THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 243 



permanently the stream of truth. At heart, 

 however, he was delighted with his fiery pupil. 

 They were to fight their battle shoulder to 

 shoulder for seventeen years. During all those 

 years there was never the slightest disturbance 

 of their friendship. Darwin knew well what an 

 auxiliary he had in Haeckel. It is true that he 

 wrote him a wonderful letter occasionally, in 

 which he used the right of a senior to warn 

 Haeckel not to deal so violently with his oppo- 

 nents. Violence only had the effect of making 

 onlookers side with the party you attacked. We 

 must be careful not to be too hasty in setting 

 things up as positive truths, as we see every day 

 people starting from the same premises and coming 

 to opposite conclusions. But he was generally at 

 one with Haeckel, and had the good spirit to 

 acknowledge it openly. When Haeckel's History 

 of Creation raised up the most extreme parties, 

 and started the cry that a distinction must be 

 drawn at once between Darwin's real scientific 

 ideas and Haeckel's desperate excursions into 

 natural philosophy, Darwin said, in the Descent 

 of Man, which he had begun much earlier, but 

 did not publish for some time, that he would 

 never have written his book if he had then known 

 Haeckel's History of Creation. Haeckel had 

 anticipated so much that he wished to say. 

 And when Virchow attacked Haeckel in 1877, 

 Darwin spoke very severely of the opponents who 

 would make the eternal freedom to teach the 

 truth dependent on the accidental conditions of 



