190 HAECKEL 



must be read continually. It is found occasionally 

 at second-hand booksellers ; an antiquarian price 

 running to five pounds and more is put on it, 

 after forty years' active production on the part of 

 its author. At present you could count on your 

 fingers the German works that have this distinc- 

 tion of being highly priced and out of print. One 

 such is Vischer's ^Esthetics , and another is the 

 first edition of Gottfried Keller's Green Henry. 

 Keller had threatened any one who ever attempted 

 to republish this first edition (afterwards modified 

 but not improved by him) that their hand would 

 not rest quietly in the grave. But the price of 

 the work went up amongst antiquarians. I feel, 

 in speaking of Haeckel's General Morphology , that 

 I am describing a book which has become so rare 

 that one must treat it as something new, a codex 

 that is only accessible to a few. It is certainly 

 not known to the general reader. 



Let me endeavour in a few words to give a 

 general idea of the chief contents of the work. 



All the intellectual forces that had had any 

 influence upon Haeckel now concentrated for a 

 supreme achievement. First of these was Goethe, 

 who supplied the title, " Morphology." In its 

 simplest signification morphology is merely " the 

 science of forms." If I take houses, furniture, 

 statues, fishes, flowers, crystals, &c., and only 

 regard and describe their forms, I am a morpho- 

 logist in the literal sense of the word. But when 

 Goethe invented the term he sought to give it 

 a more restricted application, writing in the style 



