SOURCE: "Ernst Haeckel," in False Prophets, The Macmillan Company, 1925, pp. 102-24.

In the following excerpt, Gillis critiques Haeckel's Monism and his presentation of it, treating the former as a variety of religious dogma and the latter as an often dishonest attempt to make facts conform to theory.

I

It is odd that a man like Charles Darwin should have for champion a man like Ernst Haeckel. No two men could be more opposite in character. Darwin was diffident about himself and about his doctrine; Haeckel was arrogantly certain. Darwin knew his limitations; he made few if any incursions into the foreign field of philosophy. Haeckel, not content with his reputation as a scientist, persistently encroached upon the ground of philosophy and of theology. Darwin said, humbly enough, that though he might claim to know something about the origin of species, he knew nothing about the origin of life...