It is the principal idea which penetrates all our reasoning about the

relation of God and the world--namely, the idea of a _teleology in the

world_--which is to lead us to a correct conception of the _miracles_ and

their reconcilableness with a mechanism of nature and with the Darwinistic

ideas of development. In the much discussed contest about the problem of

miracles, clearer results would certainly have been attained, if one had

questioned more closely what the record of the Christian religion means by

miracles, and what position, according to it, these miracles have to take

in the order of the world and in the divine plan of salvation; and after

having satisfied himself as to this position, had further asked what

position they take in reference to our exact science and our theistic view

of the world. Instead of doing this, we have often enough seen friend and

foe of the idea of miracles, as soon as the question was even touched upon,

at once set to work with the insufficient conceptions of old rationalism

and supernaturalism, and thus raising objections and attempting solutions

which could satisfy nobody. Especially every inadequate idea {359} which

was put forth by the advocates of faith in miracles, was gladly accepted by

its adversaries; for thereby they were furnished with a caricature of the

idea of miracles, the tearing to pieces of which was an easy and agreeable

sport to them.

The very ideas of the _natural_ and the _supernatural_ are a category which

is to be treated with caution. When discussing the question of divine

providence, we have seen that, with every free act of the will of man

springing from an ethical motive, something supernatural invades the

natural, so that in every normal human life we always see supernatural and

natural by the side of and in one another.

The distinction between the _direct_ and the _indirect action or invasion

of God_ is also to be used with great caution and restriction. For where we

are no longer able to find secondary causes, who can assert that God no

longer uses any? Where the realm of visible causes ceases and that of the

invisible begins, who can exclude secondary causes? And on the other hand,

where God acts directly, who can deny the concurrence of his direct

presence and his direct action, or reduce the value of that which was

indirectly produced?

Moreover, the often-returning conceptions of a _breaking of the laws of

nature_, or the compromises which were made between a breaking and a

non-breaking of the laws of nature by assuming a "supernatural acceleration

of the process of nature," were still more misleading. In the whole world,

infinitely many higher and lower forces act according to laws and order. In

every process, a part of the forces which in the single case surround it,

become active, and thereby hinder {360} another part from its activity. But

the laws of this other part of forces are not thereby invalidated or

broken. When a man acts with moral freedom, from mere moral motives, the

highest of the conceivable forces over which we have control comes into

direct action upon the natural. But therewith those forces, with their

laws, which would have been active if another motive had determined him,

are not yet overcome, but only hindered from their activity in exactly the

same way as one part of forces can be active and another not, where mere

mechanical actions take place. Thus, in miracles, no law of nature is

overcome, but only a force which otherwise would have been active according

to the law of its activity, is for the time hindered from action by another

force becoming active. Moreover, through the conscious and unconscious

connection of the idea of irregularity and lack of plan with the idea of

miracles, not only the idea of a God who works miracles, but also that of a

personal Creator and Ruler of the world, in general, has come into

discredit. For that reason, Häckel, for instance, when he attacks the

Christian idea of creation, never fails to speak of the "capricious

arbitrariness" of the Creator; and Oskar Schmidt also speaks of the

"caprice" of the God of Christians.

With these criticisms, which we have made in reference to the treatment of

the question of miracles, we certainly have undertaken only to characterize

the superficial skirmishing which took place between the two opposing views

of the world, but not the labors of more recent theological science. But

that skirmish has made, like all superficiality, the most noise in the

world; and since the adversaries of the faith in {361} miracles endeavored

almost exclusively to reflect in this manner, and almost ignored the deeper

deductions of theological science, they succeeded in making the idea of

miracles almost the most dreaded object of antipathy to modern education,

and many of those who feel that the conceptions of traditional dogmatics

are in need of revision, and religion and science of a reconciliation,

endeavor to find that revision and reconciliation especially in the fact,

that religion gives up miracles. On the other hand, _theology as science_,

in its main advocates, long ago gave up these insufficient and misleading

categories and conceptions, and established a conception of miracles which

can easily be received into the science of the processes of nature, as well

as into our reasoning about God and the divine. The first who adopted this

mode of treatment, is one of the pioneers of more recent positive theology,

and of a theology still uninfluenced by science--Karl Immanuel Nitzsch. It

is certainly interesting to read what this man, as early as 1829, said, in

the first edition of his "System der Christlichen Lehre" ("System of

Christian Doctrine"), and also in the succeeding edition printed without

alteration. He says, on page 64: "The miracles of revelation are, in spite

of all objective supernaturalness, derived from their central origin,

_something really conformable to law_: partly in relation to the higher

order of things to which they belong and which is also a world, a nature in

its kind, and acts upon the lower in its way; partly in reference to the

similarity to common nature which they retain in any way; partly on account

of their teleological perfection; and they must not only be expected as the

homogeneous phenomenon from the inner miracle of {362} redemption, from the

standpoint of perfect Christian faith, but also by virtue of the union

between spirit and nature, be looked upon _as the natural in its kind_." In

these words we find the fruitful germs of a sound dogmatic development

which the idea of miracles has found on the part of more recent theology.

Let us, in the first place, try to keep free from all preconceived, correct

or incorrect, opinions, and ask how the miracles appear to us, when they

present themselves with a claim to acknowledgment as integral parts of a

divine revelation of salvation, namely, in the religion of redemption and

its record. In regard to their name, they appear to us in the Holy

Scriptures as amazing bright processes, as great deeds and signs; and in

regard to their nature, as signs which are destined to call the attention

of man to the government in grace and in judgment of a living God, to the

salvation of redemption which God gives to man, and to the human

instruments which he uses for that purpose. Now, in a view of the world

which, like the Biblical, so decidedly sees a revelation of God in all that

which takes place, in a view of the world to which everything natural has

also, as a work of God, its supernatural cause, and everything

supernatural, at present, or in the future, is transposed again into nature

and history, not only all those above rejected conceptions of miracles lose

their significance, but all remaining conceptions with which one otherwise

tries to distinguish the miracles from all that is not miraculous, or to

classify the different species of miracles, also diminish in importance, as

do also all those distinctions of direct and indirect actions of God--the

distinctions of relative and absolute, of subjective and objective

miracles: and there {363} remains hut a single inviolable kernel and

central point of the Biblical conception of miracles, and that is the above

mentioned _teleological character_ of miracles. Indeed, we are not willing

to reject all these logical distinctions and investigations as worthless:

they have helped to render clear our conceptions and ideas, and they still

help. But a deeper investigation of the idea of miracles and its relation

to a scientific knowledge of the world may perhaps finally lead our more

developed reflection back to the fact that we find the quintessence and the

nature of miracles only where the pious people of the Bible found it. And

this quintessence of miracles consists precisely in their _teleological

nature_, and not at all in the fact that they cannot be explained

physically: it consists in the fact that miracles are _signs_ through which

God manifests himself and his government over man, and actually shows the

latter that _he_ wishes to bring him to the pursuit of perfection by the

way of redemption. Ritschl, in an essay which appeared in the "Jahrbücher

für Deutsche Theologie," as early as 1861, pointed out this decidedly

teleological character of Biblical miracles and the indifference shown by

pious men in the Bible as to the question whether these deeds and signs can

be explained naturally or not.

The profit which we derive from this reverting to the Biblical conception

of the idea of miracles is by no means small.

In the first place, we help to establish the full recognition of that

direct religious consciousness and sensation which is not only

characteristic of the pious men of Scripture, but which yet characterizes

all genuine religiousness; and this consists in the fact that the religious

man sees {364} _miracles of God in all that turns his attention to God's

government_,--in the sea of stars, in rock and bush, in sunshine and storm,

in flower and worm, just as certainly as in the guidance of his own life

and in the facts and processes of the history of salvation and of the

kingdom of the Lord. In this idea of miracles, the essential thing is not

that the phenomena and processes are inconceivable to him--although

certainly in all that comes into appearance there is still an

incomprehensible and uncomprehended remainder. For a form of nature,

_e.g._, which turns his attention to a creator, is of course a miracle,

even if he is able to look upon it with none other eye than that of the

unlearned: but it even then remains a miracle,--nay, it is increased to a

still greater miracle, if he has learned to contemplate and investigate it

with all the auxiliary means of science. A hearing of his prayers remains a

miracle, whether or not he is able to perceive the natural connection of

the process in which he sees his prayers answered, or even to trace it back

to the remotest times which preceded his prayers. The events and facts of

the history of salvation remain miracles to him, whether the history of

nature and the world offers to him auxiliary means of explaining them or

not. The pious man, therefore, does not find the essential characteristic

of miracles in their relative inconceivableness, but in the fact that they

refer him to a living God who stands above this process, whether perceived

or unperceived in its relative causal connection, and unites it with the

course of things in order to reach his ends and to manifest himself to man.

Now, in our attempt at a scientific reproduction of the idea of miracles,

if we return to that Biblical conception, we see no longer in this just

{365} mentioned religious conception of miracles a pious sophistry which

avoids the difficulty of the idea, or a child-like _naïveté_ worthy of

being partly envied and partly pitied, which does not at all see the

difficulties and remains on the child-stage of Biblical conceptions; but we

only perceive in it a confirmation and fulfilment of that profound and

beneficent word of our Lord: "Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not

receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein."

Of course, piety as well as science makes _distinctions_ among miracles.

The former separates the _mere products and processes of nature_ which,

through what is explicable as well as what is inexplicable in their

qualities and processes, point to an almighty and all-wise Creator, and

thereby become miracles to the religious view of the world, from the

_historical events_ which, by their newness and uniqueness, and by their

pointing toward divine ends, manifest God and his teleological government

to man, and calls them miracles in a still more specific sense than science

does. And among historical events, piety as well as science assigns the

name miracle, in the most pregnant sense, to those events which belong to

the _history of salvation_, and, by their newness and uniqueness, introduce

new stages into it, render legitimate its new instruments, or bring new

features of redemption to our knowledge. Our religiousness has the greatest

and deepest interest in this history: for it is the history of the leading

back of man into communion with God by the way of redemption; and therefore

the events of this history are precisely those miracles upon which our

deepest religious interest is concentrated. But in spite of all these

distinctions in degree, that natural relationship and that {366} common

character of the miraculous between the miracles of nature, the miracles of

the history of man, and the miracles of the history of salvation, remain

established; and we render a service to religious consciousness, as well as

to the scientific conception of the idea of miracles, if by returning to

the Biblical idea of miracles, as we propose, we make a more comprehensive

definition of miracles possible.

Another advantage which we derive from returning to the Biblical idea of

miracles consists in the fact that it preserves us from the _magical_ and

necromantic in our conceptions of miracles; that it allows us a _grouping

of miracles according to value_, which corresponds with the idea of God and

of the divine government as well as with the idea of miracles itself; and

that in the presence of all single relations of miracles it summons us to

_criticise_ and _investigate the real state of the case_. For the nature of

miracles does not consist in the inconceivable--at least not in the

planless and arbitrary,--but in the fact that they call the attention of

man to God and his government; and this leads to the reverse of all that is

magical and necromantic, because the magical is unworthy of the idea of God

and contradicts all the other self-testimony of God. Now if the nature of

miracles consists in the fact that they call my attention to God and his

government, an event will become a miracle to me, and increase its value,

in the degree in which it refers me to God and his government, and

especially in the degree in which it refers me to that government of God

which is the most important to me--namely, to the action of God in me and

mankind, with which he is bringing about his ends in salvation; {367} but

in the degree in which an event loses this character, it becomes to me an

event without miraculous or religious significance. This gives a quite

definite grouping of miracles according to value, from those which belong

to the central manifestations of the divine plan of salvation and way of

redemption, to those which lie in the extreme periphery of religious

interest. It is a grouping which corresponds with the idea of God just as

much as with the idea of miracles; while all other divisions or groupings

of miracles according to value, which might take their principle of

division and their weight from the greater or smaller conceivableness of

the causal connection, from the greater or smaller difference of a

miraculous event from all other events, are indifferent in reference to the

idea of God, and change the centre of gravity in the idea of miracles.

Besides, if these miracles are to be real signs to me which refer me to

God, his government, and his ways of salvation, they must, in the first

place, in order to secure my conviction, be real events and facts and not

mere falsifications and fictions; and this point leads us to the duty and

right of criticising and investigating actual circumstances. In presence of

all Biblical and non-Biblical miracles, we have the full right and the full

duty of using criticism in reference to the confirmation of actual

circumstances, and where the latter cannot be established with certainty,

the question is in order whether the related event is really of such a

character as to legitimate itself as a sign of God and his government. In

the preceding section, we have had occasion to use this principle in

reference to the investigation of that event which, next to the coming of

the Redeemer, offers itself to us as the {368} central miracle of the

history of salvation and redemption: namely, in reference to the history of

the resurrection of the Lord.

We have by no means the wish to avoid _difficulties_ which meet us, when

trying to bring miracles, and especially the specific and pregnant miracles

of the history of salvation, into harmony with our scientific knowledge of

the world: only we can no longer admit that these difficulties consist in

the inconceivableness or in the supernaturalism of miracles. For to the

religious view of the world--which traces equally the explicable as well as

the inexplicable back to God, which even derives the natural from the

supernatural causality of God--neither the occasional inexplicability nor

the supposed supernaturalness of an event can be that which makes the event

a miracle. But an event in the history of salvation becomes a miracle from

the fact that something _extraordinary_, something _new_, happens in it,

which by its newness and its extraordinary character presents itself to man

as the manifestation of certain divine _ends in salvation_, and can be

explained _at first sight_, but only at first sight, from nothing else than

from the service which it renders to the plan of redemption. Whether

afterwards these extraordinary and new features can or cannot be perceived

in their natural connection, or explained out of it, does not at all change

anything in the miraculous character of the event, as soon as it has _once_

had the before-mentioned effect. The only task and the only difficulty

which meets us in the question of miracles, is to show that such

extraordinary and new things really happen, and to bring the reality and

possibility of such new things into our perception of the {369} causal

connection of the course of the world, conformable to law. But it ceases to

be a difficulty, so soon as we acknowledge a teleology in the course of the

world and a teleology in the history of mankind, and especially as soon as

we acknowledge that teleology in the history of mankind which, by the way

of the divine means of redemption, leads man back to God. Where there are

no ends, nothing can happen which calls the attention of men to these ends;

nor, indeed, can anything new happen; for nothing prevails in more absolute

sovereignty to all eternity than the maxims _causa æquat effectum_ and

_effectus æquat causam_. But where ends are appointed and reached,

something new also happens; and every new thing refers to its end. For each

step leading nearer such an end is something new, and refers, as soon as we

compare it with preceding steps, to the end towards which it strives. All

ends to which the course of things refers us, are to the religious view of

the world ends which are appointed by God; all means which serve to reach

the ends, are means which God created and chose; and every phenomenon and

every event which manifests this teleological government of God to our

mind, is a miracle to us. Now this whole course of the world is interwoven

with such new things, in events which manifest to us, now more clearly, now

more dimly, the striving of the course of the world towards an end, because

the latter is really striving towards an end. Even prehistoric times show

us new things which, from a scientific and historical point of view, we

have to place in the line of the course of the world; and from a religious

point of view, in the line of miracles. The first appearance of organic

life on earth was new, and indicated new ends; the first {370} appearance

of each single species of animals and plants was new; new, also, and

indicating the highest end of creative life, was the first appearance of

man. All these things we call _miracles_ of creation; and we especially

place the creative miracle of the appearance of man on a level with the

greatest miracles of which we have knowledge, and use the name miracle for

all before mentioned newly appearing formations, whether or not we are able

to explain those originations from the preceding connection of the course

of nature and its forces. Now, in the history of mankind, where the

intellectual and ethical motives of that which happens become active, where

also the greatest ends which come up for consideration are spiritual and

ethical ends, where man himself acts freely according to ends, and where,

therefore, human and divine teleology come alternately into play, the

manifestation of a striving toward an end, in which religious consciousness

immediately sees also ends and means of God, is repeated in an eminent

degree. Every event which brings about a progress in the history of mankind

as well as of individuals, is as to this side something new, extraordinary,

teleological: _i.e._, a miracle to the religious mode of contemplation; and

this miracle is the greater as is more important the end under

consideration, and the greater and the more decisive the step towards this

end which the event accomplishes. Now, if we recognize the return of

mankind into a communion with God as the highest goal of the general and

individual history of mankind, and if we find in the latter facts which

lead to this goal, then these facts are the great central miracles of

history. As such, the facts of redemption present {371} themselves with all

that for which it once prepared the way; and, now that it has come, leads

to full and complete perfection--and among them all, the coming, the

person, and the history of Jesus Christ, stands as central fact and central

miracle in the midst of all events in the history of salvation, and forms

the central point of all religious interest. We see how unjust it is when

one urges, as an objection to a belief in miracles, that it assigns to God

arbitrary and capricious actions. We call the manifestations of divine

teleology miracles. But striving towards an end and conformity to a regular

plan is not arbitrariness or caprice, but the contrary; and the greater our

estimate of the highest cause of all things, the greater will appear to us

the conformity to a plan and to law of all which presents itself as

miracles in the course of events. There is perhaps one objection which is

about as equally unjust as the objection of caprice; and that is the

objection that faith in miracles, in teaching a belief in supernatural

things, lends to introduce into the course of events something which is

against nature. But since miracles, as a sign of divine teleology, manifest

ends for which nature also is prepared, and through which the fallen nature

of man, fallen by sin, is again restored; and since to the religious view

of the world all natural phenomena and processes expressly rank among

miracles, the faith in miracles teaches the contrary of an opposition to

nature. It is incontestible--and will become still clearer and more certain

to us through all farther investigation of the subject--that the

acknowledgment of the idea of miracles as a necessary and a justified part

of religiousness {372} stands and falls with the acknowledgment of a

teleological view of the world.

We certainly do not indulge in the foolish hope that with the deductions of

this section we should be able suddenly to win over any of the decided

adversaries of faith in providence and miracles. For, as we have had

occasion to remind the reader, the acknowledgment or the non-acknowledgment

of God and his living government in the world is not the result of this or

that reflection and chain of conclusions, but rather an ethical action of

the centre of human personality in which God discovers himself in his

self-manifestation. Now, if this centre, in the freedom of its decision,

has once denied the acknowledgment of God and his government, then the

intellectual actions of the soul offer themselves to this atheistic and

anti-theistic standpoint, and build up atheistic systems in which the ideas

of providence and miracles naturally find no place. Thus system is opposed

to system, although the one is not able to overcome the other. For the last

and deepest power of conviction lies, neither for one nor the other system,

in its chains of conclusions, in its superstructure, but in its foundation,

its standpoint, and its principles; and the choosing of one or the other

standpoint, the theistic or atheistic, is an ethical action which precedes

methodical reasoning--or if it takes place at the same time or precedes it,

has still deeper motives than those of more or less clear forms of mere

reasoning. But we believe, and we wish and hope in our modest way to have

shown by our present investigation, that the standpoint of faith also has

its logical and justified science, and that it is able to appreciate the

{373} world of the real more universally and candidly, and offers to

logical reasoning fewer and less important difficulties, than the systems

of atheism.

We have now discussed all the essential and direct points of contacts

between Christianity and the theory of evolution. But a remaining part,

still more closely related to the centre of the Christian view of the

world, yet offers some indirect points of contact which demand treatment.

§ 5. _The Redeemer and the Redemption. The Kingdom of God and the

Acceptance of Salvation._

As soon as it is once an established fact that an evolution theory of the

origin of man as a merely scientific theory permits all the valuable

qualities of man, when they have once come into existence, to show

themselves undiminished in their entire greatness and importance, and must

so permit them, then the whole Christian view of the world, of the

Redeemer, his person, his course of redemption, and his work, remains

entirely untouched by all these scientific theories of evolution. Yet the

Biblical representation, the orthodox perception, and the actual history of

the Redeemer and his work, present us with some evidences which are rather

in sympathy than in antipathy with these scientific theories. First, the

long preparation for his birth, which began immediately after the fall of

man and stretched over at least four thousand years, perhaps over a much

longer period, the special preparation of his human genealogy, the

selection, separation, and guidance of the ancestor and of the people of

Israel, of the tribe, the family, and finally of the mother of Jesus--all

these are manifestly {374} just as favorable to the idea of evolution as

they would have been to the idea of a sudden creation of man out of

nothing, if Christ, the second Adam, had come into existence by a sudden

creation. Moreover, the Redeemer himself was wholly subject to the ordinary

laws of development of the human individual, and was, from his annunciation

and conception, developed entirely like man in the long process of

evolution from the egg and its still absolutely indifferent spiritual worth

through all the imperceptible stages of development before and after the

birth up to the full age of man. Likewise the result of his course of

salvation, redemption, and entrance into the kingdom of God, underwent the

same process of gradual development. It began with a few disciples, and was

slowly propagated; it has to-day reached but a small part of mankind, and

even where it took root, it sees infinitely many things by its side which

it has not yet been able to penetrate with its leaven:--facts which have

much more elective affinity with the scientific ideas of development than

with those of sudden creations.

Finally, precisely the same analogy forces itself upon us in the Christian

doctrine of the way of salvation. The work of the Holy Spirit in the human

individual is nothing less than a new birth; its aim is the revival of the

entire man, in mind, soul, and body. In most men, this work takes place by

a slow process, advancing step by step. This gradual course is even the

rule in Christianized nations; although a decisive change of mind often

enough, though by no means always, takes place in marked epochs of the

inner history of life. And in all Christians--even in those whose

conversion takes place by a sudden awakening, like that of Paul--the {375}

transformation of the entire man into the similarity of Christ, and the

full restoration of the image of God, is certainly a process of

development, and must await its completion in the resurrection. This view

is also confirmed by the Lord's parable of the seed, growing up

imperceptibly.

Every believing Christian knows these facts, and judges and acts according

to them: therefore, when in the realm of nature, which God certainly

submitted to the free investigation of the human mind, he meets similar

views, what right has he to protest against them as being hostile to

religion?

§ 6. _Eschatology._

In our discussion of the preceding questions, we have seen that an entirely

neutral, not to say friendly, relationship is taking place between religion

and the theories of development, which will continue so long as the latter

keep within the limits of their proper realm, the perception of nature; and

that a hostile relation takes place, and anti-religious attacks are to be

guarded against, only when a disbelieving system of metaphysics, which has

grown on other ground, in an uncalled-for way, tries to connect itself

closely with the theory of descent. This is in an eminent degree the case

with the great eschatological hopes of Christianity. The evolution theory

so exclusively contents itself with the attempts at perceiving the causal

circumstances of organisms in the _present_ world, that it does not at all

wish to, and cannot, express itself concerning the _end_ and _goal_ of the

world and the laws and circumstances which may reign in a _future æon_, and

that it gives free scope to every perception of the ultimate which might

come from another source. {376}

On the other hand, Christian eschatology is alone able to do most essential

service to the evolution theory, in case it should be verified, by giving

an answer to questions to which the evolution theory tends more decidedly

than any other scientific theory--namely, to the questions as to _the end

of the world and mankind_, with such distinctions as no philosophy which

treats of the doctrines of nature, is able to give, although natural

science itself demands the answer to these questions the more peremptorily,

the higher the points of view are to which it leads us.

The world shows to every investigating eye a development, whether we have

to take this development as descent or as successive new creation; and

therefore we shall take, in the following discussion, the idea of

development in this broad sense which comprises all conceivable attempts at

explanation. All nature--its most comprehensive cosmic realms as well as

the realms of its smallest organisms--together with the corporeal,

psychical, and spiritual nature of man, shows a _harmony_, a _conformity to

the end in view_, and a _striving toward an end_ of its development, the

denial of which will certainly not add to the laurels which transmit the

scientific fame of our present generation to posterity. Now, what is this

end? The answer which we receive from those who reject Christian

eschatology, may be given by two scientific antipodes: by Strauss and

Eduard von Hartmann. Strauss takes sides with those who reject all striving

toward an end in nature; and his answer to the question (which still

asserts itself in his system of the world), is: eternal circular motion of

the universe, death of all individuals and of all complexes of individuals,

even of {377} mankind. Eduard von Hartmann, on the other hand, is filled by

the knowledge of the teleological, but he rejects the hope of Christians

and the end which offers itself to him in the place of the rejected end of

Christian hope, is destruction--destruction of all individuals and

destruction of the world. In view of such ends, is not the Christian's hope

_the_ answer which not only satisfies the deepest ethical and religious

need, but also all heights and depths of the most faithful, most devoted,

and most enlightened investigation of nature?

Finally, we have still another eschatological conclusion to mention and

reject; a conclusion which is drawn from this theory by the advocates of

the evolution theory. It opens the perspective into a future development of

still higher beings out of man. _In abstracto_, we can naturally make no

objection to the possibility of such a development, as soon as we once

accept the evolution theory; but we have to object to the supposition of

such a process _in infinitum_. For such a process would certainly be

interrupted by the final destruction of the globe; and in case the

mechanico-naturalistic view of the world should be right, this destruction

would be only the more cruel as would be more highly organized the beings

which should find their destruction in this inevitable catastrophe.

Moreover, as we have repeatedly seen, a development _in infinitum_ suffers

from a self-contradiction: for development involves an end, and this end

must certainly have been once reached. Now, if we have reason to assume

that this end has been reached in the development of the inhabitants of the

globe, by the creature being in the image of God and his child, and that it

is also reached in fallen man through redemption {378} and its perfection,

then the idea of development, it is true, allows and postulates a relative

development of mankind, so long as this takes place within the limits of

the now valid laws of the universe,--a development towards the perfection

of this likeness to God and filial relationship; but that idea of

development has no longer an influence that would lead to the production of

new beings which should be more than man.

With the foregoing, we believe that we have discussed all essential points

of the relation between religion and Darwinism; and we now proceed to the

last part of our investigation.

* * * * *

{379}

_B. THE DARWINIAN THEORIES AND MORALITY._

CHAPTER III.

DARWINISM AND MORAL PRINCIPLES.

§ 1. _Darwinistic Naturalism and Moral Principles._

If we consider the ethical consequences of a view of the world which,

proceeding from Darwinism, permits the universe, man included, to be taken

up into a mechanism of atoms--a mechanism in which everything, even the

ethical action of man, finds its sufficient explanation--we certainly

cannot perceive how such a view of the world is able to arrive at firm

moral principles. If man, even in his spiritual life and moral action, is a

mere product of nature, originated through descent, and if his whole

spiritual life is fully consumed by these merely mechanical factors, then

all moral principles are also nothing else than inherited customs founded

upon those instincts which in the struggle for existence have proven to be

the most beneficial to man. Then their influence is subject to continual

change, always corresponding to the existing state of human development. As

these moral instincts have displaced the former instincts of the animal

predecessors of man--say, _e.g._, of sharks, of marsupialia, of

lemurides--so they must {380} also expect it any time to be displaced in

turn by new and still more useful instincts. And even in the same period of

the development of mankind, the moral or immoral principles which have

actual authority in each nation or tribe, have their full right of

existence as long as they are not displaced by still more advantageous

instincts. Moral principles in which infanticide, prostitution, and

cannibalism have a place, are inferior to the highest form of Christian

morality only so far as they do not hold their own in the struggle for

existence, when nations having those low views come into collision with

nations of higher moral culture; but in themselves they have full value and

full right, so long as they attain the end of all instincts, and so far as

we can speak of ends at all; in such naturalism, apart from human activity,

the end consists only in the preservation of the individual and the species

in the struggle for existence.

Under these suppositions, moral principles not only lose their objective

and solid consistency in the mass of mankind, but they also become

irrevocably subject to the arbitrariness of the single individual. An

individual who either has not, or asserts that he has not, a determined

moral instinct, or who allows it to be smothered by some other instinct

which in a normal individual is subordinate, but in him stronger, is fully

justified in his immoral action so long as he is successful with it. Every

individual is entirely his own master and his own judge. If man is morally

good, it may be the consequence of an especially happy individual

disposition, or of an especially clear perception, or of happy

circumstances and influences; but it is not the consequence of a free

subordination under the authority {381} of a moral law; for there is

neither freedom nor an objective moral authority. The single man is but the

product of a certain sum and mixture of powers of nature, acting of

necessity, which may with him turn out fortunately or unfortunately. If, on

the other hand, man is morally perverted, society may defend itself against

his perversity; wisdom may try to convince him of the bad consequences of

his perversity for himself and society; the effect of his perversity may

make him sensible of the bad consequences of his actions: but there is no

other objectively valid corrective of his perversity. If he is successful

in his immoral action, and if he silences his conscience, this voice of the

unobserved higher instinct in favor of the preferred lower--which

unfortunately, as is well known, succeeds oftenest and most easily in the

case of those whose perversity has become the most habitual, and in whom

another grouping of instincts would be most desirable--then the whole

affair is settled, and he is absolved. Let us be understood correctly. We

do not say that all advocates of mechanical or monistic ethics draw these

conclusions in reality; we know very well that many a man is better than

his system; but it seems to us inevitable that the logical pursuit of that

naturalistic principle leads to this dissolution of all solid fundamentals

of moral principles, and that it is but an inconsequence, certainly worthy

of honor and of notice, if all the advocates of naturalism do not profess

this dissolution of all moral principles with the same cynic frankness that

is shown by many of their partisans.

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.

§ 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, § 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.

* * * * * {391}

CHAPTER IV.

DARWINISM AND MORAL LIFE.

§ 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 Häckel

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 Göthe's Promethean word: "Hast thou not thyself accomplished

all, thou holy glowing heart?"--and even when Häckel prints as the leading

motto of his "Anthropogeny" Göthe'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 _naïveté_ 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." (Häckel, "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. Büchner, 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.

§ 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.

* * * * * {399}

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."

* * * * *

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 Körpern 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 Müller, "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 Auslösung," 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 § 74 of his "The Old Faith and the New."

* * * * *

Corrections made to printed original.

p. 43. "the whole course of the zoölogical 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.