Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
Finally, we have to say a word concerning the name which the anti-teleological view of the world gives to itself: the name "monism." The view of the world which monism gives us, seems hardly comprehensible; and just as little does the name which it gives itself, seem justifiable.
For this reason, not only the anti-teleological monists meet the fate of Nihilism, whether they appear in the plebeian roughness of Büchner or in the aristocratic gentility of Strauss, but also such a brilliant advocate of teleology as Eduard von Hartmann does not know of any other final end to offer to the world and mankind than nothingness, because he did not wish to be driven from his perception of ends in the world to the only conclusion to which it leads namely: to the perception of an absolute intelligent and ethical personality that directs these ends.
Darwin’s thinking follows the course that all anti-teleological thought has followed since the earliest times. In bringing forth the forms of life, nature offers, without choice or aim or intention, a wealth of possibilities. Thus arises adaptation at first in the rough, but gradually in more and more minute detail.
But still, where we have had to represent this anti-teleological view of the world, we have happily convinced ourselves of the fact that an existence of ends and designs in nature is not only reconcilable with the conformity to law and the causal mechanism of its processes, but is also postulated by scientific contemplation of nature, as soon as the latter observes that in these processes, acting with lawful necessity, something in general is attained, and, moreover, when out of them comes forth something so infinitely rich and beautifully arranged, such a rising series of higher and higher developments, as the world.
His pantheism is distinguished from that of the Cabalists by its rejection of the doctrine of emanation, and from Bruno's, which nevertheless may have influenced him, by its anti-teleological character. That which most of all separates him from the mediaeval scholastics of his own people, is his rationalistic conviction that God can be known.
As to the further scientific consequences to which this anti-teleological monism leads, the advocates of it are in tolerable accord; although they are subject to the most incomprehensible illusions regarding the practical consequences of it, as we have seen in the above-quoted concluding words of Häckel's "Natural History of Creation."
And it only becomes definitely anti-theological because it is anti-teleological.
It seems that Darwin in his theology is not only inclined to theism, but, following the traditions of his countrymen of the last century, to a quite cool and superficial deism, and that he permits himself to be too much impressed by the anti-teleological deductions of many of his followers, and to be induced to separate in his later publications the Creator and his work more widely than he has done in the beginning.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking