136 HAECKEL 



as regards method, at that tirae. It was now 

 more than ever probable that there was no more a 

 special vital force besides the simple natural forces 

 than there was a God distinct from nature. The 

 animal or the plant was a wonderful outcome of 

 the same laws that had built the crystal or the 

 globe. The sharp distinction between living and 

 dead matter fell into the waste-basket, where so 

 many other Dualistic tags lay, cut off by the 

 shears of science. 



But if one of Miiller's theses was abandoned, 

 another was retained as a real blessing with all the 

 more tenacity by his pupils — the thesis that even 

 the scientific investigator shall always ^^ think" — 

 nay, even " philosophise." Miiller called it *' using 

 one's imagination," in his desire to emphasise it. 

 Now it was certainly a fair philosophic deduction 

 from Du Bois-Eeymond's discoveries that one 

 ought no longer to be so rigid as regards the 

 possibility of spontaneous generation. If the 

 same natural forces are at work in the organic 

 and the inorganic, the living and the dead, it is 

 no longer inconceivable theoretically that life and 

 inorganic matter only differ in degree, not in kind. 

 The distinction might become so slender — either 

 now, or at least in past times — that an apparent 

 *' spontaneous generation " might really take place. 



Here again, it is plain, Haeckel had a greater 

 freedom than Darwin. Working gradually from 

 above, Darwin desisted when he came to spon- 

 taneous generation, and left room for G-od. 

 Haeckel came into an open field, believing that 



