The Evolution of Man — Volume 2 by Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich Philipp August, 1834-1919

A famous English physicist, Lord Kelvin (then Sir W. Thomson), attempted to dispense with the hypothesis of spontaneous generation by assuming that the organic inhabitants of the earth were developed from germs that came from the inhabitants of other planets, and that chanced to fall on our planet on fragments of their original home, or meteorites. This hypothesis found many supporters, among others the distinguished German physicist, Helmholtz. However, it was refuted in 1872 by the able physicist, Friedrich Zollner, of Leipzig, in his work, On the Nature of Comets. He showed clearly how unscientific this hypothesis is; firstly in point of logic, and secondly in point of scientific content. At the same time he pointed out that our hypothesis of spontaneous generation is "a necessary condition for understanding nature according to the law of causality."

I repeat that we must call in the aid of the hypothesis only as regards the Monera, the structureless "organisms without organs." Every complex organism must have been evolved from some lower organism. We must not assume the spontaneous generation of even the simplest cell, for this itself consists of at least two parts--the internal, firm nuclear substance, and the external, softer cellular substance or the protoplasm of the cell-body. These two parts must have been formed by differentiation from the indifferent plasson of a moneron, or a cytode. For this reason the natural history of the Monera is of great interest; here alone can we find the means to overcome the chief difficulties of the problem of spontaneous generation. The actual living Monera are specimens of such organless or structureless organisms, as they must have boon formed by spontaneous generation at the commencement of the history of life.

CHAPTER 2.19. OUR PROTIST ANCESTORS.

Under the guidance of the biogenetic law, and on the basis of the evidence we have obtained, we now turn to the interesting task of determining the series of man's animal ancestors. Phylogeny us a whole is an inductive science. From the totality of the biological processes in the life of plants, animals, and man we have gathered a confident inductive idea that the whole organic population of our planet has been moulded on a harmonious law of evolution. All the interesting phenomena that we meet in ontogeny and paleontology, comparative anatomy and dysteleology, the distribution and habits of organisms--all the important general laws that we abstract from the phenomena of these sciences, and combine in harmonious unity--are the broad bases of our great biological induction.

But when we come to the application of this law, and seek to determine with its aid the origin of the various species of organisms, we are compelled to frame hypotheses that have essentially a DEDUCTIVE character, and are inferences from the general law to particular cases. But these special deductions are just as much justified and necessitated by the rigorous laws of logic as the inductive conclusions on which the whole theory of evolution is built. The doctrine of the animal ancestry of the human race is a special deduction of this kind, and follows with logical necessity from the general inductive law of evolution.