Mr. Mivart, whose opinions so often concur with those of the Quarterly
Reviewer, puts the case in a way, which I much regret to be obliged to
say, is, in my judgment, quite as incorrect; though the injustice may
be less glaring. He says that the theory of natural selection is,
in general, exclusively associated with the name of Mr. Darwin, "on
account of the noble self-abnegation of Mr. Wallace." As I have said,
no one can honour Mr. Wallace more than I do, both for what he has
done and for what he has not done, in his relation to Mr. Darwin. And
perhaps nothing is more creditable to him than his frank declaration
that he could not have written such a work as the "Origin of Species."
But, by this declaration, the person most directly interested in the
matter repudiates, by anticipation, Mr. Mivart's suggestion that Mr.
Darwin's eminence is more or less due to Mr. Wallace's modesty.
XI.
THE GENEALOGY OF ANIMALS.[1]
Considering that Germany now takes the lead of the world in scientific
investigation, and particularly in biology, Mr. Darwin must be well
pleased at the rapid spread of his views among some of the ablest and
most laborious of German naturalists.
[Footnote 1: "The Natural History of Creation." By Dr. Ernst Haeckel
(_Natürliche Schöpfungs-Geschichte._--Von Dr. Ernst Haeckel, Professor
an der Universität Jena.) Berlin, 1868.]
Among those, Professor Haeckel, of Jena, is the Coryphaeus. I know of
no more solid and important contributions to biology in the past seven
years than Haeckel's work on the _Radiolaria_, and the researches of
his distinguished colleague Gegenbaur, in vertebrate anatomy; while
in Haeckel's _Generelle Morphologie_ there is all the force,
suggestiveness, and, what I may term the systematizing power, of Oken,
without his extravagance. The _Generelle Morphologie_ is, in fact, an
attempt to put the doctrine of Evolution, so far as it applies to
the living world, into a logical form; and to work out its practical
applications to their final results. The work before us, again, may
be said to be an exposition of the _Generelle Morphologie_ for an
educated public, consisting, as it does, of the substance of a series
of lectures delivered before a mixed audience at Jena, in the session
1867-8.
"The Natural History of Creation,"--or, as Professor Haeckel admits
it would have been better to call his work, "The History of the
Development or Evolution of Nature,"--deals, in the first six
lectures, with the general and historical aspects of the question,
and contains a very interesting and lucid account of the views of
Linnaeus, Cuvier, Agassiz, Goethe, Oken, Kant, Lamarck, Lyell, and
Darwin, and of the historical filiation of these philosophers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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