Chapter II (2)

But we have to draw still another conclusion from the difference between the two accounts of creation. If the succession, in which the inhabitants of the earth appear in the first account, is so entirely different from that in the second, as it evidently is, we have necessarily either to give up the historical reality of the one or of the other account, or of both, or to suppose that the creation of the inhabitants of the earth took place in a way and manner which makes it possible to perceive a _real_ connection of the succession in the first account, _as well as_ in that of the second, with the real processes of creation. Now we do not at all intend to argue with those who choose the first part of the dilemma; we ourselves join with them, and believe that salvation does {320} not depend upon the objective reality of that succession, nor the possession of salvation on the faith of such reality. But we leave to the consideration of those who, in their religious convictions, think themselves bound to the objective reality of both accounts, the following thoughts: If not only ideal depth, but also a connection with the empirical and historical reality of the process of creation, is to be assigned to the succession of the first account as well as to that of the second, it is only possible by assuming a descent--namely, that man, _e.g._, may be called in one sense the first of creatures, inasmuch as with the first organism that was already given which was afterwards developed into man, and inasmuch as all which was otherwise created and developed as aspecial species, was only present on account of that aim; and that man in another, in the merely empirico-historical sense, is still also the last of creatures. Thus, then, the advocates of descent would find themselves in the unaccustomed position, equally surprising to friend and foe, of being in a much more friendly relation to the Biblical belief in revealed religion than their opponents. We should see the apparent discords not only between Scripture and nature, but also between account and account, dissolved into harmony, and above the double relation of the two accounts we should see the morphological ideas of Oken and Göthe, the ideas of types of Cuvier, Agassiz, and Owen, the laws of development of K. E. von Baer, and finally the ideas of descent of Lamarck and Darwin, reach a friendly hand to one another. And even the old joys of a teleological view of nature, adorned indeed with queue and wig, but at present rejected with too much disdain, even if they {321} are called ichthyo-teleological and insecto-teleological, would attain in this reconciliation their modest, subordinate place. Moreover, we should then have the satisfaction of seeing again that a religiousness which in its own realm gives absolutely free play to natural investigation, and does not find it beneath its dignity to learn from natural science, can on that account retain its own autonomy in its own realm much more uncontestedly; and that, as it seems to us in the present case, it can go much farther in the use which it makes of its autonomy and in the extension of the revealed character of its religious records to physical processes and circumstances, than is either necessary or safe, and that it nevertheless is rewarded for keeping peace with natural science by more rich, more living, and more correct glimpses into the harmony between the word of God and the work of God, than would be the case with a religiousness which, without regard to natural science, weaves its cosmogonies from the Holy Scripture alone.

§ 3. _The Primitive Condition of Man: Paradise, the Fall of Man, and Primitive History._

After the Holy Scripture has narrated the creation of man in two accounts, the second of them gives us a continuation in the well-known account of Paradise and of the fall of man, with its consequences; and the further development, of the Biblical doctrine, as well as of Christian theology, has also taken the substance and quintessence of these narratives into its representation of the Christian truths of salvation.

We shall not throw any obstacles in the way of bringing about an understanding between the Darwinian views {322} and the Biblical primitive history, by acknowledging the justice of the view that Christian piety might in some way contain in itself the demand that also the form in which the facts of truth in Genesis III are given to us, has historical reality. He who makes this demand has only his own short-sightedness and imprudence to blame, if he also loses the substance with the form, the figurative nature of which can be shown to him only too certainly. We acknowledge it as a real providence of God, which intends faithfully to guard believing man against a senseless and slavish adherence to the letter, and against grounding his means of salvation upon insecure foundations, that at the grand and venerable portal of Holy Scripture two accounts stand peacefully beside one another, which, if we penetrate through the form into their substance, complete one another in magnificent and profound harmony, but which, if we look upon the form as their substance, so diametrically contradict each other that we cannot do anything else but reject the one or the other, or, still more logically, both. We think that this hint is strong enough to be understood, and bears, like all bowing before truth and its power of conviction, rich fruit not only for our knowledge, but also for the purity, certainty, and richness of our religiousness. We shall not lose by this acknowledgment the character of revelation and the impression of the truth of these Biblical records, but shall be able through them, and through them alone, to gain and perceive it. It is true, the first account, and still more the second--the account of the creation and of the primitive history of man--has in its external form an exceedingly close relationship to the poetical myths of the ancient nations of the Orient; but {323} its difference does not consist essentially in the form--although this too, being the form of a true and correct substance, shows differences enough from these heathen myths--but consists in the substance itself. These heathen myths certainly contain many beautiful, deep, and true factors, but always, besides, fundamental ideas which we have to reject as half-true or wholly erroneous: sometimes a dualistic conception of God and the world, sometimes a materialization of the divine, the spiritual, and the ethical, sometimes fatalistic and sometimes magic elements in great number. These Biblical representations, on the other hand, certainly appear to us still in a picturesque form which is analogous to that formation of myth; for it really seems to be the only form in which the mind of man, in his first epoch of life, was able to perceive and represent supernatural and ethical truth, as we are to-day able to represent the highest relations of our mind to the supernatural and the ethical only in pictures and parables; but the Biblical representations offer us, under this plastic covering, a substance which, in view of the most extensive criticism, of the deepest speculation, and of the most enlightened and practically most successful piety, is still established as the purest, the most correct, and the most fruitful representation of the nature of God, and of the ethical nature and the ethical history of man.

Moreover, we shall not make it difficult to bring about an understanding between the Darwinian theories and the Biblical doctrine, by supporting the other view taught by the Holy Scripture--that death came into the animal world first through the fall of man, and that the fall of man first brought the character of perishableness {324} into the condition of the earth or even of the universe. There are essentially three Biblical passages to which those refer who think that they find such a view in the Holy Scripture; namely, Romans V, 12; Romans VIII, 19-23, and Genesis III; but they are wrong. That the Apostle Paul, in Romans V, 12, by the world, into which death came through sin, did not mean the universe or the globe, but mankind, is plain enough from the connection, and is only demanded by the difference of meaning which in the Greek, as well as in the German language, the word "world" has according to its connection. And in Romans VIII, 19-23, where he speaks of the subjection of the creature to vanity, he does not mention a certain time in which it happened, nor an historical occasion, as the fall of man, which should have given the impulse to this subjection; but he only says, in general, that it was God who "hath subjected the creature to vanity," and that he hath "subjected the same _in hope_." He who reads this passage without prepossession, can be led to no other idea than to this: that God has subjected the creature to the law of vanity from the very beginning of creation--not forever, but from the very beginning--with the intention that he shall also celebrate his transfiguration and deliverance from the yoke of perishableness, together with the perfection of mankind, and with the manifestation and transfiguration of the children of God. And even the curse of the ground (Genesis III, 17) is no cursing of the universe, or of the globe and its creatures, but only a cursing of _the ground_; and of this not on its own account, but only in its relation, as a means of subsistence, to man, and in opposition to the {325} exemption from labor which his life hitherto had, and to the agreeableness of his means of support in paradise.

After having thus rejected these two perversions of the Biblical doctrine, there remains to us as an established substance of the latter, and as an essential part of Christian dogmatics, so far as it may come into contact with the _Darwinian_ views, at least the following: Man was originally created by God, good and happy. To his goodness there also belonged the possibility of having a sinless development, as he ought to have had; and to his happiness there also belonged a life amid surroundings wholly corresponding to him, and the possibility of obtaining exemption from death and all evils by way of a self-controlling submission to God, which resists temptation. We purposely express ourselves thus. For the Biblical primitive history does not say that man was _created_ with exemption from the law of death, but that the latter must have been _granted_ to him as a reward for his submission: the tree of life stood _by the side of_ the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and only the eating of the fruit of the tree of life, by avoiding the eating of the forbidden fruit, should have given to man that immortality which he forfeited by disobedience. Man became disobedient, and, in consequence of it, subject to death; the harmony between man and his surroundings disappeared; the earth became to him a place of labor and of death; and now began for man his historical development as a web of guilt, of punishment, and of education and redeeming mercy.

Now, in the presence of this Biblical view, the question comes up first of all: is a view according to which man should have been able and obliged to take a sinless {326} development, and, in case he had taken it, should have been exempt from the fate of death and of the ills preceding it, and endowed with immortality as to body and soul--is such a view in any way reconcilable with the Darwinian ideas of development, according to which man came forth from the series of lower organisms, subject to death?

We could avoid answering this question by a deduction similar to that which we drew in Chap. I, § 3, when treating of the question of 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 into new and full light. Therefore, if we wish to reach a certain basis for our conviction, nothing else remains to us but to enter upon that question wholly and exclusively from Darwinian premises.

Now these premises, indeed, indicate to us a _development_ of things, but a development of such a kind that there appears to us something new, and always new in a rising line. The rising of this line of development consists in the fact that the spiritual comes forth from the {328} natural in permanent progress and in always higher development: that mind vanquishes matter. The first new thing which meets us in the development of the globe, is the organic and life; the second, sensation and consciousness; the third, self-consciousness and free-will. Now let us once suppose imaginary human spectators of every first appearance of these phenomena. Would he who thus far had only known inorganic phenomena and processes, have dared, before the appearance of life, to utter the proposition: matter can also become living and live? And who would have dared to suggest the further doctrine: matter can also feel and get a consciousness of things? Finally, who would have dared even to say: matter can also become a self-conscious and free personality? To every person who would have pronounced such dreams of the future, there would have been opposed, apparently with full right, the inviolable mechanism of the inorganic world. But all this nevertheless took place. If something material can be led so far that a personality lives in it, that, with the assistance of this material basis, is able to perceive the ideas and the eternal, that can act in accordance with aims and designs and can set itself the highest aims, and that may even enter upon a loving and child-like relation to the highest primitive cause of all things, then we are no longer permitted to say that the material, of which the body of such a personality consists, could not have been subjected to the service of such a personality so far, that the latter could have vanquished the elements of the destruction of life in an eternal process of spontaneous renewal.

It is true, with such a concession alone we have not {329} gained anything directly. For _in abstracto_ everything is finally conceivable which does not contradict the logical laws of reasoning--even the basilisk and the mountain of diamonds in stories and fairy tales. But such an _abstract_ conceivableness has not the least value for the knowledge of the _real_, nor even for the knowledge of the _really possible_. For in the world of being and becoming, everything in its last elements, forces, qualities, and laws, as well as in the last causes of its development, is something so absolutely _given_, that only afterward are we able to analyze that which is present, from our observations, or to follow from the given factors that which can be, or which under other conditions would have become different, and that we are not able to synthetically construct the one or the other in advance, independently from the factors of reality. If, therefore, that concession shall attain a scientific value, and if the conditional sentence: Man would not have been subject to death if he had not sinned, is to become an admitted and unassailable part of Christian theology, we have to look in the realm of phenomena, and in the course of that which took place, for _facts_ which _prove_ that man, if he had not committed sin, would not have died, and which thus change that merely abstract, possibility into a real one.

Now we have such a fact in the _resurrection of the Lord_. If it really took place, then it is the last earthly stage in the course of the Lord's work of Redemption, and then it permits us to draw conclusions backwards as to what would have become of man, if he had not been in need of this redemption, if he had had a sinless development instead of one with sin. {330}

We know very well that in mentioning this fact we meet not only the opposition of those who contest a teleological, theistic, and especially a Christian view of the world, but also the natural doubts of those who defend with warm interest teleology and the ethical fundamentals and productive forces of Christianity, but who think it more advisable to pass over the whole question of the resurrection in cautious silence. The main consideration which hinders them from believing in the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is not the want of historical attestation, but rather the absolute want of any attested analogy in the other events which have taken place on the earth. What we commonly see and witness in the dead, is without exception precisely the opposite of that which is related about the further fate of Jesus crucified. Now we have repeatedly had occasion to point out that the want of analogy cannot at all be a proof of a fact's not having taken place, supposing it otherwise well established. Especially if a _development_ of events follows aims, it lies in the nature of this development that in its course in all the places where we really and actually can speak of a development, of a process, things appear and must appear which were not present before, and which, even if they once appeared, nevertheless need not necessarily be repeated, except at certain times which correspond to the plan of development; namely, when "their time has come." All these are events which are wanting in analogy, but which cannot be doubted at all on that account. That was the case with the first appearance of organic life, also with the first appearance of beings having sensation and consciousness; moreover, it was the case with the first appearance of each of the thousands {331} of species of organic beings: all these things, at the time when they first appeared, lacked every analogy in the past, and were perhaps repeated for some time, in primitive generations, perhaps not; at any rate, they have all ceased to have analogies within the memory of man. In an eminent degree does the first appearance of man want every analogy with what we observe elsewhere. We never see men appear on the stage of the earth, who were not originated by men; yet this event, so contrary to all analogy, did once take place, and stands without parallel and analogy in the midst of the series of events, so far as our knowledge can reach.

Thus the resurrection of the Lord must also necessarily want analogy, in case it is an event which really marks a station of progress in the development of earthly creatures and their history, and in case also its nature and its importance tend not to bring mankind, or at least those who believe in him who has been raised, at once under the influence of its physical consequences, but only so far to prepare the way for these consequences in intellectual and moral life-forces. And precisely such an event is the resurrection of Jesus, according to the announcement of the Lord as to himself and his work, and according to the development of this personal testimony in the minds of his first disciples, and also according to what Jesus actually became for mankind, and especially for Christianity. According to this testimony of Jesus and his apostles, and to this actual experience, Jesus is the Redeemer, whose work is to make amends for the destruction caused by sin, and thus to originate and establish a new creation in mankind which, from inner, mental, and spiritual beginnings, {332} renews mankind, and becomes the leaven which, in long periods of labor, leads it to the goal of perfection; a perfection in which the whole creation shall participate--with which, indeed, mankind is inseparably connected on the whole natural side of its existence. But then it also lies in the nature of the resurrection of Jesus to be single in its kind, and without analogy, until that time shall have come in the development of mankind when the last enemy, death, shall be forever removed and overcome.

We quite fail to conceive how those who acknowledge design in the world, can avoid the acknowledgment of the resurrection of Jesus--supposing the fact to be historically established: whereof we shall have to speak hereafter. It is, indeed, quite impossible to speak of a goal of mankind, if annihilation--annihilation of single personalities as well as of mankind as a whole--is its certain destiny. Where and what is this end of mankind, if the last generation of the globe is to perish with the destruction of this globe, or languish and die even before that destruction, and if nothing will be left of mankind beyond the soulless material for new formations in their putrifying corpses and desolate homes and works of art? Where and what is this goal, if all which once set human minds and hearts in motion, and which stimulated the intellectual and moral work of the human races, simply ceases to exist, no longer finds anywhere even a place of remembrance, and nowhere has a fruit to exhibit, except perhaps in the mind of a God who once set the cruel play in motion, and now permits it to cease, in order to procure for himself a change in the entertainment? A mere immortality of human {333} souls, without resurrection and without the perfection and transfiguration of the universe, is not afforded us by this goal, which we certainly need, if we are to think at all of a goal for mankind. For if all departing souls should be carried into another world whose only relation to the further course of the earthly history of mankind was in the fact, that the dead are always gathered in it; into another world whose only relation to the past of the earthly history of mankind should be in the fact, that it is divided into a heaven and a hell for those who reach it; if in this world everything should move on, without end, in eternal coming and going; and if nothing could be said of that other world than that everything there is different from ours--even that we should there have no possible points of contact with this world: then we should have nothing else but a gloomy dualism of the world for which neither our intellectual, nor our psychical, and least of all our physical, organization is in any way prepared, we should have in it no satisfaction of our noblest instincts, no goal to which we would be led by any of the guides who show us the paths which we have to follow on earth. Only a resurrection and transfiguration of the earth and the universe, as well as of a glorified mankind, show us such a goal. For this aim, for such a _real_ continuation of life of the single personality, and of all mankind, after the long work of moral and intellectual development, all noble and worthy instincts of mankind are prepared--from the instinct of self-preservation up to the instinct of self-sacrifice for ideal purposes and the instinct of moral perfection and community with God. We find that in all the rest of creation, instincts and inherent powers {334} are present to be satisfied. The naturalistic tendencies which at present control so many minds, are very much inclined to found their whole view of the world upon this correlation of instinct, function, and satisfaction. Should, then, the highest instincts of the highest creature on earth alone make an exception? Have they originated from illusions, and do they lead to illusions? We cannot refrain from quoting a word which Alb. Réville, of Rotterdam, has written in the first part of the October issue of the "Revue des Deux Mondes," 1874, on the occasion of a criticism of E. v. Hartmann's "Philosophy of the Unconscious"; though it was written only in defence of theism in general. We quote from a report of E. P., in the _Augsburger Allgem. Zeitung_, Oct. 27, 1874, which is all at present at our command: "When the young bird, fluttering its wings on the edge of its mother's nest, launches forth for the first time, it finds the air which carries it, while a passage is opened for it. Instinct deceived the bird just as little as it deceives the multitude of large and small beings which only live in following its incitations. And should man alone, whom spiritual perfection attracts--man whose characteristic instinct it is to raise himself mentally toward the real-ideal, the superiority of which he cannot sufficiently describe, should man, who obeys his nature, dash his head against the wall built of unhewn stones of unconscious, blind, and deaf force? Nature, indeed, has too much spirit--according to Hartmann himself--to indulge in such an absurdity; and the philosophy of the 'unconscious Unconscious' will never permit it." It is true, there is actually present in mankind, and in it alone, such a discord between {335} instinct and satisfaction: man has in himself instincts which are opposed to sin and death, and nevertheless sin and death exist. But the redemption through Christ, and especially the knowledge of his resurrection, announces to us that this discord is removed.

Therefore, he who in general acknowledges that mankind in its development has had given to it goals which correspond to its gifts and instincts, has every reason to look about and see whether, in the course of human history, certain things have happened which point at such aims--indications which prophetically assure mankind, that it advances toward a spiritual and moral perfection, and toward an undiminished participation of all members of mankind in this perfection. Such an assurance is offered us in the resurrection of Jesus; and therefore, all who have not abandoned a teleological view of the world, have reason for _examining it with reference to the degree of its historical truth_. This degree is the highest which we can in general claim of any historical event.

In order to show this with such brevity as is necessary in the present book, and at the same time to guard ourselves against every danger of prejudice in the investigation, we shall for this occasion assume hypothetically that all, even the most extreme, assertions of Biblical criticism as to the authenticity and inauthenticity of the books of the New Testament, and as to the difference of their component parts and the time of their composition, are correct and proven; and see what then remains established. In the first place, it is an acknowledged fact, that Peter first, then the eleven apostles at different times, and between these more than five hundred "brethren" (_i.e._, nearly or fully all who had preserved their {336} attachment to the Lord till his death), saw the appearances of the risen one, a few days after his death; and, indeed, under the most different circumstances, and under mental conditions in which they did not at all expect any such second appearance. We have, in regard to this, the most authentic written evidence of the apostle Paul, in the fifteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians: a letter whose authenticity no criticism has dared to doubt. This letter was written in the spring of 58: and Paul himself had already been changed from a persecutor into a believer in Christ in the year 36--_i.e._, one year after the death of Jesus, which took place in 35; he went to Jerusalem in 39, and here everything was related to him by Peter, as we know from his letter (likewise not contested) to the Galatians. Thus the authentic information of the man, who in 58 collected the historical proofs of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus for his Corinthian Christians, goes back to four years after the death of Jesus, and to the personal witnesses of the appearances; as in that letter he also refers to the fact that "many of these five hundred brethren are still living." Moreover, it is an established fact, that the first written evidences of the evangelical history from which our canonical gospels subsequently originated, likewise contained accounts of the appearance of the risen one. Finally, it is an established fact that, from the very beginning, the whole meaning of evangelical preaching turned on the two facts of the death and of the resurrection of Jesus, as on the two cardinal points of all preaching of salvation; also that all the faith of those who embraced the Gospel was founded upon these two facts, as upon the historical fundamentals of the {337} salvation which comes from Jesus; and that thus Christianity, with all its effects, which have unhinged the old world and diffused streams of blessing over mankind, has its historical basis in faith in the death of Jesus and his resurrection. This is our historical chain of proof. And that evidence which gives certainty to its most important link, on which everything depends--the _appearance_ of the risen one--is the entire failure of all the attempts at explaining that appearance from a seeming death, from an intended deception, from a self-delusion, from a vision and an ecstasy, from a poetic myth; in short, from any other cause than, that the Lord really appeared to his disciples as the man who was dead, but who is risen and lives. We cannot follow Keim in all his methods of reconstructing the life of Jesus, and we believe that he is much too timid regarding the consequences which follow from an objective, real appearance of Jesus after his death; but we acknowledge it as a high merit of his christological works, that although he is willing to use criticism to the utmost, he has so thoroughly and strikingly shown the impossibility of explaining the appearance of Jesus after his death differently from the real manifestations of his still living person. It is well that Strauss, in his "The Old Faith and the New," declares the history of the resurrection of Jesus a _historical humbug_; for it may open the eyes of many, if the tendency, of which Strauss is leader, is no longer able to explain Christianity--the noblest, purest, and most successful religion which has come into existence in the whole history of mankind--otherwise than by calling it a humbug. With him who is pleased with this manner of explaining the most perfect blossom and fruit of {338} the tree of mankind, we certainly can find no common ground of mutual understanding.

We have been led to all these discussions, by looking for something actual which should be able to throw its light back upon the earliest primitive history of mankind--a history which can no longer be historically investigated. We have found this reality in the resurrection of Jesus; and the light which it throws upon the primitive history of man, we have perceived in the conclusion to which it leads us: that man, if he had taken a sinless development, would also have been exempt from death.

The resurrection of Jesus throws its light upon still another side of the Biblical doctrine of the primitive condition of man: namely, upon that which is the religious quintessence of the Biblical doctrine of _Paradise_. As now the resurrection of the Lord is the beginning and the prophecy of a new creation on the basis of the old, and as we now hope, with St. Paul, that this beginning shall manifest its comprehensive cosmic effects, when the Lord shall manifest them in the resurrection of the "children of God:" so, in case of a sinless development of man, the beginning of this new and glorified stage of creation would certainly have been perceptible at the beginning of the history of mankind and in the relation of man to his earthly surroundings. But we are of course not permitted to make or to pursue such a suggestion at present, since a sinful development of mankind, with its consequences, actually took place.

We have no reason to enter into the discussion of another often and much debated question, which is connected with the primitive history of man; namely, {339} _whether mankind is descended from one or more pairs of men_. We pass it by; because it has no connection whatever with the acceptance or rejection of the Darwinian ideas, and since it is not yet archæologically and scientifically solvable. There are Darwinians who think monogenetically, and others who think polygenetically; and there is still a third class--and they speak most correctly--who acknowledge that they know nothing about it. Besides, we can also pass by this question, for the reason that in spite of the important place which it occupies in the theological system of St. Paul, we have no right to assign to it, in the form in which we put it, the decisive dogmatic importance which it still occupies in many conceptions of Christian theology. For we cannot question the right of the natural sciences to enter into the discussion of this question, and to look for a solution of it. As soon as we make this concession, it necessarily and naturally follows from it, that we must no longer make the substance and truth of our religious possession, even in a subordinate manner, dependent on the results of exact investigations: for our religious possessions have too deep a basis of truth, to permit us to ground them on the results of investigations in a realm so dark for science and so far removed from religious interest. As to this question, we may hope for a future solution in the monogenetic sense: we may rejoice over the fact that, according to the present state of knowledge, the needle of the scale rather inclines in favor of a oneness of origin of mankind; but we must also be prepared to accept the possibility of a contrary result, without being afraid that in such a case we should have to abandon at once that religious factor {340} for whose sake the advocates of a monogenetic descent might defend their view. This religious (and, we may add, quite as strong ethic) factor consists in the idea of the intimate unity and brotherhood of mankind. We must absolutely adhere to this idea; for it is in opposition to the particularism which, quite without exception, governed the entire old world, even its most highly developed nations, and which was only penetrated by some beams of hope and prediction in the prophecy of Israel--one of the most beautiful and blissful gifts of Christianity to mankind. This idea still contains, as ethical motive, one of the strongest, most indispensable, and most promising forces in the world. If this idea shall be a real and lastingly effective one, it certainly must also have its real basis in the history of the origin of mankind. But, we must ask, is the only conceivable reality of this basis a monogenetic pedigree, and do we lose this reality if science should once find that mankind came into existence not only in one single pair, but in several pairs, even in different places, and at different times? Even in such a case, the idea of the unity of mankind would only lose its real basis, if at the same time we were permitted to think also anti-teleologically--if we were permitted to suppose that that which came into existence, repeatedly, and in different places, had each time entirely different causes without a common aim and a common plan. If we think teleologically, we see the unity of mankind, also in case of a polygenetic origin, in the unity of the metaphysical and teleological cause which called mankind into existence; and to rational beings, endowed with mind, as men are, the metaphysical bond is certainly stronger than the physical. {341} Precisely the Darwinian ideas of the origin of species through descent would show us in such a case the real bond which unites mankind. For then we should only have to go back from the different points on the stem-lines of the prehistoric generators of these primitive men, at which men originated otherwise than by generation, in order to arrive finally at a common root of all these stem-lines: the members of mankind would even then remain consanguineous among one another, not only in an ideal, but in a real sense.

Now that the idea of the unity of mankind was holy and important to St. Paul, is to be inferred in advance from such a universal mind. And when in Acts XVII, 26, he expresses this idea before the Athenians, so proud of their autochthony, with the words that "of one blood all nations of men dwell on all the face of the earth"; or when, in Romans V, and 1 Corinthians XV, he makes use of the idea in order to explain and to glorify the universal power of redemption of Christ by putting Adam and Christ in opposition to one another, as the first and the second Adam, so that he sees sin and death coming forth from Adam, grace and justice and life from Christ and extending over mankind; then we find this idea quite convincing and natural, and adhere firmly to the quintessence of these truths, even if we acknowledge neither in these passages, nor in Genesis I and II, the intention of God to give us a supernatural manifestation of the exterior process of the creation of man. Paul himself gives us a hint not to follow slavishly a literal interpretation, when he says, in Romans V, "as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin," and calls this man Adam, although he knows that according to the {342} Biblical relation, Eve was the one who was first seduced, and although he expressly points out and makes use of this priority of the sin of Eve in another connection, and for another reason.

Finally, we may here also take into consideration the contradictions which have come up by reason of more recent investigations, in reference to the _prehistoric conditions of man_, and which, especially in England, have been designated as the contradiction between the _elevation theory_ and the _depravation theory_.

In general, this contradiction is looked upon as if a conception of the primitive history of man, remaining conformable to the Bible, could only be brought into harmony with a depravation theory, and not with an elevation theory; but certainly without reason.

The Biblical and Christian conception of the primitive history of man does not at all demand the conception of a gradual sinking down of mankind from a supernatural height--of a gradual depravation of our species--which many representations seem to assume. For, according to it, the fall of man had already taken place with the first pair of mankind; they were driven from Paradise, to long hard labor and development; and Paradise was taken from earth. Even the paradisaical condition, with its short duration, was deficient in all the various gifts of life which are a product of human inventive faculty and skill, and which can leave behind vestiges and remains. But what the Holy Scripture relates or indicates of the after-paradisaical primitive history of man, wholly corresponds to the idea of a gradual development out of the more simple and rough, which is demanded by the evolution theory in its {343} application to history. That, even according to the Biblical conception, goodness and progress in outer culture, sin and intellectual stagnation, are not identical, we see from the fact, that by the Holy Scripture the most successful inventions of man are not assigned to the more pious Sethites, but to the Titan-like, rebellious Kainites. Likewise, the evolution theory does not at all require a constant, general, and exclusive progress of mankind in all its members. As in the realm of irrational organisms, so in the history of mankind; it has to assume the most various ramifications with progress, stand-still, and retrogradation. It is true, it sees in the nations of culture progress in an upward rising line; but besides, stand-still and retrogradations in great variety. It also sees in mankind in general a labor of upward rising development; but it also sees many hindrances of development, and many shavings which the work throws to one side. But exactly the same thing was also seen in every religious or profane contemplation of history, long before the evolution theory was born.

Therefore, the different views of the earliest primitive history of man, the theory of depravation and that of elevation, do not stand so opposed to one another--the former representing the Biblical and religious, the latter the anti-religious, view of the history--but the question as to the primitive history is not yet solved in that respect; the depravation theory, as well as the elevation theory, indicates rather the _directions_ in which investigation has to put its questions to the archæological sources. Investigation, on the other hand, has free scope in both directions; and the primitive history of man shows itself to be a realm in which religious and scientific interest, {344} opponents and advocates of the descent theory, can peacefully join hands for common labor. Up to the present, the investigations reach results which seem to fall now more into one, now more into the other, scale of the balance. On the one hand, the older the products of human skill are, the more simple they are; on the other hand, even the oldest remains show man in full possession of that which distinguishes him from the animal, and attests a spiritual life. The reader may think of the before mentioned sketches of the reindeer and mammoth (page 90). If we finally come down to historic times, and to the present, in order to try to draw conclusions from the comparisons of the remotest times of which we have historic knowledge, with the present, as to prehistoric times, we likewise find on the one side vestiges of the lowest barbarism in the past and present; but on the other side we find that the oldest written monuments afford a glance into a perfection of intellectual reflection and into a nobility of moral and religious views which permits us to draw the highest conclusions as to the intellectual worth of earliest mankind. The very oldest records of the Holy Scripture give evidence of this intellectual height; and even the royal programmes of Assyrian monarchs, which the wonderful diligence and ingenuity of recent investigators have deciphered from the cuneiform inscriptions, not only relatively correspond to the height of culture which we find in the ruins of Assyrian palaces, but even, when looked upon absolutely and aside from the morality of conquest which they indulge, are inspired by a nobility of mind, and permeated by a religiousness, which no potentate of recent times would need to be ashamed of. They have {345} been made accessible to the public by the work of Eberhard Schrader: "Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament" ("Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament"), Giessen, 1872.

§ 4. _Providence, Hearing of Prayer, and Miracles._

Before we enter into the special christological realm, we have yet to glance at the realm of the more common relations between God and the creature, as they have found, in faith in a divine providence, in hearing of prayer, and in divine miracles, their reflection in Christian consciousness.

It is true, we had to discuss the chief basis of an understanding in this matter when treating of the position of the Darwinian theories in reference to theism in general; but we have a double reason for entering again into the consideration of the concrete form which this faith has obtained in Christianity.

One reason is the fact, that faith in a special providence of God, in a hearing of prayer, and in a connection of the human history of salvation with miracles, forms a very essential part of the Christian view of the world and of Christian religiousness. All Holy Scripture is interwoven with assurances of a providence of God, going even into details; with the most distinct and solemn promises of the hearing of our prayers; and with the most emphatic reference to the miracles which it relates. The Lord himself not only found all these doctrines, and left them untouched, but he developed them in the most pregnant way, and brought them into the most intimate connection with the quintessence and centre of his doctrine. According to his teaching, {346} "a sparrow shall not fall to the ground without the will of your heavenly Father; but the very hairs of your head are all numbered." He encourages us to pray, with the words: "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you;" and he proves himself to be the Redeemer, through signs and wonders, and refers to the greatest sign which was to be manifested in him--the sign of the resurrection.

The other reason for entering upon the discussion of these questions, lies in the incredible thoughtlessness with which a great part of modern educated people, even of such men as do not at all wish to abandon faith in a living God, permit themselves to be governed by the leaders of religious infidelity, and to be defiled and robbed of everything, which belongs to the nature of a living God. By many, it is considered as good taste, and as an indispensable sign of deep scientific learning and high education, and it forms a seldom contested part of correspondence in newspapers, which have for their public a wide circle of educated people, that in referring to the inviolableness of the laws of nature they declare faith in a special providence of God to be a view long ago rejected, and which is only consistent with half-civilized individuals; that they look down with a compassionate and self-conscious smile upon the egoistic implicit faith of congregations who still pray for good harvest-weather, and see in the damage done by a hailstorm a divine affliction; that they criticise it as a sad token of ecclesiastical darkness, when even church-authorities order such prayers in case of wide-spread calamities; that they fall into a passion over the {347} narrowness and the dulling influence of pedagogues who see in the histories which they relate to their pupils or put into their hands for reading, the government of an ethical order of the world which goes a little farther than the rule that he who deceives injures his good name, and he who gets intoxicated injures his health; that they give a man who still believes in the resurrection of Jesus, to understand that he has not yet learned the first elements of the theory of putrefaction and perishableness. That the adversaries of faith in a God thus express themselves, and try to conquer as much ground as possible for their frosty doctrine, is certainly quite natural; but that even advocates of theism should permit such stuff to be presented to them, and can keep silent in regard to it--nay, that even preachers offer it to their congregations as ordinary Sabbath edification, and that their hearers can gratefully accept it--is certainly a suggestive and alarming evidence of the rapidity with which, in many men who still do not wish consciously and certainly to be thought godless (_i.e._, to be separated from God), their connection with the source of light and life is decreasing, and of how strongly the fear that they may be looked upon as unscientific and imperfectly educated, overbalances the fear of losing the living God and Father, and therewith the support of both mind and life.

Now, that this faith in a _special providence_, in a _hearing of prayer_, and in _divine miracles_, forms an essential part of Christian religiousness, we do not need to show more in detail; it is an established historical fact, and an object of direct Christian knowledge. On the other hand, we have still to say a word concerning {348} that which, on the part of those just described, is so strongly contested; namely, about the scientific worth of such a faith, and also about its reconcilableness with the Darwinism theories.

In the first place, as to the faith in a _special providence of God_, and, in connection with it, as to the possibility of _a hearing of human prayer_, such a faith is by itself the inevitable consequence of all theism; nay, it is precisely identical with theism; it is that which makes theism _theism_, and distinguishes it from mere deism--_i.e._, from an idea of God, which merely makes God the author of the world, and lets the world, after it was once created, go its own way. Now, the theistic idea of God, which sees the Creator in an uninterrupted connection with his creation, is in itself the more scientific one: for a God who, although the author of the world, would not know how to find, nor intend to find, a way of communication with his creation, would certainly be an idea theologically inconceivable. We should, therefore, still have to adhere to the idea of a special providence of God, even if in our discursive reasoning and exact investigation of the processes in the world we should not find a single guide referring us to the scientific possibility of such a direct and uninterrupted dependence of the world on its author. We should then have simply to declare a conviction of the providence of God to be a postulate of our reasoning, which is given with the idea of God itself; and would just as little call this conviction unscientific on account of the fact, that we are not able to show the modalities of divine providence, as in reference to the exact sciences we should contest the character of their {349} scientific value on account of the fact that they are no longer able to give us an answer exactly where our questions become most important and interesting.

But the ways in which we are able to realize scientifically the idea of a divine providence are, indeed, not entirely closed for us. We have several of them; one starts from the idea of God, others from the empiric created world.