POPE AND ANTI-POPE. 323 



stration of the transformation of species once inhabiting open space 

 and endowed with visual power into bUnd creatures with a very re- 

 stricted range ; but for men who, like Virchow, do not know these 

 relations, the experimental proof might be given. Who will deny 

 that such experiments would further science ? 



In the third chapter, " Cranium Theory and Ape Theory," Haeckel 

 considers a familiar question, treated already by Virchow in a lect- 

 ure delivered in 1869, on " The Crania of Men and Apes." Unfortu- 

 nately, in regard to this very question, Haeckel has, by his extravagant 

 theses, seriously weakened the ground on which he stands, if he has not 

 swept it clean away. Once you say " Man is a true catarrhine monkey," 

 then it is difficult to meet the swarm of objections that will be raised. 

 Virchow's discourse was one of the weakest ever pviblished on this 

 subject, and, although the author directed his polemic chiefly against 

 me, I have not seen fit to make any reply, because I should have had 

 only to point out and meet a misunderstanding (whether intentional or 

 not I will not decide) of what myself and others have said. Virchow 

 himself, in that essay, declared that " the resemblance of young mon- 

 keys to human children is very much greater than that of old monkeys 

 to adult and fully developed men ;" but he is unable to see that this, 

 and the fact that as they advance in age the differences become more 

 pronounced, necessarily lead us to suppose a point of time in the re- 

 mote past at which the two types developed in divergent directions. 

 Haeckel, then, is perfectly justified when he says in his reply, " From 

 this inevitable grouping results the common origin of man and monkey 

 from one ancestral form ; " and I observe with pleasure that here, again, 

 Haeckel abandons his extravagant theses, and lays down propositions 

 which must be regarded as entirely tenable. 



Even if to me, as to Oscar Schmidt, Haeckel's doctrines concerning 

 the " memory of the plastidules " and the " psychic activity of the cells " 

 appear only as a " shipwrecked hypothesis," and not, as their author 

 believes, "the sure foundation of empirical psychology," neverthe- 

 less, I must, on the other hand, admit that Haeckel simply demolishes 

 Virchow's position in his fourth chapter on " The Cell-Soul and Cellular 

 Psychology." That in the development of the psychic faculties of the 

 organism we have the same process of perfectionment, the same division 

 of labor, the same gradual differentiation, as in the development of the 

 bodily organs and tissues, cannot be doubted ; but when, at Munich, 

 Haeckel asserts that we have in the several individual cells the self- 

 sam,e manifestations of psychic life, of sensation, and of thought ( Vor- 

 stelhing), of will, and of movement, which are seen in higher animals 

 made up of many cells, he exaggerates ; this exaggeration can, however, 

 in part be accounted for by the fact that language possesses no terms to 

 denote the obscure and in some sense confluescent expressions of these 

 lowly psj'chic activities. But Virchow has the assurance to say to the 

 assembled naturalists and physicians : " There is no doubt that, for us, 



