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

RELIGION, AND MORALITY.
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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 be more agreeable to them, and more profitable, if they could delay their judgment until the question became better cleared up. For the whole question presented by Darwin has not yet passed beyond the stage of problems and attempts at solution; and there is always something unsatisfactory in being compelled to deal with theories which in their fundamentals are still hypotheses. But since all tendencies of the present which are hostile to Christianity and to the theistic view of the world, from the most extreme materialism up to the most sublime monism (as pantheism and materialism of to-day have begun to call themselves), seemingly with the confidence of complete victory, take possession of Darwinism as the solid ground from which they hope to destroy all and every belief {20} connected with faith in a living creator and master of the world, it has also become impossible for those to whom the