304 HAECKEL 



editions. This remarkable success irritated his 

 opponents, and the wide range of the subjects 

 touched in the work gave them opportunities. 

 Germany was deluged with pamphlets of offence 

 and defence. Some of Haeckel's pupils replied to 

 his opponents, but the master himself smiled 

 through the storm. His chief critics were men 

 with no competence in biology, and he was not 

 minded to comply with their stratagem of with- 

 drawing attention from the substantial positions 

 of the work. Dennert, the philologist, swept 

 together all the hard sayings about Haeckel that 

 the fierce struggle of the preceding twenty years 

 had produced Paulsen and Adickes, the meta- 

 physicians, poured philosophic scorn on his 

 pretensions to construct a theory of knowledge. 

 Adickes, in particular, met him with a vigorous 

 fusillade of pure Kantism. It is a curious com- 

 mentary on this long philosophic disdain to find 

 Haeckel awarded a prominent place amongst "the 

 philosophers since Kant." 



Two points in this connection are noteworthy. 

 Haeckel's first sin against the ruling metaphysic 

 of the nineteenth century was his " naive realism." 

 He had dared to think he could break beyond 

 the charmed circle of our states of consciousness. 

 He had dreamed that a real material world lay 

 here in space before the human mind came into 

 existence; that a living, palpitating humanity, 

 not a bloodless phantasm in the mind, called for 

 our most solemn efforts. Where the ordinary 

 reader saw a truism the metaphysicians recognised 



