400 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



and what we wish to search for. The objects of our 

 research are expressed as problems (or hypotheses). 

 We need not keep them to ourselves ; ive are ready to 

 communicate them to all the world, and say " There is 

 the problem ; that is what we strive for." . . . The 

 investigation of such problems, in which the whole 

 nation may be interested, cannot be restricted to any 

 one. This is Freedom of Enquiry. But the problem 

 (or hypothesis) is not, without further debate, to be 

 made a doctrine.' He will not concede to Dr. Haeckel 

 6 that it is a question for the schoolmasters to decide, 

 whether the Darwinian theory of man's descent should 

 be at once laid down as the basis of instruction, and 

 the protoplastic soul be assumed as the foundation of all 

 ideas concerning spiritual being.' .The Professor con- 

 cludes his lecture thus : ' With perfect truth did Bacon 

 say of old " Scientia est potential But he also defined 

 that knowledge ; and the knowledge he meant was not 

 speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypotheses, 

 but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentle- 

 men, I think we should be abusing our power, we 

 should be imperilling our power, unless in our teaching 

 we restrict ourselves to this perfectly safe and un- 

 assailable domain. From this domain we may make 

 incursions into the field of problems, and I am sure 

 that every venture of that kind will then find all 

 needful security and support.' I have emphasised by 

 italics two sentences in the foregoing series of quota- 

 tions ; the other italics are the author's own. 



Virchow's position could not be made clearer by 

 any comments of mine than he has here made it him- 

 self. That position is one of the highest practical 

 importance. ' Throughout our whole German Father- 

 land,' he says, ' men are busied in renovating, extending, 

 and developing the system of education, and in invent- 



