346 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



for these broad statements of personal faith yield no 

 deductions which conflict with objective facts of expe- 

 rience. 



As the third of these efforts to discredit science and 

 its methods I have placed Professor Haeckel's recent 



address, The Confession of Faith of a 

 Haeckel's Con- M f g j Thig remarkable work 



fession of Faith. . 



is an eloquent plea for the acceptance 



of the philosophic doctrine of monism as the fundamental 

 basis of science. This doctrine once adopted, we have 

 the groundwork for large deductions which forestall the 

 slow conclusions of science ; for monism necessitates 

 belief in certain scientific hypotheses resting as yet on 

 no foundation in human experience, incapable as yet of 



scientific verification, but which are a 



Monism. r , . . , 



necessary part ot the monistic creed. 



The primal conception of monism is that there lives one 

 spirit in all things, and that the whole cognizable world 

 is constituted and has been developed in accordance 

 with one common, fundamental law. This involves the 

 essential oneness of all things, matter and force, object 

 and spirit, Nature and God. This philosophical concep- 

 tion of monism and pantheism can not be made intelli- 

 gible to us, because it can be stated in no terms of hu- 

 man experience. But it has certain necessary derivatives, 

 according to Haeckel, and these are intelligible because 

 their subject-matter is available for scientific experiment. 

 First among these postulates, called by Haeckel " ar- 

 ticles of faith," comes " the essential unity of organic 

 and inorganic Nature, the former having 

 Unity of organic been evolved from the ]atter only at a 

 and inorganic ... . , ,, . . . . 



Nature relatively recent period. This involves 



the " spontaneous generation " of life 

 from inorganic matter. It also resolves " the vital force," 

 or the force which appears in connection with protoplas- 



