48 HAECKEL 



distinction that he has earned. But at that time 

 he had a much more general importance as a 

 leader in the struggle to introduce ascertain method 

 of scientific research. A somewhat obscure epoch 

 was coming to a close, a more or less superficial 

 natural philosophy having sought to replace sound 

 investigation. The struggle had ended with the 

 decisive victory of the simple discovery of facts. 

 There was everywhere a vague feeling that the 

 progress of science was best secured by a bald 

 enumeration and registration of bones, of the joints 

 in the limbs of insects, or of pollen-filaments, 

 rather than by the romantic and spirited leaps of 

 natural philosophy over all the real problems into 

 the heavens above. The question now arose 

 whether this narrow method really exhausted the 

 nature of things; whether scientific specialism, 

 with its laurels of victory, would not prove in the 

 end an equally dangerous enemy. What was 

 "better" for the time being might be very far 

 from really "good." It was here that Schleiden 

 stepped in. He fought against the prevailing 

 specialism, at first in his own particular province 

 of botany. He did not, indeed, take up the cause 

 of the exploded pyrotechnics of the older natural 

 philosophy, but pleaded for more general critical- 

 philosophical methods. These must be preserved 

 in any circumstances. The great botanist, he said, 

 is not the man who can determine ten thousand 

 species of plants according to the received models, 

 but the man of clear logic and wide deductions 

 from his lore. Botany must be conceived as a 



