206 HAECKEL 



carries out a plan that very quickly forced itself 

 on him. 



He forms them into a new kingdom of life. To 

 the animal and plant kingdoms he adds the primi- 

 tive realm of the beings that showed unequivocal 

 signs of the possession of life, yet were neither 

 animals nor plants. He gives them the name of 

 " Protists." To botany and zoology is now added 

 protistology. 



The name "protista" (from protiston, the very 

 first) is familiar to every one in biology to-day. If 

 protistology has not yet been securely established 

 as a special branch of science, that is due to the 

 circumstance that a strict limit cannot be deter- 

 mined on either the plant or the animal side, so 

 that the botanist encroaches on the province at 

 one point and the zoologist at another. But when 

 we remember that Haeckel's protists include the 

 well-known bacilli, on which whole libraries are 

 accumulating to-day, it is clear that the province 

 must be definitely marked off at some date in the 

 near future, whether one accepts Darwinism or no. 



These important innovations in technical biology 

 show very clearly how sound and fruitful the new 

 " natural philosophy " was. We have to go back 

 to the untenable and utterly impracticable systems 

 of Hegel, Schelling, and Steffen, which were 

 immediately rejected as the trifling of dilettanti, or 

 even to much that the admirable Oken did on the 

 scientific side, if we would measure the whole 

 distance between what people understood in the 

 sixties by " natural philosophy " and the real 



