e to our inner
happiness as that impulse of investigation, and which first gives to this
impulse its overwhelming power--namely, the {408} consciousness and the
hope of really possessing the truth. For, in fact, we are not required to
make this choice. There is a possession of truth which does not exclude,
but requires, the search for truth: that is the possession of truth in the
answer to the questions as to the starting point and the goal of our life,
the possession of truth in the fundamentals of our religious view of the
world. It is the certainty about the starting-point and goal of our life,
which lastingly and effectively invites us also to look for and perceive
all the ways which, in theory as well as in practice, lead from a firm
starting-point to a certain end, and only the possession of truth in the
fundamentals of our religious view of the world gives value and
satisfaction to investigation in a world which, without this possession,
contains for us only transitory and fleeting, and therefore only
unsatisfactory, things, but which stands before us as the work and the
theatre of revelation of a God and Father, and therefore gives to
investigation inexhaustible joy and satisfaction when we look upon it from
those stand-points.

In like manner as, at the outset of our investigation, we perceived in
organic species creations of God, and in spite of this, or rather on
account of it, looked upon the attempts at exploring their origin with so
much deeper interest, we also see ourselves, in the still more direct
religious realm, not at all condemned to stagnation when we acknowledge
Christianity as absolute religion. This very acknowledgment alone makes a
real progress possible for us. For every progress, in order to be a real
progress, needs a firm starting-point and a certain goal; hence that which
is shown and offered to mankind in Christianity. From this {409}
starting-point and toward this end there are tasks enough for religious
progress. The ever more definite investigation of the facts and doctrines
of Christianity, the improvement and ever more complete reproduction of the
scientific image in which these facts and doctrines are reflected in the
mind of man the progressing adaptation of ecclesiastical life in divine
service, and organization to the substance and the need of Christian
religiousness, the harmonizing of our possession of faith with all other
elements of culture of each period, the working up of t