i io IGNORABIMUS ET RESTRINGAAWR. 



Bois-Reymond availed themselves of the particularly 

 solemn occasions of the fiftieth anniversary and of the 

 fiftieth meeting of the German naturalists and physi- 

 cians to lay lance in rest against the progress and free- 

 dom of science. The eager approbation which they 

 both promptly met with from the party of the clergy 

 and of all other enemies of free thought Yirchow, in- 

 deed, in much greater measure than Du Bois-Reymond 

 appears to justify this inquiry. I believe I can con- 

 tribute something towards answering it, and as I am 

 not fettered by any reverence for the Berlin tribunal 

 of science or by any anxiety as to vexing influential 

 Berlin connections, as most of my colleagues are who 

 think as I do, I do not hesitate, here as elsewhere, to 

 express my honest conviction in the freest and frankest 

 manner, not troubling myself about the wrath which 

 may be roused in many actual and not actual offi- 

 cials in Berlin at this exposition of the unvarnished 

 truth. 



The primary cause of their " misunderstanding," and 

 the best excuse that can be offered for it, in Virchow 

 and Du Bois-Reymond alike, lies in their unacquaint- 

 ance with the advance of modern morphology. As 

 has been repeatedly stated, no natural science is so 

 directly to be referred to the doctrine of evolution 

 and more particularly to the theory of descent as 

 morphology. It is because we morphologists can 



