Part of the preceding, so far as it is a criticism of Haeckel, was given by me in the first instance as a Presidential Address to the Members of the Birmingham and Midland Institute; and the greater portion of this Address was printed in the Hibbert Journal for January 1905. Mr M'Cabe, the translator of Haeckel, thereupon took up the cudgels on behalf of his Chief, and wrote an article in the following July issue; to the pages of which references will be given when quoting. A few observations of mine in reply to this article emphasise one or two points which perhaps previously were not quite clear; and so this reply, from the October number of the Hibbert Journal, may be conveniently here reproduced.
I have no fault to find with the tone of Mr M'Cabe's criticism of my criticism of Haeckel, and it is satisfactory that one who has proved himself an enthusiastic disciple, as well as a most industrious and competent translator, should stand up for the honour and credit of a foreign Master when he is attacked.
But in admitting the appropriateness and the conciliatory tone of his article, I must not be supposed to agree with its contentions; for although he seeks to show that after all there is but little difference between myself and Haeckel—and although in a sense that is true as regards the fundamental facts of science, distinguishing the facts themselves from any hypothetical and interpretative gloss—yet with Haeckel's interpretations and speculative deductions from the facts, especially with the mode of presentation, and the crude and unbalanced attacks on other fields of human activity, my feeling of divergence occasionally becomes intense.
And it is just these superficial, and as Mr M'Cabe now admits hypothetical, and as they seem to me rather rash, excursions into side issues, which have attracted the attention of the average man, and have succeeded in misleading the ignorant.
If it could be universally recognised that
"it is expressly as a hypothesis that Haeckel formulates his conjecture as to manner of the origin of life" (p. 744),
and if it could be further generally admitted that his authority outside biology is so weak that
"it is mere pettiness to carp at incidental statements on matters on which Haeckel is known to have or to exercise no peculiar authority, or to labour in determining the precise degree of evidence for the monism of the inorganic or the organic world" (p. 748),
I should be quite content, and hope that I may never find it necessary to carp at these things again. Also I entirely agree with Mr M'Cabe, though I have some doubt whether Professor Haeckel would equally agree with him, that
"there remain the great questions whether this mechanical evolution of the universe needed intelligent control, and whether the mind of man stands out as imperishable amidst the wreck of worlds. These constitute the serious controversy of our time in the region of cosmic philosophy or science. These are the rocks that will divide the stream of higher scientific thought for long years to come. To many of us it seems that a concentration on these issues is as much to be desired as sympathy and mutual appreciation" (p. 748).