It should be needless to repeat that if nothing is known regarding all this, it is mere charlatanism to pretend that Science tells us anything about it, and those who make such assertions use words to which no meaning can attach. Unfortunately such a practice is far from uncommon in connexion with these questions. What sense can there be conceivable in the well-known materialistic doctrine that the brain secretes thought, just as the proper organs secrete bile or saliva? Bile and saliva are material substances, with a definite chemical constitution, each adapted to one definite function. But, Thought! It would be as intelligible to talk of secreting the British Constitution, the Steam Engine, and the Differential Calculus.
So much for the sole basis of Monistic argument. When we turn to some other considerations it certainly becomes no easier to understand the claim of Monism to be scientific. In the first place, as we have seen, in order to furnish the system with any semblance of truth, it has been found necessary to attribute to the ultimate elements of matter qualities which all our experience denies them; for Professor Haeckel has told us that "the two fundamental forms of substance, ponderable matter and ether, are not dead, and only moved by extrinsic force, but they are endowed[{135}] with sensation and will." Of such attributes, and that of self-mobility, it is unnecessary to add anything to what has been said already. Assuredly nothing can look less like the great ultimate reality, of whose ceaseless metamorphoses, we are but a flitting phase, than the material substances with which we can do what we like, investigating their laws, exploring their constitution, and setting them tasks which we know exactly how they will accomplish.
Another point in the same connexion is no less important. What is this one Thing, this Ultimate and Solitary Self-existent Reality, from which Monism takes its title? Professor Haeckel has told us of two fundamental forms of substance,—ponderable matter and ether. These he evidently supposes, as his creed requires, to be radically the same: but what right has he to take such a supposition for a fact? and unless this unity be a fact, what becomes of Monism? What has Science ever discovered that can justify any one in speaking of Ether and Matter as one and the same? How, then, can a theory that assumes their identity be termed "scientific?"
Or, leaving Ether alone, "that half-discovered entity," as Lord Salisbury styled it on a famous occasion, and restricting our attention to ponderable matter, concerning which we know a little more,—how can even this be spoken of as "One"? As we have seen already it is only by a figure of speech that the term "Matter" can be used at all.[{136}] It stands not for a single thing, but for countless millions and billions of atoms, dispersed through space, some of one kind some of another, no one of which can be imagined to owe its existence or its properties to any other. To say that matter is self-existent is to say that every several atom is self-existent. If this be so, and if this be the ultimate Reality,—then there are as many first principles, or first causes, as there are atoms. Yet none of these could do anything to the purpose towards the evolution of anything, without the concurrence of a multitude of others, nor would such concurrence be possible but for the reign of law, which none of them can have instituted, but to which all alike are subject. Were matter the great reality, even matter composed of "animated atoms," the term Monism would be sadly out of keeping, and should yield its place to Myriadism. If, on the other hand, there is a unifying principle amid such diversity, this it must be which can control and direct all to one end.
It is undoubtedly hard to understand how the First Principle of all things can be supposed to consist of Atoms, but this is one of the perplexities in which monistic doctrines abound. That atoms are, so far as we know, the ultimate constituents of the Fundamental Reality, Professor Haeckel admits. It is true, he adds, that our knowledge of these ultimate elements is still far from satisfying, and he likewise anticipates that atoms will someday be discovered not really to be ultimate, but forms of something, more primal still.[{137}]
Although [he says][174] Monism is on the one hand for us an indispensable and fundamental conception in science, and although, on the other hand, it strives to carry back all phenomena, without exception, to the mechanism of the atom, we must nevertheless still admit that as yet we are by no means in a position to form any satisfactory conception of the exact nature of these atoms, and their relation to the general space-filling, universal ether. Chemistry long ago succeeded in reducing all the various natural substances to combinations of a relatively small number of elements; and the most recent advances of that science have made it in the highest degree probable that these elements ... are themselves in turn only different combinations of a varying number of atoms of one single original element. But in all this we have not as yet obtained any further light as to the real nature of these original atoms or their primal energies.
From which it is clear, that, while the considerations above presented lose none of their force, the Monistic system, by the avowal of its chief apostle, is based on complete ignorance concerning all which could furnish it with a foundation.
But by far the most serious consideration yet remains. If, according to Monistic teaching men are but bubbles on the surface of reality, and are inevitably carried as it wills,—there is an end of all distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, merit and guilt. One man, or one line of conduct, is as good, or as bad, as another, being all equally[{138}] the products of Evolution, and aspects of the great Monistic principle;—"Jack the Ripper," and Socrates, Messalina and Queen Victoria, Chief Justice Scroggs and Sir Thomas More, are none of them in any possible sense one whit better or worse than the others,—inasmuch as they all did but act as puppets actuated by one and the same original, playing its own part in them all.
And in like manner as regards Truth. It must follow that a man's beliefs, like his actions, are as much beyond his own control as his stature or the colour of his hair. If Professor Haeckel calls Monism supreme wisdom, and I call it nonsense, we are equally right, for each is the mouthpiece of the same one all-embracing first-principle. What each believes is the only thing possible for him to believe, and, so far as he is concerned, is the only truth.
But here comes in a perplexity. If such be the case, if there be no Free-will, and no possibility whatever of doing or believing anything but what is predetermined for us as a necessary part of our being,—where is the sense of all the strenuous efforts that are being made to convert the people to a belief which, according to its own principles, nothing in the world can make them accept, unless nothing in the world can prevent them from accepting it? What again is the meaning of organizations, such as we hear of, for giving ethical instruction to the young on a Monistic and determinist basis? What can be the possible sense of giving ethical lectures[{139}] to young people, if it is really believed that the course of each is marked out for him more rigorously than the path of a city omnibus? "If" said Professor Paul Darnley in Mr. Mallock's clever satire,—"If we would be solemn, and high, and happy, and heroic, and saintly, we have but to strive and struggle to do what we cannot for an instant avoid doing,"—namely, conform to the laws of matter. If Monists were to limit their aspirations to this, their teaching would at least be intelligible. It ceases to be so, when they feel compelled to graft on their Monistic stock the Dualistic notions of Right and Wrong, Truth and Error. But, as Dr. Johnson said respecting Free-will, no one ever believes the arguments on the other side, however loudly he may profess to do so. And in the same way it is quite clear that no Monist can get himself really to accept Monism.[175][{140}]