r
with attempts at its solution, separately, although keeping constantly in
mind its connection with all other problems and their attempts at solution.
We found ourselves led into the presence of a series of the most
interesting problems, but not a single solution finished. That very attempt
at solution which brought up this whole question, and which was repeatedly
announced as the infallible key to the solution of all scientific
problems--the selection theory--we found a decided failure, at least in the
direction of the extension and importance which was given to this theory.
And yet in spite of the hypothetical nature of all attempts at solution, we
see investigators in all the realms of natural science strongly attracted
by the very promising character of these problems and busily engaged in
making attempts at solution; {400} and we see even philosophy strongly
attracted by its interest in these works. Such a diligent work can
certainly not be without gain; but wherein will this gain consist? Will it,
as its antagonists prophecy, be like that which in former times alchemy
brought to science, which, indeed, enriched chemistry by an entire series
of new discoveries, but did not find what it sought, the one fundamental
element from which all the rest are derived, which only confirmed, with a
power acknowledged even to-day, the old doctrine of the elementary
difference of the elements? Will the Darwinian investigations thus also
make all possible discoveries _by the way_, but in place of that which they
look for, in place of a common pedigree or of a few pedigrees for all
organisms, finally only give additional strength to the permanence of
species and the unapproachableness of the secret of their origin? Or can we
derive from the reasons which the investigators urge in favor of the idea
of an origin of species through descent and evolution, the hope that that
mysterious darkness of prehistoric times upon which the works of our
century have shed so much light, will still be illuminated even to the
sources from which organic species came, and from which mankind also
originated? We must leave the decision of these questions to the future and
to scientists.

But we have to note _one_ gain, which is so great that on its account, we
willingly cease our regret in regard to the unfinished condition of these
theories; for we owe the full enjoyment of this gain to that very
unfinished condition. It is the gain which _religion and