About 1850 A. D., there began to be felt among scientific men a possibility that perhaps all of the natural phenomena of which we have knowledge are so inter-related that all of our observations are but different views of a few fundamental primary laws. These so-called laws or statements of facts in their natural order of sequence were always, and under all conditions, operative in natural affairs, had been quite thoroughly understood since Humboldt's time. But it remained for Herbert Spencer in England, and Ernest Haeckel in Germany, to correlate the vast quantity of facts gained from experiment and observation along the various lines of scientific research. Particularly has the latter been a most potent factor in formulating the new and necessarily predominating theology of the future--a system of belief which is in accordance with everything which the individual knows, and which is always ready to accept a new fact upon demonstration, although its reception may revolutionize even its fundamental concepts. This doctrine, which has been most aptly termed "monism," stands squarely upon its basis of "empirical investigation of facts, and the rational study of their efficient causes." In place of worshiping the trinities of the old superstitions, it holds for reverence the "good, the true, and the beautiful" wherever found, and in antithesis to the sacredness of Sabbath and the church, it holds that for the contemplation of the objects of its trinity, "all seasons to be summer and all climates June." While denying the existence of a God outside of Nature, the freedom of the human will and the possibility of an immortality for the individual human soul, as usually understood, it does insist upon the sequence of effect upon cause, and shows that here, in this earthly existence, we are forced to be virtuous if we would be happy, and that although we are not completely masters of our fates, yet it fundamentally lies with us, in the vast majority of cases, to so conduct our lives that either misery or happiness will result therefrom.