In his lecture on "Cell-souls and Soul-cells," Haeckel says of instinct: "Unbiassed observation, applying its tests without prejudice, shows conclusively that the so-called 'instinct' of the animals is nothing else than a sum of psychical functions originally acquired by adaptation, fixed by habit, and descending from generation to generation by inheritance. Originally carried out with consciousness and reflection, many instinctive actions of the animals have become unconscious, as have, in like manner, the ordinary acts of intelligence in man. These too, may, with the same justice, be regarded as the expression of innate instinct, as often is the impulse to self-preservation, maternal love, and the social impulse. Instinct is not an exclusive attribute of the animal-brain, nor is reason an especial endowment of man; there is, on the contrary, for the unbiassed observer, a long, long scale of gradual improvement and evolution in psychic life, which may be traced step by step, from the higher to lower human beings, from the perfect to the imperfect animals, until we reach those simple worms, whose nerve-ganglia are the beginning of all the numberless brain-forms of the scale." In his "Anthropogenie," Haeckel denies Free Will, maintaining that all phenomena are the result of mechanical causes--_causae efficientes_, not _causae finales_. In an essay on the "Relation of the Theory of Evolution in its present form to Science in General" (1877), he says of Ethics: "By far the most important and the most difficult demand which Practical Philosophy makes upon the theory of Evolution seems to be that of a new theory of Morals. Certainly in the future, as in the past, the careful development of moral character and of religious conviction must be the chief problem of education. But until now the greater number of people have clung to the conviction that this most important problem could be solved only in connection with certain ecclesiastical articles of faith. And since these dogmas, especially as connected with ancient myths of the Creation, are in direct opposition to the facts of evolution, the latter have been believed to be, in the highest degree, inimical to religion and morality.