rching understanding, but also for
its yearning spirit.

"Knowledge of the true, training for the good, pursuit of the
beautiful: these are the three great departments of our monism; by
the harmonious and consistent cultivation of these we effect at
last the truly beatific union of religion and science, so painfully
longed after by so many to-day. The True, the Beautiful, and the
Good, these are the three august Divine Ones before which we bow
the knee in adoration....

"In the hope that free research and free teaching may always
continue, I conclude my monistic _Confession of Faith_ with the
words: 'May God, the Spirit of the Good, the Beautiful, and the
True, be with us.'"

This is clearly the utterance of a man to whose type I unconsciously
referred in an article written two years ago (_Hibbert Journal_,
January 1903), from which I now make the following appropriate
extract:--

Looking at the loom of nature, the feeling not of despair, but of what
has been called atheism, one ingredient of atheism, has arisen: atheism
never fully realised, and wrongly so called--recently it has been
called severe Theism, indeed; for it is joyful sometimes, interested
and placid always, exultant at the strange splendour of the spectacle
which its intellect has laid bare to contemplation, satisfied with the
perfection of the mechanism, content to be a part of the self-generated
organism, and endeavouring to think that the feelings of duty, of
earnest effort, and of faithful service, which conspicuously persist in
spite of all discouragement, are on this view intelligible as well as
instinctive, and sure that nothing less than unrepining unfaltering
unswerving acquiescence is worthy of our dignity as man.

The above 'Confession of Faith,' then, is very well; for the man
himself very well indeed, but it is not enough for the race. Other
parts of Haeckel's writings show that it is not enough, and that his
conception of what he means by Godhead is narrow and limited to an
extent at which instinct, reason, and experience alike rebel. No one
can be satisfied with conceptions below the highest which to him are
possible: I doubt if it is given to man to think out a clear and
consistent system higher and nobler than the real truth. Our highest
thoughts are likely to be nearest to reality: they must be stages in
the direction of truth, else they could not have come to us and been
recognised