individual names--was also done in the realm of the world's history: this, Darwin did in the realm of the history of the organic kingdoms, seconded by the geological principles of Sir Charles Lyell and by the investigations in biology and comparative anatomy of a number of scientists. From this point of view, the movement which was inaugurated by Darwin seems to us but the reflex of the universal spirit of the present time upon a particular realm; namely, that of natural science. But since, soon after the appearance of the before-mentioned work and long before the publication of Darwin's "Descent of Man," man also was included in the consequences of the evolution theory, and his existence was explained as a wholly natural development out of lower animal forms; since Darwin himself unreservedly adopted this theory of the descent of man from the animal world as an entirely natural consequence of his doctrine of the origin of species, the evolution question has gone far beyond the proportionately narrow and limited bounds of natural philosophy and of merely theoretical scientific interest--has surpassed in interest all the before-mentioned investigations, however lively this interest was and is to-day, and has stirred up the minds of all most thoroughly, not only in their scientific but also in their religious and ethical depths, some in {19} acknowledgment and admiration, others in aversion and repugnance, and only a few in sober and unprejudiced judgment. While some see in Darwinism the flambeau which now lights mankind to entirely new paths of truth, and also to spiritual and moral perfection, others see in it only an unproved hypothesis, threatening to become the torch which might change the noblest and greatest acquirements of the culture of past centuries into a heap of ashes; while some date from it a new period of culture, others see in it a deep descent of the present from the scientific, religious, and moral height which mankind has ascended.