resent
themselves to us--_e.g._, in the Holy Scripture, from its most developed
points of view--would now find only richer illustrations than heretofore.
St. Paul, for instance, in Rom. viii, speaks of the earnest expectation of
the creature that waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. As to
the present state of our knowledge of nature, those who adopt this view are
only entitled to see in the sensation of pain of the _animal world_ a
sensation of this longing, unconscious of the end; but as to all soulless
and lifeless beings and elements in the world, they can see in these words
of a sighing and longing creation only a strong figurative expression used
because of its suitableness to denote suffering of the animal world, as
well as of men,--for the destination of the world to another and higher
existence in which the law of perishableness and suffering no longer
governs. On the other hand, if, as we assume hypothetically, all higher
forms of existence in the world could be explained out of the preceding
lower ones, and if the before-mentioned theorem of a sensation of atoms
should form a needed and correct link in that chain of explanation, those
words of sighing and longing would have to be literally taken in a still
more comprehensive sense than now and in their directly literal meaning
{279} would refer not only to the animal world but indeed to everything in
the world.

Therefore, so long as attempts at explaining the different forms of
existence in the world wholly from one another keep within their own
limits, and do not of themselves undermine theism; and so long as there are
men who on the one hand favor such a mode of explanation and on the other
hand still adhere firmly to a faith in God, whether it be the deeper theism
or the more shallow and superficial deism--so long religion has no reason
for opposing those attempts at explanation. And there are such men; we need
only to mention Huxley, whose position in reference to religion we have
already discussed; or Oskar Peschel, who, in his "Voelkerkunde"
("Ethnology"), says: "It is not quite clear how pious minds can be
disturbed by this theory; for creation obtains more dignity and importance
if it has in itself the power of renewal and development of the perfect."
Even Herbert Spencer, with his idea of the imperceptibility of the
super-personal, of the final cause of all things, is still a living proof
of the fact that man can trace the mechanism of ca