far removed from monistic ideas. In searching out the causes of
phenomena, and exercising his understanding thereon, he is in the first
instance prone in every case to regard personal beings--in fact,
anthropomorphic deities--as the agents at work. In thunder and lightning,
in storm and earthquake, in the circling of sun and moon, in every
striking meteorological and geological occurrence, he sees the direct
activity of a personal god or spirit, who is usually thought of in a more
or less anthropomorphic way. Gods are distinguished as good and bad,
friendly and hostile, preserving and destroying, angels and devils.

This becomes true in a yet higher degree when the advancing pursuit of
knowledge begins to take into consideration the more complicated
phenomena of organic life also, the appearance and disappearance of
plants and animals, the life and death of man. The constitution of
organised life, so suggestive as it is of art and purpose, leads one at
once to compare it with the deliberately designed works of man, and thus
the vague conception of a personal god becomes transformed into that of a
creator working according to plan. As we know, this conception of organic
creation as the artistic work of an anthropomorphic god--of a divine
mechanic--generally maintained its ground almost everywhere, down even to
the middle of our own century, in spite of the fact that eminent thinkers
had demonstrated its untenability more than two thousand years ago. The
last noteworthy scientist to defend and apply this idea was Louis Agassiz
(died 1873). His notable _Essay on Classification_, 1857, developed that
theosophy with logical vigour, and thereby reduced it to an absurdity.[5]

All these older religious and teleological conceptions, as well as the
philosophical systems (such as those of Plato and of the Church fathers)
which sprang from them, are antimonistic; they stand in direct antithesis
to our monistic philosophy of nature. Most of them are dualistic,