we can exactly point out: it is self-consciousness and moral self-determination. Now, in case development took place in the above sense, it may have passed ever so gradually; the epochs of preparation between that which we know as highest animal development and that which constitutes the substance of man, may have stretched over ever so many generations, and, if the friends of evolution desire it, we say over ever so many thousands of generations; yet that which makes man man— selfconsciousness and moral self-determination-must have always come into actual reality in individuals. Those individuals in which self-consciousness came into existence and activity, for the first time, and with it the entire possibility of the world of ideas-the consciousness of moral responsibility, and with it also the entire dignity of moral self-determination- were the first men. The individuals which preceded the latter may have been ever so interesting and promising as objects of observation, if we imagine ourselves spectators of these once supposed processes; yet, they were not men. $ 4. The Selection Theory and Theism. The last scientific theory whose position in reference to theism we have to discuss, is the selection theory. We have found but little reason for sympathizing with this theory. But since we believed that we were obliged to suspect it, not for religious but for scientific reasons, so the completeness of our investigation requires us to assume hypothetically that the selection principle really manifests itself as the only and exclusive principle of the origin of species, and to ask now what position it would in such a case take in reference to theism. The only answer we are able to give is decidedly favorable to theism. It is true, development would in such a case approach the organisms merely from without. For the principle lying within the organisms, which would then be the indispensable condition of all development, would be first the principle in itself, wholly without plan or end, of individual variability; second, the principle of inheritance which for itself and without that first principle is indeed no principle of development, but the contrary. The causes from which the single individuals vary in such or such a way, would then be the outer conditions of life and adaptation to them: .e., something coming from without. And the causes from which one individual, varying in such or such a way, is preserved in the struggle for existence, and another, varying differently, perishes, would be approaching the individuals also from without; hence they are a larger or smaller useful variation for the existence of the individual. Now if, through these influencing causes of development, approaching the most simple organisms from without, a rising line of higher and higher organized beings comes finally into existence (a line in which sensation and consciousness, finally self-consciousness and free-will, appear) we again reach the teleological dilemma: all this has either happened by chance, or it has not. No man who claims to treat this question earnestly and in a manner worthy of respect, will assert that it happened by chance, but by necessity. But with this word the materialist only hides or avoids the necessity of supposing a plan and end in place of chance, as we have convinced ourselves in Part I, Book II, Chap. II, § 1. The only exception in this case is, that the bearer and agent of this plan would not be the single organism (as is easily possible when we accept a descent theory which is more independent from the selection theory), but the collection of all forces and conditions, acting upon the organism from without. And for the question, whence this plan and its realization comes, we had again but the one answer: from a highest intelligence and omnipotence, from the personal God of theism. The locus of creation and the locus of providence would now, as ever, retain their value in the theological system, with the sole exception that most of that which so far belonged to the locus of creation would now belong, in a higher degree than in the hitherto naturo-historical view, to the locus of providence and of the government of the world. When looked upon from the theocentric point of view, the new forms which we had to suppose as called into existence only by selection, would remain products of divine creation: the "God said, and it was so," would retain its undiminished importance; but looked upon from the cosmic point of view, they would present themselves as products of the divine providence and government of the world, still more exclusively than in every principal of explanation which finds the causes of development in the organisms themselves or in an immaterial cause acting upon the organisms from within. The first as well as the second point of view is in full harmony with the religious view of things. We do not conceal that on the ground of all other analogies we sympathize more with those who look for the determining influences of the origin of new species rather within than without nature, and who, while look ing at that which the higher species have in common with the lower, do not forget or neglect the new, the original, which they possess. But we are indeed neither obliged nor entitled, in the name of religion, to take beforehand in the realm of scientific investigation the side of the one or the other direction of investigation, or even of the one or the other result of investigation, before it is arrived at. Let us unreservedly allow scientists free investigation in their realm, so long as they do not meddle with ethical or religious principles, and quietly await their results. These results, when once reached, may correspond ever so closely with our present view and our speculative expectations, or in both relations be ever so surprising and new; the one case as well as the other has already happened: at any rate they will not affect our religious principles, but only enrich our perception of the way and manner of divine activity in the world, and thereby give new food and refreshment to our religious life. A. THE DARWINISTIC PHILOSOPHEMES IN THEIR POSITION REGARDING THEISM. § 5. The Naturo-Philosophic Supplements of Darwinism and Theism. We still have to discuss the position of theism in reference to the philosophic problems to which a Darwinistic view of nature sees itself led, and in the first place its position in reference to the naturo-philosophic theories with which the descent idea tries to complete itself. In the first part of our book, we have found that not a single one of the naturo-philosophic problems before |