CHAPTER X. 



In order to judge of the present status of Darwinism 

 it is of primary importance to note the position assumed 

 by the few really eminent investigators, who as pupils of 

 Haeckel still seem to have remained true to him. Among 

 these I reckon Oskar Hertwig, the well known Berlin anat- 

 omist. 



As early as 1899 in an address at the University on. 

 Die Lehre vom Organismus und ihre Beziehung sur Sosialwis- 

 senschaft, Hertwig gave expression to views which are very 

 little in harmony with the doctrines proceeding from Jena,, 

 and which are also put forth in his manual, The Cell and the 

 Tissue. In that address we read (p. 8): "With the same 

 right, with which, for the good of scientific progress, an 

 energetic protest has been raised against a certain m3nsti- 

 cism which attaches to- the word Vitality, I beg to 

 give warning against an opposite extreme which is but too 

 apt to lead to onesided and unreal, and hence also> ulti- 

 mately to false notions of the vital process, against an ex- 

 treme which would see in the vital process nothing but- st 

 chemico-physical and mechanical problem and thinks to 

 arrive at true scientific knowledge only in so far as it suc- 

 ceeds in tracing back phenomena to the movements of re- 

 pelling and attracting atoms and in subjecting them to- 

 mathematical calculation." 



"With right does the physicist Mach, with reference to 



137' 



