Chapter VI: Ernst Haeckel (2)

"Biologists are likely to be of two minds concerning the advisability of putting Haeckel's 'Evolution of Man' into the hands of the lay reader as a guide and counselor on this most important of evolution subjects. Haeckel is such a proselytizer, such a scoffer and fighter of those who differ with him, that plain, 'unadorned statement of facts and description of things as they are cannot be looked for in his books. Or, if looked for, cannot be found. But this very eagerness to convince; this hoisting of a thesis, this fight for Haeckelian phylogeny and Haeckelian Monism, all make for interest and life in his writings."

This whole affair is a striking illustration of Huxley's observation that a controversy always shows an unfortunate tendency to slip from the question of what is right to the relatively unimportant question of who is right. Haeckel's critics have rarely attempted to controvert his scientific work and in fact would not in most cases be competent to discuss it. Even if he were guilty of all the mistakes alleged, it would not materially affect his scientific conclusions.

In noting Haeckel's faults, we are in danger of failing to appreciate the marvelous constructive genius of the man; the creative imagination which is characteristic of the great scientist even more than of the great poet. It was this gift that enabled him to discern in a handful of slime dredged up by the _Challenger_ from the depths of the sea an orderly system of living beings wherein each microscopic skeleton of silica found its natural niche. It was this power which enabled him to assist so largely in the transformation of zoölogy from a purely observative and descriptive science, as it was when he began his labors, to a rational, experimental, and prophetic science, as it was when he closed them. As Cuvier from a few bits of bone could construct a whole animal, so Haeckel from scattered species ventured to construct, as early as 1865, a family tree, including all living forms from monera to man. Faulty it is from the standpoint of our present knowledge, but yet it must command our admiration because of the insight he showed in perceiving natural relationships and the skill with which he bridged the gaps in his living chain by hypothetical forms. Just as the great Russian chemist Mendeléef was able to describe in advance elements then unknown, but which were discovered later and found to fit into the vacant places he had assigned to them in his periodic law, so Haeckel's anticipations have been in many cases confirmed by later science. It was his good fortune to be able to hold in his hand the skullcap and femur of the "missing link" which had for years been the jest of the anti-evolutionists. The apeman, or Pithecanthropus, which he had in 1885 described and named, was in 1894 discovered by Dubois in Java. The mind of Haeckel has such high tension that it leaps over the gaps in a demonstration like a ten thousand volt current.

His account of how he was led to doubt the dogma of the immutability of species must be quoted because it is an excellent illustration of the wisdom of the laboratory adage: "Study the exceptions. They prove some other rule."

The problem of the constancy or transmutation of species
arrested me with a lively interest, when, twenty years ago,
as a boy of twelve years, I made a resolute but fruitless
effort to determine and distinguish the "good and bad
species" of blackberries, willows, roses, and thistles.
I look back now with fond satisfaction on the concern
and painful skepticism that stirred my youthful spirits
as I wavered and hesitated (in the manner of most "good
classifiers", as we called them) whether to admit only
"good" specimens into my herbarium and reject the "bad",
or to embrace the latter and form a complete chain of
transitional forms between the "good species" that would
make an end of all their "goodness." I got out of the
difficulty at the time by a compromise that I can recommend
to all classifiers. I made two collections. One, arranged
on official lines, offered to the sympathetic observer all
the species, in "typical" specimens, as radically distinct
forms, each decked with its pretty label; the other was a
private collection, only shown to one trusted friend, and
contained only the rejected kinds that Goethe so happily
called "the characterless or disorderly races, which we
hardly dare ascribe to a species, as they lose themselves
in infinite varieties", such as rubus, salix, verbascum,
hieracium, rosa, cirsium, etc. In this a large number of
specimens, arranged in a long series, illustrated the direct
transition from one good species to another. They were the
officially forbidden fruit of knowledge, in which I took a
secret boyish delight in my leisure hours.--Bölsche's "Life
of Haeckel", p. 38.

Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel, to give him for once his full baptismal name, was born in Potsdam, February 16, 1834. He has a double inheritance of talent, for both the Haeckels and the Sethes, his mother's family, have contributed prominent names to German history, and the two families have intermarried more than once. It is a curious fact that Gustav Freytag, in his series of "Pictures from the German Past", should have chosen for his representative men of the nineteenth century two of Haeckel's ancestors: his mother's father, Christopher Sethe, Privy Councilor and defender of Prussia against Napoleon, and his father, Karl Haeckel, State Councilor.

But Ernst did not follow the family tradition and take to the law. He showed an unmistakable bent for natural science, so, as a compromise profession, his father had him trained as a physician. He took the medical course, and in obedience to his father's wishes consented to practice the profession for a year to see if he could make a success of it. During the year only three patients came to him, owing perhaps to the fact that Haeckel in order to get time for his biological researches had fixed his consultation hours from five to six in the morning. His father then gave up trying to make a doctor out of him and allowed him to go to Messina in 1859 to study marine animals. Haeckel straightway became engaged to his cousin Anna Sethe, and as soon as he got his appointment at Jena married her. Their happiness was brief. Two years later she died, leaving Haeckel, then thirty, so stricken that he felt that he could not long survive the blow, so he plunged with feverish haste into the preparation of his "General Morphology" in order to leave to the world his science and philosophy in a systematic form. It was written and printed, two thick volumes of more than twelve hundred pages, in less than a year, during which Haeckel lived like a hermit, working all day long and half the night, getting barely three or four hours sleep out of the twenty-four.

Haeckel immortalized his wife by giving her a living monument instead of one of marble or brass. He named for her one of his beloved medusæ, a fairy-like jellyfish, whose mass of long, trailing tentacles reminded him of his wife's blond hair. The Mitrocoma Ann? is described in his "Monograph on the Medusæ", published in 1864, and a note states that it was so named[10]

in memory of my dear, never-to-be-forgotten wife, Anna
Sethe. If it is given to me to do something during my
earthly pilgrimage for science and humanity, I owe it for
the most part to the blessed influence of my gifted wife,
who was torn from me by a premature end in 1864.

Three years afterwards he married again, Agnes Huschke, daughter of a Jena anatomist. They have three children, two daughters and a son, who has inherited his father's artistic talent and has devoted himself to art in Munich.

Haeckel's æsthetic taste is shown not merely in the thousands of paintings and drawings that fill his monographs, but especially in his "Art Forms of Nature", which consists of ten portfolios of large color plates depicting strange and beautiful creatures from all realms of animal life but particularly in little known lower forms, fishes, crustaceans, corals, radiolaria, diatoms, and desmids. Here are to be seen real gargoyles, more grotesque than a sculptor's unaided imagination can create. Here the designer and decorator can find hundreds of suggestive themes for almost any purpose, so they have no excuse for repeating the trite and traditional forms as they do.

A large part of these "art forms" Haeckel discovered in the course of his investigations of deep-sea life on the material gathered by the _Challenger,_ which was commissioned by the British Government in 1872-1875 to explore the ocean. The results of this expedition, published in fifty large volumes, constituted the greatest contribution to oceanography that has ever been made. Haeckel contributed the volumes on the medusæ, the siphonophora, the keratosa, and the radiolaria. To the radiolaria Haeckel devoted ten years, 1877-1887, and described 4318 species and 739 genera, from the curiously complicated siliceous skeletons deposited on the bottom of the ocean by these minute one-celled creatures.

Although Haeckel's life was largely devoted to the closest study of the minutest forms of life, yet he never lost sight of the broader aspects of his science. It seems as though he felt the need of resting his eyes by raising them from the microscope and looking out of the window to focus on infinity. Haeckel is essentially a specialist with a fondness for generalization. He welcomed the change in the current of thought that set in at the close of the nineteenth century, the effort of the new century to get at the inner meaning of the mass of miscellaneous facts that the old century had heaped up. It was with intent to assist in this movement that he produced, at the age of sixty-five, his "Riddle of the Universe", intending this to be the final expression of his view of the world, a fragmentary sketch instead of the complete "System of Monistic Philosophy" which he had projected many years ago and could not now hope to complete. But five years later he supplemented this with a similar popular volume, "The Wonders of Life", in which he replies to certain criticisms and explains the biological principles on which his philosophy is based. This, unlike the "Riddle", was not composed at various intervals in the course of many years, but was written uninterruptedly during four months spent at Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera, when he was

stimulated by the constant sight of the blue Mediterranean,
the countless inhabitants of which had, for fifty years,
afforded such ample material for my biological studies;
and my solitary walks in the wild gorges of the Ligurian
Apennines and the moving spectacle of its forest-crowned
altars, inspired me with a feeling of the unity of living
nature--a feeling that only too easily fades away in the
study of detail in the laboratory.

Professor Haeckel retired from active service as teacher and investigator in 1909 at the age of seventy-five. "Indeed I am wholly a child of the nineteenth century and with its close I draw the line under my life's work," he said, and the publication of "The Wonders of Life" in 1904 confirms rather than contradicts this, for it shows that he maintains his position altogether unshaken by the revolution that has taken place in philosophic thought. Like Herbert Spencer he lived to see a reaction against many of the opinions for which he fought most earnestly.

The nineteenth century was cocksure of so many things about which the twentieth century doubts. We are not so certain that, as Haeckel says, everything can be reduced to the motion of the atoms. The atom itself is crumbling, and as for motion, what is it? The ether in the reality of which Haeckel puts implicit faith is to us a doubtful, perhaps an unnecessary, hypothesis. Vitalism and teleology are coming back again into biology in new forms. Pluralism, not monism, is the fashion of the day, and some carry it almost to polytheism. Indeterminism finds more advocates nowadays than determinism. Haeckel makes the first law of thermodynamics (conservation of energy) one of the corner stones of his philosophy, but has little regard for the second (degradation of energy). Modern thought considers the second law more important than the first.[11]

And what shall we say about the "Law of Substance", which is Haeckel's contribution to the fundamental principles and which he apparently regards as of equal importance to the discoveries of Lavoisier and Mayer?[12] Speaking for myself, the reason I cannot accept it is because it is absolutely meaningless to me. We know what the law of the conservation of matter means. It means, among other things, that 12 pounds of carbon when burned make 44 pounds of carbon dioxid, which we may decompose and get back 12 pounds of carbon again. The law of the conservation of energy means, among other things, that when we burn 12 pounds of carbon we produce 135,305,600 foot pounds of energy. But what does it mean when we say that matter and energy, or body and spirit, are somehow the same substance? Have we said more than when we affirmed the two laws separately? Even if true, does it make a bit of difference to anybody or anything; or to put the query into the pragmatic form, can it be true if it does not make a bit of difference to anybody or anything? But we must bear in mind that the rigid application of this formula to many historic attempts to solve the "riddle of the universe" would leave less of them intact than in the case of Haeckel.

The Christian reader is likely, in his irritation at what appears to him to be willful misrepresentation of his beliefs, to be too sweeping in his condemnation of the ideas of Haeckel. Even in the matter of religion Haeckel is not nearly so heretical as he assumes or is presumed to be. Many of the things he attacks are almost unrecognizable caricatures of modern religious views. It should be remembered that the "Riddle" and the "Wonders" were written at a time when he saw the German Government coming under the domination of the Blue-Black Block, and when it seemed to him that this coalition of conservatives and clericals threatened to suppress free speech and to check the advance of science. In his earlier writings his views are expressed in much more conciliatory language. Indeed, his pantheism is hardly distinguishable at times from theories of divine immanence such as are now held very commonly in orthodox churches. Wherein lies the magic of the word "Monism" if not in our ingrained prejudice in favor of unity, inherited from the fierce monotheism of the Jews? Is not Haeckel then borrowing the thunders of Sinai to enforce his new religion?

His "General Morphology" of 1866, which, as he told me, he prefers to his later works as an expression of his philosophy, concludes with the following passage:

Our philosophy knows only one God, and this Almighty God
dominates the whole of nature without exception. We see his
activity in all phenomena without exception. The whole of
the inorganic world is subject to him just as much as the
organic. If a body falls fifteen feet in the first second in
empty space, if three atoms of oxygen unite with one atom of
sulphur to form sulphuric acid, if the angle that is formed
by the contiguous surfaces of a column of rock-crystal is
always 120°, these phenomena are just as truly the direct
action of God as the flowering of the plant, the 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
radiolarian as well as 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 the forms and properties
of matter, to God, as the sustainer of all things, do we
reach the human idea and reverence for him that really
corresponds to his infinite greatness. In him we live, and
move, and have our being. Thus does natural philosophy
become a theology. The cult of nature passes into that
service of God of which Goethe says: "Assuredly there is no
nobler reverence for God than that which springs up in our
heart for conversation with nature." God is almighty: he is
the sole sustainer and cause of all things. In other words,
God is the universal law of causality. God is absolutely
perfect; he cannot act in any other than a perfectly good
manner; he cannot therefore act arbitrarily or freely--God
is necessity. God is the sum of all force, and therefore
of all matter. Every conception of God that separates him
from matter, and opposes to him a sum of forces that are
not of a divine nature, leads to amphitheism (or ditheism)
and on to polytheism. In showing the unity of the whole of
nature, Monism points out that only one God exists, and that
this God reveals himself in all the phenomena of nature. In
grounding all the phenomena of organic or inorganic nature
on the universal law of causality, and exhibiting them as
the outcome of "efficient causes", Monism proves that God
is the necessary cause of all things and the law itself. In
recognizing none but divine forces in nature, in proclaiming
all natural laws to be divine, Monism rises to the greatest
and most lofty conception of which man, the most perfect of
all things, is capable, the conception of the unity of God
and nature.

* * * * *

HOW TO READ HAECKEL

"The Riddle of the Universe" (Harper) is the best popular presentation of science and philosophy from Haeckel's point of view. This may be supplemented by "The Wonders of Life" (Harper), in which he develops more fully the biological side and defends himself against certain criticisms. To these should be added the very interesting life of Haeckel by W. Bölsche (Jacobs). Cheap editions of these three are published by the Rationalist Press Association, London. They, as well as other works of Haeckel, are translated by Joseph McCabe.

"The Natural History of Creation" (Appleton) and "The Evolution of Man" (Appleton or Putnam) are both intended to explain in a way comprehensible to the general reader the fundamental principles of the theory of evolution and the biological facts on which it is based. Special addresses by Haeckel are translated under the titles of: "Monism as Connecting Religion and Science" (Macmillan) and "Last Words on Evolution" (New York). Of his "Indische Reisebilder" there are two versions in English; one by Mrs. S. E. Boggs entitled "India and Ceylon", which is neither literal nor complete, and one by Clara Bell, "A Visit to Ceylon" (Eckler), which is better. On the personal side may be read Herman Schauffauer's sketches, "Haeckel, a Colossus of Science" (_North American Review_, August, 1910), and "A Talk with Haeckel at Home", in _T. P.'s Magazine_, 1912; Elbert Hubbard's "Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists", and Joseph McCabe's "A Scientist's Sunset Years", in _Harper's Weekly,_ August 7, 1909. A few of the more noteworthy of the books and articles on Haeckelism in English are: "Life and Matter", by Sir Oliver Lodge, a criticism from the standpoint of a spiritualist; the discussion between Lodge and McCabe in _Hibbert Journal_, Vol. Ill, pp. 315 and 741; "The World View of a Scientist", by Frank Thilly in _Popular Science Monthly,_ Vol. LXI, pp. 407-425; "Ernst Haeckel, Darwinist, Monist", by V. L. Kellogg, in _Popular Science Monthly_, _Vol._ LXXVI, pp. 136-142; "Haeckel and Monism", by J. Butler Burke, in _Oxford and Cambridge Review_, 1907; "Lucretius and Haeckel", by F. B. R. Hellems, in "University of Colorado Studies", Vol. Ill, 1905; "Religion as a Credible Doctrine", by W. H. Mallock; "Haeckel's Monism False", by Reverend F. Ballard; "The Old Riddle and the Newest Answer", by Father Gerard; "Haeckel's Critics Answered", by Joseph McCabe (London: Rationalist Press); "Haeckel's Answer to the Jesuits" (New York: _Truthseeker_); "Haeckel and His Methods", by R. L. Mangan, in the _Catholic World_, May, 1909. The monism of Doctor Paul Cams, of Chicago, is a different variety from Haeckel's as he has pointed out in the Monist, Vol. II, p. 498; Vol. IV, p. 228; and Vol. XVI, p. 120.

Of the immense body of literature in German on Haeckel it is impossible to give more than a few selected titles. The bibliography appended to "Ernst Haeckel: Versuch einer Chronik seines Lebens und Wirkens" by Walther May (Leipzig: Barth, 1909) devotes fourteen pages to the titles of Haeckel's writings, four pages to a list of biographical books and sketches, and thirteen pages to a list of criticisms and discussions of Haeckelism.

"Die Welträtsel" and "Die Lebenswunder" are published by Alfred Kröner, Leipzig. The epitome of Haeckel's philosophy, which is given almost entire in the preceding pages, is to be found in "Der Monistenbund", _Thesen zur Organisation des Monismus_ (Neuer Frankfurter Verlag). Other works of Haeckel of a general and philosophical character are: "Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte" (Berlin: Reimer); "Anthropogenic oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Menschens" (Leipzig: Engelmann); "Generalle Morphologie der Organismen" (Reimer); "Systematische Phylogenie" (Reimer); "Der Kampf um den Entwickelungs-Gedanken" (Reimer); "Der Monismus als Band zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft" (Kröner); "Freie Wissenschaft und freie Lehre", the reply to Virchow (Kröner); "Das Weltbild von Darwin und Lamarck", the centenary address on Darwin's, birthday (Kröner).

Haeckel's travel sketches are to be found in "Indische Reisebriefe" (Berlin: Paetel) and "Aus Insulinde" (Kröner). Even one who reads no German will find enjoyment and gain an appreciation of the artistic side of Haeckel by looking over the color plates in "Kunstformen der Natur" (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut) or "Wanderbilder" (Gera: Köhler).

A remarkable tribute of world-wide affection is the volume issued on his eightieth birthday, "Was wir Ernst Haeckel verdanken" (Leipzig: Verlag Unesma), to which one hundred and twenty-five men and women contributed,--savants, artists, workingmen, officials, and businessmen.

The monistic movement may be followed by the pamphlets of the society which may be obtained ordinarily from the Verlag Unesma, Leipzig. Some of the more interesting of these _Flugschriften_ are: "Friedrich Paulsen über Ernst Haeckel", by Albrecht Rau; "Reinke contra Haeckel", by Heinrich Schmidt; "Eine neue Reformation vom Christentum zum Monismus", by Hannah Dorsch and Arnold Dodel; "Monismus und Christentum", by Heinrich Schmidt; "Monismus und Klerikalismus", by J. Unold; "Das Einheit der physikochemischen Wissenschaften", by Wilhelm Ostwald; "Die einheitliche Weltanschauung", by Ernst Diesing: this last urges the Monists to support the peace and conservation movements. The official organ is _Das monistische Jahrhundert_, a weekly edited by Ostwald and published by the Verlag Unesma, Leipzig. The issue for February 14, 1914, is, in honor of his eightieth birthday, devoted to Haeckel. For the history of monistic philosophy in general from the Greeks to the present time see "Der Monismus", by various authors, under the editorship of Arthur Drews (Jena: Diederich, 1908) or "Geschichte des Monismus", by Rudolf Eisler (Leipzig: Kröner).

Of the expository and controversial literature, pro and con, it must suffice to mention the following titles: "Die Weltanschauung Haeckel", by Max Upel (Berlin-Schoenberg; Buchverlag der Hilfe), a brief and fairminded critique; "Ernst Haeckel, ein Bild seines Lebens und seiner Arbeit", by Wilhelm Breitenbach (Brackwede i. W.: Verlag von Breitenbach & Hoerster), a tribute to the master on his seventieth birthday; "Haeckel's Welträthsel nach ihren starken und ihren schwachen Seite", by Julius Baumann (Leipzig: Diederich, 1900); "Anti-Haeckel", by F. Loofs, Professor of Theology in Halle; "Philosophia Militans" by F. Paulsen, Professor of Philosophy in Berlin. A good account of the Haeckel-Paulsen controversy by Theodor Lorenz may be found in _Deutsche Literaturzeitung_, March 12, 1910, and later.

[1] An undergraduate friend of mine to whom I referred these verses for translation into the vernacular of the campus gives me this version:

Who knows the truth and speaks not out
He is indeed a sorry lout!
Who knows the truth and speaks too loose
In Berlin gets in the calaboose!

[2] This is _not_ to be translated, as I once heard a student give it, "Haeckel's one-sided showing-up of the universe."

[3] "Thesen zur Organization des Monism."

[4] "Riddle of the Universe", p. 363.

[5] "Wonders of Life", p. 430.

[6] _Ibid._, p. 248.

[7] "Wonders of Life", pp. 115 and 119.

[8] President Thomas, of Middlebury College, exposed the source of his theory that the father of Christ was a Roman officer named Pandera in _The Independent_, Vol. 64, p. 515.

[9] Some of the more offensive of these passages are modified or eliminated in the later editions of "Die Welträtsel."

[10] Another medusa also named for his wife, Demomema Annasethe, will be found on one of the color plates of the New International Encyclopedia (Vol. XII, p. 68).

[11] The significance of this change of emphasis in its bearing on metaphysical, religious, and ethical ideas I endeavored to explain in the preceding chapter.

[12] See Number 20 of the thirty theses given above.

End of Project Gutenberg's Major Prophets of To-Day, by Edwin E. Slosson