THE STABILITY OF TRUTH. 



347 



mic structures, into properties shown by certain carbon 

 compounds under certain conditions. Life is thus in a 

 sense an emanation of carbon, " the true maker of life," 

 according to Haeckel, " being the tetraedral carbon 

 molecule." 



This "article of faith " implies also the unity of the 

 chemical elements, each of which is a product of the 



evolution of the primal unit of matter 

 Unity of chem- and force Force and matter are Hke . 

 ical elements. . . 



wise one, because neither appears except 



in the presence of the other. The inheritance of acquired 

 characters is also made a corollary of monistic belief. 



Now all these hypotheses are possibly true, but none 

 of them are as yet conclusions of science. They meet 

 the conditions required by philosophy. 

 They are plausible. They have the 

 merit of logical continuity, and, except- 

 ing to those persons biased by early subjection to con- 

 trary notions, they " satisfy the human heart." There 

 should be no natural repugnance to monism or to pan- 

 theism, difficult as it is to associate the idea of truth 

 and reality with either, or with the opposite of either. 

 Speaking for myself, I feel no prejudice against them. 

 They lend themselves to poetry ; they appeal to the 

 human heart. In Haeckel's own words, referring to 

 something else : " Such hereditary articles of faith take 

 root all the more firmly the further they are removed 

 from a rational knowledge of Nature, and enveloped in 

 the mysterious mantle of mythological poesy." The 

 present resistance to them may in time be turned into 

 superstitious reverence for them ; for, of all the philo- 

 sophic doctrines brought down as lightning from heaven 

 for the guidance of plodding man, these seem most at- 

 tractive, and least likely to conflict with the conclu- 

 sions of science. 



