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I am desirous of prefacing the English edition of the “History of Creation” with a few remarks which may serve to explain the origin and object of this book. In the year 1866 I published, under the title “Generelle Morphologie,” a somewhat comprehensive work, which constituted the first attempt to apply the general doctrine of development to the whole range of organic morphology (Anatomy and Biogenesis), and thus to make use of the vast march onwards which the genius of Charles Darwin has effected in all biological science by his reform of the Descent Theory and its establishment through the doctrine of selection. At the same time, in the “Generelle Morphologie,” the first attempt was made to introduce the Descent Theory into the systematic classification of animals and plants, and to found a “natural system” on the basis of genealogy; that is, to construct hypothetical pedigrees for the various species of organisms.
The “Generelle Morphologie” found but few readers, for which the voluminous and unpopular style of treatment, and its too extensive Greek terminology, may be chiefly to blame. But a proportionately large measure of approval has met xiv the “Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte” in Germany. This book took its origin in the shorthand notes of a course of lectures which treated, before a mixed audience and in a popular form, the most important topics discussed in the “Generelle Morphologie.” The notes were subsequently revised, and received considerable additions. The book appeared first in 1868, its fourth edition in 1873, and has been translated into several languages. I hope that it may also find sympathy in the fatherland of Darwin, the more so since it contains special morphological evidence in favour of many of the important doctrines with which this greatest naturalist of our century has enriched science. Proud as England may be to be called the fatherland of Newton, who, with his law of gravitation, brought inorganic nature under the dominion of natural laws of cause and effect, yet may she with even greater pride reckon Charles Darwin among her sons—he who solved the yet harder problem of bringing the complicated phenomena of organic nature under the sway of the same natural laws.
