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They call this view the mechanical view of the world; and, as "monism," put it in opposition to the "vitalistic, teleological, and dualistic view of the world." In order to obtain a correct view of this standpoint, we quote from Häckel's "Natural History of Creation", Vol.
In the first place, we wish to render evident the fact which is so often overlooked by the friends of monism and still more by theistic adversaries of the idea of evolution, that the idea of a development of species, and also of man, does not offer to theistic reasoning any new or any other difficulties than those which have been long present, and which had found their solution in the religious consciousness long before any idea of evolution disturbed the mind.
It is but the shadow cast by the eternal sun. The monophysite tenets traceable to monism will be considered in detail in later chapters. Here our concern is to show that monism supplies the metaphysical principle on which the heresy is based; that, as dualism provides the a priori of Nestorian thought, monism provides the a priori of monophysite thought.
Where teleological Dualism seeks the arbitrary thoughts of a capricious Creator in miracles of creation, causal Monism finds in the process of development the necessary effects of eternal immutable laws of nature." Häckel's "Anthropogeny" also is replete with attacks upon a teleological view of nature, which leave nothing wanting in distinctness and coarseness. On page 111, Vol.
At least, he unreservedly professes monism, rejects all teleological conceptions as imperfections, speaks of the caprice of a personal God, and sees the conception that the idea of God is immanent in human nature invalidated by the fact "that many millions in the most cultivated nations, and among them the most eminent and lucid thinkers, have not the consciousness of a personal God; those millions of whom the heroic Strauss became the spokesman."
In a true and real sense, therefore, it is God's own doing and meant for our greater glory; . . . I believe in the infinitude of wisdom and love; there is nothing else. Those who will take the moderate trouble of translating these words from the abstract into the concrete will need no further demonstration of the moral implications of this type of Monism.
It is an odd fact that many monists consider a great victory scored for their side when pluralists say 'the universe is many. "'The universe'!" they chuckle "his speech bewrayeth him. He stands confessed of monism out of his own mouth." Well, let things be one in that sense! You can then fling such a word as universe at the whole collection of them, but what matters it?
Monistic investigation of nature as knowledge of the true, monistic ethic as training for the good, monistic aesthetic as pursuit of the beautiful these are the three great departments of our monism: by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully longed after by so many to-day.
Here we see once more the unbridgeable gulf between every form of "idealistic Monism" Eastern or Western and Christianity; for while, e.g., "the central idea of Indian piety is meditation, the absorption of the individual in the life-spirit, the experience of identity with the universality and oneness of the Godhead," on the other hand "Christianity is the religion of prayer prayer is its crown and its pearl."
"That which is not" provokes an inquiry into what is, Being. Dualism, Monism, Materialism and Idealism are all discussed, the conclusion being that the Sophist is a counterfeit of the Philosopher, a wilful impostor who makes people contradict themselves by quibbling. The Politicus carries on the discussion. In this dialogue we may see the dying glories of Plato's genius.
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