i 3 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



In quiet little Jena, then, Haeckel's many and extensive and valu- 

 able investigations have been carried on and from here has issued that 

 long and brilliant array of monographs, books and published addresses 

 that has excited variously the admiration, the wonder, the scorn and 

 the bitter anger of the world. Like Huxley, Haeckel is most widely 

 known to the world, and to the lay world almost solely, by his more 

 popular and generalizing books and by his brochures and pamphlets 

 dealing with his philosophical propaganda. But also like Huxley, 

 Haeckel has to his credit a large and important original contribution to 

 zoological science. This contribution consists of monographs on the 

 classification and general biology of the protozoans, sponges and medusas, 

 and represents an extraordinary industry and devotion. And it is 

 largely on a basis of the revelations of the methods and truths of nature 

 as revealed to him in this personal original work that Haeckel claims 

 to have come to his radically monistic world conception. 



I do not wish to over-paint the likeness between Huxley and 

 Haeckel. The differences are obvious. The German has more egoism 

 in him. Haeckel fights more for himself; perhaps he has to. His 

 position has a certain difference. But in his polemic he is inclined to 

 more personal defense, more personal reference, more personal ex- 

 ploitation. It is a trait that becomes even slightly uncomfortable for 

 his admirers to face. And Haeckel has had more criticism from his 

 scientific confreres to meet than Huxley had. These brother critics, 

 not gentle ones, accuse him of a certain carelessness in his handling of 

 biological facts. The sharper ones call this carelessness willful over- 

 looking and distortion. His published illustrations are accused of 

 inaccuracies favorable to his argument. He is reproached of a too 

 lively imagination exercised in filling in gaps in his ancestral series 

 with plausible hypothetical links. He gets too swiftly to generalization ; 

 he is too speculative. " Der Haeckelismus in der Zoologie " has been 

 for long the subject of much strong writing and talking among German 

 biologists. 



But there is no doubt of the unescapable truth of all the larger 

 biological facts upon which Haeckel builds his philosophy and his 

 " scientific religion." The criticisms of this superstructure and its 

 manner of rearing are more to the point than the picking of flaws in 

 the details of phyletic arrangement or embryologic description. And 

 it is these criticisms of Haeckel's monism, Haeckel's materialism and 

 atheism that interest the world at large. 



These criticisms are of various types. Some are simply bitter de- 

 nunciation and epithet, coming mostly from bigoted church men. They 

 have no interest more than a future historical one, nor any real value. 

 They harm neither Haeckel nor his philosophy. Another group of 

 criticisms is less bitter and more would-be analytical and reasoned. But 



