THE veteran Professor Haeckel, who has been a commanding figure for so many years in the ranks of militant science, has summed up the teaching of his life in the three lectures of which Mr. McCabe adds to his many services to the English student by publishing a clear and admirable translation. These lectures, which were delivered before the Berlin public in the spring of 1905, may fitly be compared with Huxley's famous Oxford lecture on "Evolution and Ethics." They form a popular retrospect and summary of the views of human ...
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THE veteran Professor Haeckel, who has been a commanding figure for so many years in the ranks of militant science, has summed up the teaching of his life in the three lectures of which Mr. McCabe adds to his many services to the English student by publishing a clear and admirable translation. These lectures, which were delivered before the Berlin public in the spring of 1905, may fitly be compared with Huxley's famous Oxford lecture on "Evolution and Ethics." They form a popular retrospect and summary of the views of human life and destiny, as affected by the great doctrine of evolution, which their author has advocated for fifty years, and which he has seen triumph in the minds of the educated, in spite of the storm of obloquy and the persistent misrepresentation which they had at first to overcome. Professor Haeckel is one of those born fighters who "never turned his back, but marched breast forward," like Huxley and Darwin himself. "I do not belong to the amiable group of 'men of compromise'" he says, "but am in the habit of giving candid and straightforward expression to the convictions which a half-century of serious and laborious study has led me to form." This statement is well illustrated by the very lucid and interesting account of this veteran biologist's life and Work by Professor Bolsche, an old pupil of his at Jena, and now himself a distinguished biologist, of which we also owe the translation to Mr. McCabe. A characteristic story relates how once, in the midst of a brilliant circle, the Grand Duke of Weimar began to "chaff" Professor Haeckel about his belief in the queer stories of the evolutionists. To the horror of the assembled courtiers, the biologist slapped the Grand Duke on the shoulder, and invited him to visit his laboratory at Jena and See the proofs for himself. That anecdote displays the spirit in which Haeckel has always encountered opposition, Haeckel's work, as described by Professor Bolsche, and in the supplementary chapter dealing with the years since 1900 which Mr. McCabe has added, falls into two sections. One of these is purely biological, culminating in that "General Morphology" which has become already an epoch-making classic; the other is rather philosophical in its nature, and includes "The Riddle of the Universe" and the supplementary volumes which have placed the Monistic theory before readers in general. The former part of Haeckel's life-work is universally accepted; the latter has evoked a storm of controversy that still divides learned Germany into two hostile camps. It involves, of course, a theological element, with which we cannot deal in this brief notice. Sir Oliver Lodge's suggestive and trenchant essays on "Life and Matter" are intended "to act as an antidote to the speculative and destructive portions of Professor Haeckel's interesting and widely read work, but in other respects may be regarded less as a hostile attack than as a supplement-au extension of the more scientific portions of that work into higher and more fruitful regions of inquiry." It is needless to say that Sir Oliver Lodge is well worth hearing on each a fascinating subject as the relation of the higher physics to the phenomena of life. It is particularly instructive to the layman to observe the distinction here drawn between the empirical laws based on observation and the fundamental laws of thought. We have heard much said in the last decade about the "bankruptcy" of physics in the face of the singular behavior of radio-active substances.... - The Spectator , Volume 97
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