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 God. The mode of reasoning to which mankind, in its scientific as well as in its religious meditations, had
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 God 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 Häckel'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.
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