OUR MONISTIC RELIGION. 349 



influence on general culture, and especially in the 

 strengthening of Christian belief — an influence which 

 still endures throughout the entire civilized world. 



The diametrical opposite of this dominant Christian 

 art is the new artistic tendency which has been 

 developed during the present century in connection 

 with science. The remarkable expansion of our 

 knowledge of nature, and the discovery of countless 

 beautiful forms of life which it includes, have 

 awakened quite a new aesthetic sense in our genera- 

 tion, and thus given a new tone to painting and 

 sculpture. Numerous scientific voyages and expedi- 

 tions for the exploration of unknown lands and seas, 

 partly in earlier centuries, but more especially in the 

 nineteenth, have brought to light an undreamed 

 abundance of new organic forms. The number of 

 new species of animals and plants soon became 

 enormous, and among them (especially among the 

 lower groups that had been neglected before) there 

 were thousands of forms of great beauty and interest, 

 affording an entirely new inspiration for painting, 

 sculpture, architecture, and technical art. In this 

 respect a new world was revealed by the great advance 

 of microscopic research in the second half of the 

 century, and especially by the discovery of the 

 marvellous inhabitants of the deep sea, which were 

 first brought to light by the famous expedition of the 

 Challenger (1872-6). Thousands of graceful radiolaria 

 and thalamophora, of pretty medusae and corals, of 

 extraordinary molluscs and crabs, suddenly introduced 

 us to a wealth of hidden organisms beyond all antici- 

 pation, the peculiar beauty and diversity of which far 

 transcend all the creations of the human imagination. 

 In the fifty large volumes of the account of the 



