Prof. Ernst Haeckel 31 



the most beloved of men a circle that bids fair to include 

 the enlightened world ; and some parts not so enlightened, 

 if we may judge from his difficulty in tearing himself from 

 the embraces of his dusky Ceylonese attendants when he 

 had to bid them a sad farewell ! So also we must part from 

 our consideration of him as a man, to greet him as a phi- 

 losopher. But, in so doing, let us say : Fortunate it is for 

 " the new thought " that he is not alone or singular among 

 evolutionists and scientists, in being worthy of a new order 

 of sainthood, in which devotion to truth and humanity is a 

 saving grace to them, and to themselves for others. So was 

 it with Darwin and Lyell, and so is it with their living co- 

 workers and followers generally. There is no discount to 

 be taken from their personal or general worth. When these 

 pure nature- worshipers enter the Heaven where the whole 

 human race appears in the Pantheon of memory, how soon 

 will they rise above those ancient, mediaeval, abnormal, 

 sickly fanatics who have been canonized as " saints " ! 



And now, secondly, let us turn to the philosophy of these 

 men, and especially of Prof. Haeckel, to find, if we can, the 

 life motive, or religion, which inspires such noble results. 

 They are all, indeed, scientific evolutionists ; but, of them 

 all, Haeckel appears to be the persistent, consistent, and 

 complete evolutionist, and as such he is entitled to name 

 this new philosophy and religion. The name which he has 

 bestowed upon it is Monism. The only complete evolution- 

 ist ? Darwin, Lyell, Huxley, Hooker, Gray, and others never 

 went far beyond their special sciences never assumed to be 

 general philosophers, much less prophets and teachers of 

 religion. Of those who have expressed " religious " views, 

 we notice that Alfred E. Wallace, who shares with Darwin 

 the discovery of natural selection, has become fatally in- 

 volved in spiritualism and the ghost world, so that he be- 

 lieves that we can not reach the human Ego by natural selec- 

 tion. That assumption is, of course, fatal to his consistency 

 and usefulness as far as general science and complete evolu- 

 tion are concerned. We follow him gladly until his appeal 

 to our rational nature vanishes in the shadowy realms where 

 superstition defies science. Then, like Newton, before the 

 " Prophecies," his observing intellect is powerless. In a sim- 

 ilar way Herbert Spencer starts out grandly, in his scheme 

 of universal evolution, but develops his doctrine of the " Un- 

 knowable " before he reaches the human Ego, and thus his 



