Part 1 (1/2)
Freedo
by Ernst Haeckel and T H Huxley
PREFATORY NOTE
In co with the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those ”who in quarrels interpose,” ee from some brain-cupboard in which they have been hidden sincehich both the attack and the defence abound, s of the unhappy ladiators to turn their weapons from one another upon hiht, and I have never forgotten the brief but impressive lesson on the value of the policy of non-intervention which I then received
But there is, happily, no need for ht with danger, would savour of presumption: Careful study of both the attack and the reply leaves me without the inclination to become either a partisan or a peacereat deal hich I fully agree said on both sides; not a peacehly desirable that the important questions which underlie the discussion, apart frohly discussed And if it were possible to have controversy without bitterness in huood, to use to both of the eonists the famous phrase of a late President of the French Chamber--”_Tape dessus_”
No profound acquaintance with the history of science is needed to produce the conviction, that the advancee 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 iinative and synthetic; its chief aim is to arrive at a broad and coherent conception of the relations of phenomena; the other is positive, critical, analytic, and sets the highest value upon the exact determination and statement of the phenomena themselves
If the man of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism ”Melius autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere”[1] for his motto, the champion of free speculation it veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;”[2]
and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his e as that of his rival
Every science has been largely indebted to bold, nay, even to wild hypotheses, for the power of ordering and grasping the endless details of natural fact which they confer; for the moral stimulus which arises out of the desire to confirestion of paths of fruitful inquiry, which, without them, would never have been followed From the days of Columbus and Kepler to those of Oken, La his father's asses, found a kingdohted upon verities while following illusions, which, had they deluded lesser ht possibly have been considered more or less asinine
On the other hand, there is no branch of science which does not owe at least an equal obligation to those cool heads, which are not to be seduced into the acceptance of syeneralisations for solid truths because of their brilliancy and grandeur; to the nificant residual phenomena which, when tracked to their causes, are so often the death of brilliant hypotheses; to thethe lie which are set by the very conditions of thought, have warned ainst fruitless efforts to overstep those limits
Neither of the eminent men of science, whose opinions are at present under consideration, can be said to be a one-sided representative either of the synthetic or of the analytic school Haeckel, no less than Virchow, is distinguished by the number, variety, and laborious accuracy of his contributions to positive knowledge; while Virchow, no less than Haeckel, has dealt in wide generalisations, and, until the obscurantists thought they could turn his recent utterances to account, no one was better abused by them as a typical free-thinker andat the same mill, one has been taken and the other left Since the publication of his famous oration, Virchow has been received into the bosom of orthodoxy and respectability, while Haeckel remains an outcast!
To those who pay attention to the actual facts of the case, this is a very surprising event; and I confess that nothing has ever perplexed me more than the reception which Professor Virchow's oration has met with, in his own and in this country; for it owes that reception, not to the undoubted literary and scientific hteousness for which, so far as I can discern, it offers no foundation It is supposed to be a recantation; I can find no word in it which, if strictly construed, is inconsistent with the most extreme of those opinions which are commonly attributed to its author It is supposed to be a deadly blow to the doctrine of evolution; but, though I certainly hold by that doctrine with some tenacity, I aeneral proposition which its author lays down
In co his address, Virchow adverts to the coard to scientific questions which obtains in Geration which lies upon men of science, even if for no better reason than the s, to exhibit a due sense of the responsibility which attaches to their speaking and writing, and he dwells on the necessity of drawing a clear line of demarcation between those propositions which they have a fair right to regard as established truths, and those which they know to be only more or less well-founded speculations Is any one prepared to deny that this is the first great co? Would any responsible scientific teacher like to admit that he had not done his best to separate facts from hypotheses in the minds of his hearers; and that he had not made it his chief business to enable those whoe of the forh upon those who address the general public It is indubitable, as Professor Virchow observes, that ”he who speaks to, or writes for, the public is doubly bound to test the objective truth of that which he says” 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 atte in it, I suspect that hea conscience For assuredly if a ht to do, that the obligation to be accurate--to say nooff 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 For my own part, I am inclined to doubt whether there is any method of self-discipline better calculated to clear up one's own ideas about a difficult subject, than that which arises out of the effort to put thee which all the world can understand Sheridan is said to have replied to some one who re, sir, is--hard writing;” and any one who is above the level of a scientific charlatan will know that easy speaking is ”----hard thinking”
Again, when Professor Virchow enlarges on the extree beyond those provinces which he has ht well have added within these also), and when he dilates on the inexpediency, in the interests of science, of putting forth as ascertained truths propositions which the progress of knowledge soon upsets--ill be disposed to gainsay hiive to his declaration, that the modern development of science is essentially due to the constant encroachment of experima; and that the most difficult, as well as the most important, object of every honest worker is ”_sich ent-subjectiviren_”--to get rid of his preconceived notions, and to keep his hypotheses well in hand, as the good servants and bad masters that they are
I do not think I have omitted any one of Professor Virchow's main theses in this brief enumeration I do not find that they are disputed by Haeckel, and I should be profoundly astonished if they were What, then, is all the coil about, if we leave aside various irritating sarcaslish that touches the present ht
The ”plastidule-soul” and the potentialities of carbon may be sound scientific conceptions, or they may be the reverse, but they are no necessary part of the doctrine of evolution, and I leave their defence to Professor Haeckel
On the question of equivocal generation, I have been compelled,the last ten years, to enunciate exactly the same views as those put forward by Professor Virchow; so that, to my mind, at any rate, the denial that any such process has as yet been proved to take place in the existing state of nature, as little affects the general doctrine[3]
With respect to another side issue, raised by Professor Virchow, he appears toHe is careful to say that he has no unwillingness to accept the descent ofus of the special attention which, of late years, he has given to anthropology, he affirms that such evidence as exists is not only insufficient to support that hypothesis, but is contrary to it ”Every positive progress which we have y has removed us further from the demonstration of this relation”
Well, I also have studied anthropological questions in my time; and I feel bound to remark, that this assertion of Professor Virchow's appears to me to be a typical example of the kind of incautious over-statereatly err, all the real knowledge which we possess of the fossil reoes no farther back than the Quaternary epoch; and the most that can be asserted on Professor Virchow's side respecting these remains is, that none of them present us with morethe existing races of mankind[4] But, if this be so, then the only just conclusion to be drawn from the evidence as it stands is, that the men of the Quaternary epoch h their remains hitherto discovered show no definite approach towards that type The evidence is not inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution, though it does not help it If Professor Virchow had paid as y as he has to anthropology, he would, I doubt not, be aware that the equine quadrupeds of the Quaternary period do not differ fro _Equidae_ in any more important respect than these last differ from one another; and he would know that it is, nevertheless, a well-established fact that, in the course of the Tertiary period, the equine quadrupeds have undergone a series of changes exactly such as the doctrine of evolution requires Hence sound analogical reasoning justifies the expectation that, e obtain the remains of Pliocene, Miocene, and Eocene _Anthropidae_, they will present us with the like series of gradations, notwithstanding the fact, if it be a fact, that the Quaternary men, like the Quaternary horses, differ in no essential respect from those which now live
I believe that the state of our knowledge on this question is still justly suo:--
”In conclusion, I may say, that the fossil remains of man hitherto discovered do not seem to me to take us appreciably nearer to that lower pithecoid form by the modification of which he has probably beco what is non of thethat they fashi+oned flint axes, and flint knives, and bone skewers of es at the present day, and that we have every reason to believe the habits andof such people to have remained the same from the time of the mammoth and the tichorhine rhinoceros till now, I do not know that the result is other than e the opinion here expressed, and so far froree opposed to a belief in the evolution ofthe relation of the Recent and Quaternary to the Tertiaryhar eneral law of evolution