VIE CHOW AND EVOLUTION. 283 



turb this progress of public faith in the theory of evolution, I do not 

 believe. That the special lessons of caution which he inculcates were 

 exemplified by me, years before his voice was heard upon this subject, 

 has been proved in the foregoing pages. It is possible to draw the 

 coincident lines still further, for most of what he has said about sponta- 

 neous generation might have been uttered by me. I share his opinion 

 that the theory of evolution in its complete form involves the assump- 

 tion that at some period or other of the earth's history there occurred 

 what would be now called " spontaneous generation." I agree with 

 him that " the proofs of it are still wanting. . . . Whoever," he says, 

 "recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very 

 recently to discover a decided support for the generatio cequivoca in 

 the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world 

 will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly dis- 

 credited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of 

 life." I hold with Virchow that the failures have been lamentable, that 

 the doctrine is utterly discredited. But my position here is so well 

 known that I need not dwell upon it further. 



With one special utterance of Prof. Virchow his translator couuects 

 me by name. "I have no objection," observes the professor, "to your 

 saying that atoms of carbon also possess mind, or that in their connec- 

 tion with the Plastidule company they acquire mind ; only I do not 

 know hoio I am to perceive thisy This is substantially what I had 

 said seventeen years previously in the Saturday Hevieio. The pro- 

 fessor continues : " If I explain attraction and repulsion as exhibitions 

 of mind, as psychical phenomena, I simply throw the Psj'che out of the 

 window, and the Psjxhe ceases to be a Psyche." I may say, in pass- 

 ing, that the Psyche that coidd be cast out of the window is not worth 

 house-room. At this point the translator, who is evidently a man of 

 culture, strikes in with a foot-note : " As an illustration of Prof. Vir- 

 chow's meaning, we may quote the conclusion at which Dr. Tyndall 

 arrives respecting the hypothesis of a human soul, oflfered as an ex- 

 planation or a simplification of a series of obscure phenomena — psychi- 

 cal phenomena, as he calls them. *If jou are content to make your 

 soul a poetic rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of 

 ordinary physical laws, I, for one, would not object to this exercise of 

 ideality.' " ^ Prof. Virchow's meaning, I admit, required illustration ; 

 but I do not clearly see how the quotation from me subserves this pur- 

 pose. I do not even know whether I am cited as meriting praise or 

 deserving opprobrium. In a far coarser fashion this utterance of mine 

 has been dealt with in another place : it may therefore be worth while 

 to spend a few words upon it. 



The sting of a wasp at the finger-end announces itself to the brain 

 as pain. The impression made by the sting travels, in the first place, 



1 Presidential Address delivered before the Birmingham and Midland Institute, Octo- 

 ber 1, 187Y. Fortnightly Review, November 1, 1877, p. 607. 



