T

he men who have most benefited the world have, almost without exception, been looked down upon by the priestly class. That is to say, the men upon whose tombs society now carves the word Savior were outcasts and criminals in their day.

In a society where the priest is regarded as the mouthpiece of divinity, and therefore the highest type of man, the artist, the inventor, the discoverer, the genius, the man of truth, has always been regarded as a criminal. Society advances as it doubts the priest, distrusts his oracles, and loses faith in his institution.

In the priest, at first, was deposited all human knowledge, and what he did not know he pretended to know. He was the guardian of mind and morals, and the cure of souls. To question him was to die here and be damned for eternity.

The problem of civilization has been to get the truth past the preacher to the people: he has forever barred and blocked the way, and until he was shorn of his temporal power there was no hope. The prisons were first made for those who doubted the priest; behind and beneath every episcopal residence were dungeons; the ferocious and delicate tortures that reached every physical and mental nerve were his. His anathemas and curses were always quickly turned upon the strong men of mountain or sea who dared live natural lives, said what they thought was truth, or did what they deemed was right. Science is a search for truth, but theology is a clutch for power.

Nothing is so distasteful to a priest as freedom: a happy, exuberant, fearless, self-sufficient and radiant man he both feared and abhorred. A free soul was regarded by the Church as one to be dealt with. The priest has ever put a premium on pretense and hypocrisy. Nothing recommended a man more than humility and the acknowledgment that he was a worm of the dust. The ability to do and dare was in itself considered a proof of depravity.

The education of the young has been monopolized by priests in order to perpetuate the fallacies of theology, and all endeavor to put education on a footing of usefulness and utility has been fought inch by inch.

Andrew D. White, in his book, "The Warfare of Science and Religion," has calmly and without heat sketched the war that Science has had to make to reach the light. Slowly, stubbornly, insolently, theology has fought Truth step by step—but always retreating, taking refuge first behind one subterfuge, then another. When an alleged fact was found to be a fallacy, we were told it was not a literal fact, simply a spiritual one. All of theology's weapons have been taken from her and placed in the Museum of Horrors—all save one, namely, social ostracism. And this consists in a refusal to invite Science to indulge in cream-puffs.

We smile, knowing that the man who now successfully defies theology is the only one she really, yet secretly, admires. If he does not run after her, she holds true the poetic unities by running after him. Mankind is emancipated (or partially so).

Darwin's fame rests, for the most part, on two books, "The Origin of Species" and "The Descent of Man."

Yet before these were published he had issued "A Journal of Research into Geology and Natural History," "The Zoology of the Voyage of the 'Beagle,'" "A Treatise on Coral Reefs, Volcanic Islands, Geological Observations," and "A Monograph of the Cirripedia." Had Darwin died before "The Origin of Species" was published, he would have been famous among scientific men, although it was the abuse of theologians on the publication of "The Origin of Species" that really made him world-famous.

Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin's chief competitor said that "A Monograph on the Cirripedia" is enough upon which to found a deathless reputation. Darwin was equally eminent in Geology, Botany and Zoology.

On November Twenty-fourth, Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, was published "The Origin of Species." Murray had hesitated about accepting the work, but on the earnest solicitation of Sir Charles Lyell, who gave his personal guarantee to the publisher against loss, quite unknown to Darwin, twelve hundred copies of the book were printed. The edition was sold in one day, and who was surprised most, the author or the publisher, it is difficult to say.

Up to this time theology had stood solidly on the biblical assertion that mankind had sprung from one man and one woman, and that in the beginning every species was fixed and immutable. Aristotle, three hundred years before Christ, had suggested that, by cross-fertilization and change of environment, new species had been and were being evoked. But the Church had declared Aristotle a heathen, and in every school and college of Christendom it was taught that the world and everything in it was created in six days of twenty-four hours each, and that this occurred four thousand and four years before Christ, on May Tenth.

Those who doubted or disputed this statement had no standing in society, and in truth, until the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, were in actual danger of death—heresy and treason being usually regarded as the same thing.

Erasmus Darwin had taught that species were not immutable, but his words were so veiled in the language of poesy that they naturally went unchallenged. But now the grandson of Doctor Erasmus Darwin came forward with the net result of thirty years' continuous work. "The Origin of Species" did not attack any one's religious belief—in fact, in it the biblical account of Creation is not once referred to. It was a calm, judicial record of close study and observation, that seemed to prove that life began in very lowly forms, and that it has constantly ascended and differentiated, new forms and new species being continually created, and that the work of creation still goes on.

In the preface to "The Origin of Species" Darwin gives Alfred Russel Wallace credit for coming to the same conclusion as himself, and states that both had been at work on the same idea for more than a score of years, but each working separately, unknown to the other.

Andrew D. White says that the publication of Charles Darwin's book was like plowing into an ant-hill. The theologians, rudely awakened from comfort and repose, swarmed out angry, wrathful and confused. The air was charged with challenges; and soggy sermons, books, pamphlets, brochures and reviews, all were flying at the head of poor Darwin. The questions that he had anticipated and answered at great length were flung off by men who had neither read his book nor expected an answer. The idea that man had evolved from a lower form of animal especially was considered immensely funny, and jokes about "monkey ancestry" came from almost every pulpit, convulsing the pews with laughter.

In passing, it may be well to note that Darwin nowhere says that man descended from a monkey. He does, however, affirm his belief that they had a common ancestor. One branch of the family took to the plains, and evolved into men, and the other branch remained in the woods and are monkeys still. The expression, "the missing link," is nowhere used by Darwin—that was a creation of one of his critics.

Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford, summed up the argument against Darwinism in the "Quarterly Review," by declaring that "Darwin was guilty of an attempt to limit the power of God"; that his book "contradicts the Bible"; that "it dishonors Nature." And in a speech before the British Association for the Advancement of Science, where Darwin was not present, the Bishop repeated his assertions, and turning to Huxley, asked if he were really descended from a monkey, and if so, was it on his father's or his mother's side!

Huxley sat silent, refusing to reply, but the audience began to clamor, and Huxley slowly arose, and calmly but forcibly said: "I assert, and I repeat, that a man has no reason to be ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it would be a man, a man of restless and versatile intellect, who, not content with success in his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digression and a skilful appeal to religious prejudices." Captain Fitz-Roy, who was present at this meeting, was also called for.

He was now Admiral Fitz-Roy, and felt compelled to uphold his employer, the State, so he upheld the State Religion and backed up the Bishop of Oxford in his emptiness. "I often had occasion on board the 'Beagle' to reprove Mr. Darwin for his disbelief in the First Chapter of Genesis," solemnly said the Admiral. And Francis Darwin writes it down without comment, probably to show how much the Volunteer Naturalist was helped, aided and inspired by the Captain of the Expedition.

But the reply of Huxley was a shot heard round the world, and for the most part the echo was passed along by the enemy.

Huxley had insulted the Church, they said, and the adherents of the Mosaic account took the attitude of outraged and injured innocence.

As for himself, Darwin said nothing. He ceased to attend the meetings of the scientific societies, for fear that he would be drawn into debate, and while he felt a sincere gratitude for Huxley's friendship, he deprecated the stern rebuke to the Bishop of Oxford. "It will arouse the opposition to greater unreason," he said. And this was exactly what happened.

Even the English Catholics took sides with Wilberforce, the Protestant, and Cardinal Manning organized a society "to fight this new, so-called science that declares there is no God and that Adam was an ape."

Even the Non-Conformists and Jews came in, and there was the very peculiar spectacle witnessed of the Church of England, the Non-Conformists, the Catholics and the Jews aroused and standing as one man, against one quiet villager who remained at home and said, "If my book can not stand the bombardment, why then it deserves to go down and to be forgotten."

Spurgeon declared that Darwinism was more dangerous than open and avowed infidelity, since "the one motive of the whole book is to dethrone God."

Rabbi Hirschberg wrote, "Darwin's volume is plausible to the unthinking person; but a deeper insight shows a mephitic desire to overthrow the Mosaic books and to bury Judaism under a mass of fanciful rubbish."

In America Darwin had no more persistent critic than the Reverend DeWitt Talmage. For ten years Doctor Talmage scarcely preached a sermon without making reference to "monkey ancestry" and "baboon unbelievers."

The New York "Christian Advocate" declared, "Darwin is endeavoring to becloud and befog the whole question of truth, and his book will be of short life."

An eminent Catholic physician and writer, Doctor Constantine James, wrote a book of three hundred pages called "Darwinism, or the Man-Ape." A copy of Doctor James' book being sent to Pope Pius the Ninth, the Pope acknowledged it in a personal letter, thanking the author for his "masterly refutations of the vagaries of this man Darwin, wherein the Creator is left out of all things and man proclaims himself independent, his own king, his own priest, his own God—then degrading man to the level of the brute by declaring he had the same origin, and this origin was lifeless matter. Could folly and pride go further than to degrade Science into a vehicle for throwing contumely and disrespect on our holy religion!"

This makes rather interesting reading now for those who believe in the infallibility of popes. So well did Doctor James' book sell, coupled with the approbation of the Pope, that as late as Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two a new and enlarged edition made its appearance, and the author was made a member of the Papal Order of Saint Sylvester. It is quite needless to add that those who read Doctor James' book refuting Darwin had never read Darwin, since "The Origin of Species" was placed on the "Index Expurgatorius" in Eighteen Hundred Sixty. Some years after, when it was discovered that Darwin had written other books, these were likewise honored.

The book on barnacles being called to the attention of the Censor, that worthy exclaimed, "Some new heresy, I dare say—put it on the 'Index!'" And it was so done.

The success of Doctor James' book reveals the popularity of the form of reasoning that digests the refutation first, and the original proposition not at all.

In Eighteen Hundred Seventy-five, Gladstone in an address at Liverpool said, "Upon the ground of what is called evolution, God is relieved from the labor of creation and of governing the universe."

Herbert Spencer called Gladstone's attention to the fact that Sir Isaac Newton, with his law of gravitation and the physical science of astronomy, was open to the same charge.

Gladstone then took refuge in the "Contemporary Review," and retreated in a cloud of words that had nothing to do with the subject.

Thomas Carlyle, who has facetiously been called a liberal thinker, had not the patience to discuss Darwin's book seriously, but grew red in the face and hissed in falsetto when it was even mentioned. He wrote of Darwin as "the apostle of dirt," and said, "He thinks his grandfather was a chimpanzee, and I suppose he is right—leastwise, I am not the one to deprive him of the honor."

Scathing criticisms were uttered on Darwin's ideas, both on the platform and in print, by Doctor Noah Porter of Yale, Doctor Hodge of Princeton, and Doctor Tayler Lewis of Union College. Agassiz, the man who was regarded as the foremost scientist in America, thought he had to choose between orthodoxy and Darwinism, and he chose orthodoxy. His gifted son tried to rescue his father from the grip of prejudice, and later endeavored to free his name from the charge that he could not change his mind, but alas! Louis Agassiz's words were expressed in print, and widely circulated.

There were two men in America whose names stand out like beacon-lights because they had the courage to speak up loud and clear for Charles Darwin while the pack was baying the loudest. These men were Doctor Asa Gray, who influenced the Appletons to publish an American edition of "The Origin of Species," and Professor Edward L. Youmans, who gave up his own brilliant lecture work in order that he might stand by Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Wallace.

For the man who was known as "a Darwinian" there was no place in the American Lyceum. Shut out from addressing the public by word of mouth, Youmans founded a magazine that he might express himself, and he fired a monthly broadside from his "Popular Science Monthly." And it is good to remember that the faith of Youmans was not without its reward. He lived to see his periodical grow from a confessed failure—a bill of expense that took his monthly salary to maintain—to a paying property that made its owner passing rich.

Gray, too, outlived the charge of infidelity, and was not forced to resign his position as Professor at Harvard, as was freely prophesied he would.

As for Darwin himself, he stood the storm of misunderstanding and abuse without scorn or resentment.

"Truth must fight its way," he said; "and this gauntlet of criticism is all for the best. What is true in my book will survive, and that which is error will be blown away as chaff." He was neither exalted by praise nor cast down by censure. For Huxley, Lyell, Hooker, Spencer, Wallace and Asa Gray he had a great and profound love—what they said affected him deeply, and their steadfast kindness at times touched him to tears. For the great, seething, outside world that had not thought along abstruse scientific lines, and could not, he cared little.

"How can we expect them to see as we do," he wrote to Gray; "it has taken me thirty years of toil and research to come to these conclusions. To have the unthinking masses accept all that I say would be calamity: this opposition is a winnowing process, and all a part of the Law of Evolution that works for good."

F

or forty years Darwin lived in the same house at Down, in the same quiet, simple way. Here he lived and worked, and the world gradually came to him, figuratively and literally. Gradually it dawned upon the theologians that a God who could set in motion natural laws that worked with beneficent and absolute regularity was just as great as if He had made everything at once and then stopped.

The miracle of evolution is just as sublime as the miracle of Adam's deep sleep and the making of a woman out of a man's rib. The faith of the scientist who sees order, regularity and unfailing law is quite as great as that of a preacher who believes everything he reads in a book. The scientist is a man with faith, plus.

When Darwin died, in Eighteen Hundred Eighty-two, Darwinism and infidelity were words no longer synonymous.

The discrepancies and inconsistencies of the theories of Darwin were seen by him as by his critics, and he was ever willing to admit the doubt. None of his disciples was as ready to modify his opinions as he. "We must beware of making science dogmatic," he once said to Haeckel.

And at another time he said, "I would feel I had gone too far were it not for Wallace, who came to the same conclusions, quite independently of me." Darwin's mind was simple and childlike. He was a student, always learning, and no one was too mean or too poor for him to learn from. The patience, persistency and untiring industry of the man, combined with the daring imagination that saw the thing clearly long before he could prove it, and the gentle forbearance in the presence of unkindness and misunderstanding, won the love of a nation.

He wished to be buried in the churchyard at Down, but at his death, by universal acclaim, the gates of Westminster swung wide to receive the dust of the man whom bishops, clergy and laymen alike had reviled. Darwin had won, not alone because he was right, but because his was a truly great and loving soul—a soul without the least resentment.

Archdeacon Farrar, quoting Huxley, said, "I would rather be Darwin and be right than be Premier of England—we have had and will have many Premiers, but the world will never have another Darwin."


HAECKEL

HAECKEL

Nothing seems to me better adapted than this monistic perspective to give us the proper standard and the broad outlook which we need in the solution of the vast enigmas that surround us. It not only clearly indicates the true place of a man in Nature, but it dissipates the prevalent illusion of man's supreme importance and arrogance with which he sets himself apart from the illimitable universe, and exalts himself to the position of its most valuable element. This boundless presumption of conceited man has misled him into making himself "the image of God," claiming an "eternal life" for his ephemeral personality, and imagining that he possesses unlimited "freedom of will." The ridiculous imperial folly of Caligula is but a special form of man's arrogant assumption of divinity. Only when we have abandoned this untenable illusion, and taken up the correct cosmological perspective, can we hope to reach the solution of the Riddle of the Universe.

Haeckel


HAECKEL

T

here was a man, once upon a day, who lived in East Aurora and kept a store. He sold everything from cough-syrup to blue ribbon; and some of the things he sold on time to philosophers who sat on nail-kegs every evening, and settled the coal strike.

And in due course of time the storekeeper compromised with his creditors, at twenty-nine cents on the dollar.

Some say the man went busted a-purpose to quit business and get out of East Aurora. And he himself generally allowed the opinion to gain ground in later years that he had planned his life throughout, from start to finish, thus proving the supremacy of the will. Yet others there be, and men of worth and social standing in the village—known for miles up the creek as persons of probity—who claim that it was too much confidence in the Genus Smart-Setter, and trotting horses at the County Fairs, that made it possible for our friend to avail himself of the Bankruptcy Act. Still others, too inert to follow the winding ways of a strange career and give reasons, dispose of the matter by simply saying, "Providence!"—rolling their eyes upward, then walking out, leaving the wordy contestants humiliated and undone.

It will be seen that I am interested in this chapter of Ancient History: and in truth, I myself occasionally ornament the nail-kegs. I claim it was neither Providence nor astute planning that mapped this man's course, but Providence, Planning and Luck; and I silence the adversary, for the time, by citing these facts:

Very shortly after Providence and the Sheriff of Erie County—whose name, by the way, was Grover Cleveland—had disposed of the East Aurora grocery, our friend met a man in Buffalo who had a sweeping scar on his chin, a wonderful secret, and nothing else worth mentioning.

This man secured his assets in Germany; he got them while attending the University of Jena. The secret was gotten by an understanding with a professor; the scar was received through a misunderstanding with a student. The secret was a plan by which you could make glucose from corn. In Germany it was only a laboratory experiment, because there was no corn in Europe to speak of.

Here we had corn to burn, since in that very year the farmers of Iowa were using corn for their fuel. Glucose is the active saccharine principle in maize, but it does not become active until the corn is treated chemically in a certain way, just as honey is not honey until a bee puts it through his Maeterlinck laboratory.

Glucose is a food; it can be used for all purposes where sugar is used—in degree, at least.

And every living person on earth uses sugar as food every day! Our ex-grocer knew all about Hambletonian Ten and Dexter; but dextrine, dextrose and glucose were out of his class. Yet he realized that if sugar could be made from corn, there was a fortune in it for somebody. Opportunity, we are told, knocks once at each man's door. Our David Harum was forty, past, and he had often thought Opportunity was tapping, but when he opened wide the door, darkness there, and nothing more! Opportunity had knocked, but was too timid to stay. This time, he heard the knock, and when he opened up the door, Opportunity made a rush for him, grabbed him by the collar—catch-as-catch-can—in a grip he could not shake off.

Mr. Harum examined as best he could the glucose the German student had made, and then he watched the whole experiment worked out over again. What the particular ingredients were, was still a secret. The man would not sell out; he wanted to organize a manufactory and take a certain per cent of the profits. David had saved a thousand dollars out of the wreck at East Aurora; but he knew if he could show certain men that the scheme was genuine, he would be able to raise more.

Five thousand dollars was secured. But the men who advanced the four thousand dollars demanded an insurance-policy on the life of the German chemist. This appealed to our David Harum as an excellent plan: if the man who held the secret should die, all would be lost save honor. They insured the life of the chemist for twenty thousand dollars. In a month after, he was killed in a railroad wreck on a Sunday School excursion. And the moral is—but never mind that now.

The twenty thousand dollars' insurance was paid to David Harum. He repaid his friends immediately their four thousand dollars, and reserved for himself, very properly, the sixteen thousand dollars to cover expenses. He then started for Jena.

Arriving there, he found that the making of glucose was no special secret, and to manufacture it on a large scale was simply a matter of evolving the right kind of system and a plant. He hired a young German chemist, who had just graduated, for a matter of, say, a thousand dollars a year and expenses, and the two started back for America.

From this arose the Glucose Industry in the United States. In ten years' time twelve million dollars was invested in the business; and in Nineteen Hundred Three more than a hundred million dollars was invested. Our East Aurora hero sold out his interests, in Eighteen Hundred Ninety, for some such bagatelle as thirteen million dollars.

The young German student is now back at the Jena university, taking a post-graduate course in chemistry—the first one is still dead.

I

am told that there be folks who pooh-pooh college training and sneeze on mention of a University degree. Usually these good people have no University degrees, but have been greatly helped by those who have.

Our David Harums are not college-bred—a statement which I trust will go unchallenged.

The true type of German student is made in Germany, and when taken out of his native environment, often evolves into something less beautiful.

His lack of worldly ambition is his chief claim to immortality. His wants are few; he rises early and works late; he is most practical in his own particular specialty, but often most impractical outside of it; he is plodding, patient, painstaking, and will follow a microbe you can not see, as Thompson-Seton's hunter followed the famous Kootenay ram.

This simple reverence for the truth—this passion for an idea—this desire to know—these things have given to the world some of its richest treasures. We are aware of what the Rockfellers have done, but we seldom stop to think of the unknown laboratory students, who made possible such vast and far-reaching institutions as the Standard Oil Company, the Carborundum Company, the Amalgamated Copper Company, and the various beet-sugar factories, that give work to thousands, and lift whole counties, and even some States, from penury to plenty.

Germany honors her scholars; and one of the strongest instincts of her national life is her search for genius. Initiative is originality in motion. Originality is too rare to flout and scout. Not all originality is good, but all good things, so far as humanity is concerned, were once original. That is to say, they were the work of Genius.

Germany's sympathy for the best in thought has occasionally been broken in upon by pigmy rulers, who, for the moment, had a giant's power, so it seems hardly possible that a government which encouraged Goethe should have banished Wagner. The greatness of Kant was largely owing to the fact that he was set apart by Frederick and made free to do his work; and at this time, not another monarchy in the world would have had the insight to keep its coarse hands off this little man with the big head and the brain of a prophet.

And as Kant was the greatest and most original thinker of his time, so today does a German University house the world's greatest living scientist. Ernst Haeckel has been Professor of Natural History at Jena for forty-two years. All the efforts of various other Universities to lure him away have failed. He even declined to listen to the siren song of Major Pond, and only smiled at the big baits dangled on long poles from Cook County, Illinois.

"I have everything I want, everything I can use is right here; why should I think of uprooting my life?" he asked. And yet, Jena, there in the shadow of the Thuringian Mountains, is only a little town of less than ten thousand inhabitants.

In Nineteen Hundred Three, there were five hundred pupils registered at Jena, as against four thousand at Harvard, five thousand at Ann Arbor, and nearly the same at Lincoln, Nebraska.

It will not do to assume that those who graduate at big colleges are big men, any more than to imagine that folks who reside in big towns are bigger than those who live in little villages. Perhaps the greatest men have come from the small colleges: I believe the small colleges admit this.

And surely there is plenty of good argument handy, in way of proof; for while Harvard has her Barrett Wendell, with his caveat on clearness, force and elegance; and Ann Arbor has Cicero Trueblood, Professor of Oratory, whose official duty it is to formulate the College Yell; yet Amherst, with her scant five hundred pupils, has Professor David P. Todd, the greatest astronomer of the New World. I really wonder sometimes what a University that stands in fear of Triggsology would do with Professor Ernst Haeckel, whose disregard for tradition is very decidedly Ingersollian! The actual fact is, Ernst Haeckel, the world's greatest thinker, belongs in the little town of Jena, in Germany. At the village of Coniston, you see the little hall where Ruskin read the best things he ever wrote, to a dozen or two people.

At Hammersmith, the limit of a William Morris audience was about a hundred. At Jena, Ernst Haeckel sits secure in his little lecture-hall, and speaks or reads to fifty or sixty students, but the printed word goes to millions, so his thoughts here expressed in Jena are shots heard round the world.

American pedagogic institutions are mendicant—they depend upon private charity and are endowed by pious pirates and beneficent buccaneers. The individuals who made these institutions possible very naturally have a controlling voice in their management. The colleges in America that are not supported by direct mendicancy depend upon the dole of the legislator, and woe betide the pedagogic principal who offends the orthodox vote. His supplies are cut short, and purse-strings pucker until his voice moderates to a monotone and he dilutes his views to a dull neutral tint. I do not know a University in the United States that would not place Ernst Haeckel on half-rations, and make him fight for his life, or else he would be discharged and be reduced to the sad necessity of tilting windmills in popular lecture courses for the edification of agrarians. The German Government seeks to make men free. It even gives them the privilege of being absurd; for pioneers sometimes take the wrong track. We do not scout Columbus because his domestic voyages were failures; nor because he sought one thing and found another, and died without knowing the difference.

Haeckel's wants are all supplied; what he needs in the way of apparatus or material is his for the asking; he travels at will the round world over; visions of old age and yawning almshouses are not for him. He owns himself—he does what he wishes, he says what he thinks, and neither priest nor politician dare cry, hist! So we get the paradox: the only perfect freedom is to be found in a monarchy. "A Republic," says Schopenhauer, "is a land that is ruled by the many—that is to say, by the incompetent." But Schopenhauer, of course, knew nothing of the American primary, devised by altruistic Hibernians for the purpose of thwarting the incompetent many.

E

rnst Haeckel was born in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four, hence he is just seventy-seven years old at this writing. His parents were plain people, neither rich nor poor—and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The greatest error one can make in life is not to be well born; failing in this, a man struggles through life under an awful handicap.

Haeckel formed the habit of steady, systematic work in youth, and untiring effort has been the rule of his life. Man was made to be well, and he was made to work. It is only work—which is the constant effort to retain equilibrium—that makes life endurable. So we find Haeckel now, at near fourscore years, a model of manly vigor, with all the eager, curious, receptive qualities of youth—a happy man, but one who knows that happiness lies on the way to Heaven, and not in arriving there and sitting down to enjoy it.

Ernst Haeckel gathers his manna fresh every day. I believe Haeckel enjoys his pipe and mug after the day's work is done; but for stimulants in a general sense, he has no use. In his book on Ceylon, he attributes his escape from the jungle fever, from which most of his party suffered, to the fact that he never used strong drink, and ate sparingly.

He is jealous of the sunshine—a great walker—works daily with hoe and spade in his garden; and breathes deeply, pounding on his chest, when going from his house to the college, in a way that causes considerable amusement among the fledglings. Tall, spare rather than stout, bronzed, active, wearing shoes with thick soles, plain gray clothes, often accompanied by a half-dozen young men, he is a common figure on the roads that wind out of Jena, and lose themselves amid the mountains.

The distinguishing feature of the man is his animation. He is full of good cheer, and acts as if he were expecting to discover something wonderful very soon.

To find the balance between play and work has been the aim of his life; and surely, he has pretty nearly discovered it.

Once when a caller asked him what he considered the greatest achievement of his life, he took out of his pocket a leather case containing a bronze medal, and proudly passed it around.

This medal was presented to him in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, in token of a running high jump—the world's record at the time, or not, as the case may be. Haeckel is essentially an out-of-door man, as opposed to the philosopher who works in a stuffy room, and grows round-shouldered over his microscope. "I may entrust laboratory analyses to others, but there is one thing I will never let another do for me, and that is take my daily walk a-field," he once said.

While lecturing he sits at a table and simply talks in a very informal way; often purposely arousing a discussion, or awakening a sleepy student with a question. Yet on occasion he can speak to a multitude, and, like Huxley, rise to the occasion. Oratory, however, he considers rather dangerous, as the speaker is usually influenced by the opinions of the audience, and is apt to grow more emphatic than exact—to generate more heat than light.

The comparison of Haeckel with Huxley is not out of place. He has been called the Huxley of Germany, just as Huxley was called the Haeckel of England. In temperament, they were much alike; although Haeckel perhaps does not use quite so much aqua fortis in his ink. Yet I can well imagine that if he were at a convention where the Bishop of Oxford would level at him a few theological spitballs, he would answer, unerringly, with a sling and a few smooth pebbles from the brook. And possibly, knowing himself, this is why he keeps out of society, and avoids all public gatherings where pseudo-science is exploited.

There is a superstition that really great men are quite oblivious of their greatness, and that the pride of achievement is not among their assets. Nothing could be wider of the mark. When Ernst Haeckel was asked, "Who is your favorite author?" he very promptly answered, "Ernst Haeckel."

His study is a big square room on the top floor of one of the college buildings; and in this room is a bookcase extending from ceiling to floor, given up to his own works.

Copies of every edition and of all translations are here.

And in a special case are the original manuscripts, solidly bound in boards, as carefully preserved as were the "literary remains" of William Morris, guarded with the instincts of a bibliophile.

Of the size of this Haeckel collection one can make a guess when it is stated that the man has written and published over fifty different books. These vary in size from simple lectures to volumes of a thousand pages. His work entitled, "The Natural History of Creation," has been translated into twelve languages, and has gone through fifteen editions in Germany, and about half as many in England.

The last book issued by Professor Haeckel was that intensely interesting essay, "The Riddle of the Universe," which was written in Eighteen Hundred Ninety-nine, in two months' time, during his summer vacation. He gave it out that he had gone to Italy, denied himself to all visitors who knew that he had not, and answered no letters. He reached his study every morning at six o'clock and locked himself in, and there he remained until eight o'clock at night. At noon one of his children brought him his lunch.

Unlike Herbert Spencer, whose later writings were all dictated—and very slowly and painstakingly at that—Haeckel writes with his own hand, and when the fit is on, he turns off manuscript at the rate of from two to four thousand words a day. In writing "The Riddle of the Universe," he took no exercise save to go up on the roof, breathing deeply and pounding his chest, varying the pounding by reaching his arms above his head and stretching. However, after a few weeks the villagers and visitors got to looking for him with opera-glasses; and he ceased going on the roof, taking his calisthenics at the open window.

This exercise of reaching and stretching until you lift yourself on tiptoe, he goes out of his way to recommend in his book on "Development," wherein he says, "There is a tendency as the years pass for the internal organs to drop, but the individual who will daily go through the motion of reaching for fruit on limbs of trees that are above his head, standing on tiptoe and slowly stretching up and up, occasionally throwing his head back and looking straight up, will of necessity breathe deeply, exercise the diaphragm, and I believe in most cases will ward off diseases and keep old age awaiting for long."

Here is a little commonsense advice given by a physician who is also a great scientist. To try it will cost you nothing—no apparatus is required—just throw open the window and reach up and up and up, first with one arm, then the other, and then both arms. "The person who does this daily for five minutes as a habit will probably have no need of a physician," adds Haeckel, and with this sage remark he dismisses the subject, branching off into an earnest talk on radiolaria.

H

aeckel was educated for a physician and began his career by practising medicine. But his heart was not really in the work; he soon arrived at the very sane conclusion that constant dwelling on the pathological was not worth while. "Hereafter I'll devote my time to the normal, not the abnormal and distempered. The sick should learn to keep well," he wrote a friend.

And again, "If an individual is so lacking in will that he can not provide for himself, then his dissolution is no calamity to either himself, the State or the race." This was written in his twenties, and seems to sound rather sophomorish, but the idea of the boy is still with the old man, for in "The Riddle of the Universe" he says, "The final effect upon the race by the preservation of the unfit, through increased skill in surgery and medicine, is not yet known." In another place he throws in a side remark, thus: "Our almshouses, homes for imbeciles, and asylums where the hopelessly insane often outlive their keepers, may be a mistake, save as these things minister to the spirit of altruism which prompts their support. Let a wiser generation answer!"

Doubtless Haeckel could make a good argument in favor of the doctors if he wished, but probably if asked to do so his answer would paraphrase Robert Ingersoll, when that gentleman was taken to task for unfairness towards Moses, "Young man, you seem to forget that I am not the attorney of Moses—don't worry, there are more than ten millions of men looking after his case." Ernst Haeckel is not the attorney for either the doctors or the clergy.

It was Darwin and "The Origin of Species" that tipped the beam for Haeckel in favor of science. Very shortly after Darwin's great book was issued, in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, a chance copy of the work fell into the hands of our young physician. He read and spoke English, and in a general way was interested in biology.

As he read of Darwin's observations and experiments the heavens seemed to open before him.

Things he had vaguely felt, Darwin stated, and thoughts that had been his, Darwin expressed. "I might have written much of this book, myself," he said.

The love of Nature had been upon the young man almost from his babyhood. All children love flowers and mix easily with the wonderful things that are found in woods and fields. At twelve years of age Ernst had formed a goodly herbarium, and was making a collection of bugs, and not knowing their names or even that they had names, he began naming them himself. Later it came to him with a shock of surprise and disappointment that the bugs and beetles had already had the attention of scholars. But he got even by declaring that he would hunt out some of the tiny things the scholars had overlooked and classify them. Every man imagines himself the first man, and to think that he is Adam and that he has to go forth, get acquainted with things and name them, reveals the true bent of the scientist.

Doctor Haeckel was ripe for Darwin's book. He was looking for it, and it took only a slight jolt to dislodge him from the medical profession and allow the Law of Affinity to do the rest.

Wallace had written Darwin's book under another name, and if these men had not written it, Haeckel surely would, for it was all packed away in his heart and head. As Darwin had studied and classified the Cirripedia, so would he write an essay on Rhizopods. Luck was with him—luck is always with the man of purpose. He had an opportunity to travel through Italy as medical caretaker to a rich invalid. Sickness surely has its uses; and rich invalids are not wholly a mistake on the part of Setebos. Haeckel secured the leisure and the opportunity to round up his Rhizopods.

He presented the work to the University of Jena, because this was the University that Goethe attended, and the gods of Haeckel were three—Goethe, Darwin and Johannes Muller.

Muller was instructor in Zoology at Berlin, a man quite of the Agassiz type who made himself beloved by the boys because he was what he was—a boy in heart, with a man's head and the soul of a saint. Some one said of Muller, "To him every look into a microscope was a service to God." In his reverent attitude he was like Linnæus, who fell on his knees on first beholding the English gorse in full flower, and thanked Heaven that such a moment of divine joy was his.

Muller was a Jena man, too, and he gave Haeckel letters to the bigwigs. The wise men of Jena discovered that there was merit in Haeckel's discoveries.

Original investigators are rare—most of us write about the men who have done things, or else we tell about what they have done, and so we reach greatness by hitching our wagon to a star. For the essay on Rhizopods, Haeckel was made Professor Extraordinary of the University of Jena. This was in Eighteen Hundred Sixty-two; Haeckel was then twenty-eight years old; there he is today, after a service of forty-nine years.