VI 



THE PROBLEM OF EVOLUTION 



satisfy the requirements of many people, who 

 wished to be supplied with trustworthy data from 

 which to judge of my lectures and of the evening 

 discussion. In fact, Dr. Burdinski s work increased 

 rather than diminished the demand for another 

 report. 1 



With regard to the circumstances that led to the 

 delivery of my lectures in Berlin, I may state that 

 in his lectures on the Dispute regarding the Theory 

 of Evolution, given at the Academy of Music in 

 Berlin, in April 1905, Professor Haeckel of Jena 

 referred repeatedly to my book entitled Modern 

 Biology and ike Theory of Evolution? in fact he stated 

 that the appearance of this work had led him to 

 deliver his lectures. It seemed therefore expedient, 

 in view of the many misunderstandings to which 

 Haeckel s references had given rise, to publish a 

 definite statement of my own opinion. Such a 

 statement had, it is true, been made in my Open 

 Letter to Professor Haeckel, which appeared in the 

 Germania and in the Kolnische Volkszeitung on 

 May 2nd, 1905, and the same Open Letter, with 

 some additions, is printed in the appendix to the 

 third edition of Modern Biology and the Theory of 



1 At the request of the editor of the Umschau (Frankfurt a. M.), in 

 Nos. 14 and 15 of that review I gave a short sketch of the contents of my 

 Berlin lectures. The editor has recently, in a number of German papers, 

 referred to this sketch as being the author s first publication of the lectures. 

 Whilst acknowledging the editor s courtesy, I feel obliged to take this 

 opportunity of stating emphatically that the above-mentioned short sketch 

 cannot be regarded as an authentic publication of my lectures, especially 

 as the sketch was not printed word for word as I wrote it, and some of the 

 corrections which I made in the proof-sheets were not accepted. 



