116 HAECKEL 



not, throw more light on the appearance of organic 

 beings on the earth than any other class of facts." 

 This is clearly a summary of Darwin's deepest 

 thoughts at the time. Haeckel was born on 

 February 16th of the same year, 1834. Thus the 

 bodily birth of one of the two men whom we 

 conceive to-day as Dioscuri coincides with the 

 spiritual rebirth of the other. But it would be 

 nearly thirty years before they would meet in spirit 

 never to part again. At the very beginning of 

 their acquaintance Darwin wrote a letter to Haeckel 

 (October 8, 1864) in which he speaks of the earliest 

 suggestions of his theory. The Hamlet-hour comes 

 back vividly to his memory. " I shall never forget 

 my astonishment when I dug out a gigantic piece 

 of armour, like that of a living armadillo. As I 

 reflected on these facts and compared others of a 

 like nature, it seemed to me probable that closely 

 related species may have descended from a common 

 ancestor." 



However we take it, Darwin then saw for the 

 first time that his difficulty about the mutability 

 of species was from the first, in his own mind, a 

 difficulty about God. He began his doubts with 

 the ancient armadillo ; he ended with God. 



On the return journey from South America, which 

 amounted to a circumnavigation of the globe, the 

 struggle was renewed at the Galapagos islands. 

 Volcanic forces had raised these islands from the 

 bed of the ocean in comparatively recent times. 

 They were, therefore, bound to be a virgin province 

 at the time. Now, however, the walls of the crater 



