Text: Monism recognises one sole substance in the universe, which is at once "God and Nature"; body and spirit (or matter and energy) it holds to be unseparable. The different ideas of monism and materialism, and likewise the essentially distinct tendencies of theoretical and practical materialism, are still very frequently confused. As this and other similar cases of confusion of ideas are very prejudicial, and give rise to innumerable errors, we shall make the following brief observations, in order to prevent misunderstanding: 1. Pure monism is identical neither with the theoretical materialism that denies the existence of spirit, and dissolves the world into a heap of dead atoms, nor with the theoretical spiritualism (lately entitled "energetic" spiritualism by Ostwald) which rejects the notion of matter, and considers the world to be a specially-arranged group of "energies", or immaterial natural forces. 2. On the contrary, we hold, with Goethe, that "matter cannot exist and be operative without spirit, nor spirit without matter." We adhere firmly to the pure, unequivocal monism of Spinoza: Matter, or infinitely-extended substance, and Spirit (or Energy), or sensitive and thinking substance, are the two fundamental attributes, or principal properties, of the all-embracing divine essence of the world, the Universal Substance.

See Also: ONE FORCE, ONE SUBSTANCE

Source: 121