PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 415 



dumb, who else is prepared with an answer? Let us 

 lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest 

 and philosopher, one and all. 11 



The roll of echoes which succeeded the Lecture deliv- 

 ered by Professor Virchow at Munich on September 22, 

 1877, was long and loud. The "Times'* published a 

 nearly full translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly 

 commented on in other journals. Glances from it to an 

 Address delivered by me before the Midland Institute in 

 the autumn of 1877, and published in this volume, were 

 very frequent. Professor Virchow was held up to me in 

 some quarters as a model of philosophic caution, who by 

 his reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his depth 

 reproved my shallowness. With true theologic courtesy I 

 was sedulously emptied, not only of the "principles of 

 scientific thought/' but of "common modesty" and "com- 

 mon sense." And though I am indebted to Professor 

 Clifford for recalling in the "Nineteenth Century" for 

 April the public mind in this connection from heated 

 fancy to sober fact, I do not think a brief additional ex- 

 amination of Virchow 's views, and of my relation to them, 

 will be out of place here. 



The keynote of his position is struck in the preface to 

 the excellent English translation of his lecture a preface 

 written expressly by himself. "Nothing," he says, "was 

 further from his intention than any wish to disparage the 

 great services rendered by Mr. Darwin to the advancement 

 of biological science, of which no one has expressed more 

 admiration than himself. On the other hand, it seemed 

 high time to him to enter an energetic protest against the 

 attempts that are made to proclaim the problems of re- 

 search as actual facts, and the opinions of scientists as 



