HAECKEL AND HIS TEACHINCS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 865, 11 July 1910, Page 8

HAECKEL AND HIS TEACHINCS.

Sir, —1 beg a little hospitality in your columns to expose the grossly inaccurate statements made by a. correspondent to .vour paper. 1 do uot doubt for a- moment that he has truthfully reproduced the information as ho received it, but that information is a sheer travesty of tho facts. Hoiv any sonsiblo man can boliove. that Ilaeckol and "tho great majority" of scientific men have "deliberately forged" their illustrations is past my comprehension. The- real facts are simple enough, and ought not to Ik* sought in a rabid partisan organ lite the "Ifunehnor Allgemeine Zcitung." Xboui tidxiy .sapja age ithiz chance

was first raised against my friend Professor Haeckel. It turned out, as Professor Bolsche relates, that au. error was made by tho printers of tho book in regard to tho illustration, blocks, and tho charge of deliberate misrepresentation was shown to bo frivolous. Last year a third-rate. Gorman writer, Dr. Brass, attempted to renew the charge. Hoockel, in a public lecture at Berlin, met the silly ehargo with disdainful irony ajid offered a "contrite confession." In, the sentences reproduced (which aro not from any "signed confession.," but from a report of a public lecture), the word "embryo" has been mendaciously inserted. Haeckel, who sent tho documents to me, was not referring to his embryo drawings at all, but to certain, hypothetical drawings of extinct oreaturos, which are plainly described in his works as imaginative drawings. Even in- the words quoted by your correspondent, the irony is transparent, and it requires a childish petulance- or ignorance to mistake Hacckcl'e moaning. The sequel in Germany was far different from that described by your correspondent. Tho "milder document signed , by forty-six professors" was a drastic condemnation of Brass, not of Haeckel. by tho leaders of German culture. 'While stating that many of them disapproved of Haeekel's- controversial methods, thev indignantly resented that so gross a charge should bo brought against one of their greatest colleagues. The second manifesto, which Dr. Brass got up is signed only by unimportant follower-, of Jus own Bund. The whole episode was dealt with by one of tho loading ombryologists of Germany. Professor Rabl, in the "Frankfurter /.eitung. He absolutely closed the controversy by making public the fact that the other professors of embryology had had publicly to warn their students nover to use the works of Dr. Brass, because that gentleman had borrowed pictures from other scientists and deliberately falsified them! I leave your readors to express their own appreciation of the anonymous writers and partisan journals that have to rely on such tactics to avert a criticism of their beliefs.

i-our impartial readers will care to know that, when I visited .Hacckol last spring, I found him spending his last years in honour ;>nd happiness. Jena is proud of him, and has given his name to its new streets and square;.. He is a Privy Councillor, and is loaded with the highest honours the scientific world can give. To quote Sir Oliver Lodge on his opinions is a pirre of amusing audacity. Sir Oliver Lodge stands notoriously alone in his peculiar opinions, winch are regarded with the greatest disdain in the English scientific world, while men like Principal Lloyd Morgan openly profess themselves Monists. —I am, etc., JOSEPH M'CABE.