HAECKEL AND THE MONISTIC CREED 49 



ferent objects to prove their close similarity to 

 one another, could not shake this superstition. A 

 scratch on the plate had revealed the imposi- 

 tion practised by him in the name of science. Yet 

 this was not the worst of his deceptions and of 

 his presentations of pure assumptions for "un- 

 doubted" facts. 12 But nothing could disturb the 

 faith of his enthusiastic apostles. Had he not 

 created the Monistic god, and did not this suffice? 

 Monism was the religion of Socialism, as the 

 followers of Marx repeatedly assured us. Mon- 

 ism was the favorite dogma of rationalistic scien- 

 tists. Monism was the humanitarian creed of 

 countless philanthropists, uplifters and material- 

 istic sociologists. It affirmed the identity of God 

 and the material world, beyond which nothing 

 was to be admitted. It denied the personal ex- 

 istence of a Creator and ascribed His attributes 

 to matter. Man was nothing more than the de- 

 veloped ape. What a glorious emancipation for 

 brute passion, brute greed and brute force ! An- 

 archist and Bolshevik seized upon this doctrine 

 no less than the modern profiteer and sensualist. 

 Haeckel himself described his materialistic evo- 

 lutionary theories as "Monistic heavy artillery" 

 directed against Christianity. His guns have been 

 battered to pieces, but the Cross of the Church 

 of Christ stands forth more resplendent than ever 



"Erich Wasraann, S. J., "Modern Biology and the Theory 

 of Evolution," pp. 213, ff. 



