THE "GENERAL MORPHOI.OGY" 189 



general biological classification it inaugurates a 

 new epoch, as had been done fifty years before by 

 Cuvier, and again fifty years earlier by Linne. 

 What it did for zoology in the narrow sense was 

 thirty years afterwards summed up in one phrase 

 by a wTiter of acknowledged competence, Eichard 

 Hertwig : *' Few works have done as much towards 

 raising the intellectual level of zoology." Among 

 Haeckel's own achievements, great and varied as 

 they are, this work occupies the highest place. 

 Setting aside certain special pieces of research, 

 and regarding him mainly as a man of great ideas, 

 we find his whole programme in this work. The 

 History of Creation^ that has taken his name far 

 and wide over the globe beyond the frontiers of 

 zoology, is only an extract from this work. He 

 put his heart in it. The others are only the im- 

 proved blood-vessels of his system of ideas, partly 

 duplications, partly simplifications. I do not say 

 this either in blind admiration or in criticism, but 

 as the expression of a plain fact. Posterity will 

 turn to this work when, either in hostility or in 

 sympathy, it wishes to appreciate Haeckel.* 



His contemporaries did not accept the work 

 without difficulty. It came out without noise, 

 exerted a tremendous influence in a quiet way, 

 and at last disappeared altogether from the book- 

 shops. It is still attacked, but has never been 

 refuted. At libraries one finds, as I know from 

 experience, that it is always '* out," and therefore 



■^ Professor Huxley described the General Morplwlogy as " one 

 of the greatest scientific works ever pubUshed." [Trans.] 



