xxiv PREFACE. 



that, therefore, the matter in question is not an unjus- 

 tifiable attack by me on a formerly revered friend, but 

 a defence to which I am compelled by repeated and 

 sharp attacks on his part. 



Another reason which urges me at last to break 

 silence consists in the continual and ample advantage 

 that all the clerical and reactionary organs have been 

 taking of Virchow's address, during the last three- 

 quarters of a year, in favour of mental retrogression. 

 The shouts of triumph with which they at once hailed 

 Virchow's "grand moral action," that is to say, his 

 perversion from a Free-thinker to the side of mental 

 darkness, was the first signal for that persistent utili- 

 sation of his authority of which the pernicious conse- 

 quences can by no means be escaped. Friedrich von 

 Hellwald, in his discussion on the speeches made at 

 Munich, has already strikingly pointed out 1 the grave 

 danger that exists when just such an one as Virchow, 

 standing under the banner of political liberalism and 

 wrapped in the mantle of severe science, decisively 

 combats against the freedom of science and of its 

 doctrines. This serious danger has never shown so 

 threatening an aspect as at the present moment, when 

 our political and religious life appears to be encounter- 

 ing such a reaction as has not occurred for a long 

 time. The two insane attempts which, within a few 



1 Kosruos, Vol. II. p. 172. 



