t flows about us, and in which we would otherwise float with vaguely
defined outlines. A microcosm forms itself in contradistinction to the
macrocosm, and a unity, a monad, arises, in regard to which there is now
warrant for inquiring into its duration and immortality as compared with
the stream of general becoming and passing away. For what does it matter
to religion whether, in addition to physical indivisible atoms, there are
spiritual ones which, by reason of their simplicity, are indestructible?
But that the unities which we call personalities are superior to all the
manifoldness and diversity of the world, that they are not fleeting
fortuitous formations among the many which evolution is always giving rise
to and breaking down again, but that they are the aim and meaning of all
existence, and that as such they are above the common lot of all that has
only a transient meaning and a temporal worth--to inquire into all this and
to affirm it is religion itself.

Parallelism.

The independence and underivability of the psychical, the incomparability
of its uniformities with those of mechanical or physico-chemical laws, has
proved itself so clear and incontrovertible, notwithstanding all the
distortions of naturalism, that it is now regarded as a self-evident fact,
not only among philosophers and epistemologists, and technical
psychologists, but for the last decade even among all thinking men, and
"materialism" is now an obsolete position. It was too crude and too
contrary to all experience to define the relation between physical and
mental, as if the latter were a mere secretion of the former, although a
very subtle one, or a mere epi-phenomenon of it, in such a way that all
reality and effectiveness was on the side of the physical.

In place of this, another theory has become widespread, which claims to
define the relation of the two series of phenomena better and more
adequately: the theory of psychophysical parallelism. It is not new. There
are occasional indications of it even in Aristotle's psychology. It was
suggested by Descartes in his automaton theory, by the occasionalists in
their parable of the two watches running in exact agreement; it was
developed by Spinoza and Leibnitz, and refined by the idealistic
philosophers, by Schopenhauer, Fechner, and the modern psychologists. The
form in which it is most prevalent now is that given to it by Spinoza, and
he is usually referred to in connection with it.