series
of lectures delivered before a mixed audience at Jena, in the session
1867-8.

"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 perhap