Monism as Connecting Religion and Science | Page 7

in infinite space but mobile
elastic ether, and innumerable similar separate particles--the primitive
atoms--scattered throughout it in the form of dust; perhaps these are

themselves originally "points of condensation" of the vibrating
"substance," the remainder of which constitutes the ether. The atoms of
our elements arise from the grouping together in definite numbers of
the primitive atoms or atoms of mass. As the Kant-Laplace nebular
hypothesis has it, the rotating heavenly bodies separate themselves out
from that vibrating primeval cloud. A single unit among many
thousands of celestial bodies is our sun, with its planets, which
originated by being centrifugally thrown off from it. Our insignificant
earth is a single planet of our solar system; its entire individual life is a
product of the sunlight. After the glowing sphere of the earth has
cooled down to a certain degree, drops of fluid water precipitate
themselves on the hardened crust of its surface--the first preliminary
condition of organic life. Carbon atoms begin their
organism-engendering activity, and unite with the other elements into
plasma-combinations capable of growing. One small plasma-group
oversteps the limits of cohesion and individual growth; it falls asunder
into two similar halves. With this first moneron begins organic life and
its most distinctive function, heredity. In the homogeneous plasma of
the monera, a firmer central nucleus is separated from a softer outer
mass; through this differentiation of nucleus and protoplasm arises the
first organic cell. For a long time our planet was inhabited solely by
such Protista or single-celled primitive creatures. From coenobia or
social unions of these afterwards arose the lowest histones,
multicellular plants and animals.
By the sure help of the three great empirical "records of creation,"
palaeontology, comparative anatomy, and ontogeny, the history of
descent now leads us on step by step from the oldest Metazoa, the
simplest pluricellular animals, up to man.[13] At the lowest root of the
common genealogy of the Metazoa stand the Gastraeadae and
Spongidae; their whole body consists, in the simplest case, solely of a
round digestive sac, the thin wall of which is formed by two layers of
cells--the two primitive germinal layers. A corresponding germinal
condition, the two-layered gastrula, occurs transitorily in the
embryological history of all the other Metazoa, from the lowest
Cnidaria and Vermes up to man. From the common stock of the
Helminthes, or simple worms, there develop as independent main
branches the four separate stems of the Molluscs, Star-fishes,

Arthropods, and Vertebrates. It is only these last whose bodily structure
and development in all essential respects coincide with those of man. A
long series of lower aquatic Vertebrates (lancelets, lampreys, fishes)
precedes the lungbreathing Amphibians, which appear for the first time
in the Carboniferous period. The Amphibians are followed in the
Permian period by the first Amniota, the oldest reptiles; from these
develop later, in the Triassic period, the Birds on the one hand, and the
Mammals on the other. That man in his whole bodily frame is a true
mammal, becomes obvious as soon as the natural unity of this highest
class of animals is recognised. The simplest comparison must have
convinced the unprejudiced observer of the close constitutional
relationship between man and the ape, which of all the Mammals
comes nearest him. Comparative anatomy, with its deeper vision,
showed that all differences in bodily structure between man and the
Anthropoidea (gorilla, chimpanzee, orang) are less important than the
corresponding differences in bodily structure between these anthropoid
apes and the lower apes. The phylogenetic significance of this fact, first
emphasised by Huxley, is quite clear. The great question of the origin
of the human race, or of "man's place in Nature," the "question of all
questions," was then scientifically answered: "Man is descended from a
series of ape-like Mammals." The descent of man (anthropogeny)
discloses the long series of vertebrate ancestors, which preceded the
late origin of this, its most highly developed offshoot.[13]
The incalculable importance of the light cast over the whole field of
human knowledge of nature by these results is patent to everyone. They
are destined every year increasingly to manifest their transforming
influence in all departments of knowledge, the more the conviction of
their irrefragable truth forces its way. And it is only the ignorant or
narrow-minded who can now doubt their truth. If, indeed, here and
there, one of the older naturalists still disputes, the foundation on which
they rest, or demands proofs which are wanting (as happened a few
weeks ago on the part of a famous German pathologist at the
Anthropological Congress in Moscow), he only shows by this that he
has remained a stranger to the stupendous advances of recent biology,
and above all of anthropogeny. The whole literature of modern biology,
the whole of our present zoology and botany, morphology and
physiology, anthropology and psychology, are pervaded