KUDOLPH VIKCHOW, 1821-1902. ()49 



alike that ho had deliherately chosen his mission and never " either at 

 the dissecting table or l)ehind the microscope, at the sick l)ed or in 

 puldic life, in the manifoldness of details forgotten the unity of prin- 

 ci])les/' The "'law of the unity of human existence and its conse- 

 quences'' he had treated in a iuunl)er of sketches entitled, Man, Life, 

 Medicine, Sickness, and Contagion, and later he placed thest^ essays, 

 enlarged l)y ilkiminating notes, at the beginning of his collected works. 

 It is not possible in a l)rief account to go deeply into the '" Einheits- 

 bestrebungen," which embraces the connection of medical research 

 with the most fundamental things of human existence. Much that 

 now is accepted as self-eyident stands here in the center of the field 

 al)out which the battle betwt'cn the contending schools of science raged. 

 Questions of belief, the doctrine of \'ital force, which with that of the 

 spontaneous generation is now long since laid aside, and the system of 

 medicine which had bound medical thought in hard and fast dogmatism, 

 all find thoughtful and for the time keen and counigeous criticism. 

 There neyer appears any semblance of personal animosity, however 

 sharp the criti<'ism, and all the positions are taken wholly on ol)]ecti\e 

 grounds. • 



Thei-e has recently been a widespread discussion as to the position 

 of Virchow in relation to fundamental religious (jiu'stions, and many 

 utterances have been attrit)uted to him whose cynicism would make it 

 apparent that they could ne\er have come fi'om him. The position 

 which he tirmlyheld is completely given in the follow ing passage^ from 

 his '• Kiidieitsbestrebungen:'"' 



"There can not be any issu(^ between faith and science, for science 

 and faith mutually exclude on(> anothe)-; not in the sense that the one 

 renders th(> other impossil)le, or vice versa, but rather that so far as 

 science extends faith does not exist, and faith begins whei-e science 

 leaves otf. It can not l)e denied that beyond this limit there may be 

 real objects to be embraced by faith. It is therefore not the object of 

 science to destroy faith, l)ut rather to define the ])oimdaries to which 

 knowledge extends, and within these to estal)lisli a uniform system.'' 



He strongly attacked the materialism of Karl \'ogt, whose assaults 

 upon his own tolerant position toward faith are unjustitia])le. Though 

 opposing dogmatism where it came in liis way, he much more strongly 

 opposed materialism, for ht^ ])elieved it to be more dangerous than the 

 views of tlie church or those of the idealist, but nevertheless he 

 declined as a student of nature to follow with this latter party upon 

 transcendental ground. While desiring himself to associate with 

 science the strongest ol)jectivity, he yet showed in his later years 

 unreserved i-espect for such degrees of subjecti\ity as did not spring 

 from unexcusable violation of scientific truth. He is ey(,'n charged 

 with inconsistiMicy l)ecause of his enei'getic o})position to Krnst 

 Haeckel at the scicMitific conxocation at Munich in 1877. Haeckcl had 



