FREEDOM IN SCIENCE AND TEACHING.

FROM THE GERMAN OF ERNST HAECKEL.

WITH A PREFATORY NOTE By T. H. HUXLEY, F.R.S.

DER TELEOLOG "Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenschoepfer der gnaedig. Als er den Korkbaum schuf, gleich auch die Stoepfel erfand." XENIEN.

NEW YORK: D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, 549 AND 551 BROADWAY. 1879.



PREFATORY NOTE.

In complying with the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those "who in quarrels interpose," emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they have been hidden since my childish days. In fact, the hard-hitting with which both the attack and the defence abound, makes me think with a shudder upon the probable sufferings of the unhappy man whose intervention should lead two such gladiators to turn their weapons from one another upon him. In my youth, I once attempted to stop a street fight, and I have never forgotten the brief but impressive lesson on the value of the policy of non-intervention which I then received.

But there is, happily, no need for me to place myself in a position which, besides being fraught with danger, would savour of presumption: Careful study of both the attack and the reply leaves me without the inclination to become either a partisan or a peacemaker: not a partisan, for there is a great deal with which I fully agree said on both sides; not a peacemaker, because I think it is highly desirable that the important questions which underlie the discussion, apart from the more personal phases of the dispute, should be thoroughly discussed. And if it were possible to have controversy without bitterness in human affairs, I should be disposed, for the general good, to use to both of the eminent antagonists the famous phrase of a late President of the French Chamber—"Tape dessus."

No profound acquaintance with the history of science is needed to produce the conviction, that the advancement of natural knowledge has been effected by the successive or concurrent efforts of men, whose minds are characterised by tendencies so opposite that they are forced into conflict with one another. The one intellect is imaginative and synthetic; its chief aim is to arrive at a broad and coherent conception of the relations of phenomena; the other is positive, critical, analytic, and sets the highest value upon the exact determination and statement of the phenomena themselves.

If the man of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2] and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his method has contributed as much to the progress of knowledge as that of his rival. Every science has been largely indebted to bold, nay, even to wild hypotheses, for the power of ordering and grasping the endless details of natural fact which they confer; for the moral stimulus which arises out of the desire to confirm or to confute them; and last, but not least, for the suggestion of paths of fruitful inquiry, which, without them, would never have been followed. From the days of Columbus and Kepler to those of Oken, Lamarck, and Boucher de Perthes, Saul, who, seeking his father's asses, found a kingdom, is the prototype of many a renowned discoverer who has lighted upon verities while following illusions, which, had they deluded lesser men, might possibly have been considered more or less asinine.

On the other hand, there is no branch of science which does not owe at least an equal obligation to those cool heads, which are not to be seduced into the acceptance of symmetrical formulae and bold generalisations for solid truths because of their brilliancy and grandeur; to the men who cannot overlook those small exceptions and insignificant residual phenomena which, when tracked to their causes, are so often the death of brilliant hypotheses; to the men, finally, who, by demonstrating the limits to human knowledge which are set by the very conditions of thought, have warned mankind against fruitless efforts to overstep those limits.

Neither of the eminent men of science, whose opinions are at present under consideration, can be said to be a one-sided representative either of the synthetic or of the analytic school. Haeckel, no less than Virchow, is distinguished by the number, variety, and laborious accuracy of his contributions to positive knowledge; while Virchow, no less than Haeckel, has dealt in wide generalisations, and, until the obscurantists thought they could turn his recent utterances to account, no one was better abused by them as a typical free-thinker and materialist. But, as happened to the two women grinding at the same mill, one has been taken and the other left. Since the publication of his famous oration, Virchow has been received into the bosom of orthodoxy and respectability, while Haeckel remains an outcast!

To those who pay attention to the actual facts of the case, this is a very surprising event; and I confess that nothing has ever perplexed me more than the reception which Professor Virchow's oration has met with, in his own and in this country; for it owes that reception, not to the undoubted literary and scientific merits which it possesses, but to an imputed righteousness for which, so far as I can discern, it offers no foundation. It is supposed to be a recantation; I can find no word in it which, if strictly construed, is inconsistent with the most extreme of those opinions which are commonly attributed to its author. It is supposed to be a deadly blow to the doctrine of evolution; but, though I certainly hold by that doctrine with some tenacity, I am able, ex animo, to subscribe to every important general proposition which its author lays down.

In commencing his address, Virchow adverts to the complete freedom of investigation and publication in regard to scientific questions which obtains in Germany; he points out the obligation which lies upon men of science, even if for no better reason than the maintenance of this state of things, to exhibit a due sense of the responsibility which attaches to their speaking and writing, and he dwells on the necessity of drawing a clear line of demarcation between those propositions which they have a fair right to regard as established truths, and those which they know to be only more or less well-founded speculations. Is any one prepared to deny that this is the first great commandment of the ethics of teaching? Would any responsible scientific teacher like to admit that he had not done his best to separate facts from hypotheses in the minds of his hearers; and that he had not made it his chief business to enable those whom he instructs to judge the latter by their knowledge of the former?

More particularly does this obligation weigh upon those who address the general public. It is indubitable, as Professor Virchow observes, that "he who speaks to, or writes for, the public is doubly bound to test the objective truth of that which he says." There is a sect of scientific pharisees who thank God that they are not as those publicans who address the public. If this sect includes anybody who has attempted the business without failing in it, I suspect that he must have given up keeping a conscience. For assuredly if a man of science, addressing the public, bethinks him, as he ought to do, that the obligation to be accurate—to say no more than he has warranty for, without clearly marking off so much as is hypothetical—is far heavier than if he were dealing with experts, he will find his task a very admirable mental exercise. For my own part, I am inclined to doubt whether there is any method of self-discipline better calculated to clear up one's own ideas about a difficult subject, than that which arises out of the effort to put them forth, with fulness and precision, in language which all the world can understand. Sheridan is said to have replied to some one who remarked on the easy flow of his style, "Easy reading, sir, is—hard writing;" and any one who is above the level of a scientific charlatan will know that easy speaking is "——hard thinking."

Again, when Professor Virchow enlarges on the extreme incompleteness of every man's knowledge beyond those provinces which he has made his own (and he might well have added within these also), and when he dilates on the inexpediency, in the interests of science, of putting forth as ascertained truths propositions which the progress of knowledge soon upsets—who will be disposed to gainsay him? Nor have I, for one, anything but cordial assent to give to his declaration, that the modern development of science is essentially due to the constant encroachment of experiment and observation on the domain of hypothetical dogma; and that the most difficult, as well as the most important, object of every honest worker is "sich ent-subjectiviren"—to get rid of his preconceived notions, and to keep his hypotheses well in hand, as the good servants and bad masters that they are.

I do not think I have omitted any one of Professor Virchow's main theses in this brief enumeration. I do not find that they are disputed by Haeckel, and I should be profoundly astonished if they were. What, then, is all the coil about, if we leave aside various irritating sarcasms, which need not concern peaceable Englishmen? Certainly about nothing that touches the present main issues of scientific thought. The "plastidule-soul" and the potentialities of carbon may be sound scientific conceptions, or they may be the reverse, but they are no necessary part of the doctrine of evolution, and I leave their defence to Professor Haeckel.

On the question of equivocal generation, I have been compelled, more conspicuously and frequently than I could wish, during the last ten years, to enunciate exactly the same views as those put forward by Professor Virchow; so that, to my mind, at any rate, the denial that any such process has as yet been proved to take place in the existing state of nature, as little affects the general doctrine.[3]

With respect to another side issue, raised by Professor Virchow, he appears to me to be entirely in the wrong. He is careful to say that he has no unwillingness to accept the descent of man from some lower form of vertebrate life; but, reminding us of the special attention which, of late years, he has given to anthropology, he affirms that such evidence as exists is not only insufficient to support that hypothesis, but is contrary to it. "Every positive progress which we have made in the region of prehistoric anthropology has removed us further from the demonstration of this relation."

Well, I also have studied anthropological questions in my time; and I feel bound to remark, that this assertion of Professor Virchow's appears to me to be a typical example of the kind of incautious over-statement which he so justly reprehends.

For, unless I greatly err, all the real knowledge which we possess of the fossil remains of man goes no farther back than the Quaternary epoch; and the most that can be asserted on Professor Virchow's side respecting these remains is, that none of them present us with more marked pithecoid characters than such as are to be found among the existing races of mankind.[4] But, if this be so, then the only just conclusion to be drawn from the evidence as it stands is, that the men of the Quaternary epoch may have proceeded from a lower type of humanity, though their remains hitherto discovered show no definite approach towards that type. The evidence is not inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution, though it does not help it. If Professor Virchow had paid as much attention to comparative anatomy and palaeontology as he has to anthropology, he would, I doubt not, be aware that the equine quadrupeds of the Quaternary period do not differ from existing Equidae in any more important respect than these last differ from one another; and he would know that it is, nevertheless, a well-established fact that, in the course of the Tertiary period, the equine quadrupeds have undergone a series of changes exactly such as the doctrine of evolution requires. Hence sound analogical reasoning justifies the expectation that, when we obtain the remains of Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene Anthropidae, they will present us with the like series of gradations, notwithstanding the fact, if it be a fact, that the Quaternary men, like the Quaternary horses, differ in no essential respect from those which now live.

I believe that the state of our knowledge on this question is still justly summed up in words written some seventeen years ago:—

"In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form by the modification of which he has probably become what he is. And considering what is now known of the most ancient races of men; seeing that they fashioned flint axes, and flint knives, and bone skewers of much the same pattern as those fabricated by the lowest savages at the present day, and that we have every reason to believe the habits and modes of living of such people to have remained the same from the time of the mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros till now, I do not know that the result is other than might be expected."[5]

I have seen no reason to change the opinion here expressed, and so far from the fact being in the slightest degree opposed to a belief in the evolution of man, all that has been learned of late years respecting the relation of the Recent and Quaternary to the Tertiary mammalia appears to me to be in striking harmony with what we know respecting Quaternary man, supposing man to have followed the general law of evolution.

The only other collateral question of importance raised by Professor Virchow is, whether the doctrine of evolution should be generally taught in schools or not. Now I cannot find that Professor Virchow anywhere distinctly repudiates the doctrine; all that he distinctly says is that it is not proven, and that things which are not proven should not be authoritatively instilled into the minds of young people.

If Professor Virchow will agree to make this excellent rule absolute, and applicable to all subjects that are taught in schools, I should be disposed heartily to concur with him.

But what will his orthodox allies say to this? If "not provenness" is susceptible of the comparative degree, by what factor must we multiply the imperfection of the evidence for evolution in order to express that of the evidence for special creation; or to what fraction must the value of the evidence in favour of the uninterrupted succession of life be reduced in order to express that in support of the deluge? Nay, surely even Professor Virchow's "dearest foes," the "plastidule soul" and "Carbon & Co.," have more to say for themselves, than the linguistic accomplishments of Balaam's ass and the obedience of the sun and moon to the commander of a horde of bloodthirsty Hebrews! But the high principles of which Professor Virchow is so admirable an exponent do not admit of the application of two weights and two measures in education; and it is surely to be regretted that a man of science of great eminence should advocate the stern bridling of that teaching which, at any rate, never outrages common sense, nor refuses to submit to criticism, while he has no whisper of remonstrance to offer to the authoritative propagation of the preposterous fables by which the minds of children are dazed and their sense of truth and falsehood perverted. Professor Virchow solemnly warns us against the danger of attempting to displace the Church by the religion of evolution. What this last confession of faith may be I do not know, but it must be bad indeed if it inculcates more falsities than are at present foisted upon the young in the name of the Church.

I make these remarks simply in the interests of fair play. Far be it from me to suggest that it is desirable that the inculcation of the doctrine of evolution should be made a prominent feature of general education. I agree with Professor Virchow so far, but for very different reasons. It is not that I think the evidence of that doctrine insufficient, but that I doubt whether it is the business of a teacher to plunge the young mind into difficult problems concerning the origin of the existing condition of things. I am disposed to think that the brief period of school-life would be better spent in obtaining an acquaintance with nature, as it is; in fact, in laying a firm foundation for the further knowledge Which is needed for the critical examination of the dogmas, whether scientific or anti-scientific, which are presented to the adult mind. At present, education proceeds in the reverse way; the teacher makes the most confident assertions on precisely those subjects of which he knows least; while the habit of weighing evidence is discouraged, and the means of forming a sound judgment are carefully withheld from the pupil.

* * * * *

Professor Virchow is known to me only as he is known to the world in general—by his high and well-earned scientific reputation. With Professor Haeckel, on the other hand, I have the good fortune to be on terms of personal friendship. But in making the preceding observations, I should be sorry to have it supposed that I am holding a brief for my friend, or that I am disposed to adopt all the opinions which he has expressed in his reply. Nevertheless, I do desire to express my hearty sympathy with his vigorous defence of the freedom of learning and teaching; and I think I shall have all fair-minded men with me when I also give vent to my reprobation of the introduction of the sinister arts of unscrupulous political warfare into scientific controversy, manifested in the attempt to connect the doctrines he advocates with those of a political party which is, at present, the object of hatred and persecution in his native land. The one blot, so far as I know, on the fair fame of Edmund Burke is his attempt to involve Price and Priestley in the furious hatred of the English masses against the authors and favourers of the revolution of 1789. Burke, however, was too great a man to be absurd, even in his errors; and it is not upon record that he asked uninformed persons to consider what might be the effect of such an innovation as the discovery of oxygen on the minds of members of the Jacobin Club.

Professor Virchow is a politician—maybe a German Burke, for anything that I know to the contrary; at any rate, he knows the political value of words; and, as a man of science, he is devoid of the excuses that might be made for Burke. Nevertheless, he gravely charges his hearers to "imagine what shape the theory of descent takes in the head of a Socialist."

I have tried to comply with this request, but I have utterly failed to call up the dread image; I suppose because I do not sufficiently sympathise with Socialists. All the greater is my regret that Professor Virchow did not himself unfold the links of the hidden bonds which unite evolution with revolution, and bind together the community of descent with the community of goods.

Professor Virchow is, I doubt not, an accomplished English scholar. Let me commend the "Rejected Addresses" to his attention. For since the brothers Smith sang—

"Who makes the quartern loaf and Luddites rise,"— Who fills the butchers' shops with large blue flies,

there has been nothing in literature at all comparable to the attempt to frighten sober people by the suggestion that evolutionary speculations generate revolutionary schemes in Socialist brains. But then the authors of the "Rejected Addresses" were joking, while Professor Virchow is in grim earnest; and that makes a great difference in the moral aspect of the two achievements.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Novum Organon, li.

[2] Partis instaurationis secundae delineatio.

[3] I may remark parenthetically that Professor Virchow's statement of the attitude of Harvey towards equivocal generation is strangely misleading. For Harvey, as every student of his works knows, believed in equivocal generation; and, in the sense in which he uses the word ovum, "nempe substantiam quandam corpoream vitam habentem potentia," the truth of the axiom "omne vivum ex ovo," popularly ascribed to him, has in no wise been affected by the discoveries of later days in the manner asserted by Professor Virchow.

[4] I do not admit that so much can be said; for the like of the Neanderthal skull has yet to be produced from among the crania of existing men.

[5] Man's Place in Nature, p. 159.



PREFACE.

When the address delivered by Rudolph Virchow on the 22d of September last year, at the fiftieth meeting of German Naturalists and Physicians at Munich, on "Freedom of Science in the Modern State," appeared in print in the following October, I was called upon, on many sides, to prepare a reply. And such a reply on my part seemed, in fact, justified by the severe strictures which Virchow in his discourse had directed against one delivered by me only four days previously, before the same meeting, on "The Modern Doctrine of Evolution in its Relation to General Science." The general views which Virchow then unfolded proved such a fundamental opposition in our principles, and touched our dearest moral convictions so nearly, that any reconciliation of such antagonistic views was no longer to be thought of. Nevertheless I forbore publishing the ready reply for two reasons: one relating to the matter itself, the other a personal one.

With regard to the matter itself, I believed I might confidently leave it to futurity to decide in the contention that has declared itself between us. For on one hand the doctrine of evolution which Virchow attacks has already so far become a sure basis of biological science and part of the most precious mental-stock of cultivated humanity, that neither the anathemas of the Church nor the contradiction of the greatest scientific authority—and such an one is Virchow—can prevail against it; and on the other hand most of the arguments which he specially adduces against the theory of descent have been so often discussed and so thoroughly refuted that any renewed discussion seems in fact superfluous.

Personally, it was in the highest degree repugnant to me to come forward as the opponent of a man whom I learned, a quarter of a century ago, to acknowledge and to honour as the reformer of medical science; a man whose most ardent disciple and most enthusiastic follower I at that time was, with whom I subsequently stood in the closest relation as his assistant, and with whom I long after continued in the most friendly intercourse. The more keenly I lamented Virchow's position, for some years past, as the antagonist of our modern doctrine of evolution, and the more I felt myself challenged to a reply by his repeated attacks upon it, the less inclination I felt, nevertheless, to come forward publicly as the opponent of this distinguished and highly-honoured man.

And if I find myself, after all, forced to reply, it is in the persuasion that a longer silence will add to the erroneous conclusions which my hitherto resigned attitude has already given rise to; at the same time I believe that, precisely by reason of the peculiar interest with which I have throughout followed Virchow's scientific achievements, I am specially qualified to answer the question, a hundred times repeated by letter or by word of mouth—"How is it possible that a man who so long stood at the head of a party of progress in science as in politics, who in political life indeed, has outwardly maintained this position, has in science become an instrument of the most perilous reaction?"

A verbal answer, which I incidentally gave in March of last year at the Concordia Banquet at Vienna, was reported in the daily papers in such a different sense, and was in part so misunderstood or so intentionally misrepresented, that I am forced at last, on that account, to publish a clear and unambiguous reply. The "Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung," which eagerly seizes every opportunity of expressing its unconquerable aversion to the evolution theory, accused me, in one of its hostile articles, of a virulent and undignified attack on Virchow. In contradiction of this misrepresentation in the Augsburg paper—which was copied by other journals—I must expressly assert that not Virchow but I myself am the person attacked, and that, therefore, the matter in question is not an unjustifiable attack by me on a formerly revered friend, but a defence to which I am compelled by repeated and sharp attacks on his part.

Another reason which urges me at last to break silence consists in the continual and ample advantage that all the clerical and reactionary organs have been taking of Virchow's address, during the last three-quarters of a year, in favour of mental retrogression. The shouts of triumph with which they at once hailed Virchow's "grand moral action," that is to say, his perversion from a Free-thinker to the side of mental darkness, was the first signal for that persistent utilisation of his authority of which the pernicious consequences can by no means be escaped. Friedrich von Hellwald, in his discussion on the speeches made at Munich, has already strikingly pointed out[6] the grave danger that exists when just such an one as Virchow, standing under the banner of political liberalism and wrapped in the mantle of severe science, decisively combats against the freedom of science and of its doctrines. This serious danger has never shown so threatening an aspect as at the present moment, when our political and religious life appears to be encountering such a reaction as has not occurred for a long time. The two insane attempts which, within a few weeks, have been made by Social-democracy against the revered and reverend person of the German Emperor have raised a storm of righteous indignation of such violence that calm judgment is entirely overthrown, and that many even of the most liberal of liberal politicians not only impetuously urge us to the severest measures against the Utopian doctrines of social democracy but, far over-shooting the mark, demand that free-doctrine and free-thought, that freedom of the press and even freedom of conscience shall be thrown into the narrowest fetters. Can this reaction, lurking in the background, find any more welcome support than is afforded by the mere demand of such a man as Virchow for restriction of liberty in teaching? And if he makes our present doctrines of evolution in general and the theory of descent in particular responsible for the mad doctrines of social-democracy, it is but a natural and just consequence when the famous New-Prussian "Kreuz-Zeitung" throws all the blame of these treasonable attempts of the democrats Hoedel and Nobiling—as in fact it quite lately did—directly on the theory of descent, and especially on the hated doctrine of the "descent of man from apes." And the danger which threatens us shows a still graver aspect when we consider how great an influence Virchow has at the present day as an advanced liberal, and how he is regarded in the Prussian diet as the highest practical authority, and at the same time as the most liberal critic when educational questions are under consideration. Now it is well known that one of the most important problems lying before the Prussian parliament is the consideration of a new education-law, which will probably exercise its restricting influence for a long time to come, not in Prussia only, but throughout Germany; what can we expect of such an education-law if in the course of the deliberations, among the small number of those specialists who are generally listened to, Virchow raises his voice as a leading authority, and brings forward the principles that he proclaimed in his speech at Munich as the surest guarantees for the freedom of science in the modern polity? Article XX. of the Prussian Charter, and Sec. 152 of the Code of the German Empire, say, "Science and its doctrines are free." And Virchow's first step, according to the principles he now declares, must be a motion to abrogate this paragraph.

In the face of this imminent danger, I dare no longer hesitate about my answer. Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato, magis amica Veritas. An unreserved and public opposition can be no longer postponed. As a matter of fact, at the Munich meeting, neither did Virchow hear my speech nor I his. I read my paper, as it is printed, on the 18th September 1877, and left on the 19th. Virchow came to Munich only on the 20th, and delivered his speech on the 22d.

Bearing in mind the gratitude which I owe to Virchow as my former master and friend at Wuerzburg—a gratitude which I have at all times striven to prove by the further development of his mechanical theory—I shall confine myself, as far as possible, to an objective and special confutation of his assertions. Certainly the temptation on this occasion was a strong one to pay the debt in like kind. In my Munich lecture, among the few names to which I alluded, I particularly mentioned that of Virchow as the distinguished founder of cellular-pathology (p. 12).[7] Virchow's return for this was to heap scorn and ridicule on the doctrine of evolution in his usual manner. The critic in the "National-Zeitung," Herr Isidor Kastan, says of this with particular satisfaction, "The ridicule with which Herr Virchow treated this side of Haeckel's visions was indeed caustic enough, but this is ever Virchow's way; only in this case, if in any, he was fully justified."

I could less easily ignore Virchow's denunciation of me than his satire—a denunciation which gibbeted me as a confederate in the social-democratic cause, and which made the theory of descent answerable for the horrors of the Paris Commune. The opinion is now widely spread that by this intentional connection of the theory of descent with Social Democracy he has hit the hardest blow at that theory, and that he aimed at nothing less than the removal of all "Darwinists" from their academic chairs and professorships. This is the inevitable consequence of his demands; for if Virchow insists with the utmost determination that the theory of descent must not be taught (because he does not regard it as true), what is to become of the supporters of that theory who, like myself, regard it as incontrovertibly true, and teach it as a perfectly sound theory? And at least nine-tenths of all the teachers of zoology and botany in Europe are among its supporters from immutable conviction of its truth, as well as all morphologists without exception. Virchow cannot expect that these teachers should collectively renounce that which they believe to be immutable truth, and in its place set up the dogma of the Church as the basis of their teaching, in accordance with his wish! Nothing remains for them but to vacate their professors' chairs, and—according to Virchow and the "Germania"—the "Modern Polity" would be in duty bound to deprive them of their liberty of teaching if they did not voluntarily renounce it.

If this be indeed Virchow's purpose, as it is generally supposed to be, with regard to me, at least, he may spare himself the trouble. Amongst us in Jena quite other ideas prevail as to the "Freedom of science in the modern Polity" than those which obtain in the capital, Berlin. And among us the Berlin students' rhyme has no meaning,

"Who knows the truth and freely speaks, On him the law its vengeance wreaks."[8]

The Jena students, on the contrary, sing the rhyme in its original form—

"Who knows the truth and speaks it not, A feeble wretch is he, God wot."[9]

The Rector Magnificentissimus of the University of Jena, the Grand Duke of Saxony, who has proved himself the protector of the arts and sciences, has besides far more liberal views as to the liberty of scientific investigation and teaching than the illustrious head of the party of progress at Berlin. The enlightened and liberal Prince at Weimar, under whose particular protection we in Jena find ourselves, has never conceived it necessary to limit in any way the unbounded freedom of my teaching and my writing; not even when in 1866 my "General Morphology," and 1868 my "History of Creation" first appeared, and when many people attempted to make the youthful extravagances which were to be found in those works the ground of a serious accusation. And what farther mischief have these extravagances done, though I now sincerely lament them?

Faithful to the glorious traditions of a past extending over three centuries, the little Thuringian university of Jena will find a way to preserve her perfect and unlimited freedom. She will ever bear in mind that she is the first Protestant university of Germany, protesting against every strait-waistcoat which hierarchical obstinacy would force upon human reason, against every dogma by which the arrogance of the learned may try to suppress all freedom of teaching. She will freely seek and freely teach in accordance with her highest convictions, untroubled by the fact that in the "great" university of Berlin nothing may be taught, as Virchow insists, but what is objectively ascertained, absolutely sure; that is to say, nothing that rises above individual, indubitable, and intelligible facts; not an idea, not a conception, not a theory, in fact not any real science; mathematics, at most, excepted. It is our conviction that Jena will continue to be an independent city of refuge for free science and free teaching as long as it remains under the faithful nurture and liberal protection of the princely house of Sax Weimar, that enlightened race which is linked with the history of German intellect through the matchless traditions of its glorious past. What the Wartburg was to Martin Luther, what Weimar has been to the foremost heroes of German literature, what Jena herself has been during three hundred years to a vast number of illustrious investigators, that will the tried and tested Jena of to-day undoubtedly continue to be to the modern doctrine of evolution, as to every other doctrine which asks free development; a strong-hold of free thought, free investigation, and free doctrine.

ERNST HAECKEL.

JENA, June 24th, 1878.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Kosmos, Vol. II. p. 172.

[7] Of the German.

[8]

"Wer die Wahrheit kennet und saget sie frei, Der kommt in Berlin auf die Stadt-Vogtei."

[9]

"Wer die Wahrheit kennet und saget sie nicht Der ist fuer wahr ein erbaermlicher Wicht."



CONTENTS.

PAGE

PREFATORY NOTE v

PREFACE xxi

CHAP.

I. DEVELOPMENT AND CREATION 1

II. CERTAIN PROOFS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT 10

III. THE SKULL THEORY AND THE APE THEORY 29

IV. THE CELL-SOUL AND CELLULAR PSYCHOLOGY 46

V. THE GENETIC AND DOGMATIC METHODS OF TEACHING 61

VI. THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT AND SOCIAL DEMOCRACY 88

VII. IGNORABIMUS ET RESTRINGAMUR 99



FREEDOM IN SCIENCE AND TEACHING.

CHAPTER I.

DEVELOPMENT AND CREATION.

Nothing is more helpful for the understanding of scientific controversies, or for the clearing of confused conceptions, than a contrasted statement, as defined and clear as possible, of the simplest leading propositions of the contending doctrines. Hence it is highly favourable to the victory of our modern doctrine of evolution that its chief problem, the question as to the origin of species, is being more and more pressed by these opposite alternatives: Either all organisms are naturally evolved, and must in that case be all descended from the simplest common parent-forms—or: That is not the case, and the distinct species of organisms have originated independently of each other, and in that case can only have been created in a supernatural way, by a miracle. Natural evolution, or supernatural creation of species—we must choose one of these two possibilities, for a third there is not.

But as Virchow, like many other opponents of the doctrine of evolution, constantly confounds this latter proposition with the doctrine of descent, and that again with Darwinism, it will not be superfluous to indicate here, in a few words, the limitation and subordination of these three great theories.

I. The general doctrine of development, the progenesis-theory or evolution-hypothesis (in the widest sense), as a comprehensive philosophical view of the universe, assumes that a vast, uniform, uninterrupted and eternal process of development obtains throughout all nature; and that all natural phenomena without exception, from the motions of the heavenly bodies and the fall of a rolling stone to the growth of plants and the consciousness of men, obey one and the same great law of causation; that all may be ultimately referred to the mechanics of atoms—the mechanical or mechanistic, homogeneous or monistic view of the universe; in one word, Monism.

II. The doctrine of derivation, or theory of descent, as a comprehensive theory of the natural origin of all organisms, assumes that all compound organisms are derived from simple ones, all many-celled animals and plants from single-celled ones, and these last from quite simple primary organisms—from monads. As we see the organic species, the multiform varieties of animals and plants, vary under our eyes through adaptation, while the similarity of their internal structure is reasonably explicable only by inheritance from common parent-forms, we are forced to assume common parent-forms for at least the great main divisions of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, and for the classes, orders, and so forth. Thus the number of these will be very limited, and the primitive archigonian parent-forms can be nothing else than monads. Whether we finally assume a single common parent-form (the monophyletic hypothesis), or several (the polyphyletic hypothesis), is wholly immaterial to the essence of the theory of descent; and it is equally immaterial to its fundamental idea what mechanical causes are assumed for the transformation of the varieties. This assumption of a transformation or metamorphosis of species is, however, indispensable, and the theory of descent is very properly called also the "metamorphosis hypothesis," or "doctrine of transmutation;" as well as Lamarckism, after Jean Lamarck, who first founded it in 1809.

III. The doctrine of elimination, or the selection theory, as the doctrine especially of "choice of breed or selection," assumes that almost all, or at any rate most, organic species have originated by a process of selection; the artificial varieties under conditions of domestication—as the races of domestic animals and cultivated plants—through artificial choice of breeds; and the natural varieties of animals and plants in their wild state by natural choice of breeds: in the first case, the will of man effects the selection to suit a purpose; in the second, it is effected in a purposeless way by the "struggle for existence." In both cases the transformation of the organic forms takes place through the reciprocal action of the laws of inheritance and of adaptation; in both cases it depends on the survival or selection of the better-qualified minority. This theory of elimination was first clearly recognised and appreciated in its full significance by Charles Darwin in 1859, and the selection-hypothesis which he founded on it is Darwinism properly so called.

The relation that these three great theories, which are frequently confounded, bear to one another may, according to the present position of science, be simply defined as follows:—I. Monism, the universal theory of development, or the monistic progenesis-hypothesis, is the one only scientific theory which affords a rational interpretation of the whole universe and satisfies the craving of our human reason for causality, by bringing all natural phenomena into a mechanical causal-connection as parts of a great uniform process of evolution. II. The theory of transmutation, or descent, is an essential and indispensable element in the monistic development hypothesis, because it is the one only scientific theory which rationally explains the origin of organic species—that is to say, by transformation—and reduces it to mechanical principles. III. The theory of Selection or Darwinism is, up to the present time, the most important of the various theories which seek to explain the transformation of species by mechanical principles, but it is by no means the only one. If we assume that most species have originated through natural elimination, we also now know, on the other hand, that many forms distinguished as varieties are hybrids between two different varieties, and can be propagated as such; and it is equally well worthy of consideration that other causes are in activity in the formation of species of which, up to the present time, we have no conception. Thus it is left to the judgment of individual naturalists to decide what share is to be attributed to natural selection in the origin of species, and even at the present day authorities differ widely on the subject. Some give it a large share, and some a very small one in the result. Moritz Wagner, for instance, would substitute his own migration-hypothesis for Darwin's theory of selection; while I regard the action of migration, which acts as isolation or separation, as merely a special mode of selection. But these differing estimates of Darwinism are quite independent of the absolute import of the doctrine of descent or of transformation, for the latter is as yet the only theory which rationally explains the origin of species. If we discard it, nothing remains but the irrational assumption of a miracle, a supernatural creation.

In this crucial and unavoidable dilemma, Virchow has declared himself publicly in favour of the latter, and against the former hypothesis. Every one who has attentively followed his occasional utterances on the theory of descent during the last decade with an unprejudiced eye and an unbiassed judgment, must be convinced that he fundamentally rejects it. Still, his dissent has always been so obscured, and his judgment on Darwinism in particular so wrapped in ambiguities, that an opportune conversion to the opposite side seemed not impossible; and many, even among those who stood near to Virchow—his friends and disciples—did not know to what point he was in fact an opponent of the evolution hypothesis in general. Virchow took the last step towards clearing up this matter at Munich; for after his Munich address there can be no farther doubt that he belongs to the most decided opponents of the whole theory of evolution, including those of inheritance and selection.

If any one still has doubts on the matter, let him read the jubilant hymns of triumph with which Virchow's friend and collaborator, Adolf Bastian, greeted his Munich discourse. This "enfant terrible" of the school—this well-nicknamed "Acting privy counsellor of the board of confusion"[10]—whose merits in involuntarily advancing the cause of metamorphism I have already done justice to in the preface to the third edition of my "Natural History of Creation"[11]—expresses himself in the "Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie," which is edited by him and Virchow (tenth yearly part, X. 1878, p. 66) as follows:—"At the Munich meeting of naturalists, Virchow by a few weighty words cleared the atmosphere, which was heavy and stifling under the pressure of the incubus called Descent, and once more freed science from that nightmare which it has so long—in many opinions so much too long—allowed to weigh upon it; freed it, let us hope, once and for ever. The forecasts of this storm were discernible many years since, and its whole course has been a strictly normal one. When the germs planted by Darwin, and that promised so much, were forced into growth by a feverish, hot-house heat, and began to sprout into sterile weeds, their small vitality was plain to our eyes. So long as the waves run too high under the pressure of a psychical storm, it is almost useless to protest against it, for every ear is too much deafened by the noise all round to hear the voice of individuals. It is best to leave things to go their own way, deeper and deeper into the mire, till they come to a stand-still there of their own accord; for 'Quos deus vult perdere prius dementat.' Thus it is in this case. When the extravagances of the descent hypothesis, encouraged as they were by mutual incitement, had reached their highest pitch in the ravings that were uttered at Munich, the too pointed point broke in this superabundance of absurdity almost by its own pointedness, and so we were quit of it with one blow. Now, happily, all is over with the theory of descent, or ascent, but natural science will not on that account fare any the worse, for many of its adherents belong to her ablest youth, and as they now need no longer waste their best time on romantic schemes, they will have it to use at the orders and for the advancement of science, so as to enrich her through real and solid contributions."

Furthermore, Bastian quotes Virchow's maxim:—"The plan of organisation is immutable within the limits of the species; species is not produced from species." The fundamental teleological idea of that school, that each species has its constant and specific plan of structure, certainly cannot be more emphatically expressed. Thus it is undoubtedly certain that Virchow has become a Dualist, and is as thoroughly penetrated by the truth of his principles as I, as a Monist, am of mine. This is undoubtedly the upshot of his Munich address, though he is throughout careful to avoid acknowledging his chief standpoint in all its nakedness. On the contrary, even now he still veils his antagonism under the phrase, which is also a favourite with the clerical papers, that the theory of descent is an "unproved hypothesis." Now it is clear that this theory never will be "proved" if the proofs that already lie before us are not sufficient. How often has it been repeated that the scientific certainty of the hypothesis of descent is not grounded in this or that isolated experiment, but in the collective sum of biological phenomena; in the causal nexus of evolution. Then what are the new proofs of the theory of descent which Virchow demands of us?

FOOTNOTES:

[10] "Wirkliche Geheime Ober-Confusionsrath."

[11] Translated under the supervision of E. Ray Lankester. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co.



CHAPTER II.

CERTAIN PROOFS OF THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT.

All the common phenomena of Morphology and Physiology, of Chorology and Oekology, of Ontology and Paleontology, can be explained by the theory of descent, and referred to simple mechanical causes. It is precisely in this, viz., that the primary simple causes of all these complex aggregates of phenomena are common to them all, and that other mechanical causes for them are unthinkable—it is in this that, to us, the guarantee of their certainty consists. For this reason all these vast and manifold aggregates of facts are so many evidences of the doctrine of descent. This fundamental relation of facts has been so often expounded that I need dwell no farther on it in this place; those who wish for any closer discussion of it are referred to my "General Morphology" (vol. ii. chap. xix.), or "The History of Creation,"[12] or "The Evolution of Man" (vol. i. p. 93).[13]

And where is yet farther proof of the truth of the theory of descent to be found? Neither Virchow, nor any one of the clerical opponents and the dualistic philosophers who are perpetually reiterating this cry for more certain evidence, anywhere indicate where possibly such evidence is to be sought. Where in all the world can we discover "facts" which will speak more plainly or significantly for the truth of transmutation than the facts of comparative morphology and physiology; than the facts of the rudimentary organs and of embryonic development; than the facts revealed by fossils and the geographical distribution of organisms—in short, than the collective recognised facts of the most diverse provinces of biological science?

But I am in error—the certain proof that Virchow demands in order to be perfectly satisfied with the evidence, is to be supplied by "experiment, the test as well as the highest means of evidence." This demand, that the doctrine of descent should be grounded on experiment, is so perverse and shows such ignorance of the very essence of our theory, that though we have never been surprised at hearing it continually repeated by ignorant laymen, from the lips of a Virchow it has positively astounded us. What can in this case be proved by experiment, and what can experiment prove?

"The variability of species, the transformation of species, the transition of a species into one or more new varieties," is the answer. Now, so far as these facts can be proved by experiment, they actually have long since been experimentally proved in the completest manner. For what are the numberless trials of artificial selection for breeding purposes which men have practised for thousand of years in breeding domestic animals and cultivated plants, but physiological experiments which prove the transformation of species? As an example we may refer to the different races of horses and pigeons. The swift race-horse and the heavy pack-horse, the graceful carriage-horse and the sturdy cart-horse, the huge dray-horse and the dwarfed pony—these and many other "races" are so different from each other, that if we had found them wild we should certainly have described them as quite different varieties of one species, or even representatives of different species. Undoubtedly, these so-called "races" and "sports" of the horse tribe differ from each other in a much greater degree than do the zebra, the quagga, the mountain horse, and the other wild varieties of the horse, which every zoologist distinguishes as "bonae species." And yet all these artificial varieties, which man has designedly produced by selection, are descended from a single common parent-form, from one wild "true variety." The same is the case with the numerous and highly differing varieties of pigeons. Domestic pigeons and carrier-pigeons, turbits and cropper-pigeons, fantail pigeons and owls, tumblers and pouters, trumpeters and laughing pigeons (or Indian doves), and the rest, are all, as Darwin has convincingly proved, descendants of a single wild variety, the rock-pigeon (Columba livia). And how wonderfully various they are, not only in general form, size, and colouring, but in the particular form of the skull, the beak, the feet, and so forth! They differ much more in every respect each from the others than the numerous wild varieties which, in systems of ornithology, are recognised as true varieties, and even as true species. It is the same with the different artificial varieties of apples, pears, pansies, dahlias, and so on; in short, of almost all the domestic varieties of animals and plants. We would lay particular stress on the fact that these artificial species which man has produced or created by artificial breeding and through experimental transformation out of one original species, differ far more one from another in physiological as well as in morphological conditions than the natural species in a wild state. With these it is self-evident that any proof by experiment of a common origin is wholly impossible. For, so soon as we subject any wild variety of animal or plant to such an experiment, we bring it under the conditions of artificial breeding.

That the morphological conception of a Species is not a positive but only a relative conception, and that it has no other absolute or positive value than those other similar system-categories—sports, varieties, races, tribes, families, classes—is now acknowledged by every systematiser who forms an honest and unprejudiced judgment of the practical systematic distinction of species. From the very nature of the case there are no limits to arbitrary discretion in this department, and there are no two systematists who are at one in every instance; this one separating forms as true varieties which that one does not. (Compare on this point "History of Creation," vol. i., p. 273.) The conception of variety or species has a different value in every small or large department of systematic Zoology and Botany.

But the conception of species has just as little any fixed physiological value. In respect to this we must especially insist that the question of hybrid offspring, the last corner of refuge of all the defenders of the constancy of species, has at present lost all significance as bearing on the conception of species. For we know now, through numerous and reliable experiences and experiments, that two different true varieties can frequently unite and produce fertile hybrids (as the hare and rabbit, lion and tiger, many different kinds of the carp and trout tribes, of willows, brambles, and others); and in the second place, the fact is equally certain that descendants of one and the same species which, according to the dogma of the old schools, could always effect a fertile union under certain circumstances, either cannot effect such a union or produce only barren hybrids (the Porto-Santo rabbit, the different races of horses, dogs, roses, hyacinths, &c.; see "History of Creation," vol. i., p. 146).

For a certain proof that the conception of species rests on a subjective abstraction and has a merely relative value—like the conception of genus, family, order, class, &c.—no class of animals is of so much importance as that of the Sponges. In it the fluctuating forms vary with such unexampled indefiniteness and variability as to make all distinction of species quite illusory. Oscar Schmidt has already pointed this out in the siliceous sponges and keratose sponges; and I, in my monograph, in three volumes, on the Calcareous Sponges (the result of five years of most accurate investigations of this small animal group), have pointed out that we may at pleasure distinguish 3, or 21, or 111, or 289, or 591 different species. I also believe that I have thus convincingly demonstrated how all these different forms of the calcareous sponges may quite naturally, and without any forcing, be traced to a single common parent-form, the simple—and not hypothetical, but existing at this present day—the simple Olynthus. Hence I think I have here produced the most positive analytical evidence of the transformation of species, and of the unity of the derivation of all the species of a given group of animals, that is generally possible.

Properly, I might spare myself these disquisitions on the question of species, for Virchow does not go into this main question of the theory of descent—but this is very characteristic of his attitude. And just as he nowhere thoroughly discusses the doctrine of transformation, neither does he enter generally on the refutation of any of the other certain proofs of the doctrine of descent which we in fact possess at the present day. Neither the morphological nor the physiological arguments for the theory of descent, neither the rudimentary organs nor the embryonic forms, neither the paleontological nor the chronological argument are anywhere closely examined and tested as to their worth or their worthlessness as "certain proofs." On the contrary, Virchow takes them quite easily, sets them aside, and declares that "certain proofs" of the doctrine of descent do not exist, but remain to be discovered. To be sure, he does not indicate where they are to be sought, nor can he indicate it. How is this strange conduct to be explained? How is it possible that a distinguished naturalist should resist the most important step forward of modern natural science without in any way specially investigating it, without even practically testing and refuting the most weighty arguments in its favour? To this question there is but one answer. Virchow is not generally intimate with the modern doctrine of evolution, and does not possess that knowledge of natural science which is indispensable for any well-grounded judgment on it.

After collecting and carefully reading all that Virchow, during many years, had written against evolution, I arrived at the conviction that he had not thoroughly read either Darwin's great work on the Origin of Species, nor any other work on the theory of descent, nor had he thought the matter out with such attention as so serious and intricate a subject absolutely demands. Virchow did with these works as it has been his well-known custom to do with many others—he hastily turned over the pages, caught at a few leading words, and without any farther trouble he has discoursed upon them, and, which is worst of all, has perpetuated these discourses through the press.

To excuse this conduct, and to account for Virchow's enigmatical position in the battle of evolution, we must consider what changes this highly-gifted and meritorious man has gone through in the course of the last thirty years. The most important and fruitful part of his life and labours was indisputably during the eight years when he resided in Wuerzburg, from 1848 to 1856. There Virchow, with all the keenness of his youthful intellect, with a sacred enthusiasm for scientific truth, with indefatigable powers of work and the rarest insight, worked out that glorious reform of scientific medicine which will shine through all time as a star of the first magnitude in the history of medical science. In Wuerzburg, Virchow elaborated that comprehensive application of the cellular theory to pathology which culminates in the conception that the cell is an independent living elementary organism, and that our human organism, like that of all the higher animals, is merely a congeries of cells—a highly fertile conception, which Virchow now denies as resolutely as he then supported it. In Wuerzburg, twenty-five years since, I sat devoutly at his feet, and received from him with enthusiasm that clear and simple doctrine of the mechanics of all vital activity—a truly monistic doctrine, which Virchow now undoubtedly opposes where formerly he defended it. In Wuerzburg, finally, he wrote those incomparable critical and historical leading articles which are the ornament of the first ten yearly series of his "Archives" of pathological anatomy. All that Virchow effected as the great pioneer of reform in medicine, and by which he won imperishable honour in the scientific treatment of disease,—all this was either carried out or preconceived in Wuerzburg; and even the celebrated "Cellular Pathology," a course of lectures which he delivered during the first year and a half after quitting Wuerzburg for Berlin, consists only of the collected and matured fruits of which the blossoms are due to Wuerzburg.

In the autumn of 1856 Virchow left Wuerzburg to settle in Berlin. The exchange of a narrow sphere of labours for a wider one, of small means and appliances for greater ones, proved unfavourable in this case, as in many similar cases. Since he has been in Berlin, in a "great Institution," and with luxurious appliances, all the scientific results which Virchow has as yet brought to light are not to be compared, either as to quality or quantity, to the grand and immortal achievements which he himself effected in the little institute of Wuerzburg with the scantiest means—a new proof of the maxim enunciated by me, and hitherto never confuted, that "the scientific results of an institute are in inverse proportion to its size." (See "The Aim and Methods of Modern Evolution."[14])

Still more grave is the circumstance that, since settling in Berlin, Virchow has more and more exchanged his theoretical scientific activity for practical political life. It is well known how prominent a part he plays there in the Prussian Chamber of Representatives, how he raised himself to be the leader of the party of progress, and, to give this political position a broader basis, took part in the representation of the citizens of the capital; how he has taken a most active interest, as city commissioner, in all the petty anxieties and concerns which the charge of such a city as Berlin entails. I am far from blaming, as many have blamed, the political and civic activity to which Virchow has indefatigably devoted his best powers. If a man feels in himself the inclination and vocation with strength and talent enough, to play a conspicuous political part, by all means let him do so; but verily I do not envy him; for the satisfaction which is derived from the most successful and fruitful political activity is not, to my taste, to be compared with that pure and disinterested satisfaction of the mind which results from absorption in serious and difficult scientific labours. In the turmoil of the political and social struggle, even the most splendid civic crown will be dulled by the stifling dust of practical life, which never reaches the ethereal heights of pure science and never rests on the laurels of the thoughtful investigator. However, as I have said, that is a matter of taste. If Virchow really believes that he is doing a greater service to humanity by his practical political life in Berlin than he formerly did by his theoretical scientific work in Wuerzburg, that is his affair; but for all that, in his former sphere he was incomparable, and cannot be replaced; in the latter this is not the case.

If a distinguished man, be he never so remarkable for uncommon power of work and universal gifts, passes the whole day in the friction of political party-struggles, and throws himself as well into all the petty and wearisome details of daily civic life, it is impossible for him to maintain the requisite feeling for the progress of science—particularly when it advances so rapidly and incessantly as is the case in our day. It is therefore quite intelligible that Virchow should soon have lost this feeling, and in the course of the last two decades have become more and more estranged from science. And this estrangement has at last led to so complete a change in his fundamental views, to such a metapsychosis, that the present Virchow of 1878 is hardly in a position to understand the youthful Virchow of 1848.

We have seen a similar mental change occur contemporaneously in our greatest naturalist, Carl Ernst von Baer. This gifted and profound thinker and biologist, whose name marks a new epoch in the history of evolution, had in his later years become wholly incompetent even to understand those most important problems of his youthful labours which opened up new paths of inquiry. While in his early years he laid down principles of the greatest value to our modern doctrine of evolution, and even went very near to adopting this hypothesis into his system, at a later period he utterly denied it, and by his writings on Darwinism proved that he was no longer generally capable of mastering this difficult problem. As I am one of Von Baer's warmest admirers, and in my "Evolution of Man," as well as in the "History of Creation," and in other places, have most emphatically expressed that sincere esteem, I thought I might venture to forbear from calling attention to the discrepancy between the lucid, monistic principles of Von Baer in his youth, and the confused dualistic views of his old age. But as many opponents of Darwinism—and among them particularly the Old Catholic philosopher of Munich, Huber, who has written a series of articles in the "Augsburger Zeitung"—have made constant capital out of the harmless talk of the feeble old Von Baer, I must in this place explicitly declare that this dualistic prating of the old man is quite incapable of shaking the monistic principles of the young and enterprising pioneers of science, or of giving them the lie.

In his autobiography Von Baer gives us the explanation of this striking contradiction. In 1834 he entirely and for ever abandoned the province of the history of development, at which for twenty years he had laboured incessantly, and where he had earned splendid laurels. To escape from the haunting and importunate ideas of the science which had so wholly absorbed him, he fled from Koenigsberg to Petersburg, and subsequently busied himself in scientific inquiries of a quite different character. Twenty-five long years passed by, and when Darwin's work appeared in 1859, Von Baer had too long undergone a metapsychosis to be able to understand it. In Von Baer, as in Virchow, the course of this remarkable metapsychosis is highly instructive, and will itself afford to the thoughtful psychologist an interesting evidence of the doctrine of evolution.

However, the lack of comprehension of our modern evolution-hypothesis is easier to explain in Virchow's case than in Von Baer's, for this reason: morphological knowledge was greatly lacking to Virchow, while Von Baer possessed it in the highest degree. Now morphology is precisely that very department of inquiry in which our theory of descent has its deepest and strongest roots, and has matured the most glorious fruits of knowledge. The study of organic forms, or morphology, is thus, more than any other science, interested in the doctrine of descent, because through this doctrine it first obtained a practical knowledge of effective causes, and was able to raise itself from the humble rank of a descriptive study of forms to the high position of an analytical science of form. It is true that by the beginning of this century the most comprehensive branch of morphology—i.e., comparative anatomy—which was founded by Cuvier and splendidly developed by Johannes Mueller, had laid the foundations on which to build a truly philosophical science of form. The enormous mass of various empirical material, which had been accumulated by descriptive systematists and by the dissections of zootomists since the time of Linnaeus and Pallas, had already been abundantly matured and utilised in many ways for philosophic purposes by the synthetic principles of comparative anatomy. But even the most important universal laws of organisation—of which the old system of comparative anatomy was one—had to take refuge in mystical ideas of a plan of structure and of creative final causes (causae finales); they were incapable of arriving at a true and clear perception of effective mechanical causes (causae efficientes). This last, most difficult, and grandest problem, Charles Darwin was the first to solve in 1859, by setting Lamarck's theory of descent, which was already fifty years old, on a firm footing by his own theory of selection. By this hypothesis it was first made possible to fit together the rich materials which had been previously amassed, into the splendid edifice of the mechanical science of form. (See my "General Morphology," vol. i. chap. iv.)

The immeasurable step which Darwin thus made in organic morphology can be adequately appreciated only by those who, like myself, were brought up in the school of the old teleological morphology, and whose eyes were suddenly opened by the theory of selection to a comprehension of that greatest of all biological riddles, the creation of specific forms. The dogma of creation, the mystic and dualistic doctrine of the isolated creation of each separate variety, was annihilated at one blow; the belief in transmutation has now for ever taken its place—the mechanistic and monistic doctrine of the metamorphosis of organic forms, of the descent of all the species of one natural class from a common parent-form. How complete a change the science of mechanical morphology has by this means been compelled to undergo, I have endeavoured to point out in my "General Morphology;" and any one who wishes to convince himself clearly of what an enormous revolution has been brought about, particularly in comparative anatomy, may compare the "Outlines of Comparative Anatomy" (Grundzuege der vergleichenden Anatomie), by Carl Gegenbaur, 1870, and the latest edition of his "Elements" (Grundrisses), with the old text-books of that science.

Virchow has no suspicion even of all these immeasurable strides in morphology, for this department always lay out of his ken. His great reforms in pathology were founded in the province of physiology, and more especially in cellular physiology. But within the last twenty years these two main branches of biological inquiry have grown more and more apart. The great Johannes Mueller was the last biologist who was able to keep these departments of organic inquiry together, and who won equally immortal honours in both divisions of the subject. After Mueller's death in 1858 they fell asunder. Physiology, as the science especially of the functions or living activity of the organism, addressed itself more and more to exact and experimental methods: morphology, on the contrary, as the science of the forms and structure of animals and plants, could naturally make but very small use of this method; it must take refuge more and more in the history of evolution, and so constitute an historical natural science. It was on this very historical and genetic method of morphology, in contradistinction to the exact and experimental method of physiology, that I based my Munich address; and if Virchow in his answer had really and thoroughly refuted this position, instead of fighting with mere phrases and denunciations, this radical opposition would have been well worthy of the fullest discussion. At the same time I have no wish to reproach Virchow for being wholly fettered by the one-sided views of the modern school-physiology, nor because morphology lies so far out of his ken that he has not been able to form an independent judgment of its aims and methods; but when, in spite of all this, he on every occasion lets fall a disparaging judgment of it, we must dispute his competence. It is true that in his Munich address he emphasises the statement, "That which graces me best is that I know my ignorance," by printing it in italics. I only regret that I am forced to deny his possession of this very grace. Virchow does not know how ignorant he is of morphology, else he would never have uttered his annihilating verdict on it, else he would not continually designate the study of the theory of descent as dilettanteism and vain dreaming, as "a fanciful private speculation which is now making its way in several departments of natural science." In truth, Virchow does me greatly too much honour when he designates as my "personal crotchet" an idea which for the last ten years has been the most precious common possession of all morphological science. If Virchow were not so unfamiliar with the literature of morphology, he must have known that it is penetrated throughout by this principle of descent, that every morphological inquiry which conscientiously pursues a well-considered problem now assumes the doctrine of descent as granted and indisputable. Of all this he is ignorant, and so it is intelligible that he should continue to demand "certain proofs" of this hypothesis, although those proofs have long since been produced.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Vol. ii., p. 334 of translation.

[13] London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1879.

[14] Jena, Zeitschriften fuer Naturwissenschaft, 1875. Vol. x. Supplement.



CHAPTER III.

THE SKULL THEORY AND THE APE THEORY.

Inasmuch as Virchow persists in treating the theory of descent as an "unproved hypothesis," inasmuch as he ignores all the forcible evidences of that hypothesis, he deprives himself of the right of speaking a decisive word in this, the most important scientific dispute of the present day. Virchow is, in fact, simply incompetent in the great question of evolution, as he is deficient in the greater part of that knowledge—more especially morphological knowledge—which is indispensable to forming a judgment upon it. Hence on the turning-point of the whole matter—viz., the problem as to the origin of species—he can have no opinion, as he has never turned his attention to the systematic treatment of species: those transitions of one species into another, which he asks to see, abound on all sides, as is well known to every systematic naturalist. Only consider, for example, the genera of Rubus and Salix among the living plants of the present period, and the Ammonites and Brachiopoda among extinct animals. Hence, too, Virchow can have no independent views as to the historical development of the higher from the lower animals, because the abundant living forms of the lower animals are almost unknown to him, and because he has hardly any conception of the marvellous strides which hundreds of industrious workers have made in this very department within the last twenty years. But there can be no doubt, indeed it is already universally acknowledged, that it is precisely the comparative anatomy of the lower—nay, of the very lowest animals—that has solved the greatest riddles of life, and removed the greatest obstacles from the path of the doctrine of descent. He simply ignores the fact that true Monads actually exist, and have been positively identified by many different observers as structureless "organisms without organs," and he turns out the poor Bathybius with a kick. And yet I believe that in "Kosmos"[15] I have conclusively proved that Monads must retain their vast elementary importance whether the Bathybius actually exists or not.

But even as regards the higher animals—nay, even as to the comparative anatomy of the highest next to man, the apes—Virchow stands apart, not understanding the views of modern morphology.

We must here examine more closely into this, because it is precisely in this department that Virchow's only morphological experiments have been made; viz., his investigations as to the skulls of apes and of men. This is precisely the one only point on which he has sought a closer acquaintance with morphology, and precisely here it is most clearly to be seen how little he is acquainted with the recent advances our science has made, and that he has hardly any conception of the extraordinary importance to that science of the theory of descent.

The skull theory, as is well known, has for a long time been a very favourite theme, not only with prominent naturalists, but also with talented amateurs. Undoubtedly the skull, viewed as the bony capsule which encloses our most important organ of sense, our brain, has a special claim to morphological importance; for the general conformation of the skull corresponds on the whole to the development of the brain, and its inner surface gives an approximate idea of the outer surface of the brain. In this correspondence lies the only sound kernel of the sickly, overgrown fancies of phrenology. The various development of the skull allows of an approximate inference as to the various degrees of development of the brain and of the mental faculties. The comparative study of the skulls of the vertebrate animals had excited the lively interest of morphologists by the end of the last century, when comparative anatomy was beginning to constitute a special science; and the genetic inquiry as to the morphological significance and development of the skull soon grew out of it. It was no less a man than our greatest German poet who first answered this question, and propounded the theory that the skull was neither more nor less than the modified foremost end of the vertebral column, and that the separate groups of bones which lie behind one another in the human skull, as in that of all the higher vertebrata, answer to the separate modified vertebrae. This "vertebral theory" of the skull, which Von Goethe and Oken simultaneously and independently attempted to prove, aroused universal interest and maintained its ground for seventy years, while many attempts were made to improve and enlarge upon it in detail.

A quite new light was thrown on this, as on every other morphological question, as soon as Darwin in 1859 had once more put into our hands the torch of the doctrine of descent. The inquiry as to the origin of the skull now assumed a real and tangible form. Since all vertebrate animals, from fishes up to man, agree so completely as to their essential internal structure that they can be rationally conceived of no otherwise than as branches of one stock and as descendants of one parent-form, the distinctly formulated question as to the skull theory which now started into prominence was this: "How, historically, has the skull of man and of the higher animals originated from that of the lower animals? How is the development of the bones of the skull from the vertebrae to be proved?" The answer to these difficult questions was supplied by the first comparative anatomist of the present day, by Carl Gegenbaur. After Huxley had pointed out that the ontogenesis or individual development of the skull by no means favoured the older hypothesis of Goethe and Oken, Gegenbaur brought forward evidence that the fundamental idea of that theory was correct; that the skull does in fact correspond to a series of coalescent vertebrae, but that the separate bones of the skull are not to be regarded as representing parts of such modified vertebrae. The skull-bones of all recent vertebrate animals are rather, for the most part, dermal bones, which have come into closer connection as supplementary to the cartilaginous primitive skull. We can even now trace the number and position of the original vertebrae, from which this primitive skull originated, by the number of the vertebral arches (gill-arches) which are attached to it, as well as by the number and position of those vertebrae, from nine to ten. Of all the recent vertebrata, the cartilaginous fishes, or Selachians, have most nearly preserved the form and structure of this primordial skull. These Selachians, the Rays and Sharks, are on the whole the creatures which throw the clearest light on the history of the lineage of the vertebrata and on the organisation of our primeval fish-natured ancestors. It is one of the particular merits of Gegenbaur that he clearly and firmly established the place in nature of the Selachians as the common ancestors of all vertebrate animals from fish up to man.

None but those who have thoroughly studied the comparative morphology of the vertebrata, who have sought the genetic issue from that labyrinth of intricate morphological problems at the hands of the theory of descent, can duly value the immeasurable service which Gegenbaur has done by this and other "Investigations into the Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrata." These investigations are as much distinguished by a profound knowledge and careful working out of the wonderfully-extensive empirical materials for the subject, as by their critical acumen and philosophic grasp. At the same time they set in the clearest light the immeasurable value of the theory of descent in the causal explanation of the most difficult morphological problems. Gegenbaur might, therefore, with perfect right, enunciate this axiom in the Introduction to his "Comparative Anatomy." "The theory of descent will at once find a touchstone of proof in comparative anatomy. Up to this time no experience in comparative anatomy has transpired which contradicts that theory; on the contrary, they all lead up to it. Thus it will receive back from science that which it has given to scientific method: clearness and certainty." In point of fact we can adduce no morphological investigations which better support this declaration than those very phylogenetic researches "as to the cranium of the Selachians, as a basis for the critical examination of the genesis of the cranium of the vertebrata," 1872. As Virchow had formerly thoroughly studied the old skull-hypothesis, and in his admirable discourse on "Goethe as a Naturalist," 1861, had given an excellent exposition of it; as moreover he had produced most valuable contributions to the normal and pathological anatomy of the human skull, we might have expected that he would have received Gegenbaur's grand reform of the theory of the skull, and historical solution of the skull-problem, with the greatest interest, and have made it the clue to his own further researches. But we seek in vain through Virchow's latest contributions to the study of the human skull, for any indication of his knowing or appreciating Gegenbaur's investigations. On the contrary, we see him persistently moving, without any clear goal in view, on that trodden and devious path of investigation which finds the highest aim of craniological science in the measuring of skulls, or craniometry.

We are far from undervaluing the full significance of the results of exact and careful descriptions and measurements of various conformations of the skull as an empirical basis for a true and scientific study of the skull—i.e., for comparative and genetic craniology. But still we must say that the way and method by which this skull measurement has, for ten years now, been pursued by numerous craniologists can never yield corresponding scientific results; on the contrary, though it is cried up as the "exact morphology" of the skull, it simply loses itself in the domains of harmless trifling. A large amount of time has in the last ten years been squandered in disputes as to the best method of measuring skulls, while the craniologists concerned have not, in the first place, answered the obviously most important question: What end they propose to gain by this specialist measuring, what proposition they mean to prove by it? Most of those numerous skull measurers know nothing beyond the perfect human skull, or at most the skulls of a few other mammalia, while the comparative morphology and historical development of the crania of the lower vertebrata are wholly unknown to them; and yet these last contain the true key to the comprehension of the others. One single month devoted by these "exact skull measurers" to the study of Gegenbaur's theory of the skull, and to testing the hypothesis by the skulls of Selachians, would have yielded them more fruit and have given them more light than long years of describing and measuring human skulls, however various.

Virchow himself affords the most striking example of the usual results of this so-called "exact method" of studying skulls. In his popular essay on "The Skulls of Men and Apes," 1870, he concludes with this notable proposition:—"It is therefore self-evident that Man can never by any progressive development have originated from the Apes." Every evolutionist who is familiar with the surprising facts of comparative morphology will draw from them the opposite conclusion: "It is self-evident that Man could only have originated from the progressive development of the Ape (organism)."

This brings us to that question which, in the popular treatment of the theory of descent, is justly considered as its most important outcome and as the keystone of the evolutionist edifice—to the well-known proposition, "Man is descended from the Ape." While we simply ignore all the misrepresentation, distortion, and misinterpretation which this ape, or pithecoid hypothesis, has met with on all sides, we will only remark that this fundamental proposition, in the sense of our modern doctrine of evolution, can rationally have only this plain meaning: that the human species as a whole was long since developed from the order of apes, indeed actually from one (or perhaps more) long since extinct form of ape; the immediate progenitors of man in the long series of his vertebrate ancestry were apes or ape-like animals. Of course none of the now surviving species of apes is to be regarded as the unaltered posterity of that primeval parent-form. Virchow, however, understanding the "ape question" in this sense, answers it, as Bastian also does, with the most positive contradiction. "We cannot teach the doctrine that man is descended from apes or from any other animal, for we cannot regard it as a real acquisition of science" (p. 31). Although I myself, in direct opposition to this view, and in agreement with almost all my professional colleagues, look upon the descent of man from apes as one of the surest of phylogenetic hypotheses, I will here expressly admit that the relative certainty of this, as of all other historical hypotheses of descent, is not comparable with the absolute certainty of the general theory of descent. It is now ten years since I first explicitly stated (in my "Natural History of Creation," vol. ii. p. 358): "The pedigree of the human race, like that of every animal or plant, remains in detail a more or less approximate general hypothesis. This, however, in no way affects the application of the theory of descent to man. In this, as in all researches into the derivation of our organism, we must distinguish between the general theory of descent and the specific hypothesis of descent. The general theory of descent claims full and permanent value, because it is inductively based on the whole range of common biological phenomena and on their internal causal connection. Each special hypothesis of descent, on the other hand, is conditional as to its specific value on the existing state of our biological information, and on the extent of those objective empirical grounds on which we deductively found the hypothesis, by our subjective inferences." And I must here emphatically add that I have on every opportunity repeated that reservation, and have always insisted on the difference which exists between the absolute certainty of transmutation in general and the relative certainty of each individual specific pedigree. So that when Semper and others of my opponents assert that I teach my specific genealogies as "infallible dogmas," it is simply false. I have, on the contrary, pointed out on all occasions that I regard them only as heuristic or provisional hypotheses, and as a means of investigating the actual relations of cognate races of organic forms more and more approximately.

Since the conception of the natural animal system as a hypothetical genealogical tree, and the phylogenetic interpretation of morphological affinity which that conception involves, afford in fact the only rational interpretation of that affinity in general, my first genealogical attempts soon found many imitators, and at the present time numerous industrious labourers in the different departments of systematic zoology are endeavouring to find in the construction of such hypothetical genealogies the shortest and completest expression of the modern conception of structural affinity. If Virchow had not been as ignorant of the true significance and method of systematic morphology as he is of its progress and scientific contents, he must certainly have known this, and then he would surely have withheld his mockery of all these grave phylogenetic studies as "personal crotchets" and worthless dreams.