i WHAT LIFE IS 7 



which he expresses his opinions. But the fact is that he has 

 gone altogether out of his own department of biological 

 knowledge, and even beyond the whole range of physical 

 science, when he attempts to deal with problems involving 

 " infinity " and " eternity." He declares that " matter," or 

 the material universe, is infinite, as is the "ether," and that 

 together they fill infinite space, and that both are " eternal " 

 and both "alive." None of these things can possibly be 

 known, yet he states them as positive facts. The whole 

 teaching of astronomy by the greatest astronomers to-day 

 is that the evidence now at our command points to the 

 conclusion that our material universe is finite, and that we 

 are rapidly approaching to a knowledge of its extent. Our 

 yearly increasing acquaintance with the possibilities of nature 

 leads us to the conclusion that in infinite space there may 

 be other universes besides ours ; but if so, they may possibly 

 be different from ours not of matter and ether only. To 

 assert the contrary, as Haeckel does so confidently, is surely 

 not science, and very bad philosophy. 



He further implies, and even expressly states, that there 

 is no spirit-world at all ; that if life exists in other worlds 

 it must be material, physical life ; and that, as all worlds 

 move in cycles of development, maturity, and destruction, 

 all life must go through the same phases that this has gone 

 on from all eternity past, and will go on for all eternity to 

 come, with no past and no future possible, but the continual 

 rise of life up to a certain limited grade, which life is always 

 doomed to extinction. And it is claimed that this eternal 

 succession of futile cycles of chance development and certain 

 extinction is, as an interpretation of nature, to be preferred 

 to any others ; and especially to those which recognise mind 

 as superior to matter, which see in the development of 

 the human intellect the promise of a future life, and which 

 have in our own day found a large mass of evidence justify- 

 ing that belief 



With Professor Haeckel's dislike of the dogmas of theo- 

 logians, and their claims to absolute knowledge of the nature 

 and attributes of the inscrutable mind that is the power 

 within and behind and around nature, many of us have the 

 greatest sympathy ; but we have none with his unfounded 



