HAECKEL IN 1890 178 _From a relief by Kopf._ HAECKEL’S VILLA AT JENA 216 HAECKEL AND HIS ASSISTANT 244 MIKLUCHO-MACLAY AT LANZAROTE, IN THE CANARIES, 1867 A SIPHONOPHORE 248 HAECKEL IN 1874 272 HAECKEL IN 1896 292 _From a photograph by Gabriel Max._ HAECKEL AND A GROUP OF ITALIAN 300 PROFESSORS AT GENOA, 1904 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Introduction One of the admirable maxims that crystallises the better sense or experience of men reminds us that we must “say nothing but good of the dead.” Unhappily, we have taken the words of our sage fathers in too large a sense. A feeling has grown amongst us that we should “say nothing good except of the dead,” at least as regards those who differ from us. So has many a man gone from the world with little suspicion of the appreciation that might have warmed him in the last chill years; many a man sunk into the grave with the harsh echo of dishonouring words still rumbling in his ears. It may be that our ideas, our truths, would not suffer greatly if we could patiently endeavour to trace the community of humane feeling that lies beneath the wide gulfs that often separate us intellectually from each other. Professor Ernst Haeckel is one of those combative figures of all time who take misunderstanding as a part of their romantic career. If he had shut himself within the laboratory, as some of his gifted colleagues did, all the world would honour him to-day. His vast range of biological knowledge, almost without parallel in our specialist days, fitted him for great scientific achievements. His superb special contributions to biology—his studies of radiolaria, sponges, medusæ, &c.—give ample evidence of it. As things are, he has, Professor Hertwig says, “written his name in letters of light in the history of science.” He holds four gold medals for scientific research (Cothenius, Swammerdam, Darwin, and Challenger), four doctorates (Berlin, Jena, Edinburgh, and Cambridge), and about eighty diplomas from so many universities and academic bodies. But he was one of those who cannot but look out of the windows of the laboratory. His intense idealism, his sense of what he felt to be wrong and untrue, inflamed by incessant travel and communion with men, drove him into the field of battle. In the din and roar of a great conflict his name has passed on to a million lips and become the varied war-cry of fiercely contending parties. A hundred Haeckels, grotesque in their unlikeness to each other, circulate in our midst to-day.