5IO 



NATURE 



\_Sept. 5, 1878 



that men of science were witnessing a secular movement of 

 renovation in France as well as in Germany. Prof. Haeckel 

 then gave an address, containing one of the most uncom- 

 promising statements of what he believes to be the logical con- 

 sequences of his doctrine that has been given by any living 

 evolutionist. We translate from the Revue Scientifique. 



" The friendly support which I have received in your midst 

 touches me more than I shall say, for it is not only the man and 

 the works which he has been able to produce that you have 

 wished to honour ; our profound love of scientific truth, our 

 philosophical beliefs, our faith in the theory of evolution and in 

 that doctrine of descent for which I venture to say I have already 

 fought well, this, gentlemen, is the secret of the sympathy which 

 unites us to-day. I have seen with great joy in the meetings of 

 the scientific congress how the theory of evolution has already, 

 whatever may be said, penetrated the spirit of French savants. 

 In the sections of Biology the theory of transformism has 

 appeared to many speakers the only explanation of the pheno- 

 mena of life which they have studied. The last consequence of 

 that doctrine —the descent of man, not only from the apes, but 

 from all the series of lower organic forms, has even been pro- 

 claimed and vigorously defended by M. de Mortillet in the 

 Anthropological Section." 



"Prof. Haeckel then proceeded to state the doctrine of the 

 descent of man, so well known in connection with his name. 

 " Certainly," he said, "man does not descend directly from any 

 existing anthropoids. No serious naturalist has professed that 

 doctrine, which has currency only among the general public and 

 theologians. For a long time frivolous and ignorant people have 

 found a subject of pleasant and innocent gaiety in the thought 

 that we wish to pass them off as improved apes. No one 

 dreams of this ; but certain professors of philosophy, and a 

 number of facetious preachers, nourish this prejudice, which 

 brings them fine and easy successes. They do not seem to have 

 any idea that they furnish the best argument in favour of that 

 theory, if it is SHStainable. Are not their naive pride, their 

 infantine vanity, weaknesses of character which the apes have 

 left us as a legacy ? There can be no doubt that man and the 

 apes of the Old and New World are descended from a common 

 ancestor. 



" That which, sooner or later, will lead all good minds to trans- 

 formist doctrines is the feeling, every day more profound 

 among us, of universal causality, of development, of continuity 

 in nature. The number increases every day of those who seek 

 the truth, the whole truth, and who rest only in the clear vision 

 of the universal connection of effects and causes. 



" Reason, causality, mechanism, on one side ; superstition, 

 mysticism, teleology, on the other. The theory of evolution, 

 which considers and embraces entire nature as one whole, has 

 replaced final causes by efficient causes. This has already 

 been accepted, at least by philosophical minds, the only ones of 

 which we need take count, for the old doctrines of the final 

 causes of the unwise, the immutability of species, sterility of 

 hybrids, geological catastrophes and successive creations, the 

 impossibility of spontaneous generation, and of the youth of 

 man on the earth. 



" We cannot say at what moment of time nor under what 

 conditions the first living beings appeared at the bottom of the 

 sea, but there can be no doubt that they have been formed 

 chemically from inorganic carbon compounds. The primitive 

 monads were born by spontaneous generation in the sea, as 

 saline crystals are born of their mother-waters. There does not 

 exist, in fact, any other alternative to explain the origin 

 of life. He who does not believe in spontaneous generation, 

 or rather in the secular evolution of inorganic matter, into 

 organic matter, admits miracle. It is a necessary hypothesis, 

 which cannot be ruined either by a priori arguments or by 

 laboratory experiments. 



' The time has arrived to replace the antique dualistic and 

 iieological conception of life and spirit by the monistic or 

 mechanical conception of the universe. We have arrived at the 

 boundaries of the old and new faith. Mystery exists, perhaps 

 impenetrable ; in any case, scholastic arguments will not pierce 

 it. The doctrine of final causes has all the naivete of the ex- 

 planations which prevail among savages and children ; the 

 theories of Lamarck and Darwin have given the last stroke to 

 that decripit doctrine. Modern morphology is irreconcilable, 

 not only, I say, with the dogma of creation, but with that of a 

 Providence or of a vague idealistic Pantheism, of the kind asso- 

 ciated with the names of Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Hartmann. 



If there certainly exists in reality, as I have striven to show, 

 an etiological connection between individual development and 

 the development of ancestry, between ontogenesis and phylo- 

 genesis, the phenomena of human embryology are only 

 mechanical and necessary effects of the evolution of our remote 

 ancestors, conformably to the la\^"s of heredity and adaptation. 



" Seventy years ago, permit me to remind you, the great La- 

 marck created the theory of descent, which Darwin, half a cen- 

 tury after, was to develop by fecundating it with his doctrine of 

 selection, founded on the physiological properties of heredity 

 and adaptation. Goethe had also conceived that doctrine very 

 philosophically. For it is the honour of our conception of things 

 to have seduced philosophers, poets, and critics, such as Kant, 

 Goethe, and Strauss. 



' ' These great and noble geniuses saw imperfectly, gentlemen, 

 that which we see better to-day ; I mean to say that the theory 

 of evolution is only a particular case of the most vast of cosmical 

 hypotheses, that of the transformation and conservation of the 

 physical forces. This is what the best minds, the most judi- 

 cious and wisest, such as the eminent naturalist of Montpellier, 

 of whom France ought to be proud. Prof. Charles Martins, novy 

 admit with entire good faith. According to Prof. Martins, in 

 fact, ' ' the theory of evolution binds together all questions of 

 natural history, as the laws of Newton have bound together the 

 movements of the celestial bodies. That theory has all the cha- 

 racteristics of the Newtonian laxvs." 



"Certainly, the laws of life, morphological laws, the laws of 

 transformation of living beings, under the influence of adapta- 

 tion and heredity, of selection and vital concurrence, are not 

 susceptible of the mathematical rigour of the laws of astronomy. 

 We cannot, however, doubt that they exist, as'we do those of psy- 

 chology, ethology or science of character, and social science. It 

 is, I think, somewhat naive to insist, as is often done, on the 

 numerous anomalies which are observed among living human 

 beings. These anomalies are only apparent as are perturbations 

 in astronomy. If we possessed all the elements of these morpho- 

 logical laws, the solution, at least in part, of which I have at 

 heart, we should see that these apparent anomalies are explained 

 by the general laws of mechanics. No one denies that the 

 extreme instability of the elements constituting the woof of 

 organised beings renders biological problems of an infinite 

 complexity. 



" Our mission — to which we have succeeded after the great heroic 

 generation of savants of the eighteenth century — for they were 

 heroes, gentlemen, and the greatest of all perhaps, the Laplaces, 

 Lavoisiers, Kants, Lamarcks, Frederick Wolffs — our mission to 

 all, naturalists, physiologists, physicians, philosophers, linguists, 

 historians, is to continue those traditions of powerful thought 

 and manly love of liberty which made our grandfathers almost 

 the equals of those Greeks of Ionia and Attica whom we 

 venerated in orr infancy as the fathers of all human science." 



PROF. NORDENSKJULD ON THE COMPOSI- 

 TION AND COMMON ORIGIN OF CERTAIN 

 METEORITES 1 



PROF. NORDENSKJOLD on comparing the composition of 

 the meteorites which fell at Stalldalen in Sweden on June 28, 

 1876 (Nature, vol. xvi. p. 238), with that of a number of other 

 meteorites, has found that a remarkable similarity, if not identity, 

 is disclosed by excluding the larger or smaller quantities of 

 oxygen and sulphur which enter into their composition, and 

 taking into consideration only the metallic constituents, _ irre- 

 spectively of their being oxidised or not. This similarity in 

 composition is found to exist between various meteors, which, 

 according to the common method of giving the results of 

 analyses of meteorites, that is, by stating separately the metallic 

 iron, sulphide of iron, soluble and insoluble silicates, &c., 

 appear to be of quite dissimilar nature and composition. The 

 meteorites compared are : — 



I. Erxleben, 1812, April 15, analysed by Stromeyer. 



II. Lixna, 1820, July 12, analysed by A. Kuhlberg. 



III. Blansko, 1833, November 25, analysed by Berzelius. 



IV. Ohaba, 1857, October 15, analysed by Bukeisen. 



V. Pillistfer, 1863, August 8, analysed by Grewingk aiwl 

 Schmidt. 



VI. Dundrum, 1865, August 12, analysed by Haughton. 



VII. Hessle, 1869, January i. a, analysed by G. Lindstrom^ 

 I Abstract of paper in Trans. Geol. Union of Stockholm, 1878, No. 44. 



