May io, 1906] 



NA TURE 



picturesque style which sometimes startles the reader 

 with its daring. 



We crinnot do more than refer to a few of the 

 interesting facts regarding Haecl<cl to which the 

 autlior gives prominence. " Haeckel's genealogical 

 tree spreads into the legal profession in a curiously 

 complex way." This inheritance was expressed in 

 Haeckel's imperious craving for clear lines and sys- 

 tematic arrangement, and in his fondness for formu- 

 lating "laws." Apart from the influence of his 

 teachers, such as Johannes Miiller and Virchow, and 

 of his friends, such as Gegenbaur, it was the sea — at 

 Helgoland, at Nice, at Messina — that really won 

 Haechel for zoology. Regarding his pupillary period, 

 the curious fact is mentioned that one of the theses 

 he defended when taking his doctorate at Berlin was 

 the impossibility of spontaneous generation. In i860 

 Haeckel was " profoundly moved " by a first reading 

 of "The Origin of Species," and conversations with 

 Gegenbaur finally confirmed his conviction of the 

 truth of Darwinism — a conviction which found its first, 

 though not prominent, expression in his monograph on 

 Kadiolaria (1862). In 1S63, at the Stettin congress, 

 when Haeckel made his first open confession of the 

 faith that was now in him, he won a laurel crown at 

 the Leipzig athletic festival for the long jump (20 feet), 

 and the translator justly remarks that we have here 

 "the note of much in his character." What many 

 zoologists, who neither misunderstand Haeckel nor fail 

 to do him homage, feel, is that the impetuous, daring, 

 pioneering evolutionist of Jena has taken many long 

 jumps which scientific caution makes them refuse. 



A fine chapter of the book is devoted to what is 

 perhaps Haeckel's best and most lasting work, the 

 " Generelle Morphologie " (1866). It was written, 

 partly as a relief from sorrow, in less than a year, 

 during which the author lived the life of a hermit, 

 sleeping barely three or four hours a day, with habits 

 so ascetic that he wondered at his survival. But the 

 great work was too difficult for the general reader, 

 too philosophical for the biologists, too biological for 

 the philosophers, and thus with a clearly defined 

 mission Haeckel set himself to the task, which he has 

 so successfully accomplished, of making monistic 

 evolutionism " understanded of the people." 



One of the many interesting incidents related in 

 Bolsche's appreciation may be quoted. 



" .\ stern theologian presented himself in person at 

 the chateau of Karl Alexander, Grand Duke of Weimar, 

 and begged him to put an end to this scandal of the 

 professorship of Haeckel, the arch-heretic. The Grand 

 Duke, educated in the Weimar tradition of Goethe, 

 asked, ' Do you think he really believes these things 

 that he publishes? ' ' Most certainly he does,' was the 

 prompt reply. 'Very good,' said the Grand Duke, 

 ' then the man simply does the same as you do.' " 



.As Prof. Bolsche closed his charming biographical 

 sketch in igoo, the translator, who has done his work 

 admirably, has added a chapter on the crowning years, 

 dealing with the controversies over the " Riddle of the 

 Universe," and other events. The whole work, helped 

 by the excellent portraits, leaves one with a grateful 

 impression of a remarkable personality who has all 

 his life been a good fighter yet most lovable withal, 

 NO. 1906, VOL. 74] 



who has done much for pure science and yet has never 

 ceased to say " Das Leben ist schon." 



(3) In these three lectures, delivered last year in 

 Berlin, Prof. Haeckel reiter.ited with wonted frank- 

 ness and fearlessness his evolutionist and monistic 

 convictions. He trounced the theologians and meta- 

 physicians for ignoring or combating or misrepre- 

 senting the secure results of science, and he did not 

 refrain froin reproving some of his own craft — every 

 his revered master, Virchow — for trying to sit on both 

 sides of the fence. He is himself so well satisfied" 

 with the naturalistic formulation of what goes on,, 

 and has gone on, in the wide world, that he has no 

 patience with those who seek for explanations that 

 science ex hypothesi can never give. 



The law of evolution and the law of substance (the 

 conservation of inatter and energy) " are irreconcilable 

 with the three central dogmas of metaphysics, which 

 so many educated people still regard as the most 

 precious treasures of their spiritual life— the belief in 

 a personal God, the personal immortality of the soul' 

 and the liberty of the human will." Not that these- 

 are to be driven out of the world. " Tliey increly 

 cease to pose as truths in the realm of pure science. 

 As imaginative creations, they retain a certain value 

 in the world of poetry." 



To many this will seem a false antithesis, an opposi^ 

 tion of incommensurables. It can hardly be patho- 

 logically that the human spirit has so persistently 

 attempted to get beyond common sense and empirical 

 science to a formulation of the efficient causes, the 

 significance, the purpose of all becoming. As a 

 matter of fact, Haeckel hiinself is a worshipper of 

 " a Monistic god, the all-embracing essence of the 

 world, the Nature-god of Spinoza and Goethe, 

 identical with the eternal, all-inspiring energy, one, 

 in eternal and infinite substance, with space-filling 

 matter," whose " will is at work in every falling drop, 

 of rain and every growing crystal, in the scent of the 

 rose and in the spirit of man." 



The lectures have been very successfully translated 

 by Mr. McCabe. We may note that the date given for 

 Weismann's theory of germ-plasm is 1844, whiclr 

 seems rather early, while that of Lamarck's " Philo- 

 sophie Zoologique " (1899) is rather late. 



PRACTICAL GEOGRAPHY. 

 An Introduction to Practical Geography. By A. T.. 



Simmons and Hugh Richardson. Pp. xi + 380. 



(London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1905.) Price 



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 'T^HIS book is based on an excellent idea, which 

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 experiments. 



Unfortunately, the execution of this design is 

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 Geography, it must be admitted, is a subject which 



