ism, was regarded as not only of no
importance, but as trivial and unscientific. It was a repetition of the
same thing that had happened in the case of Kant's works. The "Critique
of Pure Reason" was adopted by the scientific crowd; but the "Critique of
Applied Reason," that part which contains the gist of moral doctrine, was
repudiated. In Kant's doctrine, that was accepted as scientific which
subserved the existent evil. But the positive philosophy, which was
accepted by the crowd, was founded on an arbitrary and erroneous basis,
was in itself too unfounded, and therefore unsteady, and could not
support itself alone. And so, amid all the multitude of the idle plays
of thought of the men professing the so-called science, there presents
itself an assertion equally devoid of novelty, and equally arbitrary and
erroneous, to the effect that living beings, i.e., organisms, have had
their rise in each other,--not only one organism from another, but one
from many; i.e., that in a very long interval of time (in a million of
years, for instance), not only could a duck and a fish proceed from one
ancestor, but that one animal might result from a whole hive of bees. And
this arbitrary and erroneous assumption was accepted by the learned world
with still greater and more universal sympathy. This assumption was
arbitrary, because no one has ever seen how one organism is made from
another, and therefore the hypothesis as to the origin of species will
always remain an hypothesis, and not an experimental fact. And this
hypothesis was also erroneous, because the decision of the question as to
the origin of species--that they have originated, in consequence of the
law of heredity and fitness, in the course of an interminably long
time--is no solution at all, but merely a re-statement of the problem in
a new form.

According to Moses' solution of the question (in the dispute with whom
the entire significance of this theory lies), it appears that the
diversity of the species of living creatures proceeded according to the
will of God, and according to His almighty power; but according to the
theory of evolution, it appears that the difference between living
creatures arose by chance, and on account of varying conditions of
heredity and surroundings, through an endless period of time. The theory
of evolution, to speak in simple language, merely asserts, that by
chance, in an incalculably long period of time, out of any thing you
l