Feeling sure that such a book as Professor Haeckel’s “Schöpfungsgeschichte” would do a great deal of good, if placed in the hands of the English reading public, and of commencing students of Natural History, I gladly undertook to revise for the publishers the present translation, which was made by a young lady. I have not attempted to escape a difficulty by ignoring the German names made use of by Professor Haeckel for classes, orders, and genera, but have adopted English equivalents. I do not submit these names as a maturely considered English nomenclature, they appear here simply as necessary parts of a close rendering of the German work. I do, however, hold that some such series of English terms is both possible and useful, and do not doubt—in spite of the pretended hostility of the genius of our language, and the curious sentimental objection that English names are _unscientific_—that we shall before long make use of plain English in speaking of the various groups of plants and animals—much to the gain of the larger public, and without detriment to the latinized nomenclature established for the purposes of the professional student. E. R. L. _Oxford, October, 1874._ THE HISTORY OF CREATION. CHAPTER I. NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE OF FILIATION, OR DESCENT-THEORY. General Importance and Essential Nature of the Theory of Descent as reformed by Darwin.—Its Special Importance to Biology (Zoology and Botany).—Its Special Importance to the History of the Natural Development of the Human Race.—The Theory of Descent as the Non-Miraculous History of Creation.—Idea of Creation.—Knowledge and Belief.—History of Creation and History of Development.—The Connection between the History of Individual and Palæontological Development.—The Theory of Purposelessness, or the Science of Rudimentary Organs.—Useless and Superfluous Arrangements in Organisms.—Contrast between the two entirely opposed Views of Nature: the Monistic (mechanical, causal) and the Dualistic (teleological, vital).—Proof of the former by the Theory of Descent.—Unity of Organic and Inorganic Nature, and the Identity of the Active Causes in both.—The Importance of the Theory of Descent to the Monistic Conception of all Nature. The intellectual movement to which the impulse was given, thirteen years ago, by the English naturalist, Charles Darwin, in his celebrated work, “On the Origin of Species,”(1) has, within this short period, assumed dimensions which cannot but excite the most universal interest. It is true the scientific theory set forth in that work, which is commonly called briefly Darwinism, is only a small fragment of a far more comprehensive doctrine—a part of the universal Theory of Development, which embraces in its vast range the whole domain of human knowledge.