278 THE SPREAD OF EVOLUTION. [ch. xiv. 



for Haeckel that it was his advocacy of Evolution in his 

 Radiolaria (1862), and at the " Versammlung " of Natural- 

 ists at Stettin in 1863, that placed the Darwinian question 

 for the first time publicly before the forum of German 

 science, and his enthusiastic propagandism that chiefly con- 

 tributed to its success. 



Mr. Huxley, writing in 1869, paid a high tribute to Pro- 

 fessor Haeckel as the Coryphaeus of the Darwinian move- 

 ment in Germany. Of his Generelle Morphologie, " an 

 attempt to work out the practical applications " of the 

 doctrine of Evolution to their final results, he says that it 

 has the " force and suggestiveness, and . . . systematising 

 power of Oken without his extravagance." Mr. Huxley 

 also testifies to the value of Haeckel's Schdpfungs-Geschichte 

 as an exposition of the Generelle Morphologie " for an edu- 

 cated public." 



Again, in his Evolution in Biology* Mr. Huxley wrote : 

 " Whatever hesitation may not unfrequently be felt by less 

 daring minds, in following Haeckel in many of his specula- 

 tions, his attempt to systematise the doctrine of Evolution 

 and to exhibit its influence as the central thought of modern 

 biology, cannot fail to have a far-reaching influence on the 

 progress of science." 



In the following letter my father alludes to the some- 

 what fierce manner in which Professor Haeckel fought the 

 battle of ' Darwinismus,' and on this subject Dr. Krause 

 has some good remarks (p. 162). He asks whether much 

 that happened in the heat of the conflict might not well 

 have been otherwise, and adds that Haeckel himself is the 

 last man to deny this. Nevertheless he thinks that even 

 these things may have worked well for the cause of Evolu- 

 tion, inasmuch as Haeckel "concentrated on himself by 

 his Ur sprung des Menschen-Geschlechts, his Generelle Mor- 

 phologie, and Scliopfungs-Gescliiclite, all the hatred and 

 bitterness which Evolution excited in certain quarters," so 

 that, " in a surprisingly short time it became the fashion 

 in Germany that Haeckel alone should be abused, while 

 Darwin was held up as the ideal of forethought and mod- 

 eration." 



* An article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edit, reprinted in Science 

 and Culture, 1881, p. 298. 



