THE CROWNING YEARS 297 



a narrative as this. For good or evil Haeckel's 

 great influence on our generation is a reality. 

 It is the biographer's duty to record and measure 

 it : the reader's to appraise it. The future 

 historian of the dramatic course of humanity's 

 ideals must be left to interpret it in cosmic perspec- 

 tive. Do the stars exult, or do they grow thinner 

 and colder in their light, over this great stirring ? 

 The far-distant generation, that will have reached 

 the summit of the hill, will know. We who, with 

 narrow horizon, are cutting our fond paths up 

 the slope, have but the poor luxuries of faith and 

 hope. Yet there is one aspect of Haeckel's recent 

 life that makes us almost forget the cosmic issues. 

 These five years have been, in literal truth, 

 ^* crowning years" of his aims. For all the 

 slights and insults that have been showered on 

 the grim worker he has had a rich recompense 

 of honour and love. Even if his ideas are to 

 fade and wither like his laurel crowns, it will be 

 something for a future historian to record that 

 a gentler and more genial light fell about his 

 closing years. As Gramzow says : '* He tried to 

 give us his best." 



An event that Professor Bolsche has only 

 briefly alluded to in his last crowded chapter 

 was a fitting inauguration of the last decade of 

 Haeckel's career. On the 17th of February, 

 1894, his sixtieth birthday was celebrated at Jena. 

 The lover of nature and of the silent study passes 

 uneasily through such functions, but the student 

 of Haeckel's life must dwell on it. Jena had for 



