GROWTH OF IDEAS 263 



orally to students, in the form of lectures, and 

 formed a kind of introduction to morphology. The 

 lectures, retaining their lighter form, were then 

 combined to make the book. It was published in 

 1868, a small volume in a very primitive garb. 

 The success of the work was unprecedented. 



Zoology and botany were treated philosophically 

 in the Morphology. That did not suit the pro- 

 fessional scientists, who (as I said) crossed them- 

 selves when they saw '' natural philosophy." In 

 the Histojy of Creation the great problems of 

 philosophy are dealt with successively on Dar- 

 winian lines, from the zoological and botanical 

 point of view. It was like the sinking of a deep 

 well amongst general thoughtful readers. People 

 felt at last what a power science had become. The 

 old riddles of life were studied in a new light with 

 the aid of this book. There was no predecessor in 

 this field. Haeckel was absolutely the first to 

 appeal to the general reader in this way. It is 

 true that what he gave them was, strictly speaking, 

 only an extract from his own MoiyJwlogjj, espe- 

 cially the second volume. But as he now arranged 

 his matter chronologically, he converted his outline 

 of a world-system into a *^ world-history " — a real 

 *' history of natural creation." In the "Pictures 

 of Nature " in the first volume of his Cosmos 

 Humboldt had tried to bring the natural world 

 before his readers as a great panorama, to be taken 

 in at one glance. But he strictly confined his 

 study of nature to the things that actually exist ; 

 how they came to exist was not, he intimated, 



