SCIENCE AND REVOLUTION 



notwithstanding all the efforts of Haeckel and 

 others to establish a perfect monism, they are 

 unable to escape from the contradictions inherent 

 in the historical myopia of the bourgeoisie. 

 Haeckel's works on monism, such as the " Riddle 

 of the Universe," " Monism," or " The Wonders 

 of Life," are sadly disfigured by sudden relapses 

 into metaphysical language and thought The 

 same incongruities also vitiate the scientific dis- 

 cussions of bourgeois Darwinians, whenever the 

 subject calls for an understanding of the dialectic 

 nature of evolution, more especially for an un- 

 derstanding of the peculiar nature of the human 

 faculty of thought. The discussion of the con- 

 tinuity of the germ plasm and the transmission of 

 hereditary characters by natural selection through 

 the sole agency of this plasm in multicellular 

 organisms, as advocated by Weismann, or of the 

 mutation theory of De Vries, who tries to ex- 

 plain the sudden appearance of new varieties by 

 the peculiar laws of crossing, would have pro- 

 duced far better results, if the bourgeois scientists 

 could have agreed on a consistent understanding 

 of " natural selection," and if they could have 

 risen sufficiently above their environment to 

 grasp the full significance of materialist monism 

 as revealed by Dietzgen's theory of understand- 



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