GROWTH OF IDEAS
At Easter, 1867, Haeckel returned to Jena through Morocco, Madrid,
and Paris. He spent a few of the pleasant spring weeks at the Strait
of Gibraltar and in the South of Spain. In the fine bay of Algeciras
(opposite to Gibraltar on the west) the current of the Strait
brought swarms of interesting medusæ, siphonophores, and other
“plancton-animals” into his net. In his solitary walks through the
mountain forests of Andalusia, in the incomparable Moorish palaces
and the cathedrals of Seville and Cordova, Granada and the Alhambra,
he gazed on that wealth of Spain in treasures of Nature and Art
which had excited his boyish imagination in the vivid pictures of
Washington Irving.
With his return home a crisis occurred in his career, from our
biographical point of view, such as we find at one point or other in the
lives of all great men. Up to the present the course of his life has
advanced steadily onward, so that the simple chronological order
afforded the most natural thread for our narrative. With this crisis his
activity broadens out more. His ideas, almost all of which are presented
in the _General Morphology_, form a great and continuous stem, which
throws out a large or a small flower on one side or other, according to
the stimulus received. His life crystallises about Jena; however many
journeys he makes, he always feels that he will return to his centre at
Jena. Nothing in his later career ever shook him from this ideal and
personal base.
In the summer after his return to Jena, 1867, he married Agnes Huschke,
daughter of the distinguished Jena anatomist. He shares the happiness of
this second marriage down to the present day. Of their three children,
the son is now a gifted artist at Munich; the elder daughter is the wife
of Professor Hans Meyer, proprietor of the Leipsic Bibliographical
Institute, who is particularly known in science by his ascent of the
Kilimandschars; the younger daughter is still at home with her parents.
He never leaves the University of Jena—and it never abandons him. It is
a kind of spiritual marriage. In 1865, when the sky was still free from
clouds, he was invited to take a position at Würtzburg, his old
school-place. He declined the invitation, and was then appointed
ordinary professor at Jena. Then the evil days came. The conclusions of
his _Morphology_ were popularised by himself, and went out far and wide
amongst the masses. People opened their eyes to find that this audacious
scientist was making “war upon God” out of his zoology. At length the
difficult question arises whether a mind of that type can be retained in
the honourable position of official professor. The Philistines are in
arms. The quiet, stubborn group, that has vegetated unchanged, like a
demoralised parasitic animal, from Abdern to Schilda, through thousands
of years of the free development of the mind, boycots the professor and
his family for a time. The Philistines appeal from their safe corner to
the authorities to intervene. Once, towards the close of the sixties,
the situation threatened to become really critical. The head of the
governing body of the university at the time was Seebeck, a
distinguished man who by no means shared Haeckel’s views, but had a just
feeling of Haeckel’s honourableness and mental power. In the middle of
the struggle Haeckel approaches him one day, and says that he is
prepared to resign his position, a sacrifice to his ideas. Seebeck
replied, “My dear Haeckel, you are still young, and you will come yet to
have more mature views of life. After all, you will do less harm here
than elsewhere, so you had better stop here.” At Jena they still tell a
similar story that happened on another occasion. A stern theologian
presented himself in person at the chateau of Karl Alexander, Grand Duke
of Weimar, and begged him to put an end to this scandal of the
professorship of Haeckel, the arch-heretic. The Grand Duke, educated in
the Weimar tradition of Goethe, asked, “Do you think he really believes
these things that he publishes?” “Most certainly he does,” was the
prompt reply. “Very good,” said the Grand Duke, “then the man simply
does the same as you do.”
Haeckel remained a professor at Jena; and when the current subsided a
little, he was not insensible of their liberality. He remained faithful
to Jena, though even Vienna, amongst other places, offered him a
position (1871). Under his guidance “zoological” Jena flourished like a
poor orphan that has suddenly been enriched. At one stroke the
university was lifted to the position of an intellectual metropolis for
the whole of the young scientific generation of the last quarter of the
century. The best of the younger men that fill the biological positions
in Germany to-day (and many others) were educated under Haeckel. Many of
these pupils became opponents of his eventually, but they all went
through his system. He had a further satisfaction. He not only attracted
the young men to Jena, but he conjured up as if by magic the financial
resources for improving the external advantages of the place for
teaching and working. His style of “zoology,” which was at the same time
“natural philosophy,” brought people to his assistance who would never
have been won by a narrowly technical zoologist, no matter how learned
he was. Twice men were induced “for his sake”—that is to say, induced by
the magnetic force of his charming personality—to leave large legacies
to be spent on the university under his direction; once it was the
Countess Bose, another time Paul von Ritter of Basle. Ritter alone gave
sufficient to found two professorships at Jena for the express purpose
of teaching the science of phylogeny that Haeckel had created.
All through the period of his long stay at Jena that followed we trace a
series of continual holiday journeys. In these journeys he used to
collect the best material for his professional research, following the
method he had learned from Müller at Heligoland, and had practised at
Messina and Lanzarote. At the same time these travels were, like the
earlier ones, the bath of eternal youth and health for “the other soul
in his breast”; the artist, the lusty wanderer, I might almost say the
inveterate Bohemian in him, was then allowed to have his spell of song
and gaiety. In Jena he took deeper and deeper root as time went on.
There was something in him in this respect of a Persephone impulse, an
alternation of winter and summer in his life. When the days of hard and
wearing work were past, he would have to rush away into the free air,
down to the blue sea, to far and happy Nature. “Here I am a man—dare be
a man.” The duty of the zoologist of Müller’s school to go down to the
sea to work came to his rich temperament, which included so much more
than mere “professional reasons,” with a splendid sense of
Persephone-life: half his time in the cold North studying animal
skeletons and dead bones by the burning lamp, the other half in the
glare of the sun of reality, in living nature at its best. I will only
quote summarily a few dates of these travels. In 1869 he spent the
autumn vacation in Scandinavia. In 1871 he was in the island of Lesina
in Dalmatia, where he, the arch-heretic, lived in a monastery with a
jolly abbot. From beautiful Ragusa he made an interesting excursion to
Cattaro and Montenegro. In 1873 he went to Egypt and Asia Minor,
visiting Athens, Constantinople, Brussa, and the Black Sea. The
culmination of this journey was a visit to the splendid coral banks of
Tur, in the Red Sea. The Khedive, Ismail Pacha, put a Government steamer
at his disposal for the journey. The excursion has been superbly
described by Haeckel himself in the little volume, _The Corals of
Arabia_ (1876). The same volume contains the first specimens of his
landscapes in water-colour. He spent the spring of 1875 in Corsica and
Sardinia. On that occasion Oscar Hertwig discovered, in his presence,
the process of fertilisation in the sea-urchin; his discoveries will
long remain a turning-point in the history of our knowledge of sexual
generation (one of the deepest mysteries in nature). In the autumn of
1876 he was at work on the coast of Great Britain, and reached as far as
Ireland. In the spring of 1877 he was at Ithaca and Corfu; in the autumn
we find him on the Riviera. In 1878 he went first to Fiume and Pola on
the Adriatic, and afterwards on an Atlantic excursion to Brittany,
Normandy, and Jersey. In the autumn of 1879 he was in Holland and
Scotland.
In 1881 he made the second longest journey of his life. He secured
permission to absent himself from the university for six months, and
went to Ceylon. He left Jena on the 8th of October, and did not return
until April 21, 1882. The traveller and æsthete in him revelled in this
first plunge into the tropics. How he was taken to the enchanted land of
India in the Lloyd steamer _Helios_, a pretty reminiscence of the
“heliozoa” (sun-plants), a name he had himself invented; how he greeted
his beloved medusæ in their beautiful tropical forms of the Indian
Ocean; how he lived in the execrable but thoroughly tropical and
interesting Whist-Bungalow at Colombo, where mysticism and an unholy joy
in card-playing occupied him until philosophic zoology came to crown and
redeem everything; how he set up his zoological laboratory far from the
world at the Cingalese village of Belligemma (which he interpreted
_bella gemma_, the “pretty jewel”), and fished with his Müller-net for
radiolaria, medusæ, and siphonophoræ, for six whole weeks, to the
intense bewilderment of the naked children of the palms; how he at last
penetrated into the wildest virgin forests of Ceylon, where one heard
the heavy tread of the elephant and the roar of the panther—all this he
has described in his _Visit to Ceylon_, the freshest expression of his
temperament, which belongs utterly to the free, artistic half of his
life, when Persephone has her summer days in the land of flowers.
He himself regarded this journey, happy and favoured to the very last
minute, as a crown and conclusion of his travels that could never be
surpassed. But many a long hour was to be spent in travel after that,
and he was to make one journey that left Ceylon far behind him in the
Indian Ocean. In the spring of 1887 he made a pilgrimage to the “Holy
Land,” Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, Damascus and Lebanon. On this journey
he spent a delightful month on the island of Rhodos. In 1889 he had a
pleasant time on the beautiful island of Elba. In 1890 he visited
Algiers, where his innocent sketches and his anatomical knife brought
suspicion on him; they arrested him and threatened to shoot him as a
spy. He has described the incident in his genial way in his _Algerian
Reminiscences_ which is, unfortunately, lost in a back number of some
magazine or other, like so many of the sketches of his travels. In 1897
he travelled over the whole of Russia, from Finland to the Caucasus, and
visited Tiflis, Colchis, and the Crimea. In the autumn of 1892 he
accompanied Sir John Murray, of the _Challenger_ expedition, on a small
deep-sea investigation on the coast of Scotland. In the spring of 1893
and 1897 he was at work once more in his beloved Messina, where he was
now honoured as a world-famous guest. In the autumn of 1899 he climbed
the Sabine and Corsican hills. As the second decade after his first
journey to the tropics came to an end, he seemed to regard all he had
done so far as a small payment on account. In his sixty-sixth year he
felt the “home-sickness” for the tropics once more with such intensity
that he quickly made up his mind to go as far as the equator. He left
Jena on August 21, 1900, and (after a brief visit to the exhibition at
Paris) took ship at Genoa, on September 4th, for Singapore. His beloved
Italy had provided part of the cost of the journey. In the previous year
the Royal Academy of Science at Turin had awarded him the Bressa prize
(consisting of 10,000 lire) on account of his _Systematic Phylogeny_.
Once more the tropics revived the great impression made on him in his
earlier visit. This time he spent only a few hours in Ceylon, and sailed
further south. He landed at Singapore on September 27th, and sixteen
days afterwards went on to Java, and thus crossed the equator at last.
He enjoyed to the full the charms of the landscape with its volcanoes
and virgin forests, during his stay with Treub at Buitenzorg, at
Tjibodas, and during his long journey across the greater part of the
island. At Tjibodas he celebrated the close of the nineteenth century
[German calculation] by painting a fine water-colour of the smoke-canopy
over the summit of the volcano Gedeh, touched and gilded by the east
rays of the sun on the last day of 1900. On January 23, 1901, he went
from Batavia to Sumatra, crossed the Sunda Strait in sight of the famous
volcanic ruins of Krakatoa, and spent six weeks in Padang on the
south-west coast of Sumatra. This delay was largely involuntary, and due
to an injury to his knee, caused by stumbling over a rail during a visit
to an engineering establishment; but the time was by no means lost in
the middle of such glories. On March 31st he landed in Europe (at
Naples) once more, after a safe voyage. The notes he made during his
journey yielded another charming work, _Letters from the East Indies and
Malaysia_ (1901). His spirit of enterprise is inexhaustible, and still
continues.
* * * * *
Within this frame of his career we have now to study a growth of ideas
and a continuance of research that tell of vigour, consistency, and
success in every line. It unfolds logically like a great work of art.
The _General Morphology_ stands at the parting of two ways. It afforded
a programme of an infinite amount of fresh technical research—the
elaboration of his studies in detail, of promorphology, of his theory of
individuality, and of the phylogenetic system of living things; and the
strengthening of the laws of evolution, especially the great biogenetic
law. On the other hand, there was the purely philosophic work to be
done: the gathering together of the general threads that ran through his
work, and the building of a new philosophy of life, based on a new story
of creation, from the atom to the moneron, from the moneron to man, and
the whole to be comprised and contained in God. In a word, he might
proceed in either of two ways from the _Morphology_: he might construct
academic zoology afresh, or he might write a work on the new God.
When he came home from Lanzarote, the two ways seemed to coincide in
front of him; his work had, indeed, opened them out as one. But external
circumstances intervened. As things are, it was only his academic
colleagues that had any right to the new biology. A new book on God and
creation would go out to “the publicans and sinners.” Interest must be
lit up amongst the people at large, where there was as yet only the
faintest spark. It appeared, moreover, that most of his academic
colleagues in 1867 had no wish to enter on the new path he had opened
out. A new generation would have to grow up first. The _Morphology_,
from which Haeckel on his travels had expected at least a revolution,
met at first with an icy silence. There was hardly any discussion of it,
and no excitement whatever. Haeckel quickly made up his mind. He must
turn in the other direction. Gegenbaur consoles him. He has given too
much—twenty dishes instead of one. He must serve up the best part of the
work on one dish, and it will be taken. Haeckel agrees with him to some
extent, but his heavy technical artillery cannot be simplified so easily
as that. The only possible thing to do is to give an extract of it,
which will make the broad lines of the system clear. But as soon as that
is done, he sees that the extract is still only the general
philosophical part of it, and will not appeal to the general public.
It was such reflections as these that led to the writing of his _History
of Creation_, a popular work.[5]
Footnote 5:
Translated into English with the above title. Literally, the title is:
_The Story of Natural Creation_.
The chapters of this work were first delivered orally to students, in
the form of lectures, and formed a kind of introduction to morphology.
The lectures, retaining their lighter form, were then combined to make
the book. It was published in 1868, a small volume in a very primitive
garb. The success of the work was unprecedented.
Zoology and botany were treated philosophically in the _Morphology_.
That did not suit the professional scientists, who (as I said) crossed
themselves when they saw “natural philosophy.” In the _History of
Creation_ the great problems of philosophy are dealt with successively
on Darwinian lines, from the zoological and botanical point of view. It
was like the sinking of a deep well amongst general thoughtful readers.
People felt at last what a power science had become. The old riddles of
life were studied in a new light with the aid of this book. There was no
predecessor in this field. Haeckel was absolutely the first to appeal to
the general reader in this way. It is true that what he gave them was,
strictly speaking, only an extract from his own _Morphology_, especially
the second volume. But as he now arranged his matter chronologically, he
converted his outline of a world-system into a “world-history”—a real
“history of natural creation.” In the “Pictures of Nature” in the first
volume of his _Cosmos_ Humboldt had tried to bring the natural world
before his readers as a great panorama, to be taken in at one glance.
But he strictly confined his study of nature to the things that actually
exist; how they came to exist was not, he intimated, a subject of
scientific inquiry. Haeckel proceeds to this further task. His panorama
of nature does not stand out rigidly before us; it develops, under the
eyes of the observer, from the formless nebula to the intelligent human
being. Even on the surface this was seen to be a prodigious advance.
Very plain, but very attractive, it makes its way by the force of its
convincing dialectic, and places no reliance on the fireworks of
rhetoric. The subtle power of it lies in the arrangement of the facts,
which suddenly assume the form of a logical chain instead of being a
shapeless chaos. Even if all the main ideas of the work were false, we
should be compelled to regard it as one of the cleverest works that was
ever written, from the dialectical point of view. But the essence of
this cleverness is the way in which the grouping of the facts is made to
yield the philosophic evolution, which is the thoughtful basis of the
work. As the world proceeds in its natural development from the nebular
cosmic raw material until it culminates in the ape and man, the reader
finds himself at the same time advancing along a series of general
philosophic conclusions with regard to God, the world, and man. If at
the end he has retained the whole series of what are to him more or less
new scientific details, he is bound to find himself caught in a strong
net of philosophic conclusions.
In view of all this we can easily understand the different reception
that the book met with from friend and foe. People who had already
assented to the main issues of the work on general grounds of
probability, were delighted to find these issues decisively established
by the plain facts of science. On the other hand, those who would have
none of Haeckel’s philosophy now felt compelled, in view of this
dreadful work, to call these alleged facts of science themselves into
question. In face of this hostility it was some disadvantage that the
_History of Creation_ contained a vast amount of technical material
(such as the genealogical trees, the Darwinian laws, the explanation of
the facts of embryology, &c.) that could only be presented summarily in
it, while the proper technical description and justification of them was
buried in the thick volumes of the _Morphology_. Haeckel said, over and
over again, that a certain thing had been so fully established by him
scientifically in the other work that he was now at liberty to take it
as a fact; and he accordingly built it up as such without prejudice into
the compact structure of the popular work. Readers who wanted to go
further into the discussion of these facts had to look up the relevant
passages in the larger book. But the great bulk of his opponents—amongst
whom we must count even many professional scientists—had never read the
two volumes of the _Morphology_. They merely took the brief statement in
the _History of Creation_, which was really little more than a
reference, and made a violent attack on the “fact” it was said to
convey.
This led to a great deal of confusion. As in this case a controversy
over some petty zoological detail was always a “struggle about God,” and
so agitated the opponent down to the most secret folds of his
philosophy, the usual consequences did not fail to put in an appearance.
Haeckel was branded and calumniated personally. There has never been any
apostle in the world that some sect or other has not decried as a rogue
and evil-doer, simply because he was an apostle. Wherever Haeckel has
made use of any material that did not seem to be absolutely sound in
every respect, he was not simply accused of making a mistake, not even
of ignorance, but the whole thing has been put down at once to
dishonesty and the worst type of bad faith.
One should bear in mind how very generally pioneer work of this kind is
liable to err. Further, in the _History of Creation_ there is the danger
involved in the popular presentation of the results of scientific
research. Any man who has written popular works, or delivered lectures
to the general public, knows what this means. There is little common
measure between them. The truths of science are in a state of constant
flux; it is of their essence to be so. To fish out a piece from this
stream, fix it, and magnify it for the public with a broad beam of
light, really amounts in principle to an alteration of it; it is putting
a certain pressure on things, and giving them an arbitrary shape. The
work of popularising truths is so holy a thing in its aim that this risk
has to be run. We must take things as they are. We have two
alternatives: either not to popularise at all, or to take the apparatus
with all its defects. We can diminish these according to our skill; but
there is a subjective limit to this skill in all of us.
The first edition of the _History of Creation_—Haeckel’s first attempt
at popularising—had a good deal of inequality in this respect. To begin
with, the book had the air of an extempore deliverance. Its success was
very largely due to its being cast in this form. But there was a good
deal that could be improved here and there, and was improved in the
later editions of the work. In the tenth edition, as we now have it, it
is a splendid work in regard to the illustrations, for instance. But the
first edition was merely provided with a few very crude woodcuts in
outline. Some of them were very clumsy. In comparing different
embryological objects the same blocks were used sometimes, and this
would give rise to misunderstanding in the mind of the reader. For
instance, there was question of demonstrating that certain objects, such
as the human ovum and the ovum of some of the related higher mammals,
were just the same in their external outlines. This fact is quite
correct and established to-day. If I draw the outline, and write
underneath it that as a type it is applicable to all known ova of the
higher mammals, including man, there is no possibility of
misunderstanding. But if I print the same illustration three times with
the suggestion that they are three different mammal-ova, the general
reader is easily apt to think, not only that they are identical in the
general scheme of this outline, but also in internal structure. He
imagines that the ova of man and the ape are just the same even in their
microscopic and chemical features. This leads to a contradiction between
the illustration and what Haeckel expressly says in the text. We read
that there is indeed an external resemblance in shape between these ova,
but that there is bound to be a great difference in internal structure,
since an ape is developed from the one and a human being developed from
the other. It would have been better if the general reader, who is not
familiar with these outline pictures, had been more emphatically
informed in the text below the illustration that even the outline is to
be taken as a general and ideal scheme. In this sense we must certainly
admit that the illustration was bad, since it would lead to a
misunderstanding of the clear words of the text. But what are we to say
when the opponents of Haeckel’s views viciously raise the cry of “bad
faith” on the ground of a few little slips like this, and suggest that
he deliberately tried to mislead his readers with false illustrations?
Amongst the general public, in so far as it was hostile to Haeckel, the
charge blossomed out into the most curious forms. Some declared that the
whole story of a resemblance between man’s ovum and embryo and those of
other animals was an invention of Professor Haeckel’s; others—we even
read it now and again in our own time—went so far as to say that the
human ovum and embryonic forms only existed in Haeckel’s imagination.
All these wild charges are of no avail. The human ovum, which
corresponds entirely in its general scheme to that of the other higher
mammals, was not discovered in 1868 by the wicked Haeckel, but in 1827
by the great master of embryological research, Carl Ernst von Baer. The
considerable external resemblance, at certain stages of development,
between the embryos of reptiles, birds, and mammals, including man, was
decisively established by the same great scientist. These really
remarkable stages in the development of the human embryo, during which,
in accordance with the biogenetic law, it shows clear traces of the
gill-slits of its fish-ancestors, and has a corresponding fin-like
structure of the four limbs and a very considerable tail, can be seen by
the general reader at any time in the illustrated works of His, Ecker,
and Kölliker (Haeckel’s chief opponents) or in any illustrated manual of
embryology, and their full force as evolutionary evidence can be
appreciated. Any man that constructs his philosophy in such a way that,
in his conviction, it stands or falls with the existence of these
embryonic phenomena, is in a very delicate position, apart altogether
from Haeckel. His philosophy will collapse, even if the _History of
Creation_ had never been written.
These curious discussions did not seriously interfere with the success
of the book. In thousands and thousands of minds, in 1868, this little
work proved the grain of seed that led on in time to serious thought.
From that time onward Haeckel knew that he had not only scientific
colleagues and academic pupils, but a crowd of followers. When he made
an excursion into the northern part of the Sahara, as far as the first
oasis, twenty-two years afterwards, he met an artist there. They talked
philosophy, and the man, not knowing Haeckel, naïvely recommended him to
study the _History of Creation_ as likely to give him most help. The
little incident shows us something of the great pioneer work done by the
volume, something of its spiritual circumnavigation of the globe.
* * * * *
Thus the spiritual nucleus of the _General Morphology_ is introduced,
with great ability, to a much wider circle than Haeckel had dreamed of
when he gave the _Morphology_ to his colleagues. But the agitation
gradually spread into academic circles. On the whole the Darwinian ideas
pressed in everywhere by their own irresistible weight. Haeckel’s more
particular concern, however, was to secure the recognition of one single
point in the larger group of ideas—the great biogenetic law. This was
for many years the pivot on which almost all the discussions with him
and about him turned.
He himself did not at first conceive his law as a matter of controversy,
but as a method that must be brought into a position of practical
utility. An opportunity to do this arose immediately.
While he was at Lanzarote he began to take an interest in a second group
of lowly animals besides the siphonophores, namely the sponges. When the
general reader hears the word “sponge” he must modify his ordinary ideas
a little. In the present instance he must not think of the plants,
belonging to the fungi-group, such as the morel and cognate forms, that
are often called “sponges” in common parlance. He must think rather of
the sponge he uses in his bath. The bath-sponge is a structure made up
of very tough, elastic, horny fibres. This structure is originally the
skeleton, as it were, of certain animals that are known as
“sponge-animals” or, briefly, sponges; they have nothing to do with the
spongy mushrooms I spoke of. At the same time these socially-living
sponges are such curious creatures that it was disputed for a long time
whether they were real animals or not. There was a second controversy in
regard to them as to where the “individual” began—what was a single
animal, and what a co-operative colony of animals. The latter point
alone would have been enough to direct Haeckel’s attention to this group
after he had, in the case of the siphonophores, gone so deeply into the
mystery of combined individuals, forming a new “state-individual.” His
own opinion eventually was that as a matter of fact in the majority of
cases the whole sponge is a stock or colony of separate sponge
individuals closely connected together. They had not, indeed, anything
like the ingenious method of division of labour that we find in the
social medusæ; in fact, the sponges are in all respects much more lowly
organised animals than the medusæ. But they were certainly true animals.
And in the middle of his efforts to prove this Haeckel travelled into an
entirely new field of research, lying far beyond the theory of
individuality.
As there is an enormous number of different sponges, he had confined his
studies from the first to a single group of them that might be taken as
typical. He chose the calcispongiæ (calcareous sponges), which had been
the least studied up to that time. As the name obviously implies, these
sponges form their internal framework or skeleton, not of elastic horny
fibres like the common bath-sponge, but of solid calcareous needles or
spines. They secrete these out of the soft substance of their bodies
just as the radiolaria do their pretty siliceous houses. Haeckel was
engaged for five years, from 1867 to 1872, in a profound and careful
study of the natural history of the calcispongiæ. Then he published the
results in his _Monograph on the Calcispongiæ_, consisting of two
volumes of text and an atlas of sixty fine plates.
The first result was that the calcispongiæ afforded a splendid proof of
the impossibility of drawing sharp limits between species in the
perpetually developing animal world. In their case the different
varieties passed constantly out of each other and back into each other
in a way that would have made a classifier of the old type distracted.
But Haeckel had travelled far beyond the position of his boyhood, when
he had timorously concealed the bad species that would not fit into the
system. He said humorously that in the case of the calcispongiæ you had
the choice of distinguishing one genus with three species, or three
genera with 239 species, or 113 genera with 591 species. All this
confusion was saved by the Darwinian idea of not setting up absolutely
rigid classes, families, genera, and species. But even this was not yet
the essential point.
[Illustration:
ERNST HAECKEL, 1874.
]
As he had done in the case of the siphonophores, Haeckel endeavoured to
derive as much information as possible from the “ontogeny,” or embryonic
development, of the calcispongiæ. He established in some cases, it
seemed to him, that a single calcisponge-individual at first and up to a
certain stage developed from the ovum in the same way as a medusa or a
coral or an anemone. The fertilised ovum, a single cell, divided into
two cells, then several, and at last formed a whole cluster of cells. In
this cluster the cells arranged themselves at the surface, and left a
hollow cavity within. Then two layers of cells were formed, like a
double skin, in the wall of this vesicle, and an opening was left at one
spot in the wall of it. Thus we got a free-swimming embryo, with a
mouth, an external skin, and an internal digestive skin or membrane.
Then the creature attaches itself to the floor of the sea and becomes a
real sponge, partly by developing along its characteristic lines, and
partly (in most cases) by producing other sponges from itself in the
form of buds, like the siphonophore, and so forming an elaborate colony,
to which we give collectively the title of “a sponge.” These facts led
to the following reflections.
This original development from the ovum, first into an embryo with the
form of a small globe or, more correctly, an oval body consisting of two
layers of cells and having a hole at one pole—in other words, a creature
with nothing but skin, stomach, and mouth—was found, curiously enough,
in other animals besides the medusæ, corals, and sponges. We have the
same course of development in representatives of the most varied groups
of animals. There are worms, star-fishes, crabs, and snails that develop
in the same way. In fact, it was proved in this very year (1867) that
the lowest of the vertebrates, the amphioxus (or lancelet), develops in
the same way. And this was not all. In the ontogeny of all the higher
animals right up to man (inclusive) we find a state of things that most
closely resembles the same development. At all events, the fertilised
ovum gives rise in all cases to a cluster of cells; this cluster forms
something like a flattened or elongated vesicle with a single-layered
wall; the single layer of cells is doubled, and in the building up of
the body one half makes the external coat or skin and the other half the
internal lining or membrane. Haeckel reflected on the whole of the
facts, and drew his conclusions. This very curious agreement in the
earlier embryonic forms must be interpreted in terms of the biogenetic
law. In the case of the higher animals the forms have been profoundly
modified by cenogenesis. In the lower animals they are almost or
altogether a pure recapitulation of the real primitive course of the
development of the animal kingdom. In the earliest times animals were
evolved in something like the following way. First, the primitive
unicellular protozoa came together and formed crude social bodies,
clusters of cells that kept together, but had no special division of
labour. As all the members in the cluster pressed to the surface, in
order to obtain their food, they came to form, not a solid mass of
cells, but a hollow vesicle with a wall of cells. Then the first
division of labour set in. Certain cells, those that were situated at
the anterior pole, and so were better placed to receive the floating
food as the animal moved along, became the eating-cells of the group;
they provided nourishment for the others, as the nutritious sap
circulated through all the cells in the cluster, as we find in the case
of the siphonophores. As these feeding-cells multiplied rapidly at the
fore part of the animal, a depression was formed at that pole of the
body. In the end the ball or vesicle was doubled in upon itself, until
it came to have the form of a cup with a double-layered wall. Externally
were the cells in the skin that effected movement and feeling, and
afforded protection; inside, forming the internal wall, were the eating-
or stomach-cells. An opening remained at the top—the opening of the cup
or vase-like body. The food entered by it: it was virtually the “mouth.”
Thus was formed a primitive multicellular animal with division of
labour. If we imagine it attaching itself to the bottom by its lower
pole, we can see that it would easily become a sponge of the simplest
kind, a polyp, a coral, or, detaching itself once more, a medusa. If we
imagine it swimming ahead in the water or creeping along the ground in
such a way as to assume a bilateral symmetrical structure, like a tube,
with right and left, back and belly, and an anus behind, we have a worm.
This worm developed, under the action of the Darwinian laws, into a
star-fish in one case, a crab or insect in another, a snail or mussel in
another, and lastly into the amphioxus, which led on through the
vertebrates to the human frame. But the mysterious series of forms
always remained in the development of the individual from the egg,
pointing more or less clearly to the earlier stages: ovum, cluster of
cells, ball, two cell-layers in a cup-shaped form, skin, stomach, and
mouth. All animals that exhibit this primitive scheme belong to one
great stem. It was not until this skin-stomach-mouth animal was formed
that the tree branched out—evolving into sessile, creeping, swimming,
and other forms. Let us give a name to this phylogenetic (ancestral)
form, which stands at the great parting of the ways in the animal world,
as embryology proves. Leaving aside its innumerable relatives in the
primitive days, it must have differed essentially from all other living
things at the time—all the protists and the plants—by its possession of
a skin, stomach, and mouth. _Gaster_ is the Greek for stomach. Let us,
therefore, call this primitive parent of all the sponges polyps,
medusaæ, worms, crustacea, insects, snails, mussels, cephalopods,
fishes, salamanders, lizards, birds, mammals, and man, the _gastræa_,
the primitive-stomach or primitive-gut animal. The corresponding
embryonic form may be distinguished from it as the _gastrula_. There are
still many living species of animals that are very little higher in
organisation than the gastræa-form. The _Pemmatodiscus gastrulaceus_,
discovered by Monticelli in 1895, corresponds entirely to it. And the
gastrula is found, as I said, with astonishing regularity in its precise
gastræa-form in representatives of all the higher groups of animals.
That is an outline of the famous gastræa-theory, that Haeckel discovered
when he was engaged in studying the calcisponges. It was first published
in his large _Monograph on the Calcispongiæ_ in 1872, elaborated in his
_Studies of the Gastræa-theory_ in 1873, 1875, and 1876 (published in
one volume in 1877), and generally expounded, together with the
biogenetic law, in (amongst other works) his polemical essay, “The aims
and methods of modern embryology” (1875). This discovery, in Haeckel’s
opinion, now made the biogenetic law a real search-light in the
exploration of the obscure past. It indicated a third critical point in
the great genealogical tree. Already we had the root (the monera) and
the crown (man); now we had the point from which the various real animal
stems radiated like the umbellate branches of a single large bloom.
Through it the Darwinian system had been converted into the greatest
practical reform of animal classification. If this gastræa-theory was
correct, it was an incalculable gain for zoology. The difficulty of it,
on the other hand, lay in the infinite modifications of the embryonic
processes in detail that had been brought about by cenogenesis; almost
everywhere this had more or less obscured the original features. On the
whole it gave rise to the greatest and most far-reaching discussion that
has taken place in zoology for the last thirty years, apart from the
Darwinian theory itself. To-day, at the close of these three decades,
there are only two alternatives. One is that there is still an
absolutely mysterious and hidden law of ontogeny, that compels countless
animals over and over again to pass through these embryonic forms and
assume a likeness to the gastræa. After all the eagerness with which the
whole school of embryologists opposed to Haeckel have sought, up to our
own day, to establish such a direct law, we have not yet got the shadow
of a clear formulation of it. The other alternative is that Haeckel is
right in believing that he has discovered the correct formula in his
phylogenetic interpretation of embryonic processes in accordance with
the biogenetic law. If that is so, the gastræa-theory is the crown of
all his labours in technical zoology proper. Let us wait another thirty
years.
The scientific controversy over the gastræa-theory was in full swing
when Haeckel entered upon another bold experiment in the direction of
the biogenetic law. He thought it would be useful, instead of framing
wider hypotheses, to take one single instance of one of the highest
animals, and trace the whole parallel of its embryonic and ancestral
development down to its finest details. It would serve as an excellent
object-lesson. He would take it, not from some remote corner of the
system, such as the sponges or medusæ, but from the very top of the
tree, where palingenesis and cenogenesis seemed to have culminated in an
inextricable confusion. But what example could be more appropriate and
effective than the most advanced of all living things—man. He would
write a monograph on man on an entirely new method; would show ontogeny
and phylogeny confirming each other down to the smallest detail. It was
another great enterprise. And this particular subject was so interesting
that it would appeal strongly to the general readers of his _History of
Creation_ as well as to the academic scientists. Man was a subject of
such obviousness and importance to the layman that in this case there
was really no professional limitation of interest at all. Every detail
in the most technical treatment of the subject would be taken into
account, and evoked his strongest sympathy.
When Haeckel had fully matured this plan, he produced his
_Anthropogeny_.[6] The word, founded on the Greek, means the “genesis”
or “evolution of man.”
Footnote 6:
The fifth edition is translated into English, with all the plates and
illustrations, under the title of _The Evolution of Man_. [Trans.]
The work is a very able combination of two different aims. On the one
hand it affords the technical student the outline of a wholly new and
distinctive manual of human embryology (up to a certain extent) and
general anatomy; and this is intimately bound up by his method with a
kind of historical introduction to general anthropology. At the same
time the book forms a second part of the _History of Creation_. It
builds up the most important chapter of the later work, from the
philosophical point of view, namely, that which deals with the origin of
man, into a fresh volume; and it represents the first popular treatment
of embryology on broad philosophic lines—a thing that had never been
attempted before. Springing up from this double root, the work is
certainly one of the most successful things in the whole of Haeckel’s
literary career. Moreover, it is not merely a compendium of a larger
work, like the _History of Creation_. In spirit and form it is an
original work, and gives his very best to the reader. As far as its
general effect is concerned, the double-address of the work has had its
disadvantages. The academic students who were hostile to it have once
more selected for attack certain excrescences and gaps that were merely
due to the exigencies of popular treatment. On the other hand, the
general reader found it, in spite of the popular form, on which
Herculean labour had been spent—one has only to think of the details of
embryology—a book that was not to be “read” in the ordinary sense of the
word, but studied. The first edition appeared in 1874. A fifth edition
has now been published, equipped with the finest illustrations, both
from the artistic and the scientific point of view, that have ever
appeared in a popular work on embryology. We find in the _Anthropogeny_
all that the nineteenth century has learned or surmised with regard to
the ancestral history of mankind. Even the gastræa-theory—the gastræa
belonging to man’s direct ancestry—is dealt with in popular fashion as
far as this was possible.
When the _Anthropogeny_ was published Haeckel’s public position became
more stormy than ever. In professional circles a number of the
embryologists had taken up an attitude of opposition to him; the most
heated of them attacked his popular works continually on the ground that
he was popularising, not the real results of official science, but his
own personal opinions. There was a great deal of truth in that. The only
question was, which would stand best with the future, his or their
personal opinion? It does not alter the subjectivity of opinions that a
few people here and there combine and pretentiously constitute
themselves into a “science.” Posterity will deal coolly enough with
their collective decisions. It will take every man of science as an
individual, and merely ask which of them came nearest to the truth. The
name, the official science, will pass into the grave with many titles
and decorations. All that will remain in men’s minds is the star of the
personality in its relation to the great constellation of contemporary
human truth. However, as regards the particular embryological attacks of
these opponents, it seems to me to-day especially characteristic that
such people are more and more abandoning the idea that it is only a
question of contesting certain particular deductions of Haeckel’s
_within_ the limits of Darwinism. They find themselves increasingly
compelled to throw Darwinism overboard altogether. Instead of its
attempts to explain phenomena they are putting forward a confused claim
of “direct mechanical explanations,” or relying on the sonorous old
phrase, started in 1859, an “immanent law of evolution,” or retreating
into a despairing attitude of “I don’t know.” These clearer divisions
will make it very much easier for posterity to pass its judgment on the
situation.
After the embryologists we have a considerable group of opponents on the
anthropological side. The objections of these anthropological critics
have in the course of time narrowed down to the single argument that no
transitional form between man and the ape has yet been discovered. And
for many years now this position has not been held on serious scientific
grounds, but rather on ingenious and strained hypotheses. Because we now
have, in the bones found at Java by Eugen Dubois in 1894, the remains of
a being that stands precisely half-way between the gibbon and man. Hence
what is called the anti-Darwinian and especially anti-Haeckelian school
of anthropology to-day is mainly distinguished for its preference of
more risky and more subtle hypotheses instead of plain conclusions from
obvious facts. Finally, there is the theological opposition to Haeckel
that increased with every book in which he put his ideas before the
general public and helped them (in their boundless professional wisdom)
to realise the danger of the situation.
The year 1877 was a critical one in this respect. In the middle of his
struggles Haeckel retained all the simplicity of his nature. He saw that
the idea of evolution was triumphing over all obstacles and rapidly
securing the allegiance of the best men of the time. On the 18th of
September, 1877, he spoke of this with unrestrained delight at the
scientific congress at Munich. He described the theory of evolution as
“the most important advance that has been made in pure and applied
science.” Then Rudolf Virchow delivered a speech at the same congress.
There is no doubt whatever that in the period since Virchow had
indicated a neutral field in 1863, in which science might effect “its
compromise,” Haeckel had boldly invaded that province. In the previous
year he had published a little work called _The Perigenesis of the
Plastidules, or the Generation of Waves in Vital Particles_. It was
delivered in lecture-form at the medical-scientific congress at Jena in
November, 1875, and then printed on the occasion of Seebeck’s jubilee,
May 9, 1876. Possibly it is the least known of all Haeckel’s works,
though in my opinion it is one of the most valuable in regard to the
prophetic breadth of its intuition. It essays to establish a theory of
heredity. In dealing with this deepest mystery of life psychic factors
are pressed into service without reserve. Not only is the cell-soul put
into prominence, but the cell in turn is resolved into a number of
smaller units, the plastidules. Each plastidule is then conceived as a
psychic unity. The souls of the plastidules are endowed with memory;
that is the root of heredity. They learn; that is the psychological
expression of adaptation. The little work offers a suggestion of a
psychology of Darwinism that may very well become the nucleus of the
whole Darwinian structure in the twentieth century. But at the time it
was quite obvious that a man with such ideas as these was breaking with
lusty fist through the sacred net that spread before Virchow’s reserved
province. The hour had come, therefore, for Virchow to feel that he must
expel the idea of evolution from the whole field of science, and not
merely from embryology and anthropology.
It is very instructive to note how Virchow shifted his position a little
in accordance with the time. In his judgment science _had_ to make
peace. It had to make concessions in certain directions. In 1863 he had
spoken of the “ruling Churches.” Now, in 1877, he speaks of the freedom
of science in the “modern State.” The great _Kulturkampf_ had set in.
The Church was for the time being powerless in face of the State. Hence
Virchow now plays off the State as the guardian of his tabooed province.
This time Darwinism is supposed to be threatening the virgin field in
which we exact scientists make our peace with the State. At the right
moment he adroitly points out that the Social Democrats have taken to
Darwinism. Every man on deck, then. That must not go any further. At the
bottom it was the old contest. If one lays down as a general principle
that the scientific pursuit and presentment of truth has to respect
neutral provinces and make concessions, every change in current affairs
will demand a fresh application of it. To-day it is some Church or
other, to-morrow a State, the next day the momentary code of morals, and
lastly some bumbledom or other that renews the prohibition to dissect
corpses, because our dissecting knives disturb the peace of mind of our
Philistine neighbours. Haeckel published a sharp reply to Virchow (_Free
Science and Free Teaching_, 1878), in which he sought to show amongst
other things, taking his stand on his political principles, that
Socialism and Darwinism have nothing to do with each other.
I will not go more fully into the controversy here. If one province of
knowledge is to receive light from another at all, we must admit that
there is only one general truth. All stationary or reactionary political
interest is irreconcilable with the theory of evolution. That is clear
from the very meaning of the words. As to the direction in which we must
seek real political and social progress opinions are bound to differ
very considerably; it may be shown that the laws of evolution which have
selected the various species of plants and animals can only be used very
sparingly and cautiously for the promotion of human progress. But I
believe that is quite an immaterial point in this matter of Virchow’s
attack. The real influence of Darwinism on political questions is not
the chief question. The principle we have to determine is whether the
freedom of scientific research and the teaching of what the individual
student believes he has discovered to be true are to have “external”
restrictions or not. The question is whether inquiry and teaching are to
be regarded merely as things “tolerated” and interfered with at will
amongst the various elements of modern life; or whether they are not to
be considered the very bed-rock of civilisation, and every agency that
has power for the moment is not doomed whenever it comes into collision
with them.
In this momentous duel of the two men who were regarded at the time as
unquestionably the most distinguished scientists in Germany it seemed to
most people for a time that Haeckel had gone off altogether into general
and public questions with regard to the aim of research and philosophy.
He seemed to lend colour to the belief as he published, in quick
succession, a number of new popular lectures (_Cell-souls and
Soul-cells_, 1878, and _The Origin and Evolution of the Sense-organs_,
1878), and at the same time published a collected volume of older and
recent _Essays_ _on the Theory of Evolution_ (one part in 1878, a second
in 1879, and a new and enlarged edition in 1902). As a matter of fact,
we find him in these years occupied with a small but particularly
well-lit field of his whole work. It was not merely that in a few years
he buried himself in the primitive forests of Ceylon, in order to pursue
his special studies far removed from all civilisation for months
together. Just at this date appeared the great monograph on the medusæ,
which he had at length concluded. The first volume (_The System of the
Medusæ_, with 40 coloured plates) was published in 1879, and the second
(_The Deep-sea Medusæ of the Challenger Expedition and the Organisms of
the Medusæ_, with 32 plates) in 1881. And while these splendid volumes
showed his academic colleagues that he had no mind to remain entirely on
the outer battlements as a philosophic champion, he plunged up to the
ears in a new special study of a range that would have made even the
most enthusiastic specialist recoil.
From December, 1872, to May, 1876, the English had conducted a peaceful
enterprise that will be for ever memorable. A staff of distinguished
naturalists had gone on the ship _Challenger_ to explore the depth,
temperature, and bottom of remote seas. With the aid of the best
appliances specimens of the mud from the floor of the ocean (sometimes
more than a mile in depth) were brought up at 354 different spots. It
was known from earlier deep-sea explorations that this slime on the
floor of the ocean, from a certain coast-limit into the deepest parts,
is composed for the most part of the microscopically small shells of
little marine animals. The living creatures that form these shells swim
in the water of the ocean, partly at the surface and partly at various
depths beneath it. When they die the little hard coat of mail sinks to
the bottom, and as there are millions upon millions of them living in
the sea, thick deposits are gradually formed at the bottom that consist
almost entirely of these microscopic shells. The animals in question are
primitive little creatures consisting of a single cell, of the type that
Haeckel has called “Protists.” Even in Ehrenberg’s time it had been
noticed that amongst the shells in the deep-sea mud there were, besides
chalky shells, a number of graceful flinty coats that clearly pointed to
the radiolaria. The _Challenger_ expedition now made the great discovery
that vast fields at the floor of the ocean, especially of the Pacific,
were covered almost exclusively with these flinty shells. It was seen at
once that the few hundred species of radiolaria that had hitherto been
described by Haeckel and others were only a very small part of the
masses of radiolaria found in the ocean. The specimens of the deposits
which were carefully preserved and brought home by the _Challenger_
contained such an immense number of unknown species with their flinty
shells faultlessly preserved, that it was necessary to reconstruct the
whole of this wonderful group of animals. And who could be better
qualified for the work than the man who had already made a name by his
study of the radiolaria, Haeckel?
When the English Government came to publish the results of the
_Challenger_ expedition in a monumental work (of fifty volumes), he was
entrusted with the work on the siphonophores, the corneous sponges, and
all the radiolaria in the collection. For ten years, from 1877 to 1887,
Haeckel devoted every available hour to the work of selecting the
radiolarian shells with his microscope from these specimens of the
deep-sea deposits, and naming, describing, and drawing the new species.
When he began his task 810 species of radiolaria were known to science.
When he came to his provisional conclusion, ten years afterwards, though
his material was not yet exhausted, there were 4,318 species and 739
genera. They are described in the splendid work that he wrote for the
_Challenger_ Report. It consists of two volumes of text (in English)
with 2,750 pages and 140 large plates, with the title, _Report on the
Radiolaria collected by H.M.S. Challenger_. In the preparation of these
plates (and in the illustration of all his later works) he had the very
valuable assistance of the gifted Jena designer and lithographer, Adolph
Giltch. A good deal of new information with regard to the living body of
the radiolaria had come to light since 1862. In particular it had now
been settled beyond question that they consisted merely of a single
cell. There was, therefore, a good opportunity of reconstructing the
_Monograph_ of 1862 with the new and more comprehensive work. The chief
contents of the English work (with a selection of the plates) were then
published in German, and appeared in 1887 and 1888 as the second, third,
and fourth parts of the _Monograph on the Radiolaria_. A sort of
supplementary essay on the methods of studying the radiolaria and
cognate “plancton” animals was published separately with the title of
_Planctonic studies_ (1890). Though it was a moderate and tactful
criticism of the methods of some of his colleagues in this kind of work,
it was “refuted” by them in a way that it would be difficult to
qualify—in other words, it was fruitlessly assailed with charges of the
most general but most unpleasant character. In the English Report we
find two other volumes afterwards from Haeckel—the volume on the
siphonophoræ in 1888, and the _Report on the Deep-sea Keratosa collected
by H.M.S. Challenger_ in 1889; these again opened up new chapters in
zoology. The _Challenger_ work is the crown of Haeckel’s studies as a
specialist. To some extent the conclusion of it closes an epoch in his
life.
We will only touch briefly on what he has done since. It has not yet
passed into the region of history.
The latest years in Haeckel’s constructive work are characterised mainly
by _one_ idea. He had often been pressed to work up afresh the material
of his _General Morphology_. He has not done so in the form that was
expected, but chose a form of his own. In the first place he took the
systematic introduction to the second volume, which had been the first
able attempt to draw up the genealogical tree of the living world,
branch by branch, and, with the material that had accumulated in the
subsequent thirty-four years, built it up into a separate work. It had
consisted formerly of 160 pages: now it formed three volumes of 1,800
pages. There were forty years of incessant study embodied in it. It had
the title _Systematic Phylogeny_:[7] “a sketch of a natural system of
organisms on the basis of their stem-history.” The first volume (dealing
with the protists and plants) appeared in 1894; the second volume
(dealing with the invertebrate animals) in 1896, and the third (dealing
with the vertebrates) in 1895. Closely connected with it is his special
systematic study of the stem-history of the echinoderms (star-fish,
&c.), with particular reference to paleontology (_The Amphoridea and
Cystoidea_ in the _Work in Commemoration of Karl Gegenbaur_, 1896).
Footnote 7:
It has not been translated into English. A recent reviewer in _Nature_
pronounced it to be Haeckel’s best work. [Trans.]
His academic colleagues had hardly begun to master this new phylogeny
when Haeckel once more roused a general agitation by working up the
philosophic nucleus of the _Morphology_ in a more general form than he
had done in the _History of Creation_. This new work was _The Riddle of
the Universe_, “a popular study of the Monistic philosophy.”[8] It was,
he declared, his philosophical testament. In a few months 10,000 copies
of the work were sold, and a later cheap popular edition ran to more
than 100,000 copies. It has also been translated into fourteen different
languages. The controversy it excited has not yet died away. Already a
supplementary volume, _The Wonders of Life_, has followed it (1904).
Haeckel had been working in this department with great vigour for many
years. He only made one appearance at a German scientific congress since
the Virchow affair. That was on September 18, 1882, in quiet and
uncontroversial form. A little excitement was caused amongst those who
saw their salvation in keeping the gentle Darwin far apart from the
impetuous Haeckel when he read a rather free philosophical confession of
Darwin’s. Their tactics broke down as the deceased Darwin passed into an
historical personality and disappeared from the struggle of contending
parties. In 1892 Haeckel wrote with great vigour in the militant Berlin
journal, the _Freie Bühne_, on the new alliance of the Church and
political parties in Germany, criticising the political situation on
general philosophical principles, and in opposition to Virchow’s spirit
of compromise. In the same year he delivered at Altenburg a lecture on
“Monism as a connecting link between religion and science.” In this he
took a conciliatory line, and showed how his philosophic views could be
reconciled with any really sincere pursuit of truth, whatever aim it
professed to have. The address closed with the words: “May God, the
spirit of the good, the beautiful, and the true, grant it.” However,
both his criticism and his attempt at conciliation only led to further
and more bitter attacks in certain quarters. His only reply was to bring
out the first numbers of a fine illustrated work—a work that came from a
quite different depth of his rich personality. This was the _Art-forms
in Nature_ [not translated], a collection of beautiful forms of
radiolaria, sponges, siphonophores, &c., for artists and admirers of the
beautiful. It was a work such as he alone could produce. “In the storm
didst thou begin: in the storm shalt thou end,” he might have said to
himself, in the words of David Strauss. The storm never left him. In its
mood was flung off with ready pen the _Riddle of the Universe_. “Up, old
warrior, gird thy loins!” as we read in Strauss.
Footnote 8:
Literally, the title is “World-Riddles,” or “World-Problems.” [Trans.]
[Illustration:
ERNST HAECKEL, 1896.
_From a photograph by Gabriel Max._
]
The biographical sketch of a living man does not close with a stroke,
but with three stars. They glow still, these stars. Under their
influence much may yet happen—much struggle, much peace. In view of the
general situation of our time there is little hope that the last stretch
of this extraordinary career will be spent in peace, though behind it
all lies the peace-loving soul of an artist. But if Haeckel’s career is
to be one of struggle to the last hour, he may console himself with the
noble words of Goethe:—
“And when at length the long gray lashes fall
A gentle light will broaden o’er the scene,
In whose effulgence our remoter sons
Will read the lineaments of yonder stars,
And in the loftier view to which they rise
Of God and man a loftier image hold.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------