supplemented and confirmed by certain recent brilliant discoveries
in physiology. Chief amongst these are the famous experiments of
Dr. Hans Friedenthal at Berlin. He showed that the human blood acts
poisonously on and decomposes the blood of the lower apes and other
mammals, but has not that effect on the blood of the anthropoid
apes.[8]
From previous transfusion experiments it had been learned that the
affinity of mammals is connected to a certain extent with their
chemical blood-relationship. If the living blood of two nearly
related animals of the same family, such as the dog and the fox, or
the rabbit and the hare, is mixed together, the living blood-cells
of each species remain uninfluenced. But if we mix the blood of the
dog and the rabbit, or the fox and the hare, a struggle for life
immediately takes place between the two kinds of blood-cells. The
watery fluid or serum destroys the blood-cells of the rodent, and
_vice versâ_. It is the same with specimens of the blood of the
various primates. The blood of the lower apes and lemurs, which are
close to the common root of the primate stem, has a destructive
effect on the blood of the anthropoid apes and man, and _vice
versâ_. On the other hand, the human blood has no injurious effect
when it is mixed with that of the anthropoid apes.
In recent years these interesting experiments have been continued
by other physiologists and physicians, such as Professor Uhlenhuth
at Greifswald and Nuttall at London, and they have proved directly
the blood-relationship of various mammals. Nuttall studied them
carefully in 900 different kinds of blood, which he tested by
16,000 reactions. He traced the gradation of affinity to the
lowest apes of the New World; and Uhlenhuth continued as far
as the lemurs. By these results the affinity of man and the
anthropoid apes, long established by anatomy, has now been proved
physiologically to be in real "blood-relationship."[9]
Not less important are the embryological discoveries of the
deceased zoologist, Emil Selenka. He made two long journeys to the
East Indies, in order to study on the spot the embryology of the
Asiatic anthropoid apes, the orang and gibbon. By means of a number
of embryos that he collected he showed that certain remarkable
peculiarities in the formation of the placenta, that had up to
that time been considered as exclusively human, and regarded as a
special distinction of our species, were found in just the same way
in the closely related anthropoid apes, though not in the rest of
the apes. On the ground of these and other facts, I maintain that
the descent of man from extinct Tertiary anthropoid apes is proved
just as plainly as the descent of birds from reptiles, or the
descent of reptiles from amphibians, which no zoologist hesitates
to admit to-day. The relationship is as close as was claimed by my
former fellow-student, the Berlin anatomist, Robert Hartmann (with
whom I sat at the feet of Johannes Müller fifty years ago), in his
admirable work on the anthropoid apes (1883). He proposed to divide
the order of primates into two families, the _primarii_ (man and
the anthropoid apes), and _simianæ_ (the real apes, the catarrhine
or eastern, and the platyrrhine or western apes).
Since the Dutch physician, Eugen Dubois, discovered the famous
remains of the fossil ape-man (_pithecanthropus erectus_) eleven
years ago in Java, and thus brought to light "the missing
link," a large number of works have been published on this very
interesting group of the primates. In this connection we may
particularly note the demonstration by the Strassburg anatomist,
Gustav Schwalbe, that the previously discovered Neanderthal skull
belongs to an extinct species of man, which was midway between the
pithecanthropus and the true human being--the _homo primigenus_.
After a very careful examination, Schwalbe at the same time refuted
all the biassed objections that Virchow had made to these and
other fossil discoveries, trying to represent them as pathological
abnormalities. In all the important relics of fossil men that
prove our descent from anthropoid apes Virchow saw pathological
modifications, due to unsound habits, gout, rickets, or other
diseases of the dwellers in the diluvial caves. He tried in every
way to impair the force of the arguments for our primate affinity.
So in the controversy over the pithecanthropus he raised the most
improbable conjectures, merely for the purpose of destroying its
significance as a real link between the anthropoid apes and man.
Even now, in the controversy over this important ape-question,
amateurs and biassed anthropologists often repeat the false
statement that the gap between man and the anthropoid ape is not
yet filled up and the "missing link" not yet discovered. This is a
most perverse statement, and can only arise either from ignorance
of the anatomical, embryological, and paleontological facts, or
incompetence to interpret them aright. As a fact, the morphological
chain that stretches from the lemurs to the earlier western
apes, from these to the eastern tailed apes, and to the tailless
anthropoid apes, and from these direct to man, is now uninterrupted
and clear. It would be more plausible to speak of missing links
between the earliest lemurs and their marsupial ancestors, or
between the latter and their monotreme ancestors. But even these
gaps are unimportant, because comparative anatomy and embryology,
with the support of paleontology, have dissipated all doubt as
to the _unity of the mammalian stem_. It is ridiculous to expect
paleontology to furnish an unbroken series of positive data, when
we remember how scanty and imperfect its material is.
I cannot go further here into the interesting recent research in
regard to special aspects of our simian descent; nor would it
greatly advance our object, because all the general conclusions as
to man's primate descent remain intact, whichever way we construct
hypothetically the special lines of simian evolution. On the other
hand, it is interesting for us to see how the most recent form of
Darwinism, so happily described by Escherich as "ecclesiastical
evolution," stands in regard to these great questions. What does
its astutest representative, Father Erich Wasmann, say about
them? The tenth chapter of his work, in which he deals at length
with "the application of the theory of evolution to man," is a
masterpiece of Jesuitical science, calculated to throw the clearest
truths into such confusion and so to misrepresent all discoveries
as to prevent any reader from forming a clear idea of them. When
we compare this tenth chapter with the ninth, in which Wasmann
represents the theory of evolution as an irresistible truth on the
strength of his own able studies, we can hardly believe that they
both came from the same pen--or, rather, we can only understand
when we recollect the rule of the Jesuit Congregation: "The end
justifies the means." Untruth is permitted and meritorious in the
service of God and his Church.
The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann employs in order to save
man's unique position in Nature, and to prove that he was
immediately created by God, culminates in the antithesis of
his two natures. The "purely zoological conception of man,"
which has been established beyond question by the anatomical and
embryological comparison with the ape, is said to fail because it
does not take into account the chief feature, his "mental life."
It is "psychology that is best fitted to deal with the nature and
origin of man." All the facts of anatomy and embryology that I
have gathered together in my _Evolution of Man_ in proof of the
series of his ancestors are either ignored or misconstrued and
made ridiculous by Wasmann. The same is done with the instructive
facts of anthropology, especially the rudimentary organs, which
Robert Wiedersheim has quoted in his _Man's Structure as a
Witness to his Past_. It is clear that the Jesuit writer lacks
competence in this department; that he has only a superficial and
inadequate acquaintance with comparative anatomy and embryology. If
Wasmann had studied the morphology and physiology of the mammals
as thoroughly as those of the ants, he would have concluded,
if he were impartial, that it is just as necessary to admit a
monophyletic (or single) origin for the former as for the latter.
If, in Wasmann's opinion, the 4,000 species of ants form a single
"natural system"--that is to say, descend from one original
species--it is just as necessary to admit the same hypothesis for
the 6,000 (2,400 living and 3,600 fossil) species of mammals,
including the human species.
The severe strictures that I have passed on the sophisms and
trickery of this "ecclesiastical evolution" are not directed
against the person and the character of Father Wasmann, but the
Jesuitical system which he represents. I do not doubt that this
able naturalist (who is personally unknown to me) has written his
book in good faith, and has an honourable ambition to reconcile the
irreconcilable contradictions between natural evolution and the
story of supernatural creation. But this reconciliation of reason
and superstition is only possible at the price of a sacrifice
of the reason itself. We find this in the case of all the other
Jesuits--Fathers Cathrein, Braun, Besmer, Cornet, Linsmeier, and
Muckermann--whose ambiguous "Jesuitical science" is aptly dealt
with in the article of R. H. Francé that I mentioned before (No. 22
of the _Freie Wort_, 16th February, 1904, Frankfort).
This interesting attempt of Father Wasmann's does not stand alone.
Signs are multiplying that the Church militant is about to enter on
a systematic campaign. I heard from Vienna on the 17th of February,
that on the previous day (which happened to be my birthday), a
Jesuit, Father Giese, had, in a well-received address, admitted
not only evolution in general, but even its application to man,
and declared it to be reconcilable with Catholic dogmas--and this
at a crowded meeting of "catechists"! It is important to note that
in a new Catholic cyclopædia, Benziger's _Library of Science_,
the first three volumes (issued at Einsiedeln and Cologne, 1904)
deal very fully and ably with the chief problems of evolution: the
first with the formation of the earth, the second with spontaneous
generation, the third with the theory of descent. The author of
them, Father M. Gander, makes most remarkable concessions to our
theory, and endeavours to show that they are not inconsistent
with the Bible or the dogmatic treatises of the chief fathers
and schoolmen. But, though there is a profuse expenditure of
sophistical logic in these Jesuitical efforts, Gander will hardly
succeed in misleading thoughtful people. One of his characteristic
positions is that spontaneous generation (as the development
of organised living things by purely material processes) is
inconceivable, but that it might be made possible "by a special
Divine arrangement." In regard to the descent of man from other
animals (which he grants), he makes the reserve that the soul must
in any case have been produced by a special creative act.
It would be useless to go through the innumerable fallacies
and untruths of these modern Jesuits in detail, and point out
the rational and scientific reply. The vast power of this most
dangerous religious congregation consists precisely in its device
of accepting one part of science in order to destroy the other part
more effectively with it. Their masterly act of sophistry, their
equivocal "probabilism," their mendacious "reservatio mentalis,"
the principle that the higher aim sanctifies the worst means, the
pernicious casuistry of Liguori and Gury, the cynicism with which
they turn the holiest principles to the gratification of their
ambition, have impressed on the Jesuits that black character that
Carl Hoensbroech has so well exposed recently.
The great dangers that menace real science, owing to this smuggling
into it of the Jesuitical spirit, must not be undervalued. They
have been well pointed out by Francé, Escherich, and others.
They are all the greater in Germany at the present time, as the
Government and the Reichstag are working together to prepare the
way for the Jesuits, and to yield a most pernicious influence
on the school to these deadly enemies of the free spirit of
the country. However, we will hope that this clerical reaction
represents only a passing episode in modern history. We trust that
one permanent result of it will be the recognition, in principle,
even by the Jesuits, of the great idea of evolution. We may then
rest assured that its most important consequence, the descent of
man from other primate forms, will press on victoriously, and soon
be recognised as a beneficent and helpful truth.
CHAPTER III
THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE SOUL
THE IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY AND GOD
EXPLANATION OF PLATE III
EMBRYOS OF THREE MAMMALS AT THREE CORRESPONDING STAGES OF DEVELOPMENT
The embryos of man (M), the anthropoid ape (gibbon, G), and
the bat (rhinolophus, B) can hardly be distinguished in the
earlier stage (the upper row), although the five cerebral
vesicles, the gill-clefts, and the three higher sense-organs
are already visible. On the curved dorsal surface we see the
sections of the primitive vertebræ. Even later, when the two
pairs of limbs have appeared in the form of roundish fins (the
middle row), the differences are not great. It is not until
a further development of the limbs and head has taken place
(lowest row) that the characteristic forms are clearly seen. It
is particularly notable that the primitive brain, the organ of
the mind, with its five cerebral vesicles, is the same in all.
PLATE III.
[Illustration: EMBRYOS OF THREE MAMMALS
(_At three corresponding stages of development_).
B = BAT (Rhinolophus) G = GIBBON (Hylobates) M = MAN (Homo)]
CHAPTER III
THE CONTROVERSY OVER THE SOUL
THE IDEAS OF IMMORTALITY AND GOD
Though it was my original intention to deliver only two lectures, I
have been moved by several reasons to add a supplementary one. In
the first place, I notice with regret that I have been compelled
by pressure of time to leave untouched in my earlier lectures, or
to treat very inadequately, several important points in my theme;
there is, in particular, the very important question of the nature
of the soul. In the second place, I have been convinced by the
many contradictory press-notices during the last few days that
many of my incomplete observations have been misunderstood or
misinterpreted. And, thirdly, it seemed advisable to give a brief
and clear summary of the whole subject in this farewell lecture,
to take a short survey of the past, present, and future of the
theory of evolution, and especially its relation to the three great
questions of personal immortality, the freedom of the will, and the
personality of God.
I must claim the reader's patience and indulgence even to a greater
extent than in the previous chapters, as the subject is one of the
most difficult and obscure that the human mind approaches. I have
dealt at length in my recent works, _The Riddle of the Universe_
and _The Wonders of Life_, with the controversial questions of
biology that I treat cursorily here. But I would like to put before
you now, in a general survey, the powerful arguments that modern
science employs against the prevailing superstition in regard to
evolution, and to show that the Monistic system throws a clear
light on the great questions of God and the world, the soul and
life.
In the previous chapters I have tried to give a general idea of
the present state of the theory of evolution and its victorious
struggle with the older legend of creation. We have seen that
even the most advanced organism, man, was not brought into being
by a creative act, but gradually developed from a long series of
mammal ancestors. We also saw that the most man-like mammals,
the anthropoid apes, have substantially the same structure as
man, and that the evolution of the latter from the former can
now be regarded as a fully established hypothesis, or, rather,
an historical fact. But in this study we had in view mainly the
structure of the body and its various organs. We touched very
briefly on the evolution of the human mind, or the immaterial
soul that dwells in the body for a time, according to a venerable
tradition. To-day we turn chiefly to the development of the soul,
and consider whether man's mental development is controlled by
the same natural laws as that of his body, and whether it also is
inseparably bound up with that of the rest of the mammals.
At the very threshold of this difficult province we encounter
the curious fact that there are two radically distinct tendencies
in psychology at our universities to-day. On one side we have the
metaphysical and professional psychologists. They still cling
to the older view that man's soul is a special entity, a unique
independent individuality, which dwells for a time only in the
mortal frame, leaving it and living on as an immortal spirit after
death. This dualistic theory is connected with the doctrine of
most religions, and owes its high authority to the fact that it is
associated with the most important ethical, social, and practical
interests. Plato gave prominence to the idea of the immortality of
the soul in philosophy long ago. Descartes at a later date gave
emphasis to it by ascribing a true soul to man alone and refusing
it to the animals.
This metaphysical psychology, which ruled alone for a considerable
period, began to be opposed in the eighteenth, and still more in
the nineteenth, century by _comparative psychology_. An impartial
comparison of the psychic processes in the higher and lower animals
proved that there were numerous transitions and gradations. A long
series of intermediate stages connects the psychic life of the
higher animals with that of man on the one side, and that of the
lower animals on the other. There was no such thing as a sharp
dividing line, as Descartes supposed.
But the greatest blow was dealt at the predominant metaphysical
conception of the life of the soul thirty years ago by the
new methods of _psychophysics_. By means of a series of able
experiments the physiologists, Theodor Fechner and Ernst Heinrich
Weber of Leipsic, showed that an important part of the mental
activity can be measured and expressed in mathematical formulæ
just as well as other physiological processes, such as muscular
contractions. Thus the laws of physics control a part of the
life of the soul just as absolutely as they do the phenomena of
inorganic nature. It is true that psychophysics has only partially
realised the very high expectations that were entertained in regard
to its Monistic significance; but the fact remains that a part of
the mental life is just as unconditionally ruled by physical laws
as any other natural phenomena.
Thus _physiological psychology_ was raised by psychophysics to
the rank of a physical and, in principle, exact science. But it
had already obtained solid foundations in other provinces of
biology. Comparative psychology had traced connectedly the long
gradation from man to the higher animals, from these to the lower,
and so on down to the very lowest. At the lowest stage it found
those remarkable beings, invisible with the naked eye, that were
discovered in stagnant water everywhere after the invention of
the microscope (in the second half of the seventeenth century)
and called "infusoria." They were first accurately described and
classified by Gottfried Ehrenberg, the famous Berlin microscopist.
In 1838 he published a large and beautiful work, illustrating on
64 folio pages the whole realm of microscopic life; and this is
still the base of all studies of the protists. Ehrenberg was a very
ardent and imaginative observer, and succeeded in communicating
his zeal for the study of microscopic organisms to his pupils. I
still recall with pleasure the stimulating excursions that I made
fifty years ago (in the summer of 1854) with my teacher, Ehrenberg,
and a few other pupils--including my student-friend, Ferdinand von
Richthofen, the famous geographer--to the Zoological Gardens at
Berlin. Equipped with fine nets and small glasses, we fished in
the ponds of the Zoological Gardens and in the Spree, and caught
thousands of invisible micro-organisms, which then richly rewarded
our curiosity by the beautiful forms and mysterious movements they
disclosed under the microscope.
The way in which Ehrenberg explained to us the structure and the
vital movements of his infusoria was very curious. Misled by the
comparison of the real infusoria with the microscopic but highly
organised rotifers, he had formed the idea that all animals are
alike advanced in organisation, and had indicated this erroneous
theory in the very title of his work: _The Infusoria as Perfect
Organisms: a Glance at the Deeper Life of Organic Nature_. He
thought he could detect in the simplest infusoria the same distinct
organs as in the higher animals--stomach, heart, ovaries, kidneys,
muscles, and nerves--and he interpreted their psychic life on the
same peculiar principle of equally advanced organisation.
Ehrenberg's theory of life was entirely wrong, and was radically
destroyed in the hour of its birth (1838) by the cell-theory which
was then formulated, and to which he never became reconciled. Once
Matthias Schleiden had shown the composition of all the plants,
tissues, and organs from microscopic cells, the last structural
elements of the living organism, and Theodor Schwann had done the
same for the animal body, the theory attained such an importance
that Kölliker and Leydig based on it the modern science of tissues,
or histology, and Virchow constructed his cellular pathology by
applying it to diseased human beings. These are the most important
advances of theoretical medicine. But it was still a long time
before the difficult question of the relation of these microscopic
beings to the cell was answered. Carl Theodor von Siebold had
already maintained (in 1845) that the real infusoria and the
closely related rhizopods were _unicellular organisms_, and had
distinguished these _protozoa_ from the rest of the animals.
At the same time, Carl Naegeli had described the lowest algæ
as "unicellular plants." But this important conception was not
generally admitted until some time afterwards, especially after I
brought all the unicellular organisms under the head of "protists"
(1872), and defined their psychic functions as the "cell-soul."
I was led to make a very close study of these unicellular
protists and their primitive cell-soul through my research on the
radiolaria, a very remarkable class of microscopic organisms that
float in the sea. I was engaged most of my time for more than
thirty of the best years of my life (1856-87) in studying them
in every aspect, and if I came eventually to adopt a strictly
Monistic attitude on all the great questions of biology, I owe it
for the most part to my innumerable observations and uninterrupted
reflections on the wonderful vital movements that are disclosed by
these smallest and frailest, and at the same time most beautiful
and varied, of living things.
I had undertaken the study of the radiolaria as a kind of souvenir
of my great master, Johannes Müller. He had loved to study these
animals (of which only a few species were discovered for the first
time in the year of my birth, 1834) in the last years of his
life, and had in 1855 set up the special group of the rhizopods
(protozoa). His last work, which appeared shortly after his death
(1858), and contained a description of 50 species of radiolaria,
went with me to the Mediterranean when I made my first long voyage
in the summer of 1859. I was so fortunate as to discover about 150
new species of radiolaria at Messina, and based on these my first
monograph of this very instructive class of protists (1862). I
had no suspicion at that time that fifteen years afterwards the
deep-sea finds of the famous _Challenger_ expedition would bring
to light an incalculable wealth of these remarkable animals. In my
second monograph on them (1887), I was able to describe more than
4,000 different species of radiolaria, and illustrate most of them
on 140 plates. I have given a selection of the prettiest forms on
ten plates of my _Art-forms in Nature_.
I have not space here to go into the forms and vital movements of
the radiolaria, of the general import of which my friend, Wilhelm
Bölsche, has given a very attractive account in his various
popular works. I must restrict myself to pointing out the general
phenomena that bear upon our particular subject, the question of
the mind. The pretty flinty skeletons of the radiolaria, which
enclose and protect the soft unicellular body, are remarkable, not
only for their extraordinary gracefulness and beauty, but also
for the geometrical regularity and relative constancy of their
forms. The 4,000 species of radiolaria are just as constant as the
4,000 known species of ants; and, as the Darwinian Jesuit, Father
Wasmann, has convinced himself that the latter have all descended
by transformation from a common stem-form, I have concluded on the
same principles that the 4,000 species of radiolaria have developed
from a primitive form in virtue of adaptation and heredity. This
primitive form, the stem-radiolarian (_Actissa_) is a simple round
cell, the soft living protoplasmic body of which is divided into
two different parts, an inner central capsule (in the middle of
which is the solid round nucleus) and an outer gelatinous envelope
(_calymma_). From the outer surface of the latter, hundreds and
thousands of fine plasmic threads radiate; these are mobile and
sensitive processes of the living internal substance, the plasm (or
protoplasm). These delicate microscopic threads, or pseudopodia,
are the curious organs that effect the sensations (of touch),
the locomotion (by pushing), and the orderly construction of the
flinty house; at the same time, they maintain the nourishment of
the unicellular body, by seizing infusoria, diatoms, and other
protists, and drawing them within the plasmic body, where they
are digested and assimilated. The radiolaria generally reproduce
by the formation of spores. The nucleus within the protoplasmic
globule divides into two small nuclei, each of which surrounds
itself with a quantity of plasm, and forms a new cell.
What is this plasm? What is this mysterious "living substance"
that we find everywhere as the material foundation of the "wonders
of life"? Plasm, or protoplasm, is, as Huxley rightly said
thirty years ago, "the physical basis of organic life"; to speak
more precisely, it is a chemical compound of carbon that alone
accomplishes the various processes of life. In its simplest form
the living cell is merely a soft globule of plasm, containing
a firmer nucleus. The inner nuclear matter (called caryoplasm)
differs somewhat in chemical composition from the outer cellular
matter (or cytoplasm); but both substances are composed of carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur; both belong to the
remarkable group of the albuminates, the nitrogenous carbonates
that are distinguished for the extraordinary size of their
molecules and the unstable arrangement of the numerous atoms (more
than a thousand) that compose them.
There are, however, still simpler organisms in which the nucleus
and the body of the cell have not yet been differentiated. These
are the _monera_, the whole living body of which is merely a
homogeneous particle of plasm (the chromacea and bacteria). The
well-known bacteria which now play so important a part as the
causes of most dangerous infectious diseases, and the agents of
putrefaction, fermentation, etc., show very clearly that organic
life is only a chemical and physical process, and not the outcome
of a mysterious "vital force."
We see this still more clearly in our radiolaria, and at the same
time they show us unmistakably that even the psychic activity is
such a physico-chemical process. All the different functions of
their cell-soul, the sense-perception of stimuli, the movement
of their plasm, their nutrition, growth, and reproduction, are
determined by the particular chemical composition of each of the
4,000 species; and they have all descended, in virtue of adaptation
and heredity, from the common stem-form of the naked, round
parent-radiolarian (_Actissa_).
We may instance, as a peculiarly interesting fact in the psychic
life of the unicellular radiolaria, the extraordinary power of
memory in them. The relative constancy with which the 4,000
species transmit the orderly and often very complex form of their
protective flinty structure from generation to generation can
only be explained by admitting in the builders, the invisible
plasma-molecules of the pseudopodia, a fine "plastic sense of
distance," and a tenacious recollection of the architectural
power of their fathers. The fine, formless plasma-threads are
always building afresh the same delicate flinty shells with an
artistic trellis-work, and with protective radiating needles
and supports always at the same points of their surface. The
physiologist, Ewald Hering (of Leipsic), had spoken in 1870 of
memory as "a general function of organised matter." I myself had
tried to explain the molecular features of heredity by the memory
of the plasma-molecules, in my essay on "The Perigenesis of the
Plastidules" (1875). Recently one of the ablest of my pupils,
Professor Richard Semon (of Munich, 1904), made a profound study
of "Mneme as the principle of constancy in the changes of organic
phenomena," and reduced the mechanical process of reproduction to a
purely physiological base.
From the cell-soul and its memory in the radiolaria and other
unicellular protists, we pass directly to the similar phenomenon in
the ovum, the unicellular starting-point of the individual life,
from which the complex multicellular frame of all the histona, or
tissue-forming animals and plants, is developed. Even the human
organism is at first a simple nucleated globule of plasm, about
1/125 inch in diameter, barely visible to the naked eye as a tiny
point. This stem-cell (_cytula_) is formed at the moment when the
ovum is fertilised, or mingled with the small male spermatozoon.
The ovum transmits to the child by heredity the personal traits of
the mother, the sperm-cell those of the father; and this hereditary
transmission extends to the finest characteristics of the soul as
well as of the body. The modern research as to heredity, which
occupies so much space now in biological literature, but was only
started by Darwin in 1859, is directed immediately to the visible
material processes of impregnation.
The very interesting and important phenomena of impregnation have
only been known to us in detail for thirty years. It has been
shown conclusively, after a number of delicate investigations,
that the individual development of the embryo from the stem-cell
or fertilised ovum is controlled by the same laws in all cases.
The stem-cell divides and subdivides rapidly into a number of
simple cells. From these a few simple organs, the germinal layers,
are formed at first; later on the various organs, of which there
is no trace in the early embryo, are built up out of these. The
biogenetic law teaches us how, in this development, the original
features of the ancestral history are reproduced or recapitulated
in the embryonic processes; and these facts in turn can only be
explained by the unconscious memory of the plasm, the "_mneme_ of
the living substance" in the germ-cells, and especially in their
nuclei.
One important result of these modern discoveries was the prominence
given to the fact that the personal soul has a beginning of
existence, and that we can determine the precise moment in which
this takes place; it is when the parent cells, the ovum and
spermatozoon, coalesce. Hence what we call the soul of man or the
animal has not pre-existed, but begins its career at the moment of
impregnation; it is bound up with the chemical constitution of the
plasm, which is the material vehicle of heredity in the nucleus of
the maternal ovum and the paternal spermatozoon. One cannot see how
a being that thus has a beginning of existence can afterwards prove
to be "immortal."
Further, a candid examination of the simple cell-soul in the
unicellular infusoria, and of the dawn of the individual soul in
the unicellular germ of man and the higher animals, proves at once
that psychic action does not necessarily postulate a fully formed
nervous system, as was previously believed. There is no such system
in many of the lower animals, or any of the plants, yet we find
psychic activities, especially sensation, irritability, and reflex
action everywhere. All living plasm has a psychic life, and in this
sense the psyche is a partial function of organic life generally.
But the higher psychic functions, particularly the phenomena of
consciousness, only appear gradually in the higher animals, in
which (in consequence of a division of labour among the organs) the
nervous system has assumed these functions.
It is particularly interesting to glance at the central nervous
system of the vertebrates, the great stem of which we regard
ourselves as the crowning point. Here again the anatomical and
embryological facts speak a clear and unambiguous language. In all
vertebrates, from the lowest fishes up to man, the psychic organ
makes its appearance in the embryo in the same form--a simple
cylindrical tube on the dorsal side of the embryonic body, in
the middle line. The anterior section of this "medullary tube"
expands into a club-shaped vesicle, which is the beginning of
the brain; the posterior and thinner section becomes the spinal
cord. The cerebral vesicle divides, by transverse constrictions,
into three, then four, and eventually five vesicles. The most
important of these is the first, the _cerebrum_, the organ of
the highest psychic functions. The more the intelligence develops
in the higher vertebrates, the larger, more voluminous, and more
specialised does the cerebrum become. In particular, the grey
mantle or cortex of the cerebrum, its most important part, only
attains in the higher mammals the degree of quantitative and
qualitative development that qualifies it to be the "organ of mind"
in the narrower sense. Through the famous discoveries of Paul
Flechsig eleven years ago we were enabled to distinguish eight
fields in the cortex, four of which serve as the internal centres
of sense-perception, and the four that lie between these are the
thought-centres (or association-centres) of the higher psychic
faculties--the association of impressions, the formation of ideas
and concepts, induction and deduction. This real organ of mind, the
_phronema_, is not yet developed in the lower mammals. It is only
gradually built up in the more advanced, exactly in proportion as
their intelligence increases. It is only in the most intelligent
forms of the placentals, the higher ungulates (horse, elephant),
the carnivores (fox, dog), and especially the primates, that the
phronema attains the high grade of development that leads us from
the anthropoid apes direct to the savage, and from him to civilised
man.
We have learned a good deal about the special significance of the
various parts of the brain, as organs of specific functions, by the
progress of the modern science of experimental physiology. Careful
experiments by Goltz, Munk, Bernard, and many other physiologists,
have shown that the normal consciousness, speech, and the internal
sense-perceptions, are connected with definite areas of the cortex,
and that these various _parts of the soul_ are destroyed when
the organic areas connected with them are injured. But in this
respect Nature has unconsciously given us the most instructive
experiments. Diseases in these various areas show how their
functions are partially or totally extinguished when the cerebral
cells that compose them (the _neurona_ or ganglionic cells) are
partially or entirely destroyed. Here again Virchow, who was the
first to make a careful microscopic study of the finest changes in
the diseased cells, and so explain the nature of the disease, did
pioneer work. I still remember very well a spectacle of this kind
(in the summer of 1855, at Würzburg), which made a deep impression
on me. Virchow's sharp eye had detected a small suspicious spot
in the cerebrum of a lunatic, though there seemed to be nothing
remarkable about it on superficial examination. He handed it to me
for microscopic examination, and I found that a large number of the
ganglionic cells were affected, partly by fatty degeneration and
partly by calcification. The luminous remarks that my great teacher
made on these and similar finds in other cases of mental disorder,
confirmed my conviction of the unity of the human organism and
the inseparable connection of mind and body, which he himself
at that time expressly shared. When he abandoned this Monistic
conception of the psychic life for Dualism and Mysticism twenty
years afterwards (especially after his Munich speech in 1877), we
must attribute this partly to his psychological metamorphosis,
and partly to the political motives of which I spoke in the last
chapter.
We find another series of strong arguments in favour of our
Monistic psychology in the individual development of the soul in
the child and the young animal. We know that the new-born child
has as yet no consciousness, no intelligence, no independent
judgment and thought. We follow the gradual development of these
higher faculties step by step in the first years of life, in
strict proportion to the anatomical development of the cortex
with which they are bound up. The inquiries into the child-soul
which Wilhelm Preyer began in Jena twenty-five years ago, his
careful "observations of the mental development of man in his early
years," and the supplementary research of several more recent
physiologists, have shown, from the ontogenetic side, that the soul
is not a special immaterial entity, but the sum-total of a number
of connected functions of the brain. When the brain dies, the soul
comes to an end.
We have further proof in the stem-history of the soul, which we
gather from the comparative psychology of the lower and higher
mammals, and of savage and civilised races. Modern ethnography
shows us in actual existence the various stages through which the
mind rose to its present height. The most primitive races, such as
the Veddahs of Ceylon, or the Australian natives, are very little
above the mental life of the anthropoid apes. From the higher
savages we pass by a complete gradation of stages to the most
civilised races. But what a gulf there is, even here, between
the genius of a Goethe, a Darwin, or a Lamarck, and an ordinary
philisthine or third-rate official. All these facts point to one
conclusion: the human soul has only reached its present height by
a long period of gradual evolution; it differs in degree, not in
kind, from the soul of the higher mammals; and thus it cannot in
any case be immortal.
That a large number of educated people still cling to the dogma of
personal immortality in spite of these luminous proofs, is owing to
the great power of conservative tradition and the evil methods of
instruction that stamp these untenable dogmas deep on the growing
mind in early years. It is for that very reason that the Churches
strive to keep the schools under their power at any cost; they can
control and exploit the adults at will, if independent thought and
judgment have been stifled in the earlier years.
This brings us to the interesting question: What is the position of
the "ecclesiastical evolution" of the Jesuits (the "latest course
of Darwinism"), as regards this great question of the soul? Man is,
according to Wasmann, the image of God and a unique, immaterial
being, differing from all other animals in the possession of an
immortal soul, and therefore having a totally different origin from
them. Man's immortal soul is, according to this Jesuit sophistry,
"spiritual and sensitive," while the animal soul is sensitive only.
God has implanted his own spirit in man, and associated it with
an animal soul for the period of life. It is true that Wasmann
believes even man's body to have been created directly by God;
but, in view of the overwhelming proofs of our animal descent, he
leaves open the possibility of a development from a series of other
animals, in which case the Divine spirit would be breathed into him
in the end. The Christian Fathers, who were much occupied with the
introduction of the soul into the human embryo, tell us that the
immortal soul enters the soulless embryo on the fortieth day after
conception in the case of the boy, and on the eightieth day in the
case of the girl. If Wasmann supposes that there was a similar
introduction of the soul in the development of the race, he must
postulate a moment in the history of the anthropoid apes when God
sent his spirit into the hitherto unspiritual soul of the ape.
When we look at the matter impartially in the light of pure reason,
the belief in immortality is wholly inconsistent with the facts of
evolution and of physiology. The ontogenetic dogma of the older
Church, that the soul is introduced into the soulless body at a
particular moment of its embryonic development, is just as absurd
as the phylogenetic dogma of the most modern Jesuits, that the
Divine spirit was breathed into the frame of an anthropoid ape at
a certain period (in the Tertiary period), and so converted it
into an immortal soul. We may examine and test this belief as we
will, we can find in it nothing but a piece of mystic superstition.
It is maintained solely by the great power of tradition and the
support of Conservative governments, the leaders of which have no
personal belief in these "revelations," but cling to the practical
conviction that throne and altar must support each other. They
unfortunately overlook the circumstance that the throne is apt
to become merely the footstool to the altar, and that the Church
exploits the State for its own, not the State's, good.
We learn further, from the history of this dogma, that the
belief in immortality did not find its way into science until a
comparatively late date. It is not found in the great Monistic
natural philosophers who, six centuries before the time of Christ,
evinced a profound insight into the real nature of the world. It
is not found in Democritus and Empedocles, in Seneca and Lucretius
Carus. It is not found in the older Oriental religions, Buddhism,
the ancient religion of the Chinese, or Confucianism; in fact,
there is no question of individual persistence after death in
the Pentateuch or the earlier books of the Old Testament (which
were written before the Babylonian Exile). It was Plato and his
pupil, Aristotle, that found a place for it in their dualistic
metaphysics; and its agreement with the Christian and Mohammedan
teaching secured for it a very widespread acceptance.
Another psychological dogma, the belief in man's free-will, is
equally inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern physiology
shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or in the
animal, but determined by the organisation of the brain; this in
turn is determined in its individual character by the laws of
heredity and the influence of the environment. It is only because
the _apparent_ freedom of the will has such a great practical
significance in the province of religion, morality, sociology, and
law, that it still forms the subject of the most contradictory
claims. Theoretically, determinism, or the doctrine of the
necessary character of our volitions, was established long ago.
With the belief in the absolute freedom of the will and the
personal immortality of the soul is associated, in the minds of
many highly educated people, a third article of faith, the belief
in a personal God. It is well known that this belief, often wrongly
represented as an indispensable foundation of religion, assumes
the most widely varied shapes. As a rule, however, it is an open
or covert anthropomorphism. God is conceived as the "Supreme
Being," but turns out, on closer examination, to be an idealised
man. According to the Mosaic narrative, "God made man to his own
image and likeness," but it is usually the reverse; "Man made
God according to his own image and likeness." This idealised man
becomes creator and architect and produces the world, forming the
various species of plants and animals like a modeller, governing
the world like a wise and all-powerful monarch, and, at the "Last
Judgment," rewarding the good and punishing the wicked like a
rigorous judge. The childish conceptions of this extramundane God,
who is set over against the world as an independent being, the
personal creator, maintainer, and ruler of all things, are quite
incompatible with the advanced science of the nineteenth century,
especially with its two greatest triumphs, the law of substance and
the law of Monistic evolution.
Critical philosophy, moreover, long ago pronounced its doom. In
the first place, the most famous critical thinker, Immanuel Kant,
proved in his _Critique of Pure Reason_ that absolute science
affords no support to the three central dogmas of metaphysics,
the personal God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom
of the will. It is true that he afterwards (in the course of his
dualistic and dogmatic metamorphosis) taught that we must _believe_
these three great mystic forces, and that they are indispensable
postulates of practical reason; and that the latter must take
precedence over pure reason. Modern German philosophy, which
clamours for a "return to Kant," sees his chief distinction in this
impossible reconciliation of polar contradictions. The Churches,
and the ruling powers in alliance with them, accord a welcome to
this diametrical contradiction, recognised by all candid readers of
the Königsberg philosopher, between the two reasons. They use the
confusion that results for the purpose of putting the light of the
creeds in the darkness of doubting reason, and imagine that they
save religion in this way.
Whilst we are engaged with the important subject of religion, we
must refute the charge, often made, and renewed of recent years,
that our Monistic philosophy and the theory of evolution that
forms its chief foundation destroy religion. It is only opposed
to those lower forms of religion that are based on superstition
and ignorance, and would hold man's reason in bondage by empty
formalism and belief in the miraculous, in order to control it
for political purposes. This is chiefly the case with Romanism
or Ultramontanism, that pitiful caricature of pure Christianity
that still plays so important a part in the world. Luther would
turn in his grave if he could see the predominance of the Roman
Centre party in the German Empire to-day. We find the papacy, the
deadly enemy of Protestant Germany, controlling its destiny, and
the Reichstag submitting willingly to be led by the Jesuits. Not
a voice do we hear raised in it against the three most dangerous
and mischievous institutions of Romanism--the obligatory celibacy
of the clergy, the confessional, and indulgences. Though these
later institutions of the Roman Church have nothing to do with the
original teaching of the Church and pure Christianity; though their
immoral consequences, so prejudicial to the life of the family and
the State, are known to all, they exist just as they did before the
Reformation. Unfortunately, many German princes foster the ambition
of the Roman clergy, making their "Canossa-journey" to Rome, and
bending the knee to the great charlatan at the Vatican.
It is also very regrettable that the increasing tendency to
external show and festive parade at what is called "the new court"
does grave injury to real and inner religion. We have a striking
instance of this external religion in the new cathedral at Berlin,
which many would have us regard as "Catholic," not Protestant
and Evangelical. I often met in India priests and pilgrims who
believed they were pleasing their God by turning prayer-wheels, or
setting up prayer-mills that were set in motion by the wind. One
might utilise the modern invention of automatic machines for the
same purposes, and set up praying automata in the new cathedral,
or indulgence-machines that would give relief from lighter sins
for one mark [shilling], and from graver sins for twenty marks. It
would prove a great source of revenue to the Church, especially if
similar machines were set up in the other churches that have lately
been erected in Berlin at a cost of millions of marks. It would
have been better to have spent the money on schools.
These observations on the more repellent characters of modern
orthodoxy and piety may be taken as some reply to the sharp attacks
to which I have been exposed for forty years, and which have lately
been renewed with great violence. The spokesmen of Catholic and
Evangelical beliefs, especially the Romanist _Germania_ and the
Lutheran _Reichsbote_, have vied with each other in deploring my
lectures as "a desecration of this venerable hall," and in damning
my theory of evolution--without, of course, making any attempt
to repute its scientific truth. They have, in their Christian
charity, thought fit to put sandwich-men at the doors of this room,
to distribute scurrilous attacks on my person and my teaching to
those who enter. They have made a generous use of the fanatical
calumnies that the court chaplain, Stöcker, the theologian, Loofs,
the philologist, Dennert, and other opponents of my _Riddle of the
Universe_, have disseminated, and to which I make a brief reply at
the end of that work. I pass by the many untruths of these zealous
protagonists of theology. We men of science have a different
conception of truth from that which prevails in ecclesiastical
circles.[10]
As regards the relation of science to Christianity, I will only
point out that it is quite irreconcilable with the mystic and
supernatural Christian beliefs, but that it fully recognises the
high ethical value of Christian morality. It is true that the
highest commands of the Christian religion, especially those of
sympathy and brotherly love, are not discoveries of its own; the
golden rule was taught and practised centuries before the time of
Christ. However, Christianity has the distinction of preaching
and developing it with a fresh force. In its time it has had a
beneficial influence on the development of civilisation, though
in the Middle Ages the Roman Church became, with its Inquisition,
its witch-drowning, its burning of heretics, and its religious
wars, the bloodiest caricature of the gentle religion of love.
Orthodox _historical_ Christianity is not directly destroyed by
modern science, but by its own learned and zealous theologians.
The enlightened Protestantism that was so effectively advocated
by Schleiermacher in Berlin eighty years ago, the later works of
Feuerbach, the inquiries into the life of Jesus of David Strauss
and Ernest Renan, the lectures recently delivered here by Delitzsch
and Harnack, have left very little of what strict orthodoxy regards
as the indispensable foundations of historical Christianity.
Kalthoff, of Bremen, goes so far as to declare that all Christian
traditions are myths, and that the development of Christianity is a
necessary outcome of the civilisation of the time.
In view of this broadening tendency in theology and philosophy
at the beginning of the twentieth century, it is an unfortunate
anachronism that the Ministers of Public Instruction of Prussia and
Bavaria sail in the wake of the Catholic Church, and seek to instil
the spirit of the Jesuits in both lower and higher education. It
is only a few weeks since the Prussian Minister of Worship made a
dangerous attempt to suppress academic freedom, the palladium of
mental life in Germany. This increasing reaction recalls the sad
days of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when thousands
of the finest citizens of Germany migrated to North America, in
order to develop their mental powers in a free atmosphere. This
selective process formed a blessing to the United States, but it
was certainly very injurious to Germany. Large numbers of weak
and servile characters and sycophants were thus favoured. The
fossilised ideas of many of our leading jurists seem to take us
back sometimes to the Cretaceous and Jurassic periods, while the
palæozoic rhetoric of our theologians and synods even goes back to
the Permian and Carboniferous epochs.
However, we must not take too seriously the anxiety that this
increasing political and clerical reaction causes us. We must
remember the vast resources of civilisation that are seen to-day in
our enormous international intercourse, and must have confidence
in the helpful exchange of ideas between east and west that is
being effected daily by our means of transit. Even in Germany
the darkness that now prevails will at length give place to the
dazzling light of the sun. Nothing, in my opinion, will contribute
more to that end than the unconditional victory of the idea of
evolution.
Beside the law of evolution, and closely connected with it, we have
that great triumph of modern science, the law of substance--the
law of the conservation of matter (Lavoisier, 1789), and of the
conservation of energy (Robert Mayer, 1842). These two laws are
irreconcilable with the three central dogmas of metaphysics,
which so many educated people still regard as the most precious
treasures of their spiritual life--the belief in a personal God,
the personal immortality of the soul, and the liberty of the human
will. But these great objects of belief, so intimately bound up
with numbers of our treasured achievements and institutions, are
not on that account driven out of the world. They merely cease
to pose as truths in the realm of pure science. As imaginative
creations, they retain a certain value in the world of poetry.
Here they will not only, as they have done hitherto, furnish
thousands of the finest and most lofty motives for every branch of
art--sculpture, painting, or music--but they will still have a high
ethical and social value in the education of the young and in the
organisation of society. Just as we derive artistic and ethical
inspiration from the legends of classical antiquity (such as the
Hercules myth, the _Odyssey_ and the _Iliad_) and the story of
William Tell, so we will continue to do in regard to the stories of
the Christian mythology. But we must do the same with the poetical
conceptions of other religions, which have given the most varied
forms to the transcendental ideas of God, freedom, and immortality.
Thus the noble warmth of art will remain, together with--not in
opposition to, but in harmony with--the splendid light of science,
one of the most precious possessions of the human mind. As Goethe
said: "He who has science and art has religion; he who has not
these two had better have religion." Our Monistic system, the
"connecting link between religion and science," brings God and the
world into unity in the sense that Goethe willed, the sense that
Spinoza clearly expressed long ago and Giordano Bruno had sealed
with his martyrdom. It has been said repeatedly of late that Goethe
was an orthodox Christian. A few years ago a young orator quoted
him in support of the wonderful dogmas of the Christian religion.
We may point out that Goethe himself expressly said he was "a
decided non-Christian." The "great heathen of Weimar" has given
the clearest expression to his Pantheistic views in his noblest
poems, _Faust_, _Prometheus_, and _God and the World_. How could
so vigorous a thinker, in whose mind the evolution of organic life
ran through millions of years, have shared the narrow belief of a
Jewish prophet and enthusiast who sought to give up his life for
humanity 1,900 years ago?
Our Monistic god, the all-embracing essence of the world, the
Nature-god of Spinoza and Goethe, is identical with the eternal,
all-inspiring energy, and is one, in eternal and infinite
substance, with space-filling matter. It "lives and moves in
all things," as the Gospel says. And as we see that the law of
substance is universal, that the conservation of matter and of
energy is inseparably connected, and that the ceaseless development
of this substance follows the same "eternal iron laws," we find God
in natural law itself. The will of God is at work in every falling
drop of rain and every growing crystal, in the scent of the rose
and the spirit of man.
APPENDIX
EVOLUTIONARY TABLES
1.--GEOLOGICAL AGES AND PERIODS
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
Ages in the | | |Approximate length
Organic History | Periods of | Vertebrate |of Paleontological
of the Earth. | Geology | Fossils. | Periods.
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| {1. Laurentian | |
I. Archeozoic age| { | | 52 million years
(primordial) | { | No fossil |Sedimentary strata
| {2. Huronian | remains of | 63,000 ft. thick
| | vertebrates |
Age of | 3. Cambrian | |
invertebrates | | |
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| | |
| 4. Silurian | Fishes |
| | |
II. Paleozoic age| 5. Devonian | Dipneusts | 34 million years
(primary) | | |Sedimentary strata
Age of fishes | 6. Carboniferous| Amphibia | 41,200 ft. thick
| | |
| 7. Permian | Reptiles |
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| | |
| 8. Triassic | Monotremes |
III. Mesozoic age| | | 11 million years
(secondary) | 9. Jurassic | Marsupials |Sedimentary strata
Age of reptiles| | | 12,200 ft. thick
| 10. Cretaceous | {_Mallotheria_ |
| | {Pro-placentals |
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| | |
| 11. Eocene | {_Prosimiæ_ |
| | { Lemurs |
| | |
| 12. Oligocene | {_Cynopitheca_ |
IV. Cenozoic age | | { Baboons |
(tertiary) | | | 3 million years
Age of mammals | 13. Miocene | {_Anthropoides_ | 3,600 ft. thick
| | { Man-like apes |
| | |
| 14. Pliocene | {_Pithecanthropi_|
| | { Ape-men |
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
| | |
V. Anthropozoic | 15. Glacial | Pre-historic man |
age (quaternary)| | | 300,000 years
Age of man | 16. Post-glacial | Savage and |Sedimentary strata
| | civilised man | little thickness
-----------------+------------------+------------------+------------------
2A.--MAN'S GENEALOGICAL TREE--_First Half_
EARLIER ANCESTRAL SERIES, WITHOUT FOSSIL REMAINS, BEFORE THE
SILURIAN PERIOD
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
Chief Stages.| Ancestral | Living Relatives |Pale-|Onto-|Mor-
| Stem-Groups. | of our Ancestors. |onto-|geny.|phol-
| | |logy.| |ogy.
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
Stages 1-5: | { 1. MONERA | 1. CHROMACEA | O | I? | I
PROTIST- | { (Plasmodoma) | (_Chroococcus_) | | |
ANCESTORS | { without nuclei | _Phycochromacea_ | | |
Unicellular | { 2. ALGARIA | 2. PAULOTOMEA | O | I? | I
organisms | { Unicellular algæ | _Palmellacea_ | | |
| { with nuclei | _Eremosphaera_ | | |
| | | | |
| { 3. LOBOSA | 3. AMŒBINA | O | II | II
| { Unicellular | _Amœba_ | | |
| { (Amœboid) | _Lecocyta_ | | |
1-2: | { Rhizopods | | | |
Plasmodomous | { 4. INFUSORIA | 4. FLAGELLATA | O | ? | II
Protophyta | { (Unicellular) | _Euflagellata_ | | |
3-5: | { | _Zoomonades_ | | |
Plasmophagous| { 5. BLASTÆADES | 5. CATALLACTA | O | III | III
Protozoa | { Multicellular | _Magosphaera_ | | |
| { cell-colonies | _Volvocina_ | | |
| { | _Blastula?_ | | |
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
| { 6. GASTRÆADES | 6. GASTRULA | O | III | III
Stages 6-11: | { with two | _Hydra, Olynthus_,| | |
INVERTEBRATE | { germinal layers | _Orthonectida_ | | |
METAZOA- | { 7. PLATODES I. | 7. CRYPTOCŒLA | O | ? | I
ANCESTORS | { _Platodaria_ | (_Convoluta_) | | |
6-8: | { (without nephridia)| (_Proporus_) | | |
Cœlenteria, | { 8. PLATODES II. | 8. RHABDOCŒLA | O | ? | I
without anus | { _Platodinia_ | (_Vortex_) | | |
anus or | { (with nephridia) | (_Monotus_) | | |
body-cavity | | | | |
| | | | |
| { 9. PROVERMALIA | 9. GASTROTRICHA | O | ? | I
| { _Rotatoria_ | _Trochozoa_ | | |
| { Primitive worms | _Trochophora_ | | |
9-11: | {10. FRONTONIA | 10. ENTEROPNEUSTA | O | ? | I
Vermalia, | {(_Rhynchelminthes_)| _Balanoglossus_ | | |
with anus and| { Snouted worms | _Cephalodiscus_ | | |
body-cavity | {11. PROCHORDONIA | 11. COPELATA | O | II | II
| Worms with chorda | _Appendicaria_ | | |
------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
| {12. ACRANIA I. | 12. LARVÆ OF | O | III | II
| { (Prospondylia) | AMPHIOXUS | | |
Stages 12-15:| {13. ACRANIA II. | 13. LEPTOCARDIA | O | I | III
MONORRHINA- | { Later skull-less | Amphioxus | | |
ANCESTORS | { animals | (Lancelet) | | |
Earliest | {14. CYCLOSTOMA I. | 14. LARVÆ OF | O | III | II
vertebrates, | { (Archicrania) | PETROMYZON | | |
without jaws| {15. CYCLOSTOMA II. | 15. MARSIPOBRAN- | O | I | III
or pairs of | { Later round- | CHIA | | |
limbs, with | { mouthed animals | Myxinoides | | |
single | { | Petromyzontes | | |
nostril | | | | |
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
2B.--MAN'S GENEALOGICAL TREE--_Second Half_
LATER ANCESTRAL SERIES, WITH FOSSIL REMAINS, BEGINNING IN THE
SILURIAN
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
Geological | Stem-Groups of | Living Relatives |Pale-|Onto-|Mor-
Periods. | Ancestors. | of our Ancestors. |onto-|geny.|phol-
| | |logy.| |logy.
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
|{16. SELACHII |16. NOTIDANIDES | I | II | III
Silurian |{ Primitive fishes| Chlamydoselachus| | |
|{ _Proselachii_ | _Heptanchus_ | | |
|{17. GANOIDES |17. ACCIPENSERIDES | II | I | II
Silurian |{ Plated fishes | Sturgeon, | | |
|{ _Proganoides_ | Polypterus | | |
|{18. DIPNEUSTA |18. NEODIPNEUSTA | I | II | II
Devonian |{ _Paladipneusta_ | Ceratodus, | | |
|{ | Protopterus | | |
|{19. AMPHIBIA |19. PHANEROBRANCHIA| III | III | III
Carboniferous|{ _Stegocephala_ | and Salamandrina | | |
|{ | (Proteus, Triton)| | |
|{20. REPTILIA |20. RHYNCOCEPHALIA | III | II | II
Permian |{ _Proreptilia_ | Primitive lizards| | |
|{ | Hatteria | | |
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
|{21. MONOTREMA |21. ORNITHODELPHIA | I | III | III
Triassic |{ _Promammalia_ | Echnida | | |
|{ | Ornithorhyncus | | |
|{22. MARSUPIALIA |22. DIDELPHIA | I | II | II
Jurassic |{ _Prodidelphia_ | Didelphys, | | |
|{ | Perameles | | |
|{23. MALLOTHERIA |23. INSECTIVORA | III | I | I
Cretaceous |{ _Prochoriata_ | Erinaceida | | |
|{ | (Ictopsida+) | | |
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
|{24. LEMURAVIDA |24. PACHYLEMURES | III | I? | II
Older Eocene |{ Earlier lemurs | (_Hypopsodus_+) | | |
|{ Dent. 3, 1, 4, 3 | (_Adapis_+) | | |
|{25. LEMUROGONA |25. AUTOLEMURES | II | I? | II
Later Eocene |{ Later lemurs | (_Eulemur_) | | |
|{ Dent. 2, 1, 4, 3 | (_Stenops_) | | |
|{26. DYSMOPITHECA |26. PLATYRRHINÆ | I | I | II
Oligocene |{ Western apes | (_Anthropops_+) | | |
|{ Dent. 2, 1, 3, 3 | (_Homunculus_+) | | |
|{27. CYNOPITHECA |27. PAPIOMORPHA | I | I | III
Older Miocene|{ Baboons (tailed) | (_Cynocephalus_)| | |
|{28. ANTHROPOIDES |28. HYLOBATIDA | I | II | III
Later Miocene|{ Anthropoid apes | Hylobates | | |
|{ (tailless) | Satyrus | | |
|{29. PITHECANTHROPI |29. ANTHROPITHECA | II | III | III
Pliocene |{ Ape-like men | Chimpanzee | | |
|{ (alali=speechless) | Gorilla | | |
|{30. HOMINES |30. WEDDAHS | I | III | III
Pleistocene |{ (loquaces=with | Australian | | |
|{ speech) | natives | | |
-------------+---------------------+-------------------+-----+-----+-----
3.--CLASSIFICATION OF THE PRIMATES
[[TRANSCRIBER NOTE: This 4-column Table has been split into two parts.
The first part has columns 1, 2 and 3. The second part has columns
2, 3 and 4 (2 and 3 are repeated from the first part).]]
_N.B_.-- * indicates extinct forms, + living groups, ++ the
hypothetical stem-form. _Cf._ _History of Creation_, chap. xxvii.;
_Evolution of Man_, chap. xxiii.
[[First Part]]
----------------------+------------------------+--------------------------
Orders. | Sub-Orders. | Families.
----------------------+------------------------+--------------------------
| |
I | |
PROSIMIAE | { 1. LEMURAVIDA | {1. PACHYLEMURES*
Lemurs | { (_Palalemures_) | {(_Hypopsodina_)
(Hemipitheci) | { Early lemurs | {
The orbits imper- | { (generalists) | {Dent. 44=3.1.4.3/3.1.4.3
fectly separated | { Originally with | {Primitive dentition
from the temporal | { claws on all or | {
depression by a | { most fingers: later | {2. NECROLEMURES
bony arch. Womb | { transition to nails. | {(_Anaptomorpha_)
double or two-horned. | { Tarsus primitive. | {
Placenta diffuse, in- | { | {Dent. 40=2.1.4.3/2.1.4.3
deciduate (as a rule).| { | {Reduced dentition
Cerebrum relatively | { |
small, smooth, or | { | {3. AUTOLEMURES+
little furrowed. | { | {(_Lemurida_)
| { 2. LEMUROGONA | {
| { (_Neolemures_) | {Dent. 36=2.1.3.3/2.1.3.3
| { Modern lemures | {Specialised dentition
| { (specialists) | {
| { All fingers usually | {4. CHIROLEMURES+
| { have nails (except | {(_Chiromyida_)
| { the second toe). | {
| { Tarsus modified. | {Dent. 18=1.0.1.3/1.0.0.3
| | {Rodent dentition
| |
----------------------+------------------------+--------------------------
| |
II | | {5. ARCTOPITHECA+
SIMIAE | { 3. PLATYRRHINAE | {
Apes | { Flat-nosed apes | {Dent. 32=2.1.3.2/2.1.3.2
(_Pitheci_ or | { _Hesperopitheca_ | {Nail on hallux only
_simiales_) | { Western apes | {
Orbits completely | { (American) | {6. DYSMOPITHECA+
separated from the | { Nostrils lateral, | {
temporal depression | { with wide partition | {Dent. 36=2.1.3.3/2.1.3.3
by a bony septum. | { 3 premolars | {Nails on all fingers
Womb simple, pear- | { |
shaped. Placenta | { | {7. CYNOPITHECA+
discoid, deciduate. | { | {
Cerebrum relatively | { | {Dent 32=2.1.2.3/2.1.2.3
large and much | { | {Generally with tail
furrowed. | { 4. CATARRHINAE | {and cheek-pouches
| { Narrow-nosed | {Sacrum with 3 or
| { apes | {4 vertebræ
| { _Eopitheca_ | {
| { Eastern apes | {8. ANTHROPOMORPHA+
| { (Arctogoea) | {
| { Europe, Asia, and | {Dent. 32=2.1.2.3/2.1.2.3
| { Africa. | {No tail or cheek-pouches
| { Nostrils forward, | {Sacrum with 5
| { with narrow septum | {vertebræ
| { 2 premolars |
| { Nails on all |
| { fingers |
| |
----------------------+------------------------+--------------------------
[[Second Part]]
-----------------------+---------------------------+-----------------
Sub-Orders. | Families. | Genera.
-----------------------+---------------------------+-----------------
| |
| | {_Archiprimas_++
{ 1. LEMURAVIDA | {1. PACHYLEMURES* | {_Lemuravus_*
{ (_Palalemures_) | {(_Hypopsodina_) | { Early Eocene
{ Early lemurs | { | {_Pelycodus_*
{ (generalists) | {Dent. 44=3.1.4.3/3.1.4.3 | { Early Eocene
{ Originally with | {Primitive dentition | {_Hypopsodus_*
{ claws on all or | { | { Late Eocene
{ most fingers: later | {2. NECROLEMURES |
{ transition to nails. | {(_Anaptomorpha_) | {_Adapis_*
{ Tarsus primitive. | { | {_Plesiadapis_*
{ | {Dent. 40=2.1.4.3/2.1.4.3 | {Necrolemur*
{ | {Reduced dentition |
{ | | {_Eulemur_
{ | {3. AUTOLEMURES+ | {_Hapalemur_
{ | {(_Lemurida_) | {_Lepilemur_
{ 2. LEMUROGONA | { | {_Nycticebus_
{ (_Neolemures_) | {Dent. 36=2.1.3.3/2.1.3.3 | {_Stenops_
{ Modern lemures | {Specialised dentition | {_Galago_
{ (specialists) | { |
{ All fingers usually | {4. CHIROLEMURES+ | {_Chiromys_
{ have nails (except | {(_Chiromyida_) | { (Claws on all
{ the second toe). | { | { fingers except
{ Tarsus modified. | {Dent. 18=1.0.1.3/1.0.0.3 | { first)
| {Rodent dentition |
| |
-----------------------+---------------------------+-----------------
| |
| {5. ARCTOPITHECA+ | {_Hapale_
{ 3. PLATYRRHINAE | { | {_Midas_
{ Flat-nosed apes | {Dent. 32=2.1.3.2/2.1.3.2 |
{ _Hesperopitheca_ | {Nail on hallux only |
{ Western apes | { | {_Callithrix_
{ (American) | {6. DYSMOPITHECA+ | {_Nyctipithecus_
{ Nostrils lateral, | { | {_Cebus_
{ with wide partition | {Dent. 36=2.1.3.3/2.1.3.3 | {_Mycetes_
{ 3 premolars | {Nails on all fingers | {_Ateles_
{ | |
{ | {7. CYNOPITHECA+ | {_Cynocephalus_
{ | { | {_Cercopithecus_
{ | {Dent 32=2.1.2.3/2.1.2.3 | {_Inuus_
{ | {Generally with tail | {_Semnopithecus_
{ 4. CATARRHINAE | {and cheek-pouches | {_Colobus_
{ Narrow-nosed | {Sacrum with 3 or 4 | {_Nasalis_
{ apes | {vertebræ |
{ _Eopitheca_ | { | {_Hylobates_
{ Eastern apes | {8. ANTHROPOMORPHA+ | {_Satyrus_
{ (Arctogoea) | { | {_Pliopithecus_*
{ Europe, Asia, and | {Dent. 32=2.1.2.3/2.1.2.3 | {_Gorilla_
{ Africa. | {No tail or cheek-pouches | {_Anthropithecus_
{ Nostrils forward, | {Sacrum with 5 | {_Dryopithecus_*
{ with narrow septum | {vertebræ | {_Pithe-
{ 2 premolars | | { canthropus_*
{ Nails on all | | {_Homo_
{ fingers | |
| |
-----------------------+---------------------------+-----------------
4.--GENEALOGICAL TREE OF THE PRIMATES
[Illustration: Anthropomorpha]
EXPLANATION OF GENEALOGICAL TABLE 1
CHRONOMETRIC REDUCTION OF BIOGENETIC PERIODS
The enormous length of the biogenetic periods (_i.e._, the periods
during which organic life has been evolving on our planet) is still
very differently estimated by geologists and paleontologists,
astronomers and physicists, because the empirical data of the
calculation are very incomplete and admit great differences of
estimate. However, most modern experts aver that their length
runs to 100 and 200 million years (some say double this, and even
more). If we take the lesser figure of 100 millions, we find this
distributed over the five chief periods of organic geology very
much as is shown on Table 1. In order to get a clearer idea of the
vast duration of these evolutionary periods, and to appreciate
the relative shortness of the "historical period," Dr. H. Schmidt
(Jena) has reduced the 100,000,000 years to a day. In this scheme
the twenty-four hours of "creation-day" are distributed as follows
over the five evolutionary periods:
I. Archeozoic period (52 million years) = 12h. 30m.
II. Paleozoic period (34 million years) = 8h. 7m.
III. Mesozoic period (11 million years) = 2h. 38m.
IV. Cenozoic period (3 million years) = 43m.
V. Anthropozoic period (0·1-0·2 million years) = 2m.
If we put the length of the "historic period" at 6,000 years, it
only makes _five seconds_ of "creation-day"; the Christian era
would amount to _two_ seconds.
POSTSCRIPT
EVOLUTION AND JESUITISM
The relation of the theory of evolution to the teaching of
the Jesuits is in many respects so important and so liable to
misunderstanding that I have felt it very desirable to make it
clear in the present work. I have, I think, clearly showed that
the two doctrines are diametrically and irreconcilably opposed,
and that the attempt of the modern Jesuits to reconcile the two
antagonists is mere sophistry. I wrote with special reference
to the works of the learned Jesuit, Father Erich Wasmann, not
only because that writer deals with the subject more ably and
comprehensively than most of his colleagues, but because he is more
competent to make a scientific defence of his views on account of
his long studies of the ants and his general knowledge of biology.
He has made a vigorous reply to my strictures in an "open letter"
to me, which appeared on 2nd May, 1905, in the Berlin (or Roman)
_Germania_, and in the _Kölnische Volkszeitung_.
The sophistical objections that Wasmann raises to my lectures, and
his misleading statement of the most important problems, oblige me
to make a brief reply in this "Postscript." It will be impossible,
of course, to meet all his points here, and convince him of their
futility. Not even the clearest and most rigorous logic makes a man
a match for a Jesuit; he adroitly employs the facts themselves for
the purpose of concealing the truth by his perverse misstatements.
It is vain to hope to convince my opponent by rational argument,
when he believes that religious faith is "higher than all reason."
A good idea can be formed of his position from the conclusion of
the eleventh chapter of his work, _Modern Biology and the Theory
of Evolution_ (p. 307). "There can never be a real contradiction
between natural knowledge and supernatural revelation, because
both have their origin in the same Divine spirit." This is a
fine comment on the incessant struggle that "natural science" is
compelled to maintain against "supernatural revelation," and that
fills the whole philosophical and theological literature of the
last half century.
Wasmann's orthodox position is shown most clearly by the following
statement: "The theory of evolution, to which I subscribe as a
scientist and a philosopher, rests on the foundations of the
Christian doctrine which I hold to be the only true one: 'In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth.'" Unfortunately,
he does not tell us how he conceives this "creation out of
nothing," and what he means by "God" and "heavens." I would
recommend him to consult Troelslund's excellent work, _The Idea of
Heaven and of the World_.
Almost at the same time that I was delivering my lectures at
Berlin, Wasmann was giving a series of thoroughly Jesuitical
lectures on the subject at Lucerne. The Catholic Lucerne journal,
_Vaterland_, describes these lectures as "a work of emancipation"
and "a critical moment in the intellectual struggle." It quotes
the following sentence: "At the highest stage of the theistic
philosophy of evolution is God, the omnipotent creator of heaven
and earth; next to him, created by him, is the immortal soul of
man. We reach this conclusion, not only by faith, but by inductive
and strictly scientific methods. The system that is reared on the
theistic doctrine of evolution is the sole rational and truly
scientific system; the atheistic position is irrational and
unscientific."
In order to see the untruth of this and the succeeding statements
of the modern Jesuits, we have to remember that the Churches--both
Protestant and Catholic--have vigorously combated the theory of
evolution with all their power for thirty years, ever since the
first appearance of Darwinism. The shrewd clergy saw more clearly
than many of our naïve philosophers that Darwin's theory of descent
is the inevitable key-stone of the whole theory of evolution,
and that "the descent of man from other mammals" is a rigorous
deduction from it. As Karl Escherich well says: "Hitherto we read
in the faces of our clerical opponents only hatred, bitterness,
contempt, mockery, or pity in regard to the new invader of their
dogmatic structure, the idea of evolution. Now (since Wasmann's
apostasy) the assurances of the Catholic journals, that the Church
has admitted the theory of evolution for decades, make us smile.
Evolution has now pressed on to its final victory, and these people
would have us believe that they were never unfriendly to it, never
shrieked and stormed against it. How, they say, could anyone have
been so foolish, when the theory of evolution puts the wisdom
and power of the creator in a nobler light than ever." We find
a similar diplomatic retreat in the popular work of the Jesuit,
Father Martin Gander, _The Theory of Descent_ (1904): "Thus the
modern forms of matter were not immediately created by God; they
are effects of the formative forces, which were put by the creator
in the primitive matter, and gradually came into view in the course
of the earth's history, when the external conditions were given in
the proper combination." That is a remarkable change of front on
the part of the clergy.
We see the astonishing system of the Jesuits, and of the papacy of
which they are the bodyguard, not only in this impossible jumble
of evolution and theology, but also in other passages of Wasmann,
Gander, Gutberlet, and their colleagues. The serious dangers that
threaten our schools, and the whole of our higher culture, from
this Jesuitical sham-science, have been well pointed out lately
by Count von Hoensbroech in the preface to his famous work, _The
Papacy in its Social and Intellectual Activity_ (1901). "The
papacy," he says, "in its claim to a Divine authority, transmitted
to it by Christ, endowed with infallibility in all questions
of faith and morals, is the greatest, the most fatal, the most
successful error in the whole of history. This great error is
girt about by the thousands of lies of its supporters; this error
and these lies work for a system of power and domination, for
ultramontanism. The truth can but struggle against it.... Nowhere
do we find so much and such systematic lying as in Catholic
science, and in the history of the Church and the papacy; nowhere
are the lies and misrepresentations more pernicious than here; they
have become part and parcel of the Catholic religion. The facts
of history tell plainly enough that the papacy is anything but a
Divine institution; that it has brought more curses and ruin, more
bloody turmoil and profanation, into humanity's holiest of holies,
religion, than any other power in the world."
This severe judgment on the papacy and Jesuitism is the more
valuable as Count von Hoensbroech was himself in the service of the
Jesuit Congregation for forty years, and learned thoroughly all
its tricks and intrigues. In making them public, and basing his
charges on numerous official documents, he has done great service
to the cause of truth and civilisation. I was merely repeating
his well-founded verdict when, at the close of my first lecture,
I described the papacy as the greatest swindle the world has ever
submitted to.
A curious irony of Fate gave me an opportunity, the same evening,
to experience in my own person the correctness of this verdict. A
Berlin reporter telegraphed to London that I had fully accepted
the new theory of Father Wasmann, and recognised the error of
Darwinism; that the theory of evolution is not applicable to man on
account of his mental superiority. This welcome intelligence passed
from London to America and many other countries. The result was a
flood of letters from zealous adherents of the theory of evolution,
interrogating me as to my unintelligible change of front. I thought
at first that the telegram was due to the misunderstanding or the
error of a reporter, but I was afterwards informed from Berlin that
the false message was probably due to a deliberate corruption by
some religious person who thought to render a service to his faith
by this untruth. He had substituted "supported" for "refuted," and
"error" for "truth."
The struggle for the triumph of truth, in which I have had the most
curious experiences during the last forty years, has brought me a
number of new impressions through my Berlin lectures. The flood
of calumnies of all kinds that the religious press (especially
the Lutheran _Reichsbote_ and the Catholic _Germania_) poured
over me exceeded any that had gone before. Dr. Schmidt gave a
selection from them in the _Freie Wort_ (No. 4, p. 144). I have
already pointed out, in the Appendix to the popular edition of the
_Riddle of the Universe_ [German edition], what unworthy means are
employed by my clerical and metaphysical opponents for the purpose
of bringing my popular scientific works into disrepute. I can only
repeat here that the calumniation of my person does not move me,
and does not injure the cause of truth which I serve. It is just
this unusually loud alarm of my clerical enemies that tells me my
sacrifices have not been in vain, and that I have put the modest
key-stone to the work of my life--"The advancement of knowledge by
the spread of the idea of evolution."
THE END
_Printed by Cowan & Co., Limited, Perth._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] The word "evolution" is still used in so many different ways
in various sciences that it is important to fix it in the general
significance which we here give it. By "evolution," in the widest
sense, I understand the unceasing "mutations of substance,"
adopting Spinoza's fundamental conception of substance; it unites
inseparably in itself "matter and force (or energy)," or "nature
and mind" (= the world and God). Hence the science of evolution in
its broader range is "the history of substance," which postulates
the general validity of "the law of substance." In the latter are
combined "the law of the constancy of matter" (Lavoisier, 1789)
and "the law of the conservation of energy" (Robert Mayer, 1842),
however varied may be the changes of _form_ of these elements in
the world-process. _Cf._ Chapter XII. of _The Riddle_.
[2] Certain orthodox periodicals have lately endeavoured to deny
this famous atheistical confession of the great Laplace, which was
merely a candid deduction of his splendid cosmic system. They say
that this Monistic natural philosopher acknowledged the Catholic
faith on his death-bed; and in proof of this they offer us the
later testimony of an Ultramontane priest. We need not point out
how uncertain is the love of truth of these heated partisans. When
testimony of this kind tends to "the good of religion" (_i.e._,
their own good), it is held to be a pious work (_pia fraus_). On
the other hand, it is interesting to recall the reply of a Prussian
Minister of Religion, Von Zedlitz, 120 years ago, to the Breslau
Consistory, when it urged that "those who believe most are the best
subjects." He wrote in reply: "His majesty [Frederick the Great] is
not disposed to rest the security of his State on the stupidity of
his subjects."
[3] See, for instance, _Moses and Geology, or Harmony of the Bible
with Science_, by Samuel Kinns (1882). In this work the pious
Biblical astronomer executes the most incredible and Jesuitical
manœuvres in order to bring about an impossible reconciliation
between science and the Biblical narrative.
[4] The eel-like sophistry of the Jesuits, which has been brought
to such a wonderful pitch in their political system, cannot, as
a rule, be met by argument. An interesting illustration of this
was given by Father Wasmann himself in his controversy with the
physician, Dr. Julian Marcuse. The "scientific" Wasmann had gone so
far in his zeal for religion as to support a downright swindle of
a "miraculous cure" in honour of the "Mother of God of Oostacker"
(the Belgian Lourdes). Dr. Marcuse succeeded in exposing the
whole astounding story of this "pious fraud" (_Deutsche Stimmen_,
Berlin, 1903, iv. Jahrg., No. 20). Instead of giving a scientific
refutation, the Jesuit replied with sophistic perversion and
personal invective (Scientific [?] Supplement to _Germania_,
Berlin, 1902, No. 43, and 1903, No. 13). In his final reply, Dr.
Marcuse said: "I have accomplished my object--to let thoughtful
people see once more the kind of ideas that are found in the
world of dead and literal faith, which tries to put the crudest
superstition and reverence for the myth of miraculous cures in the
place of science, truth and knowledge" (_Deutsche Stimmen_, 1903,
v. Jahrgang, No. 3).
[5] While these pages are in the press the journals announce a
fresh humiliation of the German empire that will cause great
grief. On the 9th of May the nation celebrated the centenary of
the death of Friedrich Schiller. With rare unanimity all the
political parties of Germany, and all the German associations
abroad, came together to do honour to the great poet of German
idealism. Professor Theobald Ziegler delivered a very fine address
at Strassburg University. The Emperor, who happened to be in the
town, was invited, but did not attend; instead of doing so, he held
a military parade in the vicinity. A few days afterwards he sat at
table with the German Catholic cardinals and bishops, amongst them
being the fanatical Bishop Benzler, who declared that a Christian
cemetery was desecrated by the interment of a Protestant. At these
festive dinners German Catholics always give the first toast to the
Pope, the second to the Emperor; they rejoice at present that the
Emperor and Pope are _allies_. But the whole history of the papacy
(a pitiful caricature of the ancient Catholic faith) shows clearly
that they are natural and irreconcilable enemies. Either emperor
must rule _or_ pope.
[6] The manuscript letter in which the gentle Darwin expresses so
severe a judgment on Virchow is printed in my Cambridge lecture,
_The Last Link_. My answer to Virchow's speech is contained in the
second volume of my _Popular Lectures_, and has lately appeared in
the _Freie Wort_ (April, 1905).
[7] In his presidential speech at the last meeting of the British
Association, Professor Darwin said: "It does not seem unreasonable
to suppose that 500 to 1,000 million years may have elapsed since
the birth of the moon." [Trans.]
[8] See account of similar experiments in the _Lancet_, 18th
January, 1902. [Trans.]
[9] Wasmann meets these convincing experiments with mere Jesuitical
sophistry. Of the same character is his attack on my _Evolution of
Man_, and on the instructive work of Robert Wiedersheim, _Man's
Structure as a Witness to his Past_.
[10] I may remind those who think that the hall of the Musical
Academy is "desecrated" by my lectures, that it was in the very
same place that Alexander von Humboldt delivered, seventy-seven
years ago (1828), the remarkable lectures that afterwards made up
his _Cosmos_. The great traveller, whose clear mind had recognised
the unity of Nature, and had, with Goethe, discovered therein
the real knowledge of God, endeavoured to convey his thoughts in
popular form to the educated Berlin public, and to establish the
universality of natural law. It was my aim to establish, as regards
the organic world, precisely what Humboldt had proved to exist
in inorganic nature. I wanted to show how the great advance of
modern biology (since Darwin's time) enables us to solve the most
difficult of all problems, the historical development of plants and
animals in humanity. Humboldt in his day earned the most lively
approval and gratitude of all free-thinking and truth-seeking men,
and the displeasure and suspicion of the orthodox and conservative
courtiers at Berlin.
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
In Tables 2A and 2B, 'Ontogeny' column, the character ! was used in
the original text. This was probably a printer's error, and has been
replaced with I. So ! !! and !!! are displayed as I II and III.
Notation for dentition in Table 2B (p. 117), where lower dentition is
assumed the same as upper, is unchanged; for example "3, 1, 4, 3".
In Table 3 (p.118) it is given as a fraction, and represented in the
etext as "upper/lower"; for example "44 = 3.1.4.3/3.1.4.3".
Table 3 has been split into two parts in the etext.
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained. For example,
manlike, man-like; paleozoic, palæozoic; to-day; unspiritual; instil.
Pg 44, 'Christain sects' replaced by 'Christian sects'.
Pg 53, '_Philosophie Zoologique_ (1899)' replaced by
'_Philosophie Zoologique_ (1809)'.
Pg 53, 'and the champanzee)' replaced by 'and the chimpanzee)'.
Pg 72, 'familar tendency' replaced by 'familiar tendency'.
Pg 88, 'acurately described' replaced by 'accurately described'.
Pg 115, '5. Jurassic' replaced by '9. Jurassic'.
Pg 123, 'irrational and inscientific' replaced by 'irrational and
unscientific'.