Strauss in "The Old Faith and the New," a publication which certainly has to be ranked here, for the reason that in it he founds on Darwinism his whole knowledge of the world, on the ground of which he wishes to arrange life, appears to be much more decent, and in the practical consequences much more conservative, than Büchner; but essentially stands upon quite the same ground. Häckel, Oskar Schmidt, and (as to his linguistic Darwinism) W. Bleek, group themselves around Strauss, partly with, partly without express reference to his deductions.
Strauss arrives at a peculiar inconsequence, but one well worthy of notice, when, in place of the struggle for existence which, according to the conclusions of those who also reduce morality to Darwinism, is still the spiritus rector of moral development in mankind, and yet cannot of itself possibly lead to the morally indispensable requirements and virtues of self-sacrifice and of mere subordination under the moral idea, he suddenly substitutes a going of man beyond mere nature, and herewith a moral principle, which can never be deduced from Darwinism alone, and which is directly opposed to monism and pankosmism, which is to be the basis of his ethics. The reader may compare the manner in which he metaphysically supports his moral principle when he says: "As nature cannot go higher, she would go inwards. Nature felt herself already in the animal, but she wished to know herself also.... In man, nature endeavored not merely to exalt, but to transcend herself." Ulrici, the philosopher, in his reply to Strauss, has pointed out in sharp terms this inconsequence, as well as the other, that from the ground of a blind necessity which does not know anything of a higher and a lower, the difference of higher and lower, good and bad, rational and irrational, cannot at all be maintained; and that the requirement of a progress cannot at all be made, and its idea not at all be given. In this very perceptible inconsistency, Strauss calls that morality which he requires, "the relation of man to the idea of his kind." To realize the latter in himself, is the summary of his duties toward himself; actually to recognize and promote the equality of the kind in all the others, is the
summary of his duties towards others. He opposes the internal satisfaction which originates therein, to the "rough" idea of a reward of virtue and piety, coming from without, which, in order to connect both, is in need of a God. And he again reaches that inconsequence which from his metaphysical standpoint is entirely without motive, but as to itself only worthy to be recognized, when in another formula of his moral imperative he says: "Ever remember that thou art human, not merely a natural production."
It is also this representation and realization of the idea of the kind, which those who combine with their Darwinism a negation of theism have mostly established before the appearance of the work of Strauss as the highest moral principle, and to which they are also led most naturally by Darwin's deduction of morality from the social instincts. Thus, Wilhelm Bleek, in the preface to his "Ursprung der Sprache" ("Origin of Language"), says (page XIII): "To aim at the inner and outer harmony of his genus in one or the other way, and to promote the correct relations of the different parts to one another in their reciprocal connections and in the greater parts of the whole organism (family, community, nation), are the highest visible designs of human existence, which must by themselves incite man to noble actions and to virtuous deeds. In the performance of this task lies the highest happiness which seems to be given to our species, a happiness accessible by everyone in his own way. Neither the fruit of eternal punishment nor the hope of an individual happiness, is really capable as a truly saving idea to elevate man to a higher existence; even if we take no account of the fact that
each of these two fundamental dogmas of the vulgar dogmatism makes but refined egoism the lever of its ethics."
Häckel alone, in his "Natural History of Creation," with his utterances as to Christianity, morality, and the history of the world, again sinks down to the level of the coarseness of Büchner, and even below it. On page 19, vol. I, he entirely contests the reality of the moral order of the world, and continues: "If we contemplate the common life, and the mutual relations between plants and animals (man included), we shall find everywhere and at all times, the very opposite of that kindly and peaceful social life, which the goodness of the Creator ought to have prepared for his creatures—we shall rather find everywhere a pitiless, most embittered struggle of all against all. Nowhere in nature, no matter where we turn our eyes, does that idyllic peace, celebrated by the poets, exist; we find everywhere a struggle and a striving to annihilate neighbors and competitors. Passion and selfishness, conscious or unconscious, is everywhere the motive force of life. Man in this respect certainly forms no exception to the rest of the animal world." On page 237, vol. I, he professes the most extreme naturalistic determinism: "The will of the animal, as well as that of man, is never free. The widely spread dogma of the freedom of the will is, from a scientific point of view, altogether untenable." And on page 170, vol. I, he even says: "If, as we maintain, natural selection is the great active cause which has produced the whole wonderful variety of organic life on the earth, all the interesting phenomena of human life must also be explicable from the same cause. For man is after all
only a most highly-developed vertebrate animal, and all aspects of human life have their parallels, or, more correctly, their lower stages of development, in the animal kingdom. The whole history of nations, or what is called universal history, must therefore be explicable by means of natural selection,—must be a physico-chemical process, depending upon the interaction of adaptation and inheritance in the struggle for life. And this is actually the case." That in his ethical naturalism he sees a real reform of morality, he expressly declares on the page next to the last of his "Natural History of Creation": "Just as this new monistic philosophy first opens up to us a true understanding of the real universe, so its application to practical human life must open up a new road towards moral perfection." (Vol. II, p. 367.)
In the low conception of morality and its principle, Häckel is perhaps seconded only by Seidlitz who says in his "Die Darwin'she Theorie" ("Darwin's Theory"), p. 198: "Rational and moral life consist in the satisfaction of all physical functions, in correct proportion and relation to one another. Man is immoral through excessive satisfaction of one function and through neglect of the others."
As in the religious question, so in the ethical, Carneri also takes a peculiar position. In reducing all the phenomena of existence, together with the whole spiritual life of mankind, to a close development of nature according to the causal law, in expressly grouping also the utterances of the will of man under this law of an absolute necessity, in fully adopting Darwin's doctrine as the wholly satisfactory key for the comprehension of the entire development of nature up to the history of