216 HAECKEL 



matical relations and effects — produced without 

 conscious perception of these relations, though a 

 human mind is at work in them. In spite of all 

 our '* consciousness," the obscure intuitive power 

 at work in these human artistic achievements 

 differs very little from the curious force with 

 which a radiolarian builds up its little house in the 

 deep sea or a caseworm fits on its fine, rhythmic, 

 snail-like coat. In both we have the same pro- 

 found, crystal-like constructive power that brought 

 forth the wings of the butterfly, the feathers of 

 the bird, the bodily frame of all the animals and 

 plants, that harmonises so well with strict mathe- 

 matical forms. In Beethoven and Eaphael it is 

 not more conscious or unconscious, not clearer or 

 vaguer, not more mystical or more natural, than 

 in the poorest worm or the microscopically small 

 radiolarian. The aesthetics of the twentieth cen- 

 tury will take up these ideas. 



It is a great work. How few there are in the 

 whole of the nineteenth century that show the 

 wealth of ideas we find in the first volume alone.* 

 And this is only one volume. We have as yet 

 said nothing of the idea that is of the greatest 



* The reader may be interested to know that Haeckel gives 

 a popular summary of his early work on individuality and on 

 the mathematical types of organisms in a more recent work. 

 This has been translated into EngUsh with the title The 

 Wonders of Life. The two chapters that deal with these 

 questions are omitted from the abridged cheap edition, 

 [Trans.] 



