The fundamental biogenetic law, as interpreted by Haeckel is a complete contradiction of the very nature of the theory of Natural Selection. Like every purely scientific mode of envisaging things, the latter comes in on an unaccented beat, so to speak. It starts out with a given difference of potentiality, with respect to which one does nothing but observe the symptoms furnished by the process of compensation; refraining, however, from every interpretation of how these differences could ever have arisen. In the interpretation of the evolutionist, on the other hand, the facts upon which the fundamental biogenetic law is based of necessity point in the direction of a first beginning; they converge upon the idea of the “setting in of life.” Hence they constrain to a scientific form of faith, which necessitates acrimonious warfare against the church-form of the same, if one cannot agree that the primordial cell, existing all complete, and the “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth,” may be regarded simply as different attempts at the definition of one and the same occurrence. It is the feud betwixt dog and wolf. In the dusk they might pass for mates, were it not that each is busy trying to take a bite out of the other’s throat. But, like all atheists from the most ancient times, modern monism, too, forgets that to challenge the _bon dieu_ to single combat is, as politicians would say, to “recognize him in principle,” and that at bottom this duel can be nothing but a _modus vivendi_ for both parties. Darwin’s original position entirely obviates such a strait as this. It is, as all science should be, strictly a-moral. With disconcerting--or if one likes, refreshing--coolness, the biological pieces are set up on the cosmic chess-board, and a game begun. The first move of the opening is already made, and now move after move follows of simple necessity. Where, for example, Darwin speaks of the cuckoo’s instinct, he makes no attempt to account for the same by itself. He rather begins, “Now let us suppose that the ancient progenitor of our European cuckoo had the habits of the American cuckoo, and that she occasionally laid an egg in another bird’s nest ...” and so on;[26] which simply means: the game is already in full swing, and so one move follows from the other.