashioned, and the personal "soul" which represented the work performed by
      this. The complicated chemical combinations of that nervous mass pass over
      into other combinations by decomposition, and the kinetic energy produced
      by them is transformed into other forms of motion.
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
   "Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
   Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
   O that that earth which kept the world in awe
   Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw."
</pre>
    <p>
      On the other hand, the conception of a personal immortality cannot be
      maintained. If this idea is still widely held, the fact is to be explained
      by the physical law of inertia; for the property of persistence in a state
      of rest exercises its influence in the region of the ganglion-cells of the
      brain, as well as in all other natural bodies. Traditional ideas handed
      down through many generations are maintained with the greatest tenacity by
      the human brain, especially if, in early youth, they have been instilled
      into the childish understanding as indisputable dogmas. Such hereditary
      articles of faith take root all the more firmly, the further they are
      removed from a rational knowledge of nature, and enveloped in the
      mysterious mantle of mythological poesy. In the case of the dogma of
      personal immortality, there comes into play also the interest which man
      fancies himself to have in his individual future existence after death,
      and the vain hope that in a blessed world to come there is treasured up
      for him a compensation for the disappointed hopes and the many sorrows of
      his earthly life.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is often asserted by the numerous advocates of personal immortality
      that this dogma is an innate one, common to all rational men, and that it
      is taught in all the more perfect forms of religion. But this is not
      correct. Neither Buddhism nor the religion of Moses originally contained
      the dogma of personal immortality, and just as little did the majority of
      educated people of classical antiquity believe it, at any rate during the
      highest period of Greek culture. The monistic philosophy of that time,
      which, five hundred years before our era, had reached speculative heights
      so remarkable, knew nothing of any such dogma. It was through Plato and
      Christ that it received its further elaboration, until, in the Middle
      Ages, it was so universally accepted, that only now and then did some bold
      thinker dare openly to gainsay it. The idea that a conviction of personal
      immortality has a specially ennobling influence on the moral nature of
      man, is not confirmed by the gruesome history of mediaeval morals, and as
      little by the psychology of primitive peoples.<a href="#linknote-17"
      name="linknoteref-17" id="noteref-17"><small>17</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      If any antiquated school of purely speculative psychology still continues
      to uphold this irrational dogma, the fact can only be regarded as a
      deplorable anachronism. Sixty years ago such a doctrine was excusable, for
      then nothing was accurately known either of the finer structure of the
      brain, or of the physiological functions of its separate parts; its
      elementary organs, the microscopic ganglion-cells, were almost unknown, as
      was also the cell-soul of the Protista; very imperfect ideas were held as
      to ontogenetic development, and as to phylogenetic there were none at all.
    </p>
    <p>
      This has all been completely changed in the course of the last
      half-century. Modern physiology has already to a great extent demonstrated
      the localisation of the various activities of mind, and their connection
      with definite parts of the brain; psychiatry has shown that those
      psychical processes are disturbed or destroyed if these parts of the brain
      become diseased or degenerate. Histology has revealed to us the extremely
      complicated structure and arrangement of the ganglion-cells. But, for the
      settlement of this momentous question, the discoveries of the last ten
      years with regard to the more minute occurrences in the process of
      fertilisation are of decisive importance. We now know that this process
      essentially consists simply in the copulation or fusion of two
      microscopical cells, the female egg-cell and the male sperm-cell. The
      fusion of the nuclei of these two sexual cells indicates with the utmost
      precision the exact moment at which the new human individual arises. The
      newly-formed parent-cell, or fertilised egg-cell, contains potentially, in
      their rudiments, all the bodily and mental characteristics which the child
      inherits from both parents. It is clearly against reason to assume an
      eternal and unending life for an individual phenomenon whose beginning in
      time we can determine to a hair's breadth, by direct observation. Judging
      of human spiritual life from a rational point of view, we can as little
      think of our individual soul as separated from our brain, as we can
      conceive the voluntary motion of our arm apart from the contraction of its
      muscles, or the circulation of our blood apart from the action of the
      heart.
    </p>
    <p>
      Against this strictly physiological conception, as against our whole
      monistic view of the relations of energy and matter, of soul and
      substance, the reproach of "materialism" continues to be raised. I have
      repeatedly before now pointed out that this is an ambiguous party word
      which conveys absolutely nothing; its apparent opposite, "spiritualism,"
      could quite easily be substituted for it. Every critical thinker, who is
      familiar with the history of philosophy, knows that, as systems change,
      such words assume the most varied meanings, In addition to this, the word
      "materialism" has the disadvantage of being liable to continual confusion
      between its theoretical and practical meanings, which two are totally
      distinct. Our conception of Monism, or the unity-philosophy, on the
      contrary, is clear and unambiguous; for it an immaterial living spirit is
      just as unthinkable as a dead, spiritless material; the two are
      inseparably combined in every atom. The opposed conception of dualism (or
      even pluralism in other anti-monistic systems) regards spirit and
      material, energy and matter, as two essentially different substances; but
      not a single empirical proof can be adduced to show that either of these
      can exist or become perceptible to us by itself alone.
    </p>
    <p>
      In thus shortly indicating the far-reaching psychological consequences of
      the monistic doctrine of evolution, I trench at the same time upon a most
      important field, to which our lecturer in his address has more than once
      alluded&mdash;that of religion and the belief in God connected therewith.
      I am at one with him in the conviction that the formation of clear
      philosophical conceptions upon these fundamental matters of belief is of
      the highest importance, and I would therefore crave the permission of this
      assembly briefly to lay before it on this occasion a frank confession of
      faith. This monistic confession has the greater claim to an unprejudiced
      consideration, in that it is shared, I am firmly convinced, by at least
      nine-tenths of the men of science now living; indeed, I believe, by all
      men of science in whom the following four conditions are realised: (1)
      Sufficient acquaintance with the various departments of natural science,
      and in particular with the modern doctrine of evolution; (2) Sufficient
      acuteness and clearness of judgment to draw, by induction and deduction,
      the necessary logical consequences that flow from such empirical
      knowledge; (3) Sufficient moral courage to maintain the monistic
      knowledge, so gained, against the attacks of hostile dualistic and
      pluralistic systems; and (4) Sufficient strength of mind to free himself,
      by sound, independent reasoning, from dominant religious prejudices, and
      especially from those irrational dogmas which have been firmly lodged in
      our minds from earliest youth as indisputable revelations.
    </p>
    <p>
      If from this unprejudiced point of view of the thinker, we compare the
      numerous religions of the various races of mankind, we shall be compelled,
      in the first instance, to put aside as untenable all those conceptions
      which stand in irreconcilable contradiction to those principles of our
      empirical knowledge of nature which are now clearly discerned and
      established by critical reasoning. We can thus at once set aside all
      mythological stories, all "miracles," and so-called "revelations," for
      which it is claimed that they have come to us in some supernatural way.
      All such mystical teachings are irrational, inasmuch as they are confirmed
      by no actual experience, but, on the contrary, are irreconcilable with the
      known facts which have been confirmed to us by a rational investigation of
      nature.
    </p>
    <p>
      This is true alike of Christian and Mosaic, of Mohammedan and Indian
      legends. If now we thus lay aside the whole mass of mystical dogmas and
      transcendental revelations, there is left behind, as the precious and
      priceless kernel of true religion, the purified ethic that rests on
      rational anthropology.<a href="#linknote-18" name="linknoteref-18" id="noteref-18"><small>18</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      Among the numerous and varied forms of religion which, in the course of
      the past ten thousand years and more, have been evolved from the crudest
      prehistoric beginnings, the foremost rank undoubtedly belongs to those two
      forms which still continue to be the most widely accepted among civilised
      races&mdash;the older Buddhism and the younger Christianity. The two have
      very many features in common, alike in their mythology and in their
      ethics; indeed, a considerable part of Christianity has come directly from
      Indian Buddhism, just as another part is drawn from the Mosaic and
      Platonic systems. But, looked at from the point of view of our present
      stage of culture, the ethic of Christianity appears to us much more
      perfect and pure than that of any other religion. We must, it is true,
      hasten to add that it is exactly the weightiest and noblest principles of
      Christian ethic&mdash;brotherly love, fidelity to duty, love of truth,
      obedience to law&mdash;that are by no means peculiar to the Christian
      faith as such, but are of much older origin. Comparative psychology proves
      that these ethical principles were more or less recognised and practised
      by much older civilised races thousands of years before Christ.
    </p>
    <p>
      Love remains the supreme moral law of rational religion, the love, that is
      to say, that holds the balance between egoism and altruism, between
      self-love and love of others. "Do to others as you would they should do to
      you." This natural and highest command had been taught and followed
      thousands of years before Christ said: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
      thyself." In the human family this maxim has always been accepted as
      self-evident; as ethical instinct it was an inheritance derived from our
      animal ancestors. It had already found a place among the herds of Apes and
      other social Mammals; in a similar manner, but with a wider scope, it was
      already present in the most primitive communities and among the hordes of
      the least advanced savages. Brotherly love&mdash;mutual support, succour,
      protection, and the like&mdash;-had already made its appearance among
      gregarious animals as a social duty; for without it the continued
      existence of such societies is impossible. Although at a later period, in
      the case of man, these moral foundations of society came to be much more
      highly developed, their oldest prehistoric source, as Darwin has shown, is
      to be sought in the social instincts of animals. Among the higher
      Vertebrates (dogs, horses, elephants, etc.), as among the higher
      Articulates (ants, bees, termites, etc.) also, the development of social
      relations and duties is the indispensable condition of their living
      together in orderly societies. Such societies have for man also been the
      most important instrument of intellectual and moral progress.
    </p>
    <p>
      Beyond all doubt the present degree of human culture owes in great part
      its perfection to the propagation of the Christian system of morals and
      its ennobling influence, although the great value of this has been
      impaired, often in the most deplorable manner, by its association with
      untenable myths and so-called "revelations." How little these last
      contribute to the perfection of the first, can be seen from the
      acknowledged historical fact that it is just orthodoxy and the
      hierarchical system based on it (especially that of the Papacy) that has
      least of all striven to fulfil the precepts of Christian morality; the
      more loudly they preach it in theory, the less do they themselves fulfil
      its commands in practice.
    </p>
    <p>
      It is, moreover, to be borne in mind that another and very considerable
      portion of our modern culture and morality has been developed quite
      independently of Christianity, mainly through continual study of the
      highly-elaborated mental treasures of classical antiquity. The thorough
      study of Greek and Roman classics has at least contributed much more to it
      than that of the Christian Church fathers. To this we must now add, in our
      own century (rightly called the "century of the natural sciences"), the
      immense advance in the higher culture which we owe to a purified knowledge
      of nature and to the monistic philosophy founded upon this. That these
      must also exercise an advancing and ennobling influence cannot be doubted,
      and has already been shown by many eminent authors (Spencer, Carneri, and
      others) in the course of the last thirty years.
    </p>
    <p>
      Against this monistic ethic founded on a rational knowledge of nature, it
      has been objected that it is fitted to undermine existing civilisation,
      and especially that it encourages the subversive aims of social democracy.
      This reproach is wholly unjustified. The application of philosophical
      principles to the practical conditions of life, and in particular to
      social and political questions, can be made in the most various ways.
      Political "free-thinking," so called, has nothing whatever to do with the
      "freedom of thought" of our monistic natural religion. Moreover, I am
      convinced that the rational morality of monistic religion is in no way
      contrary to the good and truly valuable elements of the Christian ethic,
      but is destined in conjunction with these to promote the true progress of
      humanity in the future.
    </p>
    <p>
      With Christian mythology and the special form of theistic belief
      associated with it the case is different. In so far as that belief
      involves the notion of a "personal God," it has been rendered quite
      untenable by the recent advances of monistic science. But, more than this,
      it was shown more than two thousand years ago, by eminent exponents of the
      monistic philosophy, that the conception of a personal God, creator and
      ruler of the world, does not give the slightest help toward a truly
      rational view of the world. For even if the question of "creation," in the
      ordinary and trivial sense of the term, be answered by referring it to the
      miraculous agency of a creator working according to plan apart from the
      world, there immediately arises upon that the new inquiry: "Whence comes
      this personal God? What was He doing before creation? And whence did He
      derive the material for it?" and such like questions. The antiquated
      conception of an anthropomorphic personal God is destined, before the
      present century is ended, to drop out of currency throughout the entire
      domain of truly scientific philosophy; the corresponding conception of a
      personal devil&mdash;even as late as last century connected with the
      former and very generally accepted&mdash;has already been given up once
      for all by all persons of education.
    </p>
    <p>
      Let it be noted, however, in passing, that the amphitheism which believes
      in God and devil alike is much more compatible with a rational explanation
      of the world than pure monotheism. The purest form of this is perhaps the
      amphitheism of the Zend religion of Persia, which Zoroaster (or
      Zarathustra, the "Golden Star") founded two thousand years before Christ.
      Here Ormuzd, the god of light and goodness, stands everywhere in conflict
      with Ahriman, the god of darkness and evil. The continual conflict between
      a good and an evil principle was personified in a similar manner in the
      mythology of many other amphitheistic religions: in the old Egyptian, the
      good Osiris was at war with the evil Typhon; in the old Indian, Vishnu the
      sustainer with Siva the destroyer, and so forth.
    </p>
    <p>
      If we really must retain the conception of a personal God as the key to
      our view of the universe, then this amphitheism can explain the sorrows
      and defects of this world very simply, as being the work of the evil
      principle or devil. Pure monotheism, on the contrary, as represented in
      the religions of Moses and Mohammed in their original form, has no
      rational explanation of these to offer. If their "one God" is really the
      absolutely good, perfect being they proclaim, then the world which he has
      created must also be perfect. An organic world so imperfect and full of
      sorrows as exists on this earth he could not possibly have contrived.
    </p>
    <p>
      These considerations gain in force when we advance to the deeper knowledge
      of nature acquired by modern biology; here it was Darwin, especially, who
      thirty-three years ago opened our eyes by his doctrine of the struggle for
      existence, and his theory of selection founded upon it. We now know that
      the whole of organic nature on our planet exists only by a relentless war
      of all against all. Thousands of animals and plants must daily perish in
      every part of the earth, in order that a few chosen individuals may
      continue to subsist and to enjoy life. But even the existence of these
      favoured few is a continual conflict with threatening dangers of every
      kind. Thousands of hopeful germs perish uselessly every minute. The raging
      war of interests in human society is only a feeble picture of the
      unceasing and terrible war of existence which reigns throughout the whole
      of the living world. The beautiful dream of God's goodness and wisdom in
      nature, to which as children we listened so devoutly fifty years ago, no
      longer finds credit now&mdash;at least among educated people who think. It
      has disappeared before our deeper acquaintance with the mutual relations
      of organisms, the advancement of oecology and sociology, and our knowledge
      of parasite life and pathology.
    </p>
    <p>
      All these sad but insuperable facts&mdash;truly the dark side of nature&mdash;are
      made intelligible to religious faith by amphitheism; they are the "works
      of the devil," who opposes and disturbs the perfect moral order in the
      world of the "good God." For pure monotheism which knows only one God, one
      perfect highest being, they remain unintelligible. If, with a monotheistic
      creed, any one still continues to talk of the moral order of the world, he
      in so doing shuts his eyes to the undeniable facts of history, both
      natural and civil.
    </p>
    <p>
      In view of these considerations, it is hard to understand how the large
      majority of the so-called educated classes can persevere, on the one hand,
      in declaring belief in a personal God to be an indispensable principle of
      religion, and, on the other hand, in at the same time rejecting the belief
      in a personal devil as an exploded superstition of the Middle Ages. This
      inconsistency on the part of educated Christians is all the more
      incomprehensible and censurable, inasmuch as both dogmas in equal degree
      form an integral part of the Christian creed. The personal devil, as
      "Satan," "the Tempter," "the Destroyer," and so forth, undeniably plays a
      most important part in the New Testament, though not met with in the
      earlier portions of the Old. Our great reformer, Martin Luther himself,
      who "sent to the devil" so many antiquated dogmas, was unable to rid
      himself of the conviction of the real existence and personal enmity of
      Beelzebub; we have only to think of the historical ink-spot at Wartburg!
      Moreover, our Christian art, in many thousands of paintings and other
      representations, has exhibited Satan in corporeal form just as
      realistically as it has the three "Divine Persons," about whose
      "hypostatical union" human reason has for eighteen hundred years been
      tormenting itself in vain. The deep impression made by such concrete
      representations, a million times repeated, especially on childish
      understandings, is usually under-estimated as to its tremendous influence;
      to it certainly is in large measure to be attributed the fact that
      irrational myths of such a kind, under the mask of "doctrines of faith,"
      continue to hold their ground in spite of all protests of reason.
    </p>
    <p>
      Liberal-minded Christian theologians have, it is true, often sought to
      eliminate the personal devil from Christian teaching, representing him as
      merely the personification of falsehood, the spirit of evil. But with
      equal right we must in that case substitute for a personal God the
      personified idea of truth, the Spirit of Goodness. To such a
      representation no objection can be made; rather do we recognise in it a
      bridge connecting the dim wonderland of religious poesy with the luminous
      realms of clear scientific knowledge.
    </p>
    <p>
      The monistic idea of God, which alone is compatible with our present
      knowledge of nature, recognises the divine spirit in all things. It can
      never recognise in God a "personal being," or, in other words, an
      individual of limited extension in space, or even of human form. God is
      everywhere. As Giordano Bruno has it: "There is one spirit in all things,
      and nobody is so small that it does not contain a part of the divine
      substance whereby it is animated." Every atom is thus animated, and so is
      the ether; we might, therefore, represent God as the infinite sum of all
      natural forces, the sum of all atomic forces and all ether-vibrations. It
      comes virtually to the same thing when (as was done here by a speaker on a
      former occasion) God is defined as "the supreme law of the universe," and
      the latter is represented as the "working of universal space." In this
      most important article of belief it matters not as to the name but as to
      the unity of the underlying idea; the unity of God and the world; of
      spirit and nature. On the other hand, "homotheism," the anthropomorphic
      representation of God, degrades this loftiest cosmic idea to that of a
      "gaseous vertebrate."<a href="#linknote-19" name="linknoteref-19" id="noteref-19"><small>19</small></a>
    </p>
    <p>
      Of the various systems of pantheism which for long have given expression
      more or less clearly to the monistic conception of God, the most perfect
      is certainly that of Spinoza. To this system, as is well known, Goethe
      also paid the tribute of his highest admiration and approval. Of other,
      eminent men who have given a similar pantheistic form to their natural
      religion, we shall here mention only two of the greatest poets and
      students of man, Shakespeare and Lessing; two of the greatest German
      rulers, Frederick II. of Hohenstaufen and Frederick II. of Hohenzollern;
      two of the greatest scientists, Laplace and Darwin. In adding our own
      pantheistic confession to that of these great and untrammelled spirits,
      let it only be noted further, that it has received an empirical
      confirmation, never before imagined, through the wonderful advances of
      natural knowledge within the last thirty years.
    </p>
    <p>
      The charge of atheism which still continues to be levelled against our
      pantheism, and against the monism which lies at its root, no longer finds
      a response among the really educated classes of the present day. It is
      true that not so very long ago the German Imperial Chancellor, in the
      Prussian Chamber of Deputies, found it in him to put forward such an
      alternative as this: "Either the Christian or the atheistic view of the
      world"; this in the defence of a most objectionable law, designed to hand
      over our school training, tied hand and foot, to the papal hierarchy. The
      vast distance which separates the last-named degenerate outgrowth of the
      Christian religion from pure primitive Christianity is not greater than
      that which separates those mediaeval alternatives from the cultured
      religious consciousness of the present day. To one who regards as true
      exercises of Christian religion the adoration of old clothes and wax
      dolls, or the thoughtless repetition of masses or rosaries, who believes
      in wonder-working relics, and purchases pardon for his sins by means of
      indulgence-money or Peter's pence, we willingly concede the claim to
      possess the "only saving religion"; but with such fetish-worshippers we
      will willingly submit to be ranked as "atheists."
    </p>
    <p>
      In like case with the charge of atheism and irreligion are those so often
      heard against monism, that it destroys the poetry of life and fails to
      satisfy the spiritual wants of human nature; we are told, in particular,
      that aesthetics&mdash;certainly a most important department both in
      theoretical philosophy and in practical life&mdash;is prejudiced by a
      monistic philosophy. But David Friedrich Strauss, one of our subtlest
      exponents of aesthetics and also one of our noblest writers, has already
      refuted such a charge; and shown how, on the contrary, the care for poetry
      and the cultivation of the beautiful are in the "new faith" called upon to
      play a still greater part than ever. My present hearers, at once
      investigators and lovers of nature, do not need to be told that every new
      insight which we obtain into the secrets of nature at the same time also
      kindles our souls, affords new material for imagination to work on, and
      enlarges our perception of the beautiful. To convince ourselves how
      closely all these noblest spiritual activities of man hang together, how
      intimately the knowledge of truth is bound up with the love of goodness
      and veneration of the beautiful, it will be enough to mention a single
      name, Germany's greatest genius&mdash;Wolfgang Goethe.
    </p>
    <p>
      If the perception of the aesthetic significance of our monistic
      nature-religion, as well as of its ethical value, has hitherto so little
      pervaded the educated classes, this is due chiefly to the defects of our
      school training. It is true that in the course of the last few decades an
      infinite deal has been spoken and written about school reform and the
      principles of education; but of any real progress there is as yet but
      little trace. Here also reigns the physical law of inertia; here also&mdash;and
      more especially in German schools&mdash;the scholasticism of the Middle
      Ages exhibits a power of inertia, against which any rational reform of
      education must laboriously contest every inch of ground. In this important
      department also, a department on which hangs the weal or woe of future
      generations, matters will not improve till the monistic doctrine of nature
      is accepted as the essential and sure foundation.
    </p>
    <p>
      The school of the twentieth century, flourishing anew on this firm ground,
      shall have to unfold to the rising youth not only the wonderful truths of
      the evolution of the cosmos, but also the inexhaustible treasures of
      beauty lying everywhere hidden therein. Whether we marvel at the majesty
      of the lofty mountains or the magic world of the sea, whether with the
      telescope we explore the infinitely great wonders of the starry heaven, or
      with the microscope the yet more surprising wonders of a life infinitely
      small, everywhere does Divine Nature open up to us an inexhaustible
      fountain of aesthetic enjoyment. Blind and insensible have the great
      majority of mankind hitherto wandered through this glorious wonderland of
      a world; a sickly and unnatural theology has made it repulsive as a "vale
      of tears." But now, at last, it is given to the mightily advancing human
      mind to have its eyes opened; it is given to it to show that a true
      knowledge of nature affords full satisfaction and inexhaustible
      nourishment not only for its searching understanding, but also for its
      yearning spirit.
    </p>
    <p>
      Monistic investigation of nature as knowledge of the true, monistic ethic
      as training for the good, monistic aesthetic as pursuit of the beautiful&mdash;these
      are the three great departments of our monism: by the harmonious and
      consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union
      of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day. The
      True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones
      before which we bow the knee in adoration; in the unforced combination and
      mutual supplementing of these we gain the pure idea of God.<a
      href="#linknote-20" name="linknoteref-20" id="noteref-20"><small>20</small></a> To
      this "triune" Divine Ideal shall the coming twentieth century build its
      altars.
    </p>
    <p>
      Ten years ago I was present at the celebration of the third centenary of
      the university of Würzburg, which forty years ago I had entered as a
      medical student. The festal address on that occasion was delivered in the
      university church by the then rector, the distinguished chemist, Johannes
      Wislicenus. His concluding words were: "God, the Spirit of Goodness and of
      Truth, grant it." I now add, "and the Spirit of Beauty." It is in this
      sense that I also, on this commemorative occasion, dedicate to you my best
      wishes. May the investigation of nature's secrets flourish and prosper in
      this corner of our Thüringian land also, and may the fruits of knowledge,
      ripening here in Altenburg, contribute no less to the culture of the
      spirit and to the advancement of true religion, than those which three
      hundred and seventy years ago the great reformer, Martin Luther, brought
      to the light of day in another corner of Thüringen, on the Wartburg at
      Eisenach.
    </p>
    <p>
      Between Wartburg and Altenburg, on the northern border of Thüringen, lies
      Weimar, the classical City of the Muses, and, close by it, our national
      university of Jena. I regard it as a good omen that precisely at this
      moment a rare celebration should have called together in Weimar the most
      illustrious patrons of the university of Jena, the defenders of free
      research and free teaching.<a href="#linknote-21" name="linknoteref-21"
      id="noteref-21"><small>21</small></a> In the hope that the defence and
      promotion of these may still be continued, I conclude my monistic
      Confession of Faith with the words: "May God, the Spirit of the Good, the
      Beautiful, and the True, be with us."
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><br />
    </p>
    <hr />
    <p>
      <a name="link2H_NOTE"> </a>
    </p>
    <div style="height: 4em;">
      <br /><br /><br /><br />
    </div>
    <h2>
      NOTES
    </h2>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-1" id="note-1"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      1 (<a href="#linknoteref-1">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Scientific Articles of Faith</i>.
      In Professor Schlesinger's address (delivered on 9th October at Altenburg)
      on this subject he rightly called attention to the limits of knowledge of
      nature (in Kant's sense of the terms) imposed upon us by the imperfection
      of our perceptive organs. The gaps which the empirical investigation of
      nature must thus leave in science, can, however, be filled up by
      hypotheses, by conjectures of more or less probability. These we cannot
      indeed for the time establish on a secure basis; and yet we may make use
      of them in the way of explaining phenomena, in so far as they are not
      inconsistent with a rational knowledge of nature. Such rational hypotheses
      are scientific articles of faith, and therefore very different from
      ecclesiastical articles of faith or religious dogmas, which are either
      pure fictions (resting on no empirical evidence), or simply irrational
      (contradicting the law of causality). As instances of rational hypotheses
      of first-rate importance may be mentioned our belief in the oneness of
      matter (the building up of the elements from primary atoms), our belief in
      equivocal generation, our belief in the essential unity of all natural
      phenomena, as maintained by monism (on which compare my <i>General
      Morphology</i>, <i>vol</i>. i. pp. 105, 164, etc., also my <i>Natural
      History of Creation</i>, 8th ed., 1889, pp. 21, 360, 795). As the simpler
      occurrences of inorganic nature and the more complicated phenomena of
      organic life are alike reducible to the same natural forces, and as,
      further, these in their turn have their common foundation in a simple
      primal principle pervading infinite space, we can regard this last (the
      cosmic ether) as all-comprehending divinity, and upon this found the
      thesis: "Belief in God is reconcilable with science." In this pantheistic
      view, and also in his criticism of a one-sided materialism, I entirely
      agree with Professor Schlesinger, though unable to concur with him in some
      of his biological, and especially of his anthropological, conclusions (<i>cf</i>.
      his article on "Facts and Deductions derived from the Action of Universal
      Space" <i>Mittheilungen aus dem Osterlande</i>, Bd. v., Altenburg, 1892).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-2" id="note-2"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      2 (<a href="#linknoteref-2">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Unity of Nature</i>. I
      consider the fundamental unity of inorganic and organic nature, as well as
      their genetic relation, to be an essential axiom of monism. I particularly
      emphasise this "article of faith" here, as there are still scientists of
      repute who contest it. Not only is the old mystical "vital power" brought
      back upon the stage again from time to time, but even the "miraculous"
      origin of organic life out of "dead" inorganic nature is often brought up
      still against the doctrines of evolution, as an insoluble riddle&mdash;as
      one of Du Bois-Reymond's "seven riddles of the world" (see his <i>Discourse
      on Leibnitz</i>, 1880). The solution of this "transcendent" riddle of the
      world, and of the allied question of archigony (equivocal generation, in a
      strictly defined meaning of the term), can only be reached by a critical
      analysis and unprejudiced comparison of matter, form, and energy in
      inorganic and organic nature. This I have already done (1866) in the
      second book of my <i>General Morphology</i> (vol. i. pp. 109-238):
      "General Researches as to the Nature and First Beginning of Organisms,
      their Relation to things Inorganic, and their Division into Plants and
      Animals."]
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      A short résumé of this is contained in Lecture XV. of my <i>Natural
      History of Creation</i> (8th ed., pp. 340-370). The most serious
      difficulties which formerly beset the monistic view there given may now be
      held to have been taken out of the way by recent discoveries concerning
      the nature of protoplasm, the discovery of the Monera, the more accurate
      study of the closely-related single-celled Protista, their comparison with
      the ancestral cell (or fertilised egg-cell), and also by the chemical
      carbon-theory. (See my "Studies on Monera and other Protista," in the <i>Jenaische
      Zeitschrift für Naturwissenschaft</i>, vols. iv. and v., 1868-1870; also
      Carl Naegeli, <i>Mechanisch-physiologische Begründung der Abstammungslehre</i>,
      1884.)]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-3" id="note-3"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      3 (<a href="#linknoteref-3">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Religion in the Lower
      Animals</i>. We cannot fail to recognise in the more highly developed of
      our domestic animals (especially in dogs, horses, and elephants) some
      first beginnings of those higher brain-functions which we designate as
      reason and consciousness, religion and morality; they differ only in
      degree, not in kind, from the corresponding mental activities of the
      lowest human races. If, like the dogs, the apes, and especially the
      anthropoids, had been for thousands of years domesticated and brought up
      in close relation with civilised man, the similarity of their mental
      activities to those of man would undoubtedly have been much more striking
      than it is. The apparently deep gulf which separates man from these most
      highly-developed mammals "is mainly founded on the fact that in man
      several conspicuous attributes are united, which in the other animals
      occur only separately, viz. (1) The higher degree of differentiation of
      the larynx (speech), (2) brain (mind), and (3) extremities; and (4) the
      upright posture. It is merely the happy combination of these important
      animal organs and functions at a higher stage of evolution that raises the
      majority of mankind so far above all lower animals" (<i>General Morphology</i>,
      1866, vol. ii. p. 430).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-4" id="note-4"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      4 (<a href="#linknoteref-4">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Inheritance of Acquired
      Characters</i>. As the controversy on this important question is still
      unsettled, special attention may here be called to the valuable data for
      arriving at a decision which are afforded precisely by the development of
      instincts among the higher animals, and of speech and reason in man. "The
      inheritance of characters acquired during the life of the individual, is
      an indispensable axiom of the monistic doctrine of evolution." "Those who,
      with Weismann and Galton, deny this, entirely exclude thereby the
      possibility of any formative influence of the outer world upon organic
      form" (<i>Anthropogenie</i>, 4th ed., pp. xxiii., 836; see, further, the
      works there referred to of Eimer, Weismann, Ray-Lankester, etc.; also
      Ludwig Wilser's <i>Die Vererbung der geistigen Eigenschaften</i>,
      Heidelberg, 1892).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-5" id="note-5"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      5 (<a href="#linknoteref-5">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Theosophical System of
      Nature</i>. Of all the modern attempts of dualistic philosophy to
      establish the knowledge of nature on a theological basis (that of
      Christian monotheism), the <i>Essay on Classification</i> of Louis Agassiz
      is by far the most important,&mdash;in strictness, indeed, is the only one
      worthy of mention. (On this see my <i>Natural History of Creation</i>,
      Lect. III., also "Aims and Methods of the Modern Embryology," 1875, <i>Jena
      Zeitschr. für Naturw., Bd. x., Supplement</i>.)]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-6" id="note-6"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      6 (<a href="#linknoteref-6">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Darwin and Copernicus</i>.
      This is the title of an address delivered by Du Bois-Reymond on 25th
      January 1883, in the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and afterwards published
      in his <i>Collected Addresses</i> (<i>vol</i>. ii. 1887). As the author
      himself mentions in a note (p. 500) that this gave rise, "most
      unmeritedly," to great excitement, and called down upon him the violent
      attacks of the clerical press, I may be allowed to point out here that it
      contained nothing new, I myself, fifteen years previously, in my lectures
      on "The Origin and Genealogy of the Human Race," having carried out in
      detail the comparison between Darwin and Copernicus, and the service
      rendered by these two heroes in putting an end to the anthropocentric and
      geocentric views of the world. (See the Third Series in Virchow and
      Holtzendorff's <i>Collection of Popular Scientific Lectures</i>, Nos. 53
      and 54, 1868, 4th ed., 1881.) When Du Bois-Reymond says, "For me, Darwin
      is the Copernicus of the organic world," I am the more pleased to find
      that he agrees (partly in identical words) with my way of thinking, as he
      himself, quite unnecessarily, takes up an attitude of opposition towards
      me. The same is the case with regard to the explanation of innate ideas by
      Darwinism, which he has attempted in his address (1870) on "Leibnitzian
      Ideas in Modern Science" (vol. i. of the <i>Collected Addresses</i>). Here
      also he is most agreeably at one with me in what, four years before, I had
      elaborated in my <i>General Morphology</i> (vol. ii. p. 446), and in my <i>Natural
      History of Creation</i> (1868). "The laws of heredity and adaptation
      explain to us how it is that <i>à priori</i> ideas have been developed out
      of what was originally <i>à posteriori</i> knowledge," etc. I cannot fail
      to be highly flattered in being able in these last days to greet the
      renowned orator of the Berlin Academy as a friend and patron of the <i>Natural
      History of Creation</i>, which he had previously designated a bad romance.
      But his winged words are not on that account to be forgotten, that "the
      genealogical trees of phylogeny are about as much worth as, in the eyes of
      the historical critic, are those of the Homeric heroes" (<i>Darwin versus
      Galiani</i>, 1876).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-7" id="note-7"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      7 (<a href="#linknoteref-7">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>The Law of the Conservation
      of Substance</i>. Strictly taken, this belongs also to "scientific
      articles of faith," and could stand as the first article of our "monistic
      religion." Physicists of the present day, it is true, generally (and
      correctly) regard their "law of the conservation of energy" as the
      immovable foundation of all their science (Robert Mayer, Helmholtz), just
      as in like manner chemists so regard their fundamental law of the
      "conservation of matter" (Lavoisier). Sceptical philosophers could,
      however, raise certain objections to either of these fundamental laws with
      as much success as against their combination into the single superior law
      of the "conservation of substance." As a matter of fact, dualistic
      philosophy still attempts to raise such objections, often under the guise
      of cautious criticism. The sceptical (in part also purely dogmatic)
      objections have a semblance of justification only in so far as they relate
      to the fundamental problem of substance, the primary question as to the
      connection between matter and energy. While freely recognising the
      presence of this real "boundary of natural knowledge," we can yet, within
      this boundary, apply quite universally the "mechanical law of causality."
      The complicated "phenomena of mind," as they are called (more especially
      consciousness), fall under the "law of the conservation of substance" just
      as strictly as do the simpler mechanical processes of nature dealt with in
      inorganic physics and chemistry. Compare note 16.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-8" id="note-8"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      8 (<a href="#linknoteref-8">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Kant and Monism</i>. As
      recent German philosophy has in a large measure returned to Kant, and in
      some cases even deified as "infallible" the great Königsberg philosopher,
      it may be well here to point out once more that his system of critical
      philosophy is a mixture of monistic and dualistic ingredients. His
      critical principles of the theory of knowledge will always remain of
      fundamental importance: his proof that we are unable to know the essential
      and profoundest essence of substance, the "thing in itself" (or "the
      combination of matter and energy"); that our knowledge remains subjective
      in its nature; that it is conditioned by the organisation of our brain and
      sensory organs, and can therefore only deal with the phenomena which our
      experience of the outer world affords us. But within these "limits of
      human knowledge" a positive monistic knowledge of nature is still
      possible, in contrast to all dualistic and metaphysical fantasies. One
      such great fact of monistic knowledge was the mechanical cosmogony of Kant
      and Laplace, the "Essay on the Constitution and Mechanical Origin of the
      Universe, according to the Principles of Newton" (1755). In the whole
      field of our knowledge of inorganic nature, Kant held firmly to the
      monistic point of view, allowing mechanism alone as the real explanation
      of the phenomena. In the science of organic nature also, on the other
      hand, he held monism to be valid indeed, yet insufficient; here he
      considered it necessary to call in the aid of final as well as of
      efficient causes. (<i>Cf</i>. the fifth lecture of my <i>Natural History
      of Creation</i> on "The Evolution-Theory of Kant and Lamarck"; also
      Albrecht Rau's <i>Kant und die Naturforschung: Eine Prüfung der Resultate
      des idealistischen Kritikismus durch den realistischen Kosmos</i>, vol.
      ii., 1886.) Once thus on the downgrade of dualistic teleology, Kant
      afterwards arrived at his untenable metaphysical views of "God, Freedom,
      and Immortality." It is probable that Kant would have escaped these errors
      if he had had a thorough anatomical and physiological training. The
      natural sciences were, indeed, at that time truly in their infancy. I am
      firmly convinced that Kant's system of critical philosophy would have
      turned out quite otherwise from what it was, and purely monistic, if he
      had had at his disposal the then unsuspected treasures of empirical
      natural knowledge which we now possess.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-9" id="note-9"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      9 (<a href="#linknoteref-9">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>The Ether</i>. In a
      thoughtful lecture on the relations between light and electricity at the
      sixty-second Congress of German naturalists and physicians in Heidelberg
      in 1889, Heinrich Hertz explains the scope of his brilliant discovery:
      "Thus the domain of electricity extends over the whole of nature. It comes
      nearer to ourselves; we learn that we actually possess an electric organ,
      the eye. Here we are brought face to face with the question as to
      unmediated <i>actio in distans</i>. Is there such a thing? Not far off
      from this, in another direction, lies the question of the nature of
      electricity. And immediately connected therewith arises the momentous and
      primary question as to the nature of the ether, of the properties of the
      medium that fills all space, its structure, its rest or motion, its
      infinitude or finitude. It becomes every day more manifest that this
      question rises above all others, that a knowledge of what the ether is
      would reveal to us not only the nature of the old 'imponderables,' but
      also of the old 'matter' itself and its most essential properties, weight
      and inertia. Modern physics is not far from the question whether
      everything that exists is not created from the ether." This question is
      already being answered in the affirmative by some monistic physicists, as,
      for example, by J. G. Vogt in his most suggestive work on <i>The Nature of
      Electricity and Magnetism</i>, on <i>The Basis of the Conception of a
      Single Substance</i> (Leipsic, 1891). He regards the atoms of mass (the
      primal atoms of the kinetic theory of matter) as individualised centres of
      concentration of the continuous substance that uninterruptedly fills all
      space; the mobile elastic part of this substance between the atoms, and
      universally distributed, is&mdash;the ether. Georg Helm in Dresden, on the
      basis of mathematico-physical experiments, had already at an earlier date
      arrived at the same conclusions; in his treatise on "Influences at a
      Distance mediated by the Ether" (<i>Annalen der Physik und Chemie</i>,
      1881, Bd. xiv.), he shows that it requires only the postulate of one
      particular kind of matter, the ether, to explain influence at a distance
      and radiation; that is, as regards these phenomena, all the qualities
      ascribable to matter, except that of motion, are of no account; in other
      words, that in thinking of the ether we simply require to think of it as
      "the mobile."]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-10" id="note-10"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      10 (<a href="#linknoteref-10">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Atoms and Elements</i>.
      The evidences, numerous and important, for the composite nature of our
      empirical elements, have lately been compendiously discussed by Gustav
      Wendt in his treatise, <i>Die Entwicklung der Elemente: Entwurf zu einer
      biologischen Grundlage fur Chemie und Physik</i>[I] (Berlin, 1891);
      compare also Wilhelm Freyer's <i>Die organischen Elemente und ihre
      Stellung im System</i>[II] (Wiesbaden, 1891), Victor Meyer's <i>Chemische
      Probleme der Gegenwart</i>[III] (Heidelberg, 1890), and W. Crookes's <i>Genesis
      of the Elements</i>. For the different views as to the nature of the atom,
      see Philip Spiller on "The Doctrines of Atoms" in <i>Die Urkraft des
      Weltalls nach ihrem Wesen und Wirken auf allen Naturgebieten[IV]</i>
      (Berlin, 1886), (1. The philosophy of nature; 2. The doctrine of the
      ether; 3. The ethical side of the science of nature). For the constitution
      of the elements out of atoms, see A. Turner, Die Kraft und Masse im
      Raume[V] (Leipsic, 3rd ed., 1886), (1. On the nature of matter and its
      relationships; 2. Atomic combinations; 3. The nature of the molecules and
      their combinations. Theory of crystallisation).
    </p>
<p class="foot">
Note I "The Development of the Elements: an Essay towards a Biological Basis
    for Chemistry and Physics."
</p>
    <p class="foot">
      Note II "The Organic Elements and their Place in the System."
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      Note III "Chemical Problems of the Day."
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      Note IV "The Primary Force of the Universe, its Nature and Action."
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      Note V "Force and Matter in Space."]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-11" id="note-11"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      11 (<a href="#linknoteref-11">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>World-Substance</i>. The
      relation of the two fundamental constituents of the cosmos, ether and
      mass, may perhaps be made apparent, in accordance with one out of many
      hypotheses, by the following, partly provisional, scheme.]
    </p>
<pre xml:space="preserve">
            World (=Substance=Cosmos).]

            (Nature as knowable by Man.)]

    Ether (="spirit") (mobile       Mass (="body") (inert or
      or active substance).           passive substance).
    Property of Vibration.          Property of Inertia.]

    Chief Functions: Electricity,   Chief Functions: Gravity,
      Magnetism, Light, Heat.         Inertia, Chemical Affinity.
    Structure: dynamical;           Structure: atomic, discontinuous,
      continuous, elastic substance,  inelastic substance,
      not composed of atoms (?)       composed of atoms (?)]

    Theosophical: "God the          Theosophical: "Created
      Creator" (always in motion).    world" (passively formed).]

    "Influence of space."           "Products of space condensation."]
</pre>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-12" id="note-12"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      12 (<a href="#linknoteref-12">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>General doctrine of
      Evolution</i>. The fundamental importance of the modern doctrine of
      evolution, and of the monistic philosophy based upon it, is clearly
      evidenced by the steady increase of its copious literature. I have cited
      the most important treatises on this subject in the new (eighth) edition
      of my <i>Natural History of Creation</i> (1889). Compare, specially, Carus
      Sterne (Ernst Krause), <i>Werden und Vergehen: Eine Entwicklungsgeschichte
      des Naturganzen in gemeinverständlicher Fassung</i>[VI] (3rd ed., Berlin,
      1886); Hugo Spitzer, <i>Beiträge zur Descendenztheorie und zur
      Methodologie der Naturwissenschaft</i> (Graz, 1886);[VII] Albrecht Ran, <i>Ludwig
      Feuerbach's Philosophie der Naturforschung und die philosophische Kritik
      der Gegenwart</i> (Leipsic, 1882);[VIII] Hermann Wolff, <i>Kosmos: Die
      Weltentwicklung nach monitisch-psychologischen Principien auf Grundlage
      der exacten Naturforschung</i> (Leipsic, 1890).[IX]
    </p>
<p class="foot">
Note VI "Growth and Decay: a Popular History of the Development of the
    Cosmos."
</p>
<p class="foot">
Note VII "Contributions towards a Theory of Descent, and towards a
    Methodology of the Sciences of Nature."
</p>
<p class="foot">
Note VIII "Ludwig Feuerbach's Philosophy of Science, and the Philosophical
    Criticism of the Present Time."
</p>
<p class="foot">
Note IX "Cosmos: The Development of the Cosmos according to Monistic
    Principles on the Basis of Exact Science."]
</p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-13" id="note-13"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      13 (<a href="#linknoteref-13">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>History of Descent</i>.
      The idea and the task of phylogeny, or the history of descent, I first
      defined in 1866, in the sixth book of my <i>General Morphology</i> (<i>vol</i>.
      ii. pp. 301-422), and the substance of this, as well as an account of its
      relation to ontogeny or history of development, is set forth in a popular
      form in Part II. of my <i>Natural History of Creation</i> (8th ed.,
      Berlin, 1889). A special application of both these divisions of the
      history of evolution to man, is attempted in my <i>Anthropogenie</i> (4th
      ed.), revised and enlarged, 1891: Part I. History of development. Part II.
      History of descent.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-14" id="note-14"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      14 (<a href="#linknoteref-14">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Opponents of the Doctrine
      of Descent</i>. Since the death of Louis Agassiz (1873), Rudolf Virchow is
      regarded as the sole noteworthy opponent of Darwinism and the theory of
      descent; he never misses an opportunity (as recently in Moscow) of
      opposing it as "unproved hypothesis." See as to this my pamphlet, <i>Freedom
      in Science and in Teaching</i>, a reply to Virchow's address at Munich on
      "Freedom of Science in the Modern State" (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr.,
      1892).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-15" id="note-15"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      15 (<a href="#linknoteref-15">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Cellular Psychology</i>.
      See on this my paper on "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," in the <i>Deutsche
      Rundschau</i> (July 1878), reprinted in Part 1, of <i>Collected Popular
      Lectures</i>; also "The Cell-soul and Cellular Psychology" in my discourse
      on <i>Freedom in Science and Teaching</i> (Stuttgart, 1878; Eng. tr.,
      1892, p. 46); <i>Natural History of Creation</i> (8th ed., pp. 444, 777);
      and <i>Descent of Man</i> (4th ed., pp. 128, 147). See also, Max Verworn,
      <i>Psycho-physiologische Protisten-Studien</i> (Jena, 1889), and Paul
      Carus, <i>The Soul of Man: An Investigation of the Facts of Physiological
      and Experimental Psychology</i> (Chicago, 1891). Among recent attempts to
      reform psychology on the basis of evolutionary doctrine in a monistic
      sense, special mention must be made of Georg Heinrich Schneider's <i>Der
      thierische Wille: Systematische Darstellung und Erklärung der thierischen
      Triebe und deren Entstehung, Entwickelung und Verbreitung im Thierreiche
      als Grundlage zu einer vergleichenden Willenslehre</i>[X] (Leipsic, 1880).
      Compare also his supplementary work, entitled <i>Der menschliche Wille vom
      Standpunkte der neuen Entwickelungstheorie</i>[XI] (1882); also the <i>Psychology
      of Herbert Spencer</i> and the new edition of Wilhelm Wundt's <i>Menschen-und
      Thierseele[XII]</i> (Leipsic, 1892).
    </p>
<p class="foot">
Note X "Will in the Lower Animals: a Systematic Exposition and Explanation
    of Animal Instincts, and their Origin, Development, and Difference in
    the Animal Kingdom, as Basis of a Comparative Doctrine of Volition."
</p>
<p class="foot">
Note XI "The Human Will from the Standpoint of the Modern Theory of
    Evolution."
</p>
    <p class="foot">
      Note XII "Soul in Man and Brute."
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-16" id="note-16"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      16 (<a href="#linknoteref-16">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Consciousness</i>. The
      antiquated view of Du Bois-Reymond (1872)&mdash;that human consciousness
      is an unsoluble "world-riddle," a transcendent phenomenon in essential
      antithesis to all other natural phenomena&mdash;continues to be upheld in
      numerous writings. It is chiefly on this that the dualistic view of the
      world founds its assertion, that man is an altogether peculiar being, and
      that his personal soul is immortal; and this is the reason why the
      "Leipsic ignorabimus-speech" of Du Bois-Reymond has for twenty years been
      prized as a defence by all representatives of the mythological view of the
      world, and extolled as a refutation of "monistic dogma." The closing word
      of the discourse, "ignorabimus," was translated as a present, and this
      "ignoramus" taken to mean that "we know nothing at all"; or, even worse,
      that "we can never come to clearness about anything, and any further talk
      about the matter is idle." The famous "ignorabimus" address remains
      certainly an important rhetorical work of art; it is a "beautiful sermon,"
      characterised by its highly-finished form and its surprising variety of
      philosophico-scientific pictures. It is well known, however, that the
      majority (and especially women) judge a "beautiful sermon" not according
      to the value of the thoughts embodied in it, but according to its
      excellence as an aesthetical entertainment. While Du Bois treats his
      audience at great length to disquisitions on the wondrous performances of
      the genius of Laplace, he afterwards glides over, the most important part
      of his subject in eleven short lines, and makes not the slightest further
      attempt to solve the main question he has to deal with&mdash;as to whether
      the world is really "doubly incomprehensible." For my own part, on the
      contrary, I have already repeatedly sought to show that the two limits to
      our knowledge of nature are one and the same; the fact of consciousness
      and the relation of consciousness to the brain are to us not less, but
      neither are they more, puzzling, than the fact of seeing and hearing, than
      the fact of gravitation, than the connection between matter and energy.
      Compare my discourse on <i>Freedom in Science and Teaching</i> (1878), pp.
      78, 82, etc.]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-17" id="note-17"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      17 (<a href="#linknoteref-17">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Immortality</i>. Perhaps
      in no ecclesiastical article of faith is the gross materialistic
      conception of Christian dogma so evident as in the cherished doctrine of
      personal immortality, and that of "the resurrection of the body,"
      associated with it. As to this, Savage, in his excellent work on <i>Religion
      in the Light of the Darwinian Doctrine</i>, has well remarked: "One of the
      standing accusations of the Church against science is that it is
      materialistic. On this I would like to point out, in passing, that the
      whole Church-conception concerning a future life has always been, and
      still is, the purest materialism. It is represented that the material body
      is to rise again, and inhabit a material heaven." Compare also Ludwig
      Buchner, <i>Das zunkünftige Leben und die moderne Wissenschaft</i>
      (Leipsic, 1889); Lester Ward, "Causes of Belief in Immortality" (<i>The
      Forum</i>, vol. VIII., September 1889); and Paul Carus, <i>The Soul of
      Man: an Investigation of the Facts of Physiological and Experimental
      Psychology</i> (Chicago, 1891). Carus aptly points out the analogy between
      the ancient and the modern ideas with respect to light, and with respect
      to the soul. Just as formerly the luminous flame was explained by means of
      a special fiery matter (<i>phlogiston</i>), so the thinking soul was
      explained by the hypothesis of a peculiar gaseous soul-substance. We now
      know that the light of the flame is a sum of electric vibrations of the
      ether, and the soul a sum of plasma-movements in the ganglion-cells. As
      compared with this scientific conception, the doctrine of immortality of
      scholastic psychology has about the same value as the materialistic
      conceptions of the Red Indian about a future life in Schiller's
      "Nadowessian Death-Song."]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-18" id="note-18"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      18 (<a href="#linknoteref-18">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Monistic Ethic</i>. All
      Ethic, the theoretical as well as the practical doctrine of morals, as a
      "science of law" (<i>Normwissenschaft</i>), stands in immediate connection
      with the view that is taken of the world (<i>Weltanschauung</i>), and
      consequently with religion. This position I regard as exceedingly
      important, and have recently upheld in a paper on "Ethik und
      Weltanschauung," in opposition to the "Society for Ethical Culture" lately
      founded in Berlin, which would teach and promote ethics without reference
      to any view of the world or to religion. (Compare the new weekly journal,
      <i>Die Zukunft</i>, edited by Maximilian Harden, Berlin, 1892, Nos.
      V.-VII.). Just as I take the monistic to be the only rational basis for
      all science, I claim the same also for ethics. On this subject compare
      especially the ethical writings of Herbert Spencer and those of B. von
      Carneri&mdash;<i>Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus</i> (1871); <i>Entwickelung
      und Glückseligkeit</i> (1886); and more particularly, the latest of all,
      <i>Der moderne Mensch</i> (Bonn, 1891); further, Wilhelm Streeker, <i>Welt
      und Menschheit</i> (Leipsic, 1892); Harald Höffding, <i>Die Grundlage der
      humanen Ethik</i> (Bonn, 1880); and the recent large work of Wilhelm
      Wundt, <i>Ethik, eine Untersuchung der Thatsachen und Gesetze des
      sittlichen Lebens</i> (Stuttgart, 2nd ed., 1892).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-19" id="note-19"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      19 (<a href="#linknoteref-19">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Homotheism</i>. Under the
      term homotheism (or anthropomorphism) we include all the various forms of
      religious belief which ascribe to a personal God purely human
      characteristics. However variously these anthropomorphic ideas may have
      shaped themselves in dualistic and pluralistic religions, all in common
      retain the unworthy conception that God (<i>Theos</i>) and man (<i>homo</i>)
      are organised similarly and according to the same type (homotype). In the
      region of poetry such personifications are both pleasing and legitimate.
      In the region of science they are quite inadmissible; they are doubly
      objectionable now that we know that only in late Tertiary times was man
      developed from pithecoid mammals. Every religious dogma which represents
      God as a "spirit" in human form, degrades Him to a "gaseous vertebrate" (<i>General
      Morphology</i>, 1866; Chap, xxx., God in Nature). The expression
      "homotheism" is ambiguous and etymologically objectionable, but more
      practical than the cumbersome word "Anthropotheism."]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-20" id="note-20"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      20 (<a href="#linknoteref-20">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Monistic Religion</i>.
      Amongst the many attempts which have been made in the course of the last
      twenty years to reform religion in a monistic direction on the basis of
      advanced knowledge of nature, by far the most important is the
      epoch-making work of David Friedrich Strauss, entitled <i>The Old Faith
      and the New: A Confession</i> (11th ed., Bonn, 1881: <i>Collected Writings</i>,
      1878). Compare M. J. Savage, <i>Religion in the Light of the Darwinian
      Doctrine</i>; John William Draper, <i>History of the Conflict between
      Religion and Science</i>; Carl Friedrich Retzer, <i>Die
      naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung und ihre Ideale, ein Ersatz fuer das
      religiöse Dogma</i> (Leipsic, 1890); E. Koch, <i>Natur und Menschengeist
      im Lichte der Entwickelungslehre</i> (Berlin, 1891). For the phylogeny of
      religion see the interesting work of U. Van Ende, <i>Histoire Naturelle de
      la Croyance</i> (Paris, 1887).]
    </p>
    <p>
      <br /><a name="linknote-21" id="note-21"> </a>
    </p>
    <p class="foot">
      21 (<a href="#linknoteref-21">return</a>)<br /> [ <i>Freedom in Teaching</i>.
      The jubilee of the "Naturforschende Gesellschaft des Osterlandes" was
      celebrated in Altenburg on October 9, 1892, contemporaneously with the
      commencement of the brilliant celebration of the golden wedding of the
      Grand Duke and Duchess in Weimar. As exceptional as the celebration are
      the characteristics which distinguish this august couple. The Grand Duke
      Carl Alexander has, during a prosperous reign of forty years, constantly
      shown himself an illustrious patron of science and art; as Rector
      Magnificentissimus of our Thüringian university of Jena, he has always
      afforded his protection to its most sacred palladium&mdash;the right of
      the free investigation and teaching of truth. The Grand Duchess Sophie,
      the heiress and guardian of the Goethe archives, has in Weimar prepared a
      fitting home for that precious legacy of our most brilliant literary
      period, and has anew made accessible to the German nation the ideal
      treasures of thought of her greatest intellectual hero. The history of
      culture will never forget the service which the princely couple have
      thereby rendered to the human mind in its higher development, and at the
      same time to true religion.]
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