AT THE UNIVERSITY 75 



Church, the State, and so on. Hence it would 

 have to respect hmitations that were not drawn 

 from its own nature ; in given cases it would have 

 to keep silent in order not to jeopardise its exist- 

 ence as a whole. It is my firm belief that this 

 diplomatic attitude as such would lead to the 

 destruction of all pursuit of the truth. It 

 carefully excludes the possibility of any further 

 martyrdoms, but at the cost of science's own 

 power to illumine the world. In my opinion the 

 free investigation of the truth is an absolute 

 right. Churches, States, social orders, moral 

 precepts, and all that is connected with them, 

 have to adjust themselves to this investigation, 

 and not the reverse. 



However, the point is that under Virchow — 

 more particularly under Virchow, in fact — Haeckel 

 would be educated into the general attitude with 

 regard to God, nature, life, and man, to which he 

 has since devoted his whole energy. In spite of 

 Goethe — and who would be likely to take Goethe 

 as his guide in bis twenty-first year ? — the ardent 

 young student was as yet by no means firmly 

 seated in the saddle. He grubbed, and sought, 

 and rejected. In his Riddle of the Universe he 

 tells us that he "defended the Christian belief in 

 his twenty-first year in lively discussions '* with his 

 free-thinking comrades, . . ./"although the study 

 of human anatomy and physiology, and the 

 comparison of man's frame with that of the other 

 animals, had already greatly enfeebled my faith. 

 I did not entirely abandon it, after bitter struggles, 



