VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 



by their fruits. There is on all hands a growing repug- 

 nance to invoke the supernatural in accounting for the 

 phenomena of human life; and the thoughtful minds just 

 referred to, finding no trace of evidence in favor of any 

 other origin, are driven to seek in the interaction of social 

 forces the genesis and development of man's moral nature. 

 If they succeed in their search and I think they are sure 

 to succeed social duty will be raised to a higher level of 

 significance and the deepening sense of social duty will, it 

 is" to be hoped, lessen, if not obliterate, the strifes and 

 heartburnings which now beset and disfigure our social 

 life. Toward this great end it behoves us one and all to 

 work; and devoutly wishing its consummation, I have 

 the honor, ladies and gentlemen, to bid you a friendly 

 farewell. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION". 



THIS WORLD of ours has, on the whole, been an inclem- 

 ent region for the growth of natural truth; but it may be 

 that the plant is all the hardier for the bendings and 

 buffetings it has undergone. The torturing of a shrub, 

 within certain limits, strengthens it. Through the strug- 

 gles 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 over- 

 come the opposing forces. Feeling 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 



