HAECKEL'S CRITICS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 165, 14 July 1910, Page 6

HAECKEL'S CRITICS.

(To tbe Editor.) Sir, —It is not to vindicate Haeckel, nor refute individual beliefs, as propounded by the Rev. Isaac Jolly, of the Manse, Ponsonby, and his be-like that I intrude into this correspondence. What seems incredible in the contribution of Mr Joily is that lie should demand that strict demonstrative proof of "Haeckel's" deductions, neither himself nor his cochamjMons can produce in support of their own. To us, out in the wilds, reared in intimate contact with Nature, and keen observers, how rigidly her acts coincide with her comprehensible laws, to believe in miraeular interference therewith, is unspeakably revolting. Whereas science, as demonstrated by Haeckel, Darwin, and other brave iconoclasts, satisfies those laws, and all things fall into place as our pre-obseryations expect they would. Tirades of inconsequential assertion, and their foolish satire, bolstered and shared by frail struts of folk professing like beliefs to Mr Jolly et Cie, together with demands for proof our present incomplete data cannot produce, simply beg the question, and disclose a dictatorial pre-emptive right they have not yet established a legal claim to. As soon as Mr Jolly and his eo-labora-teurs can bring the same class of proof, and the same credible data in defenqe of their theories, as Haeckei, et Cie, have for theirs—even though these 'be patched and improved—so soon will they have attained to an uncritical hearing, and rightly claim to be expounders of incontrovertible truth. Until then, let them accept the reply of Pope Pius the IXth. "Keligion is a' matter of Faith, not Reason!"—l am, etc., Te Kuiti. W.B. "Student," writing on the same subject, states that he has again read the theological section of Haeckel's "Riddle of the Universe," and fails to sco any "grotesque misrepresentation of facts" as stated by Mr. Jolly. "Bara Fostus" also sends a long letter defending Haeckel, in reply to Mr. Jully.