Neuhaus blows up Haeckel and Huxley

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things on Ernst Haeckel and T.H. Huxley...

Give a boy a hammer and he discovers the whole world needs hammering. Give an intellectual enthusiast a really big idea and he discovers it explains just about everything. Ernst Haeckel...had no problem with being accused of worshiping Darwin and was an influential popularizer of his thought....

Haeckel published a book with an illustration juxtaposing three embryos (dog, chicken, and turtle) and pointing out, as evidence in support of Darwin’s theory, that the three images were indistinguishable. A sharp-eyed reviewer noted that they were indeed indistinguishable. The same woodcut had been printed three times. Haeckel’s reputation never recovered. T.H. Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog,” wrote him a letter of consolation: “May your shadow never be less, and may all your enemies, unbelieving dogs who resist the Prophet of Evolution, be defiled by the sitting of jackasses upon their grandmothers’ graves!” A true believer, like a little boy with a hammer, is not easily deterred.