196 HAECKEL 



whole world be exempt from the action of these 

 laws ? It is immaterial that Miiller's best pupils, 

 Du Bois in his later years and Virchow at an early 

 date, departed more or less from this consistent 

 position of theirs into philosophic and other side- 

 paths. The younger generation, to which Haeckel 

 belongs, that only came into direct touch with 

 Miiller |in his last years, heard no other gospel. 

 What further advance was to be made? In 

 chemistry and physics they had before them the 

 deep stratum that yielded good mechanical laws. 

 The first stage of physiology after Miiller, as we 

 find it, for instance, under Du Bois-Eeymond, 

 yielded some good indications for the organic. But 

 was the whole of morphology to be remodelled? 

 Was the vast labyrinth of the thousands and 

 thousands of animal and plant forms in the 

 museum to be reduced to mechanical laws, corre- 

 sponding to those of physics and chemistry, and 

 be explained by them ? 



Darwin brought salvation. Now that he had 

 appeared, Haeckel felt that he could begin to work. 

 The hour and the man were come. 



Darwin made it possible for him to raise 

 morphology to a penetrative science, equal to 

 physics and chemistry, and so to make a step 

 towards the unity of our knowledge of a unified 

 world. Hitherto the morphology of the animals 

 and plants had been in confusion. God, imagined 

 in the form of a higher man, had deliberately 

 created the organic forms, the palm, the moss, the 

 turtle, and the man. He had constructed them on 



