Haeckel Again

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 20, 20 May 1909, Page 10

Haeckel Again

' A Mother ' asks us if the infidel writer Haeckel's Evolution of Man is a proper book for Catholic young people to read. We unhesitatingly say that it is not. Indeed, none of the same author's works are safe reading for young people. And_ this, partly because so very fewyoung people have the mental training and equipment necessary to dissect the inaccuracies and the fallacies with which that aggressive atheist missionary's books abound; partly because the false and exaggerated glamor of a scientific reputation which, in the popular eye, has been thrown around him by his rationalist and free-thinking admirers, blinds the unskilled reader to the deplorable methods by which Haeckel ekes out his case in favor of an atheistic evolution. In the eyes of men of real eminence in the world of science, Haeckel has long since found his level. For a generation past his studied falsifications of facts, illustrations, etc., have, indeed, constituted one of the gravest scandals in the scientific annals of our time.

In our last issue we published, in condensed form, the latest and most serious exposure of the man's methods of bending his ' facts ' to suit his theories. But this is an old resort of that prime favorite of the Raiio&alist Press Association. 'It is more than forty years,' says the April number of The Month (1909, pp. 374-5), 'since Haeckel exhibited his ideas as to how science may be abused to serve his purposes, in the notorious instance of the " three wood-cuts," which should, it might be supposed, have for ever destroyed his authority in the eyes" of the world, scientific or otherwise.- In his Natural History of Creation (Natiirlichen Schopfungsgeschichte), published in 1868, to support his statement that, in their rudimentary stages, wholly different animals exactly resemble one another — and thus testify that they are all developments from one identical form — he printed in one place plates which purported to be embryos of a man, an ape, and a dog, pointing out that they were exactly alike, and elsewhere three other plates, to represent those or a dog, a fowl, and a turtle, similarly indistinguishable. Presently,, however, it was observed, by Professor Rutimeyer, of Basle, that no wonder the objects represented were precisely similar, as in both instances the same plate had been printed three times over, with only the title altered, as was proved by accidental scratches and fissures on the face of the blocks. What is more remarkable, Professor Haeckel did not attempt to deny the charge thus brought against him. But, although he described it as "a very foolish blunder" (eine hbchst unbesonnene Torheit), he was by no means inclined to plead guilty to dishonesty. . . The case of the three woodcuts, though it has attained more notoriety than some others, is by no means- singular. On the contrary, such scientific authorities as His, Semper, Hensen, Bischoff, Hamann, and others, declare that of Haeckel's plates, some are pure " inventions," and others are arbitrarily altered to suit his purpose, and that, having thus wantonly trifled with facts, he has forfeited all claim to rank amongst serious men of science.' Young people can find abundant works on scientific subjects — such as those of Father John Gerard, the writer of the article in The _ Month — without risking shipwreck of their faith by saturating their minds with the unscientific falsifications of so militant a propagandist of materialism as Ernest Haeckel.