Evolution

Abraham Kuyper

Free University of Amsterdam

[From Calvin Theological Journal 31:11-50 (April, 1996)]
©1996 by Calvin Theological Seminary
Reprinted in electronic form by permission.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Abraham Kuyper's "Evolution" address was delivered as a rectoral

oration at the Free University of Amsterdam in 1899. This translation is a collaborative
effort coordinated by Clarence Menninga, emeritus Professor of Geology at Calvin
College. The inital translation was prepared by George Kamps, reviewed and refined by
Walter Lagerway, and typed from Kamps' handwritten manuscript by Jan Woudenberg-
Bruinooge. Assistance was also received from Wallace Bratt on the German passages
and George Harris on the Latin and Greek expressions. The numbered footnotes are
Kuyper's original with additional English bibliographic references added by Clarence
Menninga; footnotes designated by letter are also Clarence Menninga's.

I
Our nineteenth century is dying away under the hypnosis of the dogma of evolution.

To be sure, both in our country and elsewhere, Christian thought and action developed
greater resiliency than it appeared to be capable of since the time of the Reformation, but
while this action has been rapidly gaining ground, it has until now been almost
exclusively of a practical and mystical nature. At the center of the conscious life of
mankind, i.e., in science, in literature, and in the press, leadership remained largely in the
hands of intellectuals with a Christless perspective. Although there are indications that a
change in this respect is taking place, and our university has also attempted to hasten this
change, it cannot be denied that, in the sphere of higher thinking, Christian
presuppositions only sporadically function as the lodestar. What is more, the continuing
influence of Christian philosophical thought has diminished rapidly in the intellectual
thought of this century, and it is especially the hypnosis of the dogma of evolution that
must be blamed. Although until now the sciences that rejected Christ preferred to deal
with the empirically observable and left the mystically incomprehensible to religion and
mysticism, in this regard there has been a decided change during the last quarter of this
century. The dogma of evolution appeared with the pretension that it could explain the
entire cosmos by means of its monistic mechanics, including all life processes within
that cosmos, to the very earliest origins. The principle that the adherents of evolution
profess is absolute. Not only is all study in the natural sciences forced to follow that
principle, but Herbert Spencer in his Data derived ethics, and Haeckel of Jena in
his Monismus als Band zwischen Religion und Wissenscha, 1 derived religion from that
same principle. And without exaggeration we may say that it is precisely the absolute
character of evolution that explains the audacious calling into question of the received
truths of Christianity increasingly evident in modernist circles. Until now in our
Christian circles the inspiration of our faith, which bound all things into a unity, gave us
an advantage over our opponents. They languished spiritually, in the diaspora of the vast
realm of the Unknowable [Ignorabimus]. But thanks to the dogma of evolution, they also
have now come into possession of an all encompassing system, a world-and-life view
derived from one single principle. They, in turn, now have a basic dogma, and they cling
to that dogma with unshakeable faith. The spirit of man cannot get along in the long run
without an answer to the questions concerning the origin, the essence, and the future of
things. Until now the possession of such an answer was our strength over against the
unproven claims [non-liquet] of those intellectual leaders. But precisely this advantage is
now lost to us. For, illumined by the brightness of the dogma of evolution, our
opponents are no longer embarrassed by any of these questions, and, enamored of their
new discovery, most of them look down pityingly if not arrogantly, upon anyone who
still holds to the old basic dogma of Christianity and, like the fathers, swears by the faith
in Him who created heaven and earth.

It's just a pity that the exultant joy in this newly discovered monism increasingly comes
into such painful conflict with bitter reality.

Until now the emergence of a new faith usually went hand in hand with a certain
exaltation, a certain ennobling of our human life. It was thus when Christianity appeared,
and it also was so in the days of the Reformation. This time, however, the "new faith" is
closely followed by the shadow of the Decadence.

The cherished expectation of "liberty, equality, and fraternity" during the past century
has proven increasingly to be an ideal, of which Schiller sang: "The ideals which once
swelled our ecstatic hearts have dissipated" ["Die Ideale sind zerronnen die einst das
trunkne Herz geschwellt".] With the passing of this century, humanity gloomily stares at
the increasing supremacy of materialistic tendencies, of eagerness for sensual pleasures,
of passion for the power of money, of a violent passion for material expansion. The
Peace Conference in The Hague accomplished little more than to bring into sharp relief
the distance between the high ideals of many people and the hard, brutal reality.
Bismarck's name remains linked with the slogan "might above right." Rudyard Kipling
prodigally sowed the evil seed of Caesarism in the hearts of the English people. And,
unless God forbids, proud Transvaal threatens to become its prey. "To fight everybody
and to take everything" is the evil disposition that increasingly charms the English nation
that was once the champion of right. Three hundred thousand Armenian Christians have
been slaughtered by Islam's fanaticism, and even our government had the audacity to
reject the Armenian exiles. America, once a noble land, is now itself playing the crude,
cruel game in the Phillippines for which it attacked Spain in Cuba. Entire nations are
garbed in military uniforms, and the fruit of their labors is consumed in formidable
batteries of maxims and even more formidable armored castles. Small nations, like the
Netherlands, perceive how the guarantee of their independent existence as a nation is
visibly shrinking. In Africa, men have control over "spheres of influence," a "hinterland"
extending to wide horizons, whose boundaries are not given on the best maps. In China,
entire provinces are being leased out as only house and field were until now.

Many a purist refuses to acknowledge as right anything but that which is defined by law.
In France, a court case, not unlike that of Jean Calas, has amazed the world because of
its violation of justice. In Serbia, there was an even more brazen abuse of right. Nearly
everywhere people sense and are saying that parliamentary glory is on the wane, to clear
the way for a new autocracy if not a new despotism. Increasingly, bullfights enchant the
highly cultured French people. The call for feasting and games [panem et Circenses], the
dissolution of the marriage bond, and many other things create in us the perception that
the decline and fall of the Roman empire is being repeated on an even more terrible scale
in our highly touted age. And withal, one encounters a dwindling of enthusiasm and a
coolness toward higher concerns, over against which neither the rise of asceticism in
small circles, nor the passion for sports, is much consolation.

II
Now if it could only be stated that the theory of evolution, at least in principle, took a
stand against this effrontery by physical violence and usurpation of power; but the
opposite is true. Rather, the evolution theory, by virtue of its struggle for life, encourages
this usurpation of power. Its basic law is that, from diversification among individuals,
and by adaptation, the stronger evolves alongside the weaker; that the weaker and the
stronger are involved in a life-and-death struggle; that, in this struggle, the stronger must
triumph; and only in the triumph of the stronger is the way to higher development. One
of its adherents in England profanely dared to call this "through suffering to glory."
Nietzsche therefore was entirely consistent when, as a matter of principle, he branded
Christ's holy intent to have mercy an the weak as bad ethics, and called upon all "strong
spirits" to unite in the common struggle against the miasma of the weak. His "super-
race" ["Uebermensch"] is nothing more than the logical consequence of an ascent from
the Monera to the Protista, from the Protista to the completed nucleus, and
phylogenetically from there to plant, beast, and man; but which also, for that very
reason, cannot remain at a standstill with that low level man, but continuing the process,
thanks to the new struggle for life, must rise from that low level man to the "super-race,"
and presently to an even higher form of life.

It is that same struggle that, when transmitted from social to national life, incites the
stronger nations to make an end of the lower level existence of nations that are smaller
and therefore weaker. And since, according to the theory of evolution, no higher goal
may direct this process, nor may any organic law have a voice in it, but since the impulse
for all life development arises exclusively from chemical action, it cannot be otherwise
than that the possession of material power must in the end be decisive, and in the minds
of people, of groups of people, and of nations, makes all higher life subordinate to the
securing of whatever increases the chances of victory in this material struggle.

Wallace and Darwin were the precursors of Kipling, as narrator, and Chamberlain, as
statesman. "The individual is nothing, the species everything," is the harsh, false idea
that finally must kill all respect for the right. And the antithesis between the Christian
religion and the theory of evolution is by no means to be found only in the alleged
development of man from the chimpanzee, but rather, fundamentally in the two
questions that govern all of life: First, whether the stronger must have mercy on the
weaker, or whether it may or indeed must crush the weaker. And the other question
concerning the species or the individual, which finds it sharpest expression in the
concise contrast between the Selection of Evolution and the Election of Scripture.
Selection aims at the preservation of species; Election is the Selection of persons.

We can hardly be sufficiently serious in warning all who worship Christ as their realized
Ideal to be on guard against every wanton relation with evolution. It is impossible to
bridge the gap between the dogma of the Trinity and the pseudo-dogma of evolution.
The Christian religion and the theory of evolution are two mutually exclusive systems.
They are antipodes that can neither be reconciled nor compared. In broad circles the
negative Higher Criticism of the Bible [Schriftcritiek] had already undermined belief in
confessional certitudes, but the modernistic theologians at least remained idealists who
respected the authority of Jesus' Word. Pantheism, which soon crept into their thought,
did indeed break down the transcendent battlements of the temple, but nevertheless it
still continued to try to link up with the mystical immanence of the Christian faith. But
the theory of evolution is no respecter of anything sacred. Even as the Israelite had to
search for every crumb of leaven and discard it before the Passover, even so the theory
of evolution examines every Christian atom, in order to replace it with the very opposite.
The dogma of evolution not only penetrates to the deepest core of things but even delves
beneath the deepest principles of life, to spy out with an Argus eye whether or not there
might have remained some imprint of that deepest principle at the bottom of things, so
that even this slightest impression may be rendered unrecognizable. If the theory of
evolution is true, then all that mankind has thus far imagined, thought and pondered, and
believed, is a lie. Then the Tree of Knowledge, on whose fruits we have lived thus far,
must be eradicated root and branch. Then the most absolute nihilism must be applied to
the world-and-life view current till now.

Until now mankind has then been dreaming; not until now is it beginning to awaken.
Also, if the theory of evolution, however untrue in its monistic and mechanistic zeal,
should triumph, then the days of freedom of conscience, of tolerance and forbearance are
numbered, and there will be a return, as in Nero's days, to a unsparing, violent
persecution of all that is called Christian. After all, the dogma of evolution not only
excuses the violent eradication of the weak, but makes it, as a matter of principle, a duty
of the strong. From our viewpoint, therefore, both the ignoring of evolution and the
wanton acceptance of it are naive and shortsighted. And preachers, as well as authors,
who wrongly imagine themselves as gaining scientific approval by mixing a dose of
evolution with their Christian profession both in preaching and writing, indict
themselves most stronglv, in the view of the expert, of unpardonable naivete or
characterless cowardice.

Even the delusion of some who, misled by the false sound of the word into thinking that
the theory of evolution is to be viewed as nothing more than a new form of Pantheism, is
to be rejected. Evolution, that is, unfolding from the Latin, evolvere, is indeed a
genuinely pantheistic notion, but the dogma of evolution knows nothing of evolving, in
the real sense of the word. It is parading under a false banner. Rather, this dogma in
principle denies all pre-formation, that is, the governance of a plan over the budding of
life. Unfolding is an organic idea, but the dogma of evolution tolerates nothing but
mechanistic action, from beginning to end. The ancient distinction between Epicurus and
the Stoics also separates Pantheism from the theory of evolution. Like Epicurus, the
theory of evolution would explain the origin, being, and existence of all life in an
atomistic and consequently in a purely mechanistic manner. When Haeckel, in
his Religion und Wissenschaft, nevertheless claimed to be a pantheist, he merely exposed
the lack of clarity in his own philosophical conception, and even when he posed as
professing a God who was to be honored as "the spirit of the good, the true, and the
beautiful" he engaged in a deceptive play on words, or else deceived himself with
obscurities. After all, the dogma of evolution knows of no spirit that forms, drives, or
dominates. In this dogma the natural event is the only conceivable motive, and all that
we honor as spirit is never anything other than a chance product or an arbitrary result.
Asceticism and social action, with origins in part in Pantheism and in part in the
Christian tradition, are again in vogue; these phenomena owe absolutely nothing to
evolution. And if, again and again, one encounters people who desire to be evolutionists
in the broad field of nature but Stoics in the field of ethics, then one is merely dealing
with spiritual amphibians, who are not even aware of their inner contradictions.

Jurists who similarly are zealous for a pantheistic evolving of justice, and who also have
an evolutionistic conception of the structure of the universe, are likewise afflicted with a
dangerous antinomy. And to mention only one other group, historians who conceive of
history as a process unfolding before our very eyes in a pantheistic manner, and who still
make no secret of their enthusiasm for Darwin and Haeckel, betray an equally shocking
lack of a unified conception. The idea of a guiding purpose [Zweck-theorie], an
unconscious striving of all things toward the realization of a mystically determined goal,
is out-and-out pantheistic, but is diametrically opposed to the dogma of evolution.
Anyone who still imagines that there can be any thought of purpose [Zweck] or of a
compelling and guiding principle at any point along the phylogenetic way, simply does
not know the dogma of evolution. Indeed, "Die Mechanik des Weltalls" ("The
Mechanics of the Universe"), the title of the discerning study by Dr. Zehnder, is indeed
the only correct formula for the theory of evolution, and Dr. Haeckel did not hesitate to
say in plain terms: "The history of the world must be a physical-chemical process."2

If you now ask whether we must therefore write off as worthless the studies of the
Darwinistic school, most broadly conceived, from the balance sheet of our scientific
gains, permit me to reply by asking whether well-established facts can ever be
amortized. Nay, rather, all who love the light exult in the wealth of facts revealed by
these studies and in the impetus to even deeper, more methodical research that they
produced. And who of us who can still be aroused to enthusiasm would conceal the
ecstasy that often moved him by the much deeper insight afforded into the essential
structure of the world as a result of these studies? Only, the knowledge of these unveiled
facts may not be equated with the dogma of evolution that was falsely distilled from
them. The empiricism, and the theory built upon it, must also be sharply differentiated
here. In this case also, the facts and the conception of the facts are two different things.
For that dogma, that theory, that system, which in France is usually introduced as
transformation [Transformisme], in Germany as theory of descent [Descendenz-theorie],
and in this country, following England's example, as the theory of evolution, purports to
be nothing less than a strictly monistic understanding of the cosmos, by seeking the
explanation of all organic life in the inorganic. Its adherents, even in Germany,
constantly emphasize the fact that "a philosophical understanding" of the discovered
facts" is a necessary precondition for the complete worldview of the theory of
evolution."3 Also, as we read elsewhere, that "the unshakeable edifice of true monistic
science" comes into existence cnly when "empiricism and philosophy intimately
permeate one another." 4 A frank acknowledgement, this, but one that accordingly gives
us the right and charges us with the duty of making a sharp distinction between those
facts and the philosophical theory linked to them. Indeed, every sincere man
immediately pledges his agreement with that which is logically deduced from
established facts, but before one may accept these intertwined deductions as a well-
rounded system, one must test the philosophical principles underlying these operations
against the basic axioms [axiomata] of one's own thinking. Otherwise those ideas cannot
be incorporated into a coherent view for one personally.

This watchfulness is required all the more urgently, since our adversaries are inclined not
only to establish the facts but also to construe them philosophically. Thus, to limit my
remarks to this one, surely weighty, so-called fact, which no one less than Haeckel
formulated as follows: "Therefore it is indubitably certain: man comes from the ape." 5
Has this alleged fact really been established? Not so‹Haeckel himself acknowledges:
"The enormous gaps in our paleontological knowledge" make definite proof impossible;
6 and also, the skeleton of the Pithecanthropus erectus that was excavated in Java in
1894 by our own Eugen Dubois, and upon which the well known Congress in Leiden in
1895 dulled its acumen, in nowise fills the gap. Therefore the experts are careful to add
that neither gorilla nor chimpanzee qualify as our patriarch, but that the likely progenitor
among the apes that could also be a progenitor of Homo sapiens is the tailless, narrow-
nosed species of apes, Catarrhina lipocerca. Proof for this supposition is sought
especially in the morphological resemblance between these two; however, this search
has been so fruitless that a scholar like Rudolph Virchow denies the consequences
derived from the foregoing and by contrast emphasizes the fact that the oldest excavated
human skeletons display "heads of such a large size that many a living person would
consider himself fortunate to possess a head like that." 7

And Haeckel himself acknowledges that the proof in this case can never be produced
"merely through individual empirical observations" but must be derived from the
"philosophical evaluation" of the incomplete data. 8 And when we ask what he means,
he replies: "It lies herein, that the theory of evolution follows as a general law of
induction from the comparative synthesis of all natural phenomena of living organisms."
The "Pithecoid theory," therefore, is nothing more than "a special deductive conclusion
which must follow from the general laws of induction of the evolution theory with the
same logical necessity." 9 No sober thinker, he continues, can escape the conclusion: "If
the theory of development is at all true," and the individual animal species are not
"created miraculously, then man, too, cannot be an exception." And that is called logic!
Begging the question by circular reasoning! [Een petitio principii die haar wedergade
zoekt!] You induce from animal data. Your deduction would therefore hold good only if
it were established that man and animal were of one species. Precisely that which you
must prove you have thus smuggled in (there is no milder word for it) by means of your
induction, contrary to all good logic. And yet all of Spencer's ethics rests on such a
proposition, and with such argumentation they popularize, by means of secondhand
science, ideas that are calculated to undermine all Christian faith.

III
What then does the evolution theory desire, what does it have in view, what does it seek
after? Naegeli, usually a much more levelheaded thinker than Haeckel hinted at it rather
clearly when he wrote of "spontaneous generation" ["Urzeugung"], which most scholars
concede to be "purely a hypothesis" ["eine reine Hypothese"]: To deny spontaneous
generation is equivalent to proclaiming the miracle" ["Die Urzeugung leugren heisst das
Wunder verkunden."]. Yet we must not interpret this abhorrence of the miracle in a
general-atheistic sense. The motivation for science cannot rest in the knowledge of the
singular phenomenon. All of science is consumed with passion for the general. The unity
of life, and therefore also the general law that governs the particular case, is the food that
nourishes scientific endeavor; and it must be acknowledged that the focus on empirical
detail by the so-called exact sciences is a starvation diet. The zoologist, the botanist,
every natural scientist had his private hunting terrain. Each of them proceeded from the
available data as existing independently, and there was no interest in seeking a deeper
unity that binds together all phenomena. Lamarzk may have theorized, and Goethe may
have prophesied concerning a unity in nature, but our natural scientists paid no attention
to it, and the current view of the public was satisfied with a mystical, magical idea of the
origin of things, which lacked any basis in a general view of nature. And this has
avenged itself. The knowledge of a few bricks and beams did not, in the end, suffice. As
with Empedocles in Greek philosophy, the question again had to arise concerning the
architectonic structure by means of which such a magnificant building was erected from
those few individual bricks and beams. Add to this the increasing aversion in scientific
circles to the superficial misconception of rootless supernaturalism, as well as the
irreligious predisposition that experienced an emancipatory kind of joy in escaping the
restraints of divine action, then both the impulses that gave rise to evolution and the goal
that it aimed at become transparent.

In these matters the theory of evolution proceeded from the somewhat too-readily-
accepted hypothesis that the inorganic world, with the data present there, and with the
laws that govern those data, no longer presented any insurmountable difficulties for
scientific understanding. The mystery that it sought to unveil, in its opinion, in fact lay
hidden only in the living organisms [organic realms] of nature; and it considered the
problem confronting it as solved when and if it succeeded in explaining those living
organisms by the data of the inorganic.a That accounts for its sworn enmity against
every presupposition of a previously established goal toward which the development of
living organisms would be impelled, either by means of an indwelling principle, or
through divine power working from without. Darwin himself, and every well-informed
evolutionist after him, stated honestly: If such a previously planned working principle
should turn up at only one point along the phylogenetic way, the entire dogma of
evolution will collapse.

George John Romanes of Christ Church, Oxford, said it plainly: "Our theory seeks to
bring all phenomena in organic nature within the same theoretical structure as the facts
of inorganic nature, and if it does not perfectly attain that aim, it has served no purpose
except to create a great stir in the world of thought.''l0 Until now the nonliving and the
living world were considered to be two sharply distinguished spheres of existence, the
first of a lower and the second of a higher order, but without a unity that would link them
together in principle, at least in so far as one did not find this unity in God as the Creator.
And now the design was to eliminate this duality, to explain both spheres from the
viewpoint of unity of operation, in the sense that the sphere of the higher order was to be
explained by the sphere of the lower order. Now if the mark of the lower order were the
mechanistic, and that of the higher order the organical, the evolution theory could be
described briefly as the theory that permits the organical to be swallowed up by the
mechanistic.11

Mechanistic is a magic word. Whatever has not been explained mechanistically,

according to this theory, is still hidden in the uncomprehended darkness. And insofar as
the dogma of evolution might have pressed for new research also in the physical and
chemical area, this was not so much a desire to gain a more thorough understanding of
inorganic nature as such, as a desire to elicit from it more exact and richer information
that could serve to establish the absolute dominance of the mechanistic over the organic
sphere of life. Had not Du Bois-Reymond already stated crassly: "What cannot be
grasped in mechanistic terms has not been understood scientifically." 12

Darwin was not the first to devote his energy to the solution of this problem. Lamarck
and Goethe preceded him, l3 and Wallace was his contemporary. But Darwin is superior
in this respect, that he was the first who attached more importance to empiricism than to
speculation, and who gathered a wealth of botanical and especially zoological data that
were in every way suitable to show, in an original manner, the extent of the field where
that metamorphosis is undeniably prevalent. In so doing, he initially avoided drawing
man within the circle of transformation, and, like all English writers before him, he also
has this going for him, that he was far from being chauvinistic in matters of religion, but,
rather, he never desisted from paying his respects to the mystery of religion. The idea of
evolution arose in his mind through careful observation of what can be accomplished by
artificial breeding in the case of plants and animals. He was impressed especially by the
far-reaching transformation to which the dove is susceptible.

Now this artificial breeding proceeds according to a definite law. It rests upon the
principle, to remain with the dove, that there will be variations among the young of one
pair, and that, if pairs drawn from these variations are set apart which, for example, have
a more brilliant plumage, and this selective breeding of similarly endowed birds is
continued for several generations, a specific pattern of that more brilliant plumage
eventually becomes the property of the resulting variety. This is a fact that anyone can
duplicate, and none will gainsay. But this does not mean that Darwin had the final
answer. Even though one still might presume that in the same manner, by the
perpetuation of certain variations, new species had arisen, it still remained an open
question by what power the knowledge and selection of the nurseryman and animal
breeder are replaced in untamed nature. To say that this was an organic principle that
impelled organisms toward perfection, or to acknowledge that God regulated this
selection, was not possible. That would have meant the reintroducion of the notion of
purpose, and the entire theory would collapse, along with Mechanistics. A mechanistic
power had to be enlisted. And this was Darwin's greatest discovery, that he did indeed
point out such a purely mechanistic agency that made the perpetuation of a more richly
endowed variation self-explanatory, or as it has also been expressed, that he succeeded
in having the highest functionality [Zweckmässigkeit] emanate automatically from
complete aimlessness [Zwecklosigkeit]. In so doing, he proceeded from Malthus' theory
that the means of subsistence for living organisms are totally disproportionate to the
prolific propagation of those organisms. That which is procreated geometrically will find
only arithmetical multiplication of food. l4
Now if a gnawing hunger in a besieged city more than once brought a mother to act
against nature by preparing the flesh of her own child for food, or a shipwrecked sailor
who was perishing with thirst to kill his companion so that he might drink his blood,
then we can understand how this struggle for life embodies an agency so general and so
overpowering that Darwin indeed laid his finger on a law that governs all living
organisms. Well now, from that law he obtained his selection, his nature choices. Every
kind of breeding exhibited variations. Among those variations, some are weaker and
some stronger. The stronger eat, and the weaker perish with hunger. That stronger
element was embodied in a membrane, or in a developing claw; in something
morphological or histological. This was bequeathed to the offspring and was increased in
each new generation by the same law and was strengthened by adaptation.l5 Thus, there
occurred, automatically, entirely by chance, a constant strengthening of the formation of
organs. And thus, it seemed to be explained how richer and stronger forms continued to
appears both in the plant and the animal kingdom, assuming an un-limited span of time,
thanks to this selection that was the result of the struggle for life. For not only did the
improved structure of the privileged variations already appear stronger at birth [ex ovo],
but during the individual's lifetime it also underwent effective alterations by means of
adaptation to its environment, and the advantages thus obtained were transmitted by
heredity, it was said, to the offspring, and thus propagated themselves. The seal of
straightforward truth [simplex sigillum veri] indeed seemed to be engraved on this
discovery. Transformation by artificial breeding is a fact. Another fact is the distorted
balance between the almost boundless multiplication of the eaters and the scantiness of
available food. A fact also is the struggle for life and the many-sided adaptations to life.
And finally, an equally undeniable fact is the inheritance of the distinguishing
characteristics [notae characteristicae] by the following generations.

Now, combine all these facts and arrange them as common sense dictates, even as
Darwin did in his inimitably placid manner, and indeed, the riddle seems to be solved.
Then one need no longer be concerned with God's influence, with direction by a guiding
principle, or with the imposition of control by any plan or purpose. The richest organism
automatically develops itself from the most insignificant organism. In the individuals of
each generation we constantly find something new, and that something strengthens itself
by adaptation. That something is advantageous. It maintains itself through the utility of
that advantage while others perish, and enriches itself while others are impoverished.
And that enrichment goes on from generation to generation. There is an additive effect
and an accumulation, and through that accumulation of profitable attributes, which
promise victory in the struggle for life, the entire marvelous structure of the realm of
living organisms is erected. It is a structure that is as thrilling as it is transparent. And
nothing is more easily understood than the unbelievably rapid acceptance of that
structure as with a triumphant "I came, I saw, I conquered!" ["Veni, vidi, vici"]. For a
scientific world that, through its lack of faith, had witnessed the collapse of the grandeur
of unity in the diversity of details and yet retained in its heart the nostalgia for unity, the
discovery of Darwin was indeed, if not the "Eureka!" that brought deliverance, then at
least the mirage [Fata Morgana], which enchanted.

Moreover, it cannot be denied that an entire sequence of phenomena, which until then
had not received attention or could not be accounted for, were found to fit quite naturally
into the structure of this system. Especially in France, the so-called appendicitis
[Appendicite], a pathological infection in the extension of the appendix, is the subject of
the day and receives universal attention. After all, it is said that this appendix is of no use
to man, while it performs a necessary role in the case of many non-flesh-eating animals.
It only threatens us with an unwelcome surgical operation. If only we did not have it!
But the theory of evolution thrives on it. It is, so they say, a "new welcome" carry-over
from our speechless ancestors. Organs that were no longer of use remained present in a
rudimentary state, and, even apart from the appendix, it is possible to point to other parts
of the body, both in man and animal, which have ceased to serve any clearly
demonstrable purpose. Moreover, morphology with its studies of comparative anatomy
is in agreement with that idea. Indeed, the similarity of the structure of the human
skeleton to that of different beings with totally different external form is so obvious that
one can hardly explain the striking difference in external appearance except by the
hereditary unity of the inner structure modified by the different adaptation to life.

The same tendency appears in the embryological, or, if you will, ontogenetic studies,
which have disclosed a more and more detailed account of development from a single
nucleus and have demonstrated how, either through dividing or through formation of
buds, new cells developed, and how these cells, grouping themselves ectodermically and
endodermically, gradually produce by mechanistic action, all histological and
morphological phenomena that are required for the formation of the structure of the
organism. It seemed that what is visible to the eye phylogenetically in all of the
systematic grouping of plant and animal organisms is repeated individually in the
embryological phenomena. The so-called geographic distribution of plants and animals
throughout the various parts of the world, the importance of which Darwin perceived on
the coastal islands of South America, and especially the paucity of both flora and fauna
in Australia's gigantic island, all of these seemed to point to one identical process.

Comparative physiology, by paying more heed than before to the important factor of
physical and chemical action, also discovered a uniformity of the law for preservation of
life, growth, and functions of the several organs, which indeed could be reduced to the
double process of feeding and propagating. And to mention no more, paleontology has
revealed the parallel ordered sequences of plants and animals arising in successive strata
on the earth and likewise has acquainted us with various species of extinct organisms,
and with still surviving species that had different morphological characteristics in a
bygone age. Even psychology applied itself to establishing that there is a close
connection between the functions of human will and thought and those of the animal
world, to relating these to the physical functions of the lower organisms, and these in
turn to chemical behaviar, and even to the undulations and vibrations of the ether.b
Finally, authoritative writers already made mention of a "primordial soul
["Protistenseele"], created in their way a cellular psychology, and even ascribed the
function of memory to the plastidule.

IV
Thus the field upon which the theory of evolution caused its brilliant light to shine
became constantly more all-embracing. Time and again, new provinces of our cosmic
life were brought under its scepter, and in each territory that it annexed, it quickened a
spirit of more profound investigation, elicited research that had not been previously
considered, and brought about a unity in studies that earlier dealt only with details. Such
splendid results increasingly strengthened the belief that in its inspired thought the true
explanation of the universe had indeed been found. To explain all that exists in its origin,
being, transformation, and functions from a single principle was the richest and most
absolute monism, in which our thinking spirit could finally find the so passionately-
desired rest. And this rest would be granted to our spirit, not as formerly through the
thought-gymnastics of speculation, which lifted itself up from the earth to enjoy a bird's
eye view of the panorama, but by proceeding from the most accurate research study of
nature itself, and through digging ever deeper into the mine of real life.

Something that Darwin, in his sober and down-to-earth naiveté, had not remotely
anticipated, soon followed the theory of evolution in its triumphal procession. Monistic
psychology had scarcely expressed its opinion that it could establish genetic connections
between the radiation, undulation, and vibration in the plastidule and the creative genius
with which a Plato or Thomas, a Calvin or Kant had astonished the scholarly world,
before the audacious attempt was made to explain the entire development of man's
intellectual, aesthetic, ethical, religious, and thus of his social and political life, not only
according to the analogy of nature but also in association with the phenomenon of its
very existence, and the origin of that existence in the inorganic world. That which in
earlier years had been honored by thinkers and poets as the symbolic parallel of the
visible and the invisible was now being converted into a genetic coherence. Symbolics
rest upon a dualism; the mechanistic theory did not rest until, in its monism, it had also
surmounted this symbolic duality and had caused the highest expression of
consciousness of the human spirit to ascend from the lowest chemical action, along an
uninterrupted scale of progression.

It is, as I cited from Haeckel a moment ago, the entire world history [Weltgeschichte]
that must dissolve itself into one mighty physical and chemical process. Thus there came
into existence, especially in England, that total change in the study of the spiritual
sciences also, which, guided by the psychological and ethical research of Herbert
Spencer, Bain, and Georges Lewes, also attempted to apply the mechanics of evolution
to spiritual life.
In a much more general sense than Darwin had done, evolution is thus recommended to
us by this formula, that it is an integration of matter coupled with an infusion of energy,
in the sense that matter that formerly was indefinite, homogeneous, and incoherent is
changed to a condition of heterogeneity that is definite and coherent, while the excess
energy undergoes a similar transformation.l6 A formula which, no matter how intricate,
cannot offend us, under one condition, namely that these naturalistic scholars, who so
readily cast the reproach of haziness upon the formulation of the Christian dogma, do not
claim the glory of lucidity for the formulation of their own dogma. Accordingly, armed
with that formula, they proceeded to the evolutionistic reformation of psychology,
ethics, and sociology, with the further goal to found all jurisprudence upon a changed
basis, to change history into an action of mechanistic factors, to fit the economy together
like a mechanistic jigsaw puzzle, and finally, not only to slip in entirely new principles
to undergird political concepts but also to construe religion as a sublimate that, provided
it is dissociated entirely from the existence of a living, personal God, rises of its own
accord from the undulation and ferment of inorganic phenomena and is conducted into
the retort that is called man.

Yet, in spite of the power with which the point of this hypothesis entered all branches of
science, piercing and transposing all traditional presentations, it really has a much more
fragile basis than would appear at first blush. I will not enter into the question whether
Dr. Gustav Wolff, lecturer in Wurzburg, an expert in this matter, and the famous
discoverer of the regeneration of the lens of the eye in the salamander [Triton taeniatus]
does not go too far when he writes: "Doubtless, the realization that Darwinism was a
chimera is slowly dawning," and then adds: "the end of Darwinistic domination" is not
far away.l7 But without hesitation it must be stated that discord has already entered the
ranks of the evolutionists, that sound criticism is constantly driving them farther into a
corner, and that at least their assertion that "the highest purposiveness has arisen through
absolutely purposeless mechanics," and the mystery of life completely revealed, has
proved to be increasingly untenable.

In this case, the Achilles' heel was concealed in the factor of heredity, which makes or
breaks the entire system. According to the theory, the innate privilege of the better-
equipped varieties, as well as the preference gained by these stronger individuals by
virtue of adaptation to life, becomes permanent working capital. The fortunate possessor
bequeathes it to his posterity. And when the fortunate heir, in his turn, accumulates new
gains, the amazing power that causes the most ingeniously constituted organisms to arise
from the Monera is to be found in the cooperation of these three factors: richer diversity
among individuals, gains obtained by adaptation to life, and the transmission of both by
breeding. But of course, if the system is to remain valid, not only the adaptation but also
the diversity and transmission will have to be explained to us mechanistically, for if that
diversification or that transmission were left unexplained, or were governed by an
indwelling organic principle, then, as the experts admit unconditionally, the entire
presentation of the cosmos as arising mechanistically from atoms would prove to have
been a cruel illusion. Of course, we would not think of denying that changeableness does
occur by diversification or by adaptation among individuals, nor that such characteristics
are transmitted to succeeding generations. Even a mole on the arm will sometimes reveal
the mother in the child. Both facts are undeniable. Whether changes obtained through
adaptation cannot again be lost may be a dubious matter. Weismann denies it, and surely
it cannot be maintained in the case of domestication. But, apart from this, it is certain
that what is begotten is not identical with the begetter, nor are the progeny identical
among themselves, and that, nevertheless, they have primitive forms in common with
both their begetter and among themselves. The dispute, therefore, does not involve those
facts, but the explanation of those facts and the decisive question in the case of the
dogma of evolution is whether it can explain both of these facts and explain them
mechanistically. If so, they have attained their goal. If not, the spell of this theory is
broken once for all.

V
Because of lack of time, I will not pursue further the first fact, the diversification of
individuals, especially because during the past years the conflict has been concentrated
on the other fact, the problem of transmission. In that conflict, hypothesis after
hypothesis has been presented, but to date there has been no progress at all.c Darwin
himself was careful to call his idea, which was later discarded, a "provisional
hypothesis,"l8 and Haeckel frankly admits that these and other hypotheses "rest on pure
conjecture," and are nothing more than "metaphysical speculations."l9

The Pangenesis theory of Darwin, first disclosed in 1868, and more broadly in 1875,20
would have it that all cells in an organism, aside from the ability to multiply by dividing,
also possess the wholly other ability to separate and pass along gemmules or pangenes
that are not observable in the external form or structure, in such a way that every
peculiarity of the organic structure is equipped with the means of propagation in one of
the gemmules‹thus it is suggested that separate gemmules for every detail of our body
and every feature of our spirit are wandering about in our being, and at every turn a
complete set of such gemmules would find its way to the sperm or ovum, in order that
the combined attributes of the procreators may in this way be transmitted to the newly
begotten individual. According to Darwin, some superfluous gemmules in latent
condition would even travel with the complete set only to appear two or three
generations later, and thus to exhibit the symptoms of atavism.

However, in spite of Darwin's high authority, and despite the attempt by Brooks to
perfect this pangenesis theory, such an invention was a bit too much for most people.
Immediately following publication it was rejected by most experts as untenable, and it is
said that Galton gave it the death blow by his transfusion experiments with the rabbit.
Even with the most powerful microscope, no one has ever observed any trace of these
imagined pangenes, and even if these gemmules were finally discovered by a more
powerful eye, their grouping into a complete organic system could never be explained
rnechanistically, and therefore nothing at all would be gained by this hypothesis that
would count in favor of the monistic-mechanistic theory of evolution.

Haeckel therefore immediately attacked Darwin's invention, and in 1876 he substituted

the theory of Perigenesis for it. In so doing, the proceeds from the plastidule-hypothesis,
that is, the presupposition that the plasma, which is transmitted from the begetter to the
begotten, is composed of numerous plasmatic molecules, that these plastidules are
surrounded by a water bubble, that each plastidule has its own distinct undulation, and
that in these peculiar undulations or movements that are transmitted with the plasma the
mechanistic cause may be found of the similarity between the procreator and the
offspring. And Haeckel is not merely referring somatically to the bodily similarity but
also spiritually to the similarity in character and mental powers. Indeed, he does not
hesitate to ascribe intellect, will, and memory to these molecules in the plasma, functions
that he understands purely in the physical and chemical, and therefore mechanistic,
sense,2l as I stated previously. It will not surprise you that Haeckel's invention did not
fare any better than Darwin's. Rudolf Virchow ridiculed it in his famous talk on Die
Freiheit der Wissenschaft. He writes: "To say this, is to play with words. He who
conceives of attraction and repulsion as psychic forms simply throws the entire psyche
out of the window, for then the psyche ceases to be psyche."22 Dr. Otto Zacharias made
this statement: "A theory such as the perigenesis of the plastidules is a derailment of
sound human intellect. It is logically untenable, and scientifically without value." 23

A third theory to explain heredity is that of the late botanist Carl Naegeli, of Munich. It
is called the Idioplasma theory, and was published in 1884. Idioplasma, according to
Naegeli, is the portion of the plasma that does not serve as food but bears the design for
the being within itself, and in his opinion the idioplasma is divided into groups of
micelles. A few of those groups control the movements of the others, and within this
directing group of micelles there is to be found an inner urge for greater perfection that
simultaneously maintains that which existed and guides the existing organism in its
further development. However, this invention also failed to win acceptance. Dr. Eimer of
Jena judged Naegeli's extensive work in these words: "that in it there was an unusual
amount of speculation and unusually little was proven by facts."24 Haeckel commented:
"No exact physicist recognizes in it anything but metaphysical speculation."25 Naegeli's
presentation is incompatible with the latest studies concerning the nature of the cell.
And, to conclude, the directing and perfecting principle with which he endows his
idioplasma is an organic, not a mechanistic, factor and will result in the total shipwreck
of the monism of evolution. Dr. Eimer and Dr. Haeckel immediately spotted it: Naegeli's
Idioplasma theory is teleological.

A year after Naegeli's Idioplasma theory, Dr. August Weismann, of Straatsburg, entered
the arena with a fourth theory, that of germ-plasma,26 which certainly exceeds the
preceding three in simplicity. He distinguishes between two kinds of plasma, an active
form that is the germ-plasma, and a somatic form that is assimilated. Now this germ-
plasma not only accounts for the origin of the new individual but also a substantial
supply of this germ-plasma is generated in the new individual along life's pathway,
which in its turn will be given to new individuals, and it is on this continuity of germ-
plasma, which is transmitted from generation to generation, that the fact of heredity is
alleged to be based. Newly acquired properties therefore, according to Weismann,
cannot be transmitted by heredity.

But although this fourth theory, comparatively speaking, is somewhat attractive, it has
also been rejected without mercy, by Eimer, Haeckel, Virchow, Hertwig, and others.
This is the more easily understood when I add that Dr. Weismann, like Naegeli, not
only secretly introduced a teleological principle but boldly declared that a purely
mechanistic explanation of the cosmos is impossible. He writes: "It is undeniable that a
teleological principle must be recognized along with the purely mechanistic one."27
"The linking of all forces into the great world-mechanism presumes a
worldmechanic."28 Professor Max Kassowitz of Vienna this year did indeed attempt to
set up a new hypothesis in opposition to Weismann, but with an equally disappointing
result. Indeed, he proceeds from a "hereditary substance" that is said to swallow up the
"products of the disintegration of the surrounding protoplasms" and in the process to
produce "characteristic orderings of atoms" that would then be further differentiated by
"external influences." In this hypothesis it is immediately apparent that the supposition
of a "hereditary substance" is nothing more than proposing another mystical name for
the mystery to be unveiled. 29 This is a course that is even more sharply formulated by
Professor Reinke of Kiehl, who, in his most recent writing, Die Welt als That, openly
takes sides against Darwinism, assumes intelligent "Dominants" along with "Energies,"
and has these Dominants controlled by a living God, both imminent and transcendent.
Reinke also states, with Linnaeus: "I saw the eternal, omniscient, omnipotent God
passing in the background, and I was struck with amazement." 30

I trust that your kind indulgence will pardon this somewhat detailed presentation. The
subject under discussion is of such great importance for the future of the theory of
evolution that I reproach myself with having been too brief rather than too lengthy. For
although these studies of heredity bore much splendid fruit insofar as they made us
aware of a much more complex existence in the most deeply hidden life of the cell than
we had suspected until now, they have at the same time shed such a revealing light on
the absolute inability of evolution to give a mechanistic explanation of the fact of
heredity that it is no exaggeration to say that the monistic mechanism of the entire theory
of evolution has been fatally wounded in its Achilles' heel. It cannot get along without
the all-controlling fact of heredity in the erection of its cosmos, and its monistic
mechanism is shattered like a soapbubble upon that fact of heredity. If at this point,the
governance of a nonmaterial principle, of a World-Mechanic, of formation in accordance
with an Idea has proven to be an undeniable necessity, then an organic factor is
introduced alongside mechanism, and absolute Mechanism as well as strict Monism
prove to be a figment of the imagination.

VI
There are other, no-less-serious criticisms. In connection with heredity I have already
made reference to the problem of the origin of variations in the matter of diversity
among individuals. Whence are these variations that, in the selection system, are thought
to bring new gains to the privileged individuals? But there is more. As Dr. Gustav Wolff
remarks, and he is indisputably correct, not only is the origin of these variations a riddle,
but the system demands that these variations appear without previous provisions or
definition. Complete lack of regulation must characterize them.31 Without "totally
undirected variation," mechanistic explanation falls. The idea of differentiation, aided by
additive accumulation, must provide the architectural style for the universe, but then the
building bricks supplied by this idea may not have been previously adapted for insertion,
for then the mechanistic idea will fall, and the organizing idea will regain the supremacy.

It is exactly at this point that the theory of evolution runs against the facts. Or were not
the vertebrata symmetrically constructed? And if the pigment spot on the left is always
accompanied by a pigment spot on the right, and by an identical process, out of the two
pigments spots a nearly analogous eye develops, how is it to be explained then that two
entirely independent "incremental variations," in the right proportion and clearly
symmetrical, produced similar results? Here the undirected action of mechanism cannot
give the answer. Here we find no free variation, but a variation that in both cases is
subject to the same determinant, or law, or rule, and of course mechanistic variation by
Selection does not allow a pre-forrning rule.

We must say the same thing of utility as the exclusive motive for selection. Surely it is
clear that an individual armed with two wings, born of wingless parents and alongside of
wingless brothers and sisters, would by that token possess an uncommon preference, and
that this winged individual had a chance of getting the best of his wingless competitors
in the struggle for life. But this is not the way in which it is presented by the theory of
evolution. Originally there are not two wings, but nothing more than two almost
invisible stumps from which the wings eventually must emerge, right and left. Now, of
what utility to the candidate for wings is this pair of little stumps? And how can this pair
of stumps give him an advantage in the struggle for life over the stumpless? We should
say, rather, that these two unsightly stumps on his back have pushed him backward in
the course of sexual selection.

The answer of Darwin and his adherents to these questions is far from satisfactory. But
granted that their assertion holds good in the case of the wing stumps, and that in the
case of other variations, in which no utility can be established, Darwin's Correlation
hypothesis permits a way out, even then not everything has by any means been
explained. Dr. Romanes, although an ardent Darwinist, acknowledges, e.g., that the
electrical apparatus of the ray (not the torpedo or electric ray, but the common variety
or raja) delivers a thrust that is much too weak to have been of utility to the fish in
defending itself against its enemies, and therefore we are here faced with a very complex
phenomenon, that cannot be accounted for by selection.32

The evolutionists themselves are also embarrassed by the fossil record. The harvest that
has been gathered thus far is extremely scanty, when compared with expectations.
Before the first complete eagle's wing had developed from the first stump, thousands and
thousands of years must have elapsed, while eagle candidates lived first with wing
stumps, then with small rudiments of quills, then with expanding wings, until finally the
royal wing was completed. It might be expected, therefore, that in the catacombs of the
fossil world one might find a host of examples of quarter- and half-grown eagle's wings
as well as a multitude of transition forms in the world of plants and animals. Do bear in
mind that these transition forms did not pass by rapidly, but, according to the hypothesis,
endured thousands, if not ten thousands of years, and millions of examples must have
existed. But the outcome is bitterly disappointing. The Darwinists themselves are lacking
in words to mourn the "incompleteness" of the buried world of life. Not one sort of
anything that even faintly resembles a genealogy has come to light. And the painfulness
of this sore spot is nowhere more clearly revealed than in the fuss they make with their
repeated appeal to the discovered genealogical transition forms of the horse, at least as it
refers to the development of the hoof from the middle toe.

Even worse is the case of the appeal to selective breeding. For this interesting practice is
indeed successful in breeding variations within the limits of the same species, but it has
never succeeded in transforming an animal from its own species into a higher species, or
in calling a new sort of animal into being. It has long been known that every species,
within certain limits, possesses the faculty of developing a multitude of variations, and
this has been more amply confirmed by artificial breeding. Therefore nothing prevents
us from accepting the fact that nature, in the same manner, by utility selection, has
converted its original uniformity of species into pluriformity. Even in the world of
bacteria, the most knowledgeable bacteriologists maintain that the evolving of all the
species from one basic type is unthinkable. But precisely for that reason the theory of
evolution cannot gather any support at all from artificial breeding, for evolution does not
say that the species within its own limits is variegated, but that one species changes into
another. And it is precisely for this kind of variation that artificial breeding does not
offer proof.

I could continue to let the long procession of objections pass by in review for you.
Although our time does not allow this, inasmuch as the critique from an esthetical,
ethical, and religious viewpoint could not then be heard, we cannot fail to speak briefly
about two other matters: first, about Darwin's suggestion of coordinated factors [in the
processes of evolution], and then about the mystery of creation [creatio aequivoca.]
Darwin's discovery shone in the brightness of clarity and simplicity when originally he
recommended natural selection as the only driving force of evolution. But it was
precisely that claim that Darwin found it necessary to reconsider, and to abandon it with
an acknowledgment of his error. The data on physiologically indifferent structure cannot
be explained by natural selection. Since that time, Darwin himself introduced, along with
the mechanistic action, the correlation, the sexual selection, and the isolation as
coordinated factors, of which at least the first two defy all attempts at a mechanistic
explanation and loudly call for an organic explanation, and by that token also give the lie
to the original claim and attack the entire theory at its roots.

Now, finally, a few words about the formation of all life from the beginning [omne
vivum ex ovo ]. It is self-evident that the theory of evolution cannot proceed from a
created group of Monera, from which, by selection, cytodes and nuclei gradually
evolved as protists and whatever has gradually been constructed from them. For then the
starting point would remain a mystery and the gap between the inorganic and the organic
world would be absolute. Evolution, therefore, must take the position that the most
primitive living organisms came into existence by chemical processes from eggwhite-
like carbon combinations, or, if you will, that life came forth from the lifeless by
chemical means. Countless attempts have been made to bring that discovery of all
discoveries to light, but without exception they terminated in a wretched fiasco, so that
the entire structure continues to lack a foundation. And the bitterness of this bankruptcy
for our evolutionists is nowhere discerned more plainly than when we hear the boast of
Dr. Haeckel, when in his agitation he states that chemical synthesis succeeded in 1828 in
producing "from ammonium cyanate"‹please don't laugh!‹"organic urea."33 So much for
"spontaneous generation."

VII
After the foregoing argumentation, we have this result: First, that evolution is to be
greeted with thanks as a bold reaction against the clumsy detail-empiricism and the
despondent rule of the vast realm of the Unknowable [Ignorabimus], which too long
exerted a depressing influence upon natural philosophy. Over against this, the theory of
evolution has again boldly raised the question concerning the origin of the living
organisms of the world, and pressed for unity in our world- view. In the second place,
the theory of evolution, by this attempt to substitute nature study for speculation, has
stimulated such a careful observation of nature in its most deeply hidden workshops that
the half-magical speculation of former years has been replaced by the riches of
microscopic observation. While previously there was at most a marking of the
movement of the second hand on the clock dial, the mechanism of the clock has now
been opened to view, and this movement of gears and springs may be observed. In the
third place, the theory of evolution, by giving an impetus to the ontogenetic,
morphological studies, has discovered a unity of design in all living organisms, and even
an analogy and correspondence of the organic with the inorganic that had previously
been hidden from view. Finally, in the fourth place, by applying the law of Malthus to
the variations, it has pointed to a factor in the development of particular variations in the
species, which cast a startling light upon otherwise inexplicable phenomena.

However, it was in error when, intoxicated with joy because of this discovery, it fancies
that it had found the solution to the riddle of the universe, and in popular writings
suggested that the architectonics of a "cosmos without building plans" had been
disclosed to us. Every satisfactory proof that the cosmos thus mechanistically formed
itself is lacking, and the proof cannot be supplied, even experimentally, in step-by-step
detail. The catacombs of the fossil world refused to furnish what they were required to
give in order to support the system. Not one egg, nor one cytode has been produced from
non-egg [ex non-ova], and the attempt to breed the individual of one species with
another species has failed thus far. To express it more forcefully, not only do we lack the
proof that it occurred thus, but even as a hypothesis, that it could be so, the attempts of
the theory of evolution were a fiasco. Its own adherents have acknowledged that
selection explains only a portion of the phenomena, and that other, not merely
mechanistic, forces must be enlisted for assistance.

For while it was fancifully imagined at first that the dual law of change and heredity
would be the answer, further research soon disclosed that neither of these laws could be
deduced from purely mechanistic principles, and its most skillful researchers arrived
again at organic principles and returned to teleological motives. As a result, the once-
beautiful harmony among the evolutionists has given place to bitter argurnentation, and
accusations of betrayal of the system are being hurled about. One hears such charges as:
"No exact physicist recognizes in your assertions anything other than fanciful
metaphysical speculations." 34 Mark you well, metaphysiscal speculations, the most
cutting stigma for an evolutionist.

Since matters now stand thus, and we nevertheless hear the adherents of evolution in all
strains assure and declare "that every unbiased and unprejudiced scientist who possesses
sound judgment and the sufficient biological understanding" must agree with them; 35
that they can and must "assert their general theory with complete certainty;" 36 that it is
impossible to conceive "how stronger and more valid proof for the theory of evolution"
could be furnished; that "if their power of proof is not sufficient, we must do without a
reasonable answer to the question of all questions;" 37 that "no natural scientist doubts
that the causes here are grounded purely mechanistically in the nature of living matter
itself;" 38 that, when even men like Carl Vogt and Johannes Reinke differ from them in
principle, this must be attributed only to their antiquated viewpoint and the limited field
of their studies, to their "lack of sound logic" and their imperfect philosophical
development; 39 and that one who opposes them on religious grounds has forfeited
every right to a hearing of his objections, because all "blind belief in revelation and
confession is no different from superstition;" 40 we are now confronted not with a theory
nor a hypothesis but with a real dogma of evolution‹a dogma that I stigmatized as a
pseudo-dogma, because the authority that can establish the dogma is totally lacking
within the scientific premises.

VIII
The truth of this will become increasingly clear when I now finally proceed with the
critique that must attack the theory of evolution from the spiritual viewpoint. There is a
hierarchy [scala] of phenomena in the cosmos, the lowest rung of which is to be found in
the naturally forming crystal, and the highest in the Cross of Golgotha. In order to arrive
at the monism, a twofold path is indispensable, first an ascent along this ladder, and then
a descent along this cosmic ladder, and only when the results of this ascent and descent
agree will a holy monistic joy thrill our hearts. What is the cosmos? Is it a precipitation
of the spirit, or is it a sublimation of the material atoms? Must all higher organized life
be pulled down to the spheres of the lower inorganic life, or must all lower existence be
subsumed under the higher? Now the foregoing argument is proof that I challenge those
who, in their spiritual bird's -eye view, have no eyes for "the lilies of the field" and "the
sand on the seashore." Instead of the common saying, "I count no human to be an alien
to me" [nil humanum a me alienum puto], I would substitute "I count nothing in nature
to be alien to us" [nil naturale a nobis alienum]. But I would reserve for the spiritual
sphere an independence of character, its own distinct principle, and consequently the
right, not only to raise objections to every absolutely mechanistic, i.e., atomistic theory,
but to criticize them on the basis of one's own spiritual viewpoint. I shall proceed to do
so with respect to the theory of evolution, and respectively treat the esthetic, ethical, and
religious concerns.

The esthetically beautiful is a dangerous reef in the breakers for the theory of evolution,
because it cannot abandon utility as the exclusive selection-motive without also
abandoning its mechanistic explanation of the universe. It has been attempted, therefore,
to explain the beautiful as emanating from the utilitarian, in spite of the fact that the
entire esthetical development since Kant with his "that which pleases us, though without
usefulness" opposes this in principle. The matter would then stand thus, that in the
animal world the female is attracted by beautiful male forms, so that the gracefully
formed may therefore present a better chance for the propagation of its species. This is a
hypothesis that says something, but not much. For in the first place, it neglects to note
that, according to the theory of evolution, the graceful form was not complete until
thousands of years had passed, and that, as beautiful as the full-grown wing may be, so
ugly were the stumps from which it gradually developed. Second, this selection of the
beautiful in the lower animal world through the agency of sexual preference does not
hold true. And, in the third place, it assumes esthetic sense in the female, without being
able to give a mechanistic explanation of the maturing of this feminine sense. Yet it has
been thought that this sexual esthetic sense can be detected even in the plant kingdom.
Beautiful and fragrant flowers attracted the insects upon which their fertilization
depended more than the unsightly and scentless, and the strawberry, rather than the
medlar, attracted the bird that swallowed the seed along with the fruit, let it pass through
its intestines, and entrusted it to the earth elsewhere. Now if a beech or cedar seems
beautiful to our eyes, it could hardly be explained on the basis of insect or bird
attraction, but would simply be what we are accustomed to, because we had never
known anything but the ordinary tree with the forms of its trunk, branches, and leaves.
But the evolutionists themselves realized that, although there was an element of truth
hidden in all of this, it could not come close to explaining the luxuriant beauty of the
world, and in their embarrassment they then sought a way out in subjectivism.

One may go into raptures while gazing at the Pleiades or the beautiful lines of the
mountains, or enjoy the view of a stream or cataract, yet all of this is only a subjective
perception, and nothing guarantees a corresponding objective beauty. And what about
the world of sound, which comes to the ear from without, and through the ear enters the
soul? But why should we continue? The theory of evolution has even cut itself off from
flight into the tent of subjectivism. It must explain not only our outward but also our
inner life mechanistically, or its monism will be dead. Therefore, all that is left is to
follow the esthetical line to the Monera, and to delude us into the belief that a plastidule
not only embodied intellect, will, and memory but also an esthetic sense, an esthetic
sense produced chemically by the undulation, radiation, or vibration of molecules or of
the water bubble that surrounds them. And even then it has not arrived, for it must still
demonstrate how the sensation thus produced is connected with the objective world in its
ability to appreciate beauty. Since the mechanics of the universe is incapable of either
one or the other, it naturally follows that, for the sake of the theory of evolution, either
the realm of the esthetic must be referred to the realm of fancy, or, if it be true that
esthetic beauty possesses undeniable existence both subjectively and objectively,
esthetics most emphatically gives the lie to the evolution hypothesis.

The same holds true of ethics. Undoubtedly Spencer and the Scottish school are correct,
in contrast with the adherents of Kant, by demanding that in the ethical realm we must
deal not only with adult man but also with budding manhood, even to pre-cradle days.
But this admonition was unnecessary for us Reformed [Gereformeerde] people. Rather,
we may say that plagiarism was committed upon us. For the supposition of an ability to
believe, which is conceivable as potentially present already in the mother's womb [in
utero matris], was taught by our earliest theologians. But the problem that confronts the
evolutionists in their study of ethics is totally different. For also in that study they must
prove that ethical consciousness is not governed by a teleological tendency, nor by a
teleological norm, but that it is bound up with the stirrings of life in the plant and animal
kingdoms and, arising from the physical and chemical action of the inorganic elements,
comes into existence and continues to exist purely mechanistically. and it is only
accidentally that it ascends to become a higher organizing principle. An established good
[bonum perfectum] that would stand by itself, and to which man would be conformed, is
a self-contradiction [contresens] from that viewpoint. For then the teleological idea
would again have been introduced. Therefore the only valid perfect moral good, in
Spencer's view, is an act that at the same time produces maximum integration of life for
the individual and his fellow-individuals.

In this system, as Spencer frankly acknowledges, the idea of duty can rest only upon
well-timed and fortunate error, for one who acts from a sense of duty acknowledges a
higher determinant and thereby denies the automatic properties of mechanics. Therefore
Spencer and his school break with all earlier psychology and boldly demand that the
mechanistic evolution, which is claimed to have been proved inductively in astronomy,
ontogeny, biology, and so on, and which leads to a unified concept of all cosmic life,
shall also automatically prescribe the study methods [methodus vitae] that govern in the
area of psychology and ethics. And, in their opinion, ethics will obtain the right to
announce itself as a science only at the moment when it establishes itself as an analogous
subdivision of the unified science of mechanistic evolution. Thus there can be no such
thing as a soul that is a separate entity. There is nothing but the human "living
organism," which develops in two directions, physiological and psychological, and
which in the course of that development cannot undergo any changes except those that
result from the tendencies inherited from plant, animal, and man, from association with
other similar beings, and from the resistance of material nature. No ruling principle, nor
organic motive, nor a pursued ideal give guidance in this respect. At any given moment,
man is nothing more than the product of internal and external circumstance. There can
be no thought of sin or guilt except in his erring notion, and the only good that spurs him
on spontaneously and persistently is desire. Initially there will be a clashing of the desire
of one individual with the desire of the other, but gradually the cause of such clashes
wears off. For the more man begins to live as a being in association with other beings, so
much more the desire of egoism cannot assume its rightful place without also seeking
happiness in the associated fellow beings. This altruism, or rather, this companionable
egoism, will then continue for a while its struggle with isolated egoism, because of
faulty associations.

But finally, if the association is to be perfect, sympathy will cause egoism and altruism
to flow together into a higher unity, and, in a natural way, all that to which we are urged
by our desire will be perfectly good. The idea of moral freedom is then shown the door
in derision. Also in the ethical sphere nothing is to be acknowledged but one continuing,
albeit accidental, dynamic process, and just as in nature the train of evolution rumbles on
relentlessly, thanks to the tension between the one-cell and multi-cell existence, thus also
in the field of ethics all development is nothing but a blind process, the fruit of the clash
of man-by-himself [homo solus] with man-in society [homo associatus], and of both
with brute nature. There is no ethical ideal that would draw us as with a magnet. It is and
remains, always in the noble sense, the atomistic pleasure principle of a renewed
Epicureanism [Epicurus redivivus].

Does it not seem that we could apply literally to this quasi-ethical cobweb what Carl
Vogt wrote concerning Haeckel's plastidule hypothesis: "Thus do you simply throw
psyche out the door, and does psyche cease to be psyche?'' 41 Here, also, the names of
psychology and ethics continue to appear as labels on the signboard, but all the drawers
and closets in the shop in which the ethical ingredients ought to be laid out ready for use
are hopelessly empty. There is no longer a soul, for "that which one usually calls 'soul' is
only the sum of the activities of a great number of ganglion cells."42 A soul in
distinction from the body would attack monism in its vitals. Spirit without matter does
not exist. Thus there can never be any thought of a continued existence of the soul, since
it lacks any independent existence. Experimental physiology and psychiatry, and no less
ontogeny, have once and for all demolished the dogma of immortality. The species
remains, the individual perishes. There is no connection with a life beyond death, "and it
must be complete nonsense to continue to talk about the immortality of the human
person."43 Even Hallier states that "a continuation of our spirit after death is an
impossible thing."44

Accordingly, the moral ideal, the moral world order, the moral law that governs us, the
sense of duty that binds us to that law, and the Holy One who gives us the law, fall
away, and with these basic ideas we lose the correlated ideas of sin, guilt, and
repentence, and the corresponding ideas of redemption and atonement. Thus evolution
robs ethics of its entire subject, and in the place of this lost subject and its requisites it
substitutes a sociological apparatus, whereby the psychological phenomena appearing in
the individual throw very little weight in the scale. Even the idea of "righteousness," to
which Spencer gives nominal deference, is then based on a play of words. For right and
righteousness necessarily presuppose an authoritively imposed order to which life must
be conformed, and it is precisely this idea of such a pre-formative authority which, being
branded teleological, is in irreconcilable conflict with the basic idea of the theory of
evolution.

An ethical development, other than as an accidental result of uncontrolled adaptations,

can never be deduced from the theory of evolution. Therefore, although true ethics does
not refuse to pay its toll of gratitude for so many latent powers revealed by the theory of
evolution, yet it will resist, tooth and nail, a system that robs it of its most sacred
treasures, its ideal motives, and even its life; it is firmly determined to give no quarter in
this most bitter struggle for life. All advances that have been made thus far in the field of
ethics are to be credited, not to the ethics of the theory of evolution but precisely to those
ethical powers that the theory of evolution excludes. That which it holds out to us as
ultimate perfection is so distant that, in the absence of all teleology, none can guarantee
it. And although, in a limited circle of intellectuals, its theory may partially support
ethical respectability [honestum], as soon as its ideas penetrate to the broad masses of
the people, hurnanity as such will sink back into horrible sensualism and unbridled
barbarisrn.

IX
I now come to my last point, the critique of religion.

In England the adherents of evolution have never passed by the altar without a semi-
genuflection. Most of them are still faithful attendants at worship in the polychromatic
Church of England. They are moved thereto partly by the traditions of the religious past,
arnd partly by the desire to have their theory accepted by means of their respect for the
national religion. In Germany, on the other hand, the evolutionist, insolent and
condescending, delights in wounding pious feelings. Or perhaps "insolent" is too weak,
when Dr. Haeckel objects that our "personal God" is nothing more than a "gaseous
vertebrate," and when he is asked what we mean by God, replies: "the sum of all atomic
powers and oscillations of the ether."45 Yet undoubtedly the German evolutionists,
rather than the English, derived the correct consequences from their principle. For
monism, as understood by this school, fully assents to Goethe's thesis that "matter can
never exist or be effective without spirit, and vice versa." The theory of evolution
considers a spirit that exists independent of matter to be a piece of nonsense. Thus, in
principle, it must deny and combat the existence of angels, must deny and combat the
existence of the soul, but then also the existence of a God. A spiritual Being that exists
independently of the material world is death to the theory of evolution. And if it
countinues to speak of "religion," it is playing with words and declares that true religion,
after deletion of the totality of its "mystical doctrines and supernatural revelations" meets
its own invaluable nucleus only in a purified "ethical doctrine which is based on rational
anthropology," an ethics that is then formulated as being the "equilibrium between
egoisrn and alt:ruism." The feeling thus created is then labeled as piety, and this
"equilibrium," tied in46 with the "sum of all atomic powers and oscillations of the
ether," is then conjured up before the multitude as the real "Trinitarian-monistic religion"
of what is true and good and beautiful.47

Gentlemen, I do not hesitate one moment to brand such reckless play with the most
sacred things as the most cowardly quasi-religious invention ever put into words. Why
not be honest, have the courage of one's conviction, and frankly admit that evolution is
not only atheistic but antitheistic, and would ban all religion as human self-deceit? Then
one would know that he is dealing with men, and both sides can prepare for the newly
defined condition. But to declare boldly on the one hand, that the soul does not exist, that
life after death is nonsense, and therefore nothing remains of Christ after Golgotha, that
spirit without matter is unthinkable, and that the highest unity is to be thought of only as
a sum of ether waves, and yet to speak of a Trinitarian God and religion is to deceive
oneself or others, and dishonors the man of science. He who would assign a distinct
sphere to religion alongside and distinguished from ethics, must also maintain that
distinction in its working out, and, in accordance with the normal meaning of the word
[verba valent usu], let religion be what it is logically and historically.

Religion presents a duality, man who worships and a God who is worshiped by him, and
he who negates the latter of the two indispensable elements for an understanding of all
religion and destroys the former, forfeits the right, both morally and logically, to take the
word religion upon his lips. It no longer exists for him. Even the right to speak of a
"spirit of the true, the good, and the beautiful," when used by an evolutionist, makes him
unfaithful to his own theory. A spirit of the true, the good, and the beautiful means a
transcendent or immanent power, which reveals the true, the good, and the beautiful to
the spirit of man and irresistibly draws him to them. But such a spiritual constraint,
which adopts a goal toward which it is driven, presupposes purpose and plan and
influence, and therefore pertains entirely to the teleological area that is forbidden ground
for evolution. In a universe that is constructed purely mechanistically, not only
physiologically but also psychologically, there is no room for such a guiding, inspiring,
and purposeful spirit.

X
Of course, as is so often discusssed, especially in England, the question whether religion,
as such, perrnits a spontaneous unfolding of the species in organic life from the cytode
or the nuclear cell, is an entirely different question. This question must be answered
affirmatively, without reservation. We will not force our style upon the Chief Architect
of the universe. If He is to be the Architect, not in name only but in reality, He will also
be supreme in the choice of style. Therefore if it had pleased God not to create the
species but to have one species emerge from another, through the medium of enabling a
preceding species to produce a higher following species, creation would still be no less
miraculous. However, this would never have been the evolution of Darwinism, for the
preestablished purpose [Zweck] would then not have been banished but would have been
all controlling, and then the world would not have constructed itself mechanistically, but
God would have constructed it by the use of elements that He himself had prepared.48

The contrast is most clearly shown in an example chosen by Haeckel. To eliminate the
difficulty encountered in a mechanistic explanation of a constructed organism, he asks
whether a Zulu, who sees an English armored wessel put žn to the port of Lorenzo
Marquez, would not automatically look upon it as an organic monster, while we know
very well that it is mechanically constructed. This is something that everyone will
concede, but Haeckel overlooked the fact that, at the shipyards, the iron plates did not
automatically come together, but that they were fitted into place by an able architect,
after a previously prepared plan. And that same difference would also distinguish such a
divine evolutionistic creation from the Darwinian theory. Evolutionistic creation
presupposes a God who first prepares the plan and then omnipotently executes it;
Darwinism teaches a mechanistic origin of things, which excludes all plan or
specifications or purpose. Not pre-formation, but epigenesis is the slogan of this
system.49

I proceed. The claim of this system that the puzzle of the world's existence is solved by
the mechanistic production of the living from the nonliving rests upon delusion and
misunderstanding. Without the ether molecules and their waves, and the atoms with their
action, and the cells with their capacity to divide, and the variability with the heredity,
and thus also without the disproportion between the number of eaters and the available
food, the monistic mechanics of this system cannot advance one step. And no matter
whether Naegeli exclaims: "To deny spontaneous generation means to acknowledge the
miracle," it will not get him anywhere. To be rid of the miracle, he must also first
explain mechanistically the existence of the ether molecules and atoms, for the
omnipotence that can create one atom may be a lesser miracle in degree but not in
essence, than that which is required to call man into being. The presumptuous notion of
having arrived and having explained everything apart from God, can therefore be
maintained only so long as one halts at the borderline between the living and nonliving
world, and shuts his eyes to what lies behind. Thus, also, the explanation of world
mechanics on the basis of variability and heredity, of the disproportion between
procreation and food, and of the consequent struggle for life, is not an explanation so
long as the mechanistic explanation for those three mighty factors themselves has not
been formed.

From the nature of the case, my address must refrain from comparing one theory with
another. This cannot be done in a few sentences. A superficial treatment in this case
would lead to misunderstanding. However, it should be noted that the adherents of the
new studies declare for monotheism over against polytheism; place the unity of the
entire creation in the brightest light; affirm the origin of every species from one
specimen; commend the origin of the entire human race from one blood; explain the
representative status of Adam [in lumbis Adami] according to Weismann's theory;
elevate "through suffering to glory" to a principle; make the regeneration of the dead
body more comprehensible; find Pelagianism to be in error; maintain capital
punishment; and, in agreement with Romans 9, reject the idea that the construction of
the universe was directed entirely to the happiness of man. I may add to this that the
scriptural document of Creation eliminates, rather than commending, the dramatic entry
of new beings. Scripture states that "the earth brought forth herb yielding seed after its
kind," and also that "the earth brought forth the cattle and everything that creepeth upon
the earth"; not that they were set down upon the earth by God, like pieces upon a
chessboard.

But, although there are points of contact that we may not neglect, the principal contrast
between theory and theory remains unimpaired and irreconcilable. Man is and remains
created after God's image, and it is not the nature of the beast that has determined our
human being, but contrarily, the entire lower cosmos is paradigmatically determined by
the central position of man. Not as Ranke asserted; "the animal kingdom is dissected
man, and man is the paradigm of the whole animal kingdom."50 He who would make
that statement needlessly exposes himself [to refutation]. And yet it is the case that
conceptually all that is on a lower plane culminates in man, and in that respect is the
imagebearer of man, even as man bears the image of his God. And since the theory of
evolution thus destroys the object and kills the subject of the two indispenable terms for
all real religion‹God and man‹religion can do nothing other than what was done by
esthetics and ethics, and religion must, by virtue of the law governing its own life,
irrevocably condemn the system of evolution.

To hesitate at this point would mean a betrayal of one's own convictions. Evolution is a
newly conceived system, a newly established theory, a newly formed dogma, a newly
emerged faith, which, embracing and dominating all of life, is diametrically opposed to
the Christian faith, and can erect its temple only upon the ruins of our Christian
Confessions. No satisfaction with, nor appreciation of the beauty and riches that were
cast into our laps by the studies that stimulated it, may permit us to be at peace for even
a moment with this system as system. That system remains evil, even though in many
respects good has come out of evil. And therefore our combined resistance to that system
of the aimlessly and mechanistically constructed cosmos must be expressed. We must
not merely defend ourselves against it, but attack it. The textbooks into which it found its
way must be laid aside, and we may not entrust our children to any instructor who
teaches it. Like a deadly bacteria that would destroy all spiritual life, it must be
microscopically investigated, and all traces must be removed from the tissue of our life.
Over against Nietzsche's evolution-law that the stronger must tread upon the weaker, we
cling to the Christ of God, who seeks the lost and has mercy on the weak. Over against
the undirected mechanisms of evolution we present faith in that Eternal Being who "has
worked and continues to work all things after the counsel of His will." Over against the
natural selection that seeks the species and neglects the individual, we cling to the
election, which speaks of the "white stone and on the stone a new name written, which
no man knoweth saving he that receiveth it." Over against the annihilation of the
individual person in the grave we continue to testify of a coming judgment, and of an
eternal glory. And over against an altruism that is nothing more than a "transformed" and
therefore disguised egoism, we hold high the fire of the eternal love that burns in God's
Fatherheart, and of which a holy spark has leaped to our own hearts.

Gentlemen, the first time I retired from the rectorate, I warned against the "Higher
Criticism" of Scripture [Schriftcritiek],which threatened to rob us of the Revelation of
our God. When I spoke of our "Vanishing Boundaries," I cautioned against the
destructive influence of Pantheism. Today I felt myself called to raise my voice against
the even more deadly danger of evolution. Not narrowly pleading for a specifically
Reformed view but for the sacred inherited treasure of our Christian religion, most
broadly conceived, I have spoken on the two previous occasions and again today. Now I
conclude by returning to the starting point for the entire Christian church on earth in its
Confession, as it was, is now, and ever shall be, by maintaining over against evolution
the first of all articles of faith:

I BELIEVE IN GOD ALMIGHTY,

CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH.
 NOTES
1. Ernst Haeckel, Der Monismus als Band zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft, 8e
ausgabe (Bonn: E. Strauss, 1899), available in English as Monism as Connecting
Religion and Science, trans. J. Gilchrist (London: A. & C. Black, 1894).

2. "Die Weltgeschichte muss ein physikalisches chemisches Process, sein." Ernst

Haeckel, Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1898), I, 153, available
in English as The History of Creation, 2 vols., trans. E. Ray Lankester (New York: D.
Appleton, 1876).

3. "ein philosophisches Verstandniss" . . . "nothwendige Vorbedingung ist fur die volle

Weltanschauung der Descendenz-theorie." Haeckel, Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte II,
780.

4. "das unerschutterliche Gebaude der wahren monistischen Wissenschaft" [comes into

existence only when] "Empirie und Philosophie sich aufs innigste durchdringen."
Haeckel, Naifirliche Schopfungsgeschichte, II, 782.

5. "So steht es heute unzweifelhaft fest: Der Mensch stammt vom Affen ab."
Haeckel, Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, II, 800.

6. "die ungeheure Luckenhaftigkeit unserer palaontologischen Kenntnisse."

Haeckel, Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, 11, 798.

7. "Kopfe von solcher Grosze" . . . "dass wohl mancher Lebende sich glucklich preisen
wurde einen ahnlichen zu besitzen." Rudolf Virchow, Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im
modernen Staat (Berlin: Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey, 1877), 30, available in English
as The Freedom of Science in the Modern State (London: J. Murray, 1879).

8. "niemals blosz durch einzelne empirische Erfahrungen" [but must be derived froml
"philosophische Verwerthung." . . . Haeckel, Naturliche SchUpfungsgeschichte, II, 799.

9. "Sie liegt darin dass die Descendenztheorie als ein allgemeines Inductionsgesetz aus
der vergleichenden Synthese aller organischen Naturerscheinungen erfolgt." "Die
Pithecoiden-theorie" [therefore, is nothing more than] "ein specieller Deductionsschlusz
welcher aus dem generellen Inductionsgesetze der Descendenz-theorie mit derselben
logischen Nothwendigkeit gefolgert werden muss." HaeckeL Naturliche
Schopfungsgeschichte, II, 799.
a. Until well into the nineteenth century there was a sharp distinction made between
nonliving matter (inorganic) and living matter (organic). Living matter was thought to
contain a "vital force" that distinguished it from nonliving matter. Kuyper frequently
refers to that distinction with the words organic and inorganic. In many places in this
translation, the terms that are more familiar to us, i.e., living and nonliving have been
used. Further, Kuyper often contrasts "mechanistic principles" with "organic principles,"
no doubt referring to the notion of a vital force or life principle that cannot be reduced to
the principles of inorganic chemistry and physics. That notion of vital force had been
largely abandoned by the scientific community before 1899, but Kuyper nevertheless
invokes that idea frequently in his address. By today, of course, we have progressed a
long way toward understanding life processes in terms of chemical and physical factors;
no one would claim that our understanding of such processes is complete, but we
certainly may expect further progress in that direction.

10. George John Romanes, Darwin und nach Darwin (Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann,
1892-97), I, 65. Originally published in English as Darwin and after Darwin (Chicago:
Open Court, 1892). Before his death, Romanes returned from his error. See his Thoughts
on Religion, ed. Charles Gore (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1896).

11. See Ludwig Zehnder, Die Entstehung des Lebens (Freiburg im Breisgau: J. C. B.
Mohr [Paul Siebeckl, 1899), 2, 204.

12. "Was nicht mechanisch gefasst ist, ist nicht wissenschafflich verstanden?" Joseph
Epping, Der Kreislauf im Kosmos (Freiburg i B.: Herder, 1882), 102, and Tilmann
Pesch, Die grossen Welträthsel (Freiburg i B.: Herder, 1892), I, 505; Schopenhauer, Die
Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1819), II, 357, available in
English translation as The World as Will and Idea, trans. R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp
(Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co., 1883); Jacob Henle, Anthropologische
Vorträge (Braunschweig: E Vieweg, 1880) II, 128; and J. Diebolder, Darwins
Grundpnncip der Abstammungslehre (Freiburg: Herder, 1891).

13. See Ernst Haeckel, Die Naturanschauung von Darwin, Goethe und Lamarsk (Jena:
G. Fischer, 1882). Conceming Goethe, see especially Eduard Oscar
Schmidt, Descendenzlehre und Darwinismus (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1884), 95-109,
available in English translation as The Doctrine of Descent and Darwinism (London: H.
S. King, 1876).

14. The geometric progression is: a, a·q, a·q2, a·q3, etc.; the arithmetic progression is: a,
a+d, a+2d, a+3d, and so forth.

15. That the "adaptation" here is not the cause but the effect and also that it is not the
main issue, was pointed out very correctly by Johann W. Spengel, Zweckmässigkeit und
Anpassung (Jena: 1898), p. vf., especially 18.
b. Throughout most of the nineteenth century, it was supposed that light waves and other
wave like phenomena were transmitted from distant objects by means of the
''luminiferous ether." The ether was weightless and transparent and therefore was not
detectable directly, but everyone supposed that some sort of material substance was
required for light rays to be transmitted through the vacuum of space, as well as through
man-made vacuums. Doubt was cast on the existence of the ether by the "Michelson and
Morley experiment" published in 1887. It was not until the very late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries that the concept of waves traveling through empty space became
acceptable to the scientific community, and then became commonly accepted by the
general public through the teaching in the universities and schools.

16. See Theodule Ribot, La psychologie anglaise conternporaine (Paris: F. Alcan,1896),

76. Originally published in English as English Psychology (New York: D. Appleton,
1874).

17. "Es bricht sich zweifellos allmählig die Erkenntniss Bahn, dass es mit dem
Darwinismus eine Täuschung gewesen ist" [and then adds:] "Das Ende der
Darwinistischen Herrschaft" [is not far away]. Gustav Wolff, Beiträge zur Kritik der
Darwin'schen Lehre (Leipzig: A. Georgi 1898), Foreword, 1.

c. The experiments of Gregor Mendel, which provide the basis for our modern
understanding of genetic inheritance, were reported in a paper that Mendel presented to a
meeting of the Brunn Natural Science Society in 1865, and were published in
the Proceedings of that meeting in 1866, but those ideas did not come to the attention of
the rest of the scientific community until the early years of the twentieth century. Mendel
had sent a copy of the paper to Karl Naegeli, the leading authority on heredity at that
time, but Naegeli did not consider those experiments to be of any special importance. It
was only in 1900, after similar experiments had been done independently by Erich von
Tschermak in Austria, Carl Correns in Germany. and Hugo de Vries in the Netherlands,
that a search of the literature rediscovered what Mendel had done thirty-five years
earlier. Clearly, Kuyper did not know about Mendel's work. Knowledge of Mendelian
inheritance and the understanding of genetics that we possess today greatly modify the
force of Kuyper's comments about heredity and evolution.

18. Romanes, Darwin und nach Darwin, I, 199.

19. "auf reiner Muthmaassung beruhen," [and are nothing more than] "metaphysische
Speculationen sind." Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte. I, 205.

20. Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication," in The
Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin (New York: D. Appleton, 1887)
II, 369ff. cf., Life and Lettres of Darwin, III, 83ff.
21. Haeckel had a forerunner in Louis Elsberg; see his On the Plastidule-
hypothesis. Buffalo meeting, August 1876.

22. "Zoo spreken, schreef hij, is spelen met woorden. Wie aantrekking en afstooting als
psychische vormen opvat werpt kort en goed geheel de Psyche het venster uit want dan
houdt de Psyche op Psyche te zijn." Virchow, Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft, 27.

23. "Een theorie als die van de Perigenesis der Plastidulen is een ontsporing van het
gezonde menschenverstand. Logisch onhoudbaar, is ze wetenschappelijk zonder
waardij." Otto Zacharias, Ueber gelöste und ungelöste Problemen der
Naturforschung (Leipzig: Denicke~Zs Verlag, 1887), 60.

24. "dass in demselben ausserordentlich viel speculirt und ausserordentlich wenig aus
Thatsachen bewiesen wurde." Gustav Eimer, Die Entstehung der Arten : Jena: G.
Fischer, 1888), 21.

25. "Kein exacter Physiker erkennt in demselben etwas anderes als phantasiereiche
metaphysische Speculationen." Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, I, 203.

26. August Weismann, Mechanisch-psychologische Theorie der

Abstammungslehre (Munich: 1884); Das Keimplasma, Eine Theorie der
Vererbung (Jena: Fischer, 1892), available in English translation as The Germ-Plasm: A
Theory of Heredity (London: W. Scott, 1912); and Aufsätz über Vererbung und
verwandte Biologische Fragen : Jena: G. Fischer, 1892), available in English translation
as Essays upon Heredity and Kindred Biological Problems (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1892), especially 208, Das Keimplasma.

27. "Es ist unabweislich ein teleologisches Princip neben dem blossen mechanischen an
zu erkennen." Weismann, Mechanisch-psychologische Theorie, 86; II, 316, 295.

28. "Die Verbindung aller Kräfte zu dem groszen Weltmechanismus stellt ein
Weltmechaniker voraus." Weismann, Mechanisch-psychologische Theorie, II, 316, 295.

The theory of intracellular pangenesis, proposed in 1889 by Professor Hugo de Vries

in Intracelluläre Pangenesis : (Jena: G. Fischer, 1889), available in English translation
as Intracellular Pangenesis (Chicago: Open Court, 1910), returned in principle to the
pangenesis of Darwin, but with this important difference, that it did not allow the
pangenes to wander through the entire body, but the protoplasm itself was viewed as
consisting of a complete set of pangenes, whereby each individual hereditary property,
whether somatic or psychological, was borne by a separate pangene. "I take intracellular
pangenesis to be the hypothesis that all living protoplasm is constructed out of
pangenes." ("lntracellulaire Pangenesis nenne ich die Hypothese, dass das ganze
lebendige Protoplasma aus Pangenen aufgebaut ist",) 211. And further, "Every
hereditary characteristic has its own particular kind of pangenes" ("Jede erbliche
Eigenschaft hat ihre besondere Art von Pangenen"), 211. Undoubtedly a much more
natural representation, but one that as one arranges these pangenes in their interactive
relationship to each other, and does not get his thoughts confused, brings us partway
back to the ancient theory of preformation, as was correctly observed by Dr. Haeckel.

29. Max Kassowitz, Allgemeine Biologie (Vienna: Perles, 1899), II, 359, 361. Others are
presently seeking an escape in empirical teleology, see Paul Nic. Cossman, Elemente der
Emp. Teleologie (Stuttgart: 1899),121. He calls this a "scientific teleology," which
amounts to this, that the great Unknown always remains standing behind all empirical
data. See also Eduard Strasburger, Ueber die Bedeutung phylogenetischer Methoden fur
die Erforschung lebender Wesen Jena: Mauke's Verlag [H. Dufft], 1874), who also
acknowledged on page 25 that "the Unknown" person or principle cannot be left out of
account.

30. "Deum sempiternum, omnisium, omnipotentem a tergo transeuntem vidi et

obstupui." Johannes Reinke, Die Welt als That [Tat] (Berlin: Gebruder Paetel, 1899),
482.

31. "Völlige Regellosigkeit" Wolff, Beiträge zur Kritik, 4.

32. Romanes, Darwin und nach Darwin. I, 432.

d. The reference here is to the work of Friedrich Wohler, who had succeeded in
synthesizing the organic chemical compound urea from the inorganic
compound ammonium cyanate in 1828. Until that time it was commonly thought that
chemical compounds found in living organisms (organic compounds) were very
different from compounds that came fram nonliving sources (inorganic compounds). It
was thought that organic compounds could be formed only in the bodies of living
organisms and could not be made by chemical synthesis from inorganic starting
materials. Today the synthesis of organic compounds from inorganic starting materials is
done routinely, with successful synthesis of some very complex biochemical
compounds.

In 1899 Kuyper was apparently still skeptical of the possibility of forming complex
organic compounds from inorganic starting materials. He inserted the comment "Please
don't laugh!" into the quotation from Haeckel, apparently using a bit of barnyard humor
to ridicule the significance of Wöhler's synthesis of urea.

33. "uit cyaan- en ammoniakverbindingen," [risum teneatis], -"organischen Harnstoff"

Haeckel, Naturliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, I, 364.

34. "Kein exacter Physiker erkennt in deinen Behauptungen etwas andres als
phantasiereiche metaphysische Speculationen." Haeckel, Natürliche
Schöpfungsgesckichte, I, 203.
35. "dass jede unbefangene und vorurtheilsfreie Naturforscher, welcher gesundes Urtheil
und die genügende biologische Vorkenntnisse besitzt'' Haeckel, Natürliche
Schöpfungsgeschichte, II, 799.

36 "allgemeine Theorie mit voller Sicherkeit behaupten können und müssen"

Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, II, 798.

37. "wie stärkerer und vollgültigerer Beweis für die Abstammungslehre," [that] "wir,
wenn ihre Beweiskraft nicht genügt, überhaupt auf eine vernunftgemässe Beantwortung
der Frage aller Fragen verzichten müssen;" Haeckel, Natürliche
Schöpfungsgeschichte, 801.

38. "kein Naturforscher zweifelt dass die Ursachen hier überall rein mechanisch in der
Natur der organischen Materie selbst gegründet sind;" Haeckel, Nutürliche
Schöpfungsgeschichte, I, 196.

39. "Mangel gesunder Logik," Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, II, 783.

40. "blinder Offenbarungsglauben und Confession, von Aberglauben nicht verschieden

ist;" Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, II, 767.

41. "So wirfst du einfach die Psyche die Thüre aus, und hört Psyche auf Psyche zu sein?"
In Germany the same ethic is gaining ground. See Gustav Ratzenhofer, Die
Sociologische Erkenntniss (Leipzig: E A. Brockhaus, 1898). Over against the point of
departure of theology and metaphysics, he bases his system on positivistic
understanding, 368-69. And Georg Johannes Unbehaun, Versuch einer philosophischen
Selectionstheorie (Jena: B Vopelius, 1896), 137. Also Oscar Hertwig, Die Lehre vom
Organismus und ihre Beziehung auf Socialwissenschaft (Jena: G. Fischer, 1899), 20ff.
There is an interesting critique of this system by Victor Cathtrein, Die Sittenlehre des
Darwinismus (Freiburg i B.: Herder, 1885).

42. "was man gewöhnlich Seele nennt is nur die Summe von Thätigkeiten einer groszen
Anzahl von Gangliencellen." Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, II, 808.

43. "und es muss vollkommen Widersinnigkeit sein noch von einer Unsterblichkeit der
menschlichen Person zu reden." Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, I, 297.

44. "Eine Fortdauer unseres Geistes nach dem Tode ist ein Ding der Unmöglichkeit."
Ernst Hallier, Naturwissenschaft, Religion und Erziehung (Jena: G. Fischer, 1875), 41.

45 "gasförmiges Wirbelthier" . . . "die Summe aller Atomkräfte und

Aethlerschwingungen." Haeckel, Monismus lts Band, 33.
46. "Religion" . . . "sämmtliche mystischen Dogmen und übersinnlichen
Offenbarungen," . . . "auf vernünftige Anthropologie gegründete Sittenlehre," . . .
"Gleichgewicht zwischen Egoismus und Altruismus." . . "Gleichgewic,"
Haeckel, Monismus als Band, 28.

47. "Summe der Atomkrüfte und Aetherschwingungen," . . . "trinitarisch-monistische

Religie." Haeckel, Monismus als Band, 36.

48. Emil Heinrich Du Bois-Reymond in his most recent publication: Uber Neo-
vitalismus, 1894 (initially published in a collection of speeches, 1890; published later as
a separate book, Ueber Neo-vitalismus [Brackwede i.W.: W. Breitenbach, 1913])
actually accepts this position. He posits that God "before conceivable time created by a
creative act all matter in such a way that the simplest living beings came into existence
according to the concomitant laws of matter, out of which, without further assistance, the
natural world of today arose out of an original micrococcus all the way up to Suleima's
sweet gestures and Newton's brain." ("Vor undenklicher Zeit durch einen Schöpfungsakt
die ganze Materie so geschaffen habe, dass nach den der Materie mitgegebenen
Gesetzen einfachste Lebewesen entstanden, aus denen ohne weitere Nachhülfe die
heutige Natur vom einem Urmikrokokkus bis zu Suleima's holden Gebärden, und bis zu
Newton's Gehirn ward.") This, however, is completely in conflict with the theory of
evolution, and Dr. Haeckel also hastens to censure it in his most recent work: Die
Welträthsel (Bonn: Emil Strauss, 1899), 274, available in English translation as The
Riddle of the Universe at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, tran. Joseph McCabe
(New York: Harper & Bros., 1900), 236. By suggesting such a notion, he says, exposes
"in a striking way the shallowness and illogic of his monistic thought" ("in auf fallender
Weise die geringe Tiefe und Folgerichtigkeit seines monistischen Denkens"). Also
Gerardus Johannes Mulder, in Das streben der Materie nach Harmonie (Braunschweig:
1844), 24, takes the same position as Du Bois-Reymond.

49. Cf., Oscar Hertwig, Zeit- und Streitfragen der Biologie, vol. I, Präformation oder
Epigenese? (Jena: G. Fischer, 1894), available in English translation as The Biological
Problem of Today: Preformation or Epigenesis? (New York: Macmillan, 1900).