THE CROWNING YEARS 301 



"the last link." Otherwise the little work offers 

 students a most excellent summary of " our 

 present knowledge of the evolution of man," the 

 title which Haeckel gave it. 



But the last period of Haeckel's career is 

 associated chiefly with, and is really inaugurated 

 by his now famous Riddle of the Universe, published 

 in 1899. To understand that work, to avoid the 

 extremes of praise and censure that have been 

 lavished on it, one must put oneself in Haeckel's 

 position at the close of the last century. Mr. 

 Wells has given us a forecast of the coming 

 social order in which the intellectual few are 

 separated by a wider and deeper gulf than ever 

 from the workers and the women of the world. 

 That keen-eyed and judicious social writer has 

 already modified his forecast, but there were 

 symptoms enough of the possibility of such an 

 issue a few years ago. In Germany the signs 

 were ominous to a man like Haeckel. The older 

 Liberalism to which he belonged by tradition and 

 conviction seemed in danger of being ground to 

 dust between the upper and the nether stones of 

 the new political mill the increasing strength of 

 Social Democracy and the increasing and con- 

 sequent alliance of Conservative Kaiserism with 

 the still powerful Catholic Church. Haeckel 

 distrusted the power of Demos much as Renan 

 did when he wrote his sombre dialogues in the 

 seventies ; and a political alliance with the Vatican 

 opened out to him the grim prospect of a return 

 to the Middle Ages. The freedom of research 



