54 



FACTS AND FANCIES 



and common sense alike demand a severe ad- 

 herence to truth. Ji: becomes, therefore, very 

 important to ascercain to what extent we are 

 justified in adopting the agnostic evolution in 

 its relation to life and man on scientific grounds. 

 Perhaps this may best be done by reviewing the 

 argument of Haeckel in his work on the evolu- 

 tion of man — one of the ablest, and at the same 

 time most thorough, expositions of monistic ev- 

 olution as applied to lower animals and to men. 

 Ernst Haeckel is an eminent comparative 

 anatomist and physiologist, who has earned a 

 wide and deserved reputation by his able and 

 laborious studies of the calcareous sponges, the 

 radiolarians, and other low forms of life. In 

 his work on The Evolution of Man he applies 

 this knowledge to the solution of the problem 

 of the origin of humanity, and sets himself not 

 only to illustrate, but to "prove," the descent 

 of our species from the simplest animal types, 

 and even to overwhelm with scorn every other 

 explanation of the appearance of man except 

 that of spontaneous evolution. He is not 

 merely an evolutionist, but what he terms a 

 "monist," and the monisH'^ philosophy, as de- 

 fined by him, includes certain negations and 

 certain positive principles of a most compre- 



