Darwin and Haeckel 3

Haeckel and Darwin

Darwin and Haeckel 1
Darwin and Haeckel 2

If Charles Darwin had never heard of Ernst Haeckel or written to him or confirmed his understanding of natural selection, or encouraged him, endorsed his books, cited him positively in his scientific writing, or hosted him at Down,  he could still be responsible for inspiring Haeckel's version of evolution, his scientific racism, his eugenics and other things up till the end of Haeckel's life.   All that would take to prove that Darwin had inspired Haeckel is for Haeckel to say he had.   And he did from his early writings, lectures ....  right up to the end.   And Darwin did do all of those things.  Darwin knew that Haeckel was his foremost proponent in Germany, perhaps on the European continent.  He knew and said that Haeckel's promotion of Darwinism was important for its spread.  He knew what Haeckel was saying about him and  he knew that Haeckel's work was being read.  No conditional "what if" is relevant because Darwin, himself, left the record that ties him directly and intentionally to Ernst Haeckel.   The only way to deny that is to lie about it.

In an earlier post I gave an extremely startling passage from Haeckel's "The History of Creation  (Naturliche Schopfungsgeschichte)":

This final triumph of the monistic conception of nature constitutes the highest and most general merit of the Theory of Descent, as reformed by Darwin.

As Darwin proved in his citation of the book, already noted here, he had read "The History of Creation" and gave it his enthusiastic endorsement.   He would have had to have read that sentence,  a sentence that contained his name and gave Darwin a superlative endorsement,  attributing the "final triumph of the monistic conception of nature" to him.    As I noted,  E. Ray Lankester, whose translation I took that passage from, a translation made during Darwin's lifetime,  was a longtime correspondent and colleague of Charles Darwin.  I cannot imagine that  if he suspected that passage could have been inaccurate, he wouldn't  have checked with Darwin - who was at the height of his fame and who was jealous for his reputation -  and corrected it accordingly.

If Darwin misunderstood what Haeckel meant by "monistic" he could not have remained in confusion as Haeckel talks about it quite a bit in the next chapters of "The History of Creation".

I have looked at many of Haeckel's books, some in German, some in English as well and find similar citations of Darwin all through his books, including one of his most infamous books,  "Monism as Connecting  Religion and Science".   In 1892, ten years after Darwin's death,  Haeckel showed just how much of his thought he attributed to Darwin's influence. It is incendiary and I know it will be controversial to cite it, but the record is there to be read by anyone.  The record being there is all the justification anyone needs to cite it.

And  I will point out that Darwin is the one who told Haeckel that "I am delighted that so distinguished a Naturalist should confirm & expound my views, and I can clearly see that you are one of the few who clearly understand Natural Selection"  in 1865,  less than thirty years before he presented the book as a lecture.  And that through the rest of Darwin's life,  he poured praise on Haeckel and what he was writing.  Darwin had not retracted his earliest endorsement of Haeckel but repeated it in private, by letter, and in the form of SCIENTIFIC CITATIONS up till the end of his life.

Here is the passage:

These considerations gain in force when we advance to the deeper knowledge of nature acquired by modern biology; here it was Darwin, especially, who thirty-three years ago opened our eyes by his doctrine of the struggle for existence, and his theory of selection founded upon it. We now know that the whole of organic nature on our planet exists only by a relentless war of all against all. Thousands of animals and plants must daily perish in every part of the earth, in order that a few chosen individuals may continue to subsist and to enjoy life. But even the existence of these favoured few is a continual conflict with threatening dangers of every kind. Thousands of hopeful germs perish uselessly every minute. The raging war of interests in human society is only a feeble picture of the unceasing and terrible war of existence which reigns throughout the whole of the living world. The beautiful dream of God's goodness and wisdom in nature, to which as children we listened so devoutly fifty years ago, no longer finds credit now—at least among educated people who think. It has disappeared before our deeper acquaintance with the mutual relations of organisms, the advancement of oecology and sociology, and our knowledge of parasite life and pathology.

All these sad but insuperable facts—truly the dark side of nature—are made intelligible to religious faith by amphitheism; they are the "works of the devil," who opposes and disturbs the perfect moral order in the world of the "good God." For pure monotheism which knows only one God, one perfect highest being, they remain unintelligible. If, with a monotheistic creed, any one still continues to talk of the moral order of the world, he in so doing shuts his eyes to the undeniable facts of history, both natural and civil.
Lecture given October 9, 1892, at Altenburg

As in the case of Darwin's enthusiastic endorsements of Galton's early eugenics, it will take the discovery of a complete repudiation of Haeckel's monism, his racism, his eugenics, his depravity, to get Darwin off of the Haeckel hook. Haeckel's word is all that is needed to identify Darwin as his inspiration, but, again as with Galton, Darwin, himself, provided the confirmation that Haeckel was not misrepresenting Darwin.  Darwin encouraged Haeckel's boldness in expressing his views.  As he gave Haeckel the highest praise in scientific citations, presenting what Haeckel wrote as extremely reliable information,  I don't think anything short of as public and grave a repudiation would get Darwin off.  Nor should he get off without it.  And if such a repudiation existed, it would be trumpeted non-stop by those who want to distance Darwin from Haeckel.

There is no reason a mere ten years after Darwin's death that Haeckel shouldn't have still believed he still stood as one of the "few who clearly understand Natural Selection" and that he would no longer have had Darwin's delight in confirming and expounding his views boldly.  Considering what he said in General Morphology, History of Creation and other books and articles which Darwin had praised and not criticized, there is no reason for Haeckel to believe what he said in that lecture would not have also met with Darwin's approval.   If someone else had asserted that it would have been disapproved by Darwin,  Haeckel had letters and endorsements enough to have asserted his superior credibility to all, except, perhaps, Thomas Huxley.  And Thomas Huxley was also praising Haeckel, not damning him.

If Darwin was nervous about or had rejected what was being derived from his ideas during his lifetime, in books and articles we know him to have read,  it was up to him to say so.   With his death, that record of statements or of unretracted endorsements has to stand as his final word on the matter.   No one can do that for Darwin posthumously.  I'm unaware of anyone who knew him who did.  And they would have had to present the same record to credibly do so.

Update:  In one of my old notebooks I came across a reference to this passage from Haeckel's 1899 lecture,  "The Last Link: Our Present Knowledge of the Descent of Man."

The immense significance of this positive knowledge of the origin of man from some Primate does not require to be enforced. Its bearing upon the highest questions of philosophy cannot be exaggerated. Among modern philosophers no one has perceived this more deeply than Herbert Spencer.* He is one of those older thinkers who before Darwin were convinced that the theory of development is the only way to solve the   enigma of the world. Spencer is also the champion of those evolutionists who lay the greatest weight upon progressive heredity, or the much combated heredity of acquired characters. From the first he has severely attacked and criticised the theories of Weismann, who denies this most important factor of phylogeny, and would explain the whole of transformism by the c all-sufficiency of selection.  In England the theories of Weismann were received with enthusiastic acclamation, much more so than on the Continent, and they were called  “Neo-Darwinism” in opposition to the older conception of Evolution, or “Neo-Lamarckism.” 

Neither of those expressions is correct. Darwin himself was convinced of the fundamental importance of progressive heredity quite as much as his great predecessor Lamarck; as were also Huxley and Spencer. 

Three times I had the good fortune to visit Darwin at Down, and on each occasion we discussed this fundamental question in complete harmony. I agree with Spencer in the conviction that progressive heredity is an indispensable factor in every true monistic theory of Evolution, and that it is one of its most important elements. If one denies with Weismann the heredity of acquired characters, then it becomes necessary to have recourse to purely mystical qualities of germ-plasm. I am of the opinion of Spencer, that in that case it would be better to accept a mysterious creation of all the various species as described in the Mosaic account.

If you want to deny that's what Darwin agreed to in his private conversations with Haeckel, you've got the considerable problem of not having been there. No rational person would consider, given the evidence from first hand observation, that Darwin was unaware of Haeckel's monism, as he was still articulating it in 1899.  Though, in the context of my notes, I think it was Spencer I was looking into when it was taken down.