40 Prof. Ernst Haeckel 



of confusing expressions. For instance, he speaks of " me- 

 chanical life phenomena," " atom soul," all matter being 

 considered " equally living," " molecule soul," " carbon soul," 

 etc., which enable objectors like Virchow and others to ob- 

 tain the only advantage they have ever obtained in their 

 discussions with him. But until life and mind are found 

 to be the correlate of non-living matter, and not of the or- 

 ganic action of protoplasm only, such expressions by Prof. 

 Haeckel and other monists are to be limited to the proto- 

 plasmic matter the brains of animals, where only sentiency 

 and thought do exist. Otherwise they are simply poetical 

 expressions as though they were used by the poets Goethe 

 or Wordsworth, or by Comte, " subjectively," as when, for 

 " worship " purposes, he styles the earth " Le grand fetich." 

 So the word " mechanical " is often used by Haeckel to 

 mean natural, causal, correlative. Objectors who have noth- 

 ing better than criticisms of such verbal errors of expression 

 have need to remember logician Mill's rule of safety in such 

 discussions, viz. : " Unless you refute your opponent at his 

 best, you are refuted by him." Haeckel is a German and a 

 specialist, and thus, as a monist, may have sometimes hazy 

 or limited modes of expression and exposition, but, at his 

 best, he stands on the verified, irrefragable, invincible, inex- 

 pugnable law which makes realities of and unifies the facts 

 and processes of the whole world, and compels us to conceive 

 the world as an objective unity, and not as a duality. There- 

 fore, until this law of correlation can be shown to have a 

 limit or an exception, the philosophy of monism stands im- 

 pregnable ; and Haeckel, who gave it this name and recog- 

 nized its scientific completeness, is rightfully regarded as its 

 latest leading champion. 



For, thirdly, Prof. Haeckel is prominent as a religionist 

 and a reformer-prophet. 



The position of Prof. Haeckel as a leading naturalist and 

 philosopher would doubtless be gracefully acknowledged by 

 the conservative and even the retrograde influences if he 

 would not, as he does on every fitting occasion, lift up the 

 voice of & prophet and insist that this " monism " is also a 

 religion. In a word, that it is the future Eeligion of Science 

 and Humanity, now in its nascent state. This fact makes 

 him a sort of terror to the spiritual, political, and temporal 

 " powers that be," and a subject of greater interest to us. 

 For if the philosophy of monism is scientifically sound there 

 is no escape from monism as the religion of scientific people 



