282 HAECKEL 



truth. However, as regards the particular 

 embryological attacks of these opponents, it seems 

 to me to-day especially characteristic that such 

 people are more and more abandoning the idea 

 that it is only a question of contesting certain 

 particular deductions of Haeckel's within the 

 limits of Darwinism. They find themselves 

 increasingly compelled to throw Darwinism 

 overboard altogether. Instead of its attempts 

 to explain phenomena they are putting forward 

 a confused claim of ** direct mechanical explana- 

 tions," or relying on the sonorous old phrase, 

 started in 1859, an ^'immanent law of evolution," 

 or retreating into a despairing attitude of " I don't 

 know." These clearer divisions will make it 

 very much easier for posterity to pass its judg- 

 ment on the situation. 



After the embryologists we have a considerable 

 group of opponents on the anthropological side. 

 The objections of these anthropological critics 

 have in the course of time narrowed down to the 

 single argument that no transitional form between 

 man and the ape has yet been discovered. And 

 for many years now this position has not been 

 held on serious scientific grounds, but rather on 

 ingenious and strained hypotheses. Because we 

 now have, in the bones found at Java by Eugen 

 Dubois in 1894, the remains of a being that 

 stands precisely half-way between the gibbon and 

 man. Hence what is called the anti-Darwinian 

 and especially anti-Haeckelian school of anthro- 

 pology to-day is mainly distinguished for its 



