140 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of Monism " are the avowed creed of an already large and undoubtedly 

 rapidly growing fraction of the German people. They have besides 

 been " substantially adopted by the Universal Free-thought Congresses 

 of Europe and North America, at Eome and St. Louis, 1904/' and are 

 making their way over all the civilized world. 



These " theses," as succinctly formulated by Haeckel, number thirty, 

 of which " twenty have to do with theoretical and ten with practical 

 monism." The latter ten are " intended merely to elicit general sug- 

 gestions according to their subjective interpretations; but the former 

 twenty, namely, "the objectively accepted and established truths of 

 modern science " are considered by Haeckel to be a firm foundation for 

 the monistic conception of the world. These theses affirm (1) that the 

 monistic world conception has its foundation exclusively in scientifically 

 established truths which (2) have been arrived at "partly by sense- 

 observations in the external world and partly by conscious ratiocination 

 in our internal mentality." They deny (3 and 4) that important and 

 profound apperceptions can be gained through supernatural revelation 

 or through a priori reasoning independently of experience. They 

 recognize (5, 6, 7 and 8) the dynamic unity of the cosmos, and its 

 government by unchangeable natural laws, denying the dualistic world 

 conception of a material and a spiritual world. Biology is really but a 

 branch of physics, as living matter is subject to the same natural laws 

 that govern dead or inorganic bodies. There is (9) no special or pecul- 

 iar vital force " directing and controlling the physical and chemical 

 processes within organisms." The whole cosmos is the result of a great 

 monogenetic process of evolution which results in or is an unbroken 

 succession of transformations and variations. This holds for both 

 inorganic and organic nature. " Part of this universal process of evolu- 

 tion is directly accessible to our apperception, while its beginning and 

 its ultimate goal are unknown to us." The world thus (10) was not 

 created by a personal Creator. 



The science of organic descent (11) is firmly established, and shows 

 that " all organisms existing to-day on our planet are the transformed 

 descendants of an extensive series of extinct organisms and have in the 

 course of long periods of many millions of years in duration descended 

 from them by evolution." This descent is an established fact whether 

 its causes be explained by means of selection, mutation or any other 

 theory of variation. Organic life (12) began on the earth after the 

 latter had cooled from its molten liquidity into a sphere solidly en- 

 crusted with a superficial temperature below the boiling point of water. 

 Life then originated naturally out of inorganic materials " by catalysis 

 from colloidal carbohydrogen combinations." This first life was of the 

 nature of " structureless plasma globules represented in our time by the 

 Chromacese (Cyanophycege)." By the "grand process of biological 



