ll of which have the same character, and give their stamp to the entire
mental work of the last decades. This stamp consists in the tendency of
science, which has nearly become universal, not only to consider all
phenomena, both of the physical and the mental life, in connection with
their preceding conditions in space and time, but to trace them back more
or less exclusively to these conditions, and to explain them exclusively by
means of the same. What a Wilhelm von Humboldt, and, still more, a Jacob
Grimm, prepared the way for in the realm of philology, a Lazar Geiger and a
Steinthal, and (under direct influence of Darwin) a Schleicher and a
Wilhelm Bleek further developed; what Julius Braun did in the realm of the
history of art; what a Buckle and a Sir {18} John Lubbock tried to do in
the realm of the history of civilization; what a Max Mueller did in the
realm of the history of religion; what the Tuebingen School began and its
disciples carried out in the realm of the exegesis of the Bible; what a
Strauss and a Renan, and in a certain sense also a Keim, did in the realm
of christology; what, finally--without being so closely connected with
individual names--was also done in the realm of the world's history: this,
Darwin did in the realm of the history of the organic kingdoms, seconded by
the geological principles of Sir Charles Lyell and by the investigations in
biology and comparative anatomy of a number of scientists. From this point
of view, the movement which was inaugurated by Darwin seems to us but the
reflex of the universal spirit of the present time upon a particular realm;
namely, that of natural science. But since, soon after the appearance of
the before-mentioned work and long before the publication of Darwin's
"Descent of Man," man also was included in the consequences of the
evolution theory, and his existence was explained as a wholly natural
development out of lower animal forms; since Darwin himself unreservedly
adopted this theory of the descent of man from the animal world as an
entirely natural consequence of his doctrine of the origin of species, the
evolution question has gone far beyond the proportionately narrow and
limited bounds of natural philosophy and of merely theoretical scientific
interest--has surpassed in interest all the before-mentioned
investigations, however lively this interest was and is to-day, and has
stirred up the minds of all most thoroughly, not only in their scientific
b