OUE MONISTIC RELIGION. 345 



first and third sections) have convinced us that truth 

 unadulterated is only to be found in the temple of the 

 study of nature, and that the only available paths to 

 it are critical observation and reflection — the empirical 

 investigation of facts and the rational study of their 

 efficient causes. In this way we arrive, by means of 

 pure reason, at true science, the highest treasure of 

 civilized man. We must, in accordance with the 

 arguments of our sixteenth chapter, reject what is 

 called " revelation," the poetry of faith, that affirms 

 the discovery of truth in a supernatural fashion, 

 without the assistance of reason. And since the 

 entire structure of the Judaeo-Christian religion, like 

 that of the Mohammedan and the Buddhistic, rests on 

 these so-called revelations, and these mystic fruits of 

 the imagination directly contradict the clear results of 

 empirical research, it is obvious that we shall only 

 attain to a knowledge of the truth by the rational 

 activity of genuine science, not by the poetic imagining 

 of a mystic faith. In this respect it is quite certain 

 that the Christian system must give way to the 

 monistic. The goddess of truth dwells in the temple 

 of nature, in the green woods, on the blue sea, and on 

 the snowy summits of the hills — not in the gloom of 

 the cloister, nor in the narrow prisons of our goal-like 

 schools, nor in the clouds of incense of the Christian 

 Churches. The paths which lead to the noble divinity 

 of truth and knowledge are the loving study of nature 

 and its laws, the observation of the infinitely great 

 star-world with the aid of the telescope, and the 

 infinitely tiny cell-world with the aid of the micro- 

 scope — not senseless ceremonies and unthinking 

 prayers, not alms and Peter 's-pence. The rich gifts 

 which the goddess of truth bestows on us are the 



