exists, and that monism knows of but one existence,namely, that of the world; while the contrary view of the world-that of theism, which in a manner wholly incompetent, and historically wholly unjustified, is called dualism-supposes two existences, God and the world. But then this name does not correctly represent either itself or theism. It does not correctly represent itself: for the so-called monism does not, indeed, suppose that that which appears in the world is the really existing, or that the processes which come into appearance have again their final cause only in the appearance, but it seeks the final causes of the phenomena in laws and principles which can no longer be observed by our senses, and of those it again seeks the common, highest, and very last principle, the perception of which it either, with Häckel, renounces or finds it, with other theories, now in atomism, and in attraction and repulsion, then in the law of causality. Thus it has not only a single existence and mode of existence, but it does exactly the same thing that theism does: it seeks the final principles of the world. And it does not correctly represent theism: for theism also does not know of two existences to which the idea of existing is applicable in fully the same way—namely, the world and God-but in seeking a cause for the existence of the world, it finds it in God; the world, according to its view, only exists by the fact that it exists in and through God. So theism in this sense also contests with monism for the right of the name. Therefore, when teleology allows the opponent's view of the world to appropriate the name monism exclusively to itself, it can do this only in the same sense as that in which, in order to avoid disputes, we are satisfied with many irrational names which have forced themselves upon us; as, for instance, we can perhaps call the clerical party in Bavaria the patriotic, because it calls itself so, or as we accept the title of the ultramontane paper "Germania," at Berlin, without conceding to the bearers of those names the care of patriotism and of the interests of the German empire in a higher degree than to parties and papers of a different standpoint. In fact, this linguistic arbitrariness does not particularly tend to clearness of conception and to the avoidance of obscure phrases. |