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The History of Creation, Vol. II is Ernst Haeckel’s sweeping synthesis of evolutionary theory as it stood in the late nineteenth century. Presented as a “popular exposition” of the doctrines of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck, the work opens with a poetic preface that frames the natural world as a grand, interconnected tapestry, then moves into a detailed table of contents that maps out the book’s ambitious scope, from geological periods and fossil records to the systematic pedigrees of the Protista, plants, animals, and finally humanity. The opening chapter argues that the traditional, catalog‑like practice of naturalists, merely naming and grouping species, must be replaced by a genealogical view that treats the whole of zoology and botany as a true family tree, a premise that the subsequent chapters develop through exhaustive surveys of paleontology, comparative anatomy and embryology.
Written in the formal, lecture‑style prose of an 1880s German professor, the translation retains Haeckel’s dense, scholarly tone, replete with technical terminology and frequent references to contemporary scientific debates. Readers who relish historic scientific literature, especially those interested in the intellectual origins of evolutionary thought, the history of taxonomy, or the Victorian‑era clash between science and religion, will find this volume a rich, if demanding, window into the era’s attempt to reconcile natural history with a unified theory of descent.
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OR THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE EARTH AND ITS INHABITANTS BY THE ACTION OF NATURAL CAUSES.
A POPULAR EXPOSITION OF THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION IN GENERAL, AND OF THAT OF DARWIN, GOETHE, AND LAMARCK IN PARTICULAR.
FROM THE GERMAN OF ERNST HAECKEL, PROFESSOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF JENA.
THE TRANSLATION REVISED BY PROFESSOR E. RAY LANKESTER, M.A., F.R.S., FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE, OXFORD.
IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. II.
NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 1, 3, AND 5 BOND STREET. 1880.
A sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.
In all things, in all natures, in the stars Of azure heaven, the unenduring clouds, In flower and tree, in every pebbly stone That paves the brooks, the stationary rocks, The moving waters and the invisible air.
WORDSWORTH.
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER XV. PAGE PERIODS OF CREATION AND RECORDS OF CREATION.
Reform of Systems by the Theory of Descent.—The Natural System as a Pedigree.—Palæontological Records of the Pedigree.—Petrifactions as Records of Creation.—Deposits of the Neptunic Strata and the Enclosure of Organic Remains.—Division of the Organic History of the Earth into Five Main Periods: Period of the Tangle Forests, Fern Forests, Pine Forests, Foliaceous Forests, and of Cultivation.—The Series of Neptunic Strata.—Immeasurable Duration of the Periods which have elapsed during their Formation.—Deposits of Strata only during the Sinking, not during the Elevation of the Ground.—Other Gaps in the Records of Creation.—Metamorphic Condition of the most Ancient Neptunic Strata.—Small Extent of Palæontological Experience.—Small proportion of Organisms and of Parts of Organisms Capable of Petrifying.—Rarity of many Petrified Species.—Want of Fossilised Intermediate Forms.—Records of the Creation in Ontogeny and in Comparative Anatomy 1
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