LUCRETIUS AND HAECKEL 1 23 



Weltrathsel are Goethe's lines/ with which Haeckel concludes his 

 work: 



Nach ewigen, ehemen 



Grossen Gesetzen 



Miissen wir alle 



Unseres Daseins 



Kreise vollenden. 



But this scientific spirit with its insistence on law and reason does 

 not prevent the kindhng in their breasts of a missionary zeal for the 

 salvation of a lost world. Though they argue never so formally and 

 dispassionately, both of their beings are at a white heat of enthusiasm 

 for the evangel of science. Never prophet or martyr was surer of 

 his vision or of its redeeming value to frail humanity than these two 

 representatives of what most people call materialism. "Come unto 

 us and we will set you free," is the eager cry on their apostolic lips; 

 "with us you may find, not the mystic peace that passeth understand- 

 ing, but the unconquerable peace that only understanding can bestow. " 



General resemblances, however, are never very hard to find, and 

 we may now turn to our particular riddles, treating them with all 

 possible brevity, and resisting the temptation to stray either into other 

 fields of resemblance or into the more exhaustive treatises of Haeckel. 

 The seven quoted by Haeckel from Emil duBois-Rcymond are: (i) the 

 nature of matter and force; (2) the origin of motion; (3) the origin 

 of hfe ; (4) the (apparently preordained) orderly arrangement of nature ; 

 (5) the origin of simple sensation and consciousness; (6) rational 

 thought and the origin of the cognate faculty, speech; (7) the question 

 of the freedom of the will. To these we may add two of Kant 's postu- 

 lates, the third being No. 7 above, and we shall have: (8) the exist- 

 ence of God; (9) the immortality of the soul. Of course, Haeckel 

 classes these last three as mere dogmas, but in his discussions they 

 have quite as much prominence as in Lucretius. 



Accordingly, we may take up at once the central question, the 



' I have never seen the lines adequately translated. The English edition gives the accepted rendering: 

 "By eternal laws 

 Of iron ruled, 

 Must all fulfil 

 The cycle of 

 Their destiny." 



