Monophysitism Past and Present: A Study in Christology

by A. A. Luce

CHAPTER I

THE METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF MONOPHYSITISM

Monophysitism was a Christological heresy of the fifth century. It was condemned by the church in the middle of that century at the council of Chalcedon. Surviving its condemnation it flourished in the East for several centuries. Its adherents formed themselves into a powerful church with orders and succession of their own. Although the monophysite church has long since lost all influence, it is still in being. The Coptic and Jacobite churches of Egypt and Mesopotamia, respectively, preserve to this day the doctrines and traditions of the primitive monophysites.

The history of the sect, however, does not concern us here. The writer's purpose is to review its doctrine. Monophysitism is a system of religious thought, and, as such, its importance is out of all proportion to the present or even the past position of the churches that professed it. Its significance lies in its universality. It is grounded in the nature of the human mind. It is found in West as well as East, to-day as well as in the early centuries of our era. Wherever men bring intellect to bear on the problem of Christ's being, the tendency to regard Him as monophysite is present.

An examination of the heresy is of practical value. Our subject-matter is not an oriental antique or a curiosity of the intellect, but a present-day problem of vital moment to the Faith. If we are concerned with a half-forgotten heresy, it is because a study of that heresy serves both as a preventive against error and as an introduction to the truth. The doctor studies disease to ascertain the conditions of health; pathological cases are often his surest guide to the normal; just so the study of heresy is the best guide to orthodox Christology. It was in conflict with monophysitism that the church of the fifth century brought to completion her dogmatic utterances about Christ; and the individual thinker to-day can gain the surest grasp of true Christology by examining the monophysite perversion.

With this practical purpose in view, we now proceed to an analysis of the heresy. Monophysitism is a body of doctrine. It is a dogmatic system, in which the individual dogmata are controlled by a principle or dominant idea. As all the particular doctrines of monophysitism depend on this principle, and, as it is not properly a theological concept, but one borrowed from philosophy, we may call it "the metaphysical basis of monophysitism." An intelligent grasp of this basic principle is necessary to an appreciation of the whole system. Accordingly, our first concern is to ascertain and exhibit this metaphysical basis. In subsequent chapters we shall analyse in detail the doctrines specifically monophysite and trace the Christological errors back to their source in metaphysic.

THE A PRIORI AND A POSTERIORI IN CHRISTOLOGY

The following considerations prove the necessity of this procedure. Two methods of examining the being of Christ can be distinguished. According to the one method the facts of His life are reviewed as they are presented in the New Testament, and a formula is then constructed to fit them. The other method starts from the concept of a mediator between God and man. It supposes that concept actualised, and asks the question, "Of what nature must such a mediator be?" These methods may be distinguished, but they cannot be separated. No one, however scientific, can come to a study of the life of Jesus with an absolutely open mind. Presuppositions are inevitable. Similarly, as the a priori thinker develops his concept of a mediator, he compares the results of his thinking at every stage with the picture presented in the Gospel story, and that picture unavoidably modifies his deductions. Both diphysite and monophysite used a combination of these two methods. Each party took the recorded facts and interpreted them in accordance with their notion of what a mediator should be. Both parties studied the same facts; but the a priori of their thought differed, and so their conclusions differed. In the realm of Christology this a priori of thought is of paramount importance. Preconceived opinions inevitably colour our mental picture of Christ. Readers of the Gospel narrative find there the Christ they are prepared to find. On this well-recognised fact we base our contention that an examination of any Christological system must begin with the philosophy on which the system rests. That philosophy supplies the a priori, or the presupposition, or the metaphysical basis, whichever name we prefer.

We do not suggest that theologians have consciously adopted a metaphysical principle as the basis of their beliefs, and then have applied it to the special problem of Christology. That is a possible method but not the usual one. In most cases the philosophic basis remains in the background of consciousness; its existence is unrecognised and its influence undetected. If Christian thinkers took the trouble to analyse the basis of their beliefs about Christ, they would not halt, as they so often do, at the stage of monophysitism. If they laid bare to the foundations the structure of their faith, the danger of error would be reduced to a minimum. Viewed from the standpoint of timeless reason, monophysitism is based on a definite metaphysical idea. Not all monophysites have consciously adopted that basis; many, had they recognised its presence, would have rejected it. But it was present as a tendency. A tendency may be neutralised by counteracting causes; but it has its effect, and sooner or later it will produce positive results.

THE THREE TYPICAL CHRISTOLOGIES

The same truth holds of the other Christological systems. A different metaphysical idea lies at the root of each. Nestorian, monophysite, catholic, these three were the main types of Christologian in the fifth century. Each studied Christ's life. After studying it, the Nestorian said of Him, "There are two persons here." "Not so," said the monophysite, "I see but one incarnate nature of God the Word." The catholic replied, "You are both wrong; there is one person in two natures." All three types deserve close study. The thinkers were devout and sincere, and, for the most part, able men. There is no question here of superficial uninformed thought, nor of moral obliquity. The disagreement was due not to their vision but to their view point, not to the object of their thought or the process of their thinking, but to their different presuppositions and starting points.

Presented in this way the monophysite and other Christological controversies of the fifth and sixth centuries become phases of the cosmic problem. They thus regain the dignity which is theirs by right, and which they lose in the ordinary church histories. The heat of passion they aroused becomes intelligible. It was no battle about words. The stakes were high. The controversialists championed far-reaching principles with a decisive influence on the course of thought and conduct. Unfriendly critics usually portray the Christologians as narrow-minded and audacious. So, no doubt, they were, but they were not wrong-headed. If the matters in dispute between theist, deist, and pantheist are trivialities, then and then only can we regard the enterprise of the Christologians as chimerical and their achievements as futile. The different formulae represented attitudes of mind fundamentally opposed. No peace between catholic and monophysite was possible. They had conflicting conceptions of ultimate truth.

DEPENDENCE OF CHRISTOLOGY ON PHILOSOPHY

We mentioned above the two other chief Christological systems, the Nestorian and the catholic. No analysis of monophysitism which omitted a reference to these systems would be complete. They were three nearly contemporary attempts to solve the same problem. The comparison is of special interest when, as here, fundamental principles are under examination. It demonstrates the closeness of the connection between the Christological and the cosmic problems. In each of the three cases we find that a school of philosophy corresponds to the school of theology, and that the philosopher's dominant idea about the cosmos decided the theologian's interpretation of Christ.

This connection between philosophy and Christology is of early date. From the nature of both disciplines it had to be. Even in apostolic days the meaning of the incarnation was realised. Christ was apprehended as a being of more than national or terrestrial importance. The Pauline and Johannine Christologies gave cosmic significance to His work, and so inevitably to His Person. Theologians made the tremendous surmise that Jesus of Nazareth was no other than the Logos of the Neo-Pythagoreans or the Wise One of the Stoics. That is to say, He stands not only between God and man, but between Creator and creation. He is the embodiment of the cosmic relation. From early days, then, philosophy and religion were working at the same problem; their paths met at the one goal of the Ideal Person who satisfied both head and heart. The systematic Christology of the fifth century was, therefore, a completion of the work begun in the first.

THE CHRISTOLOGICAL AND THE COSMIC PROBLEMS

The essence of the Christological problem is the question as to the union of natures in Christ. Are there two natures divine and human in Him? Is each distinct from the other and from the person? Is the distinction conceptual or actual? The incarnation is a union. Is it a real union? If so, what did it unite? We have seen that such questions cannot be approached without presuppositions. What these presuppositions shall be is decided in the sphere of a wider problem. This wider problem is known as the cosmic problem. The solution given to it prescribes the presuppositions of any attempt to solve the specialised problem. We shall proceed to sketch the cosmic problem, and to indicate the three main types of answers given to it. It will then be evident that these three answers find their respective counterparts in the Nestorian, monophysite and the catholic solutions of the Christological problem.

As man's intellectual powers mature, two supreme generalisations force themselves on his consciousness. He conceives his experience as a whole and calls it the world; he conceives the basis of his experience as a whole and calls it God. To some minds the world, to some minds God, is the greater reality; but both concepts are present in varying proportions wherever thought becomes self-conscious. Here we have in its lowest terms the material for the ontological question, the first and the last problem of philosophy. God and the world, at first dimly conceived and scarcely differentiated, gradually separate and take shape in the mind as distinct entities. The concepts become principles, fixed by language and mental imagery. The gulf between them widens until they stand at opposite poles of thought. In their isolation they constitute a standing challenge to the mind of man. If he thinks the world in terms of time, he must postulate a creator. If he thinks the world out of time, he is forced to conceive a ground of the world's being. The world cannot be thought without God nor God without the world. The one necessitates the other. Yet when the thinker tries to define the terms, he can at first only do so by negatives. The world is what God is not, and God is what the world is not. The two primary concepts thus attract and repel each other. The mind's first task is to grasp them in their difference. It cannot rest there, but must proceed to attempt to reunite them and grasp them in their unity. Thus the main problem of philosophy is to conceive and find expression for the relation between God and the world. Christology attacks essentially the same problem. Christology is an attempt to define the relation between God and the world in terms of personality.

This relation has been conceived in three modes. According to the level of thought reached, or, as led by their disposition and education, men have made their choice between three mediating concepts. Hence derive three divergent types of thought and three outlooks on life fundamentally opposed. We shall take them in their logical sequence for convenience of treatment. The historical connection is of no importance for our present purpose, but it is noteworthy that the time order both of the schools of philosophy and of the corresponding Christological systems follows approximately the logical order.

THE FIRST SOLUTION OF THE COSMIC PROBLEM—DUALISM

The first attempted solution of the cosmic problem is best expressed in the concept "co-existence." God and the world co-exist. God is, and the world is; their relation is expressed by an "and." "God and the world" is the truth, all that man can and need know. This solution is verbal. It leaves the problem more or less as it finds it. The two principles remain ultimates; neither is reduced to the other. God still stands outside the world and the world outside God. Neither can explain the other. This dualism is the lowest stage of ontological thought. The thinker sees the problem, only to turn away from it. He surmises that there is some relation between the two; but he cannot define it, and it remains ineffectual. This was Plato's early standpoint. He established the idea as the truth of the thing, but he failed to find expression for the relation between idea and ideate. He took refuge in symbolical language, and spoke of the thing as a "copy" of the idea or as a "participant" in it. But as there was no causation on the one side or dependence on the other side, all that the earlier Platonic philosophy achieved was in its ideal world to duplicate the real. Plato's heaven simply co-exists with the world, and the relation between them is merely verbal.

This metaphysical idea survived Plato and Plato's system, and passed into common currency. It found and still finds expression in numerous speculative and practical systems. In religious ontology we find it in deism. According to the deist there was once at a definite point of time a relation between God and the world, the relation of creation. But, creation finished, the relation ceased. In other words, God created the world, and then withdrew into Himself, leaving the world to work out its own salvation. The deist believes in God; but his is a self-contained God, who does not interfere in the course of things or continue creating. Such a conception of God is useless for religious purposes, because it represents Him as out of all relation with the world.

CHRISTOLOGICAL DUALISM—NESTORIANISM

The Christological counterpart of dualism and of deism is Nestorianism. The Nestorians halt at the lowest stage of Christological thought. They admit Christ to be the meeting-point of God and man, but they nullify the admission by introducing dualism into the person of Christ. They set out to find the solution of the cosmic problem in Christ; they endeavour to express the relation between God and the world in terms of His personality. They bring the two concepts together, but they do not weld them. Faith and courage fail them at the critical moment. They substitute an association for a union. They leave God and man co-existing in Christ, but not united there.

Nestorianism is a halfway house on the road from Arianism to Christianity. It is a weak compromise. The deity in Christ is admitted, but its unity with humanity denied. The divine remains external to the human nature. According to the doctrine ascribed to Nestorius two persons, the son of God and the son of Mary, at the Baptism were mysteriously associated. The union consists partly in identity of name, partly in the gradual deepening of the association. As Jesus grew in spiritual power and knowledge and obedience to the divine will, the union which at first was relative gradually deepened towards an absolute union. Divinity was not His birthright, but acquired. Thus throughout His life the two personalities remained external to one another. The divine worked miracles; the human suffered. The Nestorian could pride himself on having preserved the reality of the divine and the reality of the human; he could worship the one and imitate the other. But his system was non-Christian, because it excludes the element of mediation. A dual personality could never make atonement or redeem humanity. God and man in Christ were brought into nominal contact, but there was provided no channel by which the divine virtue might pass into the human. The Nestorian remains content with his solution, because the background of his thought is dualist. The thinker's attitude to the cosmic problem decides his attitude to the Christological problem. Content to couple God and the world by an "and," he similarly couples by an "and" the Logos and Jesus Christ. Dividing God from the world, he divides Christ. Abandoning metaphysical relation between the cosmic principles, he despairs of finding, or, rather, has no motive for seeking a personal relation between God and man in the being of Christ.

SECOND SOLUTION OF THE COSMIC PROBLEM—MONISM

The second solution given to the cosmic problem is of special importance for our thesis. It had a direct influence on monophysitism, and may be regarded as supplying the metaphysical basis for that heresy. It represents an advance to a higher stage of thought, just as monophysitism, which depends on it, is an advance on Nestorianism, and has always been regarded as a more venial heresy.

The mind finding no satisfaction in dualism advances to monism. The spectacle of two unrelated ultimate principles impels it to seek and, if necessary, to invent some mode of reconciling them. Explain it as we may, the craving for unity, for synthesis, for mediation is radical in human thought. The mind cannot rest at anything short of it. God and the world, held asunder conceptually or only nominally united, constitute a contradiction in excelsis, and, as such, provide an irresistible motive for further and deeper thought.

As is natural, the swing of the pendulum carries the mind to the opposite extreme. Co-existence failing to supply the required solution, the key is sought in identity. God and the world are thought as identical. The terms are connected by the copula. God is the world, and the world is God. This is the truth of being, for the monist. The two principles are merged in one, and the contradiction solved by an assertion of the identity of the contradictories. Monism takes two forms. It may be either materialist or spiritual. One term must be selected as the reality, and the other written off as an illusion. If the thinker's bent of mind be scientific, he is disposed to make the material world the only objective reality, and God becomes simply a working hypothesis or a creation of the subjective mind. It would be beside our purpose to do more than mention this phase of monism. Spiritual monism, however, requires lengthier treatment; it is of vital importance to our subject. In this case the mind takes sides with God as against the world. God is the reality and the world the illusion. The world is God, in spite of appearances to the contrary. As world it has no substantive reality; it has no existence for self. It is the shadow of God, an emanation from Him, or an aspect of Him. Like dualism, monism is only a sham solution of the cosmic problem. It fails to keep prominent the idea of relation. A relation must relate. If its terms are merged, the relation falls to the ground. A relation must be such that, while the terms are unified, they are preserved as realities. It must both unify and keep distinct. To abandon either God or the world is a counsel of despair. To detract from the reality of either is treason to fact and tantamount to a shelving of the cosmic problem.

PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEOLOGICAL MONISM

The systems that identify God and the world range from the crude materialism of Democritus to the lofty spiritualism of Plotinus. Stoic cosmology occupies an intermediate position. The Stoic was nominally a pantheist, but he seems to have oscillated between a spiritual and a materialist explanation of the universal being. The monist system that prepared the soil for monophysitism and constantly fostered its growth was Neo-Platonism. In the hands of Plotinus all the main elements of spiritual monism were worked up into a speculative philosophy with a profound bearing on practical life. The world and the human spirit, for Plotinus, were simply manifestations of God. He taught that, as light issues from the sun and proceeds forth on its way, growing gradually dimmer till it passes into darkness, so the world of thought and thing has no true being apart from God, from whom it proceeded and to whom it returns. Spiritual monism found in Alexandria a congenial home. Blending there with oriental mysticism it produced a crop of gnostic speculative systems, in all of which Acosmism or a denial of the world was the keynote. Whether the problem was conceived in terms of being or of value, the result was the same. The world has no true being. Its appearance of solidity is a sham. It has no value. Compared with God, it is negligible. 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.

CHRISTOLOGICAL MONISM—MONOPHYSITISM

The essential doctrine of monophysitism is the assertion of the absolute numerical unity of the person of Christ. It carries to extremes its denial of the dual personality maintained by the Nestorians. All vestiges of duality were banished from His being; there were not two persons: there were not even two natures. There was in Christ only the one nature of God the Word. The human nature at the incarnation was absorbed into the divine. It no more has substantive existence than has the world in a pantheistic system. This is monism in terms of personality. Its presuppositions are those of a mind imbued with an all-powerful feeling for unity. It is faced with the problem of reconciling God and the world in the person of Jesus Christ. It brings to that problem a prejudice against the real being and the real value of the world. Hence it is led to draw the false conclusion that humanity, which is part of the world, is not a permanent element in the highest truth; that even perfect humanity, humanity representative of all that is noblest in the race, cannot be allowed true existence in the Ideal.

Monism abandons the universal relation by abandoning one or other of the terms to be related. Monophysitism cuts a similar knot in a similar fashion. It jettisons redemption by excluding from the Redeemer all kinship with that which He came to redeem. Nominally admitting human nature into union with deity, it destroys the reality of that transaction at a stroke by making the two natures identical. So the incarnation, for the monophysite, becomes a myth; no change in the nature of the Logos took place at it, and, consequently, no change in the nature of the Man Christ Jesus.

We may trace the likeness between the cosmic and the Christological problems still further. Monism is forced to attempt to give some account of the world's apparent reality. Similarly monophysitism had to try to explain those facts of Christ's life which on the face of the Gospel narrative are human and normal. The explanation offered is essentially the same in both systems. The monist asserts that the world exists only in the mind of the thinker. It is an illusion of the senses. The duty of the philosopher is to overcome the illusion by turning away from the world of sense and fixing his mind on true being; by ascesis and contemplation he endeavours to attain the ecstatic state, in which the illusion of the world's reality disappears, and the potential identity of man with the universal spirit becomes actualised in experience. Similarly, for the monophysite, the humanity of Christ was a creation of the senses. Christ's body was a phantom, and His human mind simply an aspect of Him. They were impressions left on the minds of His contemporaries. Having no substantive existence, no reality in fact, they were to be ignored in Christological dogma. They were not to be considered as part of the true Christ; they were not to be worshipped. No spiritual value attached to them. They were hindrances rather than helps to the religion that aimed at entire abandonment of self and absorption in the divine.

THE THIRD SOLUTION OF THE COSMIC PROBLEM—IDENTITY IN DIFFERENCE

We come now to the third and last solution of the cosmic problem. As we develop it, we shall endeavour to show that it supplies that metaphysical idea which forms the basis of catholic Christology. The two previous solutions failed. They do not satisfy the philosopher and they mislead the theologian. The one separates God from the world; the other merges them. Thus both, in effect, abandon the original enterprise. They destroy the relation instead of expressing it. The concepts both of co-existence and of identity have proved fruitless in the speculative problem, and in Christology have given rise to heresy. The third school of thought takes as its starting point neither God, nor the world, nor the two as co-existing, but the relation of the two. It makes that relation such that the terms related are preserved in the relation. Neither identity nor difference is the full truth, but identity in and through difference. God is not the world, nor is the world God. God is, and the world is. Each are facts. In their separateness they are not true facts. It is only as we conceive the two in their oneness, a supra-numerical oneness, that we can give their full value to each. The world is God's world; therefore it has being and value. The cosmic relation then is expressed not by an "and," nor by an "is," but by an "of." The God "of" the world is the key concept that unlocks the doors of the palace of truth.

It was in the prominence given to this concept that Aristotle's system made a great advance on that of his predecessor. Plato had established a world of ideas with the idea of the Good as its centre, but he left it unrelated to the world of experience. Aristotle insisted on relating the ideal and the real. His concept of relation was that of form and matter. The world apart from God is matter apart from form. It has only potential reality. When it becomes united to its form, it becomes actual. Its form makes it a fact—what it has in it to be. Aristotle conceives different grades of being. Unformed matter is the lowest of these grades, and God the highest. Each grade supplies the matter of which the next highest grade is the form. Ascending the scale of being at last we reach pure form. Thus the ladder of development is constructed by which the world rises to its realisation in God. Aristotle gave to humanity the conception of a God who transcends the world, and yet is immanent in it, as form is in matter. Thus Greek philosophy in Aristotle attained that spiritual monotheism which supplied the foundation for the edifice of Christian doctrine.

The effect of Aristotle's teaching was felt by all the ecclesiastical parties in the fifth century. As we shall see in a later chapter, some of the subsidiary elements of his philosophy are reflected in monophysitism. The dominant ideas, however, of the system, the conception of God and the world and the relation between them, were taken over by the catholic theologians, and incorporated into their Christology. We need not here inquire whether Aristotle's influence was direct or indirect. No doubt many of the theologians who constructed Christian doctrine had read his works. Whether that is so or not, they must have unconsciously assimilated his central doctrine. It was common property. The determination to keep God a reality and the world a reality and yet relate the two became the controlling motive of their thinking.

Aristotle in theory and application of theory has always a feeling for fact. The individual thing and the world of individual things are, for him, never negligible. Realised matter, life, the human spirit, human nature, are actualities and have their value as such. They are not all on the same level of being; they do not occupy the same rank; and it is the philosopher's business to determine their respective positions in the scale of being and value. But he cannot have his head in the clouds of contemplation, unless he have his feet on the earth of fact.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLIC CHRISTOLOGY

Catholic Christology has caught the spirit of Aristotle's teaching. It is not primarily speculative. It is in close touch with fact. It is the outcome of a deep-felt want. Redemption is the first demand of religious experience; so it is the motive and theme of all Christology. The soul views itself as a member of a world of souls estranged from God, and for its own peace and welfare seeks to effect a union between God and the world. Such a union, to be effective, must preserve the being and value of the world. If there were no world or only a valueless world, there would be nothing to redeem, or nothing worth redeeming. Seeking that union in personality, and in the most marvellous personality of history, the orthodox theologians by a true instinct ascribed to Him both divine and human natures. He is the cosmic unity of opposites. His person is the cosmic relation. In that person the lower term of the relation has true being and full value. Thus the Church steered a middle course between the Scylla of co-existence and the Charybdis of identity.

These a priori deductions as to the being of Christ were verified by a reference to fact. The life-story of the historic Christ comprises two distinct groups of experience. There are thoughts, deeds, and words attributed to Him that only God could have thought, done, and said. There are as well thoughts, deeds and words of His that only a man could have thought, done and said. Hence the diphysite doctrine was verified a posteriori. Again, in both groups of experience there is a never-failing connecting link. There is a unity lying deeper in His consciousness than the duality. Christ, the Agent, is the same in both parts. Whether as God or man, He is never out of character. Hence the unity of the person also was established a posteriori. Thus, to the orthodox Christologians, the expectation that the human Ideal would be a unity, comprising divinity and humanity, was justified by historical fact.

They found a further verification on applying the test of practice. Orthodox Christology satisfies the requirements of the soul. Man's chief spiritual need is access to God through "a daysman that might lay his hand upon both." An exemplar, even though perfect, is not adequate to his need. The unio mystica can only be experienced by the leisured few. Man demands a religion of redemption, a redemption that allows value to labour, to endeavour, to human thought, that recognises the reality of pain and sorrow and sin, a redemption that redeems humanity in all its phases and in the wealth of its experiences. An Agent that has not shared to the full those experiences is useless for the purpose. Redemption must be the work of One who knows God and knows man, of One who has the touch of sympathy; for to such a touch alone can humanity respond. The Christology that makes Christ Jesus consubstantial with God and with man satisfies man's deep-felt need.

SUMMARY OF THE CHAPTER

We have taken a triad of ontologies and a triad of Christological systems, placed them side by side, and examined them. The result of that examination is a triple correspondence. The metaphysical principle is found in each case worked out in a corresponding Christology. The comparison is of general interest. It reveals Christology as intimately connected with the workings of intellect, as in the main stream of the current of human thought, as capable of philosophic treatment. Further than that, the comparison is vital to the main argument of this essay. It provides the clue to the heart of our subject. The scientist, who wishes to understand a botanical specimen, pays as much attention to what is in the ground as to what is above ground. The seed and roots are as full of scientific interest as are stem, leaf and flower. Similarly, to understand the monophysite heresy, to be able to detect it and expose it, we must take it in the germ. We may push the illustration further. The properties of a botanical specimen are best studied in connection with organisms of allied species. We cannot isolate unless we compare. By comparison the essential features, functions and properties of the specimen under examination are elucidated.

It is by isolating the three germinal ideas of these three Christological systems and comparing them, that a full comprehension of monophysitism in all its stages, from seed to flower, is reached. We have used this method, and have found that the roots of the heresy lie in spiritual monism. In subsequent chapters we shall analyse its origins as a historical system, its specific tenets and its practical consequences. It will then be seen that the spirit of monism pervades the whole system.