424 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



Italian edition. So far from Natural Selection being a 

 thing of the past [the 'Athenaeum' had stated it to be 

 so], it is an accepted doctrine with almost every philo- 

 sophical naturalist, including, it will always be under- 

 stood, a considerable proportion who are not prepared to 

 admit that it accounts for all Mr. Darwin assigns to it." 

 In the following year, at Innsbruck, Helmholtz took up 

 the same ground. 1 Another decade has now passed, and 

 he is simply blind who cannot see the enormous progress 

 made by the theory during that time. Some of the out- 

 ward and visible signs of this advance are readily indi- 

 cated. The hostility and fear which so long prevented 

 the recognition of Mr. Darwin by his own university have 

 vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid universal accla- 

 mation, conferred on him her Doctor's degree. The 

 Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had so long per- 

 sistently closed its doors against Mr. Darwin, has also 

 yielded at last; while sermons, lectures, and published ar- 

 ticles plainly show that even the clergy have, to a great 

 extent, become acclimatized to the Darwinian air. My 

 brief reference to Mr. Darwin in the Birmingham Ad- 

 dress was based upon the knowledge that such changes 

 had been accomplished, and were still going on. 



That the lecture of Professor Virchow can, to any prac- 

 tical extent, disturb this progress of public faith in the 

 theory of evolution, I do not believe. That the special 



1 "Noch besteht lebhafter Streit um die Wahrheit oder Wahrscheinlichkeit 

 von Darwin's Theorie ; er dreht sich aber doch eigentlich nur um die Grenzen, 

 welche wir fur die Veraiiderlichkeit der Arten annehmen diirfen. Pass inner- 

 halb derselben Species erbliche Racenverschiedenheiten auf die von Darwin 

 beschriebene Weise zu kommen konnen, ja dass viele der bisher als verschiedene 

 Species derselben Gattung betrachteten Formen von derselben Urform abstain- 

 men, werden auch seine Gegner kaum leugnen." "Popuiare Vortrage." 



