HAECKEL AND THE MONISTIC CREED 41 



lessen by one iota its full significance and all that 

 this may imply. He understands, like every true 

 scientist, that new discoveries when ultimately 

 confirmed by incontrovertible proof may refute 

 the scientific theories to which he now adheres; but 

 he knows, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that they 

 will never conflict with one single truth of the 

 Divine faith that is happily his within the Church. 

 No man therefore can enter upon the work of 

 scientific study and research with a more open 

 mind than the Catholic scientist, who can have but 

 one purpose in all his work: that the truth be most 

 fully recorded, and that the often insignificant 

 residue of fact be carefully discriminated from the 

 endless welter of theory and hypothesis. 



Nothing of course could be wider of the mark, 

 as we have already shown, than the implication 

 so common in materialistic literature that un- 

 believers have no philosophy to defend. Every 

 one who thinks has his own system, as the great 

 Cardinal just quoted rightly says, and we would 

 not do them the injustice of holding that they 

 never allow themselves the luxury of thought. 



I have recently glanced through the sometimes melancholy 

 and sometimes humorous reflections of the English thinker Har- 

 rison, who is intimately connected with the Positivist and 

 Agnostic movement, latterly represented in England by Spencer, 

 John Stuart Mill, Huxley and Lewes. All these men, he ob- 

 serves, had their own religion. Have they not even defined the 

 Unknowable?' 



'I bid., p. 1 6. 



