LITTLE JOURNEYS 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 and consecutive thinking; and in the solitude of travel-through jungle, forest, crowded city, or across wide oceans, Hæckel 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 Hæckel for Darwinism. In his book, "The Freedom of Science and Teaching," Hæckel 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, first expressed by Goethe, is the controlling shibboleth in all of Hæckel'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 Moore, 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." Hæckel builds on Darwin and shows that as the Cirripedia which make the bottom of the ocean, the coral "insect" that rears dangerous reefs and even mountain ranges, and the Rhizopods that made 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, the Marxians are helping the race to ascend, by supplying it an Ideal, even it 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 III. 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, Hæckel 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 death-bed 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 death-bed could be " glorious for a man who had LITTLE LITTLE OURNEYS 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 impassible gulfs fixed between them. Those who fix gulfs here and now are intent on showing that God will fix gulfs hereafter; and 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 stage coach, with priests and preachers on top; kings and nobles inside; and coffins full of past sins in the boot. A man is always better than his creed, unless perchance he makes his creed new every day. Hand-me-down religions seldom fit, and professional theology is mostly a-dealing in ol' clo'. PN the month of September, 1904, Ernst Hæckel was one of the delegates 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, not afterward. Special mass was held in every Catholic Church in Rome "to partially 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, in the course of his speech, Hæckel said, "This Congress is historic. It marks a white mile post in the onward and upward march of freedom. We have met in Rome not accidentally or 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, LITTLE JOURNEYS LITTLE JOURNEYS 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 Hæckel attitude of mind is essentially one of faith-Hæckel'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. As 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 ** Hæckel has chosen this word Monism, as opposed to theism, `deism, materialism, spiritism. Dr. 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 in our public schools. But Hæckel 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 conveyers of the Divine Will. And we ourselves are the Divine Will. |