SOURCE: "Ernst Haeckel," in Contemporary Portraits, Grant Richards Ltd., 1924, pp. 84-92.

In the following excerpt, Harris offers his personal recollections of an encounter with Haeckel, as well as a chance meeting with the latter's translator.

"Knowledge is unattainable, in Man's State,
 We at best may only see some little part;
 After short purblind visions of Man's thought,
 Wisdom; our heritage, lies within our might,
 Time past, our fathers' was; this day that is,
 Is ours; the Future, we ourselves beget."

These lines are taken from a book with the secondary title of "The Riddle of the Universe," by Charles Doughty, an English poet of to-day, and as Haeckel's book with the same title is his most popular work, and has been translated into half a dozen languages and had an enormous sale, I thought the poetry might well introduce what I have to say about the thinker. For...