324 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mental phenomena pertain to certain animals, not to the totality of all 

 organized beings, nor even to all animals ; this I maintain without hes- 

 itation. We have no reason yet to affirm that the lowest animals pos- 

 sess psychic attributes ; these we find only in the higher animals, and 

 with perfect certainty only in the highest." Verily, Haeckel is right 

 when he says that any zoologist, on reading this sentence, must throw 

 up his hands in astonishment and ask, " Where would Virchow fix the 

 point at which the soul suddenly enters the previously soulless body?" 



But Haeckel deals his adversary a still more telling blow when, in 

 the fifth chapter, " Genetic and Dogmatic Method of Teaching," he 

 repudiates Virchow's theses touching the freedom of research and the 

 restriction of the liberty of teaching. Virchow would have only ob- 

 jective knowledge taught in educational institutions. Haeckel, on the 

 whole, only enlarges upon what I said in reply to Virchow eight months 

 ago, when I gave to the Virchovian prescription this form : Give the stu- 

 dent just so much as he requires to pass his examination and no more. 

 As Haeckel justly observes regarding Virchow's suggestion that noth- 

 ing should be taught which is not absolutely certain, all sciences, with 

 the exception of lower mathematics, would have to be stricken from the 

 lecture-list ; and, as Helmholtz very properly remarks, it behooves us 

 to declare that the teacher's work can never bear fruit, save inasmuch 

 as it conveys to the student a conception of " how the thoughts of in- 

 dependent thinkers are moving." 



The chapter entitled "The Theory of Descent and Social Democracy " 

 is a brief one, because, as Haeckel tells us, the amazing denunciations 

 pronounced by Virchow called forth from the moment of their publica 

 tion the just indignation of thinking men, and were signally rebuked. 

 It is a pity that Haeckel did not himself conform to the principle which 

 he laid down toward the close of his chapter, where he says : " Wherein 

 does all this concern the scientific investigator ? His sole and only 

 problem is this, to ascertain the truth, and to teach what he has recog- 

 nized as true, without regard to what corollaries the various parties in 

 state and church may draw from it." This was the right reply, nay, 

 the only one, to make to Virchow's ill-judged utterance ; but, instead 

 of following it up, Haeckel endeavors to prove that the Darwinian ten- 

 dency can only be aristocratic. A man can read in the book of Nature 

 whatever he pleases, just as in the Bible ; but Darwinism is neither so- 

 cialistic nor aristocratic, neither republican nor monarchical ; it is an 

 explanation of the most diversified natural phenomena, but it rests on 

 one simple principle. Such is Darwinism — nothing more, nothing less. 



In the closing chapter, " Ignorabimus et Restringamur," Haeckel 

 criticises Du Bois-Reymond and his speech made in 1872. Of this chap- 

 ter we have only to say that we fully accept all that the author writes con- 

 cerning the decline of natural science at the University of Berlin. How 

 far ossification has advanced there, may be understood when we reflect 

 that the chair once filled by Johannes Mtiller is to-day occupied by 



