no occasion, except incidentally, to
discriminate between the different fundamental principles and parts of
ethics, but shall in the last part of our work treat of the question
independently. In making subdivisions for them here, we should but cause
infinite repetitions, unnecessarily complicate our review, and render it
more difficult.

* * * * * {230}

CHAPTER IV.

ANTAGONISM BETWEEN DARWINISM AND MORALITY.

Sec. 1. _Objections to Darwinism from an Ethical Standpoint._

From what we said at the beginning of the preceding preliminary view, it is
evident that we have to look for the advocates of an irreconcilableness
between morality and Darwinism, not in the camp of the followers of the
latter, but only in that of its adversaries. It is true, such advocates
were never wanting. In pamphlets and journals, it has been often enough
said that Darwinism cuts through the nerve of life, not only of religion,
but also of morality.

It was demonstrated that in making man a mere product of nature, and
degrading him to a being that is nothing else but a more highly developed
animal, Darwinism takes from human personality its value, from the realms
of morality its dignity, and from its demands their autonomy. In making the
struggle for existence the principle of all development and, by extending
it to the development and social relations of man, at the same time the
human social principle, it puts in place of self-denial and love the
principle of egoism and boorishness and the right of the stronger, gives
full course to the unchaining of all animal passions, and coquettes with
all the emotions which, flattering the animal part of man, {231} aims at
the subversion of all that exists and at the destruction of the ideal
acquisitions of mankind. In tracing everything which constitutes the higher
position and dignity of man back to his own work, and permitting it to be
worked out of physical, spiritual, and ethical brutishness, in slow
development and effort, closely related to the animal kingdom, it fosters
and nourishes haughtiness in an intolerable way. And finally, in breaking
off and denying the dependence of man upon God, and leading to mechanical
determinism, it destroys the deepest and most effective motive to moral
action--the tracing of the moral law to the authority of the divine
Law-giver, and the consciousness of an individual moral responsibility.

It cannot be denied that many of t