THE CROWNING YEARS 307 



It has sold, with rather less than the usual adver- 

 tising, with no special machinery for pressing it 

 such as is at the command of religious works — 

 it has sold about 100,000 copies. The success of 

 the work astounded us. While we were being 

 accused of " thrusting it down people's throats " 

 we could not have arrested its circulation, had 

 we wished, without positively refusing to republish 

 it. Indeed, the last library edition has long been 

 out of print, though still in frequent demand. It 

 has made Haeckel's a familiar name in circles 

 where even Spencer has been heard to be described 

 as '* a great balloonist." Clergymen have written 

 to their journals saying how they heard the 

 Monistic philosophy discussed by groups of paviors. 

 Sir Leslie Stephen told me, on his death-bed, but 

 with a momentary flash of his old humour, how 

 an Orkney clergyman had written to him for 

 consolation, as it was circulating amongst the 

 fishers of that ultima thule.^ 



From the seething agitation he had aroused 

 Professor Haeckel cheerfully withdrew in the 

 autumn of 1900 to make his long journey to Java. 



''' The reader who deskes a summary of the criticisms 

 passed on the work may consult Dr. Schmidt's Der Kampf um 

 die Weltrdthsel for Germany, and my own HaeckeVs Critics 

 Answered for England. The only biologist of competence who 

 has written on it in this country is Prof. Lloyd-Morgan 

 {Contemporary Beview, 1903), but his reply is indirect. Sir 

 Oliver Lodge has recently dealt with it at length in his Life 

 and Matter, but the distinguished physicist's conception of life 

 is in extreme and general disfavoui* with the biologists of 

 England. 



