the
reconcilableness of the idea of evolution with theism, but of which we
likewise made no use. We could show that in this question no other
difficulties present themselves to the religious consciousness, than such
as existed long before the appearance of the Darwinian theories and were
overcome by pious consciousness and religious reasoning. For a difficulty
entirely similar to that which here appears to us, when looking upon the
whole human _species_ and its origin, stood before us heretofore, when
looking upon the human _individual_ and his origin. From the standpoint of
Biblical Christianity, we ascribe to the human individual an immortality of
the soul and a coming resurrection of the body; but we do not to the human
embryo at the beginning of its development in the womb. Now we know that
the development of man from that embryo to perfect man is wholly gradual;
that we cannot observe and predicate of any organ, of any quality, of any
activity of body, soul, or mind, exactly the moment when it comes into
existence; and that therefore we cannot give the moment when we could
assume that something so decidedly great and new as the immortality of the
soul and the prospect of a {327} resurrection of the body, begins for the
human individual. Although we know all this, nevertheless in all
discussions of the question whether we have to hope for an immortality of
the soul and a resurrection of the body, the gradual development has hardly
ever been, so far as we know, a weight--in any case, never the decisive
weight--in the balance _against_ the supposition of an immortality. If we
can look upon the idea of an immortality of the soul and of a resurrection
of the body as reconcilable with the fact, that the human individual was
only developed gradually out of something which was still soulless and
perishable, we also have to look upon the other fact as reconcilable with
the gradual development of the whole _species_; namely, that man, if he
should have developed himself without sin, would have reached an
immortality of body and soul. But we shall not enter this path which would
lead us around the whole question. For the objection might be made, that
the scientific and philosophic impossibility of assuming an eternal
duration of an individual that originated in time, has, indeed, always been
pointed out, and only the _assertion_, not the _proof_, of the contrary has
been opposed to it; but that Darwinism puts this impossibility