CHAPTER VI. 

 SOPHISMS. 



" No stability in the foundation, no continuity 

 in the superstructure " ; "a flimsy framework of 

 hypothesis, constructed on imaginary facts." If 

 any one imagines that this is the language of 

 exaggeration or romance, let him turn to the 

 twenty-second chapter of Haeckel's " Natural 

 History of Creation," where he will find a 

 complete and circumstantial history of human 

 ancestry in twenty-two stages of existence, from 

 the unicellular Monera up to the perfect man. 

 The theory of man's ape-descent thus constructed 

 is perfect but it is in the air. It lacks but one 

 thing to give it relevance : and that one thing is 

 reality. Like the "chateaux en Espagne" of 

 the penniless Count, it exists only in the, in- 

 terested imagination of the pretender. 



Du Bois Reymond has incurred the bitter 

 and unappeasable wrath of Haeckel by declar- 

 ing this genealogical tree (Stammbauni) to be 

 as authentic in the eyes of a naturalist, as are 



