Beside the law of evolution, and closely connected with it, we have that great triumph of modern science, the law of substance--the law of the conservation of matter (Lavoisier, 1789), and of the conservation of energy (Robert Mayer, 1842). These two laws are irreconcilable with the three central dogmas of metaphysics, which so many educated people still regard as the most precious treasures of their spiritual life--the belief in a personal God, the personal immortality of the soul, and the liberty of the human will. But these great objects of belief, so intimately bound up with numbers of our treasured achievements and institutions, are not on that account driven out of the world. They merely cease to pose as truths in the realm of pure science. As imaginative creations, they retain a certain value in the world of poetry. Here they will not only, as they have done hitherto, furnish thousands of the finest and most lofty motives for every branch of art--sculpture, painting, or music--but they will still have a high ethical and social value in the education of the young and in the organisation of society. Just as we derive artistic and ethical inspiration from the legends of classical antiquity (such as the Hercules myth, the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_) and the story of William Tell, so we will continue to do in regard to the stories of the Christian mythology. But we must do the same with the poetical conceptions of other religions, which have given the most varied forms to the transcendental ideas of God, freedom, and immortality. Thus the noble warmth of art will remain, together with--not in opposition to, but in harmony with--the splendid light of science, one of the most precious possessions of the human mind. As Goethe said: "He who has science and art has religion; he who has not these two had better have religion." Our Monistic system, the "connecting link between religion and science," brings God and the world into unity in the sense that Goethe willed, the sense that Spinoza clearly expressed long ago and Giordano Bruno had sealed with his martyrdom. It has been said repeatedly of late that Goethe was an orthodox Christian. A few years ago a young orator quoted him in support of the wonderful dogmas of the Christian religion. We may point out that Goethe himself expressly said he was "a decided non-Christian." The "great heathen of Weimar" has given the clearest expression to his Pantheistic views in his noblest poems, _Faust_, _Prometheus_, and _God and the World_. How could so vigorous a thinker, in whose mind the evolution of organic life ran through millions of years, have shared the narrow belief of a Jewish prophet and enthusiast who sought to give up his life for humanity 1,900 years ago?