Last Words on Evolution A Popular Retrospect and Summary
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By Ernst Haeckel 22 May, 2020
I was persuaded to make one departure from this fixed resolution, firstly, by the pressing entreaties of many intimate friends at Berlin. They represented to me how important it was to give an account myself to the educated Berlin public of the chief ... Read more
I was persuaded to make one departure from this fixed resolution, firstly, by the pressing entreaties of many intimate friends at Berlin. They represented to me how important it was to give an account myself to the educated Berlin public of the chief evolutionary conclusions I had advocated for forty years. They pointed out emphatically that the increasing reaction in higher circles, the growing audacity of intolerant orthodoxy, the preponderance of Ultramontanism, and the dangers that this involved for freedom of thought in Germany, for the university and the school, made it imperative to take vigorous action. It happened that I had just been following the interesting efforts that the Church has lately made to enter into a peaceful compromise with its deadly enemy, Monistic science. It has decided to accept to a certain extent, and to accommodate to its creed (in a distorted and mutilated form) the doctrine of evolution, which it has vehemently opposed for thirty years. This remarkable change of front on the part of the Church militant seemed to me so interesting and important, and at the same time so misleading and mischievous, that I chose it as the subject of a popular lecture, and accepted the invitation to Berlin. Less
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  • English
  • 978-1408608784
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