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 G.o.d; who reduce the relative unsearchableness of G.o.d, 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 subst.i.tute for the knowledge of G.o.d, _i.e._, comprehending the unknowable in a figure. The most prominent {194} 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 theories 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 subst.i.tute the universe in place of G.o.d, but so that he remains sceptical in reference to every attempt at forming an idea of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d when he thinks that he understands him.

On the side of philosophy, Albert Lange and Herbert Spencer reach similar results. Albert Lange, in his {195} "History of Materialism," starting especially from premises of Kant, reaches the conclusion that the "thing _per se_," the "intelligible world," is absolutely hidden to us. What we perceive is but the world of appearances; and the fact that we perceive it, and perceive it as we do, is originally founded in the human organization.

By virtue of this organization we are bound, in all our knowledge of the world of appearances, to the law of causality. Science does not get beyond this causal chain of finite and relative causes and effects; to the "thing _per se_" there is nowhere to be found a bridge, not even as Kant supposes, in the categoric imperative, nor in ideas. Inasmuch as science does not get beyond this chain, it is materialistic; inasmuch as it must nevertheless perceive the existence, or at least the possibility of the existence, of a "thing _per se_," even if it does not see any way to its perception, it is idealistic. But man also has ideal impulses, and he has to follow them just as much as the impulse of perception. By virtue of these ideal impulses, he makes in imagination a picture of the "thing _per se_" in the activity of philosophic speculation, art, and religion. Philosophic speculation is but imaginative conceptions. It has always a value in the history of culture, as a summing-up of the elements of culture and of the spiritual impulses and treasures of a certain time; but it errs as soon as it claims to be more than imaginative conceptions--namely, an adequate representation of the final cause of all things--for it lacks the necessary basis of experience. Art does not claim this, and therefore is not exposed to that danger of deception. Religion satisfies a need of the heart, to have a home of the spirit in the "thing _per se_"; but {196} since the "thing _per se_"

is not accessible for us, religion creates in mind that home, in order to rise above the common reality to it. Lange finds the highest realization of a perfect satisfaction of that impulse in the philosophic poems of Schiller. He sees the quintessence of religion expressly "in the elevation of minds above the real, and in the creation of a home of the spirit."

Religion remains untouched in its full vital power, as long as it retains that as its quintessence; but it is exposed to all the dangers of a destructive criticism as soon as it seeks its quintessence in something else--for instance, in certain doctrines of G.o.d, the human soul, creation of the world, etc.

Herbert Spencer is in full accord with Lange in regard to the theory of an absolute indiscernibleness of the final cause of all things; but he reaches this result in a somewhat different way, and from his premises infers a different modification of the nature of religion. In his "First Principles"

he appears to be a true scholar of the English and Scotch schools of philosophy, from which he takes his start in conscious and express opposition to the German modes of speculation, and begins with an empiric comparison of all actual contrasts existing in the world and in human life.

He follows the axiom that a particle of truth lies at the basis of every error, and that each contrast becomes a contrast only by the fact that the two poles of the contrast have something in common. Now, in comparing with one another all contrasts between religion and science, and all forms of religiousness and irreligiousness, from fetishism up to monotheism, pantheism, and atheism, all imaginable cosmogonies, he finds, as the last truth common to all, and therefore {197} alone absolutely certain, the _absolute indiscernibleness of the final cause of all things_. On page 44 he says, that religions diametrically opposed in their overt dogmas, are yet perfectly at one in the tacit conviction that there is a problem to be solved, that the existence of the world with all it contains is a mystery ever pressing for interpretation; and on page 45, that the omnipresence of something which pa.s.ses comprehension, is that which remains unquestionable.

And on page 46 he concludes: "If Religion and Science are to be reconciled, the basis of reconciliation must be this deepest, widest, and most certain of all facts--that the Power which the Universe manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." The acknowledgment of this fact is religiousness; the contrary of it is irreligiousness and anthropomorphistic arrogance, even if it appears in the name of religiousness. "Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious" (p. 110).

A comparison of the two philosophers is interesting.

In one direction, Lange does more justice to the religious need than Spencer does. While he sees in religion the metaphorical realization of the needs of the heart, of a "creation of a home of the spirit," he gives to the heart full play to satisfy its need, and to create and arrange for itself a spiritual home entirely according to its need. He especially acknowledges repeatedly the need of the heart for _atonement_, and vigorously defends this need and its satisfaction against Liberal Theologians (Reformtheologen), like Heinrich Lang; he also stands, as we see, in satisfactory contrast to Wilhelm Bleek. Without reserve, he admits into the hymn-book of his religion of the future hymns like that of Gerhard: "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" ("O Sacred Head, {198} now wounded"). To be sure, all the concessions he makes to religion sink again to the value of a beautiful illusion, from the fact that for him they are but metaphorical approaches to the cause of all things, which after all still remains inaccessible. But nevertheless, in consequence of that idea of religion, religious life, and especially also religious service, has infinitely more room for rich development in Lange than in Spencer. For, according to the view of the latter, religiousness consists in nothing else but the perception and acknowledgment of this indiscernibleness of the final cause. All other things which may be still connected with religious life and reasoning, are but a misty veil. The acknowledgment of the indiscernibleness of the final cause of all things alone is the quintessence of religion. But such a religiousness, which expressly forbids imagining any quality or any state of the highest being, certainly would be, as Prof. Huxley correctly says in his "Lay Sermons," for the most part of the silent sort.

While thus Lange's conception of religion is superior to that of Spencer in admitting a richer development of religious life, a more various satisfaction of the religious need, in another direction Spencer is superior. He comes considerably nearer to a correct and full _conception of G.o.d_ than Lange. His idea of the final cause of all things does not lie entirely in the conception that it is the absolute indiscernible; but Spencer is fully in earnest with the idea that this indiscernible is the real cause of the world and of all single existences in it. He accordingly forbids giving certain attributes to the absolute--not because it would be doubtful whether it has attributes or not, but because it stands _above_ all these {199} imaginable attributes as their real cause. Therefore he forbids, for instance, attributing personality, intelligence, will, to the highest being--not because it could also be impersonal, and in want of intelligence and will, but because it stands _above_ all these attributes as their highest real cause, and because we can think of all these attributes only in human a.n.a.logy, and therefore, when attributed to the highest being, can think of them only in rejectable anthropomorphism. He says, on page 109: "Those who espouse this position [personality of G.o.d], make the erroneous a.s.sumption that the choice is between personality and something lower than personality; whereas the choice is rather between personality and something higher. Is it not just possible that there is a mode of being as much transcending Intelligence and Will, as these transcend mechanical motion? It is true that we are totally unable to conceive any such higher mode of being. But this is not a reason for questioning its existence; it is rather the reverse.... The Ultimate Cause cannot in any respect be conceived by us because it is in every respect greater than can be conceived."

Thus we find in Lange a fuller and richer conception of the subject of religion; but this conception is in want of one thing--without which it is in want of everything--namely, of nothing less than of the objective reality. Spencer's religiousness has a much more meagre and less varied character: the acknowledgment and veneration of the indiscernible; but he nevertheless gives us with this content and object a _real_ object, even an object of veneration, in which the abundance of all reality is hidden, with the only conception that the indiscernible {200} does not let us look into its cornucopia, but only lets us judge of the abundance of its contents by the richness of that which it pours over us in the world of the relatively perceptible.

It will not be difficult to show the points at which each of these writers would have been able, had he so wished, to lead his conception of religion, the one to a real, the other to a full content.

Lange finds the last principle of perception which is accessible to us, in our _organization_. Now from our organization originate not only all modes of the perception of the empirical world, but just as well all our ideal impulses, especially the ethical. Which one of all those dispositions, impulses, and activities has the precedence, mainly depends upon the value which man places upon them. Now, when man attributes to the ideal and ethical a higher value than to the empirical, when in reflecting about himself he finds that even in the normal individual the empirical, sensual, and material is subordinate and subject to the ideal and especially to the ethical, then from the standpoint of Lange he is right, and obliged to estimate the truth of that ideal and ethical as higher than the truth of the empirical world, and to look at the whole empirical world only as being in the service of that ideal world. When, at the same time, we observe an inner harmony in our organization, this observation gives us the right and the duty of controlling the truth of our empirical perception by the truth of the results of our ideal and our ethical activity, and the latter again by the former. For if we do not wish to suppose that the human organization aims at a grand deception of mankind, we have, in spite of {201} the superiority of the ideal and ethical activities, to establish the axiom that the empirical and the ideal and ethical cannot remain in lasting contradiction. Besides, if we should add to this that a religion like Christianity offers to man that which it gives to him on the ground of historical facts, then the reports of these facts will certainly be subject to historical criticism just as surely as all historical reports; but if they are confirmed, the ideal and ethical convincing power which lies in this religion, unites for us with the whole weight of the convincing power of the historical and empirical facts, although the reproduction and systematization of its contents is still deficient and capable of further development.

In Spencer's system, there are two points by which his own course of reasoning is able to bridge over the poverty of his conception of religion.

The first point, given on pages 107-108 of his "First Principles," and also elsewhere in his works, is the acknowledgment that the final cause of all things is _higher_ than all that we know, and is of such a nature that it really can be the real cause of everything, even the real cause of the spiritual and ethical. Thus he forbids us to think of qualities of the highest being, but he himself thinks of them; for this conception of the highest being as an _impersonal_ is certainly something else and something much more valuable than the mere negation of personality. The other point which might be able to lead him out of the vacuum of his idea of G.o.d, lies in the method of his own investigation. When he seeks the truth by collecting what is common in all the contrasts, he also must seek and find something common between the highest cause {202} of all things on one side and of the world as a whole and in detail on the other; and this something will consist of the necessity of the highest cause of all things being so qualified that _it is able_ to bring into existence the world as a whole and in detail. If such ideas are also rejected as anthropomorphisms, then all reasoning and investigating is anthropomorphistic; and in that respect we refer to what we had to say above, when treating of teleology (p. 170 ff.). The same Duke of Argyll whom we there had occasion to quote, in an article in the "Contemporary Review" (May, 1871), upon "Variety as an Aim in Nature," has admirably shown that it is the mind of man from which we may draw conclusions as to the nature of the Creator, and that the picture which we thus get of him, can at the same time be seen true and yet dim, at the same time real and yet from a distance; for the human mind does not feel anything so much as its own limitations, and therefore can easily imagine each of his powers and talents as being present in the highest being in infinite perfection. If Spencer had made this comparison, and drawn the conclusions which follow from it for the nature of the final cause of all things, the indiscernibleness of G.o.d would for him be reduced to an unsearchableness, the unknowable be changed into an unsearchable, and we could willingly acknowledge the humble modesty in regard to the infinity of the deity, which his philosophy requires, as a factor of all true religiousness. But we have to present to him as an expression, not only of true religiousness, but also of true science, that pa.s.sage of the Psalms: "He that planted the ear, shall he {203} not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?" (Psalm XCIV, 9.)

-- 4. _Spinoza and Hegel in the Garb of Darwin: Carneri. Eduard von Hartmann._

To the Austrian philosopher Carneri in his "Sittlichkeit und Darwinismus"

("Morality and Darwinism"), three books of Ethics, Vienna, Braumuller, 1871, we shall have to give a place of his own.

Inasmuch as religion and the beautiful are to him but a preliminary stage of truth which has to dissolve itself into philosophy--a philosophy which, inclined to monism, prefers to call itself pantheism--he takes a position in reference to religion similar to that toward materialism, namely: a negative position. But inasmuch as he still grants to religion in a subjective sense, to "religion in the form of piety," a lasting position and truth (religion, he says, has truth, but the positive G.o.d of religion has no reality, page 114), and inasmuch as he ascribes to it not only a transitory pedagogical value for the ma.s.ses, which are not yet elevated to the height of philosophic reasoning, but a value also for the philosopher--namely, the value of religiousness and of piety--he rather belongs to the second and third of the before-mentioned groups.

Carneri, in his "Three Books of Ethics," gives us a whole philosophic encyclopedia. In thoughts sometimes rich, but without regularly arranged and quiet reasoning, and in full command and employment of modern terms which he uses sometimes like a genius, but often superficially and unjustly, he develops a view of the world which, although it appears in an independent way {204} in all its fundamentals, as regards its contents takes its origin from Spinoza, and as regards form and dialectics from Hegel, but sometimes, it is true, sinks into weaknesses of which these philosophers would hardly have been guilty. So, for instance, when he simply identifies religious faith with conjecture, he takes a superficial view which he has in common with Hackel who, among other things, repeatedly says that faith begins where knowledge ceases. Dialectical motion is everything to him. In pursuing this dialectical motion, he gives us a mult.i.tude of outlooks into all imaginable realms of knowledge and life, but he always follows at the same time the formula of dialectical motion, and, where the difficulties of the real world are most invincibly opposed to this dialectics, knows, like his master, with almost chivalric ease, to mingle and confound abstract formalistic reasoning and thoughts naturally following from the given thought. Want of clearness in general makes the reading of this otherwise not unimportant book very difficult. On a Darwinian foundation in his conception of nature and its development, he puts a Hegelian structure into his conception of human spiritual life, but finally lets mankind, although it is the highest form of appearance in this development, sink back into death and destruction.

The G.o.d of this view of the world is the causal law; the conception of this causal law is the worship of the philosopher--a G.o.d, of course, so incapable of filling and quieting a mind longing for G.o.d--a worship so leathern that Carneri himself cannot get rid of the opinion that, with such religious ideas of reform, he will finally lose the last reader of his book. The aim of the {205} development, also, does not promise to the mind any subst.i.tute for the rigidness of G.o.d, for the aim of the development is death--the death of the individual as well as of the universe. "He who has learned to get comfort in the deepest affliction from the absolute impartiality of the causal law, is on so good terms with death, whose inflexibility he comprehends, that without reluctance he gives to it the universe into the bargain." (p. 353.)

We give these glimpses into the dreary waste of the very latest advocate of pessimism which, as it seems, has fully and formally become the fashion, in order to show what monstrosities are demanded from thought, what revolting hardness from feeling, what nonent.i.ties of ethical striving, are offered as valuable wares, if man has once begun to break the bond between himself and his living Creator and Master. For this reason, not only the anti-teleological monists meet the fate of Nihilism, whether they appear in the plebeian roughness of Buchner or in the aristocratic gentility of Strauss, but also such a brilliant advocate of teleology as Eduard von Hartmann does not know of any other final end to offer to the world and mankind than nothingness, because he did not wish to be driven from his perception of ends in the world to the only conclusion to which it leads--namely: to the perception of an absolute intelligent and ethical personality that directs these ends. He prefers, rather, to suppose an unconsciously seeing substance of the world, which, after having once in the dark impulse of its unconscious will, made the mistake of creating a world, leads the same by the instinct of unconscious teleology in sad, melancholy, and yet relatively {206} best development, until it is ripe to sink back into nothingness, and thereby to bring the absolute to rest.

Although we pity the individuals who came under the ban of such a pessimism, we nevertheless can be glad of the fact that the consequences of such a separation from G.o.d are at least exposed so clearly, and return from wandering through such barren steppes with renewed thankfulness to our Christian view of the world, with its divine plan and aim.

We have, next, however to review the representatives of theism and of the Christian view of the world--which review will show us that the song of triumph which monism began to raise before its expected victory, came very near disturbing the composure of persons here and there.

-- 5. _Re-echo of Negation on the Side of the Christian View of the World._

In this condition of affairs, it certainly could not happen otherwise than that, even on the part of the theistic and positive Christian view of the world, some advocates were drawn into the contest who thought themselves obliged to see two irreconcilable antagonists in Darwinism and Christianity.

Science and religion had both been so much accustomed to see the origin of species, and especially the appearance of man on the stage of earth, hidden in impenetrable and unapproachable secrecy, that every attempt at clearing up this darkness very naturally appeared to both as an attack upon the creative activity of G.o.d. The mode of reasoning to which mankind, in its scientific as well as in its religious meditations, had {207} accustomed itself for hundreds of years, was used to exclude from the idea of creation the conception of intervening agencies; and this was true not only in regard to the idea of the first creation of the universe, where the idea of intervening agencies naturally is left out, but also in regard to the idea of the creation of single beings. Moreover, mankind was so accustomed to see a contrast between origination and creation, that in the same degree in which man tried or was able to perceive the modalities of the origin of species, the divine causality, or at least the idea of creation, seemed to disappear; and for the word of the Bible, that G.o.d created creatures _each after its kind_, a place could no longer be found.

To this was added the fact that not only all materialism took possession of Darwinism as the irresistible battering-ram which, as they said, forever demolishes the whole fortress of theism and buries under its ruins all those who take refuge in this decaying castle, but that even _naturalists_ let themselves be carried away without opposition by this anti-theistic current, and even submitted to be heralds and prophets of this new anti-theistic wisdom of monism. Let the reader think of Hackel's "Natural History of Creation" and "Anthropogeny," where he will find the most interesting reports from all realms of exact natural science, together with a wholly unsolved entanglement of descent, selection, and mechanical view of the world, and this mode of contemplation of the world, with eloquent and enthusiastic proclamation of monism and with unconcealed derision of the capricious arbitrariness of a personal Creator, all thrown together as one great entire system, formed at one stroke. {208}

Is it, then, to be wondered at, that not only the uncritical among believers, but also those who thoughtfully examined the movements of the mind, believed in the loudly-proclaimed connection of Darwinism with the whole anti-Christian view of the world, and therefore protested immediately against everything which is called Darwinism? Can we reproach theologians for not immediately becoming scientists themselves, in order to form an independent judgment in the question, when even the most eminent scientists declared that amalgamation of the most heterogenetic as an inevitable consequence of Darwinism, and as much as possible diminished or concealed their want of harmony with a few other investigators who, although small in number, yet by their weight counterbalanced dozens of names of the second and third rank?

Thus we could read, in the journals of specialists, in pamphlets, in religious and political journals, even in local newspapers, a great many articles which were guilty of exactly the same confounding of the scientific and the religious, and again of the scientific and the philosophic, as those who had caused this confounding, and who, under the supposition of this solidarity of wholly distinct things, attacked and contested in the interest of religion, not only the anti-religious conclusions of Darwinian philosophers, but also Darwinism as a merely scientific theory, and rendered the contrast as strong as possible by adhering to that above censured, unmotived, indefensible, and one-sided conception of creation.

And although on the part of positive Christian theology there was a gradually increasing number of voices {209} of those who in the idea of an origin of species through _descent_ do not yet see an injury to the theistic and Christian conception of G.o.d and creation, still as a rule this concession was made only to the idea of descent, and not to that of selection and to that which is properly called Darwinism. As a rule, in most of the theological works which treat in general of the _Darwinian_ questions, Darwinism and opposition to the Christian conception of G.o.d and creation were and are still taken as identical. For instance, Ebrard, in the first part of his "Apologetik" ("Apologetics"), Gutersloh, Bertelsmann, 1874, enumerates among the systems which are opposed to Christianity, in the same line with the doubtless anti-theistic and anti-Christian _aposkopiology_ or negation of the idea of design, also the mechanistic system, or the negation of the organic vital force, and the Darwinian theory of descent. Besides, in reading his "Apologetics," we had earnestly wished, in the interest of science as well as of religion, that a theologian who writes a work which claims to be scientific and to advocate the Christian standpoint, had abstained from that coa.r.s.e and disgusting contempt and derision of adversaries which we meet so often in his book, and which only causes friend and foe to take a position contrary to that which the author intended. Trumpelmann who, in an essay upon Darwinism, monistic philosophy, and Christianity (Jahrbucher fur protestantische Theologie, 1876, I) gives a similar conception of the relation between Darwinism and religion, but defends his whole position with much more scientific acuteness and depth, has also not taken the tone which worthily treats an opposite opinion and its advocates.

* * * * * {210}

CHAPTER II.

REFORM OF RELIGION, OR AT LEAST OF THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION, THROUGH DARWINISM.

-- 1. _Heinrich Lang, Friedrich Vischer, Gustav Jager._

In pa.s.sing on to those who in Darwinism do not see a negation but a reformation of religion, or at least of theology, we first meet Heinrich Lang, the late spiritual leader of the "Reformtheologie" in Switzerland. He treats of "Die Religion im Zeitalter Darwins" ("Religion in the Age of Darwin") in Holtzendorff's and Oncken's "Deutsche Zeit- und Streitfragen,"

Jahrg. II, Heft 31, Berlin, Luderitz, 1873.

With a very correct estimate of the lasting value of religion as well as of natural science, and with a warm apology for the religious realm, he regulates the boundaries of each by asking religion not to hinder modern knowledge of the world and nature, and by asking knowledge of nature to leave the realm of religion untouched in its self-certainty.

But when he, evidently still dependent on the old rationalistic supernaturalistic conception of miracle and providence, claims to find that as the result of modern knowledge of the world and nature a special providence is no longer conceivable, and no other hearing of prayer is possible than a subjective psychological one; that the processes in the world, in their entire final causal connection of causes and effects, nowhere leave a place for {211} the freely acting hand of a divine Lord of the world, and that even a moral order of the world can only prove itself so far as guilt and punishment stand in a natural causal connection with one another: then his religiousness makes concessions to the modern view of the world which it is not at all obliged to make or justified in making, and forces upon religion a reform against the necessity and usefulness of which not only religious feeling and need, but also deeper and more consequent reflection on G.o.d and the world, just as strongly strives.

What remains to him as an independent realm for religion is nevertheless worthy of recognition. As faith of the human mind in a transcendental unity which manifests itself in the manifold and sensible, and carries through a moral order of the world--although one which, by the before-mentioned limitation of the natural connection of guilt and punishment, is very much reduced--religion gives to the mind warmth and worship; as confidence of the heart in an infinite possession in the anguish of the finite, it creates confidence in G.o.d, grat.i.tude, devotion, energy, courage of life; as reverence for a holiness which stands unimpeachable above the fluctuating inclinations of our will, awakens the consciousness of guilt, and abolishes the guilt, it remains the basis of all moral action. Lang also sharply and correctly points out the insufficiency of Strauss's "The Old Faith and the New," as well as the conflict between his metaphysical naturalism which only leads to the struggle for existence, and his demand of self-submission to the universe, and of the moral and spiritual self-determination of man as of a being which goes beyond nature. Nevertheless we can not follow Lang in his {212} ways of reform. First--his conception of G.o.d is amazingly meagre, and of more than a Spencerian unapproachableness. G.o.d is to him, according to his "Dogmatics," nothing but the eternal, in itself perfect cause of all being, exempted from all changes of the world's process. When he gives the name of father to this primeval cause, as he does in his sermons and elsewhere, without being able to admit relation of mutual love of person to person, he only makes it glaringly evident how little his abstract metaphysics can satisfy religious need. Second--that which is claimed to be gained by this modern view of the world (namely, extension of the supremacy of religion to everything, even to the affairs of daily life), is not at all new, but is the effect of long-existing sound religiousness, and is the essence of all sound religious doctrine; and we therefore can not see how a view of the world, which, for instance, denies divine providence, and limits the hearing of prayer to its psychological effects, shall have greater force to leaven the whole daily life religiously, than our Christian faith in the Father without whose will no sparrow falls to the ground, and who says to his children: "Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."

Third--exactly that which Lang declares a purification of religion (namely, the before-mentioned elimination of divine providence and of all that which is connected therewith), appears to us not at all as a reform, but as an immense impoverishment and desolation of religion, which is so far from being required by natural science, that it turns out to be but a concession to the most superficial metaphysicians who, of course, have become very popular. {213}

Friedrich Vischer is also to be ranked in this group. In the sixth part of his "Kritische Gange" ("Critical Walks"), he speaks of Strauss' "The Old Faith and the New," and takes his determined position in reference to the religious question, quite essentially differing from Strauss. In regard to the aversion to miracles, he stands on the same ground with Strauss and Lang; in protesting against Strauss' elimination of the idea of design, and especially in demanding a moral order of the world, he is still more energetic than Lang. He particularly does not, like Lang, limit the moral order of the world to the simple empiric causal connection between human action and its consequences. But on the other hand, by his opposition to the idea of a personality of G.o.d, he again deviates more than Lang from the true meaning of Christian religiousness. On page 219 he says: "How, in spite of the infinite crossings of human action, is inner conformity to the end in view in general so established through that which we call chance, or rather by means of these crossings, that we can speak of a moral order of the world? Men, individuals as well as communities, follow their aims.

Hereby there always results something quite different from that which they intended and wished. Sublime laws govern above us, between us, full of mystery in the midst of life; one of them in reference to guilt, punishment of guilt, is called nemesis. Faith in that meaning of the word, which we regard as a low one [he means the faith which has its dogmas beyond which the man of the most recent culture has pa.s.sed, not knowing that he also carries around with him his dogmas, his "new faith"] is in need of a person who founds, carries out, and executes {214} these laws. But the faith of the monists has no such need. Why not? That needs more sufficient demonstration."

Certainly it needs more sufficient demonstration. But this demonstration will never be possible, so long as we acknowledge the government of a moral order of the world. For this leads of necessity to faith in a living G.o.d, and this faith demands from our conception less pretensions than the faith in a kind of system of spiritual machinery by which chance and the wished-for are woven together, without this system proceeding from a highly spiritual and ethical intelligence. It nevertheless must be acknowledged that Vischer, from the standpoint of _ethical_ need, vindicates the position and truth of religion, as he also beautifully and correctly defines its position in reference to morality, in saying that morality makes the demand, religion gives the strength to meet it.

From another side, Gustav Jager makes a compromise between Darwinism and religion in his five lectures on "Die Darwinsche Theorie und ihre Stellung zu Moral und Religion" ("The Darwinian Theory and its Position in Reference to Morality and Religion"), Stuttgart, J. Hoffmann, 1869.

He makes still more valid concessions to religion and Christianity than Lang and Vischer; directly opposes materialistic monism; leaves to faith in a personal G.o.d, in the divinity of Christ, in individual immortality, in the answer to prayer beyond the psychological effect, in miracles, in short, to the full contents of Christian religiousness, their weight and truth; and in that respect we would have to rank him in the following group, if he {215} did not by his manner of proving these concessions exclude himself from it, and rank himself in that group of which we treat in the present section.

According to his opinion, Darwinism gives to religion, if not new contents (although these contents are entirely subject to revision according to Darwinism), still a wholly new foundation, and, indeed, a foundation of subjective religiousness, as well as of the objective contents of religion, only from the standpoint of its practical usefulness in the struggle for existence. The faith in a personal G.o.d, in immortality, in redemption by the G.o.d-Man Jesus Christ, in the hearing of prayer, in help in danger even to the extent of miracles, strengthens man, gives to him a superiority to those who do not have that faith and who do not have the habit of prayer, and therefore is so far the best weapon in the struggle for existence; and herein lies the truth of religion, especially of the Christian religion, as the most successful weapon in the struggle for existence which takes place through the whole creation, from the lowest organisms up to the highest spiritual life of mankind.

We willingly admit that Christianity has certainly proved itself by far the strongest and most successful means of education to mankind, and that, if we must once express this experience in the Darwinian mode of speaking, we can express it as above. But with the attempt to make the _truth_ of religion and the truth of its contents, even if only subjective, dependent only and solely upon the proof of its _usefulness_, n.o.body, either friend or foe, will be satisfied. The adversaries of religion and Christianity, perhaps with the exception of Buchner, will admit that Christianity has for some {216} time been a quite useful weapon to mankind in the struggle for existence; but they will say that they are just about to replace it by a still more useful weapon; and the advocates of religion and Christianity likewise can not agree upon a mere grounding of their religion upon need which puts upon them every day the possibility of changing it for something still more useful. Both friend and foe will join in the conviction that objective truth is always the best guarantee for subjective success; and thus both will pa.s.s beyond the purely utilitarian apologetics or polemics to the questions as to the objective reality of the contents of Christian religiousness.

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CHAPTER III.

PEACE BETWEEN RELIGION AND DARWINISM.