DK. TH. NEUMANN. 213 



earth. This idea is so wide spread, and it is so ex- 

 tremely hard to succeed in convincing people of the con- 

 trary,- that I for a long time hesitated whether it would 

 be advisable for me to choose this subject for my lecture. 

 No, I act in self-defense only when I say emphatically 

 that nothing is less grounded than such a reproach. 

 There is no Darwinist in the whole wide world who does 

 not believe in God, who is not through his very studies 

 more convinced than many other people that there must 

 be an almighty, all-wise and all-kind Creator, who made 

 this beautiful world and governs it according to his 

 power and wisdom. There is no scientist who ever look- 

 ed up to the starry heavens or investigated the wonder- 

 ful construction of a flower, of a leaf, or who examined 

 the magnificent frame of our own body with its number- 

 less fine and splendid properties, there is no one, I say, 

 who is not much more inclined to fold his hands in 

 prayer and cry out full of devotion : O Lord, how won- 

 derful are Thy works ! Nature alone tells us much more 

 plainly and better than any other source that there must 

 be an almighty Creator of the Universe, and I myself 

 have never felt that more distinctly than when I had 

 taken a look into the workshop of the Almighty where- 

 in he has arranged everything so beautifully according 

 to number, measure and weight. Only a fool can say 

 that there is no God. 



There is only one thing which we fight against, and 

 that is the idea that we, Man, are the centre of all life 

 on earth ; that we are of a special divine origin created 

 by a special act of our Creator, and that all the rest of 

 creation, animals, plants and stones, are made only to 

 serve man ; that we are the last end and the highest pur- 

 pose of all creation ; that we are the crown of the whole 

 universe, just as the earth is the centre and the principal 

 part of the world. 



Such ideas are contradictory to every scientific fact, 



169 



