292 HAECKEL 



ran to more than 100,000 copies. It has also been 

 translated into fourteen different languages. The 

 controversy it excited has not yet died away. 

 Already a supplementary volume, The Wonders of 

 Life^ has followed it (1904). Haeckel had been 

 working in this department with great vigour for 

 many years. He only made one appearance at a 

 German scientific congress since the Virchow aSair. 

 That was on September 18, 1882, in quiet and 

 uncontroversial form. A little excitement was 

 caused amongst those who saw their salvation in 

 keeping the gentle Darwin far apart from the 

 impetuous Haeckel when he read a rather free 

 philosophical confession of Darwin's. Their tactics 

 broke down as the deceased Darwin passed into an 

 historical personality and disappeared from the 

 struggle of contending parties. In 1892 Haeckel 

 wrote with great vigour in the militant Berlin 

 journal, the Freie Billine^ on the new alliance of the 

 Church and political parties in Germany, criticising 

 the political situation on general philosophical 

 principles, and in opposition to Virchow's spirit of 

 compromise. In the same year he delivered at 

 Altenburg a lecture on *^ Monism as a connecting 

 link between religion and science." In this he 

 took a conciliatory line, and showed how his philo- 

 sophic views could be reconciled with any really 

 sincere pursuit of truth, whatever aim it professed 

 to have. The address closed with the words : 

 '' May God, the spirit of the good, the beautiful, 

 and the true, grant it." However, both his 

 criticism and his attempt at conciliation only led 



