THE CROWNING YEARS 



307 



It has sold, with rather less than the usual adver- 

 tising, with no special machinery for pressing it 

 such as is at the command of religious works 

 it has sold about 100,000 copies. The success of 

 the work astounded us. While we were being 

 accused of " thrusting it down people's throats " 

 we could not have arrested its circulation, had 

 we wished, without positively refusing to republish 

 Indeed, the last library edition has long been 

 >ut of print, though still in frequent demand. It 

 made Haeckel's a familiar name in circles 

 'here even Spencer has been heard to be described 

 c a great balloonist." Clergymen have written 

 their journals saying how they heard the 

 [onistic philosophy discussed by groups of paviors. 

 lir Leslie Stephen told me, on his death-bed, but 

 ith a momentary flash of his old humour, how 

 Orkney clergyman had written to him for 

 jonsolation, as it was circulating amongst the 

 ishers of that ultima thule.* 

 From the seething agitation he had aroused 

 >fessor Haeckel cheerfully withdrew in the 

 lutumn of 1900 to make his long journey to Java. 



The reader who desires a summary of the criticisms 

 jsed on the work may consult Dr. Schmidt's Der Kampf um 

 Weltrdthsel for Germany, and my own Haeckel's Critics 

 (nswered for England. The only biologist of competence who 

 written on it in this country is Prof. Lloyd-Morgan 

 (Contemporary Beview, 1903), but his reply is indirect. Sir 

 )liver Lodge has recently dealt with it at length in his Life 

 Matter, but the distinguished physicist's conception of life 

 in extreme and general disfavour with the biologists of 

 Ingland. 



