PROFESSOR HAECKEL'S RELIGION.

pROFESSOR HAECKEL has no more notion of the atti- tude of doubt than the most confident monk of the Middle Ages. He is a dogmatist of the purest water; but a dogma- tist who affirms almost all that the religious world denies, and denies almost all that it affirms. His address on " Monism,"* — one of his pedantic terms for the doctrine of "the essential unity of inorganic and organic nature, the latter having been evolved from the former only at a relatively late period," — which Dr. Gilchrist has just translated for us, is about the most dogmatic work which we ever came across. And the Professor is not only certain on the strength of his own finite intelligence, that there is no such Being as a personal God, he is even quite confident that Shakespeare and Leasing agreed with him,—Shakespeare, who embodied in his poetry the whole Catholic doctrine of the age which preceded him ; and Leasing, who wrote on "the education of the human race" with a mind as fall of the doctrine of a divine purpose as Professor Haeckel's is full of the denial of that doctrine. Professor Haeckel's largeness of mind may be measured by his describing what we suppose him to mean by the religion of Roman Catholics, as f tthe adoration of old clothes and wax dolls," since he couples with that description the remark that it includes "the thoughtless repetition of masses or rosaries," but he makes up for his narrowness towards one of the greatest religions of the world by his charity towards the religion of apes when he assures us that Christ's teaching, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," had found a place long before men appeared in the world "among the herds of apes and other social mammals." Professor Haeckel is fully convinced that " nine-tenths " of the men of science now living share his wonderful denials and still more wonderful convictions; indeed,

* London : Adam and Charles Black.

he goes on to enlarge his statement, and to assert that "all" men of science share them, or all in whom the following four conditions are realised :—" (I) Sufficient acquaintance with the various departments of natural science, and in particular with the modern doctrine of evolution; (2) sufficient acuteness and dearness of judgment to draw by induction and deduction the necessary logical consequences that flow from such empirical knowledge; (3) sufficient moral courage to maintain the monistic knowledge so gained against the attacks of hostile dualistic and pluralistic systems; (4) sufficient strength of mind to free himself by sound independent reasoning from dominant religious prejudices, and especially from those irrational dogmas which have been firmly lodged in our minds from earliest youth as indisputable revelations." It is of course, easy enough to affirm that " all " men of science agree with you, if you take care to except all those who disagree with yon,—which is, we believe, what these four conditions of Professor Haeokel really imply.

One of the moat curious features of Professor Haeckel's confession of faith, is the energy with which he assails the doctrine of perscrial immortality as something ineffably vulgar and unworthy. The cosmos, he says, is immortal,— which might be a satisfaction to the cosmos if it had any consciousness of itself as a whole, which Professor Haeckel would certainly not admit, since he considers that the cosmos was once inorganic, and has become organic only by the development of the evolutionary forces contained in it, while consciousness is an attribute only of a special organic de. velopment ; but we do not see that the immortality of the cosmos can be of any sort of account either to itself, since, properly speaking, the cosmos has no "self," or to any frag- ment of it which once had, but which lost that self in the process which Professor Haeckel describes as death. Here is the Professor's "confession of faith" on this subject :—

"As regards immortality, it is well known that this important idea is interpreted and applied in a great variety of ways. It is often made a reproach against our Monism that it altogether denies immortality ; this, however, is erroneous. Rather do we hold it, in a strictly scientific sense, as an indispensable funda- mental conception of our monistic philosophy of nature. Immor- tality, in a scientific sense, is conservation of substance, therefore the same as conservation of energy as defined by physics, or con- servation of matter as defined by chemistry. The cosmos as a whole is immortal. It is just as inconceivable that any of the atoms of our brain or of the energies of our spirit should vanish out of the world, as that any other particle of matter or energy could do so. At our death there disappears only the individual form in which the nerve-substance was fashioned, and the personal soul' which represented the work performed by this. The complicated chemical combinations of that nervous mass pass over into other combinations by decomposition, and the kinetic energy produced by them is transformed into other forms of motion.

' Imperial Omar, dead and turned to elan Mieht stop a hole to keep the wind away. 0 that that earth which kept the woild in awe Slmuld patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw.'

On the other hand, the conception of a personal immortality can- not be maintained. If this idea is still widely held, the fact is to be explained by the physical law of inertia ; for the property of persistence in a state of rest exercises its influence in the region of the ganglion-cells of the brain, as well as in all other natural bodies. Traditional ideas handed down through many genera- tions are maintained with the greatest tenacity by the human brain, especially if, in early youth, they have been instilled into the childish understanding as indisputable dogmas."

Now what seems to us so remarkable in this confession of faith is that everything which even Professor Haeckel regards as religion depends on this personality which he makes so little of, and treats as the mere breath which vanishes out of a mortal body as a scent exhales from a dead flower. Let us quote his panegyric on the true and inspiring religion of the twentieth century :—

"The school of the twentieth century, flourishing anew on this firm ground, shall have to unfold to the rising youth not only the wonderful truths of the evolution of the cosmos, but also the inex- haustible treasures of beauty lying everywhere hidden therein. Whether we marvel at the majesty of the lofty mountains or the magic world of the sea, whether with the telescope we explore the infinitely great wonders of the starry heaven, or with the microscope the yet more surprising wonders of a life infinitely small, everywhere does Divine Nature open up to us an inex- haustible fountain of (esthetic enjoyment. Blind and insensible have the great majority of mankind hitherto wandered through this glorious wonderland of a world; a sickly and unnatural theology has made it repulsive as a 'vale of tears.' But now, at least, it is given to the mightily advancing human mind to have Its eyes opened; it is given to it to show that a true knowledge of nature affords full satisfaction and inexhaustible nourishment not only for its searching understanding, but also for its yearning spirit. Monistic investigation of nature as knowledge of the true, monistic ethic as training for the good. monistic Bathetic as pur- suit of the beautiful—these are the three great departments of our monism : by the harmonious and consistent cultivation of those we effect at last the truly beatific union of religion and science, BO painfully longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow the knee in adoration ; in the unforced combination and mutual supplementing of these we gain the pure idea of God. To this 'triune' Divine Ideal shall the coming twentieth century build its altars."

"To this ' triune ' Divine Ideal shall the coming twentieth century build its altars !" And where will the " triune ' Divine Ideal" be when this organ of "anthropomorphism," on the purely ganglionic origin of which Professor Haeckel is never

weary of discoursing, has been finally exploded P The "triune' Divine Ideal" exists only, as Professor Haeokel himself de- monstrates, in those personalities which are, in his opinion, bound up in the closest union with "the elementary organs, the microscopic ganglion-cells," whose dissipation is as in- evitable and as near at hand as death, and whose temporary formation even, depends wholly on conditions which those who are bidden to rejoice in them are wholly unable to command.

Professor Haeokel would scoff at the idea that during the infinite ages in which inorganic life alone existed, and in which, according to his astounding conception of Creation, some single chemical element was slowly contriving to develop within itself by concentration or rarefaction some varieties which would result eventually in the formation of other elements, and so advance into the stage of chemical affinity and analysis, there was or could be any of this joy in a " triune ' Divine Ideal" which he regards as now constituting the glory of religion. He would not deny for a moment that on this earth, and every other such stage of life as he can conceive, all the beings who can form and enjoy this " triune ' Divine Ideal" are destined to vanish away as bubbles which rise and burst on the surface of the water.

He would admit, and indeed maintain, that not only the individuals who can glorify this " ' triune ' Divine Ideal " must each and all disappear, but that even the race which contains these individuals must vanish from every stage in which the temporary conditions that favour their existence bad pre- viously disappeared. He is perfectly aware that the " gan- glion-cells " on the generation of which this " ' triune' Divine

Ideal" depends, cannot continue to exist at all after the geologic and cosmic conditions which for a time promote their production, have ceased to be. To him the cosmos is a suc- cession of deserts, in which these "ganglion-cells " are mere temporary and occasional oases, so that only here and there can the" 'triune Divine Ideal" flash into existence, and even then with an absolute certainty of vanishing again as soon as the combinations which admitted of what we call "per- sonality," have died out. He scoffs at the notion that there

is anything in the "immortal cosmos" which has more regard to the production of personality than it has to its extinction. The principle of evolution, in his conception of it, has no more "purpose "in it, as personal beings conceive pur- pose, than has hydrogen or carbon itself. It is pure anthropo- morphism, he holds, to attach the slightest importance to the conception that when consciousness is once developed, it has any more security for its own continuance than have the short- lived individuals in whom it manifests itself. Nature is no more careful of the type than she is of the individual. Pro- fessor Haeokel must, on his own principle, echo Tennyson's account of the disdain of Natural Evolution for anthropo- morphic ideas :—

" So careful of the type ! but no ;

From scarped cliff and quarried stone, She cries,' a thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, all shall go.'" And consequently nothing can be more certain on Professor

Haeckel's principle, than that the " triune ' Divine ideal" before which he prostrates himself in reverence, is a mere periodic ildsh in the pan of the immortal cosmos. He is very eloquent on the joys of the " Nattir.1 or echer," of the physical

and psychical investigator; but there can be no physical and psychical investigator except in worlds where the necessary " ganglion-cells " have come into existence, and have not yet perished. He is very eloquent on the de- light of developing the idea of love to one's neighbours; but the idea of such love is inconceivable without the

formation of these ganglion-cells, and cannot possibly survive their destraction. He is very eloquent on the beauty of the universe ; but the beauty of the universe is a wholly

aabjective phenomenon which is absolutely non-existent with. out those personalities, the immortality of which he derides and regards as the vain invention of human egotism. Thus his idea of the cosmos is one in which the " ' triune' Divine Ideal," which is the essence of religion, can only shine at best like a kind of occasional aurora borealis over an otherwise blank and unconscious world. Indeed, according to him, it is part and parcel of the glory of the man of science that he can dissipate that idle dream of an inflated egotism that any sort of ideal—triune or otherwise—is the end or purpose of the cosmos. The order which he discovers there is an order in which consciousness is a mere temporary phenomenon,—tereporary and probably not very endur- ing. Man, he thinks, has the privilege of rising to an elevated plane in which he can even look down upon his own mind as a mere phase of that great impersonal tide of existence, which has no more regard for conscious ideals and human religions than it has for empty wishes and futile hopes. In Professor Haeckel's belief, the most religious men must be those who can most completely look down upon religion as a temporary phenomenon in a great procession of events which sweeps away thought and reverence and conscience themselves, just as it generates them, in the great tides of its impersonal advances and retreats. Professor Haeckel's religion is bound by the very law of its being to make very light indeed of its own phases. It is lost in the 'drift of that mighty "cosmic" gulf-stream which at once includes and submerges it. Now, we cannot hold that sort of religion to be a religion at all. The loud disdain for what is termed anthropomorphism always ends in making of God not something higher, but something vastly lower, than the highest of his creatures here known to us. M. Renan's suggestion of God as a sort of cosmic polyp that grows into points of vivid consciousness and then loses them again, is the nearest we can get to Professor Haeckel's idea of an "immortal cosmos." 'And what a base idolatry is that !