THE SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS OF 1863 1G1 



ternally to form the new individual of the human 

 body, so the cell-souls would enter into a spiritual 

 combination to form the new psychic individuality 

 of the human mind. I say there was nothing 

 to prevent us from thinking this, in the line of 

 deductions from the plain principles of the cell- 

 state theory which Virchow claimed to be a naked 

 "fact." Philosophically, however, an immense 

 number of questions, problems, doubts, and hopes 

 lurked behind it. The whole conception of indi- 

 viduality took on a new aspect. First, in the 

 material sense; the individual human being 

 seemed to be, bodily, only the connecting bracket, 

 as it were, of countless deeper individuals, the 

 cells. But it was more significant on the spiritual 

 side. The individual human soul could be ana- 

 lysed into millions of smaller psychic individu- 

 alities, the cell-souls, of which it was the sum. 

 The unified ego, the consciousness of self and 

 unity of the psychic clamp, " man," remained 

 as the connection of all the cell-souls. A ray 

 of light was thrown on the deep mystery of the 

 origin of individualities, material and spiritual. 

 Haeckel devoted himself afterwards to the question 

 with all his energy. But at the time it was 

 Virchow who, unconsciously enough, started the 

 great wave that welled up from the depths of 

 his theory. 



He had marked out his path very clearly in 

 the first part of his speech. Scientific research 

 collects facts. It puts them before us without 

 any reference to philosophy. The less philosophy 



11 



