CHAPTER II. 



MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 

 Haeckel and Monism. 



T fISTORICALLY considered, Monism, as a sys- 

 11 tern of philosophy, is as old as speculative 

 thought. It has, however, had various and even 

 contradictory meanings. Etymologically, it indi- 

 cates a system of thought, which refers all phenom- 

 ena of the spiritual and physical worlds to a single 

 principle. We have, accordingly, idealistic Monism, 

 which makes matter and all its phenomena but 

 modifications of mind ; materialistic Monism, which 

 resolves everything into matter ; and, finally, the 

 system of those who conceive of a substance that 

 is neither mind nor matter, but is the underlying 

 principle or substantial ground of both. In each 

 and all of its forms, Monism is opposed to the phil- 

 osophical Dualism which recognizes two principles 

 matter and spirit. 



The Monism, however, with which we have to 

 deal here, is not the idealism of Spinoza, Berkeley, 

 Hume, Hegel or Schopenhauer, nor the atheistic 

 Materialism of D'Holbach and La Mettrie, which 

 was but a modified form of Epicureanism, but rather 

 a later development of these errors. An outgrowth 

 of recent speculations in the natural and physical 



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