cosmos, lie (as we believe) in the direction of reconciling the metaphysical with the monistic system? We seek no escape from the underlying principle of one universal law which determines all matter, life and energy; but our monism must comprise the psychic factor. For us this cannot be stated in physiological terms. Force cannot be regarded as a pure attribute of matter. Recent advances in psychological research appear to endorse this view. It is, in any case, less important to insist upon one particular hypothesis, when much, at the present stage of knowledge, is insoluble, than to appreciate by observation and introspection the laws that appear to evolve from it. Haeckel cannot conceive mind apart from matter or, conversely, protoplasm without mind (for him they develop concurrently); yet why should the fact that both are subject to the same cosmic law invalidate the idea of the persistency of an immaterial force, which may even under certain conditions, or metamorphoses, break the partnership with matter; provided that the unit of psychic force is in itself immaterial?[39] This psychic unit Haeckel terms _psychoplasm_, that is, the materialistic basis of mind in protoplasm. The laws of psychic phenomena, however, only appear intelligible when we concede that the _psychoplasm_ possesses an immaterial aspect which, at a certain stage of development, may persist as "force," even after the disintegration of matter into its chemical components. On the other hand, it may, below a certain stage of development or intensity, lose cohesion and dissipate; organic matter, however, is never without it. The wonderful discoveries of recent psychological research, especially in the department of hypnotism, in the facts of memory and above all in the evidence lately forthcoming of the existence of telepathy, should encourage us to adopt a hypothesis which, to the materialistic philosopher, appears chimerical.[40] A final decision of the ultimate problem remains at present unattainable, its discussion is therefore of necessity speculative in character. But the need for recognizing the existence of a psychic factor, whose phenomena cannot be reconciled on a materialistic basis, makes its inclusion in the cosmic system imperative. This need is the greater in view of the tendency amongst an ever-increasing class to relegate all psychic phenomena to the chaotic realms of emotional thought, resulting in the propagation of the wildest fanaticism under such titles as Spiritualism, Christian Science or Theosophism.