42 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



No creed therefore has ever been more dog- 

 matic than that of materialism, precisely because 

 it depended upon dogmatism alone for its accept- 

 ance. If ever a dogmatist existed it was the hiero- 

 phant of modern materialism, Ernst Haeckel^ 

 Quite consistently he acclaimed himself the 

 founder of a new "scientific" religion, which was 

 established mainly as a denial of a personal God, 

 and for a time even boasted of an ephemeral mon 

 astery of Monistic monks heaven save the 

 mark! Such was Monism, the materialistic creed 

 enthusiastically adopted by countless rationalists 

 and Socialists throughout the world. To allay 

 all fear of a religious bias in our estimate of the 

 sage of Jena, it will suffice to quote here from the 

 Manchester Guardian, whose religious and social 

 views will not be held under suspicion of such 

 prejudice even by the most ultra-radical. Ap- 

 praising the life-work of Haeckel, it says: 



Unlike Darwin, Haeckel entered into the field of theological 

 controversy. Darwinism has had a profound and far-reaching 

 influence upon ethics and religion, but so far as the master-mind 

 was concerned it has worked by stealth and without any compact 

 body of doctrine corresponding to the orthodoxy of the schools. 

 Haeckel, on the other hand, drew out with uncompromising 

 distinctness what he conceived to be the necessary results of 

 his evolutionary teaching as a solvent of traditional theology. 

 In his later years he was known chiefly as the ardent apostle 

 of materialistic Monism as opposed to every form of spiritual 

 religion or idealistic philosophy. He published "Das Welt' 

 Rathsel" in 1889, and in spite of its severely technical qualities 

 it passed rapidly through several editions. Under the direction 



