But there is a long note at this point in the text, where Darwin’s title is cited, that gives us his first appreciation of Darwin in detail. It begins: “I cannot refrain from expressing here the great admiration with which Darwin’s able theory of the origin of species has inspired me. Especially as this epoch-making work has for the most part been unfavourably received by our German professors of science, and seems in some cases to have been entirely misunderstood. Darwin himself desires his theory to be submitted to every possible test, and ‘looks confidently to the young workers who will be prepared to examine both sides of the question impartially. Whoever leans to the view that species are changeable will do a service to science by a conscientious statement of his conviction; only in that way can we get rid of the mountain of prejudice that at present covers the subject.’ I share this view entirely,” Haeckel continues, “and on that account feel that I must express here my belief in the mutability of species and the real genealogical relation of all organisms. Although I hesitate to accept Darwin’s views and hypotheses to the full and to endorse the whole of his argument, I cannot but admire the earnest, scientific attempt made in his work to explain all the phenomena of organic nature on broad and consistent principles and to substitute an intelligible natural law for unintelligible miracles. There may be more error than truth in Darwin’s theory in its present form, as the first attempt to deal with the subject. Undeniably important as are the principles of natural selection, the struggle for life, the relation of organisms to each other, the divergence of characters, and all the other principles employed by Darwin in support of his theory, it is, nevertheless, quite possible that there are just as many and important principles still quite unknown to us that have an equal or even greater influence on the phenomena of organic nature. This is the first great attempt to construct a scientific, physiological theory of the development of organic life and to prove that the physiological laws and the chemical and physical forces that rule in nature to-day must also have been at work in the world of yesterday.” Haeckel then refers to Bronn, the translator of the book. With Bronn he calls Darwin’s theory the fertilised egg from which the truth will gradually develop; the pupa from which the long-sought natural law will emerge. And he concludes: “The chief defect of the Darwinian theory is that it throws no light on the origin of the primitive organism—probably a simple cell—from which all the others have descended. When Darwin assumes a special creative act for this first species, he is not consistent and, I think, not quite sincere. However, apart from these and other defects, Darwin’s theory has the undying merit of bringing sense and reason into the whole subject of the relations of living things. When we remember how every