PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION 435 



the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of knowledge 

 than a protest against the assumption of knowledge which 

 must long, if not always, lie beyond us, and the claim to 

 which is a source of perpetual confusion." At the same 

 time, when I look with strenuous gaze into the whole 

 problem as far as my capacities allow, overwhelming won- 

 der is the predominant feeling. This wonder has come to 

 me from the ages just as much as my understanding, and 

 it has an equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, 

 abandoning your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you 

 place, with Job, your forehead in the dust and acknowl- 

 edge the authorship of this universe to be past finding 

 out — if, having made this confession, and relinquished the 

 views of the mechanical theologian, you desire, for the sat- 

 isfaction of feelings which I admit to be, in great part, 

 those of humanity at large, to give ideal form to the 

 Power that moves all things— it is not by me that you 

 will find objections raised to this exercise of ideality, if 

 it be only consciously and worthily carried out. 



Again, I think Professor Virchow's position, in regard 

 to the question of contagium animatum is not altogether 

 that of true philosophy. He points to the antiquity of 

 the doctrine. *'It is lost,'* he says, '*in the darkness of 

 the Middle Ages. We have received this name from our 

 forefathers, and it already appears distinctly in the six- 

 teenth century. We possess several works of that time 

 which put forward contagium animatum as a scientific 

 doctrine, with the same confidence, with the same sort 

 of proof, with which the *Plastidulic souF is now set 

 forth." 



These speculations of our "forefathers" will appeal 



