Virchow’s opposition to Darwin 145 
as a leading authority. In Germany, especially, the great majority 
of the members of the anthropological societies took up an attitude 
of hostility to him from the very beginning of the controversy in 
1860. The Descent of Man was not merely rejected, but even the 
discussion of it was forbidden on the ground that it was “unscientific.” 
The centre of this inveterate hostility for thirty years—especially 
after 1877—was Rudolph Virchow of Berlin, the leading investigator 
in pathological anatomy, who did so much for the reform of medicine 
by his establishment of cellular pathology in 1858. As a prominent 
representative of “exact” or “descriptive ” anthropology, and lacking 
a broad equipment in comparative anatomy and ontogeny, he was 
unable to accept the theory of descent. In earlier years, and 
especially during his splendid period of activity at Wiirzburg (1848— 
1856), he had been a consistent free-thinker, and had in a number of 
able articles (collected in his Gesammelte Abhandlungen)' upheld 
the unity of human nature, the inseparability of body and spirit. 
In Jater years at, Berlin, where he was more occupied with political 
work and sociology (especially after 1866), he abandoned the positive 
monistic position for one of agnosticism and scepticism, and made 
concessions to the dualistic dogma of a spiritual world apart from 
the material frame. 
In the course of a Scientific Congress at Munich in 1877 the 
conflict of these antithetic views of nature came into sharp relief. 
At this memorable Congress I had undertaken to deliver the first 
address (September 18th) on the subject of “Modern evolution in 
relation to the whole of science.” I maintained that Darwin’s theory 
not only solved the great problem of the origin of species, but that 
its implications, especially in regard to the nature of man, threw 
considerable light on the whole of science, and on anthropology in 
particular. The discovery of the real origin of man by evolution 
from a long series of mammal ancestors threw light on his place in 
nature in every aspect, as Huxley had already shown in his excellent 
lectures of 1863. Just as all the organs and tissues of the human 
body had originated from those of the nearest related mammals, 
certain ape-like forms, so we were bound to conclude that his mental 
qualities also had been derived from those of his extinct primate 
ancestor. 
This monistic view of the origin and nature of man, which is now 
admitted by nearly all who have the requisite acquaintance with 
biology, and approach the subject without prejudice, encountered a 
sharp opposition at that time. The opposition found its strongest 
expression in an address that Virchow delivered at Munich four 
days afterwards (September 22nd), on “The freedom of science in 
1 Gesammelte Abhandlungen zur wi. haftlichen Medizin, Berlin, 1856. 
D. 10 
