THE SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS OF 1863 155 



He opens with a vigorous protest that there 

 can be no quarrel about the materialism of science 

 with the " spiritual " and the " privately-orthodox." 

 Such people must regard all investigation of "this 

 world" as aimless. The only thing of value for 

 them is " the next world " ; the best attitude 

 towards this life is as crass an ignorance as 

 possible, and so all science is worthless. The 

 words are so sharp that he was interrupted and 

 had to explain that he was not attacking anybody 

 personally. He was only speaking "with the 

 candour of a scientific worker, who is in the habit 

 of calling things by their proper names." (At this 

 point there was some applause.) Hence he is not 

 speaking of materialism, he says, on that account, 

 but because of certain objections from men of 

 science, who said that philosophic speculation led 

 us out of our way. Schleiden had branded the 

 theory of man as a cell-state, the conception of 

 man as, not an absolute, but a federal unity, as 

 materialism. But this conception is not a philo- 

 sophical theory at all ; it is a fact. It is a piece 

 of scientific truth, like the law of gravitation. He 

 recurred to the old and often-quoted definition : 

 the kind of research that brings such facts to light 

 has nothing whatever to do with philosophy. On 

 the other hand, " materialism," in so far as it 

 expresses a general theory of the world, is a 

 philosophy. Hence the simple investigation of 

 facts as such can neither be dubbed materialistic 

 nor said to have a philosophic tinge. 



There are many objections to this strict 



