Ernst Haeckel

“ We need only call to mind our present doctrine of evolution. The problem of creation—the question as to the origin of animal and vegetable species—was universally looked upon as transcendental and perfectly insoluble, till the genius of Lamarck established the principles of the theory of descent in his admirable "Philosophie Zoologique" in 1809. Nay, even then most—and among them the most distinguished—biologists thought the problem of creation a quite insoluble mystery, and Darwin was the first to solve it, fifty years later, by his theory of selection in 1859. ”

“ Every one who has attentively followed his occasional utterances on the theory of descent during the last decade with an unprejudiced eye and an unbiassed judgment, must be convinced that he fundamentally rejects it. Still, his dissent has always been so obscured, and his judgment on Darwinism in particular so wrapped in ambiguities, that an opportune conversion to the opposite side seemed not impossible; and many, even among those who stood near to Virchow—his friends and disciples—did not know to what point he was in fact an opponent of the evolution hypothesis in general. ”

“ Faithful to the glorious traditions of a past extending over three centuries, the little Thuringian university of Jena will find a way to preserve her perfect and unlimited freedom. She will ever bear in mind that she is the first Protestant university of Germany, protesting against every strait-waistcoat which hierarchical obstinacy would force upon human reason, against every dogma by which the arrogance of the learned may try to suppress all freedom of teaching. ”

“ The distinguished position which Virchow, twenty-five years since, won by his natural conception of the nature of man, and the great fame which he then earned in the fight for the truth, rest precisely on this, that on every occasion he maintained with his utmost vigour the unity of all vital phenomena, and asserted their mechanical character. All organic life, even the soul-life, rests on mechanical principles, on that causal mechanism of which Kant said that "it alone contained a practical interpretation of nature," and that "without it no natural science can exist." ”

“ There is a sect of scientific pharisees who thank God that they are not as those publicans who address the public. If this sect includes anybody who has attempted the business without failing in it, I suspect that he must have given up keeping a conscience. For assuredly if a man of science, addressing the public, bethinks him, as he ought to do, that the obligation to be accurate—to say no more than he has warranty for, without clearly marking off so much as is hypothetical—is far heavier than if he were dealing with experts, he will find his task a very admirable mental exercise. ”

“ None but objective and absolutely ascertained knowledge is to be imparted by the teacher to the learner; nothing subjective, no knowledge that is open to correction, only facts, no hypotheses." The investigation of such problems as the whole nation may be interested in must not be restricted; that is liberty of inquiry; but the problem ought not, without anything farther, to be the subject of teaching. "When we teach we must restrict ourselves to the smaller, and yet how great, departments which we are actually masters of." ”

“ The power of development inherent in science and knowledge is hereby simply swept away with a word. Almost every great and difficult problem of knowledge seems to most or all contemporary thinkers insoluble, and every path to the solution of it seems closed, till at last the bold genius appears whose clear sight detects the right path which till then was hidden, and which leads to the required knowledge. ”

“ But let us go over the rest of the sciences to see what, according to Virchow, may be taught in each without endangering the safety of science. In the whole department of biology, as well as in zoology—including anthropology—and in botany, instruction must be limited to imparting those trifling fragments of knowledge which either consist of mere descriptions of dry facts, or which supply an explanation of them by mathematical formulas. Morphology must be taught as mere descriptive anatomy and systematising, the history of development as mere descriptive ontogenesis. ”

“ And next to this centrifugal tendency of our German national mind nothing will so greatly contribute to it as a vigorous opposition to the free advance of science, such as is just now declaring itself in the metropolis. For by just so much as Berlin is dragged back by it in the mighty onward stream of free intellectual movement, by so much will it see itself outstripped by the other seats of culture in Germany, which follow the stream with enthusiasm, or at least without resistance. ”

“ Virchow brings against the doctrine of evolution, he takes good care in no way to touch the kernel of the matter. How, indeed, would it have been possible without arriving at conclusions wholly opposed to those which he has declared? For the theory of descent proclaims more clearly than any other scientific theory, that that equality of individuals which socialism strives after is an impossibility, that it stands, in fact, in irreconcilable contradiction to the inevitable inequality of individuals which actually and everywhere subsists. ”

“ Theology alone is the one true science, and its dogmas alone may be taught as certain. Of course! for it proceeds directly from revelation, and only divine revelation can be "quite certain;" it alone can never err. Yes, incredible as it sounds, Virchow, the sceptical opponent of dogma, the leader of the fight for "liberty of science," Virchow now finds the only sure basis for instruction in the dogmas of the Church. ”

“ There are, as is well known, two problems which Du Bois-Reymond propounds as the impassable boundary of human knowledge of nature; limits which indeed the human mind is not only incapable of passing at the present stage of its development, but which it never can be capable of passing in any more advanced stage. The first problem is the nature and connection of matter and force; the second is human consciousness. ”

“ How, then, is it possible that Virchow, the experienced and skilled politician, who, above all things, preaches caution and reserve in theory, suddenly makes just such an application of transformation and Darwinism—an application so radically perverse that it actually flies in the face of the fundamental ideas of these doctrines? I myself am nothing less than a politician. ”

“ It is therefore impossible for any objective zoologist, according to the principles of comparative systematisation, to ascribe to man any other place in the animal world than in the order of apes; and it is quite immaterial whether we designate this individual group as the Order of Apes, or, with Linnæus, as the Primates. For the phylogenetic construction of the system, the common descent of man and of apes from one common parent-form, necessarily follows from this inevitable grouping, and on this proposition only all the general inferences of the "ape-hypothesis" depend. ”

“ No profound acquaintance with the history of science is needed to produce the conviction, that the advancement of natural knowledge has been effected by the successive or concurrent efforts of men, whose minds are characterised by tendencies so opposite that they are forced into conflict with one another. The one intellect is imaginative and synthetic; its chief aim is to arrive at a broad and coherent conception of the relations of phenomena ”

“ The teacher should, above everything, guide the pupil to this general knowledge, and then it will be easy to him, by the aid of proper methods, to acquire mastery in each individual and special branch. Thus in medicine, as in every other science, he is not the best qualified who, on Bastian's method, has loaded his memory with a confused mass of undigested facts, and has flung them all together into his brain without any order ”

“ I therefore have not the smallest doubt that the morphological training of medical students, as at present conducted at Berlin under the influence of Reichert and his colleagues, is as far behind that of Müller's day, twenty or thirty years ago, in all general comprehension of the typical organism, as it is in advance of it in specialist acquirements.
In medical, as in all other scientific learning, the highest aim does not consist in seeking to accumulate a vast chaotic mass of isolated items of knowledge, but in a general comprehension of the science, its aims and problems. ”

“ The whole theoretical side of chemistry is an airy structure of hypotheses such as does not exist in any other science. In the last three decades we have seen a whole series of the most different theories rapidly succeed each other, none of which can be positively proved, though at least one of them is taught by every professor of chemistry. But what is worst of all, the common basis of all the most dissimilar chemical theories, viz., the atomic theory, is as unproved and unprovable as any hypothesis can be. ”

“ Nothing, perhaps, shows so plainly as the history of Christianity how little theory and practice harmonise in human life; how little pains are taken, even by those whose calling it is to uphold established doctrines, to apply their natural consequences to practical life. ”

“ Only one thing is to be regretted, that Virchow has not more clearly defined which of the many different church-religions is the only true one, and which of the innumerable and contradictory dogmas are to form the sure basis of instruction. We all know that each Church regards itself as the only truly saving one, and her own dogma as the only true one. ”

“ I suppose because I do not sufficiently sympathise with Socialists. All the greater is my regret that Professor Virchow did not himself unfold the links of the hidden bonds which unite evolution with revolution, and bind together the community of descent with the community of goods. ”

“ It has been imagined that this soul-matter, which resembles that imponderable ether which is the medium of light, is diffused between the ponderable molecules of the soul-organs and especially of the nerve-cells, and that this connection of the imponderable "soul" with the ponderable body subsists only so long as the individual life lasts. At the instant of the first beginning of the individual organism, at the moment of generation, this imponderable "soul" passes into the body, and at the instant of death, at the annihilation of the living individual, it again quits the body. ”

“ Not quite twenty years have passed by, and yet, in the course of that time, in Virchow's views of the universe, in his conception of human nature, and of the soul-life, a change has been effected than which we can conceive of no greater. We learn to our surprise that psychical and corporeal processes are wholly different phenomena; that no scientific necessity whatever exists for extending the province of psychical processes beyond the circle of those bodies in which, and by which, we see them actually exhibited. ”

“ The aversion and contempt which the theories of descent and selection have met with at Berlin, more than in any other place, is in great measure to be explained by the circumstance that, during the last two decades, morphological studies have been more neglected in that university than any others. In no other city of Germany has evolution in general, as well as Darwinism in particular, been so little valued, so utterly misunderstood, and treated with such sovereign disdain as in Berlin. ”

“ Physiology, as the science especially of the functions or living activity of the organism, addressed itself more and more to exact and experimental methods: morphology, on the contrary, as the science of the forms and structure of animals and plants, could naturally make but very small use of this method; it must take refuge more and more in the history of evolution, and so constitute an historical natural science. It was on this very historical and genetic method of morphology, in contradistinction to the exact and experimental method of physiology, that I based my Munich address ”

“ The dogma of creation, the mystic and dualistic doctrine of the isolated creation of each separate variety, was annihilated at one blow; the belief in transmutation has now for ever taken its place—the mechanistic and monistic doctrine of the metamorphosis of organic forms, of the descent of all the species of one natural class from a common parent-form. How complete a change the science of mechanical morphology has by this means been compelled to undergo, I have endeavoured to point out in my "General Morphology;" ”

“ Socialism demands equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions, equal enjoyments for every citizen alike; the theory of descent proves, in exact opposition to this, that the realisation of this demand is a pure impossibility, and that in the constitutionally organised communities of men, as of the lower animals, neither rights nor duties, neither possessions nor enjoyments have ever been equal for all the members alike nor ever can be. ”

“ The relation that these three great theories, which are frequently confounded, bear to one another may, according to the present position of science, be simply defined as follows:—I. Monism, the universal theory of development, or the monistic progenesis-hypothesis, is the one only scientific theory which affords a rational interpretation of the whole universe and satisfies the craving of our human reason for causality, by bringing all natural phenomena into a mechanical causal-connection as parts of a great uniform process of evolution. ”

“ Every naturalist who is familiar with the comparative morphology and physiology of the lower animals will here put in a decided contradiction, for he can no more refuse to admit the undoubted sensation and voluntary motion of the one-celled Infusoria than of the many-celled hydroid polyps. The body of the true Infusoria (Ciliata, Acineta, &c.) , and many other Protista, remain throughout life one single cell, and, nevertheless, this cell is as fully furnished with all the most important attributes of the soul, with sensation and volition, as any one of the higher animals with a nervous system. ”

“ Now these two great branches of biology, which are equally important and have an equal claim on our attention, are so dependent the one on the other, that a real scientific [114] understanding of organic life can never be obtained without due relative study of both. The masterly and incomparable teaching of Johannes Müller owed a great part of its captivating charm to his equitable regard for morphology and physiology, as well as to his comprehensive treatment, from the broadest point of view, of the enormous mass of details to be dealt with. ”

“ For the dogma of the Trinity in Unity as a basis of mathematics, the dogma of the resurrection of the body as a basis of medicine, the dogma of infallibility as a basis of psychology, the dogma of the immaculate conception as a basis of genetic science, the dogma of the staying of the sun as a basis of astronomy, the dogma of the creation of the earth, animals, and plants [82] as a basis of geology and phylogenesis—these or any other dogma, at pleasure, from any other church will make all other doctrine quite superfluous. ”