270 HAECKEL 



Sahara, as far as the first oasis, twenty-two years 

 afterwards, he met an artist there. They talked 

 philosophy, and the man, not knowing Haeckel, 

 naively recommended him to study the History of 

 Creation as likely to give him most help. The 

 little incident shows us something of the great 

 pioneer work done by the volume, something of its 

 spiritual circumnavigation of the globe. 



• • • • 



Thus the spiritual nucleus of the General 

 Morphology is introduced, with great ability, to a 

 much wider circle than Haeckel had dreamed of 

 when he gave the Morphology to his colleagues. 

 But the agitation gradually spread into academic 

 circles. On the whole the Darwinian ideas pressed 

 in everywhere by their own irresistible weight. 

 Haeckel's more particular concern, however, was 

 to secure the recognition of one single point in the 

 larger group of ideas — the great biogenetic law. 

 This was for many years the pivot on which almost 

 all the discussions with him and about him turned. 



He himself did not at first conceive his law as 

 a matter of controversy, but as a method that 

 must be brought into a position of practical utility. 

 An opportunity to do this arose immediately. 



While he was at Lanzarote he began to take an 

 interest in a second group of lowly animals besides 

 the siphonophores, namely the sponges. When 

 the general reader hears the word ^* sponge " he 

 must modify his ordinary ideas a little. In the 

 present instance he must not think of the plants, 

 belonging to the fungi-group, such as the morel 



