ERNST HAECKEL: DARWINIST, M ON I ST 137 



certainly shown great strength and great courage. Since 1863 he has 

 been, and in this his seventy-sixth year still is, the champion who has 

 almost single-handed made the open fight for the evolution conception 

 and for that complete and extreme dominance of it in sociology, phi- 

 losophy and religion which he terms monism. And he has made this 

 fight with such success that the two chief opposing combatants, " throne 

 and altar," as he terms them, see in him one of the greatest dangers in 

 the world to their special interests. For Haeckel is no longer merely 

 the German champion of Darwinism and monism, but the world cham- 

 pion. The heresies of " The Eiddle of the Universe " and " The Won- 

 der of Life " have penetrated all lands and circles of reading and think- 

 ing people. 



Born in February, 1834, and educated soundly in a Jena gymnasium 

 and then in the universities of Jena, Wiirzburg and Berlin, Haeckel 

 early showed his strong predilection and special capacity for the study 

 of nature. He was fortunate in coming in these early formative years 

 under the direct tuition and into the close personal companionship 

 of some of Germany's greatest naturalists. He was variously student 

 and assistant of Schleiden, Alex. Braun, Albert Kolliker, Franz Leydig, 

 Eudolf Virchow, Carl Gegenbaur and Johannes Miiller, a brilliant array 

 of names, and a guarantee for the young naturalist's thorough ground- 

 ing in the facts and principles of botany, zoology, physiology and 

 medicine. Haeckel's first love was botany, but his father's wish led him 

 to make his degree (M.D., Berlin, 1857) in medicine. The later 

 semesters of his university work and his doctor's dissertation were, 

 however, given to zoology, and it was as an active investigating zoologist 

 that he began his post-student career. This career opened with a year's 

 trip to Sicily, where Haeckel commenced that study of the radiolarians, 

 minute shell-secreting one-celled animals, which he has continued as an 

 authority all through his life. This zoological journey was the first of 

 many, especially to tropic lands and waters, that Haeckel has made, the 

 last one being an expedition to Java and Malay in 1900-1901 in search 

 of prehistoric man ! 



For forty-five years he has taught, investigated and written in the 

 small Thuringian University at Jena. His calls to larger universities 

 he has steadfastly refused, to remain with the institution that has given 

 him from the first full freedom, if not, perhaps, always full faith and 

 adherence. In the earlier more critical years of his bold declarations 

 and the bitter attacks they excited he felt himself becoming an incum- 

 brance, possibly an actual danger, to his university, and he offered to 

 resign his professorship. But the head of the corporation, Seebeck, said 

 to him : " My dear Haeckel, you are still young and you will come to a 

 riper understanding of life. Anyway, you will do less harm here than 

 •elsewhere, so stay ! " 



VOL. LXXVI. — 11. 



