Prof. Ernst Haeckel. 41 



— that is, of people really intelligent on this subject. All 

 religion has been very well defined as some philosophy of the 

 world applied in practice and warmed by the consequent 

 emotions. Our morality we may then call our individual 

 practice of such religion in social life and intercourse. 

 Back of every religion, therefore, lies some view and theory 

 of the world, a cosmology or philosophy, by which each peo- 

 ple or sect ciphers out, as best it can, some tolerable rela- 

 tion to the mighty world and the social organism and all 

 their fellow human beings. We find the religious history 

 of our race to consist, therefore, of a gradual evolution of 

 its leading peoples from a broad base of general animism 

 and fetichism, thence to astrology, thence to polytheism, 

 thence to monotheism, and thence to scientism, expressed 

 chiefly to us in the pantheism of Goethe, the positivism of 

 Comte, the synthetism of Spencer, the cosmism of Fiske, 

 and finally by the monism of Haeckel. He proposed this 

 word monism as expressive of the world-unifying Jaw of 

 science, as the summary of all that was true and good in 

 the other philosophic names proj^osed by the philosophers 

 just named, while it excluded what he regards as the crude 

 and vulgar notions of materialism, spiritualism, and dualism. 

 Our professor is very brave, like many Germans, in in- 

 venting new words instead of adding new meanings or 

 shades of meaning to old ones. If scientific people would 

 take religiously to this name, monism, it would certainly 

 help to clear up things wonderfully, for it excludes at once 

 a mass of old erroi's and misconceptions which will hang 

 around the old words ; but to many it is just this protective 

 twilight of uncertainty in philosophy and religion — half 

 concealing and half revealing — which makes old names, 

 symbols, and ideas alternately repelling and attractive, tan- 

 talizing and comforting. Our monist prophet has brought 

 us well out of this twilight, and the situation looks better 

 the clearer it is seen. Every clear view of the world is fol- 

 lowed by a sincere conviction, and such conviction becomes 

 a " faith " and an enduring well-spring of energy and con- 

 solation. ]\[onism in that view rises above all religions as 

 the culmination of all. If anything can be, it is the imi- 

 versal faith. Because it is based upon verified science, it is 

 positive monism ; because it depends upon the objective 

 unity of the world, it is rnonistic positivism. By one name 

 or another the highest scientific solution of the world, so- 

 "^ ciety, and man, when scientific methods arc carried to their 



