an objective sense, and chiefly also their relation to the contents of religion; but this would make it appear that we supposed religion in a subjective sense, religiousness, to be in the first place an activity and a possession of knowledge. Nothing lies farther from us {187} than this thought; although religiousness certainly has and asks for solid, objectively true, and really possessed salvation, and however little we would overlook the word of the Lord: "And this is life eternal, that they might _know_ thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent." (John xvii, 3.) Those who wish to inform themselves in regard to the relation of religion and morality, will find the necessary information in Martensen's "Ethik" ("Ethics"), in Otto Pfleiderer's monograph, which partly assumes a contrary point of view, and in a thorough essay of Julius Koestlin (Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1870, I), which appeared before the "Ethics" of Martensen. In undertaking now to represent the conclusions which have been drawn from Darwinism, we treat of the religious realm as the higher, a realm demanding a sound morality prior to the moral realm; and we begin with those conclusions which take a hostile position in reference to religion, in order to proceed from them to the moderate and friendly relations. * * * * * {188} _A. THE DARWINIAN THEORIES AND RELIGION._ CHAPTER I. MORE OR LESS NEGATIVE POSITION IN REFERENCE TO RELIGION. Sec. 1. _Extreme Negation. L. Buechner and Consistent Materialism._ The common point of beginning and attack of all those who take a negative position against religion, is the rejection of teleology. The most advanced of all materialists, Ludwig Buechner, in his self-criticism, which he gives in his "Natur und Wissenschaft" ("Nature and Science"), on page 465, openly declares, and quite correctly, that with the success or failure of the attacks upon teleology materialism itself stands or falls.