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! But a great counterpoise to these bitter attacks—attacks that forgot, as Gramzow says, that “there is an ethic for the critic as well as for the man of science”—had now been provided. Men like Dr. Schmidt, Dr. Breitenbach, Professor Bölsche, and Professor Verworn rallied to their master, and conveyed a juster image of him and his work to the public. The ominous silence of the great biologists was felt to mean that his views were, in substance, no heresy to them. The man’s warm and enthusiastic zeal for truth and humanity, his earnest efforts to pierce the barriers that shut off the treasures of science from the mass, could not be ignored. A cheaper edition of his work was demanded, and it was soon in the hands of more than 150,000 readers. Country after country imported his “gospel of Monism,” the stirring agitation spread to France, England, America, Italy, and on until it reached Australia and Japan. To-day fourteen translations of the _Riddle_ bear his teaching to the ends of the world.