DISCUSSION 219 



I come now to the question of the creation of 

 primitive forms. 



Here again my respected opponent, Professor 

 Plate, has adopted a mistaken idea. He fancies 

 that, in my opinion, the good God simply created 

 for us a primitive horse, a primitive ant, a primitive 

 ammonite, and so on. Have I ever said so ? Can 

 such a statement be found anywhere in my books ? 

 It occurs only in some reviews, written by pre- 

 judiced reviewers, 1 upon my work on Biology and 

 the Theory of Evolution, and Professor Plate took 

 it thence. I should like to invite my audience to 

 examine carefully the newest edition of this book 

 (chapter ix., section 6, p. 303, etc.), in which I made 

 short work of all these objections. As I have 

 already dealt with them there, I need not discuss 

 them now, for they were merely distortions of my 

 views. I am not so childish as to imagine the 

 polyphyletic evolution to be so simple a matter, 

 and such arguments prove nothing. To my mind 

 the primitive forms of the natural orders are identical 

 with the primitive forms of the polyphyletic evolution, 

 which are recognised by many other scientists of 



liquid crystals in the Neues Jahrbuch fur Mineralogie, Geologie, und 

 Palaontologie, 1906, ii. 2, pp. 151-153. Professor Brauns states, as the 

 result of his investigation into Lehmann's experiments, that he was inclined 

 to regard the changes which take place inside the molten or fluid mass as 

 a process of disintegration, and therefore he would hesitate to lay so much 

 stress upon the analogy with living forms. See also a Report by L. Katha- 

 riner, 'Fliissige Kristalle und Leben,' Scientific Supplement to the Oer- 

 mania, 1907, No. 24. 



1 Escherich, Forel, Haeckel. Cf. my Biology, chap, xii., etc. 



