The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-02-16
MONIsM.
BY REV. WILLIAM TUCKER, D.. d.

tive ana constructive IN ltS Iedcn-
ing. But it is radically revolution
ary in all directions. To receive
and hold it consistently we
must change our views Of God, man,
matter, life, mind, the world, Christ,
the Bible, history, civilization, re-
sponsibility, religion, ethics, duty and
destiny.
1t is the philosophy OF atheism, ma
terialism, pantheism, naturalism and
radicalism. To this philosophy the
universe is not mechanism but an
organism. It was not made, it grew.
1t is not divine creation, but an un-
foldment. God is not the creator of
the Universe, but its life. It is not
the creature of God, but his body. 1t
is not inferior to him, but part of his
nature and being. God is in nature
but not above it, before it, or superior
to it, as its producing cause. He is
the immanent, but not the transcend
ant God.
In this philosophy there are not
such distinctions in thought or Ian
guage as the infinite and the finite,
creator and creature, matter and spir-
it, the natural and the supernatural,
divine and human; because it holds
such distinctions are not true, as they
are contrary to the nature of things
There is in all the universe really but
one cause, one substance, one force,
one life, one mind. Dualism must be
displaced by monism and diversity by
unity in our Interpretation of nature.
This philosophy holds that truly
there is no such thing as beginning
or ending; only change.
To sustain this philosophy we
must derive order from chaos, life
from the lifeless, the living from the
dead, find intelligence in atoms, SEN
sation in plants and morality in mon
keys. The soul is born of nervous
shock, benevolence of sel6shness, and
all religion had its origin in ignor-
ance, superstition and the fear of
ghost
In its reasonings it gets something
from nothing, makes the effect great
er than its producing cause, raises
the stream of life higher than its
fountain, assumes spontaneous gener-
alton as fact without scientific evi-
dence, and holds that one species is
transmitted into another without
showing anything to sustain it but
variation of species, as though the
two were identical. It teaches, in ac-
counting for the origin of man, that
he was evolved from a lower order of
animals without presenting one case
of such evolution in all historical and
geological time.
If this philosophy is true in all it's
assumptions, nothing in philosophy,
science, or religion is settled. There
are no institutions of reason, no laws
of thought, no self evident truths, no
first and fundamental principles of
science. We must unlearn all we
have been taught or learned, and the
knowledge of the race is swept into
the gulf of empiricism and uncer-
tainty, our systems of logic are worth
less, the principles of mathematical
reasoning are unreliable, and the
ethical laws of human action can no
longer be trusted as safe guides in the
practical business of life. Are we
ready for this, and shall we risk the
coming in of this uncertainty by en-
bracing the system of monistic phil
osophyi
This philosophy is illogical. It's
advocates are not logicians, but
teachers and prophets They do not
reason, but interpret and predict.
Logic is not their forte, but assump-
ton and speculation. They have
but little use for the syllogism, but
prefer to infer certainty from uncer-
tainty, and aver positive conclusions
from things which are only possible
or probable. They all the time get
more in their conclusions than they
have in their premises, in violation of
an established axiom of deductive
logic. They start with the atom and
get the universe, with matter and get
life, mind, conscience, character, eth
ic' and religion.
Their inductive logic is no better.
The only methods of proof recog-
nized as legitimate by inductive logic
are veri6cations by experiment and
the application of hypothesis. Have
they ever shown by experiment that
men were evolved from a lower order
of animalsi This will not be claimed.
In fact, such an experiment as to the
origin of man at first was impossible,
as there was no one to make it. But