reat the idea
of development seriously and recognize a plan and a striving towards an end
in this world-process, and should then find ourselves referred to a higher
intelligence and a creative will as the highest and last cause which
appoints the end and conditions of this process. This would be the case
still more, as we actually {277} see that at present the single beings
which stand on a lower stage of existence no longer produce beings of a
higher stage, although, according to that theory whose correctness we now
assume hypothetically, the elements and factors for the production of those
higher forms of existence are fully present in the lower ones. Inorganic
matter no longer produces organisms; the lower species of plants or animals
no longer develop higher ones; the animal no longer becomes man; and yet
there were periods, lying widely apart, in which, according to that theory,
such things took place. What else set free those active causes, at the
right time and in the right place? What else closed again at the precise
place and moment the valves of the proceeding development, and brought to
rest again the inciting force of the rising development?--what else but the
highest end-appointing intelligence and omnipotence?

Even the inherent qualities of the elements, and the products of all the
higher forms of existence which in the future shall arise out of them, the
whole striving toward an end of the processes in the world, would present
itself to us much more vividly than now, where we are still in the dark as
to all these questions. We should see in _atoms_ the _real_ inherent
qualities of all things and processes which are to be developed out of
them; in the inorganic the _real_ inherent qualities for the organic and
living; in that which has no consciousness and sensation the _real_
inherent qualities for self-consciousness. Instead of being now obliged to
recur to the ideal and metaphysical, we should see the threads of the
world's plan uncovered before us in empirical reality; and far from bearing
with it an impoverishment of our {278} consciousness of God, all this would
bring us only an immense enrichment of its contents; for with such an
enlargement of our knowledge, we should only be permitted to take glances
into the way and manner of divine creation and action--glances of a depth
which at present we are far from being permitted to take.

Even very concrete parts of a theistic view of the world, as they p