This materialistic opposition to everything which is called religion, is certainly independent of Darwinism, and originated before its time; but since Buechner himself sees in Darwinism but a grand confirmation of his view of the world, and believes that he has found in it {190} that principle which, with urgent necessity, banishes teleology from the contemplation of nature--teleology, with the defeat or victory of which materialism stands or falls,--we are entitled and obliged to rank even this view of the world among the conclusions which in reference to religion have been drawn from the theories of Darwin. And, indeed, it is a most extreme conclusion, and simply puts itself in the category of negation to the contents of religion, as well as to religion in a subjective sense, to religious and pious conduct. It can be clearly seen how firmly a view of the world which makes war against religion and the idea of God its special life-task, is connected with all those destructive elements which lie in human nature, and especially in the social circumstances of the present, and which have their only and final ethical limit in the consciousness of God which, as a power never wholly to be effaced, lies in the depth of the soul of even those who wander farthest from a moral and spiritual life. Sec. 2. _Replacement of Religion through a Religious Worship of the Universe. Strauss, Oskar Schmidt, Haeckel._ Strauss, in that testament of his scientific life and activity, "The Old Faith and the New," takes a somewhat different position in reference to religion. Even for him, the whole idea of God is abolished and replaced by the idea of the cosmos; but he makes this cosmos the object of religious worship, and has exactly the same feeling of absolute dependence in regard to it, which, according to Schleiermacher, constitutes the nature of religion. When Arthur Schopenhauer or {191} Eduard von Hartmann bring forth their pessimistic accusations against the universe, his religious sensation reacts against it in the same manner as the organism against the prick of a needle. This pessimism, he says, acts upon reason as an absurdity, but upon sensation as blasphemy. "We demand the same piety for our cosmos that the devout of old demanded for his God. If wounded, our feeling for the cosmos simply reacts in a religious manner." While, therefore, Strauss, to the question, "Are we still Christians?" gives an emphatic "No," he answers the question, "Have we still a religion?" with "Yes or No, according to the spirit of the inquiry."