120 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



principles of a most comprehensive and important 

 character. It implies the denial of all spiritual or 

 immaterial existence. Man is to the monist 

 merely a physiological machine, and nature is only a 

 greater self-existing and spontaneously-moving aggre 

 gate of forces. Monism can thus altogether dispense 

 with a Creative Will, as originating nature, and adopts 

 the other alternative of self-existence or causelessness 

 for the universe and all its phenomena. Again, the 

 monistic doctrine necessarily implies that man, the 

 animal, the plant, and the mineral are only successive 



, stages of the evolution of the same primordial matter, 

 constituting thus a connected chain of being, all the 

 parts of which sprang spontaneously from each other. 

 Lastly, as the admixture of primitive matter and 



i force would itself be a sort of dualism, Haeckel 

 regards these as ultimately one, and apparently 

 resolves the origin of the universe into the operation 

 of a self-existing energy having in itself the potency 

 of all things. After all, this may be said to be an 

 approximation to the idea of a Creator, but not a 

 living and willing Creator. Monism is thus not 

 identical with pantheism, but is rather a sort of 

 atheistic monotheism, if such a thing is imaginable, 

 and vindicates the assertion attributed to a late 



j lamented physical philosopher, that he had found no 



(atheistic philosophy which had not a God somewhere. 

 ^ Haeckel s own statement of this aspect of his 

 philosophy is somewhat interesting. He says : 



