THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



stands aside from it all, and in its introspective analysis 

 of the functions of the brain will not hear a word about 

 the brain itself. It would explain the working of a most 

 complicated machine without paying any attention to its 

 structure. It is, therefore, not surprising to find that 

 the dualistic theories established by Kant flourish at our 

 universities as they did in the Middle Ages. 



If the official philosophers, whose formal duty it is to 

 study truth and natural law, still cling to the belief in 

 miracles in spite of all the advance of empirical science, 

 we shall not be surprised to find this in the case of 

 official theology. Nevertheless, the sense of truth has 

 prompted many unprejudiced and honorable theologians 

 to look critically at the venerable structure of dogma, 

 and open their minds to the streaming light of modem 

 science. In the first third of the nineteenth century a 

 rationalistic section of the Protestant Church attempted 

 to rid itself of the fetters of dogma and reconcile its ideas 

 with pure reason. Its chief leader, Schleiermacher, of 

 Berlin, though an admirer of Plato and his dualist 

 metaphysics, approached very close to modem pan- 

 theism. Subsequent rationalistic theologians, especially 

 those of the Tubingen school (Baur, Zeller. etc.), de- 

 voted themselves to the historical study of the gospels 

 and their sources and development, and thus more 

 and more destroyed the base of Christian supersti- 

 tion. Finally, the radical criticism of David Friedrich 

 Strauss showed, in his Life of Jesus (1835), the mytho- 

 logical character of the whole Christian system. In his 

 famous work. The Old and New Faith (1872), this 

 honorable and gifted theologian finally abandoned the 

 belief in miracles, and turned to natural knowledge and 

 the monistic philosophy for the construction of a rational 

 view of life on the basis of critical experience. This 

 work has lately been continued by Albert Kalthoff. 

 Moreover, maily modem theologians (such as SavagQ, 



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