The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality | Page 5

164, 191, 234. Schopenhauer,
128, 190. Schrader, Eberhard, 345. Seidlitz, 51, 159, 238. Semper, Karl,
84, 131. Snell, Karl, 42, 262. Spencer, Herbert, 128, 139, 194, 242, 279.

Spinoza, 204. Stael, Madame de, 234. Steffens, 109. Steinthal, 17, 96.
Strauss, David Friedrich, 18, 112, 125, 128, 159, 163, 174, 175, 190,
213, 234, 337, 376, 394. Swammerdam, 36.
Tait, 138. Thomson, Sir William, 138. Trümpelmann, 209. Tübingen
School, 18. Tylor, 91.
Ulrici, 142, 144, 149, 175, 235.
Virchow, 56, 85. Vischer, Friedrich, 175, 176, 213, 264. Vogt, Karl, 42,
56. Volkmann, A. W., 56, 105, 177.
Wagner, Moriz, 52, 56. Wallace, Alfred Russell, 37, 101, 177, 221, 262.
Wedgewood, 96. Weismann, 56. Wigand, Albert, 26, 52, 56, 57, 106,
135, 149, 170, 226. Wundt, 142. Würtemberger, 82.
Zittel, 56. Zöllner, 128, 129, 131, 138, 139.
* * * * *
{17}
THE THEORIES OF DARWIN,
AND THEIR RELATION TO
PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION, AND MORALITY.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
With the appearance of Darwin's "Origin of Species," on the 24th of
November, 1859, a new impulse began in the intellectual movement of
our generation. It is true, the whole theory advocated and inaugurated
by Darwin is, in the first place, only one of the many links in the long
chain of phenomena in the realm of the intellectual development of our
century, all of which have the same character, and give their stamp to
the entire mental work of the last decades. This stamp consists in the

tendency of science, which has nearly become universal, not only to
consider all phenomena, both of the physical and the mental life, in
connection with their preceding conditions in space and time, but to
trace them back more or less exclusively to these conditions, and to
explain them exclusively by means of the same. What a Wilhelm von
Humboldt, and, still more, a Jacob Grimm, prepared the way for in the
realm of philology, a Lazar Geiger and a Steinthal, and (under direct
influence of Darwin) a Schleicher and a Wilhelm Bleek further
developed; what Julius Braun did in the realm of the history of art;
what a Buckle and a Sir {18} John Lubbock tried to do in the realm of
the history of civilization; what a Max Müller did in the realm of the
history of religion; what the Tübingen School began and its disciples
carried out in the realm of the exegesis of the Bible; what a Strauss and
a Renan, and in a certain sense also a Keim, did in the realm of
christology; what, finally--without being so closely connected with
individual names--was also done in the realm of the world's history:
this, Darwin did in the realm of the history of the organic kingdoms,
seconded by the geological principles of Sir Charles Lyell and by the
investigations in biology and comparative anatomy of a number of
scientists. From this point of view, the movement which was
inaugurated by Darwin seems to us but the reflex of the universal spirit
of the present time upon a particular realm; namely, that of natural
science. But since, soon after the appearance of the before-mentioned
work and long before the publication of Darwin's "Descent of Man,"
man also was included in the consequences of the evolution theory, and
his existence was explained as a wholly natural development out of
lower animal forms; since Darwin himself unreservedly adopted this
theory of the descent of man from the animal world as an entirely
natural consequence of his doctrine of the origin of species, the
evolution question has gone far beyond the proportionately narrow and
limited bounds of natural philosophy and of merely theoretical
scientific interest--has surpassed in interest all the before-mentioned
investigations, however lively this interest was and is to-day, and has
stirred up the minds of all most thoroughly, not only in their scientific
but also in their religious and ethical depths, some in {19}
acknowledgment and admiration, others in aversion and repugnance,
and only a few in sober and unprejudiced judgment. While some see in

Darwinism the flambeau which now lights mankind to entirely new
paths of truth, and also to spiritual and moral perfection, others see in it
only an unproved hypothesis, threatening to become the torch which
might change the noblest and greatest acquirements of the culture of
past centuries into a heap of ashes; while some date from it a new
period of culture, others see in it a deep descent of the present from the
scientific, religious, and moral height which mankind has ascended.
Under these circumstances, it has become an impossibility for religion
and the moral interest as guardians of the highest and most sacred
acquisitions of mankind, and still more for theology and ethics as the
scientific representations of religion and morality, to remain idle
spectators. It would certainly