In existographies, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) (IQ:180|#202) (Murray 4000:16|B) (FA:74) (GPhE:11) [CR:127] was a German physician, turned Goethe-promoting, Darwin-promoting zoologist, an "unabashed atheist" (Brix, 1992), noted, in hmolscience, for, among things, his "physico-chemical monism" philosophical conception "of the world" (1892) as he put things.
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“The fundamental unit of affinity in the whole of nature, from the simplest chemical process to the most complicated love story, [as] was recognized by Empedocles [and] Goethe, [can be] reduced, on logical analysis, to matter (space filling substance) and energy (moving force), [which] are but two inseparable attributes of one underlying substance.”

“The plant-soul (phytopsyche) is, in our view, the summary of the entire psychic activity of the tissueforming, multicellular plant (the metaphyton, as distinct from the unicellular protophyton); it is, however, the subject of the most diverse opinions even at the present day. It was once customary to draw an essential distinction between the plant and the animal, on the ground that the latter had a "soul" and the plant had none. However, an unprejudiced comparison of the irritability and movements of various higher plants and lower animals convinced many observers, even at the beginning of the century, that there must be a "soul" on both sides. At a later date Fechner, Leitgeb (Ѻ) , and others strongly contended for the plant-soul. But a profounder knowledge of the subject was obtained when the similarity of the elementary structure of the plant and of the animal was proved by the cellular theory, and especially when the similarity of conduct of the active, living protoplasm in both was shown in the plasma theory of Max Schultze (1859).”

See main: Atheism types by denial and belief

See main: Plastidue theory

A circa 1910 photo (Ѻ) of Haeckel in his studio.

“Every atom has an inherent amount of force and is animated in this sense.”

“Jedes Atom besitzt eine inharente Summe von Kraft und ist in diesem Sinne beseelt.”

“Without the adoption of an 'atomic soul' the most common and general phenomena of chemistry are inexplicable. Pleasure and pain, desire and aversion, attraction and repulsion must be all atomic-masses together, the movements of the atoms, which must take place in formation and release of each chemical compound, are only explicable only if we instill in them sensation and volition. What else is due to basically the generally accepted chemical study of the elective affinity of the body than on the unconscious assumption that in fact the attracting and repelling atoms are inspired by certain tendencies, and that they, these feelings or impulses, following too have the will and the ability to move towards each other and away from each other? What Goethe transmits in his 'Elective Affinities' on the highest composite soul life of man, which has full truth.”

“Ohne die Annahme einer ‘Atomseele’ sind die gewöhnlichsten und allgemeinsten Erscheinungen der Chemie unerklärlich. Lust und Unlust, Begierde und Abneigung, Anziehung und Abstoßung müssen allen Massen-Atomen gemeinsam sein; den die Bewegungen der Atome, die bei Bildung und Auflösung einer jeden chemischen Verbindung stattfinden müssen, sind nur erklärbar, wenn wir ihnen Empfindung und Willen beilegen. Worauf anders beruht den im Grunde die allgemein angenommene chemische Lehre von der Wahlverwandtschaft der Körper, als auf der unbewussten Voraussetzung, dass in der Tat die sich anziehenden und abstoßenden Atome von bestimmten Neigungen beseelt sind, und dass sie, diesen Empfindungen oder Trieben folgend, auch den Willen und die Fähigkeit besitzen, sich zu einander hin und von einander fort zu bewegen? Was Goethe in seinen ‘Wahlverwandtschaften’ über das höchst zusammengesetzte Seelenleben des Menschen überträgt, das besitzt volle Wahrheit …”

“I was full of jubilation at the clarity with which you pass from chemical elective affinity one side into the realm of life and on the other into the realm of mechanics; and I am more than ever convinced that in its unremitting progress, science will offer explanations of all the more important points that do not stand in contradiction to the requirements of an austere philosophy, or to put it more correctly, that it makes it possible for an austere philosophy to progress without losing contact with the ground under it's feet.”

“Goethe, in his classical romance, Elective Affinities, compares the relations of pairs of loves with the phenomenon of the same name in the formation of chemical combinations. The irresistible passion that draws Edward to the sympathetic Ottilie, or Paris to Helen, and leaps over all bounds of reason and morality, is the same powerful unconscious attractive force which impels the living spermatozoon to force an entrance into the ovum in the fertilization of the egg of the animal or plant—the same impetuous movement which unities the two atoms of the hydrogen to one atom of the oxygen for the formation of the a molecule of water. This fundamental unity of affinity in the whole of nature was recognized by the great Greek scientist Empedocles in the fifth century BC in his theory of the love and hatred of the elements.”

Haeckel's 1874 "evolution of man" diagram, showing: 1 Amoeba; 1a Asexual reproduction (amoeba dividing); 2 Sexual reproduction (cell with spore); 3 Multi-cellular organism (early embryonic stage); 4 Muliticellular organism with three germ layers (blastula); 5 Organism with primitive mouth (gastrula); 6 Planaria; 7 Worm (leech); 8 Primitive chordate (tunicate larva); 8a Adult tunicate; 9 Lancelet; 10 Jawless fish (lamprey); 11 Cartilaginous fishes (shark); 12 Australian lungfish; 13 South American lungfish; 14 Aquatic reptile (plesiosaur); 15 Early amphibian (labytinthodont); 16 Modern amphibian (newt); 17 Reptile (iguana); 18 Monotreme (platypus); 19 Marsupial (kangaroo); 20 Prosimian (lemur); 21 Monkey (langur); 22 Ape (orangutan); 23 Ape-man (Pithecanthropus); 24 Modern human (a Papuan).

“… seductive women—why should I, despite all scruples and obstacles, cast myself into the dust before you? Dearst Franziska, herein lies the enigma of ‘elective affinity’, of that strange psychological ‘chemotropism’, of whose power I have spoken repeatedly in my books—little dreaming that I myself should fall a victim to it in my old age!”

“In our most impressionable years, we are given very defective, perverse, and often really mischievous instruction, by which we are filled with absurd errors, instead of natural truths.”

“We thus arrive at the extremely important conviction that all natural bodies which are known to us, are equally animated, that the distinction which has been made between animate and inanimate bodies does not exist.”

— Ernst Haeckel (1868), The History of Creation, key-citation from above [11]

“Darwin is the ‘new Newton’ who has explained the origin of organisms strictly via mechanical causes.”

— Ernst Haeckel (1868), History of Creation [13]

“Judeo-Christian beliefs are ‘those dogmatic doctrines of anthropism’.”

— Ernst Haeckel (c.1868) [14]

“Wolfgang Goethe: Germany’s greatest genius.”

— Ernst Haeckel (1892), Monism [16]

“The immortal merit of establishing the doctrine on an empirical basis, and pointing out its world-wide application, belongs to the great scientist Charles Darwin; he it was who, in 1859, supplied a solid foundation foi the theory of descent, which the able French naturalist Jean Lamarck had already sketched in its broad outlines in 1809, and the fundamental idea of which had been almost prophetically enunciated in 1799 by Germany's greatest poet and thinker, Wolfgang Goethe. These three distinguished naturalists shine as three stars of the first magnitude amid all the great men of the century.”

— Ernst Haeckel (1899), The Riddle of the Universe (pgs. 4-5)

“The fundamental unit of affinity in the whole of nature, from the simplest chemical process to the most complicated love story, [as] was recognized by Empedocles [and] Goethe, [can be] reduced, on logical analysis, to matter (space filling substance) and energy (moving force), [which] are but two inseparable attributes of one underlying substance.”

— Ernest Haeckel (1899), The Riddle of the Universe (pg. #)

“During the Middle Ages—especially during the domination of the papacy—scientific work in this direction entirely ceased. The torture and the stake of the Inquisition insured that an unconditional belief in the Hebrew mythology should be the final answer to all the questions of creation.”

— Ernst Haeckel (1899), The Riddle of the Universe (pg. 238)

“As the coach pulled up to Darwin’s ivy-covered country house, shaded by elms, out of the shadows of the vine-covered entrance came the great scientist himself to meet me. He had a tall, worthy form with the broad shoulders of Atlas, who carries a world of thought. He had a Jupiter-like forehead, high and broadly domed, similar to Goethe’s, and with deep furrows from the habit of mental work.”

— Ernst Haeckel (c.1900), retrospect on first meeting Charles Darwin [15]