PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 419 



men, I think we should be abusing our power, we should 

 be imperilling our power, unless in our teaching we re- 

 strict ourselves to this perfectly safe and unassailable do- 

 main. From this domain we may make incursions into the 

 field of problems^ and I am sure that every venture of that 

 kind will then find all needful security and support.'* 1 

 have emphasized by italics two sentences in the foregoing 

 series of quotations; the other italics are the author's 

 own. 



Virchow's position could not be made clearer by any 

 comments of mine than he has here made it himself. 

 That position is one of the highest practical importance. 

 *' Throughout our whole German Fatherland," he says, 

 *'men are busied in renovating, extending, and develop- 

 ing the system of education, and in inventing fixed forms 

 in which to mold it. On the threshold of coming events 

 stands the Prussian law of education. In all the German 

 States larger schools are being built, new educational es- 

 tablishments are set up, the universities are extended, 

 'higher' and 'middle' schools are founded. Finally comes 

 the question. What is to be the chief substance of the 

 teaching ?' ' What Yirchow thinks it ought and ought not 

 to be is disclosed by the foregoing quotations. There 

 ought to be a clear distinction made between science in 

 the state of hypothesis, and science in the state of fact. 

 In school teaching the former ought to be excluded. And, 

 as he assumes it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the 

 ban of exclusion ought, he thinks, to fall upon the theory 

 of evolution. 



I now freely offer myself for judgment before the tri- 

 bunal whose law is here laid down. First and foremost, 



