As a matter of fact, religion never had, nor could have, anything to fear from these two quarters, which--as we can now see--could not in any way touch the essence of religious faith, as distinguished from some of its temporary forms; on the other hand, that very essence might be imperilled by a false but plausible philosophy, and grave practical consequences in the domain of conduct might arise from its spread. For if it is accurate to say that behind every ethic there stands--whether avowed or unavowed--a certain metaphysic, the converse holds true no less; every philosophy, in the exact proportion in which it is _ex animo_ accepted, will tend to produce its ethical counterpart. What we {55} submit in all seriousness is that the only real danger to religion that is to be apprehended to-day--a danger to which it is impossible to blind ourselves--is that involved in a certain metaphysical outlook, whose continued growth in popularity cannot but ere long produce its own results in the field of practice. The philosophy in question is intimately related to that Pantheism at some of whose implications we were glancing in our last chapter; if we refer to it here and subsequently by the name of Monism, under which it has of late obtained a considerable vogue in this country, it must be understood that we do not mean what Dr. Ballard calls _Theo_monism, but a far less carefully thought-out and tested theory of life, which at the present time is making a successful appeal to multitudes of inexact thinkers. The fundamental idea common to this school is that the universe, including our individualities or what we think such, constitutes only one being, and manifests only one will, which all its phenomena express. Separateness of existence, according to such a view--which, after all, represents only the extreme logic of Pantheism--is, of course, a chimaera, and so, _a fortiori_, must separate volition be. The only real will--_i.e._, the will of the universe--is regarded as good and right; and since there is no other will but that one, and seeing that none resists or inhibits it, it is ever being carried out, continuously operative. {56} To call this will even "prevailing" would be a misuse of language, since there is no other will for it to prevail against.