United States or United Kingdom ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Original investigators are rare most of us write about the men who have done things, or else we tell about what they have done, and so we reach greatness by hitching our wagon to a star. For the essay on Rhizopods, Haeckel was made Professor Extraordinary of the University of Jena.
And geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, as the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state.
They are minute bodies, most of which are made individually visible only by the microscope. All of them are extremely simple in structure, and some of them, as the Rhizopods, almost structureless.
Sickness surely has its uses; and rich invalids are not wholly a mistake on the part of Setebos. Haeckel secured the leisure and the opportunity to round up his Rhizopods. He presented the work to the University of Jena, because this was the University that Goethe attended, and the gods of Haeckel were three Goethe, Darwin and Johannes Muller.
But this fact, which seems directly opposed to our inference, is really one of the most significant evidences of its truth. For what is the peculiarity of the Rhizopods, exemplified by the Amoeba? They undergo perpetual and irregular changes of shape they show no persistent relations of parts.
"It may be objected that if organic beings thus tend to rise in the scale, how is it that throughout the world a multitude of the lowest forms still exist; and how is it that in each great class some forms are far more highly developed than others?... On our theory the continuous existence of lowly forms offers no difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development, it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life.... Geology tells us that some of the lowest forms, the infusoria and rhizopods, have remained for an enormous period in nearly their present state."
Haeckel builds on Darwin and shows that as the Cirripedia which makes the bottom of the ocean, the coral "insect" which rears dangerous reefs and even mountain-ranges, and Rhizopods that make the chalk cliffs possible, did not change the earth's crust in the twinkling of an eye, so neither can the efforts of man instantly change the social condition. Souls do not make lightning changes.
In the lowest Protozoa, as some of the Rhizopods, we have a homogeneity approaching to that of air, water, or earth; and the ascent to organisms of greater and greater complexity of structure, is an ascent to organisms which are in that respect more strongly contrasted with the relatively structureless masses in the environment. In form again we see the same truth.
Word Of The Day