United States or Latvia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In thus establishing the monistic theory of nature lies the highest and most comprehensive merit of the doctrine of descent, as reformed by Darwin." Professor Huxley, in his review of this work of Haeckel, already quoted, says: "I do not like to conclude without reminding the reader of my entire concurrence with the general tenor and spirit of the work, and of my high estimate of its value."

In like case with the charge of atheism and irreligion are those so often heard against monism, that it destroys the poetry of life and fails to satisfy the spiritual wants of human nature; we are told, in particular, that aesthetics certainly a most important department both in theoretical philosophy and in practical life is prejudiced by a monistic philosophy.

Wells, however, while his influence is a very considerable one, utters his teaching from outside the Christian Church, and very properly disavows the Christian name; what must give us pause is to find the monistic ethics being preached and taught by official exponents of the Christian religion.

Hist. of Creat.," he, in a geological scala, which closes with the human period, even divides the whole past, present, and future history of mankind into two halves: first part, dualistic period of culture; second part, monistic period of culture.

We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that maya, which is an inseparable companion to life.

The monistic philosophy of that time, which, five hundred years before our era, had reached speculative heights so remarkable, knew nothing of any such dogma. It was through Plato and Christ that it received its further elaboration, until, in the Middle Ages, it was so universally accepted, that only now and then did some bold thinker dare openly to gainsay it.

The practically unanimous tradition of "regular" mysticism has been unquestionably monistic; and inasmuch as it is the characteristic of mystics to speak, not as the scribes, but as men who have "been there" and seen with their own eyes, I think that this sovereign manner must have made some other pluralistic-minded students hesitate, as I confess that it has often given pause to me.

The clear-sighted author of The Old Faith and the New had already clearly perceived that the soul-activities of man, and therefore also his consciousness, as functions of the central nervous system, all spring from a common source, and, from a monistic point of view, come under the same category.

As compared with this scientific conception, the doctrine of immortality of scholastic psychology has about the same value as the materialistic conceptions of the Red Indian about a future life in Schiller's "Nadowessian Death-Song." Monistic Ethic.

Joachim's monistic system of truth rests on an even slenderer point. I have never doubted, he says, 'that universal and timeless truth is a single content or significance, one and whole and complete, and he candidly confesses the failure of rationalistic attempts 'to raise this immediate certainty' to the level of reflective knowledge.