114 HAECKEL 



his destructive catastrophe, and swept them all 

 away, as a sponge goes over the tahle. Then, 

 in the empty land, he created afresh the sloths, 

 armadilloes, and llamas of to-day. But why had 

 God made the new animals so like the old that the 

 modern zoologist has to class the megatherium in 

 the same narrow group as the actual sloth, the 

 ancient glyptodon with the modern armadillo, and 

 so on? 



Darwin, who had studied theology, was unshaken 

 with regard to God himself. However, something 

 occurred that occurs so often and with such good 

 result in the history of thought. It appeared to 

 him that the notion of a direct creation is by no 

 means the simplest way of explaining things, but 

 the most puzzling and complicated. Darwin 

 believed in Lyell. There had been no destructive 

 catastrophe at all to sweep away the megatherium 

 and its companions. They had disappeared 

 gradually, by natural means. Was it not much 

 more rational to suppose that the actual sloths and 

 armadilloes came into being gradually, by natural 

 means? Part of the old animal population had 

 not perished, but been transformed into the actual 

 species. There was a bond of relationship be- 

 tween the past and the present. One or other 

 grotesque and perhaps helpless giant form may 

 have completely disappeared in the course of time. 

 But the golden thread of life was never entirely 

 broken. Other and more fortunate species had 

 preserved the type of the sloth, the armadillo, and 

 the llama ; they had developed naturally into the 



