THE SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS OF 1863 159 



serious difference between Haeckel and Virchow. 

 The speaker himself thinks it an unimportant 

 matter beside the great question of freedom for 

 scientific inquiry. One thing is as clear to him 

 as it is to Haeckel. The biblical dogma of creation 

 has broken down. It is impossible to take seriously 

 any longer the breathing of the breath of life into 

 a lump of clay, if these Darwinian ideas are sound. 

 Once it is fully proved that man descends from 

 the ape, " no tradition in the world will ever 

 suppress the fact." Scientific inquiry alone can 

 correct itself. And what it holds to be established 

 must be respected beyond its frontiers as well. 

 What does he mean by " beyond its frontiers " ? 

 He means, as he makes it clear here, the same as 

 Haeckel himself. " Church and State," he says, 

 must " reconcile themselves to the fact that with 

 the advance of science certain changes are bound 

 to take place in the general ideas and beliefs from 

 which we build up our highest conceptions, and 

 that no impediment must be put in the way of 

 these changes ; in fact, the far-seeing Government 

 and the open-minded Church will always assimilate 

 these advancing and developing ideas and make 

 them fruitful." What more do we want ? 



If this were the conclusion of Virchow's speech, 

 it would be merely a confirmation of Haeckel's 

 the kind of support that the older worker can give 

 to ardent youth, though on different grounds. But 

 the cloven foot has still to peep out. I believe 

 that, in the pure struggle of ideas, we can determine 

 here, in 1863, precisely the point where Virchow 



