HAECKEL: HIS LIFE, WORK, AND COMPANIONS _ 87 
In 1866 Haeckel published his ‘‘ General Morphology 
of Organic Life.’’ A second title added that it was grour ded 
on the theory of descent propounded by Charles Darwin. 
Huxley described the book as “ one of the greatest scientific 
works ever published ;’’ and years after he had written it 
Haeckel referred to it as a comprehensive, difficult work 
that had found few readers. It could hardly be a popular 
book. The morphologist concerns himself specially with 
the outer form and internal structure of living beings. To 
him we are told ‘‘ every animal has a something in common 
with all its fellows ; much with many of them; more with 
a few; and usually so much with several that it differs 
little from them.’’ A morphological classification, there- 
fore, is one that groups together living things according to 
their degrees of likeness and difference in structure. In 
this work Haeckel, with much skill and labour, showed 
how differences between the highest animals and highest 
plants decrease as they are traced back, till the protista, 
embracing the lowest forms of life in each kingdom of 
nature, can hardly be distinguished one from the other. 
Haeckel closed this work in these words: ‘’ Our 
philosophy knows but one Almighty God who dominates, 
without exception, the whole of nature. We see His 
activity in all phenomena. The whole inorganic world is 
subject to Him, just as much as the organic. The pheno- 
mena of inorganic nature are just as truly the direct action 
of the Almighty as is the flowering of the plant, movement 
of the animal, or the thought of man. We all exist by the 
grace of God; the stone as well as the water, the radiol- 
arian and the pine, the gorilla as well as the Emperor of 
China. No other conception of God except this, that sees 
His spirit and force in all natural phenomena is worthy of 
His all-enfolding greatness ; only when we trace all forces 
and all movements, all forms and all properties of matter to 
God as the sustainer of all things, do we reach an idea of 
and reverence for Him that worthily corresponds to His 
infinite greatness.” 
