In the years 1894-6 Haeckel published the Systematic Phylogeny. “We may differ,” says Professor Arnold Lang of it, “as to the value of special or even fundamental opinions in it, but we must stand before this work in astonishment and admiration: astonishment at the vast range of his knowledge—it would seem that one head could contain no more: admiration of the intellectual labour with which the various phenomena are connected and the gigantic mass of material is reduced to order.” The Royal Academy of Science at Turin judged the work the best that had been published in the last four years of the nineteenth century, and awarded its author the Bressa prize, a sum of 10,000 lire.
Haeckel and a group of Italian Professors.
Hotel Bristol, Genoa, 1904.
Pavona. Cattaneo. Ariola. Berninzo. Porro. Locchi. Andres.
Monti. Issel. Orlando. Penzig. Maggi. Haeckel. Morselli. Cattaneo.
In August, 1898, he made a further visit to England. The International Congress of Zoology met at Cambridge, and Haeckel was invited to deliver an address. He chose his ever-present theme—the evolution of man. The long lecture, or essay, has been translated by Dr. Gadow under the title, The Last Link. The title is somewhat misleading, as only a page or two are devoted to “the last link.” Otherwise the little work offers students a most excellent summary of “our present knowledge of the evolution of man,” the title which Haeckel gave it.
But the last period of Haeckel’s career is associated chiefly with, and is really inaugurated by his now famous Riddle of the Universe, published in 1899. To understand that work, to avoid the extremes of praise and censure that have been lavished on it, one must put oneself in Haeckel’s position at the close of the last century. Mr. Wells has given us a forecast of the coming social order in which the intellectual few are separated by a wider and deeper gulf than ever from the workers and the women of the world. That keen-eyed and judicious social writer has already modified his forecast, but there were symptoms enough of the possibility of such an issue a few years ago. In Germany the signs were ominous to a man like Haeckel. The older Liberalism to which he belonged by tradition and conviction seemed in danger of being ground to dust between the upper and the nether stones of the new political mill—the increasing strength of Social Democracy and the increasing and consequent alliance of Conservative Kaiserism with the still powerful Catholic Church. Haeckel distrusted the power of Demos much as Renan did when he wrote his sombre dialogues in the seventies; and a political alliance with the Vatican opened out to him the grim prospect of a return to the Middle Ages. The freedom of research and teaching for which he had fought with unsparing vigour was, he thought, imperilled by the new alliance, no less than the very existence of culture was endangered by the triumph of Social Democracy. His academic colleagues remained in that isolation which he had ever bitterly resented.
In face of this situation, which seemed to grow more sombre as the last years of the century dragged on, his zeal for truth and progress had but one outlet. He must appeal to the people. He must take the conclusions he had so laboriously worked out in his Systematic Phylogeny, and translate them from scientific hieroglyphics into a demotic tongue. He must nail his theses with his own hand on the cathedral door, like the great monk whose work seemed in danger of perishing. The partial success of his History of Creation was encouraging, though that work had only penetrated into the first circle beyond the sacred academic enclosure, and was still unknown to the crowd. Gathering his strength for what he believed to be his final effort, he blew a blast that would reach the far-off shop and factory. It must be no gentle note, no timid suggestion that the scientific work of the nineteenth century had thrown doubt on current religious notions. He was quitting the stage. He believed these things were true, were established. The world must listen to them, must discuss them; and then the twentieth century would pass its informed verdict over his grave.
So he wrote a vigorous, an irritating, an awakening book. It must be read in this context. The charge of “dogmatism” so often hurled at it is not without humour. It is generally raised by men who in the same breath hold their truths so dogmatically that they resent his very questions. They forget, too, that the chief conclusions of the Riddle are references to the larger work in which, soundly or unsoundly, they are provided with massive foundations of scientific material. In England there is some excuse, as the larger work is untranslated and unknown; though one may resent the critic who charges Haeckel with egoism for his constant references to his other works and then proceeds to ridicule the slenderness of the foundations of his theories. Further, it is too often forgotten that Haeckel opens his work with a rare warning to the reader that his opinions are very largely “subjective” and his command of other subjects than biology is very “unequal.” In fine, his constant and exaggerated allusions to the opposition he encounters from his scientific colleagues is, for any candid reader, a sufficient corrective of “dogmatism.”
The work lit up at once a flame of controversy that has hardly yet diminished in Germany. Students have told me how, when some professor dropped the well-known name in the course of his lecture, the class would split at once into two demonstrative sections. Ten thousand copies of the library edition of the work were sold within a few months, and it quickly ran to eight editions. This remarkable success irritated his opponents, and the wide range of the subjects touched in the work gave them opportunities. Germany was deluged with pamphlets of offence and defence. Some of Haeckel’s pupils replied to his opponents, but the master himself smiled through the storm. His chief critics were men with no competence in biology, and he was not minded to comply with their stratagem of withdrawing attention from the substantial positions of the work. Dennert, the philologist, swept together all the hard sayings about Haeckel that the fierce struggle of the preceding twenty years had produced—Paulsen and Adickes, the metaphysicians, poured philosophic scorn on his pretensions to construct a theory of knowledge. Adickes, in particular, met him with a vigorous fusillade of pure Kantism. It is a curious commentary on this long philosophic disdain to find Haeckel awarded a prominent place amongst “the philosophers since Kant.”
Two points in this connection are noteworthy. Haeckel’s first sin against the ruling metaphysic of the nineteenth century was his “naïve realism.” He had dared to think he could break beyond the charmed circle of our states of consciousness. He had dreamed that a real material world lay here in space before the human mind came into existence; that a living, palpitating humanity, not a bloodless phantasm in the mind, called for our most solemn efforts. Where the ordinary reader saw a truism the metaphysicians recognised a deadly sin, and laughed Homeric laughter. To-day we have, both in England and Germany, a strong claim arising amongst the metaphysicians themselves for a return to a realist basis. Haeckel’s second and chief sin was his claim to have thrown light on the evolution of consciousness and his disdain of all study of mind that was not grounded on evolution. To-day Gramzow writes: “The criticism which he makes of Kant’s theory of knowledge from the evolutionary point of view is the greatest advance that philosophy has made in that branch since Kant’s time.”
The most violent critics of the Riddle were the theologians. It would be improper here to enter into the controversy, and indeed Haeckel has paid little attention to his critics of late years. Some time ago a German religious magazine was sent to me in which one of his leading critics had written a shameful article with the aim of alienating him from me. I at once wrote to him, and received a letter brimming over with his hearty laughter at the idea that he might have taken any notice of what they said. The eminent ecclesiastical historian, Professor Loofs, made a ponderous attack on his incidental reference to the birth of Christ. As Loofs himself denied the divinity and supernatural birth of Christ, Haeckel felt little inclination to enter on a serious argument about the human parentage. The theologian was so much hurt that he used language, as far as was consistent with a broad view of the theological dignity, that came within legal limits, and then quoted to Haeckel the page and letter in the German code on which he might take action!