296 HAECKEL 



world that was, he thought, sinking into reaction. 

 This time he appealed to the people. The five 

 years tha.t have followed have witnessed an extra- 

 ordinary response on the part of the people. 

 With the speed of a popular romance his work 

 has flown through Europe. He has received a 

 hundred proofs that, at all events, the ideas he 

 thinks to be fraught with salvation for humanity 

 are being considered and discussed in wide 

 circles that had never before known that there 

 was a " riddle of the universe." He has been 

 urged in the heart of the Sahara to read his 

 own works. He has met, as he travelled on an 

 Alpine railway, cultured nuns who told him they 

 had learned evolution from " Professor HaeckeFs 

 works." He has looked down with mingled feeling 

 on the wild applause of a gathering of thousands 

 of Socialists. He has been immortalised — strangest 

 and last of all apotheoses — in an academic history 

 of philosophy ! 



The present chapter will tell the story of these 

 five stirring years. It will aim at conveying 

 to the English reader, by plain presentment of 

 facts, a full picture of the activity that has 

 attracted or distracted the attention of so many 

 m the last few years. If Dr. Gramzow is right, 

 if through these five years of indefatigable 

 labour the aged scientist has become a " sower of 

 the future," it is well for friend and foe to 

 understand him. 



There is only one respect in which one's 

 personal feeling may be allowed to tinge such 



