THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



if only conceived as symbols), daily as "vehicles of 

 energy." Ostwald would reject even these in his pur- 

 suit of the illusion of a "science without hypotheses." 

 As a fact, he is forced every day, like every other exact 

 scientist, to assume and apply in practice the indis- 

 pensable idea of matter, and its separate particles, the 

 molecules and atoms. Knowledge is impossible with- 

 out hypotheses. 



Monism is best expressed as hylozoism, in so far as this 

 removes the antithesis of materialism and spiritualism 

 (or mechanicism and dynamism), and unites them in a 

 natural and harmonious system. Our monistic system 

 has been charged with leading to pure naturalism; one 

 of its most vehement critics, Frederick Paulsen, attaches 

 so much importance to this stricture that he thinks it as 

 dangerous as dogmatic clericalism. We may, therefore, 

 usefully consider the idea of naturalism, and point out in 

 what sense we accept it and identify it with monism. 

 The key to the position is in our monistic anthropogeny, 

 our unprejudiced conviction, supported by every branch 

 of anthropological research, of "man's place in nature," 

 as we have established it in the first section of the Riddle 

 (chapters ii.-v.). Man is a purely natural being, a 

 placental mammal of the order of primates. He was 

 phylogenetically evolved in the course of the Tertiary 

 Period from a series of the lower primates (directly from 

 the anthropoid apes, but earlier from the cynocephali 

 and lemures). Savage man, as we have him to-day in 

 the Veddah or Australian negro, is physiologically nearer 

 to the apes than to highly civilized men. 



Anthropology (in the widest sense) is only a particular 

 branch of zoology, to which we must assign a special 

 position on account of its extreme importance. Hence 

 all the sciences which relate to man and his psychic 

 activity — especially what are called the moral sciences — 

 must be regarded from our monistic point of view as 



86 



