THE SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS OF 1863 153 



Haeckel's words threw a brilliant light on the 

 question. Not only the simplest forms of life are 

 unicellulars ; the primitive forms also were. With 

 them began the colossal genealogical tree that 

 branches out through the millions of years of the 

 earth's history. If anything on the earth has 

 arisen by spontaneous generation out of dead 

 matter, at the commencement of all life, it must 

 have been a cell, or a still simpler particle of 

 living plasm more or less resembling one. It is 

 true that the point is put in the form of a question ; 

 but the veil has been torn away. Given one cell, 

 the whole genealogical tree grows on, in virtue of 

 Darwin's laws, until it reaches its highest point 

 in man. 



The conclusion of the speech greets Darwin as 

 the Newton of the organic world, a phrase that 

 has often been repeated since. 



* 



Let us turn over a few pages more in the faded 

 record of the sitting. Fourteen years later he 

 would speak again at a scientific congress, and 

 speak on Darwinism. He would then put it 

 forward no longer as a hope but a fulfilment, of 

 which he showed one glittering facet. And no 

 other than Rudolf Yirchow, his former teacher, 

 would oppose him and deliver his famous speech 

 on the freedom of science in the modern State 

 and its abuse by Darwin's followers. This was 

 at Munich in 1877. The least of his hearers 

 would remember that Virchow had spoken, like 

 Haeckel, at Stettin fourteen years previously. 



