PROFESSOR VIRVHOW AND EVOLUTION. 645 
need not keep them to ourselves; we are ready to communi- 
cate them to all the world, and say ' There is the problem; 
that is what we strive for.' . . . The investigation of such 
problems, in which the whole nation may be interested, 
cannot be restricted to any one. This "is Freedom of 
Inquiry. But the problem (or hypothesis) is not, without 
further debate, to be made a doctrine." He will not con- 
cede to Dr. Haeckel "that it is a question for the school* 
masters to decide, whether the Darwinian theory of man's 
descent should be at once laid down as the basis of instruc- 
tion, and the protoplastic soul be assumed as the foundation 
of all ideas concerning spiritual being." The professor 
concludes his lecture thus: " With perfect truth did Bacon 
say of old ' Scientia est potential But he also defined 
that knowledge; and the knowledge he meant was not 
speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypotheses, 
but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentlemen, I 
think we should be abusing our power, we should be im- 
periling our power, unless in our teaching we restrict 
ourselves to this perfectly safe and unassailable domain. 
From this domain we may make, incursions into the field of 
problems, and I am sure that every venture of that kind 
will then find all needful security and support." I have 
emphasized by italics two sentences in the foregoing series 
of quotations; the other italics are the author's own. 
Virchow's position could not be made clearer by any 
comments of mine than he has made it himself. That 
position is one of the highest practical importance. 
" Throughout our whole German Fatherland," he says, 
"men are busied in renovating, extending, and developing 
the system of education, and in inventing fixed forms in 
which to mold it. On the threshold of coming events 
stands the Prussian law of education. In all the German 
states larger schools are being built, new educational 
establishments are set up, the universities are extended, 
'higher' and ' middle' schools are founded. Finally 
comes the question, What is to be the chief substance of 
the teaching? " What Virchow thinks it ought and ought 
not to be, is disclosed by the foregoing quotations. There 
ought to be a clear distinction made between science in 
the state of hypothesis, and science in the state of fact. In 
school teaching the former ought to be excluded. And, 
as he assumes it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the 
