THE SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS OF 1863 165 



could be reached philosophically by more or less 

 happy deductions from the scientific data. It 

 might or might not have lasting value in points of 

 detail. He was subject to the law of evolution. 

 He worked with analogy, and the things he com- 

 pared thereto were ever changing. It was all the 

 same to him. In any case the dawning glimmer 

 of the perfect light broadened out and lit up 

 vague outlines even in the cloud-wreathed un- 

 known. The others worked in such a way as to 

 leave beside them provinces of a virgin white- 

 ness, untouched by thought or logic. At times 

 they slipped into these provinces, and celebrated 

 their reconciliation-festival with ^'the Churches." 

 The layman continued to think that the Churches 

 wielded an absolute authority ; that the scientist, 

 abandoning his natural philosophy, came to pay 

 them tribute. This situation has done infinite 

 mischief, more than the wildest and even obviously 

 perverse philosophy ever did. It put the scientist 

 in the position of a tolerated vassal in the world of 

 thought — the world that the Churches had held in 

 chains for ages. Woe to the man who ventured 

 to discuss '^ consciousness " ! Not because science 

 had but the slender proportions of a pioneer in that 

 field, and because there was a danger of it making 

 great mistakes with its natural philosophy. No, 

 but because the white neutral field began here that 

 we had agreed to respect — we ^^ exact" scientists 

 and '* the Churches." This was the real reason 

 why Virchow and so many others who advocated 

 the strict investigation of facts had forfeited the 



