534 



NATURE 



{Sept. 28, 



scholars of the great naturalist lament the decease of the head- 

 master who had guided them, but even the most esteemed 

 of his opponents had to confess that one of the most significant 

 and influential spirits of the century had departed. This uni- 

 versal sentiment found its most eloquent expression in the fact 

 that immediately after his death the English newspapers of all 

 parties, and pre-eminently his conservative opponents, demanded 

 that the burial-place of the deceased should be in the Valhalla 

 of Great Britain, the national Temp'e of Fame, Westminster 

 Abbey, and that there in point of fact he found his last resting- 

 place by the side of the kindred-minded Newton. 



In no country of the world, however, England not excepted, 

 has the reforming doctrine of Darwin met with so much living 

 interest or evoked such a storm of writings, for and against, as 

 in Germany. It is therefore only a debt of honour we pay, if at 

 this year's assembly of German Naturalists and Physicians we 

 gratefully call to remembrance the mighty genius who has 

 departed, and bring home to our minds the loftiness of the 

 theory of nature to which he has elevated us. And what 

 place in the world could be more appropriate for rei dering this 

 service of thanks than Eisenach, with its Wartburg, this strong- 

 hold of free inquiry and free opinion! As in this sacred spot 

 360 years ago^Martin Luther, by his reform of the Church in its 

 head and members, introduced a new era in the history of 

 civilisation, so in our clays has Charles Darwin, by his reform of 

 the doctrine of development, constrained the whole perception, 

 thought, and volition of mankind into new and higher courses. 

 It is true that personally, both in his character and influence, 

 Darwin has more affinity to the rneek and mild Melanchthon 

 than to the powerful and inspired Luther. In the scope and im- 

 portance, however, of their great work of reformation, the two 

 cases were entirely parallel, and in both the success marks a new 

 epoch in the development of the human mind. 



Consider, first, the irrefragable fact of the unexampled success 

 which Darwin's reform of science has achieved in the sin rl 

 'if twenty-three years ! For never before since the beginning of 

 human science has any new theory penetrated so deeply to the 

 foui dation of the whole domain of knowledge or so deeply 

 affected the most cherished personal convictions of individual 

 students; never before has a new theory called forth such 

 vehement opposite n and so completely overcome it in such shoit 

 time. The depicture of the astounding revolution which 1 

 has accomplished in the minds of men in their entire view of 

 nature and conception of the world will form an interesting 

 chapter in the future history of the doctrine of development. 



In 1863, four years after the publication of Darwin's great work, 

 opening up a new path for the human mind, when at the meeting 

 of naturalists at Stettin, I for the first time openly drew attention 

 to the work, the great majority were of opinion that " nature- 

 ] hilosophical fantasies " of this sort were no proper subject for 

 earnest dil cussion. An esteemed zoologist pooh-poohed the 

 whole theory as the " harmless dream of a man napping," while 

 another compared it with table-turning and " Odic force." 

 A celebrated botanist maintained that there was not one single 

 fact to support this "untenable hypothesis," but that on the 

 contrary it contradicted all experiei ce, and a noted geologist 

 believed that the passing vertigo would soon inevitably sink into 

 dull sobriety. A well-known physiologist later on spoke of • the 

 whole history of filiation as a romance, and an anatomist 

 piophesied that in a few yerrs there would be no more talk 

 of it. In thick tomed works and in numberless treatises it was 

 demonstrated that Darwin's theory was false from beginning to 

 er.d, unproved by facts, delusive in its conclusions, ruinous in 

 its consequences. Nay, no further back than five yea 1 

 when in the meeting of Naturalists at Munich (1877) I expounded 

 " the current doctrine of development in relation to the whole 

 body of cience," I encountered the most unqualified antag 

 in one of our mo>l celebrated naturalists, who even went the 

 length of demanding the exclusion from education of Darwinism 

 as an " un roved hypothesis." I was compelled in my paper en 

 " Free Science and Free Teaching'," to take the right of the 

 latter emphatically under my protection. 



And of all these damnatory judgments on the part of cur 

 numerous opponents, how much remaii s current at the pre ent 

 clay? Nothing. The very number and bulk of their many- 

 sided attacks have only redounded to the completion of our 

 triumph. For the more the immovable citadel of the new theory 

 of nature was attacked from all sides and assailed by weapons of 

 the most varied kind, the more did its undaunted defenders feel 

 called upon to fill up the gaps which here and there disclosed 



themselves in their inclosing wall of defence. Every charge on 

 the part of the superannuated dogmas went to pieces against the 

 iron panoply of the united experimental sciences. The gifted 

 commander who had discovered the long-sought bond of union 

 for the sciences, and had led the defence under the conception of 

 oneness or monism, was able three years ago, on the celebration 

 of his seventieth birthday, to look with entire satisfaction on the 

 complete victory won by his troops, and with Goethe might 

 say — 



" Es wird die Spur ven meioen Erd;ntagen 

 Ni'.ht in .'Eonen untergehn " ' 



That such is really the case, and that in the evening of his 

 life Darwin was enabled to rejoice in the complete trium| h of 

 his good cau c e is a fact indisputably testified by the present state 

 of the natural sciences. We have only to cat a glmce into the 

 numerous periodicals and the most important works in those de- 

 partments which are more immediately and more integrally 

 affected by Darwin's teaching— zoology and botany, morphology 

 and physiology, ontogeny and palaeontology. In these subjects 

 scarcely any work of superior merit now appears which is not 

 penetrated by the idea of natural davel pment. With vanish- 

 ingly few and unimpor ant exceptions, almost all investigations 

 start with the assumption of Darwin's fundamental conception, 

 that the form-relationship between different species of animals 

 and plants is rooted in their essential blood-relationship, and 

 that the complicate relations of the organic world are to be 

 explained by the two factors of common origin and gradual 

 tram formati n. 



Darwini m, too, in its more specific sen e, the theory of selec- 

 tion, has maintained its ground in the face of all attacks; for 

 this it is which first discovers to us the phj i logical causes 

 through which the struggle for existence mechanically produces 

 transformation. And if natural selection is by no means the only 

 agent in transformation it at all events still remains its most im- 

 portant tnstrumen. Darwin, by his discovery of it under the ligl t 

 of artificial selection, solved one of thegreate-l 1 iological riddles. 

 For the doctrine of "natural selection through the straggle for 

 existence" is nothing less than the final solution of the great 

 problem: "How can forms of organisms constituted for a par- 

 ticular purpose come into being without the aid of a cause acting 

 with a particular purpose? How can an edifice replete with 

 design build itself up without design and without architect?" A 

 question which our greate-t critical philosopher, Kant, a hundred 

 year-, ago, declared to be insoluble. 



But in no province of natural science do Darwin's grand achieve- 

 ments appear so conspicuous as the one in which our own inves- 

 tigations revolve, in the wide pr vince of morphology, comparative 

 anatomy, and the history of development. For in morpln 

 which was also Goethe's special favourite, all kn ivi ledge that is 

 not merely superficial, depends directly on the recognition of 

 the doctrine of filiation; and here it is, par icularly, that by its 

 help the most brilliant results have been attained in the shortest 

 time. The genealogical trees of pai ticular groups of forms, which 

 at the beginning hardly dared venture into the light of day as 

 new-fangled (hac istiscie) hypotheses, are n )w, in the case of n any 

 organic group-, completely established facts. To cite but a few ex- 

 amples, no competent zoologist any longer calls in question the 

 decent of hires from tapir-like palaeotheria, of ruminant 

 animals from swine-like anoplctheria, of bird-, from lizard-like 

 reptile-. Nor does any one any longer doubt that all higher 

 air-breathing vertebrates have their origin in lower gill-breathing 

 fishes. The most important and most disputed, howevi 



s of descent, that, namely, which derives man from 

 ape-like mammals, has of late year, in con-equence of more 

 matured knowledge, gained for itself such gemral recognitii n at 

 the hands of competent ex; ert°, that the great majority of them 

 nc w deem it jut as well grounded as any of the foregoing phylo- 

 genetic hypotheses. 



In the face of such encouraging unanimity we can afford 

 quietly to ignore the opposition which is still raised here and 

 there by some single opponents of transformation. There is 

 ore capital fact in our favour, the whole of the younger genera- 

 tion i- working in Darwin's spirit, and far beyond the limits of 

 il circles bis doctrine is operating as a ferment, stimu- 

 lating 1 1 nearer solution the greatest problems of human know- 

 ledge. 



Celebrating here to-day the complete victory of Darwin s 

 doctrine of development, as we are, accordingly, entitled to do, 

 1 the influence of my earthly days 

 Will last through eons. 



