THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 205 



arose one day out of the inorganic, or that a crystal 

 was turned into a cell, my statement really involves 

 the complementary truth that the inorganic poten- 

 tially contains life in itself. Otherwise we have 

 the old miracle over again of something being pro- 

 duced out of nothing, in spite of our spontaneous 

 generation. Haeckel has always been clear on this 

 point. His later studies of the soul of the atom 

 and the plastidule only carry out the absolutely 

 logical treatment of the question that we find in 

 these chapters of the first volume of the MorpJio- 

 logij. 



Incidentally the question is raised whether the 

 plant or the animal was evolved first. Animal and 

 plant are, of course, not rigidly distinct from each 

 other. They are only the two great branches of 

 the Darwinian evolution of living forms, and are 

 united at the bottom, however much they diverge 

 above. Gegenbaur had represented this years 

 before (1860) in a figure that Haeckel quotes in 

 his Monogra^ph on the Badiolaria in 1862. The 

 whole kingdom of living things must be conceived 

 " as a connected series, within which we find two 

 lines diverging from a common centre and repre- 

 senting a gradual differentiation and development 

 of organisation." The terminal points of these 

 lines (the highest plant and the highest animal) 

 are very different from each other, but the dif- 

 ference gradually disappears as we go back towards 

 the common centre, and the lowest stages in each 

 kingdom can hardly be distinguished from each 

 other. For these lowest stages Haeckel now 



