“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.

The next six lectures are occupied by a well-digested statement of Mr. Darwin’s views.  The thirteenth lecture discusses two topics which are not touched by Mr. Darwin, namely, the origin of the present form of the solar system, and that of living matter.  Full justice is done to Kant, as the originator of that “cosmic gas theory,” as the Germans somewhat quaintly call it, which is commonly ascribed to Laplace.  With respect to spontaneous generation, while admitting that there is no experimental evidence in its favour, Professor Haeckel denies the possibility of disproving it, and points out that the assumption that it has occurred is a necessary part of the doctrine of Evolution.  The fourteenth lecture, on “Schoepfungs-Perioden und Schoepfungs-Urkunden,” answers pretty much to the famous disquisition on the “Imperfection of the Geological Record” in the Origin of Species.

The following five lectures contain the most original matter of any, being devoted to “Phylogeny,” or the working out of the details of the process of Evolution in the animal and vegetable kingdoms, so as to prove the line of descent of each group of living beings, and to furnish it with its proper genealogical tree, or “phylum.”

The last lecture considers objections and sums up the evidence in favour of biological Evolution.

I shall best testify to my sense of the value of the work thus briefly analysed if I now proceed to note down some of the more important criticisms which have been suggested to me by its perusal.

I. In more than one place, Professor Haeckel enlarges upon the service which the Origin of Species has done, in favouring what he terms the “causal or mechanical” view of living nature as opposed to the “teleological or vitalistic” view.  And no doubt it is quite true that the doctrine of Evolution is the most formidable opponent of all the commoner and coarser forms of Teleology.  But perhaps the most remarkable service to the philosophy of Biology rendered by Mr. Darwin is the reconciliation of Teleology and Morphology, and the explanation of the facts of both which his views offer.