Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/429

Rh love of neighbor at expense of self; (2) contempt of body; (3) contempt of nature; (4) contempt of civilization; (5) contempt of family-life; (6) contempt of women.

As to religion Haeckel has this to say. Many scientists regard religion as a thing of the past. They think that the clear insight into the evolution of the world which we have obtained completely satisfies not only the causal need of our reason, but all the highest emotional needs of our nature. This view is in a certain sense true. For a perfectly clear and consistent conception of monism, the notions of religion and science become identical. Only a few decided thinkers reach, however, this view, fewer still have the courage or feel the need of expressing it.

Modern science must not only destroy the illusions of superstition, but erect a new edifice for the human emotions: a place of reason in which we may reverently adore the true trinity of the nineteenth century, the trinity of the true, the beautiful, and the good.

Just as the ancient Greeks embodied their ideals of virtue in the forms of gods, we can give our ideals of reason the forms of goddesses. The Goddess of Truth dwells in the temple of nature, in the green forests, upon the blue seas, on the snow-covered mountain-peaks. The ways of approach to this goddess are loving investigation of nature and its laws, the observation of the infinite world of stars by means of the telescope, and of the infinitely small world of cells by means of the microscope, but not senseless prayers and ceremonies.

Our ideal of virtue largely coincides with the christian ideal, as expressed in the Gospels and Paul's Epistles. The best part of christian morality consists in the rules of humanity, of love and forbearance, of compassion and beneficence. We place as much value, however, upon egoism as upon altruism; perfect virtue consists of a harmony between these.

The extension of our knowledge of nature, the discovery of countless beautiful forms of life, has awakened a new sense of the beautiful in us. Every blade of grass, every bug and butterfly, reveal beauties which we usually pass by. The admiration with which we regard the starry heavens and the microscopic life in a drop of water, the awe with which we examine the wonderful action of energy in the moved matter, the reverence which we feel in the presence of the law of substance,—all these are parts of our emotional life which come under the notion of natural religion.

Our monism also teaches us that we are children of the earth and therefore mortal, that we can enjoy the glories of this planet for a little while.

The modern man who possesses science and art—and hence also religion—needs no special church, no narrow enclosed space in which to worship. For everywhere in open nature, where he turns his eyes upon