ical development, as no other idea does." He means the idea of God;
not merely the theistic idea of a personal God, but the idea of God in
general. For even the pantheistic idea of God, which he had formerly
treated with a certain polite reserve, finds in his eyes even less favor
than the theistic. He says: "If the absurdity is already great enough in
theism, it is possibly still greater in pantheism, which moreover has
always played a great _role_ in philosophy;" and, "Christianity has but
injured the spiritual and material progress of mankind." In agreement with
Strauss, he sees the earliest origin of the idea of God only in ignorance
and fear. "Every creating, preserving, or reigning principle in the world
is done away with, and there remains as highest spiritual power present in
the world only human reason. Atheism or philosophic monism alone leads to
freedom, to reason, progress, acknowledgment of true humanity,--in short to
humanism."

This materialistic opposition to everything which is called religion, is
certainly independent of Darwinism, and originated before its time; but
since Buechner himself sees in Darwinism but a grand confirmation of his
view of the world, and believes that he has found in it {190} that
principle which, with urgent necessity, banishes teleology from the
contemplation of nature--teleology, with the defeat or victory of which
materialism stands or falls,--we are entitled and obliged to rank even this
view of the world among the conclusions which in reference to religion have
been drawn from the theories of Darwin. And, indeed, it is a most extreme
conclusion, and simply puts itself in the category of negation to the
contents of religion, as well as to religion in a subjective sense, to
religious and pious conduct. It can be clearly seen how firmly a view of
the world which makes war against religion and the idea of God its special
life-task, is connected with all those destructive elements which lie in
human nature, and especially in the social circumstances of the present,
and which have their only and final ethical limit in the consciousness of
God which, as a power never wholly to be effaced, lies in the depth of the
soul of even those who wander farthest from a moral and spiritual life.

Sec. 2. _Replacement of Religion through a Religious Worship of the Universe.
Strauss, Oskar Schmidt, Haeckel._

Strauss, in that testament of his scientific life and activity, "The Old
Faith and th