MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 241 



This brief extract from Haeckel's inept state- 

 ments about religion, concerning which, it is mani- 

 fest, he is crassly ignorant, will relieve us from the ne- 

 cessity of following further this trumpeted reformer 

 of religion and omniscient seer of Monism. It would 

 be difficult to collect together, in the same space, a 

 greater number of misstatements of fact, more glar- 

 ing absurdities, or more preposterous propositions, 

 than those contained in the foregoing quotation 

 from one of his best-known and most popular works. 

 I shall not attempt categorically to refute his errors 

 of history and philosophy, of science and theology, 

 as this is beyond the scope of the present work. 

 Neither shall I waste time in indicating wherein he 

 has put himself, especially in matters of theology 

 and religion, against the unanimous teaching of the 

 saints and sages of all time. A mere presentation 

 of his errors, in a clear light and in bold relief, is a 

 sufficient, if not the best refutation, for all reasona- 

 ble men. Haeckel's vagaries but emphasize once 

 more a fact which has often been signalized the 

 danger incurred by specialists, particularly by mere 

 physicists and biologists, when they attempt to dis- 

 cuss matters of which they are not only ignorant, 

 but which are entirely foreign to their ordinary trend 

 of thought, and when they pass the frontiers with 

 which they may be familiar, and, entering upon a do- 

 main of knowledge with which they are entirely unac- 

 quainted, seek the discussion of topics for which both 

 their temper and education totally disqualify them. 



Such a congeries of errors, scientific, philosophic 

 and theologic, error personified, as it were, as that 



