HAECKEL AND THE NEW ZOOLOGY 



acquired, as a new classifier brought new resources of 

 hair-splitting pursuit of a supposed type or ideal to 

 bear on the subject. Where, for example, our great 

 ornithologists of the early part of the century, such as 

 Wilson and Audubon, had classed all our numerous 

 hawks in a genus falco, later students split the group 

 up into numerous genera just how many it is impossi- 

 ble to say, as no two authorities agreed on that point. 

 Wilson, could he have come back a generation after his 

 death, would have found himself quite at a loss to 

 converse with his successors about the birds he knew 

 and loved so well, using their technical names 

 though the birds themselves had not changed. 



Notwithstanding all the differences of opinion about 

 matters of detail, however, there was, nevertheless, 

 substantial agreement about the broader outlines of 

 classifications, and it might fairly enough have been 

 hoped that some day, when longer study had led to 

 finer discrimination, the mysteries of all the types of 

 creation would be fathomed. But then, while this 

 hope still seemed far enough from realization, Charles 

 Darwin came forward with his revolutionizing doctrine 

 and the whole time-honored myth of "types" of 

 creation vanished in thin air. It became clear that 

 the zoologists had been attempting a task utterly 

 Sisyphean. They had sought to establish "natural 

 groups" where groups do not exist in nature. They 

 were eagerly peering after an ideal that had no existence 

 outside their imagination. Their barriers of words 

 could not be made to conform to barriers of nature, 

 because in nature there are no barriers. 



What, then, was to be done? Should the whole 



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