464 Evolution and Modern Philosophy 
core of all religion is faith in the persistence of value in the world, 
and if the highest values express themselves in the cry “Excelsior !” 
then the capital point is, that this cry should always be heard and 
followed. We have here a corollary of the theory of evolution in 
its application to human life. 
Darwin declared himself an agnostic, not only because he could 
not harmonise the large amount of suffering in the world with the 
idea of a God as its first cause, but also because he “was aware that 
if we admit a first cause, the mind still craves to know whence it 
came and how it arose.” He saw, as Kant had seen before him and 
expressed in his Kritik der Urtheilskraft, that we cannot accept 
either of the only two possibilities which we are able to conceive: 
chance (or brute force) and design. Neither mechanism nor teleology 
can give an absolute answer to ultimate questions. The universe, 
and especially the organic life in it, can neither be explained as a 
mere combination of absolute elements nor as the effect of a con- 
structing thought. Darwin concluded, as Kant, and before him 
Spinoza, that the oppositions and distinctions which our experience 
presents, cannot safely be regarded as valid for existence in itself. 
And, with Kant and Fichte, he found his stronghold in the conviction 
that man has something to do, even if he cannot solve all enigmas. 
“The safest conclusion seems to me that the whole subject is beyond 
the scope of man’s intellect ; but man can do his duty’.” 
Is this the last word of human thought? Does not the possibility, 
that man can do his duty, suppose that the conditions of life allow of 
continuous ethical striving, so that there is a certain harmony 
between cosmic order and human ideals? Darwin himself has shown 
how the consciousness of duty can arise as a natural result of evolu- 
tion. Moreover there are lines of evolution which have their end in 
ethical idealism, in a kingdom of values, which must struggle for 
life as all things in the world must do, but a kingdom which has its 
firm foundation in reality. 
1 Life and Letters, Vol. 1. p. 306. 2 Ibid. p. 307. 
