DUALISM 



struction in the two chief German states — Prussia and 

 Bavaria. In their open attempt to subordinate the 

 school to the Church, they desire, above all, the primacy 

 of practical reason — that is to say, the subjection of 

 pure reason to faith and revelation. In German uni- 

 versities to-day belief in Kant is a sort of ticket of ad- 

 mission to the study of philosophy. The reader who 

 would realize the pernicious effect of this official faith 

 in Kant on the advance of scientific knowledge will do 

 well to read the able criticism in the brilliant posthu- 

 mous work of Paul Rce. 



In the face of the dualism which still prevails in the 

 academic teaching of philosophy (especially in Germany) 

 we must base our monistic system on the universality of 

 the law of substance. This harmoniously combines the 

 laws of the conservation of matter and of energy. As I 

 have fully explained my own conception of this law in 

 the twelfth chapter of the Riddle, I will only say here 

 that its validity is quite independent of any particular 

 theory of the relations of matter and force.' The 

 materialism of Holbach and Biichner lays a one-sided 

 stress on the importance of matter: the dynamism of 

 Leibnitz and Ostv/ald on that of force. If we avoid these 

 extremes, and conceive matter and force as inseparable 

 attributes of substance, we have pure monism, as we find 

 it in the systems of Spinoza and Goethe. We might 

 then substitute for the word "substance," as Hermann 

 Croll does, the temi "force-matter." The further ques- 

 tion as to the correctness of any particular physical con- 

 ception of matter is quite independent of this. 



' The English reader will find in this a reply to the fooh'sh notion 

 which has been circulated that the recent discovery of radio- 

 action and the compcfsition of the atom from electrons has af- 

 fected llacckcrs position. His monism is completely indiffer- 

 ent to chani^es in the physicist conception fif the nature of mat- 

 ter. — Trans. 



445 



