MONISM AND EVOLUTION. 251 



safely be regarded;" "as is now very generally 

 acknowledged ;" " we can with more or less certainty 

 recognize ;"" it might be argued;" "a conception 

 which seems quite allowable ;" " we can, therefore, 

 assume ;" " we may assert ;" " this justifies the con- 

 clusion ;" and numberless others of similar import, 

 which, like the paraphernalia of the magician, are 

 designed to perplex and deceive. Attention, how- 

 ever, to the matter under discussion, will always re- 

 veal the imposture in Haeckel's case, and disclose the 

 fact that his plausible statements are often nothing 

 more than rhetorical artifices and tricks of dialectics ; 

 the reasonings of a special pleader who has before 

 his mind but one aim, to give vraisemblance to an 

 assumption that cannot be substantiated by fact. 



Understanding his methods of reasoning, and the 

 reckless manner in which he draws conclusions not 

 contained in the premises, we need not be surprised 

 to have Haeckel tell us, as he does in his fanciful 

 pedigree of man, that we must " regard the am- 

 phioxus with special veneration, as that animal which 

 alone, of all extant animals, can enable us to form an 

 approximate conception of our earliest Silurian verte- 

 brate ancestors." Neither need we be surprised, 

 because we know the man's flippancy and cynicism, 



ed, but this remains to be demonstrated. What I take excep- 

 tion to in Hreckel's argumentation are, the exaggerated impor- 

 tance he attaches to faint or imaginary resemblances, and his 

 continual attribution to the argument from analogy of a value 

 which it rarely, and which, as he ordinarily uses it, it never 

 possesses and never can possess. As usually employed in 

 biology, analogical reasoning can at best afford us nothing more 

 than probability ; Hseckel would have his readers believe, in the 

 instances referred to, that it gives physical certainty, which it is 

 very far from doing. 



