We do not say too much, when we charge ethical naturalism with dissolution of all moral principles. Let {382} us examine them, for a moment, according to the old but still fundamental division into duty, virtue, and highest good.

According to the principles of that ethical naturalism, there can be no duty at all, no objective moral law, binding absolutely and in general. The motives of action are either the strongest and most durable instincts, or, in case of high culture, conventional agreement of that which benefits society. In the one as well as in the other case, when the duty is neglected, the appeal is not made to something absolutely objective and binding, but either to the highest instinct (and to this every individual has the right to answer with a Quod nego), or to agreement and custom; and as to this, every individual has the right to make his reformatory or revolutionary attempt at change—of course only upon the condition that his attempt is successful, and that it stands proof.

Relatively it is easiest for ethical naturalism to establish a principle of virtue, inasmuch as we have to look upon virtue as the principle of individual perfection, and inasmuch as even naturalism, by means of the indestructible impulse of man to attain moral ideas, can postulate an ideal of human action. But on closer examination even the naturalistic idea of virtue vanishes under our hands. Virtue, as individual morality, is constituted of the factors of duty and of the highest good, which form the motives of virtuous action. Now a system of morality which, as we have seen, is entirely wanting in an objective solid principle of duty as the motive of action, and which likewise, as we shall see immediately, is wanting in an objectively established highest good as the end of action, cannot possibly {383} produce any other idea of virtue than an abstract formal one. In ethical naturalism, even this form is subject to change. For, according to this system, not only the motive and end but also the form of moral action depend on that which in every circle of society and at every time proves to be the most successful form. It is the proof of success or failure which gives this form a certain traditional authority and a relative solidity—but only a relative one, and only until it is displaced by a still more successful form.

That, finally, ethical naturalism is also wanting in an objective end of moral action, in the idea and meaning of the highest good, is indeed not denied by naturalism itself. It is true it speaks with predilection of the idea of species, which man is to represent and to realize, and in that respect we can say that the highest good of naturalistic ethologists is the species or the idea of species.[11] But the idea of species is only the empty vessel which first becomes valuable by reason of its contents. Now, if we ask ethical naturalism the properties with which that idea of species is to be endowed, it certainly mentions properties, but those which are too rich; namely, it mentions the idea of all that is good in human life and the forms of human life, in concreto, the whole sum of all the conditions and acquisitions of the culture of mankind, art, nature, and science: the comprehensive idea of these acquisitions, the enjoyment of them, the work at them, is the highest good. Now, since no human individual can enjoy them all and work at them all at the same time, every individual, as {384} to disposition, inclination, and circumstances, has to enjoy a part of them, to work at a part of them, and to renounce a part of them. And since each single one of these good things, however valuable to the individual, may be refused to or taken away from him, he has again to learn to be satisfied with that idea of species, however little it is able to offer him, when separated from the empiric possessions of this earthly life. Thus with naturalism the highest good is either mentioned in an abstraction which does not offer us anything, or which, if we ask the meaning of that abstraction, is instantly drawn down into the low sphere and the varied multiformity of empirical and individual life, left to the chance of individual taste, and confounded with that which is connected with the highest good only in the second line and in a derived manner—namely, with the formations and actions of life which strive at and serve the realization of the highest good. Ethical naturalism is not able to produce out of itself an objective highest good which is for each individual alike attractive, rich, and comprehensive.

Moreover, since ethical naturalism proves itself insufficient for the principles of any and all morality, it is but a natural conclusion that it is still less able to produce those principles which are characteristic of the highest representation of human morality known to mankind, namely: Christian morality. Ethical monism has no room for three ethical fundamental views, whose full possession morality owes to Christianity, and which gives to Christian morality its highest motive power. One of these is a deeper conception of evil as a sin, as a positive rebellion against the good; another is faith in a future {385} absolute realization of the highest good in an end sometime to be reached by mankind and the individual and by means of a moral order of the world; and the third is the acknowledgment of the full worth of personality. Evil—to which of course no objective valid moral law, but only one conventionally established, stands opposed—is to ethical naturalism nothing but the action of an instinct which in this given case is not beneficial to man in his struggle for existence; the category of good and evil is entirely replaced by the category of the useful and detrimental. With the disappearance of the idea of sin as a transgression of the divine law, the correlated idea of holiness also disappears from the system of ethical naturalism. Besides, blessedness, complete harmony of the outer and inner man with the ideal in the state of mankind as well as of every individual, complete realization of the highest good for the whole as well as for the single through the means of moral work and perfection on the part of man and of holy and loving guidance and endowment on the part of God, is an aim which naturalism is not able to acknowledge, since, according to it, mankind and individuals continue in the ever-flowing stream of earthly incompletion until both reach their destiny in annihilation. A moral order of the world is an impossibility to it, since no holy and loving Ruler and Governor of the world, but only a blind mechanism, causes the course of things. Finally, the personality of man can be only perceived in its worth and in its full importance, when, in the first place, it is in the possession of freedom, of full moral responsibility; and when, in the second place, it lives beyond the span of its short earthly existence and may hope for a full realization of {386} all its ideals of virtue and the highest good for itself as well as for mankind. Both these points must be contested by monism and naturalism. The place of freedom is taken by absolute determinism; even man is only a natural product, the highest which naturalism knows, but still no more than a product of nature; his personality and his life, bound to the material body, cease with the death of this body, and therefore never reach the ideal of either morality or blessedness. All ideals are and must forever remain objective illusions which came forth out of the power of the corresponding noble impulse, imaginative objective conceptions of the moral impulses.

Sec. 2. Scientific Darwinism and Moral Principles.

Whilst Darwinistic naturalism surely injures the moral principles, the Darwinistic theories are friendly to them, if they, as mere scientific theories, restrain themselves within the limits of natural science. But in no other point of the entire realm of contact between the natural and intellectual sciences is it more difficult to observe the boundary-line than in reflecting upon the moral self-determination of man; here natural science is always in danger of going beyond its limits.

In the question as to the relation of the evolution theories to religion, the boundary-line can everywhere be easily drawn in theory and easily observed in practice. For it is entirely natural for man to look upon the phenomena of the visible world on the one hand, with a religious mind, as works and actions of an almighty Creator and Ruler of the world, on the other, with his observing and reflecting mind, as products of natural causes. With this double view, man by no means feels {387} himself dragged hither and thither between two conflicting views; he is able in his logical contemplation of the world scientifically to establish and arrange each for itself and both in their harmony, and has the full consciousness that the one, like the other, has subjective as well as objective truth. Or, if a single individual does not have this consciousness, he must at least admit that it is not Darwinism primarily which created the difficulty of this combined view of the world, but that the latter existed for man in the past as well as in the present.

But the relation of the Darwinian theories to ethical problems is quite a different thing. Here, in the first place, it is not the same process which is to be explained as well in regard to its natural conditions as to its moral cause. It is true that this double view deserves attention in so far as we can look upon every action which results from a moral determination also in reference to its natural side. If I have to raise my arm in consequence of a moral determination, then physiology and mechanism can demonstrate with it the whole theory of the motion of members. But this is not the question, when we treat of the relation between the natural and the ethical. In this example, the moralist examines the motives of my action, the scientist describes and explains the activity of the nerves and muscles of my arm, and as long as the scientist is not guilty of going beyond the boundary to which he is tempted, and which even now we are endeavoring to make clear, as long as he does not include the ethical motives in his physiological attempts at explanation, the one keeps himself neutral with reference to the other; each of them knows that he is {388} operating in a field which at first has nothing in common with that of the other. In a moral action, as such, the question is no longer as to a process which is to be explained as well in regard to its natural conditions as to its ethical cause, but of a process which either has its ethical cause, and then in its ethical value no natural cause, or which even in its ethical motives belongs to the causal connection of empirical nature with its indestructible chain of natural causes and natural effects. Now at this point the scientist, as such, is always exposed to the danger of denying the first part of our dilemma and affirming the second. For, in moral action, something which is elevated above nature and its causal connection always makes its way into this causal connection of nature, and with its action and the effects of this action wholly enters into this connection: and natural science which has to deal particularly with this causal connection of nature and with it alone, is on that account nevertheless always tempted to explain everything that it sees coming into this connection, in all its causes (even in those which no longer belong to this natural causal connection), out of it. It is therefore always tempted to trace even ethical action which, with its deeds, makes its way and enters into this causal connection, but which with its motives stands above it, as to its motives, back to a natural causal connection; and thus to contest the independence of ethical motives and their principles—which independence is not dependent on nature, but, on the contrary, frequently contradicts it. Ethics must adhere to the fact that the ethical determination of the will has its origin not in a natural condition, but in the ethical centre of personality; although all the conditions under which the ethical motive {389} originates and acts, belong completely to the causal connection of natural life, in which man himself stands as to the whole natural part of his being. The ethical realm stands above the natural realm, and shows its superiority partly by the category of moral demands whose imperativeness cannot have grown out of the mechanical necessity of the natural law, because it often enough contradicts the latter and carries out its demands in opposition to it, partly by the consciousness of individual responsibility which cannot be got rid of even by him who mentally establishes a system of determinism that denies responsibility, partly by the voice of the injured conscience which cannot merely be the dislike of a dissatisfied higher natural impulse, when it can speak of the same action for years, even for an entire human life, and even, where man has counterbalanced that once felt dissatisfaction of the higher impulse, by an oft-repeated satisfaction of it. In Book I, Chapter V, Sec. 1, we tried to show that even Darwin seems not to have entirely avoided this danger of explaining the moral from physical causes; while at the same time we acknowledge that he otherwise esteems the realm of the moral, and that he even finds the lofty position of man above the animal world still more decidedly expressed in his moral than in his intellectual qualities.

But such an intrusion of the physical into the ethical is by no means a necessary consequence of scientific Darwinism—only an ever-present temptation of it. He who once admits that even by means of development something new can originate, that even under the full influence of the evolution theory there appeared in the series of creation entirely new phenomena with the {390} appearance of life and the organic, and of sensation and consciousness, and still more with the appearance of self-consciousness and freedom, which phenomena no evolution theory is able to explain; and he who takes into consideration the weight of that other obvious fact that, in the origin and the growth of each single man, a time in which he acts with moral responsibility follows in gradual development a time in which he had but the value and the life of a cell,—such an one can explain the whole origin of mankind according to the evolution theory, and yet see something absolutely new coming forth with the appearance of moral determination. All conditions of the moral determinations of the will may be and are naturally conditioned, as, indeed, in this world the entire spiritual life of man is certainly bound to the conditions of his corporeal life; all preliminary stages of moral types which preceded the temporal appearance of moral beings, and which surround us still, those stages which appear in the animal world, may have preceded and prepared the way for the introduction of morally responsible beings into the world: the moral determination of the will itself nevertheless remains something new and independent—something which transcends nature.

If this fact is once admitted, then ethics also has free play to establish independently and render valid its principles. And then we have no longer any reason to treat of the relation of the different ethical principles to naturo-historical Darwinism; for this relation is that of absolute mutual peace.

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CHAPTER IV.

DARWINISM AND MORAL LIFE.

Sec. 1. Darwinistic Naturalism and Moral Life.

Precisely the same relationship between Darwinism and morality, which we found in treating of moral principles, presents itself when we ask about the relationship of Darwinistic ideas and moral life in its concrete reality. He who builds a system of monistic naturalism upon his Darwinism, if he is logical, and not better than his system, comes into inevitable collision with concrete moral life; while he who limits his Darwinism to the realm of natural science, remains in concrete life in peace with morality.

That Darwinistic ethical naturalism also comes into conflict with concrete moral life, becomes evident from the joy with which the advocates of subversion and negation greet the new principle of the "struggle for existence," and make it the principle of their own actions and social theories. This is not chance sympathy, but is founded upon the nature of ethical naturalism. Of him who learns to look upon himself only as a product of nature, though highly ennobled, we cannot expect any other principle than that of following his nature: not, indeed, the ideal nature of man—for this is an abstraction which man reaches only by means of a long {392} process of reflection—but his own empirical nature, as he finds it present in himself; for this is indeed that natural product as which man has to consider himself according to that theory. Where this leads to, everybody knows who knows human nature. If these consequences are not to be found in all ethical naturalists, and if they are perhaps the least evident in the system and life of the very ones who otherwise teach naturalism the most logically (Strauss, for example), we again most cheerfully admit that many men are better than their systems, and that in making objection to a system, even an ethical system, we in the first place do not say anything at all about the advocates of this system and their moral value. Often enough some noble and fruitful truth has been advocated by men who are personally contemptible, and often enough some dangerous error is propagated by men who are personally very amiable and moral, although the damage which such an error carries with it, must become evident in their lives, on closer observation. Besides, we must not overlook the fact, that what in a perverse system is still relatively true, and the thing which gives it a relative vitality, is borrowed from truth and from the correct system; and that all those who oppose the present fundamentals of morality, and especially of Christian morality, in a thousand ways live upon and consume the possessions which they owe to the same influences against which they contend.

But to whatever relative height the moral nobility of single advocates of ethical naturalism may rise, it is not able, at least not from its own principles, to produce thoroughly moral and truly cultivated characters; such are only produced where that which forms the character, {393} flows out of a spring of life whose origin is above nature and its series of causes.

From this we see that for the most part a very low idea of personality, a very low derivation of the motives of human action, is found in the works of Darwinistic moralists—as, e.g., we have seen in the works of Haeckel that to him the idea of a personality of God is inseparably connected with the idea of capricious arbitrariness, and that he derives all actions of all men from the motives of egoism.

But we also see, from still more common evidences, the fact that some of the very highest blossoms and noblest fruits of human virtue, as they ripen on the ground of Christian morality, are not even acknowledged, much less required, by ethical naturalism. We think particularly of the virtues of love, of self-denial, and of humility. Certainly, we do not deny that men who are inclined toward naturalism can and do possess love to a certain degree, but the highest exemplification of love, the love of enemies in the fullest sense of the word—not only compassion on the battle-field, but the full, forgiving, blessing love which renders good for evil, and even intercedes for a personal enemy, although he may be the intentional and successful destroyer of our whole earthly happiness—such a love may perhaps be demanded and admired by a naturalistic moralist under the imposing influence of the presence of such a love and in unconscious dependence on the motives of Christianity which surround him; but he will never be able to show from what point of his system it is to be deduced. On the other hand, it is easy to show him more than one point of his system which, far from requiring such love, {394} stigmatizes it as simple foolishness. Such a fruit only ripens under the care of him who gave his life for us while we still were enemies, and under the influence of the remission of our sin by our Heavenly Father.

Moreover, an ethical naturalist can also accomplish much in self-denial: he can make many great sacrifices, if he can thereby reach a desirable end that cannot be reached without acts of self-denial; he can show great strength and patience in a resigned endurance of the inevitable; and if we take into consideration the possibility of its being logically at variance with his system, he may perform all that which the highest morality requires. But a renunciation which is more than silent resignation, and which under certain circumstances can also become a joyful renunciation of all that was beloved and dear to man on earth, does not grow out of the soil of naturalism, and is possible only there where man carries in himself a possession which would render him still more fortunate and happy than the idea of species, and where he knows the cross of Jesus, and understands the word of the Lord: "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake, shall find it." Strauss is a striking proof that naturalism is not able to estimate the tasks of self-denial at their full importance. In his "The Old Faith and the New," although he speaks with great earnestness of moral demands, yet he deeply degrades that which is connected with a Christian renunciation of self and the world, when he reproaches Christianity with "a thorough cult of poverty and mendicity" (!) and, regarding its demand for self-denial, he denies that it has any comprehension of the tasks of {395} industry, of the virtues of home and family life, of patriotism and civil virtue.

Finally, we may make a similar statement in regard to humility. There certainly are ethical naturalists also who are modest. But when the prophets of ethical naturalism again and again announce that the great aim of all the discoveries of the evolution theory is to show us how far mankind has fortunately progressed; when their spirit of devotion is nourished by Goethe's Promethean word: "Hast thou not thyself accomplished all, thou holy glowing heart?"—and even when Haeckel prints as the leading motto of his "Anthropogeny" Goethe's poem "Prometheus"; when the struggle of selection is also elevated to a moral principle, and the life-task of an individual is limited to creating elbow-room for himself: then humility, indeed, is a virtue which a naturalist may acquire, not through his naturalism, but in spite of it; and the great naivete with which, in books of that tendency, haughtiness and passion for glory are treated as something necessarily understood, and their own ego is glorified, is a much more logical result. "We are proud of having so immensely out-stripped our lower animal ancestors, and derive from it the consoling assurance that in future also, mankind, as a whole, will follow the glorious career of progressive development, and attain a still higher degree of mental perfection." (Haeckel, "Hist. of Creat.") This is the theme which is repeated in many variations in all books of similar tendency. In the same book already referred to, we read: "Each free and highly developed individual, each original person, has his own religion, his own God; so it is certainly not arrogance when we also claim the {396} right of forming our own idea of God." Or, "The recognition of the theory of development and the monistic philosophy based upon it forms the best criterion for the degree of man's mental development." L. Buechner, in his collection of essays, "Aus Natur und Welt" ("From Nature and the World"), dedicates a long chapter to self-glorification, and finds confirmed in himself the word of the poet, "Great destinies are always preceded by spirit messengers"; and he, still living, prefaces his own biography in the latest edition of "Kraft und Stoff" ("Force and Matter"), and on the first page of the same publishes the testimonial which he received, when leaving the gymnasium: "The bearer of this testimonial excelled in the thorough study of literature, philosophy, and poetry, and as regards style in his productions showed an excellent talent." In view of these things, we certainly do no injustice to this tendency when we deny to it the conception of the idea and the practice of humility.

Sec. 2. Scientific Darwinism and Moral Life.

It is evident from the peace-relation between mere scientific Darwinism and moral principles, that naturo-historical Darwinism also remains in peace with moral life. We therefore have no longer to treat of any question of competency in the realm of concrete moral life, but only to mention the points of contact in which both realms, fully acknowledging their mutual independence, yet in an inferior way exercise some beneficial influence upon each other. {397}

Moral life influences Darwinism in so far as, by its mere existence, it cautions the advocate of the scientific evolution theory against effacing the differences between the moral and the natural, and against degrading man to the level of animals on account of his connection with the animal world. The naturo-historical idea of evolution, in case it should turn out to be correct, would exercise an influence upon moral life in a three-fold direction: First, it would add to all the motives of the humane treatment of the animal world—which certainly without it already has moral demands—a new one, and establish them all more firmly. Man would then recognize in the animal world which surrounds him branches of his own natural pedigree, and exercise his right of mastery only in the sense which Alex. Braun expresses, when he says: "Man consents to the idea of being appointed master of animals; but then he must also acknowledge that he is not placed over his subjects as a stranger, but proceeded from the people itself, whose master he wishes to be." A second service which the idea of evolution would have to render to the forming of moral life, would consist in the fact that it would favor all those ethical modes of contemplation and those maxims which regard the gradual process of development and the growth of character as the relative power of influences and conditions, and that it would give them hints for the perception of moral growth, in like manner as, in the before-mentioned parable, the Lord illustrates the imperceptible and continual growth of the kingdom of God with the growth of a plant. A third service which the evolution theory might be able {398} to render to moral life, would consist in the fact that it would give to the motive of perfection and progress, which is always and everywhere a moral lever, a new illustration and a new weight by pointing at the progress which development has to show in the life of nature.

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CONCLUSION.

If now, having reached our goal, we look back upon the way which we have traversed, we find a justification of the regret expressed at the beginning, that a scientific treatment of religion and morality is compelled to take a position in regard to theories which are not yet established. We found the most different problems—scientific, naturo-philosophical, metaphysical, religious and ethical—inextricably mixed, and were obliged, as one of our first tasks, to make an attempt at finding the clew and at examining and testing each single problem, together with attempts at its solution, separately, although keeping constantly in mind its connection with all other problems and their attempts at solution. We found ourselves led into the presence of a series of the most interesting problems, but not a single solution finished. That very attempt at solution which brought up this whole question, and which was repeatedly announced as the infallible key to the solution of all scientific problems—the selection theory—we found a decided failure, at least in the direction of the extension and importance which was given to this theory. And yet in spite of the hypothetical nature of all attempts at solution, we see investigators in all the realms of natural science strongly attracted by the very promising character of these problems and busily engaged in making attempts at solution; {400} and we see even philosophy strongly attracted by its interest in these works. Such a diligent work can certainly not be without gain; but wherein will this gain consist? Will it, as its antagonists prophecy, be like that which in former times alchemy brought to science, which, indeed, enriched chemistry by an entire series of new discoveries, but did not find what it sought, the one fundamental element from which all the rest are derived, which only confirmed, with a power acknowledged even to-day, the old doctrine of the elementary difference of the elements? Will the Darwinian investigations thus also make all possible discoveries by the way, but in place of that which they look for, in place of a common pedigree or of a few pedigrees for all organisms, finally only give additional strength to the permanence of species and the unapproachableness of the secret of their origin? Or can we derive from the reasons which the investigators urge in favor of the idea of an origin of species through descent and evolution, the hope that that mysterious darkness of prehistoric times upon which the works of our century have shed so much light, will still be illuminated even to the sources from which organic species came, and from which mankind also originated? We must leave the decision of these questions to the future and to scientists.

But we have to note one gain, which is so great that on its account, we willingly cease our regret in regard to the unfinished condition of these theories; for we owe the full enjoyment of this gain to that very unfinished condition. It is the gain which religion and morality get from these investigations, and which consists in the new and comprehensive confirmation of the conviction, {401} which, indeed, was established before, that religion and morality—Christian religion and Christian morality—rest on foundations which can no longer be shaken by any result of exact investigation.

The triumph with which the Darwinian theories were greeted by many as the new sun before whose rising all that mankind had thus far called light and sun turns pale, and the antipathy with which, on that very account, many to whom their religious and ethical acquisitions are a sacred sanctuary, turn away from these theories, urged us to investigate their position in reference to religion and morality. Now, if these theories had produced a certain undoubted result, we should unquestionably have been satisfied with the examination of the position of religion and morality in reference to this certain result. But since not a single result of those investigations is really established, we have found ourselves obliged to give our investigation a much greater extension and to discuss even all imaginable possibilities. The beneficial result of this comparison was, that religion and morality not only remain at peace with all imaginable possibilities of scientific theories, but can also, in the realm of the philosophy of the doctrines of nature, be passive spectators of all investigations and attempts, even of all possible excursions into the realm of fancy, without being obliged to interfere. It is in the realm of mere metaphysics that we first perceive an antagonist whose victory would indeed be fatal to the religious and ethical acquisitions of mankind: this antagonist is called elimination from nature of the idea of design. Fortunately, this metaphysical idea is in such striking opposition not only to the whole world of facts but also to all logical {402} reasoning, it has everywhere, where man perceives organization and a difference between lower and higher, especially in the contemplation of the world, of this cosmos of wonderful order and beauty, so decidedly all philosophical as well as all exact sciences as its adversaries, it lays its hands so rudely and so destructively not only upon the religious and ethical acquisitions but also upon all ideal remaining acquisitions of mankind, that religion and morality know, when fighting this adversary, they are in firm accord with all the spiritual interests of mankind.

This, in its most essential features, is the pleasing result of our critical examination; and such a demonstration of the immovably solid foundation, secure from all the change of opinions and all the progress of discoveries on which morality and religion rest, has still an entire series of further pleasing consequences in its train.

In the first place, it is a living and actual proof of the fact that religion and morality give to all sciences the full freedom of investigation. The religious and ethical interest itself not only gives, but even requires, this freedom of investigation. It requires it in consequence of that impulse of truth which religion has in common with every impulse of knowledge, and which in itself is an ethical impulse. In consequence of this impulse, religion must found its possession on nothing else than subjective and objective truth, and can look upon all the paths which lead through even the remotest realm of knowledge to the establishment of truth, only with sympathetic interest. Precisely those who see in religion more than a mere expression of emotion, and all those who require that their religious life and the object of {403} their religious faith shall possess truth, subjective and objective, cannot commit any greater folly than treating search for truth in any other realm with suspicion, or even ignoring it. They only injure that which they meant to defend, by rendering the purity of their own religious interest suspected, and by establishing more firmly the breach between religious life and faith and the other acquisitions of culture and interests of their time, of which neither religion nor science, but only a misguided tendency of their minds and hearts, is guilty. How much unfriendly and unjust judgment has already found utterance by means of the pen and voice, in reference to honest and meritorious workers, on the part of religious zealots who fail to recognize that close relationship of the religious with the scientific impulse of truth! How often and how much does such a judgment gain great consideration from a public of which but a few are able to form an independent opinion of the men and works which are thus abused before their eyes and ears, and how much of the aversion to the form in which the religious life of the present offers itself, on the part of those men who are thus suspected, is in the last instance to be attributed neither to be irreligiousness of these men nor to the deficiency of the present form of our religious life, but to the repelling effect of that unjust treatment!

Another gain of our discussion, correlated to that just mentioned, consists in the proof that religion and morality have their autonomous principle and realm which is not at all obliged to borrow the proof of its truth from the present condition and degree of our knowledge, but carries it in itself, although it stands in {404} fruitful reciprocal action with all the other realms of knowledge and life. Just as decidedly as we had to caution the advocates of religion against keeping themselves indifferent, suspicious, or even hostile, regarding the advances into the realm of secular knowledge, so decidedly do we like to see the workers in the realm of the knowledge of nature cautioned against confusing points of view, in thinking that they can through their scientific knowledge purify and reform the religious and ethical realms. They may purify and reform as much as they please, but only in their own realm. The only thing they are able to reform is our knowledge of nature, and in our religious and ethical life and perception only that which belongs to this natural part; but this is only the outer part of religious and ethical life: the source of our religion and morality springs from quite another ground than that which they cultivate.

A third gain from our discussion is the actual proof of the harmony between faith and knowledge, between the religious and the scientific views of the world. In our investigation we had no occasion for psychological or theoretical investigations as to faith and knowledge and their mutual relation; but if our discussion is not an entire failure, perhaps the actual exposition of a standpoint on which faith and knowledge may live at peace with one another, which is not bought by a sacrifice on either side, and which does not consist in a compromise of the two, but which has its reason in the deepest and most active interest of the one, in the full and unconstrained freedom of the other, a stronger proof for the intimate relationship of these brothers, between whom the present generation wishes too often to sow discord, than if we {405} had undertaken long religio-philosophical and theoretical investigations.

Finally, the results of our analysis have given us still another gain: they have led us beyond Lessing's "Nathan" and his parable of the "Three Rings." We call this a gain, without the least intention of discrediting by it the motives of tolerance and the points of view for the judgment of the character and religiousness of human individuals, which lay in that parable, or suspecting the motives of so many of our contemporaries whose religio-philosophical judgment is entirely expressed in that parable. We saw ourselves compelled to make a choice either of accepting or of rejecting ends in the world, and found that the world resolves itself into a senseless game at dice, and that the phenomena become more unintelligible the more important they are, if we ignore or even reject teleology. The acknowledgment of the latter prevented us from seeing in the world and its events merely the eternal stream of planless coming and going; it prevented us from accepting such an endless stream of appearance and disappearance, and therefore also an endless stream of the appearance and disappearance of new forms of religion in that creature for whose appearance we see all other creatures are only a preparation, and are even obliged to look upon them as a preparation in accordance with no other theory more than that of evolution. It also urged us to inquire as to the ends and designs of mankind, and we found this end in the disposition of man for a communion with God, for the state of bearing his image and of being his child. Now we have fully to acknowledge that Christianity, like all religions which claim truth and universal acceptance, {406} is to be analyzed with the very same means of science as all phenomena in the world of facts, and that therefore it is especially subject to all investigations of religio-philosophical, religio-historical, and historical criticism, to its fullest extent. But precisely such an analysis of Christianity leads us to a result which elevates Christian religion high above all other forms. It also confirms by means of science what, indeed, is established to a Christian mind as certainty from his own direct experience, that the quintessence of that which Christianity offers us, is truth and gives full satisfaction to soul and mind. For that analysis establishes, in the first place, that Christianity shows us the idea of God and the nature and destiny of man in a purity such as no other religion does, and in such a life-creating power that it is able to satisfy most completely all the nobler desires and impulses of soul and mind, and to overcome most successfully all ignoble ones. Furthermore, it shows us that these gifts of Christianity offered themselves, and still offer themselves, not only in philosophemes and doctrines, in parables and myths, in postulates and prophecies, but what, indeed, is not the case in any other religion, in an arranged course of deeds and facts which, in everything that is necessary and essential for the acquisition of that idea of God and for the realization of that ideal of mankind, legitimate themselves to criticism as historical facts, and which legitimate themselves as actions of divine manifestation by the fact, that they and their consequences also are really able to fulfill what they promise, and to bring mankind nearer to the accomplishment of that goal which they set up for it. Finally, it shows us, when it reviews and compares the development of {407} culture among all mankind, that the Christian nations have really borne the richest blossom and fruit which has appeared hitherto on the tree of mankind, and that Christianity, for the life of nations, has not only, like other religions, powers of preservation, but also powers of renovation and renewal which other religions are wanting. Even all the errors of superstition and immorality, of intolerance and lust of power, of so many of its advocates and confessors, at which the adversaries of the Christian view of the world so willingly point, are but a confirmation of its value. For they show us how divine and heavenly the gift must be, if even such errors were not able to smother its fruits. If we do not wish to suppose that mankind has foundations and ends which up to the present it is not yet allowed to know, we certainly must look for these foundations and ends where we find the best which has so far been given to mankind and which has been accomplished by it.

This acknowledgment of Christianity as the only true and only really universal religion leads us beyond another sentiment of Lessing, which has found an equally strong or perhaps still stronger echo in the mind. We mean the expression that, if he had to choose, he would prefer the continual search for truth to the possession of truth itself. We emphatically acknowledge the holy right and the high nobility of this impulse of investigation and activity, but we need not buy its acknowledgment and satisfaction at the price of being obliged to renounce a consciousness or the hope of a consciousness which is equally indispensable to our inner happiness as that impulse of investigation, and which first gives to this impulse its overwhelming power—namely, the {408} consciousness and the hope of really possessing the truth. For, in fact, we are not required to make this choice. There is a possession of truth which does not exclude, but requires, the search for truth: that is the possession of truth in the answer to the questions as to the starting point and the goal of our life, the possession of truth in the fundamentals of our religious view of the world. It is the certainty about the starting-point and goal of our life, which lastingly and effectively invites us also to look for and perceive all the ways which, in theory as well as in practice, lead from a firm starting-point to a certain end, and only the possession of truth in the fundamentals of our religious view of the world gives value and satisfaction to investigation in a world which, without this possession, contains for us only transitory and fleeting, and therefore only unsatisfactory, things, but which stands before us as the work and the theatre of revelation of a God and Father, and therefore gives to investigation inexhaustible joy and satisfaction when we look upon it from those stand-points.

In like manner as, at the outset of our investigation, we perceived in organic species creations of God, and in spite of this, or rather on account of it, looked upon the attempts at exploring their origin with so much deeper interest, we also see ourselves, in the still more direct religious realm, not at all condemned to stagnation when we acknowledge Christianity as absolute religion. This very acknowledgment alone makes a real progress possible for us. For every progress, in order to be a real progress, needs a firm starting-point and a certain goal; hence that which is shown and offered to mankind in Christianity. From this {409} starting-point and toward this end there are tasks enough for religious progress. The ever more definite investigation of the facts and doctrines of Christianity, the improvement and ever more complete reproduction of the scientific image in which these facts and doctrines are reflected in the mind of man the progressing adaptation of ecclesiastical life in divine service, and organization to the substance and the need of Christian religiousness, the harmonizing of our possession of faith with all other elements of culture of each period, the working up of that which is given to us in Christianity into the spiritual and ethical acquisition of a single personality and its ever more complete representation and realization in the individual and the common life, the progressing penetration of generations by the transfiguring light of religion and morality, and the progressive overcoming of the likewise progressingly developing kingdom of evil—in short, all that which the language of religion calls the growth of the kingdom of God, is work and progress enough, but certainly work and progress on the ground of a certain basis as the starting-point given to us by God, and work and progress toward a certain goal set for us by God.

It is only from this basis of a possession of truth as it is offered to us by Christian theism, and by the facts of redemption and of a reconciliation of man with God, that the breach between faith and knowledge, between religion and the life of culture, which at present takes place in so many a heart and mind, can be healed; and, far from seeking to cripple or hinder those who stand on this basis, it alone gives to their theoretical and practical activity its joyous strength and certain end, to {410} their sphere of knowledge its universal breadth. The Apostle Paul, at the end of 1 Corinthians, XV, when he takes a comprehensive view from the highest points of Christian hope to which he found himself led from those fundamentals, knows of no fitter words to conclude with and to give it a practical application than these: "Wherefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not vain in the Lord."

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Notes

[1] "The International Scientific Series." No. XIII.

[2] "Evolution of Man."

[3] It was only when the manuscript of this work was nearly finished and the first part of it had gone to the press, that the author received the second part of K. E. von Baer's "Studien aus dem Gebiete der Naturwissenschaften" (Studies in the Realm of Natural Sciences). It contains another essay on teleology, "Ueber Zielstrebigkeit in den organischen Koerpern insbesondere," and a treatise on Darwin's doctrine, "Ueber Darwin's Lehre," which Baer had promised long ago and which the public had anxiously awaited. It is no little satisfaction to find that I, from my modest premises, reached results regarding the naturo-philosophical problems and their weight in the religious realm which so fully harmonize with the views of this first authority in the realm of the history of development. I shall still have occasion here and there to avail myself of a study of this latest and most important publication upon the question of Darwinism, and shall confine myself here to the remark that von Baer, although he rejects the selection theory and the superficial treatment of the principle of evolution on the part of materialists, is by no means disinclined to the idea of the origin of species through descent, whether in gradual development or in leaps; and that in this respect he could no longer be counted among the advocates of the group above referred to, but among those which we mention farther on, had he not repeatedly and forcibly confessed, with a modesty worthy of acknowledgment, his total ignorance concerning the manner in which certain forms of life, especially the higher ones, originated. The origin of higher species without the supposition of a descent is to him unexplainable, because the individuals of these species are, in their first development of life, so dependent on the mother. Furthermore, he points out the fact that in early periods of the earth the organic forming power which ruled, must have been a higher one than it is at the present time; in like manner as the first period in the embryonic development of individuals is to-day the most productive. This higher power of organization, he says, could consist in a higher power of changing organisms into new species, as well as in a higher power of producing new species through primitive generation; or it could consist in both. In general, there is no reason to suppose that primitive generations which took place at the first origination of life on earth, could not have been repeated later and oftener. The nearer a generation was to these individuals originated through primitive generation, the greater was undoubtedly its flexibility and changeableness; the farther, the greater the fixity of type.

[4] After the completion this manuscript, the author found that K. E. von Baer, in his treatise upon Darwin's doctrine, pays especial attention to the change of generation and also to the metamorphosis of plants and animals in exactly the same sense and reaches the same conclusion.

[5] Compare Max Mueller, "Lectures on the Science of Language," 6th ed., London, 1871, vol. I, p. 403.

[6] Compare v. Baer, "Studies, etc.," p. 294 ff.

[7] Darwin says, on page 146, Eng. Ed., of his "Descent of Man": "In the earlier editions of my 'Origin of Species', I perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest.... I did not formerly sufficiently consider the existence of structures which, as far as we can at present judge, are neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my work.... An unexplained residuum of change, perhaps a large one, must be left to the assumed uniform action of those unknown agencies, which occasionally induce strongly-marked and abrupt deviations of structure in our domestic productions."

[8] This word, which is of recent coinage in Germany, has been found so incapable of being rendered by an exact English equivalent, that it has been thought best to retain it and to give the author's own explanation of the meaning which he desired it to express. He says, in a note to the translator: "I was led to this idea [of Auslosung] in a small essay of Robert von Mayer ("Ueber Ausloesung," 1876). Afterwards Mayer personally stated to me that he heartily approved the emphasis I had given to this idea, and said that he had only thought of the fact that psychical processes, like the action of the will, losen aus (release) physiological processes, like the action of the muscles, and that I had carried the idea farther, in saying that psychical processes are ausgelost (released) by physiological processes, and that this is a very important step farther on the way of investigation. Mayer himself thought it would be necessary to call the attention to this, when he further developed the ideas he had given in the before-mentioned essay; his intention to do so was prevented by his death.

"Auslosung is a word originated by modern mechanical science, and means: (1.) Slight mechanical operations of detaching and the like, by which another and more important action, whose forces were heretofore restrained, can be set into activity: e.g., the pressure which sets in motion a machine, previously at rest, is Auslosung; the pressure on the trigger of a gun is Auslosung; the friction of a match which is the beginning of a great fire is Auslosung. (2.) This idea may now be applied to chemical processes: e.g., a glass of sugar-water will remain sweet unless some foreign element is introduced into it, but the moment it receives a fermenting substance either by chance, from the air, or with intention, then the sugar water is brought into a process of chemical decomposition, and from this there results Auslosung; but the introduction of the fermenting agent into the sugar-water is Auslosung. (3.) Von Mayer applies this idea to psycho-physical relations of life, and says: when the will acting through the agency of the motor nerves sets in motion the muscles, this is Auslosung."—[TRANS.]

[9] For the use of readers who do not understand Greek, we may state that the word teleology is derived from the Greek word telos, Gen. teleos: end, purpose, aim; and means the "doctrine of design or a conformity to the end in view," or, as K. E. von Baer prefers and wishes to have introduced into scientific language, "the doctrine of the striving toward an end" (Zielstrebigkeit). It seems to be quite a superficial treatment of an idea on whose reception or rejection no less a thing than an entire view of the world with all its most important and deepest questions depends, when Dr. G. Seidlitz, in an essay on the success of Darwinism ("Ausland," 1874, No. 37), states incidentally that teleology is derived from the Greek [Greek: teleos] perfect. It is true that the Greek adjective for perfect is also derived from that noun, [Greek: telos], which has the same root as the German word Ziel, and there is even an Ionic form for that adjective which is [Greek: teleos], but the Attic form is [Greek: teleios]; and since modern languages, when a choice is allowed, do not derive their Greek foreign words from the Ionic, but from the Attic dialect, that word—were it really derived from that adjective and did it express "doctrine of perfection"—would have to be teleiology, or, in Latinized form, teliology. As far as we know, the word, since it was introduced into scientific language, has never been derived from any other root than from [Greek: telos], Gen. [Greek: teleos], end, and has never been used in any other sense than to express the doctrine of a purpose and end in the world.

[10] Compare "History, Essays, and Orations of the 6th General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance," New York, Harper Bros., 1874, p. 264-271.

[11] Compare D. F. Strauss, the most celebrated moral philosopher of Monism, in Sec. 74 of his "The Old Faith and the New."

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Corrections made to printed original.

p. 43. "the whole course of the zooelogical system" - "zoloogical" in original.

p. 65. "corals, radiata, worms, mollusca, and crustacea" - "radita" in original.

p. 73. "many portions of the skin" - "the the" (across line break) in original.

p. 86. "forsakes us in the inquiry" - "inqury" in original.

p. 112. "even philosophy can not take up the investigation" - "phi-osophy" (across line break) in original.

p. 147. "the origin of self-consciousness" - "conciousness" in original.

p. 265. "the origin of species through development" - "developement" in original.

p. 297. "any other interpretation than to take them" - "then" in original.

p. 343. "the Titan-like, rebellious Kainites" - "Titian" in original.

Note 3. "The nearer a generation was" - "a a" (across line break) in original.

THE END