10 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE. 



schools ; while the memory is burdened with a mass 

 of philological and historical facts which are utterly 

 useless, either from the point of view of theoretical 

 education or for the practical purposes of life. More- 

 over, the antiquated arrangements and the distribu- 

 tion of faculties in the universities are just as little 

 in harmony with the point we have reached in 

 monistic science as the curriculum of the primary 

 and secondary schools. 



The climax of the opposition to modern education 

 and its foundation, advanced natural philosophy, is 

 reached, of course, in the Church. We are not 

 speaking here of Ultramontane Papistry, nor of 

 the orthodox sects which do not fall far short 

 of it in ignorance and in the crass superstition of 

 their dogmas. We are imagining ourselves for the 

 moment to be in the church of a liberal Protestant 

 minister, who has a good average education, and who 

 finds room for " the rights of reason" by the side of 

 his faith. There, besides excellent moral teaching, 

 which is in perfect harmony with our own monistic 

 ethics, and humanitarian sentiments of which we 

 cordially approve, we hear ideas on the nature of 

 God, of the world, of man, and of life, which are 

 directly opposed to all scientific experience. It is no 

 wonder that physicists and chemists, doctors and 

 philosophers, who have made a thorough study of 

 nature, refuse a hearing to such preachers. Our theo- 

 logians and our politicians are just as ignorant as our 

 philosophers and our jurists of that elementary know- 

 ledge of nature which is based on the monistic theory 

 of evolution, and which is already far transcended in 

 the triumph of our modern learning. 



From this opposition, which we can only briefly 



