20 THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVEESE. 



Since then the situation has, happily, been profoundly 

 modified ; while both schools, in their different paths, 

 have pressed onwards towards the same high goal, 

 they have recognised their common aspiration, and 

 they draw nearer to a knowledge of the truth in 

 mutual covenant. At the end of the nineteenth 

 century we have returned to that monistic attitude 

 which our greatest realistic poet, Goethe, had recog- 

 nised from its very commencement to be alone correct 

 and fruitful. 



All the different philosophical tendencies may, from 

 the point of view of modern science, be ranged in 

 two antagonistic groups ; they represent either a 

 dualistic or a monistic interpretation of the cosmos. 

 The former is usually bound up with teleological and 

 idealistic dogmas, the latter with mechanical and 

 realistic theories. Dualism, in the widest sense, 

 breaks up the universe into two entirely distinct 

 substances — the material world and an immaterial 

 God, who is represented to be its creator, sustainer, 

 and ruler. Monism, on the contrary (likewise taken 

 in its widest sense), recognises one sole substance in 

 the universe, which is at once " God and Nature "; 

 body and spirit (or matter and energy) it holds to be 

 inseparable. The extra-mundane God of dualism 

 leads necessarily to Theism ; the intra-mundane God 

 of the monist leads to Pantheism. 



The different ideas of monism and materialism, and 

 likewise the essentially distinct tendencies of theo- 

 retical and practical materialism, are still very 

 frequently confused. As this and other similar cases 

 of confusion of ideas are very prejudicial, and give rise 

 to innumerable errors, we shall make the following brief 

 observations, in order to prevent misunderstanding : — 



