RATIONALISM BASED ON DARWINISM 19 



a dualistic or a monistic interpretation of the Cosmos. 

 The former is usually bound up with teleological and 

 idealistic dogmas, the latter with mechanical and realistic 

 theories. Dualism in the widest sense, breaks up the 

 universe into two entirely distinct substances ^ — the 

 material world and an immaterial God, who is repre- 

 sented to be its creator, sustainer and ruler. Monism, 

 on the contrary (likewise taken in its widest sense) 

 recognises one sole ' substance ' in the universe, which 

 is at once ' God and Nature ' ; body and spirit (or matter 

 and energy) it holds to be inseparable. The extra- 

 mundane God of Dualism leads necessarily to Theism ; 

 the intra-mundane God of the Monist leads to Pan- 

 theism." - 



Haeckel devotes a chapter^ to a fuller explanation of 

 " the Law of Substance." " Under this name," he writes, 

 " we embrace two supreme laws of different origin and 

 age — the older is the chemical law of the " conservation 

 of matter " and the younger is the physical law of the 

 " conservation of energy," that is to say, the sum of 

 matter and the sum of force are alike unchangeable : 

 so that " the whole marvellous panorama of life that 

 spreads over the surface of our globe is, in the best 

 analysis, transformed sunlight," and " no particle of living 

 energy is ever extinguished ; no particle is ever created 

 anew ". 



All the different forces of Nature are reducible to one 

 common original force {prodynaiiiis). " This fundamental 

 force is generally conceived as a vibratory motion of the 

 smallest particles of matter — a vibration of atoms." ^ In 



1 This word is used here partly in a metaphysical sense, not a con- 

 crete or material one, only. 



"^The Riddle of the Universe, Eng. ed., p. 20. 



^Op. cit., xii., p. 214. ^Op. cit., pp. 217, 221, 



