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This classification was previously suggested by Selenka on other grounds, namely, because of the points in common in the embryonic development of the catarrhine monkeys and of man, and their common distinctiveness as contrasted with the platyrrhines. Haeckel’s Evolutionist Position.

It is precisely the same as Haeckel’s, although he is opposed to Haeckel in regard to the strictly Darwinian standpoint. The Theory of Descent has conquered, and it may be said with assurance, for ever. That is the firm conviction on which the whole work is based, and it is really rather treated as a self-evident axiom than as a statement to be proved. Weismann takes little trouble to prove it.

In embryology, so competent an authority as O. Hertwighimself a former pupil of Haeckel’shas reacted from thefundamental biogenetic law.” His theory of the matter is very much that of Hamann which we have already discussed; development is not so much a recapitulation of finished ancestral types as the laying down of foundations after the pattern of generalised simple forms, not yet specialised; and from these foundations the special organs rise to different levels and grades of differentiation according to the type.

The attacks that have been made by naturalism upon the independence and freedom of the spiritual are so familiar to every oneeven from school daysthrough books of the type of Büchner’sKraft und Stoff,” and Haeckel’sThe Riddle of the Universe,” and other half or wholly materialistic popular dogmatics, that it is unnecessary to enter into any detail.

Haeckel’s demonstration of the possibility of spontaneous generation is along these lines. He refers to the cytodes, the blood corpuscles, to alleged or actual non-nucleated cells, to bacteria, to the simplest forms of cell-structure, as proofs of the possibility of a descending series of connecting-links. Unfortunately, this primitive slime soon proved itself an illusion.

But this last proves nothing. With Virchow’s altogether unemotional nature it is unlikely that religious or spiritual motives had any rôle in the establishment of his convictions, and in Haeckel’s naïve blustering at religion, there is, so to speak, more religion than in the cold-blooded connivance with which Virchow leaves a few openings in otherwise frozen ponds for the ducks of faith to swim in!

Even Haeckel admits that snails of very different bodily structure may form very similar and even hardly distinguishable shells. Fleischmann further asserts that Haeckel’sfundamental biogenetic lawhas utterly collapsed. “Recapitulationdoes not occur. Selenka’s figures of ovum-segmentation show that there are specific differences in the individual groups.

To this category belong Darwin’s gemmules, Haeckel’s plastidules, Nägeli’s micellæ, Weismann’s labyrinth of ids, determinants, and biophors within the germ-plasm, and Roux’s ingenious hypothesis of the struggle of parts, which is an attempt to apply the Darwinian principle within the organism in order here also to rebut the teleological interpretation by giving a scientific one. Heredity.

Petersburg, in his essay, “Protoplasm and Vital Force.” He sharply castigates the one-sidedness and impetuosity of the mechanical theory, as in Haeckel’s discovery of Bathybius and of non-nucleated bacteria. The latter are problematical, and the former has been proved an illusion. To penetrate farther into the processes of life is simply to become aware of an ever-deepening series of riddles.

Haeckel’s facile method of constructing genealogical trees, which ignores difficulties and discrepant facts, has met with much criticism and ridicule even among Darwinians. Theorator of Berlin,” Du Bois-Reymond, declared that if he must read romances he would prefer to read them in some other form than that of genealogical trees.