AT THE UNIVERSITY 73 



on the days he spent at Wiirtzhurg, had nothing 

 but grateful recognition to say of Virchow. ^'I 

 learned," he says in 1894, ''in the three terms I 

 spent under Virchow the art of the finest analytic 

 observation and the most rigorous control of what 

 I observed. I was his assistant for some time, 

 and my notes were especially praised by him. 

 But what I chiefly admired in him at Wxirtzburg 

 was his wide outlook, the breadth and philosophic 

 character of his scientific ideas." 



The theory that Virchow put before his pupils 

 was pure Monism, or a unified conception of the 

 world without any distinction of physical and 

 metaphysical. Life was defined, not as a mystic 

 eccentricity in an orderly nature, but plainly as 

 a higher form of the great cosmic mechanism. 

 Man, the object of medical science, was said to be 

 merely a higher vertebrate, subject to the same 

 laws as the rest. 



We can see very well that this was quite natural. 

 If there was any man likely to put forward such 

 views it was Virchow. He had passed through 

 Miiller's school, but was now one of the younger 

 group who, even during Miiller's life, were gradu- 

 ally adopting certain very profound views on life 

 and man, without any particular resistance on the 

 master's part. The chief characteristic of nearly 

 the whole of this group was the lack of the vol- 

 canic stratum below of deep and personal religious 

 feeling ; in MuUer this had been throughout life 

 an enchained Titan among the rocks of his logical 

 sense of reahties, yet it had given a gentle glow 



