236 HAECKEL 



Being to whom we ascribe omnipresence could not 

 possibly be confined within the narrow limits of 

 this vertebrate and mammal organisation. "When 

 we try to do so we fall into unshapely conceptions 

 that are wholly unworthy of the most exalted of all 

 words, ideas, and beings. It is in this connection 

 that Haeckel uses for the first time the phrase 

 '' gaseous vertebrate," that has so often been quoted 

 and attacked since. He means to say that we are 

 driven to such debasing and senseless definitions 

 if we do not recognise in God the essence of the 

 whole system of things ; if we form our idea of him 

 arbitrarily on any particular property of things 

 within the system. We must beware — as he ex- 

 pressly says — of such confused and unworthy 

 comparisons. 



'^ Our philosophy," Haeckel continues, '' knows 

 only one God, and this Almighty God dominates 

 the whole of nature without exception. We see 

 his activity in all phenomena without exception. 

 The w^hole of the inorganic world is subject to him 

 just as much as the organic. If a body falls fifteen 

 feet in the first second in empty space, if three 

 atoms of oxygen unite with one atom of sulphur to 

 form sulphuric acid, if the angle that is formed by 

 the contiguous surfaces of a column of rock-crystal 

 is always 120 degrees, these phenomena are just as 

 truly the direct action of God as the flowering of 

 the plant, the movement of the animal, or the 

 thought of man. We all exist ' by the grace of 

 God,' the stone as well as the water, the radio- 

 larian as well as the pine, the gorilla as well as the 



