This is excellent; but then it is surely true that Professor Haeckel has taken great pains to state forcibly and clearly that these great questions cannot by him be regarded as open; in fact Mr M'Cabe himself says—
"Haeckel's position, if expressed at times with some harshness, and not always with perfect consistency, is well enough known. He rejects the idea of intelligent and benevolent guidance, chiefly on the ground of the facts of dysteleology, and he fails to see any evidence for exempting the human mind from the general law of dissolution" (p. 748).
Ultimately, however, he appears to have been driven to a singularly unphilosophic view, of which Mr M'Cabe says—
"It is interesting to note that in his latest work Haeckel regards sensation (or unconscious sentience) as an ultimate and irreducible attribute of substance, like matter (or extension) and force (or spirit)" (p. 752).
I call this unphilosophical because—omitting any reference here to the singular parenthetical explanations or paraphrases, for which I suppose Haeckel is not to be held responsible—this is simply abandoning all attempt at explanation; it even closes the door to inquiry, and is equivalent to an attitude proper to any man in the street, for it virtually says: "Here the thing is anyhow, I cannot explain it." However legitimate and necessary such an attitude may be as an expression of our ignorance, we ought not to use the phrase "ultimate and irreducible," as if no one could ever explain it.
Moreover, if it be true that—
"Haeckel does not teach—never did teach—that the spiritual universe is an aspect of the material universe, as his critic makes him say, it is his fundamental and most distinctive idea that both are attributes or aspects of a deeper reality" (p. 745)—
in that case there is, indeed, but little difference between us. But no reader of Haeckel's Riddle would have anticipated that such a contention could be made by any devout disciple; and I wonder whether Mr M'Cabe can adduce any passage adequate to support so estimable a position. Surely it is difficult to sustain in face of quotations such as these:—
"The peculiar phenomenon of consciousness is ... a physiological problem, and as such must be reduced to the phenomena of physics and chemistry" (p. 65).
"I therefore consider Psychology a branch of natural science—a section of physiology.... We shall give to the material basis of all psychic activity, without which it is inconceivable, the provisional name of psychoplasm" (p. 32).