the results according to their value, and
that both the original nature of the world and the system of its causal
sequences--that is, the world as we know it--can be conceived of in
accordance with the ideas of dependence and conditionedness. Both
assumptions are not only possible, but necessary.

In thinking out this most general consideration, we find the real and
fundamental answer to the question as to the validity and freedom of the
religious conception of the world with regard to teleology in nature. And
if it be held fast and associated with the insight into the autonomy of
the spiritual and its underivability from the natural, we are freed at
once from all the petty strife with the naturalistic doctrines of
evolution, descent, and struggle for existence. We shall nevertheless be
obliged to discuss these to some extent, because it is not a matter of
indifference whether the detailed study of natural evolution fits in more
or less easily with the conception of purpose whose validity we have
demonstrated in general. If that proves to be the case, it will be an
important factor in apologetics. The conclusion which we have already
arrived at on abstract grounds will then be corroborated and emphasised in
the concrete.

CHAPTER IV. DARWINISM IN GENERAL.

Darwinism, which was originally a technical theory of the biological
schools, has long since become a veritable tangle of the most diverse
problems and opinions, and seems to press hardly upon the religious
conception of the world from many different sides. In its theory of blind
"natural selection" and the fortuitous play of the factors in the struggle
for existence, it appears to surrender the whole of this wonderful world
of life to the rough and ready grip of a process without method or plan.
In the general theory of evolution and the doctrine of the descent of even
the highest from the lowest, it seems to take away all special dignity
from the human mind and spirit, all the freedom and all the nobility of
pure reason and free will; it seems to reduce the higher products of
religion, morality, poetry, and the aesthetic sense to the level of an
ignoble tumult of animal impulses, desires and sensations. Purely
speculative questions relative to the evolution theory, psychological and
metaphysical, logical and epistemological, ethical, aesthetic, and finally
even historical and politico-economical questions have been drawn into the
coil, and usually receiv