Part 2 (1/2)

That the ical conception of a Species is not a positive but only a relative conception, and that it has no other absolute or positive value than those other siories--sports, varieties, races, tribes, faed by every systement of the practical systematic distinction of species From the very nature of the case there are no limits to arbitrary discretion in this department, and there are no two syste forms as true varieties which that one does not (Compare on this point ”History of Creation,” vol i, p

273) The conception of variety or species has a different value in every sy and Botany

But the conception of species has just as little any fixed physiological value In respect to this we , the last corner of refuge of all the defenders of the constancy of species, has at present lost all significance as bearing on the conception of species For we kno, through numerous and reliable experiences and experiments, that two different true varieties can frequently unite and produce fertile hybrids (as the hare and rabbit, lion and tiger, many different kinds of the carp and trout tribes, of s, brambles, and others); and in the second place, the fact is equally certain that descendants of one and the sama of the old schools, could always effect a fertile union under certain circumstances, either cannot effect such a union or produce only barren hybrids (the Porto-Santo rabbit, the different races of horses, dogs, roses, hyacinths, &c; see ”History of Creation,” vol i, p

146)

For a certain proof that the conception of species rests on a subjective abstraction and has a enus, family, order, class, &c--no class of anies In it the fluctuating forms vary with such unexampled indefiniteness and variability as to make all distinction of species quite illusory Oscar Sches and keratose sponges; and I, in es (the result of five years of roup), have pointed out that we uish 3, or 21, or 111, or 289, or 591 different species I also believe that I have thus convincingly demonstrated how all these different fores , be traced to a single common parent-for at this present day--the simple Olynthus Hence I think I have here produced the most positive analytical evidence of the transformation of species, and of the unity of the derivation of all the species of a given group of aniht spare myself these disquisitions on the question of species, for Virchow does not go into this main question of the theory of descent--but this is very characteristic of his attitude And just as he nowhere thoroughly discusses the doctrine of transforenerally on the refutation of any of the other certain proofs of the doctrine of descent which we in fact possess at the present day Neither the uans nor the eical argument are anywhere closely examined and tested as to their worth or their worthlessness as ”certain proofs” On the contrary, Virchow takes them quite easily, sets them aside, and declares that ”certain proofs” of the doctrine of descent do not exist, but remain to be discovered To be sure, he does not indicate where they are to be sought, nor can he indicate it How is this strange conduct to be explained? How is it possible that a distinguished naturalist should resist the most important step forward of ating it, without even practically testing and refuting the uments in its favour? To this question there is but one answer

Virchow is not generally intimate with the modern doctrine of evolution, and does not possess that knowledge of natural science which is indispensable for any well-grounded judg all that Virchow, during ainst evolution, I arrived at the conviction that he had not thoroughly read either Darwin's great work on the Origin of Species, nor any other work on the theory of descent, nor had he thought the matter out with such attention as so serious and intricate a subject absolutely demands Virchow did with these works as it has been his well-known custoes, caught at a few leading words, and without any farther trouble he has discoursed upon them, and, which is worst of all, has perpetuated these discourses through the press

To excuse this conduct, and to account for Virchow's enigmatical position in the battle of evolution, we ifted and h in the course of the last thirty years The most important and fruitful part of his life and labours was indisputably during the eight years when he resided in Wurzburg, from 1848 to 1856 There Virchoith all the keenness of his youthful intellect, with a sacred enthusiasable powers of work and the rarest insight, worked out that glorious reforh all tinitude in the history of , Virchow elaborated that coy which culminates in the conception that the cell is an independent living eleaniseries of cells--a highly fertile conception, which Vircho denies as resolutely as he then supported it In Wurzburg, twenty-five years since, I sat devoutly at his feet, and received from him with enthusiasm that clear and simple doctrine of the mechanics of all vital activity--a truly monistic doctrine, which Vircho undoubtedly opposes where for, finally, he wrote those inco articles which are the ornament of the first ten yearly series of his ”Archives” of pathological anatoreat pioneer of reform in medicine, and by which he won imperishable honour in the scientific treatment of disease,--all this was either carried out or preconceived in Wurzburg; and even the celebrated ”Cellular Pathology,” a course of lectures which he delivered during the first year and a half after quitting Wurzburg for Berlin, consists only of the collected and

In the autu to settle in Berlin The exchange of a narrow sphere of labours for a wider one, of sreater ones, proved unfavourable in this case, as in reat Institution,” and with luxurious appliances, all the scientific results which Virchow has as yet brought to light are not to be corand and immortal achievements which he hi with the scantiest means--a new proof of the maxim enunciated by me, and hitherto never confuted, that ”the scientific results of an institute are in inverse proportion to its size” (See ”The Airave is the circu in Berlin, Virchow has ed his theoretical scientific activity for practical political life It is well kno prominent a part he plays there in the Prussian Chamber of Representatives, how he raised hiive this political position a broader basis, took part in the representation of the citizens of the capital; how he has taken a most active interest, as city commissioner, in all the petty anxieties and concerns which the charge of such a city as Berlin entails I a, as many have blamed, the political and civic activity to which Virchow has indefatigably devoted his best powers If a th and talent enough, to play a conspicuous political part, by all means let him do so; but verily I do not envy him; for the satisfaction which is derived from the most successful and fruitful political activity is not, to my taste, to be compared with that pure and disinterested satisfaction of the mind which results from absorption in serious and difficult scientific labours In the turle, even thedust of practical life, which never reaches the ethereal heights of pure science and never rests on the laurels of the thoughtful investigator However, as I have said, that is aa greater service to humanity by his practical political life in Berlin than he for, that is his affair; but for all that, in his former sphere he was incomparable, and cannot be replaced; in the latter this is not the case

If a distinguished man, be he never so reifts, passes the whole day in the friction of political party-struggles, and throws himself as well into all the petty and wearisome details of daily civic life, it is i for the progress of science--particularly when it advances so rapidly and incessantly as is the case in our day It is therefore quite intelligible that Virchow should soon have lost this feeling, and in the course of the last two decades have becoee in his fundamental views, to such a metapsychosis, that the present Virchow of 1878 is hardly in a position to understand the youthful Virchow of 1848

We have seen a sireatest naturalist, Carl Ernst von Baer This gifted and profound thinker and biologist, whose name marks a new epoch in the history of evolution, had in his later years become wholly incompetent even to understand those most important problems of his youthful labours which opened up new paths of inquiry While in his early years he laid down principles of the greatest value to our modern doctrine of evolution, and even went very near to adopting this hypothesis into his systes on Darwinis this difficult problem As I am one of Von Baer's warmest admirers, and in my ”Evolution of Man,” as well as in the ”History of Creation,” and in other places, have ht Iattention to the discrepancy between the lucid, monistic principles of Von Baer in his youth, and the confused dualistic views of his old age But asthem particularly the Old Catholic philosopher of Munich, Huber, who has written a series of articles in the ”Augsburger Zeitung”--have made constant capital out of the harmless talk of the feeble old Von Baer, I must in this place explicitly declare that this dualistic prating of the oldthepioneers of science, or of giving theives us the explanation of this striking contradiction In 1834 he entirely and for ever abandoned the province of the history of development, at which for twenty years he had laboured incessantly, and where he had earned splendid laurels

To escape fro and importunate ideas of the science which had so wholly absorbed hi, and subsequently busied himself in scientific inquiries of a quite different character Twenty-five long years passed by, and when Darwin's work appeared in 1859, Von Baer had too long undergone a metapsychosis to be able to understand it In Von Baer, as in Virchow, the course of this rehly instructive, and will itself afford to the thoughtful psychologist an interesting evidence of the doctrine of evolution

However, the lack of comprehension of our modern evolution-hypothesis is easier to explain in Virchow's case than in Von Baer's, for this reason:to Virchohile Von Baer possessed it in the highest degree Now y is precisely that very department of inquiry in which our theory of descent has its deepest and strongest roots, and has e The study of organic fory, is thus, more than any other science, interested in the doctrine of descent, because through this doctrine it first obtained a practical knowledge of effective causes, and was able to raise itself froh position of an analytical science of _for of this century the y--_ie_, comparative anatomy--which was founded by Cuvier and splendidly developed by Johannes Muller, had laid the foundations on which to build a truly philosophical science of form The enormous mass of various empirical material, which had been accumulated by descriptive systematists and by the dissections of zootomists since the time of Linnaeus and Pallas, had already been abundantly matured and utilised in many ways for philosophic purposes by the synthetic principles of comparative anatoanisation--of which the old systee in mystical ideas of a plan of structure and of creative final causes (_causae finales_); they were incapable of arriving at a true and clear perception of effective mechanical causes (_causae efficientes_) This last, randest proble Lamarck's theory of descent, which was already fifty years old, on a fir by his own theory of selection By this hypothesis it was first ether the rich materials which had been previously amassed, into the splendid edifice of the y,” vol i chap iv)

The iy can be adequately appreciated only by those who, like ical y, and whose eyes were suddenly opened by the theory of selection to a coical riddles, the creation of specific forma 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 anic forms, of the descent of all the species of one natural class froe the science of y has by this o, I have endeavoured to point out in y;” and any one ishes to convince hiht about, particularly in comparative anatomy, e der vergleichenden Anatoenbaur, 1870, and the latest edition of his ”Elements” (Grundrisses), with the old text-books of that science

Virchow has no suspicion even of all these iy, for this departy were founded in the province of physiology, and y But within the last twenty years these two rown reat Johannes Muller was the last biologist as able to keep these departether, and on equally immortal honours in both divisions of the subject

After Muller's death in 1858 they fell asunder Physiology, as the science especially of the functions or living activity of the organism, addressed itself y, on the contrary, as the science of the forms and structure of animals and plants, could naturally e more and more in the history of evolution, and so constitute an historical natural science It was on this very historical and genetic y, in contradistinction to the exact and experiy, that I based my Munich address; and if Virchow in his answer had really and thoroughly refuted this position, instead of fighting with mere phrases and denunciations, this radical opposition would have been orthy of the fullest discussion At the sa wholly fettered by the one-sided views of the y lies so far out of his ken that he has not been able to forment of its aims and methods; but when, in spite of all this, he on every occasion lets fall a disparaging judgment of it, we must dispute his competence It is true that in his Munich address he eracesit in italics I only regret that I arace Virchow does not kno ignorant he is ofverdict on it, else he would not continually designate the study of the theory of descent as dilettanteis, as ”a fanciful private speculation which is nowits way in several departreatly too nates as my ”personal crotchet”

an idea which for the last ten years has been the ical science If Virchoere not so unfay, he hout by this principle of descent, that every ical inquiry which conscientiously pursues a well-considered probleranted and indisputable Of all this he is ignorant, and so it is intelligible that he should continue to deh those proofs have long since been produced

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Vol ii, p 334 of translation

[13] London: C Kegan Paul & Co 1879