CHAPTER VIII
THE CROWNING YEARS
[By Joseph McCabe]
When Professor Bölsche closed his biographical sketch in 1900 with the three stars that “still glowed,” he had little suspicion how widely they would yet flame out before they passed from the firmament of biography to that of history. As it has proved, Haeckel was then only entering upon the period of vast popular influence which forms the closing part of his remarkable career. He had in 1900 a few thousand thoughtful readers in several countries beside his own. To-day he is read by hundreds of thousands in Germany, England, France, and Italy, and the fourteen different translations of his most popular work have carried his ideas over the whole world. To-day the thoughts of this professor of zoology in an obscure German town are discussed eagerly by bronzed and blackened artisans in the workshops of London, Paris, and Tokio, as well as throughout Germany. The reader will have noticed in the earlier chapters that the most dignified and disdainful of Haeckel’s opponents have been the academic philosophers. In the year 1905 a Berlin professor of philosophy, a stern critic of his system, devotes a long special section of his History of Philosophy since Kant to Haeckel and his long-contemned speculations. Why? Because, to quote his concluding sentences, “the far-reaching impulse that Haeckel has given will never more die out. He has become a sower of the future. The glad echo that his words have found in a hundred thousand breasts must stir every representative of ruling power in Church and Science to make a closer self-examination, a closer scrutiny of received ideas. Does not the thought press irresistibly upon us that somehow or other we have entered upon the wrong path in our modern development?”[[9]]
[9]. Dr. Otto Gramzow’s Geschichte der Philosophie seit Kant, p. 503.
In an earlier chapter Professor Bölsche tells the moving story of the writing of the General Morphology: the young man making his masterly appeal to the scientists of Germany, which he thinks they will read over his grave. There is a singular parallel to this in Haeckel’s attitude at the time when Bölsche closed his work. Haeckel had just written another “last will and testament,” another proud and defiant utterance of what he felt to be the truth about God and man and nature. Once more he seemed to see the marble gates at the close of his career, and his sombre glance fell round on a world that was, he thought, sinking into reaction. This time he appealed to the people. The five years that have followed have witnessed an extraordinary 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 Haeckel’s 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 in 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 a narrative as this. For good or evil Haeckel’s great influence on our generation is a reality. It is the biographer’s duty to record and measure it: the reader’s to appraise it. The future historian of the dramatic course of humanity’s ideals must be left to interpret it in cosmic perspective. Do the stars exult, or do they grow thinner and colder in their light, over this great stirring? The far-distant generation, that will have reached the summit of the hill, will know. We who, with narrow horizon, are cutting our fond paths up the slope, have but the poor luxuries of faith and hope. Yet there is one aspect of Haeckel’s recent life that makes us almost forget the cosmic issues. These five years have been, in literal truth, “crowning years” of his aims. For all the slights and insults that have been showered on the grim worker he has had a rich recompense of honour and love. Even if his ideas are to fade and wither like his laurel crowns, it will be something for a future historian to record that a gentler and more genial light fell about his closing years. As Gramzow says: “He tried to give us his best.”
An event that Professor Bölsche has only briefly alluded to in his last crowded chapter was a fitting inauguration of the last decade of Haeckel’s career. On the 17th of February, 1894, his sixtieth birthday was celebrated at Jena. The lover of nature and of the silent study passes uneasily through such functions, but the student of Haeckel’s life must dwell on it. Jena had for some years realised that world-fame somehow attached to the straight, smiling figure that it saw passing daily to the Zoological Institute. It had witnessed the grave procedure of the boycott in the sixties. It had heard distinguished leaders of Churches, like Professor Michelis, brand his works as “a fleck of shame on the escutcheon of Germany,” “an attack on the foundations of religion and morality,” “a symptom of senile marasmus.” It saw all these unworthy attacks sink into confusion, and a new era begin. It heard of greater universities competing for their professor and his refusal to leave them. It saw Bismarck fall on his neck and kiss him repeatedly when, in 1892, he headed the deputation to invite him to Jena; and it noted how the Prince absolutely refused to drive through their town “unless Haeckel comes with me” in the carriage. It gave his name proudly to one of its fine new streets.
In February, 1894, Jena witnessed a remarkable celebration—remarkable not only to those who had lived with him in the sixties. A marble bust of Haeckel was unveiled by Professor Hertwig, with noble speech, in the Zoological Institute. A festive dinner, such as Germans alone can conduct, was held in the famous Luther-Hostel. More than a thousand letters and telegrams poured in from all parts of the world, and scores of journals awoke the interest of Germany. I have before me the privately-published report on the celebration, autographed to “Agnes Haeckel.” Two lists in it catch the eye. One is a list of Haeckel’s publications. Apart from his long and numerous articles in scientific journals he has written forty-two works (13,000 pages, frequently quarto) in thirty-three years. All but two are pure contributions to science: some of them are classical monographs of original research; most are beautifully illustrated by himself. The second list gives the names of those who have contributed towards the marble bust by Professor Kopf, of Rome. It is worthy of science. It includes five hundred university professors and heads of academic institutions in all parts of the world, from Brazil and the States to Algiers and Egypt and India. In their name Professor Hertwig greeted Haeckel as one “who has written his name in letters of light in the history of science.” From Italy the Minister of Public Instruction sent the following telegram: “Italy, that you love so much, takes cordial part in all the honours that the civilised nations of the earth are heaping on you in commemoration of your sixtieth birthday. In the name of the Italian Universities, which love you so much and so much admire your undying work, I send you a heartfelt greeting and wishes for a long and happy and active career.” Dr. Paul von Ritter gave 75,000 marks [shillings] for the erection of a monument to Haeckel at Jena when the hour comes. He had previously given 300,000 marks to be spent in the furtherance of Haeckel’s scientific views.
The story so vividly unfolded by Professor Bölsche has explained how the estrangement arose between Haeckel and so many of his scientific colleagues in Germany. It is not a little gratifying to find the names of some of his critics amongst the subscribers to his festival. The personality, the aim, the self-sacrifice of the man, no less than his distinguished special contributions to science, had won a superb recognition.