THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 217 



consequence in connection with Haeckel's own 

 development. He was a Darwinian from 1862 

 onwards. After 1866 and the publication of 

 the General Morplwlogy we find him dominated 

 in all his work by one single idea from the 

 Darwinian group. He brought this idea so 

 effectively to the front, improved and developed 

 it so assiduously, and applied it in so many ways, 

 that it has come to be regarded as his own most 

 characteristic work. It is inseparable from his 

 name. Whatever the future may be, wherever 

 Haeckel's name is uttered people will add the 

 phrase that was made peculiarly his after 1866, 

 that colours and pervades all his works — technical, 

 popular, polemical, or philosophical — as much as 

 the word " Monism." It is the phrase : the bio- 

 genetic law. 



Here and there even in the first volume of the 

 Morplwlogy a note is struck that the reader cannot 

 clearly understand. It increases in the second 

 volume until it dominates the whole book. 



The phrase is known far and wide to-day. This 

 is partly due to Haeckel's own insistence on it, 

 but perhaps still more to the real value of the 

 idea itself. It crops up in a hundred different 

 fields — psychology, ethics, philosophy, even in art 

 and aesthetics. I have been able to trace it even 

 into modern mysticism. For the moment I will 

 only point out that it has been attacked and 

 misstated with real fanaticism, in spite of the 

 splendid and perfectly clear account of it that 

 Haeckel has given. 



