



Produced by Giovanni Fini, Marilynda Fraser-Cunliffe, David
Garcia and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
images of public domain material from the Google Print
project.)









                                  THE

                            WONDERS OF LIFE

                            A POPULAR STUDY
                       OF BIOLOGICAL PHILOSOPHY

                                  BY

                             ERNST HAECKEL
           (Ph.D., M.D., LL.D., Sc.D., and Professor at the
                          University of Jena)

                               AUTHOR OF
                     "THE RIDDLE OP THE UNIVERSE"
                       "THE HISTORY OF CREATION"
                        "THE EVOLUTION OF MAN"
                                 ETC.

                             TRANSLATED BY
                             JOSEPH McCABE

                        SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME TO
                     "THE RIDDLE OF THE UNIVERSE"

  [Illustration: LOGO]

                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS

                          NEW YORK AND LONDON

                                 1905




                Copyright, 1904, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

                        _All rights reserved._

                       Published January, 1905.




                               CONTENTS


                   PART I.--METHODOLOGICAL SECTION:
                           KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE

                                         PAGE

  PREFACE                                   v

  CHAPTER I

  TRUTH                                     1


  CHAPTER II

  LIFE                                     27


  CHAPTER III

  MIRACLES                                 54


  CHAPTER IV

  THE SCIENCE OF LIFE                      77


  CHAPTER V

  DEATH                                    97


                   PART II.--MORPHOLOGICAL SECTION:
                            NATURE OF LIFE


  CHAPTER VI

  PLASM                                   121


  CHAPTER VII

  UNITIES OF LIFE                         147


  CHAPTER VIII

  FORMS OF LIFE                           170


  CHAPTER IX

  MONERA                                  190


                   PART III.--PHYSIOLOGICAL SECTION:
                           FUNCTIONS OF LIFE


  CHAPTER X

  NUTRITION                               210


  CHAPTER XI

  REPRODUCTION                            239


  CHAPTER XII

  MOVEMENT                                258


  CHAPTER XIII

  SENSATION                               287


  CHAPTER XIV

  MENTAL LIFE                             315


                    PART IV.--GENEALOGICAL SECTION:
                            HISTORY OF LIFE


  CHAPTER XV

  THE ORIGIN OF LIFE                      336


  CHAPTER XVI

  THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE                   359


  CHAPTER XVII

  THE VALUE OF LIFE                       386


  CHAPTER XVIII

  MORALITY                                411


  CHAPTER XIX

  DUALISM                                 433


  CHAPTER XX

  MONISM                                  452


  INDEX                                   475




PREFACE


The publication of the present work on _The Wonders of Life_ has been
occasioned by the success of _The Riddle of the Universe_, which I
wrote five years ago. Within a few months of the issue of this study
of the monistic philosophy, in the autumn of 1899, ten thousand copies
were sold. Moreover, the publisher having been solicited on many sides
to issue a popular edition of the work, more than a hundred thousand
copies of this were sold within a year.[1] This extraordinary and--as
far as I was concerned--unexpected success of a philosophical work
which was by no means light reading, and which had no particular charm
of presentation, affords ample proof of the intense interest taken by
even the