DARWIN 103 



that is the hour when the great man is born 

 who will leave his mark on it. 



Haeckel's biography only begins on a certain 

 day, if we look at it rightly and broadly. Until 

 that day he is merely a young man, an outgrowth 

 from a rich old civilisation : a young man who 

 has felt in him a struggle between artistic and 

 scientific tendencies, like so many : who has 

 vacillated between the choice of a ^'paying pro- 

 fession" and research for its own sake, and has 

 decided for the former, like so many : who has 

 chosen zoology, and begun to work .hard on 

 professional lines at his science : and who has 

 been told prophetically that he will one day do 

 something, though along a line where much has 

 been done already. In the whole of this develop- 

 ment we have as yet no indication of the real 

 tenor of his life. 



It comes first with the name of Darwin. The 

 arabesque of a very different life begins to blend 

 with that of his own. 



In the February of the year in which Haeckel 

 was born (1834), twenty-eight years before the 

 point we have arrived at, Charles Darwin was 

 on a scientific expedition to South America. There 

 is a romantic element in the earlier story of this 

 journey. The naked Fuegians had stolen a boat 

 from an English Government ship that was en- 

 gaged in making geographical measurements, 

 towards the close of the twenties, on the wild 

 coast of Tierra del Fuego. FitzKoy, the captain, 

 arrested a few of the natives, brought them on 



