all 'nature' or 'evolution.' " But from the primitive naturalistic
outlook there may arise reconstructions of nature and cosmic speculations
on a large scale, expanding into naturalistic systems of the most manifold
kinds, beginning with those of the Ionic philosophers and coming down to
those of the most recent times. Their watchwords remain the same, though
in an altered dialect: "nature and natural phenomena," the denial of
"dualism," the upholding of the one principle "monism," the
all-sufficiency of nature, and the absence of any intervening influences
from without or beyond nature. Rapidly and of necessity this last item
becomes transformed into a "denial of teleology": nature knows neither
will nor purpose, it has only to do with conditions and results. With
these it deals and through them it works. Even in the most elementary
naturalistic idea, that "everything happens of itself," there lurks that
aversion to purpose which characterises all naturalistic systems.

A naturalism which has arisen and grown in this manner has in itself
nothing to do with concrete and exact knowledge of nature. It may comprise
a large number of ideas which are sharply opposed to "science," and which
may be in themselves mythological, or poetical, or even mystical. For what
"nature" itself really is fundamentally, how it moves, unfolds, or impels,
how things actually happen "naturally," this naturalism has never
attempted to think out. Indeed, naturalism of this type, though it opposes
"dualism," does not by any means usually intend to set itself against
religion. On the contrary, in its later developments, it may take it up
into itself in the form of an apotheosis and a worship of nature. Almost
invariably naturalism which begins thus develops, not into atheism, but
into pantheism. It is true that all is nature and happens naturally. But
nature itself, as Thales said, is "full of gods," instinct with divine
life. It is the all-living which, unwearied and inexhaustible, brings
forth form after form and pours out its fulness. It is Giordano Bruno's
"Cause, Principle, and Unity," in endless beauty and overpowering
magnificence, and it is Goethe's "Great Goddess," herself the object of
the utmost admiration, reverence, and devotion. This mood may readily pass
over into a kind of worship of God and belief in Him, "God" being regarded
as the soul and mind, the "Logos" of Heraclitus and the Stoics, the inner
meaning and reason of this all-livi