Part 8

In 1896 he received from the Royal Society the Copley medal 'for his pre-eminence in the science of comparative anatomy or animal morphology.'

His marvellously powerful influence as a teacher and investigator has made Heidelberg a centre whence many pupils have spread his teaching, and above all his method of research.

ERNST HEINRICH HAECKEL was born on February 16, 1834, at Potsdam. He carried out his academical studies alternately at Berlin and Würzburg, attracted by such men as Johannes Mueller, Koelliker, and Virchow. For years he was undecided what his career should be, whether that of botanist, collector, or geographical traveller. Certainly that of medicine attracted him least, although in deference to his father's wishes he qualified and settled down for a year's practice in Berlin. As he himself has told us, he might perhaps have proved rather successful as a physician, to judge from the fact that he did not lose a single patient. But 'I had only three patients all told, and the reason of this is perhaps that I had given on my plate the hours of consultation as from 5 to 6 a.m.'

During the year 1859 he travelled as medical man and artist in Sicily. In 1861 he was induced by Gegenbaur, whose acquaintance he had made in Würzburg, to establish himself as a Privat-docent for comparative anatomy in Jena. And there he has remained ever since, filling the Chair of Zoology, and having declined several much more tempting offers from the Universities of Würzburg, Vienna, Strassburg, and Bonn.

Within one year, 1865, he wrote the two volumes of his 'Generelle Morphologie der Organismen,' as he himself relates, in order to master his sorrow over the loss of his first wife. But he broke down, and went to the Canaries to recruit health and strength. The 'Morphologie,' which has long been out of print, made scarcely any impression. It was ignored, probably because he had placed the old-fashioned study of zoology and morphology upon a thoroughly Darwinistic basis.

That this great work is now comparatively rare, although still in the second-hand market, may perhaps be urged in excuse of the fact of so many attempts made by many authors, both professional and amateur, to find fault with or to explain the principles of adaptation, variation, heredity, cænogenesis, phylogeny, etc., in complete ignorance that all these and many more fundamental questions were fully discussed more than thirty years ago in the 'Generelle Morphologie.'

On the advice of his friend Gegenbaur, he gave a more popularly written abstract of his 'Generelle Morphologie'--in fact, the substance of a series of his lectures--in the shape of his 'Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte.' This 'History of Natural Creation,' which in 1898 has reached the ninth edition (first edition translated into English in 1873), had the desired effect. So also had his 'Anthropogenie oder Entwicklungsgeschichte des Menschen,' the fourth edition of which appeared in 1891.

It was a lucky coincidence that Haeckel had just finished his preliminary academical studies, was entirely at leisure, and undetermined to which branch of natural science he should devote his genius, when Darwin's great work was given to the world. Haeckel embraced the new doctrine fervently, and, as Huxley was doing in England, he spread it and fought for it with ever-increasing vigour in Germany.

With marvellous vigour and quickness of perception he applied the principles of Evolution or the theory of descent to the whole organic world, and not only opened entirely new vistas for the study of morphology, but also worked them out and fixed them. He was the first to draw up pedigrees of the various larger groups of animals and plants, filling the gaps by fossils or with hypothetical forms (the necessary existence of which he arrived at by logical deductions); and thus he reconstructed the first universal pedigree, a gigantic ancestral tree, from the simple unicellular Amoeba to Man. Of course these pedigrees were entirely provisional, as he himself has over and over again avowed; but they are, nevertheless, the ideal which all systematists and morphologists working upon the basis of Evolution have since been seeking to establish.

Naturally he was vigorously attacked, not only by anti-Darwinians, or rather anti-Evolutionists, but also by many of those who, having accepted the principle of transformism, ought to have known better. Perhaps they thought they did know better. Imperfections or mistakes in details of the grand attempt,--and these, naturally, were many,--were singled out as samples of the whole, which was ridiculed as the romance of a dreamer.

In the end, however, this hostility, narrow-minded and unfair in many respects, has done good to the cause. There has arisen an ever-increasing school of workers in favour of the new doctrine. Owing to renewed research, criticism, corrections in all directions, we now know considerably more about natural classification (and this is pedigree) than when Haeckel first opened out the whole problem.

Owing to his fearless mode of exposition, regardless of the indignant wrath which the new doctrine aroused in certain ecclesiastical quarters, Haeckel bore the brunt of almost endless attacks, and had to write polemical essays. The result has been that friend and foe alike are now working on the lines which he has laid down; most of the ideas which he was the first to conceive, and to formulate by inventing a scientific terminology for them, have become important branches, or even disciplines, of the science.

Most morphologists of the younger generations now take these terms for granted, without remembering the name of their founder. It is, therefore, perhaps not quite superfluous to mention some of them:

Phylum, or stem, the sum total of all those organisms which have probably descended from one common lower form. He distinguished eight such phyla--Protozoa, Coelenterata, Helminthes or Vermes, Tunicata, Mollusca, Articulata, and Vertebrata. The phyla are more or less analogous to 'super-classes,' large branches or 'circles,' or principal groups of other zoologists.

Phylogeny, the history of the development of these various phyla, classes, orders, families, and species.

Ontogeny, the history or study of the development of the individual, generally called embryology. In reality the scope of embryology is the ontogenetic study of the various species, and this branch of developmental study alone can be checked by direct, 'exact' observation, for the simple reason that the individuals alone are entities, while the species, genera, families, etc., are abstract ideas.

The ontogenesis of any given living organism is a short, condensed recapitulation of its ancestral history or of its phylogenesis. This is Haeckel's 'fundamental biogenetic law.'

A complete proof of the phylogeny of any creature would be given by the preservation of an unbroken series of all its fossil ancestors. Such a series will in most cases, for obvious reasons, always remain a desideratum. In a few cases, however, the desideratum is nearly met: for example, the ancestral line of the one-toed digitigrade horse from a four-or five-toed plantigrade and still very generalized Ungulate is approaching completion.

Phylogenetic study has to rely upon other help. This is afforded by comparative anatomy and by the study of ontogeny. If the latter were a faithful, unbroken recapitulation of all the stages through which the ancestors have passed, the whole matter would be very simple; but we know for certain that in the individual development many stages are left out (or, rather, are hurried through, and are so condensed by short-cuts being taken that we cannot observe them), while other features which have been introduced obscure, and occasionally modify beyond recognition, the original course.

Again, the sequence of the appearance of the various organs is frequently upset (heterochronism). Some organs are accelerated in their development, while others, which we know to be phylogenetically older, are retarded in making their reappearance in the embryo.

These disturbing or distorting newly introduced features or factors show themselves chiefly in connection with the embryonic conditions of growth--for example, yolk-sac, placenta, amnion. They all come within the category of cænogenesis: they are cænogenetic, while the true, undisturbed recapitulation is palingenetic.

Lastly, some features, so-called rudimentary or vestigial organs, instead of disappearing, are most tenacious in their recurrence, while others of originally fundamental importance scarcely leave recognisable traces, and are, so to speak, only hinted at during the embryonic growth of the creature we happen to study. Hence arises the philosophical study of 'Dysteleology.'

Among other terms invented by Haeckel, and now in general use, are Metamere, Metamerism, Coelom, Gonochorism, Gastrula, Metazoa, Gnathostomata, Acrania, Craniota, and Amniota.

Hitherto we have dealt with his general work only, a résumé of which he gave for many years in a course of thirty lectures before an audience composed of 'all sorts and conditions of men.' Students of biology and of medicine side by side with theologians, incipient and ordained, jurists, political economists, and philosophers, crowded his lecture-room during the 'seventies to hear the master explaining the 'natural history of creation' or the mysteries of anthropogenesis. Another course of eighty lectures during the winter semester was, and still is, devoted to a systematic treatment of zoology, while practical classes are reserved for the more select.

His winning personality and fascinating eloquence, combined with a clear and concise delivery, have gained the enthusiastic admiration of many a student who went to the quiet University town in order to learn with his own ears and eyes.

List of Separate Publications by Professor Haeckel.

'Biologische Studien. I.: Studien ueber die Moneren und andere Protisten.' Leipzig, 1870 (out of print). He was the first to make observations on the natural history of the Monera, living bits of protoplasm, devoid even of a nucleus--e.g., Protogenes primordialis, Protomyxa aurantiaca.

'Monographie der Radiolarien.' Berlin, 1862-88. With 171 plates.