MONISM. As distinguished from Pluralism, Monism is that philosophy which traces back all phenomena to a single physical or spiritual principle. Physical (materialistic) Monism is represented by such a writer as Ernst Ilaeckel. " A broad historical and critical comparison of religious and philosophical systems. as a whole, leads as a main result to the conclusion that every great advance in the direction of profounder know ledge has meant a breaking away from the traditional dualism (or pluralism) and an approach to monism. Ever more clearly are we compelled by reflection to recognise that God is not to be placed over against the material world as an external being, but must be placed as a divine power' or ' moving spirit ' within the cosmos itself. Ever clearer does it become that all the wonder ful phenomena of nature around us. organic as well as inorganic, are only various products of one and the same primitive matter. Ever more irresistibly is it borne in upon us that even the human soul is but an insignificant part of the all-embracing world-soul ': just as the human body is only a small individual fraction of the great organised physical world." Again, "the monistic idea of God, which alone is compatible with our present knowledge of nature, recognises the divine spirit in all things. It can never recognise in God a ' personal
being,' or, in other words, an individual of limited extens ion in space, or even of human form. God is every where. As Giordano Bruno has it : There is one spirit in all things, and no body is so small that it does not contain a part of the divine substance whereby it is animated.' Every atom is thus animated, and so is the ether; we might. therefore, represent God as the infinite sum of all natural forces, the sum of all atomic forces and all ether-vibrations." Spiritual Monism may be described in the terms of The New Theology. " The philosophy underlying the New Theology, as I under stand it, is monistic idealism. and monistic idealism recognizes no fundamental distinction between matter and spirit. The fundamental reality is conscious ness. The so-called material world is the product of consciousness exercising itself along a certain limited plane; the next stage of consciousness above this is not an absolute break with it, although it is an expan sion of experience or readjustment of focus." See Ernst Haeckel, Monism as connecting Religion and Science. 1895; R. J. Campbell, The New Theology, New Popular Edition: and cp. Max B. Weinstein, Wclt-und Leben Anschauungen, 1910.