280 HAECKEL 



different aims. On the one hand it affords the 

 technical student the outline of a wholly new 

 and distinctive manual of human embryology 

 (up to a certain extent) and general anatomy ; 

 and this is intimately bound up by his method 

 with a kind of historical introduction to general 

 anthropology. At the same time the book forms 

 a second part of the History of Creation. It 

 builds up the most important chapter of the 

 later work, from the philosophical point of view, 

 namely, that which deals with the origin of man, 

 into a fresh volume ; and it represents the first 

 popular treatment of embryology on broad philo- 

 sophic lines — a thing that had never been at- 

 tempted before. Springing up from this double 

 root, the work is certainly one of the most suc- 

 cessful things in the whole of Haeckel's literary 

 career. Moreover, it is not merely a compendium 

 of a larger work, like the History of Creation. In 

 spirit and form it is an original work, and gives 

 his very best to the reader. As far as its 

 general effect is concerned, the double-address of 

 the work has had its disadvantages. The academic 

 students who were hostile to it have once more 

 selected for attack certain excrescences and gaps 

 that were merely due to the exigencies of popular 

 treatment. On the other hand, the general 

 reader found it, in spite of the popular form, on 

 which Herculean labour had been spent — one has 

 only to think of the details of embryology — a 

 book that was not to be *'read" in the ordinary 

 sense of the word, but studied. The first edition 



