156 HAECKEL 



delimitation of the provinces of the human mind, 

 as Virchow lays it down in the old style. It is 

 true that materialism is a real philosophy, especially 

 in the form current at the time and given to it by 

 Vogt and Biichner. But it is a question whether 

 we see, observe, or investigate at all, if we com- 

 pletely exclude philosophy; whether the philosophic 

 thought can be really pumped out of even the most 

 rigorous and exact '^ observation of facts," like air 

 in the air-pump ; whether there are any such 

 things as purely objective ^^ facts" in this sense 

 in any human brain. And it is also a question 

 whether the facts, however objectively we regard 

 them, do not arrange themselves, when they are 

 numerous, in logical series, which force us to draw 

 conclusions as to the unknown by the very laws of 

 probability; in other words, whether they do not 

 always produce a ** philosophy " in the long run. 

 However, these questions are all well within the 

 pure atmosphere of science. It is Virchow's 

 practical conclusions that are interesting ; and he 

 goes on to draw them freely. 



The man of science gives us no dogmatic 

 philosophy of any kind, but facts. But for these 

 facts and for the research that leads to them he 

 must have an absolutely free path. No power can 

 legitimately stand in his way that does not oSer 

 him more of what he regards as his palladium — 

 facts. And, curiously enough, when we think of 

 later events, the illustration that Virchow takes 

 in 1863 to enforce this is — the Darwinism that 

 Haeckel had just put before them. 



