44 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



vices, were naturally condoned by those who saw 

 in him the leader of modern atheism in its vain 

 attempt to destroy Christianity. Though utterly 

 ignorant of economics and sociology, he became 

 the idol of anarchism and Socialism. In the 

 Reichstag, September 16, 1876, Bebel, the ac- 

 credited spokesman of Socialism, said of him : 



I believe that because of his ignorance of sociology Professor 

 Haeckel, the out-spoken advocate of the Darwinian theory, had 

 really no conception of the fact that Darwinism necessarily pro- 

 motes Socialism, and that Socialism in turn must be in harmony 

 with Darwinism if its aims are to be correct. 



By "Darwinism" Bebel, in his obviously corre- 

 sponding ignorance of science, understood ma- 

 terialistic evolution. What Bebel really meant to 

 establish and in this he was perfectly correct 

 was the intimate relation between irreligion and 

 Socialism. From this point of view Haeckel be- 

 came, together with Marx, the prophet of Social- 

 ism. Rationalism, on the other hand, delicately 

 glossed over his failings. His substitutions of 

 false plates to deceive his readers, and similar de- 

 vices were thus, for example, euphemized, in the 

 London Times: "He was not infrequently misled 

 by the tendency to schematize and to generalize 

 which he had crystallized in artistic rather than 

 in scientific interpretation." 8 What a bewildering 

 way of expressing the simple fact that he told a 

 lie when it served his purpose, and was never 



'August ii, 1919. 



