Year: 1909
Type: book
Abstract: construct " him from his ideas and literary manner are, as the reader will see, very far removed from the reality.Behind all the strained inferences from doctrines, behind all the dishonouring epithets, there is a genial, warm, deeply artistic, intensely idealist nature, sung with enthusiasm by poets who have known him.Once, in playful scientific mood, Haeckel tried to explain his own character in his familiar terms of heredity and environment.He came of a line of lawyers-straight, orderly, inexorable men.He had lived and worked in quiet Jena, in the beautiful valley of the Saale.But he did not speak of that larger environment-the field of battle, stretching far away, beyond the calm Thuringian hills, to the ends of Europe.We must place Haeckel's ardent and high-minded nature in that field, face to face with his opponents, if we would understand him.For the supplementary chapter I have drawn freely on another biographical sketch by one of Haeckel's pupils, Dr. Breitenbach, and other sources.For the illustrations (to the first edition) I am indebted chiefly to Professor Haeckel himself, and can only offer him in return this grateful effort to lift his inspiring and impressive personality above the dust and cloud of a great controversy.
Source: Watts eBooks
Authors: Wilhelm Bölsche, Joseph McCabe
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2097111468