the world through descent than the origin of each
single species of organisms through a primitive generation; and we reach
this result especially by the attempt at teleologically perceiving the
palaeontological remains of organic life on earth. Theism and teleology see
in the origin of things a striving towards a goal, a rising from the lower
to the higher, a development--it is true a development really taken only in
the ideal sense of an ideal connection, of a plan; or, as K. E. v. Baer, in
1834, in his lecture on the most common law of nature in all development,
expresses {260} himself, of a progressive victory of mind over matter. Such
a plan and its realization we can much more easily conceive when, in the
past genera which geological formations show us, a genealogical connection
takes place between the preceding species and the now living species, than
when each species perished and beside or after it the newly appearing
species always originated out of the inorganic through primitive
generation. In the first case, we see in the preceding a _real_ preparation
for the following, and also easily perceive, the apparent waste of enormous
periods of time for the successive processes of creation. In the second
case, the coming and going of genera in innumerable thousands of years,
without any exterior connection, becomes an incomprehensible problem, and
the striving towards an end according to a regular plan, which we observe
in the development, of the organic kingdoms on earth, disappears completely
in metaphysical darkness.

Precisely because so many advocates of a theistic view of the world have
thought that for the sake of the theistic idea of creation they were
obliged to suppose a primitive origin of all the organic species, and
because, nevertheless, the fact is patent that in the course of the
pre-historic thousands of years myriads of species came and perished, not
to return again, they became liable to the reproach on the part of the
adversaries of theism, that the Creator, as they supposed him, makes
unsuccessful attempts, which he has to throw away, as the potter a
defective vessel, until he finally succeeds in making something durable and
useful; and this objection was and is still made, not only to these
superficial theists and their unhappily-selected and indefensible position,
but to {261} the whole view of the world of theism itself and to the faith
in God and the Creator in general.

For all these reaso