XV. 



PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 



world of ours has, on the whole, been an iricle- 

 -1- ment region for the growth of natural truth; but 

 it may be that the plant is all the hardier for the bend- 

 ings and buffetings it has undergone. The torturing 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 civilisa- 

 tion; and through illusion and persecution his know- 

 ledge of nature, including that of his own frame. The 

 bias towards 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 luxuriant, nor their abiding power 

 so strong. This general need this hunger for the 

 ideal and wonderful led eventually to the differen- 

 tiation 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 ad- 

 vanced in other words, as the savage opened out into 

 civilised man these forms were purified and ennobled 

 373 



