But so it is, and it is our duty to examine and combat the new pernicious theory. Hitherto, pessimism was kept in the regions of philosophy and metaphysics, and showed no pretensions to intrude into the domain of purely physical science, such as Darwinism. The theory of evolution has become almost universal now, and there is no school (save the Sunday and missionary schools) where it is not taught, with more or less modifications from the original programme. On the other hand, there is no other teaching more abused and taken advantage of than evolution, especially by the application of its fundamental laws to the solution of the most compound and abstract problems of man’s many sided existence. There, where psychology and even philosophy “fear to tread,” materialistic biology applies its sledge-hammer of superficial analogies, and prejudged conclusions. Worse than all, claiming man to be only a higher animal, it maintains this right as undeniably pertaining to the domain of the science of evolution. Paradoxes in those “domains” do not rain now, they pour. As “man is the measure of all things,” therefore is man measured and analyzed by the animal. One German materialist claims spiritual and psychic evolution as the lawful property of physiology and biology; the mysteries of embryology and zoology alone, it is said, being capable of solving those of consciousness in man and the origin of his soul.[24] Another finds justification for suicide in the example of animals, who, when tired of living, put an end to existence by starvation.[25] ----- Footnote 24: Haeckel. Footnote 25: Leo Bach. -----