536 



NA TURE 



{Sept. 28, 1882 



origin of animal and vegetable species, and that he should 

 not live to see any noteworthy success following the experiment, 

 the mountain of opposing prejudice being so high. He thought 

 I had greatly over-estimated his small merit, and that the high 

 praise I had bestowed on it in my "General Morphology" 

 was far too exaggerated. We next came to speak of the 

 numerous and violent attacks on his work, which were then in 

 the ascendant. In the ca^e of many of those pitiful botches, one 

 was in fact quite at a loss whether more to lament the want of 

 understanding and judgment they showed or to give the greater 

 vent to the indignation one could not but feel at the arrogance 

 and presumption of those miserable scriblers who pooh-poohed 

 Darwin's ideas and bespattered his character. I had then, as 

 on later occasion-, repeatedly, expressed my just scorn of the 

 contemptible clan. Darwin smiled at this, and endeavoured to 

 calm me with the words, "My dear young friend, believe me, 

 one must have compassion and forbearance with such poor crea- 

 ture- ; the stream of truth they can only hold back for a passing 

 instant, but never permanently stem." 



In my later visits to Down in 1876 and 1S79 1 had the pleasure 

 of being able to relate to Darwin the mighty progress which in 

 the past intervals his doctrines had made in Germany. Their 

 decisive outburst happened more rapidly and more completely 

 here with us than in England, for the reason chiefly that the 

 power of social and religious prejudice is not nearly so strong 

 here as among our cousins across the Channel, who are better 

 placed than ourselves. Darwin was perfectly well aware of all 

 this ; though his knowledge of our language and literature was 

 defective, as he often complained, yet lie had the highest apprecia- 

 tion of our intellectual treasures. 



Darwin having in his great work of 1859, planting the basis of 

 his doctrine, said nothing regarding its anthropological conse- 

 quences, and having with wise reserve maintained silence on this 

 subject down to the year 1S71, it was for me of the highest 

 interest, even as early as my first visit to him in 1866, to con- 

 verse with him at large on that topic. As was to be expected, 

 the great thinker felt not the slightest misgiving in recognising 

 the necessary extension to man of the application of his doc- 

 trine of filiation. I had, therefore, the highest satisfaction in 

 being able to set forth to him the first genealogical tables which 

 1 had then designed, and in all essential points to receive bis 

 approval. Though the special study of comparative anatomy 

 and ontogeny, on which I based my phylogenetic plans, lay out 

 of Darwin's province, he yet completely perceived their import- 

 ance. In his celebrated work, in two volumes, on the " Descant 

 of Man and Selection in relation to Sex " (1871), he has, therefore, 

 declared himself to be in all principal points in harmony with me, 

 and has expressly emphasised the importance in relation to the 

 history of filiation of the numerous animal hereditary relics 

 we possess in our human vertebrate organism. 



If now we survey the huge mass of facts which in this and 

 other works Darwin has gathered together with just as much 

 forethought as boldness to serve as a support for his ideas— if 

 we regard the innumerable observations and experiments he has 

 himself instituted to establish their accuracy, we cannot but 

 wonder at the strength of the giant-mind which has amassed 

 such an abundance of knowledge and power, of experimental 

 knowledge and philosophical science in the narrow compass of 

 a single human life. Involuntarily we exclaim what a rare con- 

 stellation of happy circumstances there must have been to render 

 possible such extraordinary performance conjoined with com- 

 mensurate succes-. 



We must then, undoubtedly, admit that in the case of Darwin, 

 merit and fortune went hand in hand, and that rare favour on 

 the part of fate made it possible for him to execute completely 

 his great life-task. Free from all the cares and worries of a 

 week day existence, enjoying in security a comfortable home 

 and a happy family life, undisturbed by professional business 

 and official duties, he was able to devote himself throughout half 

 a century exclusively to his favourite studies. While the solitude 

 of his tranquil country-seat saved him from the turbulent traffic 

 in knowledge which in large cities consumes the best powers of 

 a man, it also supplied him with those conditions which were 

 most favourable to the composure and harmony of his rich 

 w orld of thoughts. In our opinion nothing is more prejudicial 

 to scientific work of a deep and earnest character than the 

 pedantic wrangling of onr great universities and the partisanship 

 of scientific colleges. From this as from all posts of honour 

 and other such disturbing influences of the outside world Darwin 

 his whole life long kept himself remote, and he acted wisely in 

 s j doing ! 



While, therefore, the great naturalist owed his unexampled 

 success in the first place to himself and his noble endowment , 

 some share in the credit must also be allowed to the favourable 

 scientific situation of the time, which was furthersome in a high 

 degree. Ever since the failure of the older nature-philosophy in 

 the beginning of our century, since Goethe and Kant in Ger- 

 many, Lamarck and Geoffrey in France, failed in their attempts 

 to direct the minds of men to the natural development of the 

 organic world, a strictly experimental method became the uni- 

 versal practice in the domain of biology. The task thus set 

 before scientific labourers was that of the most exact investiga- 

 tion into all the particular forms and phenomena of animal and 

 vegetable life ; the monistic explanation of the whole, and, in 

 particular, the solution of the problem of creation being aban- 

 doned. The foundation of embryonic history by Baer, of com- 

 parative anatomy and palaeontology by Cuvier, the reform oi 

 physiology by Johannes Midler, the propounding of the theory 

 of cells and of the doctrine of tissues by Schleiden and Schwann 

 had opened up new and grand provinces to natural experiment, 

 w hence was drawn by numerous labourers inquisitive for know- 

 ledge an astounding abundance of facts. In the short space of 

 half a century there arose quite a series of new sciences. 



The more, however, that from year to year the number of new 

 discoveries accumulated, the higher that the flood of literature 

 swelled, the more confused became the chaos of the general 

 theory of nature, and the greater was the necessity felt by 

 thoughtful inquirers for an elevation above the stifling mass of 

 detached observations to universal monistic points of view and to 

 the knowledge of real causes. This requirement was now mo-t 

 happily met by the new doctrine of development. It is true 

 that, as early as 1S09, in the year of Darwin's birth, Lamarck 

 had clearly demonstrated that the similarity of organic forms 

 was to be explained by their common derivation and their 

 diversity by their adaptation to the conditions of exi-tence. He 

 had, however, failed to attain a knowledge of the active causes 

 which Darwin fifty years later disclosed in his theory of 

 selection. 



It is therefore in complete contradiction with the historical 

 facts and a proof of utter ignorance of the history of biology, 

 when even at the present day a few individual opponents of 

 Darwinism declare the theory to be a vague hypothesis, in 

 support of which evidence has yet to be adduced. In reality the 

 very opposite is the case. The actual evidence for the common 

 descent of the manifold forms of life had already long been 

 adduced before it wa> formulated by Darwin into a clear scien- 

 tific theory. Numerous physiological experiments even had long 

 before been carried out in support of it. For the total results 

 of our horticulture and animal rearing — and the mass of new- 

 forms of life which civilised man has artificially produced to his 

 own profit and advantage are just so many experimental proofs 

 of the theory of selection. And as concerns the "struggle for 

 existence," the essential element in Darwinism, no particular 

 arguments, in truth, are needed ; for the whole history of 

 mankind is nothing else ! 



Our whole science of living nature, which in one word we 

 designate Biology, was, accordingly, perfectly prepared for the 

 reception of the fertilising ideas of Darwin, and hence in 

 large measure we explain their extraordinary success, in contrast 

 with the pre-maturity and inefficacy of the similar theories of 

 his predecessors. The high merits of these predecessors Darw in 

 with his noble sense of justice has on all occasions recognised. 

 It is, therefore, far from the spirit of the great master when in 

 our day some over-zealous disciples of his (particularly in 

 England) aie intent on celebrating him as the sole founder of 

 the new doctrine of development, as though it had all at once 

 sprung ready-made from the head of the thinker, like Minerva 

 armed from the forehead of Jupiter. On the contrary, we 

 believe that we are acting perfectly in the spirit of our deceased 

 master and friend if we here call to honourable remembrance his 

 great predecessors. The splendour of his name can only be 

 enhanced by showing that in the m »st iinpoitant principles of his 

 theory of nature he was in unison with a select number of the 

 greatest minds the history of human civilisation can boast of. 



We have to go back no less than twenty-five centuries, into 

 the grey fore-time of classic antiquity, to come upon the first 

 germs of a philosophy of nature, pursuing Darwin's goal with 

 distinct consciousness ; the demonstration, namely, of natural 

 causes for the phenomena of nature, and thereby the eviction of 

 faith in supernatural causality, of faith in miracles. The founders 

 of the Greek philosophy of nature in the seventh and sixth 

 century before Christ were the first who laid down this true foun- 



