PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 41 1 



plete truth carries with it the antidote against the bane 

 and danger which follow in the train of half know- 

 ledge. A cheerfully laborious and temperate people 

 a people morally strong can well afford to look truth 

 full in the face. Nor are they to be ruined by the 

 enunciation of one-sided theories, even when these may 

 appear to threaten the bases of society/ These words of 

 Helmholtz are, in my opinion, wiser and more applica- 

 ble to the condition of Germany at the present moment 

 than those which express the fears of Professor Virchow. 

 It will be remembered that at the time of his lecture 

 his chief anxieties were directed towards France; but 

 France has since that time given ample evidence of her 

 ability to crush, not only Socialists, but anti-Socialists, 

 who would impose on her a yoke which she refuses to 

 bear. 



In close connection with these utterances of Helm- 

 holtz, I place another utterance not less noble, which I 

 trust was understood and appreciated by those to whom 

 it was addressed. ' If/ said the President of the British 

 Association in his opening address in Dublin, ' we could 

 lay down beforehand the precise limits of possible 

 knowledge, the problem of physical science would be 

 already half solved. But the question to which the 

 scientific explorer has often to address himself is, not 

 merely whether he is able to solve this or that problem; 

 but whether he can so far unravel the tangled threads 

 of the matter with which he has to deal, as to weave 

 them into a definite problem at all. ... If his eye 

 seem dim, he must look steadfastly and with hope into 

 the misty vision, until the very clouds wreathe them- 

 selves into definite forms. If his ear seem dull, he must 

 listen patiently and with sympathetic trust to the in- 

 tricate whisperings of Nature the goddess, as she has 

 been called, of a hundred voices until here and there 



