THE EVOLUTION THEORY. 



289 



THE EVOLUTION THEORY AND ITS RELATIONS TO THE 



PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE. 1 



Br Professor EENST HAECKEL, of Jena University. 



AS we meet here to-day to celebrate the open- 

 ing of the fiftieth Congress of German 

 Naturalists, our first care should be to show how 

 much each particular branch of research contrib- 

 utes to the sum of human knowledge. Educated 

 people of every class, who watch with the liveliest 

 interest the astonishing progress of natural sci- 

 ence, have special reason to-day to put to us the 

 question, " What, in view of the general develop- 

 ment of the human mind, are the results which 

 you present to us?" In compliance, therefore, 

 with the invitation with which you have honored 

 me, and to recompense the kind attention which 

 I pray you to grant me for a few moments, I have 

 chosen for the subject of my discourse a topic of 

 high mutual interest, namely, the relations of sci- 

 ence in general, or of the philosophy of Nature, 

 to that branch of research with which I am more 

 nearly concerned, the Evolution Theory. 



During the last ten years or more, no other 

 doctrine has taken hold so firmly of the attention 

 of the public, or has so violently agitated our 

 profoundest convictions, as the resuscitated the- 

 ory of evolution and the monistic philosophy 

 with which it is connected. By its aid alone can 

 we resolve the question of questions — the one 

 great fundamental question of man's place in 

 Nature. And since man is the measure of all 

 things, the ultimate bases, the highest principles 

 of all science, naturally depend on the place in 

 Nature assigned to man as our knowledge of the 

 cosmos increases. 



As every one knows, it is to Charles Darwin, 

 more than any other man, that our present doc- 

 trine of evolution is indebted for the supremacy 

 it enjoys. He it was that, eighteen years ago, 

 first broke the ice of dominant prejudices, being 

 inspired with that same idea of unity in the 

 development of the universe which, in the last 

 century, impressed the minds of our greatest 

 thinkers and poets, at whose head we must place 

 Immanuel Kant and Wolfgang Goethe. In set- 

 ting up his theory of natural selection, Darwin 

 gave a firm foundation to that biological side of 

 the general theory of evolution — the most impor- 



1 An address delivered at the Munich meeting of 

 German Naturalists and Physicians. Translated by 

 J. Fitzgerald, A. M. 



55 



tant side of that theory — which appeared as early 

 as the beginning of this century under the title 

 of derivation of beings, or theory of descent. In 

 vain had the old philosophy of Nature previously 

 contended for the theory of descent; neither 

 Lamarck nor Geoffrey St.-Hilaire in France, 

 neither Oken nor Schelling in Germany, could se- 

 cure its triumph. It is now just fifty years since 

 Lorenz Oken, in this very town of Munich, com- 

 menced his academic lectures on the doctrine of 

 evolution ; and it becomes us, I think, to lay a 

 crown of laurel on the tomb of that profound zo- 

 ologist, that enthusiastic philosopher. Again, it 

 was Oken, too, who, out of an ardent desire of uni- 

 fying science, called together at Jena, in 1822, 

 the first Congress of German Naturalists ; on this 

 ground alone he would have a special claim on 

 our gratitude at this fiftieth anniversary. 



The philosophy of Nature could at that time 

 only sketch the general plan and barely lay the 

 foundation of the grand edifice of the unity of 

 development. The materials required for its con- 

 struction were not collected till a later period, 

 through the labors of a multitude of diligent and 

 painstaking workers. A mighty literature, a re- 

 markable perfection of the methods of research, 

 give evidence of the amazing progress made by 

 natural science since Oken's day. At the same 

 time, however, the boundless extension of the 

 field of observation, and the consequent division 

 of labor, have led to a deplorable waste of 

 energies ; the more direct interest taken in the 

 observation of details has totally obscured the 

 nobler end of investigating general laws. 



And what is the result ? That, during the pe- 

 riod when this active research most flourished — 

 that is, the thirty years from 1830 to 1859 — the 

 two chief branches of natural history proceeded 

 on principles diametrically opposed to each other. 

 Take, first, the problem of the development of the 

 globe. Ever since 1830, since the publication of 

 Lyell's " Principles of Geology," the idea that our 

 planet did not originate in an act of supernatural 

 creation ; so, too, that it had passed through no 

 series of revolutions as radical as they were mys- 

 tical ; but that, rather, it had been formed natu- 

 rally and gradually by a process of progressive 

 and uninterrupted development, has been spread- 



