MODERN BIOLOGY 515 



Oken's wildest flights of imagination; infusorians, pollen granules, corals, 

 flower-spikes, are cited, amongst other things, as examples of the various 

 supposed crystal-symmetrical forms. Undoubtedly more successful is the nat- 

 ural system that he afterwards sets up for the organisms, wherein is employed 

 for the first time the method, so frequently used since, of representing by 

 means of a graphic chart in the form of a genealogical tree the mutual agree- 

 ment of the different life-forms, as if derived from an assumed common origin. 

 Haeckel has certainly had to endure a good deal of chaff for his genealogical 

 trees and they will not, of course, bear too close examination, but it cannot 

 be denied that the method itself has proved of good service to scientific 

 works aiming at a natural system; we need only mention how Fiirbringer 

 employed it in his great work on the birds. Here, as in many other respects, 

 Haeckel has had a rousing and stimulating influence on subsequent research. 



Haeckel idenfifies spirit and matter 

 The genealogical tree that now, as henceforth, interested Haeckel most is, 

 however, that of man; already at this stage he sets forth the ideas concern- 

 ing it that he was later to develop still further. From man he proceeds to 

 the universe and God, and now makes the entirely unexpected assertion that 

 "no matter can be conceived without spirit, and no spirit without matter." 

 It is hard to make out how this idea is to be reconciled with his earlier as- 

 surance that every natural phenomenon, both animate and inanimate, can 

 and is to be explained mechanically; ever since the days of Galileo, indeed, 

 all spirits have been outlawed from mechanics. Haeckel, nevertheless, makes 

 use of his spirit-matter to decree unity between God and nature — a unity 

 which denotes true monism and which admits of a true divine worship. It 

 is again from Goethe, of course, that these pantheistic reveries are borrowed, 

 so that in this first philosophical work of Haeckel's, romantic idealism has 

 the last word. 



Generelle Morpbologie, which in Haeckel's own views is his principal 

 speculative work, had but little success; only one edition was published. 

 Darwin, it is true, was delighted, although he complained mildly of the 

 vehement style in which the book was written, but the German biologists 

 were enraged at the natural-philosophical daring, the dilettante treatment 

 of detail, and the scurrilous language. After some years of silence, however, 

 Haeckel resumed his natural-philosophical activities, this time in a more 

 popular form, with the result that he was extremely successful with both 

 his series of lectures Naturliche Schopjungsgeschichte (1868) and his Anthropo- 

 genie oder Entivicklungsgeschichte des Menscben (1874); ^^^ former work espe- 

 cially became extraordinarily popular, being translated into many languages, 

 and it really represents perhaps the chief source of the world's knowledge 

 of Darwinism. It reproduces the ideas and the arguments from Generelle Aior- 

 phologie, but in an easier style and excluding his extensive speculations on 



