live on illusions and give way but reluctantly to the progress
of science, in order to devote themselves arduously to the ideal of the
new truths which rise out of the essence of things of which mankind is a
part. After the geocentric illusion had been destroyed, the
anthropocentric illusion still remained. On earth, man was still
supposed to be king of creation, the center of terrestrial life. All
Species of animals, plants and minerals were supposed to be created
expressly for him, and to have had from time immemorial the forms which
we see now, so that the fauna and flora living on our planet have always
been what they are today. And Cicero, for instance, said that the
heavens were placed around the earth and man in order that he might
admire the beauty of the starry firmament at night, and that animals
and plants were created for his use and pleasure. But in 1856 Charles
Darwin came and, summarizing the results of studies that had been
carried on for a century, destroyed in the name of science the superb
illusion that man is the king and center of creation. He demonstrated,
amid the attacks and calumnies of the lovers of darkness, that man is
not the king of creation, but merely the last link of the zoological
chain, that nature is endowed with eternal energies by which animal and
plant life, the same as mineral life (for even in crystals the laws of
life are at work), are transformed from the invisible microbe to the
highest form, man.

The anthropocentric illusion rebelled against the word of Darwin,
accusing him of lowering the human life to the level of the dirt or of
the brute. But a disciple of Darwin gave the right answer, while
propagating the Darwinian theory at the university of Jena. It was
Haeckel, who concluded: "For my part, and so far as my human
consciousness is concerned, I prefer to be an immensely perfected ape
rather than to be a degenerated and debased Adam."

Gradually the anthropocentric illusion has been compelled to give way
before the results of science, and today the theories of Darwin have
become established among our ideas. But another illusion still remains,
and science, working in the name of reality, will gradually eliminate
it, namely the illusion that the nineteenth century has established a
permanent order of society. While the geocentric and anthropocentric
illusions have been dispelled, the illusion of the immobility and
eternity of classes still persists. But it is well to rem