HAECKEL AND CO.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 170, 20 July 1910, Page 9

HAECKEL AND CO.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—Your correspondent "Truth" can rest assured that if he wrote columns in your paper every week of similar matter, he is not in the least going to influence thoughtful people, who have read, and are not afraid to think for themselves. I might safely say that both Haccikel and Blatchford are worldrenowned. lilatchford entered journalism at 34 yeare of ago, and in two years' time had a salary of £1000 a year. He was then offered £30 a week to write one article, and a three years' engagement if he would cease work on the

'•Clarion." He then wrote a book, of ■which tw-o million copies were sold, and ■which hsis been translated into nine languages. Recently his pamphlet on "England ami Germany" reached a sale of a million and three-quarters. How much have your correspondents done for mankind, iox the freedom of thought, for tho hastening of that day when all will even ha;ve enough to cut, instead of trying to keep people in ignorance, and so in subservience? But that day has fled for ever to those who have the pluck .to think for themselves.—l am, etc.,

1 (To the EdltorJ I Sir, —The following is a reply to "Truth," who quotes as ail authority against Darwin's theory of evolution, a writo Iflce Prof. Floischniunn, who, according to "Truth," says: "The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of Nature. It is not the result of scientific research, Imt purely the product of the imagination." How anyone, even a professor, could so misrepresent such a welliknown naturalist sural scientific observer as Darwin, and whose books are full of evidence given in support of the theory o£ evolution, 1 cannot understand. In L.i rwin's "Descent of Man," after giving evhience and stating his conclusion that "tht re is no fundamental difference beitwec n man ana the higher mammals in their mental faculties," lie concludes, chap. 4, part 1, with the following:—"ln the nvxt chapter 1 shall make some few remarks on Lhe probable steps and means by whi»-h the several mental and moral faculties: of man have been gradually evolved. That such evolution is at least ■possEble ought not to be. denied, for we daily see tliese faculties developing in every infant; and we may trace a perfect gradation from the mind of an uttei idiot, lower than that of an animal low in the scale, to the mind of a N-e-vvion." iHe aftexwards says, chap. 21, part 3*:—"l am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this work will bo denounced iby some as highly irreligious, T>ut he vtlio- denounces them is bound to shew why it is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a distinct species by descent from some lower form, through the laws of variation and natural selection, than to explain the birth of the' individual through the laws of ordinary- reproduction. The birth both of the .species and the individual are equally parts of that grand sequence of .events which our minds refuse to as the result of blind chance. The understanding revolts at such a conctrsion, whether or not we are able to believe that every slight variation of structure —the union of each pair in mar.riage —the dissemination of each seed—and other euch events, have all been onlained for some special purpose.—l am, etc., EVOLUTIONIST.

"Bara Fostus" sends another letter on this subject, in which he states that the signatures appended to the protest againet Haeckel's methods "were those of scientific men entirely outside the special branch which Haeckel so nobly represents," only three-out of the six having any specfal kno-wledge of biology. The correspondence on this subject is now cloeed.