312 HAECKEL 



appeals with equal force to the aesthete and the 

 scientist. And during the long hours that he was 

 peering into his microscope and sketching the 

 delicate and graceful forms, the din and roar of the 

 mighty controversy he had aroused was breaking 

 in with every post. By the end of the year he had 

 received more than 5,000 letters in connection with 

 the Riddle of the Universe. Scurrilous letters and 

 idolatrous letters, sober letters and fantastic letters, 

 flowed upon the Zoological Institute, where he 

 worked with pen and pencil, and were duly read. 

 He merely defended himself by posting to each 

 correspondent a printed form that he would soon 

 issue a new work in which the further questions 

 would be answered. He had given his life to 

 science and humanity, and would not withdraw for 

 the well-earned rest. And from a thousand pulpits 

 over Europe and America the aged and self-sacri- 

 ficing worker was being denounced and caricatured 

 to audiences who had not the remotest knowledge 

 of his aims and his work. A friend of mine heard 

 a minister in an important Glasgow church assure 

 his congregation from the pulpit that *^Haeckel 

 was a man of notoriously licentious life ; " he had 

 heard it ^^from a friend of Haeckel's." At the 

 very time when Haeckel was buried in his splendid 

 artistic work, the Christian World Pulpit was 

 issuing a sermon in which Dr. Horton was ex- 

 plaining '^ the personal factor " in Haeckel. " He 

 is an atrophied soul, a being that is blind on the 

 spiritual side," the popular preacher declared. 

 From the turmoil Haeckel withdrew once more 



