The fact is, as most impartial students of psychology admit, that both religious and political ethics owe far more of their character to the "emotional cravings" combined with the interested propaganda current in the age, than to any real value they may possess from a utilitarian or, assuming the Divinity to be rational, from a Divine point of view. Ibsen has truly said that moral values are dependent on power-conditions; morals, politics and law are to a great extent shaped and propelled by might-conditions, by the fancied needs and interests of dominant classes; but the greatest factor in power-condition is psychic; the greatest world-propellant, the _ultima vires_, is more mind than muscle; it is this great world force which I have spoken of as Cosmic Suggestion.[37] Too little may yet be known of this force to trace its means of transmission, but the reality of its existence can no longer be doubted. It has been described in the following way: there exists an effluence or force generated by, or resulting from, the molecular activity of each individual brain. These forces are constantly influencing the souls of men, encountering, overcoming, and repelling opposition, and reacting upon the conscious intelligence of the authors of their generation; or they may unite themselves into groups and operate collectively, forming a psychic stream of power.[38] The fact of this power must be received into the monistic system as part of the one great law. A purely materialistic monism cannot contain it. Though we postulate a single law with a dual aspect or duality within unity, whatever hypothesis we assume will be of less importance than the discovery and co-ordination of the invariable laws of its operation. We accept the principle of "monism" not, I fancy, because we are compelled to do so by the logic of Haeckel, the great exponent of modern monism, or of his fellow-scientists, but because we are driven to do so without their help. The principle of oneness and unity, alone, is capable of satisfying our intellect, our sense of order and logic. There cannot be conflicting truths; there cannot exist true systems which disprove each other; all knowledge is complementary; there cannot be true objective facts and equally true subjective ideals which contradict them; otherwise the world is chaos and there is no reality. But if we know anything we know that matter is real and thought is real, and the law of their inter-relationship is within the same reality. No commonplace of science is more widely known or more firmly established than the law of the conservation of energy or of the persistence of force and of matter, which Haeckel calls the law of substance. Can we be content to believe that no force exists that is not susceptible to physical analysis? Or does the first step towards the elucidation of the ultimate and unsolved riddle of existence, that is, the real character of substance or the