Unlike Herbert Spencer, whose later writings were all dictated—and very slowly and painstakingly at that—Haeckel writes with his own hand, and when the fit is on, he turns off manuscript at the rate of from two to four thousand words a day. In writing "The Riddle of the Universe," he took no exercise save to go up on the roof, breathing deeply and pounding his chest, varying the pounding by reaching his arms above his head and stretching. However, after a few weeks the villagers and visitors got to looking for him with opera-glasses; and he ceased going on the roof, taking his calisthenics at the open window.
This exercise of reaching and stretching until you lift yourself on tiptoe, he goes out of his way to recommend in his book on "Development," wherein he says, "There is a tendency as the years pass for the internal organs to drop, but the individual who will daily go through the motion of reaching for fruit on limbs of trees that are above his head, standing on tiptoe and slowly stretching up and up, occasionally throwing his head back and looking straight up, will of necessity breathe deeply, exercise the diaphragm, and I believe in most cases will ward off diseases and keep old age awaiting for long."
Here is a little commonsense advice given by a physician who is also a great scientist. To try it will cost you nothing—no apparatus is required—just throw open the window and reach up and up and up, first with one arm, then the other, and then both arms. "The person who does this daily for five minutes as a habit will probably have no need of a physician," adds Haeckel, and with this sage remark he dismisses the subject, branching off into an earnest talk on radiolaria.
aeckel was educated for a physician and began his career by practising medicine. But his heart was not really in the work; he soon arrived at the very sane conclusion that constant dwelling on the pathological was not worth while. "Hereafter I'll devote my time to the normal, not the abnormal and distempered. The sick should learn to keep well," he wrote a friend.
And again, "If an individual is so lacking in will that he can not provide for himself, then his dissolution is no calamity to either himself, the State or the race." This was written in his twenties, and seems to sound rather sophomorish, but the idea of the boy is still with the old man, for in "The Riddle of the Universe" he says, "The final effect upon the race by the preservation of the unfit, through increased skill in surgery and medicine, is not yet known." In another place he throws in a side remark, thus: "Our almshouses, homes for imbeciles, and asylums where the hopelessly insane often outlive their keepers, may be a mistake, save as these things minister to the spirit of altruism which prompts their support. Let a wiser generation answer!"
Doubtless Haeckel could make a good argument in favor of the doctors if he wished, but probably if asked to do so his answer would paraphrase Robert Ingersoll, when that gentleman was taken to task for unfairness towards Moses, "Young man, you seem to forget that I am not the attorney of Moses—don't worry, there are more than ten millions of men looking after his case." Ernst Haeckel is not the attorney for either the doctors or the clergy.
It was Darwin and "The Origin of Species" that tipped the beam for Haeckel in favor of science. Very shortly after Darwin's great book was issued, in the year Eighteen Hundred Fifty-nine, a chance copy of the work fell into the hands of our young physician. He read and spoke English, and in a general way was interested in biology.
As he read of Darwin's observations and experiments the heavens seemed to open before him.
Things he had vaguely felt, Darwin stated, and thoughts that had been his, Darwin expressed. "I might have written much of this book, myself," he said.