he most zealous Darwinians gave too much
cause for such a conception and representation of the ethical consequences
of their system. In view of the fact that they applied the selection
principle, with its most radical consequences, to the origin and
development of mankind, and that they elevated the same to the ethical and
social principle of mankind and did not permit the acceptance of any new
and higher agencies in mankind except those already active in the animal
and the organic world, and that they gladly treated this selection
principle also in the social and ethical realm as a struggle for existence,
it was simply an entirely logical conclusion that the advocates of the
moral nobility of mankind reproached such a reproduced Darwinism with
degrading the moral dignity of man and with replacing love by egoism.
Besides, in view of the fact that they declared materialistic monism, even
the most naked atheism, the only conclusion of {232} Darwinism, and
extended their mechanistic explanation of the world to a determinism in the
highest degree mechanistic, and, carried to its utmost limit, to a denial
of human freedom, it was not to be wondered at that those who recognize in
theism the basis of all life worthy of man, and in the freedom of man one
of the most precious pearls in the crown of his human dignity and of his
creation in the image of God, complained of Darwinism's taking from
morality its strongest motive and from moral action its responsibility.
And, finally, in view of the fact that those who thus express themselves in
their works showed but rarely, or not at all, some of the noblest fruits of
moral education, such as respectful treatment of adversaries, humbleness
and tact, they could not themselves reasonably complain that there was
ascribed to their doctrine an influence detrimental to moral education. All
this we find abundantly confirmed in the publications of Buechner and
Haeckel, and in many articles of the "Ausland."

But the question is, whether those Darwinians who drew these conclusions
were by their scientific investigations obliged to draw them, or whether
they did not rather reach their religious and ethical view of the world by
quite other ways, and whether they did not in a wholly arbitrary and
irresponsible manner make extensive use of Darwinism in this anti-religious
and ethically objectional direction--a fact which we shall try to prove in
the last part of our investigation.

Of course the