RUDt)LPH VIRCHOW, 1S21-1902. 655 



recognition of unproved assumptions, against one-sided investigations 

 and conceptions, and ag'aihst premature generalizations that he pro- 

 tested, l^he real advances of ivtiological knov.dedge he sought con- 

 tiiuially, witli all the weight of his iniluence, to i)roniote and to bring 

 t^o general recognition. 



Similar imputations liave been current in regard to liis position 

 I'ehitive to another disputed cpiestion, namely, that of Darwinism. He 

 had numerous objections to some of the single propositions of the 

 Darwinian theory; partieularlj^ as the result of his own obser\'ations 

 he recognized more fully than Darwin the pathologic side of the 

 (juestion of heredity. According to Virchow the rise of a variety of 

 a transmissible character presupposes a ''deviation from the type 

 and therefore a pathologic (though l)y no means a diseased) condition 

 of the progenitor.''" The role of atavism he was inclined to belittle 

 as one of a number of unproved assumptions, l)ut he was a no less 

 firm belicAcr in transformism than Darwin and .lohann Fricdrich 

 Meckel, whose great service to the theory of descent Virrliow repeat- 

 edly and properly emphasized.'' 



How could a man fail to accept Darwinism wiio was so influenced in 

 his intellectual development by Goethe '" and under whose hand modern 

 anthropology has become what it now is, the scientific stud}^ of man. 

 Starting with somatic anthropology, in natural expansion of his field 

 of work, in 186G he l)egan his investigations in prehistoric archteology. 

 At first he occupied himself with the primitive history of his Ponnne- 

 ranian home region, to which as a student he had already devoted some 

 historical studies that appeared in the " Baltischen Studien '' and the 

 "Pommerschen Volksblatt.*" From this the field of liis investigations 

 extended over the whole earth. Contributions from every quarter, 

 some gathered in long journeys through Europe, Avestern Asia and 

 Egypt, which he took during the vacations, and morc^ collected by the 

 arm}^ of scientific discoverers who in the last forty yc^ars have pene- 

 trated to all parts of the earth, furnished him with his material. He 

 himself grasped the spade and introduced the scientific method in 

 archadogical investigation. It is impossible even to mention hei'e all 

 his more important investigations and puldications in this and related 

 fields during the four busy decades wdiich followed. Only a few can 

 l»e touched upon, among them the inc^uiry concerning the origin of 

 the luunan race and its dispersion in the course of ages. He published 

 numerous articles filled with rich material in the " Zeitschrift fiir 

 Ethnologic," largely conducted l)v him, and in the '"'• Verhandlungen 

 der Berliner Gessellschaft fiir Anthropology, Ethnologic und 



«Arcliiv, vol. 103, ]>. 205. 

 '^Arcliiv, vol. 103, p. 10. 



''See " (ioet heals NaturforHciicr uiid in iH'soiulercr Jit-ziclmnu: zu Scliillcr. Mine 

 Rede mit Erliiuterijngen. Berlin, 1st;]. 



