The Invention of Nature

The result of his despair was the two-volume Generelle Morphologie der Organismen (General Morphology of Organisms) which was published in 1866 – 1,000 pages about evolution and morphology, the study of the structure and shape of organisms.

⁴ Darwin described the book as the ‘most magnificent eulogium’ that the Origin of Species had ever received. It was an angry book in which Haeckel attacked those who refused to accept Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Haeckel reeled off a barrage of insults: Darwin’s critics wrote thick but ‘empty’ books; they were in a ‘scientific half sleep’ and lived a ‘life of dreams that was impoverished of thoughts’. Even Thomas Huxley – a man who called himself ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ – thought that Haeckel would have to tone it down a little if he wanted to produce an English edition. Haeckel, however, was not budging.

Radical reform of the sciences could not be done gently, Haeckel told Huxley. They would have to get their hands dirty and use ‘pitchforks’. Haeckel had written Generelle Morphologie

at a moment of deep personal crisis, as he explained to Darwin, his bitterness about the world and about his life was woven into every sentence. Since Anna’s death Haeckel didn’t worry about his own reputation any more, he told Darwin: ‘long may my many enemies attack my work strongly’. They could maul him as much as they wanted, he couldn’t have cared less.

Generelle Morphologie was not only a rallying call for the new theory of evolution but also the book in which Haeckel first named Humboldt’s discipline: Oecologie, or ‘ecology’. Haeckel took the Greek word for household –

oikos – and applied it to the natural world. All the earth’s organisms belonged together like a family occupying a dwelling; and like the members of a household they could conflict with, or assist, one another. Organic and inorganic nature made a ‘system of active forces’, he wrote in Generelle Morphologie, using Humboldt’s exact words. Haeckel took Humboldt’s idea of nature as a unified whole made up of complex interrelationships and gave it a name. Ecology, Haeckel said, was the ‘science of the relationships of an organism with its environment’.⁵

In the same year that Haeckel invented the word ‘ecology’, he also finally followed Humboldt and Darwin to distant shores. In October 1866, more than two years after Anna’s death, he travelled to Tenerife, the island that had taken on an almost mystical dimension for scientists ever since Humboldt had described it so seductively in Personal Narrative. It was time to fulfil what Haeckel called his ‘oldest and most favourite travel dream’. Almost seventy years after Humboldt had set sail and more than thirty years after Darwin had boarded the Beagle, Haeckel began his own voyage. Though three generations apart, they had all believed that science was more than a cerebral activity. Their science implied strenuous physical exertion because they were looking at flora and fauna – be they palms, lichens, barnacles, birds or marine invertebrates – within their natural habitats. Understanding ecology meant exploring new worlds teeming with life.

On his way to Tenerife, Haeckel stopped in England where he arranged to see Darwin at home at Down House in Kent, a short train ride from London. Haeckel had never met Humboldt, but now he had the opportunity to meet his other hero. On Sunday, 21 October, at 11.30 a.m. Darwin’s coachman picked up Haeckel at Bromley, the local train station, and drove him to an ivy-clad country house where the fifty-seven-year-old Darwin was waiting at the front door. Haeckel was so nervous that he forgot the little English he knew. He and Darwin shook hands for a long time, with Darwin saying repeatedly how glad he was to see him. Haeckel was, as Darwin’s daughter Henrietta recounted, stunned into a ‘dead silence’. As they strolled through the garden along the Sandwalk where Darwin did so much of his thinking, Haeckel slowly recovered and began to talk. He spoke English with a strong German accent, stumbling a little but in a clear enough manner for the two scientists to enjoy a long conversation about evolution and foreign travels.

Darwin was exactly as Haeckel had envisaged him. Older, softly spoken and kind, Darwin exuded an aura of wisdom, Haeckel thought, much as he imagined Socrates or Aristotle. The whole Darwin family welcomed him so warmly that it had felt like coming home, he told friends in Jena. That visit, Haeckel later said, was one of the most ‘unforgettable’ moments of his life. When he left the next day, he was more than ever convinced that nature could only be seen as ‘one unified whole – a completely interrelated “kingdom of life” ’.