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THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 1905. 



THE QUINTESSENCE OF HAECKELISMUS. 

 The Wonders of Life. A Popular Study of Biological 

 Philosophy. Supplementary volume to " The Riddle 

 of the Universe." By Ernst Haeckel. Translated 

 by Joseph McCabe. Pp. xiv + 501. (London: 

 Watts and Co., 1904.) Price 6s. net. 



THIS new book by the indefatigable Haeckel is 

 supplementary to his " Riddle of the Universe." 

 That several hini-dred thousand copies of the " Riddle " 

 were sold indicates the widespread interest taken in 

 what the author calls " the construction of a rational 

 and solid philosophy of life," or in what others would 

 call an extremely biological way of looking at things. 

 But the " Riddle " and its solutions raised storms of 

 criticisms and evoked hundreds of reviews — both 

 friendly and hostile — besides many large pamphlets 

 and even a few books, not to speak of more than five 

 thousand letters. To these collectively, friends and 

 foes alike, Haeckel now replies in this " biological 

 sketch-book," written uninterruptedly in the course of 

 four months when he was completing his seventieth 

 year in a vacation at Rapallo, a tiny coast-town of the 

 Italian Riviera. He had leisure there to think over 

 all the views on organic life which he had formed in 

 the course of a many-sided experience of life and learn- 

 ing since the beginnings of his academic studies (1852) 

 and his teaching at Jena (1861). The constant sight 

 of the blue Mediterranean, the animal inhabitants of 

 which he knows so well, his solitary walks in the wild 

 gorges of the Ligurian Apennines, and the moving 

 spectacle of the " forest-crowned mountain altars," in- 

 spired him with " a feeling of the unity of living 

 nature — a feeling that only too easily fades away in 

 the study of detail in the laboratory." He hopes that 

 his readers may be moved by his book " to penetrate 

 deeper and deeper into the glorious work of Nature, 

 and to reach the insight of our greatest German 

 natural philosopher, Goethe : 



" What greater thing' in life can man achieve 

 Than that God-Nature be revealed to him? " 



The work is described as " a popular study of 

 biological philosophy "; it is divided into four sections 

 — methodological, morphological, physiological, and 

 genealogical, which deal respectively with the know- 

 ledge of life, the nature of life, the functions of life, 

 and the history of life. It raises no end of perplexing 

 problems — life and death, nutrition and reproduction, 

 heredity and variation, sensation and intelligence, 

 morality and religion. It discusses protoplasm and 

 the cell, spontaneous generation and evolution in 

 general, the " pro-morphology " of organisms and the 

 intricate architecture of the brain, the recapitulation 

 of phylogeny in ontogeny, the inheritance of acquired 

 characters, the evolution of sensation, asthesis, intelli- 

 gence, and morality. In short, it comprises practically 

 everything, including miracles, the religious thoughts 

 of JVIr. Romanes, the university curriculum, the in- 

 crease of pauperism, the introduction of Spartan 

 elimination-methods, the Apostles' Creed, the immacu- 

 NO 1840, VOL. 71] 



late conception, immortality, and a belief in a personal 

 God. .\ book with so large a purview is bound to be 

 sketchv — and the author calls it " a biological sketch- 

 book " — but sketchiness in dealing with subjects so 

 momentous is apt to be unsatisfactory, and, while 

 Haeckel continually and quite fairly refers to what 

 he has said elsewhere in his large family of books, the 

 discriminating reader may justly complain that he 

 has often to deal rather with an assertion of convic- 

 tions than with a reasoned argument. What carries 

 one on from page to page is the feeling that we have to 

 listen to a veteran who is telling us frankly and fear- 

 lessly what he believes to be true in regard to the order 

 of nature and our place in it. 



From one point of view Haeckel 's discussion of the 

 " Wonders of Life " is an apology for " Monism " or 

 " Hylozoism." In studies of " unequal value and in- 

 complete workmanship," as the illustrious author con- 

 fesses, an attempt is made to show how we may attain 

 to the conception of one great harmoniously working 

 universe — " whether you call this Nature or Cosmos, 

 World or God " — without utilising any knowledge 

 which is not of empirical origin and a posteriori. We 

 must not allow metaphysical fictions to intrude on our 

 philosophy — still less into our science ; we may work 

 with the " law of substance," but there is to be no 

 hocus-pocusing with transcendental formulae; science 

 is sufficient unto herself, and is justified of her children ; 

 criticism of her postulates and categories is a waste 

 of time when there is so much to do; psychology is 

 " a branch of physiology," and it is unprofitable to 

 think about thinking; a "theory of knowledge" is 

 a luxury for the leisured. Everything seems to be- 

 come plain sailing if we embark on the craft 

 " Hylozoism," but we require faith to help us across 

 the gangway. 



From another point of view Haeckel's book may be 

 taken as an e.\pression of the outlook on man and 

 nature which may be reached by a conscientious pur- 

 suit of the scientific method. Those who remain 

 agnostic or positivist in regard to either monism or 

 dualism in any of their forms will be interested in 

 hearing once more of the order, unity and pro- 

 gressiveness of nature's tactics, and in considering 

 the practical proposals which a thorough-going 

 Darwinian has to offer in regard to incapables and 

 incurables, pauperism and crime. We cannot do more 

 than remark that these proposals preach elimination 

 rather than eugenics ; they are more akin to surgery 

 than to preventive medicine. Much of the book is, 

 naturally enough, an echo of previous works — the 

 " Monera," the " Gastrsea Theory," the " Natural 

 History of Creation," the " Evolution of Man," and, 

 what has always appeared to us the author's magnwn 

 opus, the " Generelle Morphologic" (1866); but all 

 has been modernised and orientated afresh to illustrate 

 what Haeckel was so much impressed with at Rapallo, 

 the unity of living nature. An interesting illustration 

 of the author's artistic enthusiasm and indifference to 

 popularity will be found in the pages on pro- 

 morphology, wherein he discusses the architectural 

 s)nimetries of organisms, as he did forty years ago. 

 Tiie centrostigmatic, centraxonial, and centroplane 



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