168 HAECKEL 



until after Darwin was pretty firmly established 

 everywhere. At the earlier date we are dealing 

 with it was quite possible for a geologist to play 

 the sceptic with a shadow of justification. We 

 need not go into the point to-day. It is ancient 

 history. But there is an incidental point in 

 Volger's criticism and the reply it provoked from 

 Haeckel that calls for notice. 



Volger declared that Darwinism in general was 

 an unsupported hypothesis, but he made a con- 

 cession. The species of animals and plants need 

 not be absolutely unchangeable. The only thing 

 that is impossible is a continuous upward direction 

 in evolution. All the groups of living things, even 

 the highest, may have been present together from 

 the earliest days. Local changes in the distribu- 

 tion of land and water, &c., must have brought 

 about a certain amount of variation in life-forms. 

 But after brief divergences all would return to the 

 original type. The proper symbol of the story of 

 life is the wave that rises out of the sea and sinks 

 back into it. There was no such thing as a 

 steady advance, a wave that never sank back 

 into the water. The real image of human life 

 is the analogy of its obvious development : youth, 

 maturity, then old age and back once more. The 

 speaker urged in plausible terms that this concep- 

 tion retained the idea of an " eternal becoming," 

 which is better than a rigid fulfilment. As if an 

 eternally advancing evolution did not include this 

 " eternal becoming." Haeckel spoke immediately 

 after Volger. He not only attacked the weak 



