American pedagogic institutions are mendicant--they depend upon private charity and are endowed by pious pirates and beneficent buccaneers. The individuals who made these institutions possible very naturally have a controlling voice in their management. The colleges in America that are not supported by direct mendicancy depend upon the dole of the legislator, and woe betide the pedagogic principal who offends the orthodox vote. His supplies are cut short, and purse-strings pucker until his voice moderates to a monotone and he dilutes his views to a dull neutral tint. I do not know a University in the United States that would not place Ernst Haeckel on half-rations, and make him fight for his life, or else he would be discharged and be reduced to the sad necessity of tilting windmills in popular lecture courses for the edification of agrarians. The German Government seeks to make men free. It even gives them the privilege of being absurd; for pioneers sometimes take the wrong track. We do not scout Columbus because his domestic voyages were failures; nor because he sought one thing and found another, and died without knowing the difference. Haeckel's wants are all supplied; what he needs in the way of apparatus or material is his for the asking; he travels at will the round world over; visions of old age and yawning almshouses are not for him. He owns himself--he does what he wishes, he says what he thinks, and neither priest nor politician dare cry, hist! So we get the paradox: the only perfect freedom is to be found in a monarchy. "A Republic," says Schopenhauer, "is a land that is ruled by the many--that is to say, by the incompetent." But Schopenhauer, of course, knew nothing of the American primary, devised by altruistic Hibernians for the purpose of thwarting the incompetent many. * * * * * Ernst Haeckel was born in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-four, hence he is just seventy-seven years old at this writing. His parents were plain people, neither rich nor poor--and of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. The greatest error one can make in life is not to be well born; failing in this, a man struggles through life under an awful handicap. Haeckel formed the habit of steady, systematic work in youth, and untiring effort has been the rule of his life. Man was made to be well, and he was made to work. It is only work--which is the constant effort to retain equilibrium--that makes life endurable. So we find Haeckel now, at near fourscore years, a model of manly vigor, with all the eager, curious, receptive qualities of youth--a happy man, but one who knows that happiness lies on the way to Heaven, and not in arriving there and sitting down to enjoy it.