16 HAECKEL 



Chapel at Rome. What art ! What utter reve- 

 lation of the power of man's mind ! But, we ask, 

 what material did the genius of humanity choose 

 in those days for the manifestation of its giant 

 power? The last judgment: the Christ descending 

 at the blare of the last trumpet, to reward the 

 faithful and banish the sinner into everlasting 

 pain : the Almighty, breathing His spirit into 

 Adam, or mystically upbuilding Eve from the rib 

 of the man. There was no " symbolic " intention 

 in the picture ; the deepest feeling of hundreds 

 — nay, thousands — of years was embodied in it. 

 The artist merely gave an imperishable external 

 form to the most treasured truth of his time. 



Yet, slowly and gradually, what a mighty 

 change has come about ! 



Columbus has sailed over the blue seas, and a 

 new side of the earth lies in the violet haze of the 

 dawn. Copernicus sees the ball of the earth roll 

 round the sun through space, by force of some 

 mysterious law. Kepler dreams of the world- 

 harmony that win replace the ever-acting Deity, 

 and discovers at length an unsuspected regularity 

 in the framework of the heavens. Galileo turns 

 his new optic tube to the stars, and at once the 

 heavens are changed, not only for the calculating, 

 mathematical mind, but even for the eye of sense : 

 there are jagged peaks on the moon, satellites 

 circling about Jupiter, a wilderness of stars lying 

 across the Milky Way, spots on the sun, rings 

 round Saturn. Giordano Bruno shatters the 

 ancient crystalline vault of the firmament ; every 



