Monism as Connecting Religion and Science | Page 2

Ernst Haeckel
in monism.
ERNST HAECKEL. JENA, October 31, 1892
* * * * *
MONISM
A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot
celebrate its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of
its highest general problems. It must be regarded, therefore, with
satisfaction that the speaker on such an august occasion as this--the
seventy-fifth anniversary of your Society--has selected as the subject of
his address a theme of the highest general importance. Unfortunately, it
is becoming more and more the custom on such occasions, and even at
the general meetings of the great "Association of German Naturalists
and Physicians," to take the subject of address from a narrow and
specialised territory of restricted interest. If this growing custom is to
be excused on the grounds of increasing division of labour and of
diverging specialisation in all departments of work, it becomes all the
more necessary that, on such anniversaries as the present, the attention
of the audience should be invited to larger matters of common interest.
Such a topic, supreme in its importance, is that concerning "Scientific
Articles of Faith," upon which Professor Schlesinger has already
expounded his views.[1] I am glad to be able to agree with him in many
important points, but as to others I should like to express some
hesitation, and to ask consideration for some views which do not
coincide with his. At the outset, I am entirely at one with him as to that
unifying conception of nature as a whole which we designate in a
single word as Monism. By this we unambiguously express our
conviction that there lives "one spirit in all things," and that the whole
cognisable world is constituted, and has been developed, in accordance
with one common fundamental law. We emphasise by it, in particular,
the essential unity of inorganic and organic nature, the latter having
been evolved from the former only at a relatively late period.[2] We
cannot draw a sharp line of distinction between these two great
divisions of nature, any more than we can recognise an absolute
distinction between the animal and the vegetable kingdom, or between
the lower animals and man. Similarly, we regard the whole of human
knowledge as a structural unity; in this sphere we refuse to accept the

distinction usually drawn between the natural and the spiritual. The
latter is only a part of the former (or _vice versa_); both are one. Our
monistic view of the world belongs, therefore, to that group of
philosophical systems which from other points of view have been
designated also as mechanical or as pantheistic. However differently
expressed in the philosophical systems of an Empedocles or a Lucretius,
a Spinoza or a Giordano Bruno, a Lamarck or a David Strauss, the
fundamental thought common to them all is ever that of the oneness of
the cosmos, of the indissoluble connection between energy and matter,
between mind and embodiment--or, as we may also say, between God
and the world--to which Goethe, Germany's greatest poet and thinker,
has given poetical expression in his Faust and in the wonderful series
of poems entitled Gott und Welt.
That we may rightly appreciate what this Monism is, let us now, from a
philosophico-historical point of view cast a comprehensive glance over
the development in time of man's knowledge of nature. A long series of
varied conceptions and stages of human culture here passes before our
mental vision. At the lowest stage, the rude--we may say animal--phase
of prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the
tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his
immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come
successive stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as
only the rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some
measure to conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a
low civilisation, and from these again, by a long series of intermediate
steps, we rise little by little to the more highly civilised nations. To
these alone--of the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean
and Mongolian--are we indebted for what is usually called "universal
history." This last, extending over somewhat less than six thousand
years, represents a period of infinitesimal duration in the long millions
of years of the organic world's development.
Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who
immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge
of nature. The rude primitive child of nature at this lowest stage of
development is as yet far from being the restless Ursachenthier
(cause-seeking animal) of Lichtenberg; his demand for causes has not
yet risen above that of apes and dogs; his curiosity has not yet mounted

to pure desire of knowledge. If we must speak of "reason" in
connection with
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