THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION INGERMANY* 
’ II. 
WE must now examine how the primitive organisms have 
originated, or rather the single primordial organism from. 
which all others have issued. Lamarck has attempted to solve 
the problem by his hypothesis of archigony or primitive being. 
' Darwin avoids touching this question, doubtless to leave a last 
refuge for the hypothesis of a creation, and to make a final 
concession to the spiritualist systems. Haeckel shows no such 
caution ; he is willing neither to renounce the scientific expla- 
nation of the phenomenon, nor to abandon the ground of 
natural philosophy to go astray upon that of faith or poetry; 
before resigning himself to the incomprehensible, he proceeds 
to explain, by a mechanical hypothesis, the primordial pro- 
duction of life. 
He admits first, as to the origin of the earth, the system of 
Laplace, of whom Kant, about 1755, was the precursor, in his 
“Theory of the Heavens.” This system is in harmony with 
all the phenomena at present known, and has not been found to 
disagree in any single instance. Moreover, it has the advantage 
of being purely mechanical, and of not requiring a resort to any 
supernatural force. This theory, consequently, plays the same 
part in cosmogony, and especially in geology, that the theory of 
Lamarck does in biology, and especially in anthropology. 
Both are founded exclusively upon efficient, and not upon 
final and intelligent causes. Both fulfil the conditions of a 
scientific theory, and have the same title to universal adoption, 
until the time when even better hypotheses shall be discovered. 
Haeckel, however, acknowledges that the theory of Kant and 
Laplace has a feeble foundation upon two points which it cannot 
explain—the heat to which is due the gaseous mass which 
formed the primitive world, and the rotatory movement im- 
pressed upon that mass. But every attempt to explain these 
facts leads us inevitably to the untenable theory of an absolute 
beginning. 
We can no more conceive an absolute beginning for the 
eternal phenomena of movement than we can imagine an absolute 
end. The universe is, in the order of space and time, immense 
and without limits. It is eternal and it is infinite. The great 
law of the conservation of energy, which has become the basis 
of all our views of nature, does not allow of any other concep- 
tion. The world, so far as it is acce-sible to our knowing facul- 
ties, appears to us as an uninterrupted chain of movements 
which determine a continual change of forms ; each form is only 
the transitory result of a sum of phenomena of motion; but 
under this change of forms, force remains eternally inde- 
structible. 
Life could not commence before the earth had cooled suffi- 
ciently to allow the water, which had hitherto been in a state of 
‘vapour, to become liquefied and to be deposited on the surface ; 
for all animals and all plants, all organisms in short, consist for 
the most part only of water combined in a particular manner 
with other materials. But how is it possible to conceive the 
commencement of organic life? In answer to this question, 
Haeckel examines first the relations which exist between organisms 
and the inorganic kingdom, frcm the standpoint successively of 
chemistry, of form, and of motion. 
Chemistry teaches us that there does not enter into the mate- 
rial composition of living beings, absolutely any substance, 
which is not found in inanimate nature. There does not exist 
any distinct organic matter. The differences which exist between 
organic beings and the inorganic world cannot then have their 
essential foundation in the different nature of the substances of 
which they are composed, but only in the processes by which 
these substances enter into combination. A greater or less 
density suffices to place a chasm between two groups of bodies ; 
moreover, the degree of density does not depead upon the com- 
ponent elements, but solely upon the temperature: by heating 
sufficiently a solid body, we can make it pass first into the 
liquid, and then into the gaseous state. In contrast to these 
three degrees of density of inorganic bodies, the solid, the liquid, 
and the gaseous, Haeckel attributes to living beings a fourth 
state of aggregation which is proper to them, is neither solid 
like stone, nor liquid like water, but appears to be a mean 
between the two, and consists always in a characteristic com- 
bination of water with organic matter. This mixed state, which 
is of the highest importance in the mechanical explanation of 
_ the phenomena of life, is explained in its turn, according to 
* Continued from p. 352. 
- presents much fewer difficulties. 
433 
properties of a simple 
This element has a peculiar tendency 
to form with other elements, in the most diverse proportions of 
number and weight, complicated and very various combinations, 
Above all it enters into combination with three other elements, 
oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, in order to form the indis- 
pensable base of all vital phenomena, viz. albumen or protein. 
Certain very simple organisms, such as the monads, are only 
small masses of semi-liquid, semi-solil albumen; and it is the 
same for the most part with other organisms in the earliest 
Stages of their development, when they are as yet only simple 
cells ; albumen then takes the name of g/asma or protoplasm, 
and this plasma is now considered as the starting-point of all 
vital phenomena. Thus it is not more difficult for us to give a 
general explanation of life than it is to explain the physical pro- 
perties of inorganic bodies. It is true that ultimate causes are 
hidden from us ; but it isthe same in the inorganic world. If 
we are unable to say why such a combination engenders a cell, 
no more can we understand why gold crystallises into a tetra- 
hedric or antimony into a hexagonal form. Thus, from a che- 
mical point of view, it impossible to establish any difference 
between the organic and inorganic kingdoms. 
Again, with respect to Form, the simple and homogeneous 
structure of crystals is opposed to the heterogeneous and compli- 
cated structure of living beings ; but certain inferior organisms, 
such as the monads, are formed solely of a small albuminous 
mass of astructure as simple as that ofa piece ofsilex. Animals 
and plants thus appear, at first sight, not to have any mathe- 
matically determined form like crystals; but Haeckel has 
pointed out among the Radiolaria and many other protozoa 
a great number of inferior organisms, which, like crystals, 
may be referred to regular geometrical forms. He has also, 
in his ‘‘General Morphology” (pp. 375—574), presented an 
ideal system of stereometric forms which explain both the 
actual forms of inorganic crystals, and those of organic indivi- 
duals. There is finally a large number of living beings com- 
pletely amorphous, such as the monads, the amabe, &c., whose 
shape is constantly changing, and in which it is as impossible to 
recognise a determinate form as it is in the case of amorphous 
inorganic beings, such as non-crystallised stones, precipitates, &c. 
In respect of form, then, there is no more essential difference 
between organic and inorganic beings, 
Let us now consider Movement. At the present day, as the 
hypothesis of a vital force is completely abandoned, it is neces- 
sary, according to Haeckel, to refer all manifestations of life, 
and particularly the phenomena of nutrition and reproduction, 
to the properties of carbon, or at least of hydrogen. With 
regard to growth, the only difference between living beings and 
inorganic bodies lies in this, that the former grow in size by 
intersusception, that is, by the introduction of new particles into 
their interior, while the latter are enlarged by opposition, by the 
external addition of new matter. The external conformation is 
determined, in crystals as well as in organisms, by the laws of 
adaptation ; the form and the size of the crysial depends on the 
circumstances in which it is placed, on the vessel in which the 
process of crystallisation goes on, on temperature, on atmospheric 
pressure, on the presence or absence of foreign bodies. The 
form of every crystal, as wellas the form of every organism, is 
thus the result of the struggle between two factors,— an internal 
plastic force proceeding from the chemical constitution of the 
body, and an external plastic force the result cf the influence 
of the medium. Consequently, if growth and form are processes 
of life, there isno reason for refusing to attribute life to the in- 
organic world, as well as to organisms. 
As soon as this unity of organic and inorganic nature is fairly 
established, the problem of primordial or spontaneous generation 
If the attempts which up to 
the present time have been made to bring about experimentally 
spontaneous generation have not led to positive results, the only 
inference to be drawn is, that we are as yet ignorant of the con- 
ditions in which it takes place, conditions which, moreover, 
we may perhaps not now be able to reproduce. It is evident 
that all the matter which has become organic, would, at the 
time when the earth was not sufficiently cooled, be mixed in the 
atmosphere in a form of which we are ignorant. How are we 
able to reproduce completely in our laboratories all the chemical, 
electric, and other conditions of that primitive atmosphere ? 
Meanwhile, the combinations of carbon which have already been 
obtained artificially, give ground for hoping that ere long we 
shall be able to reproduce the most important of all, the matter 
of the A/asma or albumen. 
