THE "GENERAL MORPHOLOGY" 235 



of the ultimate root-connection of the great 

 parallel animal stems. In this matter Haeckel 

 himself brought illumination by his gastraea- 

 theory. 



On the whole this systematic introduction to 

 the second volume would have sufficed of itself to 

 secure for Haeckel a prominent position in the 

 history of zoology and botany. He himself was 

 chiefly proud of the fact that it was the first 

 natural-philosophical system on the new lines to 

 meet the rigorous demands of academic science, 

 and indeed to revolutionise academic science. This 

 enhances his complete triumph in the last two 

 books of the volume. First man is introduced, 

 with absolute clearness and decisiveness, into the 

 system of evolved natural beings, as crown of the 

 animal world, but subject to the same laws as the 

 animal : a vertebrate, a mammal, whose nearest 

 relatives are the anthropoid apes. Thus at last the 

 ^' system of nature " was complete. It embodied 

 the unity of nature. It formed the framework of 

 facts for a unified natural philosophy. Monism. 

 The vioiion^ the " one," embracing all things, that 

 included nature in itself and itself in nature, 

 became the last scientific definition of what people 

 called '' God." 



Thus the volume, which had begun the system 

 of nature with the monera, closes with a chapter 

 on the Monistic God — '^ the God in nature." The 

 conception of God in human fashion is rejected. 

 Man is merely a vertebrate, a mammal, adapted in 

 his whole structure to our little planet. A supreme 



