Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 76.djvu/143

Rh the critics are misinformed; they lack the knowledge of science and modern Natur-philosophie necessary to enter the lists with any strength. These critics are less bigoted and more intelligent churchmen and philosophical dilettanti. Finally there is a third type of criticism, becoming now, with the startlingly swift spread of monistic acceptance among the German people, more abundant and important in character. It is the criticism, keenly analytical, strongly put, of professors of philosophy, liberal and informed clergymen and scientific dualists like Oliver Lodge.

But still more to be reckoned with by the monists in their attempt to remake the philosophy and religious belief of the world is the strong and positive, if less outspoken and active antagonism, of all those who are deeply imbued with the feeling that a religion or philosophy which does not distinguish soul from body and which denies any hope for a persistent life for the soul is a conception in some way negatived by the very life and consciousness of man.

Haeckel manfully, even joyously, faces all these kinds of criticism and charges valiantly against the forces of entrenched belief. We can not too much praise the fighting qualities of this champion. He is a world-figure; at any rate he looms a world-figure in German eyes. We can hardly understand in America how much reading and attention are given by the whole body of German people to the serious problems of philosophy and religion. Haeckel's books and pamphlets are issued by scores of thousands and eagerly read. The "Lebensräthsel" alone is in its two hundred and fiftieth thousand. And in all the bookshop windows are displayed the pamphlets answering and denouncing the atheist philosopher of Jena. The Haeckel and monism subject is only second in interest to the eternal problem of the Kaiser temperament!

Through it all one turns with keen interest to the kindly-faced white-haired figure of the protagonist. Seventy-six years old and still carrying on steadily the duties of his professorship, lecturing simply to students, speaking occasionally to popular assemblies and uttering steadily in direct and plainest sentences his iconoclastic and radical philosophy. His hearers and admirers and followers come chiefly from the lower and middle classes, and especially from the ranks of the growing social-democratic party. He is essentially a people's prophet. Actually how large his following is it would be difficult to say, but the tremendous demand for his writings, all the popularized ones of which are issued in cheap "people's editions," indicates in some degree the number of his adherents. Many of the social-democrats and all the "free-thinkers" take up his cause with enthusiasm, and his "Theses