i^6 



NATURE 



{Dec. 12, 1878 



ticularly the attempt simply to depose the Church, and to replace 

 its dogma by a religion of descent without further trouble — these 

 attempts, I say, must fail, and their failure would at the same 

 time bring the greatest dangers upon the position of science 

 generally.' After this every one will easily understand the 

 joyful outbursts of the whole clerical press after Virchow's 

 Munich address. It is known that there is ten times more joy 

 in heaven over one repentant sinner than oven ten just men. If 

 Rudolf Virchow, the 'renowned materialist,' the 'radical 

 progressist,' the principal representative of the ' atheism of 

 science,' is suddenly so completely converted, if openly and 

 loudly he proclaims the ' dogmas of the Church ' as the only 

 certain 'basis of instruction,' then, indeed, the combatai\t 

 Church may sing ' Ilosanna in excelsis ! ' There is only one 

 point to be regretted, and that is that Virchow has not stated 

 which of the many different Church religions is the only true 

 one, and which of the numberless and contradicting dogmas are 

 to become the certain basis of education. We all know that 

 each Church thinks itself the only one leading to eternal bliss, 

 and its dogma the only true one. Now whether it is Protest- 

 antism or Catholicism, Reformed or Lutheran confession, 

 Anglican or Presbyterian dogma, Roman or Greek doctrine, 

 Mosaic or Islamitic tenets, Buddhaism or Bramahism, or one of 

 the fetish creeds of the Indians or coloured tribes which is to 

 become the lasting and certain 'basis of instruction,' this, no 

 doubt, Virchow will not hesitate to state at the next meeting of 

 the German Association of Naturalists and Physicians." 



"At all events, the instruction of the future," according to 

 Virchow, "will be very much simplified. Because the dogma 

 of the Trinity as the basis of mathematics, the dogma of the 

 resurrection of the flesh as the basis of medicine, the dogma of 

 the infallibility as the basis of psychology, the dogma of the 

 Immaculate Conception as the basis of the science of generation, 

 the dogma of the stoppage of the sun as the basis of astronomy, 

 the dogma of the creation of the earth, animals, and plants, as 

 the basis of geology and phylogeny, these or some other dogmas 

 from other creeds, will make all further doctrines rather super- 

 fluous. Virchow, this 'critical nature,' of course knows as 

 well as I do, that these dogmas are not true, and yet, according 

 to his view, they are not to be replaced as * bases of instruction ' 

 by the theories and hypotheses of modern natm-al science, of 

 which Virchow says himself that they may be true, probably are 

 true to a great extent, but have not been ' proved for certain ' 

 as yet." 



Finally, Haeckel points out that it seems to be bitter irony if 

 Virchow, at the opening address, recalls the memory of Oken, 

 whom he celebrates as the martyr of free science, and at the end 

 of the same address demands that this "liberty of science" 

 shall apply only to research, but not to instruction, and that no 

 problems, no theories, no hypotheses are to be taught. 



In Chapter VI. the application of the theory of descent to 

 socialism is discussed. The author "entirely endorses Prof. 

 Oscar's Schmidt's view on the subject, and shows that the theory 

 of descent and the socialistic theory are " like fire and water to 

 one another." The theory of descent is, on the contrary, aristo- 

 cratic in the highest sense of the word. Of course, from any 

 theory, be it ever so true and sound, the most absurd deductions 

 may be drawn if it is misapplied, and the author warns particu- 

 larly against the misapplication of scientific theories to political 

 or social questions. Theory and practice rarely correspond in 

 human life. Haeckel points to the history of Christendom to 

 illustrate his argument. " It is certain that the Christian religion, 

 as well as the Buddhistic doctrine, if freed from all dogmatic 

 fables, contain an excellent humane kernel ; now it is just this 

 humane and truly social -democratic part of the Christian creed, 

 which proclaims the equality of all men before God, and 

 preaches the 'Love thy neighbour as thyself,' in fact 'love' in 

 its noblest sense, compassion with the poor and unfortunate, &c., 

 — we say these truly humane sides of the Christian faith are so 

 natural, so pure and noble, that we comprise them with pleasure 

 amongst the moral laws of our monistic natural religion. . . . 

 But what, we must ask, have the chosen representatives, the 

 ' God-taught ' (Gottgelehrte) priests, made of this ' religion of 

 love ' ? It is written with letters of blood upon the pages of the 

 history of mankind for the last 1,800 years ! All that different 

 Church religions have done for the forcible propagation of their 

 creeds and for annihilation of 'heretics,' all that Jews have done 

 against heathens, Roman Emperors against Christians, Moham- 

 medans against Christians and Jews, all that is surpassed by 

 the hecatombs of human victims whidi Christianity has slaugh- 



tered for the propagation of its doctrine. And indeed 

 Christians against Christians. Rightly-believing Christians 

 against wrongly-believing Christians. We need only think of the 

 middle ages, of the Inquisition, of the unheard-of and inhuman 

 cruelties which the 'most Christian kings' oi Spain and theirworthy 

 colleagues in France, Italy, &c., have committed. Hundreds of 

 thousands then died the most cruel death of fire, simply because 

 they did not bend their reason beneath the yoke of the most 

 flagrant superstition, and because their dutiful conviction for- 

 bade them to deny what they had recognised to be natural 

 truths. There exists no detestable, abominable, or inhuman 

 action which was not then and up to the present day committed 

 in the name of and on account of ' true Christianity.' And 

 what about the morals of priests, who designate themselves as 

 servants of God's word, and whose duty first of all should be to 

 regulate their own lives according to the teachings of Christ- 

 ianity ? The long, uninterrupted, and horrible chain of crimes 

 of all kinds which forms the history of the Roman pontiffs, gives 

 the best reply to this question. And as these ' representatives 

 of God upon earth ' have done, so did their helpmates and sub- 

 ordinates, so did the ' rightly -believing ' priests of other confes- 

 sions, not failing to establish as glaring as possible a contrast 

 between the practices of their own lives and the noble teachings 

 of Christian love which they always talk about. What we have 

 just said of Christianity applies to all other religious and moral 

 doctrines, indeed to all doctrines which in the wide domain of 

 practical philosophy, in the education of the young, and the 

 civilisation of the masses, are to show their power. The theo- 

 retical kernel of these doctrines can always and everywhere form 

 the greatest contrast with its practical application, according to 

 the contradictory nature of man. But what does all this matter 

 to the scientific investigator ? His sole and only task is to find 

 out truth, and to teach that what he has found to be true, un- 

 heeding what consequences may be drawn from his teachings by 

 the various parties in the State or Church." 



In the last chapter Haeckel compares the " Ignorabimus " 

 speech of Dubois-Reymond (delivered at the Leipzig meet- 

 ing in 1872) with Virchow's " Restringamur " address of 

 Munich, and refutes some of the views expressed by Dubois- 

 Reymond, particularly the view that there are two insur- 

 mountable obstacles in the way of our completely under- 

 standing nature and the world, viz., the essence of matter and 

 force and the human consciousness. Haeckel points out that 

 even if the problems in question are not solved at present, no 

 one has a right to declare them unsolvable. He then proceeds 

 to explain the reasons why the opposition to the theory 

 of descent has mainly originated amongst the Berlin 

 biologists, and adduces examples from the history of 

 science to show that a similar opposition to what have 

 now become established truths, has repeatedly sprung from 

 the same quarter. " It seems, indeed, to be the fate of 

 the most interesting of all sciences, of the history of roolutiotiy 

 that its most important steps of progress and its greatest dis- 

 coveries meet with the most powerful and lasting resistance. 

 Just as Wolf's fundamental epigenesis theorj', which was founded 

 in 1759, but was acknowledged only in 1812, so Lamarck's 

 theory of descent, founded in 1809, had to wait during full 

 fifty years before Darwin, in 1859, transformed it into the most 

 important acquisition of modern science. And how was this 

 most comprehensive of all biological theories fought against 

 during this time, in spite of all progress of the empirical 

 sciences ? Let us only remember how, in 1830, the celebrated 

 George Cuvier silenced the most eloquent advocate of this theory, 

 Geoffroy Saint Hilaire, in the midst of the Paris Academy, and 

 how almost at the same time, in 1829, its founder, the great 

 Lamarck, ended his laborious life, blind and in misery and 

 poverty, while his antagonist, Cuvier, enjoyed the highest honour 

 and the greatest splendour. And yet to-day we know that the 

 despised and derided doctrines of Lamarck and of Geoffroy 

 Saint Hilaire 'then contained the most important truths, while 

 Cuvier's much-admired and generally-adopted creation doctrine 

 has been now abandoned generally as an absurd and empty 

 error. Now if neither Haller against Wolff, nor Cuvier against 

 Lamarck, could permanently impede the progress of free re- 

 search, then still less will Virchow succeed in crushing Darwin's 

 admirable theory, even if he be assisted in an unenviable manner 

 by the noisy Capuchin sermons of his friend Bastian. Much as 

 we regret Virchow's hostile position in this great ' combat for 

 truth,' we do not underrate the effect of his well-founded 

 authority upon wider circles. No doubt the hostile attitude 



