LUCRETIUS AND HAECKEL 223 



always denied any individual consciousness to the atom, and the latter re- 

 fuses to attribute thereto any sensation whatever.' But here is our old 

 crux as to ex nihilo nihil fit, and Haeckel, as we have seen, does attach 

 "the elementary qualities of sensation and will" to his first-beginnings. 

 Apparently, then, Haeckel is a consistent monist and Lucretius a be- 

 nighted materiahst; but in reahty this "unconscious possession of sensa- 

 tion and will," manifested so early in matter as tropisms, and the power to 

 swerve possessed by the Lucretian atoms, making a break in the endless 

 chain of causation, may eventually appear to metaphysical examination 

 much closer together than they seem at first sight. 

 4. The Origin of Life 



The question of the origin of hfe is still approached with no Httle diffidence 

 by many advanced scientists ; but for Haeckel and Lucretius there is no 

 doubt nor shadow of turning. * In the tender age of the world, when 

 there were conditions of heat and moisture scarcely conceivable by us, life 

 was generated spontaneously by the earth, which has "rightly gotten the 

 name of mother." Some combination of particles under just the proper 

 condition was the origin of organic life. These two sentences would be 

 a fair statement of the fundamental position of either writer ; but the order- 

 ly development of organisms through the crudest protoplasmic forms is of 

 course a purely modern conception. ^ Lucretius can guess that nature 

 essayed the creation of all sorts of living creatures which died out because 

 they were unable to beget and continue their breed, and in one sense this is 

 a theory of the survival of the fittest ; but it should not be confused with 

 the elaborately supported modern hypothesis. It is very strange, how- 

 ever, almost incredible, indeed, that with the suggestions of Lucretius 

 available for modern science the formulation of this all important hypoth- 

 esis came so late. 



5. The Orderly Arrangement of Nature 



When we come to the (apparently preordained) orderly arrangement of 

 nature, we naturally find both writers immediately rejecting any "divine, 



' De R. N., II, 86s seq. 



' In the WR. see the first part of "The Unity of Nature" (chap, xiv) and the latter part of "The Evolu- 

 tion of the World" (chap, xiii); in the De R. N. see Book V, particularly vss. 416-924. 



1 Particularly significant of the difference in the method of approach of our two writers and of the data 

 available for their use is the statement of the carbon theory of abiogenesis or archigony in WR., 256 seq. 



