ecessary information in Martensen's "Ethik"
("Ethics"), in Otto Pfleiderer's monograph, which partly assumes a contrary
point of view, and in a thorough essay of Julius Koestlin (Theol. Studien
und Kritiken, 1870, I), which appeared before the "Ethics" of Martensen.

In undertaking now to represent the conclusions which have been drawn from
Darwinism, we treat of the religious realm as the higher, a realm demanding
a sound morality prior to the moral realm; and we begin with those
conclusions which take a hostile position in reference to religion, in
order to proceed from them to the moderate and friendly relations.

* * * * *

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_A. THE DARWINIAN THEORIES AND RELIGION._

CHAPTER I.

MORE OR LESS NEGATIVE POSITION IN REFERENCE TO RELIGION.

Sec. 1. _Extreme Negation. L. Buechner and Consistent Materialism._

The common point of beginning and attack of all those who take a negative
position against religion, is the rejection of teleology. The most advanced
of all materialists, Ludwig Buechner, in his self-criticism, which he gives
in his "Natur und Wissenschaft" ("Nature and Science"), on page 465, openly
declares, and quite correctly, that with the success or failure of the
attacks upon teleology materialism itself stands or falls.

Now while many, as we shall immediately see, although opposed to a
teleological view of the world, still are inclined to give a more or less
lasting value to certain psychical processes which may be called by the
name religion, Buechner, on the contrary, makes a direct attack upon
everything which is thus called. He does not render it difficult for us to
review his position. For, after having given it openly, but still with
certain relative modifications, in different publications (especially in
his book "Force and Matter," which appeared in 1855 in the first edition,
and in 1872 in the twelfth) he gives it in cynical nakedness in the
lectures with which he travelled through America and {189} Germany in
1872-1874, and the contents of which he has made public in his pamphlet:
"Der Gottesbegriff und dessen Bedeutung in der Gegenwart" ("The Idea of
God, and its Importance at the Present Time"), Leipzig, 1874, Theo. Thomas.
As is said in the preface, the design of the lecture is "to give a renewed
impulse to the final and definitive elimination of an idea which, according
to the opinion of the author, obstructs our whole spiritual, social, and
polit