that principle which, with urgent necessity, banishes teleology from the contemplation of nature - teleology, with the defeat or victory of which materialism stands or falls,we are entitled and obliged to rank even this view of the world among the conclusions which in reference to religion have been drawn from the theories of Darwin. And, indeed, it is a most extreme conclusion, and simply puts itself in the category of negation to the contents of religion, as well as to religion in a subjective sense, to religious and pious conduct. It can be clearly seen how firmly a view of the world which makes war against religion and the idea of God its special life-task, is connected with all those destructive elements which lie in human nature, and especially in the social circumstances of the present, and which have their only and final ethical limit in the consciousness of God which, as a power never wholly to be effaced, lies in the depth of the soul of even those who wander farthest from a moral and spiritual life.

§ 2. Replacement of Religion through a Religious Worship of the Universe. Strauss, Oskar Schmidt, Häckel.

Strauss, in that testament of his scientific life and activity, "The Old Faith and the New," takes a somewhat different position in reference to religion. Even for him, the whole idea of God is abolished and replaced by the idea of the cosmos; but he makes this cosmos the object of religious worship, and has exactly the same feeling of absolute dependence in regard to it, which, according to Schleiermacher, constitutes the nature of religion. When Arthur Schopenhauer or

Eduard von Hartmann bring forth their pessimistic accusations against the universe, his religious sensation reacts against it in the same manner as the organism against the prick of a needle. This pessimism, he says, acts upon reason as an absurdity, but upon sensation as blasphemy. "We demand the same piety for our cosmos that the devout of old demanded for his God. If wounded, our feeling for the cosmos simply reacts in a religious manner." While, therefore, Strauss, to the question, "Are we still Christians?" gives an emphatic "No," he answers the question, "Have we still a relig ion ?" with "Yes or No, according to the spirit of the inquiry."

Among men of science who wrote about Darwinism, Oskar Schmidt, in his before-quoted publication, "The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism," seems to take exactly the same position in reference to religion. At least, he unreservedly professes monism, rejects all teleological conceptions as imperfections, speaks of the caprice of a personal God, and sees the conception that the idea of God is immanent in human nature invalidated by the fact that many millions in the most cultivated nations, and among them the most eminent and lucid thinkers, have not the consciousness of a personal God; those millions of whom the heroic Strauss became the spokesman.

Häckel, it is true, mentions Strauss only in the preface of the fourth edition of his "Natural History of Creation," but here he greets "The Old Faith and the New" as the confession which he also makes, and thus gives us an express right to place him in this class, although he calls his worship of the universe religion;

it is, however, a classification which his whole position compelled us to give him. It is true, he speaks very warmly of his own religion, which is founded on the clear knowledge of nature and its inexhaustible abundance of manifestations, and which, as "simple religion of nature," will in the future act upon the course of development of mankind, ennobling and perfecting it in a far higher degree than the various ecclesiastic religions of the different nations, "resting on a blind belief in the vague secrets and mythical revelations of a sacerdotal caste." (Nat. Hist. of Cr., Vol. II, p. 369.) He also repeatedly speaks of "manifestations of nature," and even of a "divine Spirit which is everywhere active in nature." In that respect he seems to take in reference to religion, without regard to the historical form in which it appeared as Christian religion, a still more friendly and less problematic position than Strauss. Moreover, he demands for every individual the full right of forming his own religion; among the more highly developed species of men, he says, every independent and highly developed individual, every original person, has his own religion, his own God; and it would certainly, therefore, not be arrogant if he should also claim the right of forming his own conception of God, his own religion. But when we try to form a more complete idea of his position in reference to religion, we really do not find any essential difference between it and that of Strauss. According to repeated utterances, he can not imagine the personal Creator without caprice and arbitrariness; again and again he advocates monism with great warmth, and also identifies, in express words, God and the universe, God and nature. Correspond

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"In re

we

ing to our progressive perception of nature and our immovable conviction of the truth of the evolution theory, our religion can be only a religion of nature." jecting the dualistic conception of nature and the herewith connected amphitheistic conception of God, * * * certainly lose the hypothesis of a personal Creator; but we gain in its place the undoubtedly more worthy and more perfect conception of a divine Spirit which penetrates and fills the universe." Furthermore, the faith in a personal Creator is called a low dualistic conception of God, which corresponds to a low animal stage of development of the human organism. The more highly developed man of the present, he says, is capable of and intended for an infinitely nobler and sublimer monistic idea of God, to which belongs the future, and through which we attain a more sublime conception of the unity of God and nature. According to his Anthropogeny, the belief that the hand of a Creator has arranged all things with wisdom and intelligence is an ancient story and an empty phrase.

§ 3. Pious Renunciation of the Knowability of God. Wilhelm Bleek, Albert Lange, Herbert Spencer.

A more friendly position in reference to religion is taken by those who hold, not directly negative, but only decidedly sceptical views of the existence of God; who reduce the relative unsearchableness of God, which every religious standpoint admits, to an absolute unknowability; and who find the nature of religion either in a pious acknowledgment of this unknowability, or in a poetical substitute for the knowledge of God, i.e., comprehending the unknowable in a figure. The most prominent

advocates of this position are, on the side of exact investigation, Wilhelm Bleek; and on that of philosophy, Albert Lange in Germany and Herbert Spencer in England. Since all three use the Darwinian thecries for their systems, they also belong to the ranks of our historico-critical essay.

Wilhelm Bleek, in the preface to his "Ursprung der Sprache" ("Origin of Language "), rejects all claims of a positively revealed religion to an objective truth-not in such a way as to substitute the universe in place of God, but so that he remains sceptical in reference to every attempt at forming an idea of God, demands a pious and modest confession of this non-understanding by man, and sees in this reverential modesty the certainly not very significant nature of his religion. In the preface he says that all worship originates in reverence for ancestors, and that even the doctrine of the atonement of modern theology has its origin there. The next step after reverence for ancestors was the worship of nature. But the grand turning-point at which the mythological mode of view gives way-in which mode of view he also reckons Christianity—is the giving up of the idea of the necessity of an atonement; for this whole idea is but anthropomorphism. It is when man has recognized the impossibility of a being, similar to man, as the final cause of all existences, and in reverential modesty has admitted his ignorance in reference to the nature of the origin of things, that he learns to understand how narrow a view he has of God when he thinks that he understands him.

On the side of philosophy, Albert Lange and Herbert Spencer reach similar results. Albert Lange, in his