AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION.
I am desirous of prefacing the English edition of the “History of Creation” with a few remarks which may serve to explain the origin and object of this book. In the year 1866 I published, under the title “Generelle Morphologie,” a somewhat comprehensive work, which constituted the first attempt to apply the general doctrine of development to the whole range of organic morphology (Anatomy and Biogenesis), and thus to make use of the vast march onwards which the genius of Charles Darwin has effected in all biological science by his reform of the Descent Theory and its establishment through the doctrine of selection. At the same time, in the “Generelle Morphologie,” the first attempt was made to introduce the Descent Theory into the systematic classification of animals and plants, and to found a “natural system” on the basis of genealogy; that is, to construct hypothetical pedigrees for the various species of organisms.
The “Generelle Morphologie” found but few readers, for which the voluminous and unpopular style of treatment, and its too extensive Greek terminology, may be chiefly to blame. But a proportionately large measure of approval has met the “Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte” in Germany. This book took its origin in the shorthand notes of a course of lectures which treated, before a mixed audience and in a popular form, the most important topics discussed in the “Generelle Morphologie.” The notes were subsequently revised, and received considerable additions. The book appeared first in 1868, its fourth edition in 1873, and has been translated into several languages. I hope that it may also find sympathy in the fatherland of Darwin, the more so since it contains special morphological evidence in favour of many of the important doctrines with which this greatest naturalist of our century has enriched science. Proud as England may be to be called the fatherland of Newton, who, with his law of gravitation, brought inorganic nature under the dominion of natural laws of cause and effect, yet may she with even greater pride reckon Charles Darwin among her sons—he who solved the yet harder problem of bringing the complicated phenomena of organic nature under the sway of the same natural laws.
The reproach which is now oftenest made against the Descent Theory is that it is not securely founded, not sufficiently proven. Not only its distinct opponents maintain that there is a want of satisfactory proofs, but even faint-hearted and wavering adherents declare that Darwin’s hypothesis is still wanting fundamental proof. Neither the former nor the latter estimate rightly the immeasurable weight which the great series of phenomena of comparative anatomy and ontogeny, palæontology and taxonomy, chorology and œcology, cast into the scale in favour of the doctrine of filiation. Darwin’s Theory of Selection, which completely explains the origin of species through the combined action of Inheritance and Adaptation in the struggle for existence, also appears to these persons not sufficient. They demand, over and above, that the descent of species from common ancestral forms shall be proved in a particular case; that, in contradistinction to the synthetic proofs adduced for the Descent Theory, the analytic proof of the genealogical continuity of the several species shall be brought forward.
This “analytical solution of the problem of the origin of species” I have myself endeavoured to afford in my recently published “Monograph of the Calcareous Sponges.” For five consecutive years I have investigated this small but highly instructive group of animals in all its forms in the most careful manner, and I venture to maintain that the monograph, which is the result of those studies, is the most complete and accurate morphological analysis of an entire organic group which has up to this time been made. Provided with the whole of the material for study as yet brought together, and assisted by numerous contributions from all parts of the world, I was able to work over the whole group of organic forms known as the Calcareous Sponges in that greatest possible degree of fulness which appeared indispensable for the proof of the common origin of its species. This particular animal group is especially fitted for the analytical solution of the species problem, because it presents exceedingly simple conditions of organisation, because in it the morphological conditions possess a greatly superior, and the physiological conditions an inferior, import, and because all species of Calcispongiæ are remarkable for the fluidity and plasticity of their form. With a view to these facts, I made two journeys to the sea-coast (1869 to Norway, 1871 to Dalmatia), in order to study as large a number of individuals as possible in their natural circumstances, and to collect specimens for comparison. Of many species, I compared several hundred individuals in the most careful way. I examined with the microscope and measured in the most accurate manner the details of form of all the species. As the final result of these exhaustive and almost endless examinations and measurements it appeared that “good species,” in the ordinary dogmatic sense of the systematists, have no existence at all among the Calcareous Sponges; that the most different forms are connected one with another by numberless gradational transition forms; and that all the different species of Calcareous Sponges are derived from a single exceedingly simple ancestral form, the Olynthus. A drawing of the Olynthus and its earliest stages of development (observe especially the highly important Gastrula) is given in the frontispiece of the present edition. Illustrations of the various structural details which establish the derivation of all Calcareous Sponges from the Olynthus, are given in the atlas of sixty plates which accompanies my monograph of the group. In the gastrula, moreover, is now also found the common ancestral form from which all the tribes of animals (the lowest group, that of the protozoa, alone being excepted) can without difficulty be derived. It is one of the most ancient and important ancestors of the human race!
If we take for the limitation of genus and species an average standard, derived from the actual practice of systematists, and apply this to the whole of the Calcareous Sponges at present known, we can distinguish about twenty-one genera, with one hundred and eleven species (as I have done in the second volume of the Monograph). I have, however, shown that we may draw up, in addition to this, another systematic arrangement (more nearly agreeing with the arrangement of the Calcispongiæ hitherto in vogue) which gives thirty-nine genera and two hundred and eighty-nine species. A systematist who gives a more limited extension to the “ideal species” might arrange the same series of forms in forty-three genera and three hundred and eighty-one species, or even in one hundred and thirteen genera and five hundred and ninety species; another systematist on the other hand, who takes a wider limit for the abstract “species,” would use in arranging the same series of forms only three genera, with twenty-one species, or might even satisfy himself with one genus and seven species. The delimitation of species and genera appears to be so arbitrary a matter, on account of endless varieties and transitional forms in this group, that their number is entirely left to the subjective taste of the individual systematist. In truth, from the point of view of the theory of descent, it appears altogether an unimportant question as to whether we give a wider or a narrower signification to allied groups of forms—whether we choose, that is to say, to call them genera or species, varieties or sub-species. The main fact remains undeniable, viz., the common origin of all the species from one ancestral form. The many-shaped Calcareous Sponges furnish, in the very remarkable conditions of their varieties of aggregation (metrocormy), a body of evidence in favour of this view which could hardly be more convincing. Not unfrequently the case occurs of several different forms growing out from a single “stock” or “cormus”—forms which until now have been regarded by systematists, not only as belonging to different species, but even to different genera. Fig. 10 in the frontispiece represents such a composite stock. This solid and tangible piece of evidence in favour of the common descent of different species ought, one would think, to satisfy the most determined sceptic!
In point of fact, I have a right to expect of my opponents that they shall carefully consider the “exact empirical proof” here brought forward for them, as they have so eagerly demanded. The opponents of the doctrine of filiation, who have too little power of weighing evidence, or possess too little knowledge to appreciate the overpowering weight of proof afforded by the synthetical argument (comparative anatomy, ontogeny, taxonomy, etc.), may yet be able to follow me along the path of analytical proof, and attempt to upset the conclusion as to the common origin of all species of all Calcareous Sponges which I have given in my Monograph. I must, however, repeat that this conclusion is based on the most minute investigation of an extraordinarily rich mass of material,—that it is securely established by thousands of the most careful microscopical observations, measurements, and comparisons of every single part, and that thousands of collected microscopic preparations render, at any moment, the most searching criticism of my results confirmatory of their correctness. One may hope, then, that opponents will endeavour to confront me on the ground of this “exact empiricism,” instead of trying to damn my “nature-philosophical speculations.” One may hope that they will endeavour to bring forward some evidence to show that the latter do not follow as the legitimate consequences of the former. May they, however, spare me the empty—though by even respectable naturalists oft-repeated—phrase, that the monistic nature-philosophy, as expounded in the “General Morphology,” and in the “History of Creation,” is wanting in actual proofs. The proofs are there. Of course those who turn their eyes away from them will not see them. Precisely that “exact” form of analytical proof which the opponents of the descent theory demand is to be found, by anybody who wishes to find it, in the “Monograph of the Calcareous Sponges.”
Ernst Heinrich Haeckel.