October 24, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



677 



Miiller in the latter 's just quoted "Gesch. 

 d. org. Naturw. im 19ten Jahrh. " 



Nageli, the botanist, whose philosophical 

 predispositions were very manifest in all 

 his work, was born in 1817, was for a time 

 under the influence of Oken, heard Hegel 

 in Berlin, soon turned away from the Na- 

 turphilosophie with a decided sense of dis- 

 illusionment, contributed largely to science, 

 but remained in spirit a philosopher to the 

 end of his days. 



More indirect, but extremely obvious, is 

 the relation of Virchow himself to the 

 Naturphilosophie. Bom in 1821, and 

 growing up as he did in the generation 

 when the Naturphilosophie was generally 

 regarded with disfavor by all the strongest 

 scientific men, Virchow, like Helmholtz, 

 had not first to live through and overcome 

 an adherence to the doctrines of the Na- 

 turphilosophen. But he too was as full of 

 a philosophical spirit as if he had been 

 a speculative thinker. His essay, "Die 

 Einheitsbestrebungen in der wissenschaft- 

 lichen Medecin," belonging to the late 

 forties, is a defense of certain leading 

 ideas which he never could have formu- 

 lated if he had not come to consciousness 

 under the influence of the philosophical 

 problems of his time. His interesting con- 

 ception of the relation of medicine to social 

 science, and even to polities, his definition 

 of his own philosophy as "Humanism," 

 his insistence upon the search for unity of 

 knowledge as the justification of all spe- 

 cialism — these are all philosophical notions 

 which one can only understand in their 

 relations to German thought at large. 

 Virchow 's frequent return, in his various 

 addresses, to the portrayal of the history 

 and the merits of the controversies of the 

 period of the Naturphilosophie, show how 

 much he was dependent for his original 

 inspiration and his spirit upon the issues 

 that the Naturphilosophie defined. In 



what sense does science seek for unity? 

 How is science related to religion, to the 

 humanities, to the social interests of man- 

 kind, to the problems of the theory of 

 knowledge? These are problems which 

 Virchow repeatedly faces. His vindication 

 of the right and the duty of special re- 

 search is a philosophical one. Moreover, 

 he too, as you well know, founds his work 

 as a pathologist upon the leading idea that 

 the study of the Entwickelungsgeschichte 

 of tissues, and, in particular, of morbid 

 growths, must be a central task for the 

 pathologist. Experience vindicated the 

 value of this idea. But the history of 

 philosophy had a good deal to do with the 

 importance which the idea had obtained 

 during the time of Virchow 's own youthful 

 process of development. 



So far for a few examples of tendencies 

 which were in those days quite prevalent. 

 But now for a somewhat more general 

 view. Nobody who takes a broader survey 

 of the history of German scholarship in the 

 second and third and fourth decades of 

 the nineteenth century can fail to see how 

 wide-spread was the influence of what may 

 in general be called the evolutionary idea 

 upon the whole conduct of special re- 

 search. It makes no difference whether 

 you turn to pathology or to Indo-European 

 philology, to the work of the students of 

 jurisprudence or to that of the compara- 

 tive embryologists, whether the cell-theory 

 or Bopp's Comparative Grammar is used 

 as your illustration — all sorts of branches 

 of special natural research, outside of phys- 

 ics and chemistry themselves, and espe- 

 cially in Germany, were in those days 

 guided by the idea that the most important 

 aspect of natural objects and processes that 

 could be studied was their historical aspect, 

 their growth, the history of their evolution, 

 unless indeed, as in physics and chemistry, 

 the phenomena presented few or no points 



