38 Pfof. Ernst Hacckel. 



" from whence all things proceed," and beyond jyossible cor- 

 relation and knowledge — decidedly, No ! * 



By tlie same law, the spiritism of Wallace and the super- 

 natural beings and entities of theologians and metaphysi- 

 cians are simply impossible. They are all illusions, or the 

 results of illusions or delusions, Mdiicli have been explained 

 or are to be explained by science. The verdict of the law of 

 scientific correlation remands them at once to the limbo of 

 all spooks — the world of the imagination. You might as well 

 argue in favor of the astronomy of Ptolemy because the 

 sun rises in the east, as to argue in favor of the existence 

 of disembodied ghosts because of the common illusions of 

 our senses. There are illusions, delusions, and frauds, natu- 

 rally enough and in abundance, but there can be no genu- 

 ine " spiritual phenomena." There is no chance of a pos- 

 sibility for such a thing as a spirit, a ghost, or Spencer's 

 unknowable " entity" to exist, for there is nothing left over, 

 and no chance-work possible between correlations under 

 this law of correlation. Existence and correlation are one 

 and the same thing. There can be no life to come, except 

 as it may be a correlate of this life. There can be no dual- 

 ity in the universe. Belief in duality is a sin against sci- 

 ence. Everything, ad infiniUini, is conceivable as correla- 

 tion, and therefore it is reality or nothing. There is no possi- 

 ble room for an extra-mundane God, a ghost, or a spook any 

 Avay or anywhere The true God is the totality of the corre- 

 lated universe — the divine reality. The monistic concep- 

 tion is not of a " first cause," "power," or "energy " outside 

 of all things, " from whence all things flow," but that the only 

 cause and causes are in things — all tilings. Every change 

 is effect and cause in never-ending correlation, of which no 

 exception or limit is conceivable. The phenomenal world is 

 a reality having its noumenon in the human intellect, its 

 coi'relate and its interpreter. 



Such is the philosophy of monism. In it we have the 

 philosopliy of Bruno, Spinoza, aiul Goethe extended and 

 made exact by the discoveries of modern science — the inde- 

 structibility of matter and the equivalence and correlation 

 of all knowable world-changes or " forces," as they are some- 

 times dangerously called, for some people are in danger of 

 thinking of force as an entity and not a change. 



* Rfo FiindiiiiK'ntnl Prol)li'inR, by Dr. Pnul Cams, fsppcinlly tlie chapter on 

 ACTTiosticism anil PhfiioiiK-naliHTn. The StronKliold of MyKliuism, pp. l;)7-154- 

 16a. and fjrisnini. Sve. also. Discussion on t)u' Natnro and Ueallty of H('lif;ioD, 

 between Herbert Speucer aud Frederick Ilurrisuii, pp. 30, ICO, ITU, and pumim. 



