WHAT LIFE IS 7 



These vague and often incomprehensible assertions are inter- 

 spersed with others equally unprovable, and often worded so 

 as to be very offensive to religious minds. After having put 

 forth a host of assertions as to a possible future state, which 

 exhibit a deplorable ignorance of the views of many advanced 

 thinkers in all the Churches, he says: 



" Our own ^ human nature ' which exalted itself into an image 

 of God in an anthropistic illusion, sinks to the level of a placental 

 mammal, which has no more value for the universe at large than 

 the ant, the fly of a summer's day, the microscopic infusorium, or 

 the smallest bacillus. Humanity is but a transitory phase of the 

 evolution of an eternal substance, a particular phenomenal form of 

 matter and energy, the true proportion of which we soon perceive 

 when we set it on the background of infinite space and eternal 

 time" (p. 87). 



The writings of Haeckel, the extremely dogmatic and asser- 

 tive character of which have been illustrated in the preceding 

 quotations, have had an immense influence on many classes of 

 readers, who, when a man becomes widely known as a great 

 authority in any department of science, accept him as a safe 

 guide in any other departments on which he expresses his 

 opinions. But the fact is that he has gone altogether out of 

 his own department of biological knowledge, and even beyond 

 the whole range of physical science, when he attempts to deal 

 with problems involving '' infinity " and ^' eternity." He de- 

 clares that " matter," or the material universe, is infinite, as 

 is the '' ether," and that together they fill infinite S2:)ace, and 

 that both are ^^ eternal " and both '' alive." ^one of these 

 things can possibly be hnown, yet he states them as positive 

 facts. The whole teaching of astronomy by the greatest 

 astronomers to-day is that the evidence now at our command 

 points to the conclusion that our material universe is finite, 

 and that we are rapidly approaching to a knowledge of its 

 extent. Our yearly increasing acquaintance with the possibil- 

 ities of nature leads us to the conclusion that in infinite space 



