There was a man, once upon a day, who lived in East Aurora and kept
a store. He sold everything from cough-syrup to blue ribbon; and some of
the things he sold on time to philosophers who sat on nail-kegs every
evening, and settled the coal strike.
And in due course of time the storekeeper compromised with his
creditors, at twenty-nine cents on the dollar.
Some say the man went busted a-purpose to quit business and get out of
East Aurora. And he himself generally allowed the opinion to gain ground
in later years that he had planned his life throughout, from start to
finish, thus proving the supremacy of the will. Yet others there be, and
men of worth and social standing in the village--known for miles up the
creek as persons of probity--who claim that it was too much confidence
in the Genus Smart-Setter, and trotting horses at the County Fairs, that
made it possible for our friend to avail himself of the Bankruptcy Act.
Still others, too inert to follow the winding ways of a strange career
and give reasons, dispose of the matter by simply saying,
"Providence!"--rolling their eyes upward, then walking out, leaving the
wordy contestants humiliated and undone.
It will be seen that I am interested in this chapter of Ancient History:
and in truth, I myself occasionally ornament the nail-kegs. I claim it
was neither Providence nor astute planning that mapped this man's
course, but Providence, Planning and Luck; and I silence the adversary,
for the time, by citing these facts:
Very shortly after Providence and the Sheriff of Erie County--whose
name, by the way, was Grover Cleveland--had disposed of the East Aurora
grocery, our friend met a man in Buffalo who had a sweeping scar on his
chin, a wonderful secret, and nothing else worth mentioning.
This man secured his assets in Germany; he got them while attending the
University of Jena. The secret was gotten by an understanding with a
professor; the scar was received through a misunderstanding with a
student. The secret was a plan by which you could make glucose from
corn. In Germany it was only a laboratory experiment, because there was
no corn in Europe to speak of.
Here we had corn to burn, since in that very year the farmers of Iowa
were using corn for their fuel. Glucose is the active saccharine
principle in maize, but it does not become active until the corn is
treated chemically in a certain way, just as honey is not honey until a
bee puts it through his Maeterlinck laboratory.
Glucose is a food; it can be used for all purposes where sugar is
used--in degree, at least.
And every living person on earth uses sugar as food every day! Our
ex-grocer knew all about Hambletonian Ten and Dexter; but dextrine,
dextrose and glucose were out of his class. Yet he realized that if
sugar could be made from corn, there was a fortune in it for somebody.
Opportunity, we are told, knocks once at each man's door. Our David
Harum was forty, past, and he had often thought Opportunity was tapping,
but when he opened wide the door, darkness there, and nothing more!
Opportunity had knocked, but was too timid to stay. This time, he heard
the knock, and when he opened up the door, Opportunity made a rush for
him, grabbed him by the collar--catch-as-catch-can--in a grip he could
not shake off.
Mr. Harum examined as best he could the glucose the German student had
made, and then he watched the whole experiment worked out over again.
What the particular ingredients were, was still a secret. The man would
not sell out; he wanted to organize a manufactory and take a certain per
cent of the profits. David had saved a thousand dollars out of the wreck
at East Aurora; but he knew if he could show certain men that the scheme
was genuine, he would be able to raise more.
Five thousand dollars was secured. But the men who advanced the four
thousand dollars demanded an insurance-policy on the life of the German
chemist. This appealed to our David Harum as an excellent plan: if the
man who held the secret should die, all would be lost save honor. They
insured the life of the chemist for twenty thousand dollars. In a month
after, he was killed in a railroad wreck on a Sunday School excursion.
And the moral is--but never mind that now.
The twenty thousand dollars' insurance was paid to David Harum. He
repaid his friends immediately their four thousand dollars, and reserved
for himself, very properly, the sixteen thousand dollars to cover
expenses. He then started for Jena.
Arriving there, he found that the making of glucose was no special
secret, and to manufacture it on a large scale was simply a matter of
evolving the right kind of system and a plant. He hired a young German
chemist, who had just graduated, for a matter of, say, a thousand
dollars a year and expenses, and the two started back for America.
From this arose the Glucose Industry in the United States. In ten years'
time twelve million dollars was invested in the business; and in
Nineteen Hundred Three more than a hundred million dollars was invested.
Our East Aurora hero sold out his interests, in Eighteen Hundred Ninety,
for some such bagatelle as thirteen million dollars.
The young German student is now back at the Jena university, taking a
post-graduate course in chemistry--the first one is still dead.
* * * * *
I am told that there be folks who pooh-pooh college training and sneeze
on mention of a University degree. Usually these good people have no
University degrees, but have been greatly helped by those who have.
Our David Harums are not college-bred--a statement which I trust will go
unchallenged.
The true type of German student is made in Germany, and when taken out
of his native environment, often evolves into something less beautiful.
His lack of worldly ambition is his chief claim to immortality. His
wants are few; he rises early and works late; he is most practical in
his own particular specialty, but often most impractical outside of it;
he is plodding, patient, painstaking, and will follow a microbe you can
not see, as Thompson-Seton's hunter followed the famous Kootenay ram.
This simple reverence for the truth--this passion for an idea--this
desire to know--these things have given to the world some of its richest
treasures. We are aware of what the Rockfellers have done, but we seldom
stop to think of the unknown laboratory students, who made possible such
vast and far-reaching institutions as the Standard Oil Company, the
Carborundum Company, the Amalgamated Copper Company, and the various
beet-sugar factories, that give work to thousands, and lift whole
counties, and even some States, from penury to plenty.
Germany honors her scholars; and one of the strongest instincts of her
national life is her search for genius. Initiative is originality in
motion. Originality is too rare to flout and scout. Not all originality
is good, but all good things, so far as humanity is concerned, were once
original. That is to say, they were the work of Genius.
Germany's sympathy for the best in thought has occasionally been broken
in upon by pigmy rulers, who, for the moment, had a giant's power, so it
seems hardly possible that a government which encouraged Goethe should
have banished Wagner. The greatness of Kant was largely owing to the
fact that he was set apart by Frederick and made free to do his work;
and at this time, not another monarchy in the world would have had the
insight to keep its coarse hands off this little man with the big head
and the brain of a prophet.
And as Kant was the greatest and most original thinker of his time, so
today does a German University house the world's greatest living
scientist. Ernst Haeckel has been Professor of Natural History at Jena
for forty-two years. All the efforts of various other Universities to
lure him away have failed. He even declined to listen to the siren song
of Major Pond, and only smiled at the big baits dangled on long poles
from Cook County, Illinois.
"I have everything I want, everything I can use is right here; why
should I think of uprooting my life?" he asked. And yet, Jena, there in
the shadow of the Thuringian Mountains, is only a little town of less
than ten thousand inhabitants.
In Nineteen Hundred Three, there were five hundred pupils registered at
Jena, as against four thousand at Harvard, five thousand at Ann Arbor,
and nearly the same at Lincoln, Nebraska.
It will not do to assume that those who graduate at big colleges are big
men, any more than to imagine that folks who reside in big towns are
bigger than those who live in little villages. Perhaps the greatest men
have come from the small colleges: I believe the small colleges admit
this.
And surely there is plenty of good argument handy, in way of proof; for
while Harvard has her Barrett Wendell, with his caveat on clearness,
force and elegance; and Ann Arbor has Cicero Trueblood, Professor of
Oratory, whose official duty it is to formulate the College Yell; yet
Amherst, with her scant five hundred pupils, has Professor David P.
Todd, the greatest astronomer of the New World. I really wonder
sometimes what a University that stands in fear of Triggsology would do
with Professor Ernst Haeckel, whose disregard for tradition is very
decidedly Ingersollian! The actual fact is, Ernst Haeckel, the world's
greatest thinker, belongs in the little town of Jena, in Germany. At the
village of Coniston, you see the little hall where Ruskin read the best
things he ever wrote, to a dozen or two people.
At Hammersmith, the limit of a William Morris audience was about a
hundred. At Jena, Ernst Haeckel sits secure in his little lecture-hall,
and speaks or reads to fifty or sixty students, but the printed word
goes to millions, so his thoughts here expressed in Jena are shots heard
round the world.
American pedagogic institutions are mendicant--they depend upon private
charity and are endowed by pious pirates and beneficent buccaneers. The
individuals who made these institutions possible very naturally have a
controlling voice in their management. The colleges in America that are
not supported by direct mendicancy depend upon the dole of the
legislator, and woe betide the pedagogic principal who offends the
orthodox vote. His supplies are cut short, and purse-strings pucker
until his voice moderates to a monotone and he dilutes his views to a
dull neutral tint. I do not know a University in the United States that
would not place Ernst Haeckel on half-rations, and make him fight for
his life, or else he would be discharged and be reduced to the sad
necessity of tilting windmills in popular lecture courses for the
edification of agrarians. The German Government seeks to make men free.
It even gives them the privilege of being absurd; for pioneers sometimes
take the wrong track. We do not scout Columbus because his domestic
voyages were failures; nor because he sought one thing and found
another, and died without knowing the difference.
Haeckel's wants are all supplied; what he needs in the way of apparatus
or material is his for the asking; he travels at will the round world
over; visions of old age and yawning almshouses are not for him. He owns
himself--he does what he wishes, he says what he thinks, and neither
priest nor politician dare cry, hist! So we get the paradox: the only
perfect freedom is to be found in a monarchy. "A Republic," says
Schopenhauer, "is a land that is ruled by the many--that is to say, by
the incompetent." But Schopenhauer, of course, knew nothing of the
American primary, devised by altruistic Hibernians for the purpose of
thwarting the incompetent many.
* * * * *
Ernst Haeckel was born in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four, hence he is just
seventy-seven years old at this writing. His parents were plain people,
neither rich nor poor--and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The
greatest error one can make in life is not to be well born; failing in
this, a man struggles through life under an awful handicap.
Haeckel formed the habit of steady, systematic work in youth, and
untiring effort has been the rule of his life. Man was made to be well,
and he was made to work. It is only work--which is the constant effort
to retain equilibrium--that makes life endurable. So we find Haeckel
now, at near fourscore years, a model of manly vigor, with all the
eager, curious, receptive qualities of youth--a happy man, but one who
knows that happiness lies on the way to Heaven, and not in arriving
there and sitting down to enjoy it.
Ernst Haeckel gathers his manna fresh every day. I believe Haeckel
enjoys his pipe and mug after the day's work is done; but for stimulants
in a general sense, he has no use. In his book on Ceylon, he attributes
his escape from the jungle fever, from which most of his party suffered,
to the fact that he never used strong drink, and ate sparingly.
He is jealous of the sunshine--a great walker--works daily with hoe and
spade in his garden; and breathes deeply, pounding on his chest, when
going from his house to the college, in a way that causes considerable
amusement among the fledglings. Tall, spare rather than stout, bronzed,
active, wearing shoes with thick soles, plain gray clothes, often
accompanied by a half-dozen young men, he is a common figure on the
roads that wind out of Jena, and lose themselves amid the mountains.
The distinguishing feature of the man is his animation. He is full of
good cheer, and acts as if he were expecting to discover something
wonderful very soon.
To find the balance between play and work has been the aim of his life;
and surely, he has pretty nearly discovered it.
Once when a caller asked him what he considered the greatest achievement
of his life, he took out of his pocket a leather case containing a
bronze medal, and proudly passed it around.
This medal was presented to him in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine,
in token of a running high jump--the world's record at the time, or not,
as the case may be. Haeckel is essentially an out-of-door man, as
opposed to the philosopher who works in a stuffy room, and grows
round-shouldered over his microscope. "I may entrust laboratory analyses
to others, but there is one thing I will never let another do for me,
and that is take my daily walk a-field," he once said.
While lecturing he sits at a table and simply talks in a very informal
way; often purposely arousing a discussion, or awakening a sleepy
student with a question. Yet on occasion he can speak to a multitude,
and, like Huxley, rise to the occasion. Oratory, however, he considers
rather dangerous, as the speaker is usually influenced by the opinions
of the audience, and is apt to grow more emphatic than exact--to
generate more heat than light.
The comparison of Haeckel with Huxley is not out of place. He has been
called the Huxley of Germany, just as Huxley was called the Haeckel of
England. In temperament, they were much alike; although Haeckel perhaps
does not use quite so much aqua fortis in his ink. Yet I can well
imagine that if he were at a convention where the Bishop of Oxford would
level at him a few theological spitballs, he would answer, unerringly,
with a sling and a few smooth pebbles from the brook. And possibly,
knowing himself, this is why he keeps out of society, and avoids all
public gatherings where pseudo-science is exploited.
There is a superstition that really great men are quite oblivious of
their greatness, and that the pride of achievement is not among their
assets. Nothing could be wider of the mark. When Ernst Haeckel was
asked, "Who is your favorite author?" he very promptly answered, "Ernst
Haeckel."
His study is a big square room on the top floor of one of the college
buildings; and in this room is a bookcase extending from ceiling to
floor, given up to his own works.
Copies of every edition and of all translations are here.
And in a special case are the original manuscripts, solidly bound in
boards, as carefully preserved as were the "literary remains" of William
Morris, guarded with the instincts of a bibliophile.
Of the size of this Haeckel collection one can make a guess when it is
stated that the man has written and published over fifty different
books. These vary in size from simple lectures to volumes of a thousand
pages. His work entitled, "The Natural History of Creation," has been
translated into twelve languages, and has gone through fifteen editions
in Germany, and about half as many in England.
The last book issued by Professor Haeckel was that intensely interesting
essay, "The Riddle of the Universe," which was written in Eighteen
Hundred Ninety-nine, in two months' time, during his summer vacation. He
gave it out that he had gone to Italy, denied himself to all visitors
who knew that he had not, and answered no letters. He reached his study
every morning at six o'clock and locked himself in, and there he
remained until eight o'clock at night. At noon one of his children
brought him his lunch.
Unlike Herbert Spencer, whose later writings were all dictated--and very
slowly and painstakingly at that--Haeckel writes with his own hand, and
when the fit is on, he turns off manuscript at the rate of from two to
four thousand words a day. In writing "The Riddle of the Universe," he
took no exercise save to go up on the roof, breathing deeply and
pounding his chest, varying the pounding by reaching his arms above his
head and stretching. However, after a few weeks the villagers and
visitors got to looking for him with opera-glasses; and he ceased going
on the roof, taking his calisthenics at the open window.
This exercise of reaching and stretching until you lift yourself on
tiptoe, he goes out of his way to recommend in his book on
"Development," wherein he says, "There is a tendency as the years pass
for the internal organs to drop, but the individual who will daily go
through the motion of reaching for fruit on limbs of trees that are
above his head, standing on tiptoe and slowly stretching up and up,
occasionally throwing his head back and looking straight up, will of
necessity breathe deeply, exercise the diaphragm, and I believe in most
cases will ward off diseases and keep old age awaiting for long."
Here is a little commonsense advice given by a physician who is also a
great scientist. To try it will cost you nothing--no apparatus is
required--just throw open the window and reach up and up and up, first
with one arm, then the other, and then both arms. "The person who does
this daily for five minutes as a habit will probably have no need of a
physician," adds Haeckel, and with this sage remark he dismisses the
subject, branching off into an earnest talk on radiolaria.
* * * * *
Haeckel was educated for a physician and began his career by practising
medicine. But his heart was not really in the work; he soon arrived at
the very sane conclusion that constant dwelling on the pathological was
not worth while. "Hereafter I'll devote my time to the normal, not the
abnormal and distempered. The sick should learn to keep well," he wrote
a friend.
And again, "If an individual is so lacking in will that he can not
provide for himself, then his dissolution is no calamity to either
himself, the State or the race." This was written in his twenties, and
seems to sound rather sophomorish, but the idea of the boy is still with
the old man, for in "The Riddle of the Universe" he says, "The final
effect upon the race by the preservation of the unfit, through increased
skill in surgery and medicine, is not yet known." In another place he
throws in a side remark, thus: "Our almshouses, homes for imbeciles, and
asylums where the hopelessly insane often outlive their keepers, may be
a mistake, save as these things minister to the spirit of altruism which
prompts their support. Let a wiser generation answer!"
Doubtless Haeckel could make a good argument in favor of the doctors if
he wished, but probably if asked to do so his answer would paraphrase
Robert Ingersoll, when that gentleman was taken to task for unfairness
towards Moses, "Young man, you seem to forget that I am not the attorney
of Moses--don't worry, there are more than ten millions of men looking
after his case." Ernst Haeckel is not the attorney for either the
doctors or the clergy.
It was Darwin and "The Origin of Species" that tipped the beam for
Haeckel in favor of science. Very shortly after Darwin's great book was
issued, in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, a chance copy of the
work fell into the hands of our young physician. He read and spoke
English, and in a general way was interested in biology.
As he read of Darwin's observations and experiments the heavens seemed
to open before him.
Things he had vaguely felt, Darwin stated, and thoughts that had been
his, Darwin expressed. "I might have written much of this book, myself,"
he said.
The love of Nature had been upon the young man almost from his babyhood.
All children love flowers and mix easily with the wonderful things that
are found in woods and fields. At twelve years of age Ernst had formed a
goodly herbarium, and was making a collection of bugs, and not knowing
their names or even that they had names, he began naming them himself.
Later it came to him with a shock of surprise and disappointment that
the bugs and beetles had already had the attention of scholars. But he
got even by declaring that he would hunt out some of the tiny things the
scholars had overlooked and classify them. Every man imagines himself
the first man, and to think that he is Adam and that he has to go
forth, get acquainted with things and name them, reveals the true bent
of the scientist.
Doctor Haeckel was ripe for Darwin's book. He was looking for it, and it
took only a slight jolt to dislodge him from the medical profession and
allow the Law of Affinity to do the rest.
Wallace had written Darwin's book under another name, and if these men
had not written it, Haeckel surely would, for it was all packed away in
his heart and head. As Darwin had studied and classified the Cirripedia,
so would he write an essay on Rhizopods. Luck was with him--luck is
always with the man of purpose. He had an opportunity to travel through
Italy as medical caretaker to a rich invalid. Sickness surely has its
uses; and rich invalids are not wholly a mistake on the part of Setebos.
Haeckel secured the leisure and the opportunity to round up his
Rhizopods.
He presented the work to the University of Jena, because this was the
University that Goethe attended, and the gods of Haeckel were
three--Goethe, Darwin and Johannes Muller.
Muller was instructor in Zoology at Berlin, a man quite of the Agassiz
type who made himself beloved by the boys because he was what he was--a
boy in heart, with a man's head and the soul of a saint. Some one said
of Muller, "To him every look into a microscope was a service to God."
In his reverent attitude he was like Linnæus, who fell on his knees on
first beholding the English gorse in full flower, and thanked Heaven
that such a moment of divine joy was his.
Muller was a Jena man, too, and he gave Haeckel letters to the bigwigs.
The wise men of Jena discovered that there was merit in Haeckel's
discoveries.
Original investigators are rare--most of us write about the men who have
done things, or else we tell about what they have done, and so we reach
greatness by hitching our wagon to a star. For the essay on Rhizopods,
Haeckel was made Professor Extraordinary of the University of Jena. This
was in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two; Haeckel was then twenty-eight years
old; there he is today, after a service of forty-nine years.
* * * * *
Haeckel is married, with a big brood of children and grandchildren about
him. Some of his own children and the grandchildren are about the same
age, for Haeckel has two broods, having had two wives, both of whom
sympathized with the Teddine philosophy.
With the whole household, including servants, the great scientist is on
terms of absolute good camaraderie. The youngsters ride on his back; the
older girls decorate him with garlands; the boys work with him in the
garden, or together they tramp the fields and climb the hills.
But when it comes to study he goes to his own room in the Zoology
Building, enters in and locks the door. When he travels he travels
alone, without companion or secretary. Travel to him means intense work;
and intense work means to him intense pleasure. Solitude seems necessary
to close, consecutive thinking; and in the solitude of travel, through
jungle, forest, crowded city, or across wide oceans, Haeckel finds his
true and best self. Then it is that he puts his soul in touch with the
Universal and realizes most fully Goethe's oft-repeated dictum, "All is
one." And, indeed, to Goethe must be given the credit of preparing the
mind of Haeckel for Darwinism.
In his book, "The Freedom and Science of Teaching," Haeckel applies the
poetic monistic ideas of Goethe to biology and then to sociology. "All
is one." And this oneness that everywhere exists is simply a
differentiation of the original single cell.
The evolution of the cell mirrors the evolution of the species: the
evolution of the individual mirrors the evolution of the race.
This law, expressed by Goethe, is the controlling shibboleth in all
Haeckel's philosophy.
In embryology he has proved it to the satisfaction of the scientific
world. When he applies it to sociology our Bellamys are looking backward
to Sir Thomas More, and expect a sudden transformation to a Utopia, not
unlike the change which the good old preachers used to tell us we would
experience "in the twinkling of an eye."
Haeckel builds on Darwin and shows that as the Cirripedia which makes
the bottom of the ocean, the coral "insect" which rears dangerous reefs
and even mountain-ranges, and Rhizopods that make the chalk cliffs
possible, did not change the earth's crust in the twinkling of an eye,
so neither can the efforts of man instantly change the social condition.
Souls do not make lightning changes. Karl Marx thought society would
change in the twinkling of a ballot, but he was not a Monist, and
therefore did not realize that humanity is a solidarity of souls,
evolved from very lowly forms and still slowly ascending.
And the beauty of it is that the Marxians are helping the race to
ascend, by supplying it an Ideal, even if they fail utterly to work
their lightning change. In the end there is no defeat for any man or any
thing. When men deserve the Ideal they will get it. So long as they
prefer beer, tobacco, brawls and slums, these things will be supplied.
When they get enough of these, something better will be evolved. The
stupidity of George the Third was a necessary factor in the evolution of
freedom for America. All is one; all is Good; and all is God.
The Marxians will eventually win, but by Fabian methods, and Socialism
will come under another name. As opposed to Herbert Spencer, Haeckel
does not admit the Unknowable, although, of course, he realizes the
unknown. No man ever had a fuller faith, and if there is any such thing
as a glorious deathbed it must come to men of this type who believe not
only that all is well for themselves, but for every one else. How a
deathbed could be "glorious" for a man who had perfect faith in his own
salvation and an equally perfect faith in the damnation of most
everybody else, is difficult to understand.
A true Monist would rather be in Hell asking for water than in Heaven
denying it.
He loves humanity because he is Humanity, and he loves God because he is
God. As a single drop of water mirrors the globe, so does a single man
mirror the race. And the evolution, biological and sociological, of the
man mirrors the evolution of the species.
When one once grasps the beauty and splendor of the monistic idea, how
mean and small become all those little, fearsome "schemes of salvation,"
whereby men were to be separated and impassable gulfs fixed between
them. Those who fix gulfs here and now are hotly intent on showing that
God will fix gulfs hereafter; thus we see how man is continually
creating God in his own image.
His idea of God's justice is always built on his own; and as usually our
deities are more or less inherited, heirlooms of the past, we see that
it is not at all strange that men should be better than their religion.
They drag their dead creeds behind them like a stagecoach, with
preachers and priests on top; kings and nobles inside; and coffins full
of past sins in the boot. A man is always better than his creed--unless
he makes his creed new every day. These hand-me-down religions seldom
fit, and professional theology, it seems to me, is mostly a dealing in
ol' clo'.
* * * * *
In the month of September, Nineteen Hundred Four, Haeckel was a delegate
to the Freethinkers' Congress at Rome. To hold such a convention in the
Eternal City, right under the eaves of the Vatican, was surely a trifle
"indelicate," to use the words of the Pope. And it was no wonder that at
the close of the Congress the Pope at once ordered a sacred
housecleaning, a divine fumigation.
Forty years ago he would have acted before the Congress convened, and
not afterward. Special mass was held in every one of the Catholic
Churches in Rome, "partially to atone for the insult done to Almighty
God."
Over three thousand delegates were present at the Congress, every
civilized country being represented.
A committee was named to decorate the statue of Bruno that stands on the
spot where he was burned for declaring that the earth revolved, and that
the stars were not God's jewels hung in the sky each night by angels.
On this occasion, Haeckel said:
"This Congress is historic. It marks a white milepost in the onward and
upward march of Freedom.
"We have met in Rome not accidentally or yet incidentally, but
purposely. We have met here to show the world that times have changed,
that the earth revolves, and to prove to ourselves in an impressive and
undeniable way that the power of superstition is crippled, and at last
Science and Free Speech need no longer cringe and crawl. We respect the
Church for what she is, but our manhood must now realize that it is no
longer the slave and tool of entrenched force and power that abrogates
to itself the name of religion."
The Haeckel attitude of mind is essentially one of faith--Haeckel's hope
for the race is sublime. There are several things we do not know, but we
may know some time, just as men know things that children do not.
And yet we are only children in the kindergarten of God. And this garden
where we work and play is our own. The boy of ten, or even the man of
sixty, may never know, but there will come men greater than these and
they will understand. The Monist, the man who believes in the One--the
All--is essentially religious.
Haeckel has chosen this word Monism, as opposed to theism, deism,
materialism, spiritism.
Doctor Paul Carus is today the ablest American exponent of Monism, and
to him it is a positive religion. If Monism could make men of the superb
mental type of Paul Carus, well might we place the subject on a
compulsory basis and introduce it into our public schools. But Haeckel
and Carus believe quite as much in freedom as in Monism. All violence of
direction is contrary to growth, and delays evolution just that much.
The One of which we are part and particle--single cells, if you
please--is constantly working for its own good. We advance individually
as we lie low in the Lord's hand and allow ourselves to be receivers and
conveyors of the Divine Will.
And we ourselves are the Divine Will. The contemplation of this divinity
excites the religious emotions of awe, veneration, wonder and of
worship. It is a world of correlation. The All is right here. There is
no outside force or energy; no god or supreme being that looks on,
interferes, dictates and decides. To admit that there is an outside
power, something uncorrelated, is to invite fear, apprehension,
uncertainty and terror. This undissolved residuum is the nest-egg of
superstition. The man who believes that God is the Whole, and that every
man is a necessary part of the Whole, has no need to placate or please
an intangible Something. All he has to do is to be true to his own
nature, to live his own life, to understand himself. This takes us back
to the Socratic maxim, "Know Thyself." No man ever expressed one phase
of Monism so well and beautifully as Emerson has in his "Essay on
Compensation." This intelligence in which we are bathed rights every
wrong, equalizes every injustice, balances every perversion, punishes
the wrong and rewards the right. The Universe is self-lubricating and
automatic. The Greeks clearly beheld the sublime truths of Compensation
when they pictured Nemesis. It is absurd to punish--leave it to
Nemesis--she never forgets--nothing can escape her.
Our duties lie in service to ourselves, and we best serve self by
serving humanity. This is the only religion that pays compound interest
to both borrower and lender. Worship Humanity and you honor yourself.
And the world has ever dimly perceived this, for history honors no men
save those who have given their lives that others might live. The
saviors of the world are only those who loved Humanity more than all
else. All men who live honest lives are saviors--they live that others
may live.
He that saveth his life shall lose it.
We grow through radiation, not by absorption or annexation. To him that
hath shall be given. We keep things by giving them to others. The dead
carry in their clenched hands only that which they have given away; and
the living carry only the love in their hearts which they have bestowed
on others.
"I and my Father are one"--the thought is old, but to prove it from the
so-called material world through the study of biology has been the
life-work of Ernst Haeckel.
Undaunted we press ever on.
[Illustration: CARL VON LINNÆUS]