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, nobody, either friend or foe, will be satisfied. The adversaries of religion and Christianity, perhaps with the exception of Büchner, will admit that Christianity has for some
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 pass beyond the purely utilitarian apologetics or polemics to the questions as to the objective reality of the contents of Christian religiousness.
CHAPTER III.
PEACE BETWEEN RELIGION AND DARWINISM.
§ 1. Darwin, Wallace, R. Owen, Asa Gray, Mivart, McCosh, Anderson, K. E. v. Baer, Alex. Braun, Braubach, etc.
It still remains for us to take a glance at those who think religion and Darwinism, and Christianity and Darwinism, hold toward one another reciprocally amicable relations.
In the first place, we have to mention Darwin himself. In his earliest work, "Origin of Species," he repeatedly gives this opinion, as on page 421: "I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz 'as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.' A celebrated author and divine has written to me that he 'has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.'" On page 428, he speaks of the laws which God has impressed on matter; and at the end of his work, on page 429, he says: "There is grandeur in this
view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." In his "Descent of Man," he also protests against the reproach that his views are irreligious, and says: "The birth both of the species and of the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of events which our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind chance." In treating of the question as to the development of the moral instincts, he says: "If he [man] breaks through the fixed habits of his life, he will assuredly feel dissatisfaction. He must likewise avoid the reprobation of the one God or gods in whom, according to his knowledge or superstition, he may believe." And furthermore he remarks: "The question whether there exists a Creator and Ruler of the Universe, has been answered in the affirmative by some of the highest intellects that have ever existed."