10 INTRODUCTION 



had shut himself within the laboratory, as some of 

 his gifted colleagues did, all the world would 

 honour him to-day. His vast range of biological 

 knowledge, almost without parallel in our specialist 

 days, fitted him for great scientific achievements. 

 His superb special contributions to biology — his 

 studies of radiolaria, sponges, medusae, &g. — give 

 ample evidence of it. As things are, he has. Pro- 

 fessor Hertwig says, ** written his name in letters 

 of light in the history of science." He holds four 

 gold medals for scientific research (Cothenius, 

 Swammerdam, Darwin, and Challenger), four 

 doctorates (Berlin, Jena, Edinburgh, and Cam- 

 bridge), and about eighty diplomas from so many 

 universities and academic bodies. But he was 

 one of those who cannot but look out of the 

 windows of the laboratory. His intense idealism, 

 his sense of what he felt to be wrong and untrue, 

 inflamed by incessant travel and communion with 

 men, drove him into the field of battle. In the 

 din and roar of a great conflict his name has 

 passed on to a million lips and become the varied 

 war-cry of fiercely contending parties. A hundred 

 Haeckels, grotesque in their unlikeness to each 

 other, circulate in our midst to-day. 



The present work is a plain study of the person- 

 ality of Haeckel and the growth of his ideas. The 

 character of Haeckel was forged amid circum- 

 stances that have largely passed away from the 

 scientific world of our time. The features, even, 

 of the world he has worked in of recent years in 

 Germany are so different from our own that no 



