XV 



PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 



THIS world of ours has, on the whole, been an in- 

 clement region for the growth of natural truth; 

 but it may be that the plant is all the hardier for 

 the bendings and bufferings it has undergone. The tor- 

 turing of a shrub, within certain limits, strengthens it. 

 Through the struggles and passions of the brute, man 

 reaches his estate; through savagery and barbarism his 

 civilization; and through illusion and persecution his 

 knowledge of nature, including that of his own frame. 

 The bias toward natural truth must have been strong to 

 have withstood and overcome the opposing forces. Feel- 

 ing appeared in the world before Knowledge ; and thoughts, 

 conceptions, and creeds, founded on emotion, had, before 

 the dawn of science, taken root in man. Such thoughts, 

 conceptions, and creeds must have met a deep and general 

 want; otherwise their growth could not have been so lux- 

 uriant, nor their abiding power so strong. This general 

 need this hunger for the ideal and wonderful led event- 

 ually to the differentiation of a caste, whose vocation it 

 was to cultivate the mystery of life and its surroundings, 

 and to give shape, name, and habitation to the emotions 

 which that mystery aroused. Even the savage lived, not 

 by bread alone, but in a mental world peopled with forms 

 answering to his capacities and needs. As time advanced 

 (392) 



