Chapter 69

The most 'materialistic' speculation for which I was responsible, prior to the 'Belfast Address,' is embodied in the following extract from a brief article written as far back as 1865: 'Supposing the molecules of the human body, instead of replacing others, and thus renewing a pre-existing form, to be gathered first-hand from nature, and placed in the exact relative positions which they occupy in the body. Supposing them to have the same forces and distribution of forces, the same motions and distribution of motions--would this organised concourse of molecules stand before us as a sentient, thinking being? There seems no valid reason to assume that it would not. Or supposing a planet carved from the sun, set spinning round an axis, and sent revolving round the sun at a distance equal to that of our earth, would one consequence of the refrigeration of the mass be the development of organic forms? I lean to the affirmative.' This is plain speaking, but it is without 'dogmatism.' An opinion is expressed, a belief, a leaning--not an established 'doctrine.'

The burthen of my writings in this connection is as much a recognition of the weakness of science as an assertion of its strength. In 1867, I told the working men of Dundee that while making the largest demand for freedom of investigation; while considering science to be alike powerful as an instrument of intellectual culture, and as a ministrant to the material wants of men; if asked whether science has solved, or is likely in our day to solve, 'the problem of the universe,' I must shake my head in doubt. I compare the mind of man to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions exists infinite silence. The phenomena of matter and force come within our intellectual range; but behind, and above, and around us the real mystery of the universe lies unsolved, and, as far as we are concerned, is incapable of solution.

While refreshing my mind on these old themes I appear to myself as a person possessing one idea, which so over-masters him that he is never weary of repeating it. That idea is the polar conception of the grandeur and the littleness of man--the vastness of his range in some respects and directions, and his powerlessness to take a single step in others. In 1868, before the Mathematical and Physical Section of the British Association, then assembled at Norwich, I repeat the same well-worn note:

'In thus affirming the growth of the human body to be mechanical, and thought as exercised by us to have its correlative in the physics of the brain, the position of the "materialist," as far as that position is tenable, is stated. I think the materialist will be able finally to maintain this position against all attacks, but I do not think he can pass beyond it. The problem of the connection of body and soul is as insoluble in its modern form as it was in the pre-scientific ages. Phosphorus is a constituent of the human brain, and a trenchant German writer has exclaimed, "Ohne Phosphor kein Gedanke!" That may or may not be the case; but, even if we knew it to be the case, the knowledge would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here assigned to the materialist, he is equally helpless. If you ask him whence is this "matter" of which we have been discoursing--who or what divided it into molecules, and impressed upon them this necessity of running into organic forms--he has no answer. Science is also mute in regard to such questions. But if the materialist is confounded and science is rendered dumb, who else is prepared with an answer? Let us lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philosopher, one and all.'

*****

The roll of echoes which succeeded the Lecture delivered by Professor Virchow at Munich on September 22, 1877, was long and loud. The 'Times' published a nearly full translation of the lecture, and it was eagerly commented on in other journals. Glances from it to an Address delivered by me before the Midland Institute in the autumn of 1877, and published in this volume, were very frequent. Professor Virchow was held up to me in some quarters as a model of philosophic caution, who by his reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his depth reproved my shallowness. With true theologic courtesy I was sedulously emptied, not only of the 'principles of scientific thought,' but of 'common modesty' and 'common sense.' And though I am indebted to Professor Clifford for recalling in the 'Nineteenth Century' for April the public mind in this connection from heated fancy to sober fact, I do not think a brief additional examination of Virchow's views, and of my relation to them, will be out of place here.

The key-note of his position is struck in the preface to the excellent English translation of his lecture--a preface written expressly by himself. 'Nothing,' he says, 'was farther from his intention than any wish to disparage the great services rendered by Mr. Darwin to the advancement of biological science, of which no one has expressed more admiration than himself. On the other hand, it seemed high time to him to enter an energetic protest against the attempts that are made to proclaim the problems of research as actual facts, and the opinions of scientists as established science.' On the ground, among others, that it promotes the pernicious delusions of the Socialist, Virchow considers the theory of evolution dangerous; but his fidelity to truth is so great that he would brave the danger and teach the theory, if it were only proved. 'However dangerous the state of things might be, let the confederates be as mischievous as they might, still I do not hesitate to say that from the moment when we had become convinced that the evolution theory was a perfectly established doctrine--so certain that we could pledge our oath to it, so sure that we could say, "Thus it is"--from that moment we could not dare to feel any scruple about introducing it into our actual life, so as not only to communicate it to every educated man, but to impart it to every child, to make it the foundation of our whole ideas of the world, of society, and the State, and to base upon it our whole system of education. This I hold to be a necessity.'

It would be interesting to know the persons designated by the pronoun 'we' in the first sentence of the foregoing quotation. No doubt Professor Haeckel would accept this canon in all its fulness, and found on it his justification. He would say without hesitation: 'I am convinced that the theory of evolution is a perfectly established doctrine, and hence on your own showing I am justified in urging its introduction into our schools.' It is plain, however, that Professor Virchow would not accept this retort as valid. His 'we' must cover something more than Professor Haeckel. It would probably cover more even than the audience he addressed; for he would hardly affirm, even if every one of his hearers accepted the theory of evolution, that that would be a sufficient warrant for forcing it upon the public at large. His 'we,' I submit, needs definition. If he means that the theory of evolution ought to be introduced into our schools, not when experts are agreed as to its truth, but when the community is prepared for its introduction, then, I think, he is right, and that, as a matter of social policy, Dr. Haeckel would be wrong in seeking to antedate the period of its introduction. In dealing with the community great changes must have timeliness as well as truth upon their side. But if the mouths of thinkers be stopped, the necessary social preparation will be impossible; an unwholesome divorce will be established between the expert and the public, and the slow and natural process of leavening the social lump by discovery and discussion will be displaced by something far less safe and salutary.

The burthen, however, of this celebrated lecture is a warning that a marked distinction ought to be made between that which is experimentally proved and that which is still in the region of speculation. As to the latter, Virchow by no means imposes silence. He is far too sagacious a man to commit himself, at the present time of day, to any such absurdity. But he insists that it ought not to be put on the same evidential level as the former. 'It ought,' as he poetically expresses it, I to be written in small letters under the text.' The audience ought to be warned that the speculative matter is only _possible_, not _actual_ truth--that it belongs to the region of 'belief,' and not to that of demonstration. As long as a problem continues in this speculative stage it would be mischievous, he considers, to teach it in our schools. 'We ought not,' he urges, 'to represent our conjecture as a certainty, nor our hypothesis as a doctrine: this is inadmissible.' With regard to the connection between physical processes and mental phenomena he says: 'I will, indeed, willingly grant that we can find certain gradations, certain definite points at which we trace a passage from mental processes to processes purely physical, or of a physical character. Throughout this discourse I am not asserting that it will never be possible to bring psychical processes into an immediate connection with those that are physical. All I say is that we have _at present_ no right to set up this _possible_ connection as _a doctrine_ of science.' In the next paragraph be reiterates his position with reference to the introduction of such topics into school teaching. 'We must draw,' he says, 'a strict distinction between what we wish to _teach_, and what we wish to _search for_. The objects of our research are expressed as problems (or hypotheses). _We need not keep them to ourselves; we are ready to communicate them to all the world_, and say "There is the problem; that is what we strive for." ... The investigation of such problems, in which the whole nation may be interested, cannot be restricted to any one. This is Freedom of Enquiry. But the problem (or hypothesis) is not, without further debate, to be made _a doctrine_.' He will not concede to Dr. Haeckel 'that it is a question for the schoolmasters to decide, whether the Darwinian theory of man's descent should be at once laid down as the basis of instruction, and the protoplastic soul be assumed as the foundation of all ideas concerning spiritual being.' The Professor concludes his lecture thus: 'With perfect truth did Bacon say of old "_Scientia est potentia_." But he also defined that knowledge; and the knowledge he meant was not speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypotheses, but it was objective and actual knowledge. Gentlemen, I think we should be abusing our power, we should be imperilling our power, unless in our teaching we restrict ourselves to this perfectly safe and unassailable domain. From this domain _we may make incursions into the field of problems_, and I am sure that every venture of that kind will then find all needful security and support.' I have emphasised by italics two sentences in the foregoing series of quotations; the other italics are the author's own.

Virchow's position could not be made clearer by any comments of mine than he has here made it himself. That position is one of the highest practical importance. Throughout our whole German Fatherland,' he says, men are busied in renovating, extending, and developing the system of education, and in inventing fixed forms in which to mould it. On the threshold of coming events stands the Prussian law of education. In all the German States larger schools are being built, new educational establishments are set up, the universities are extended, "higher" and "middle" schools are founded. Finally comes the question, What is to be the chief substance of the teaching?' What Virchow thinks it ought and ought not to be, is disclosed by the foregoing quotations. There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in the state of hypothesis, and science in the state of fact. In school teaching the former ought to be excluded. And, as he assumes it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought, he thinks, to fall upon the theory of evolution.

*****

I now freely offer myself for judgment before the tribunal whose law is here laid down. First and foremost, then, I have never advocated the introduction of the theory of evolution into our schools. I should even be disposed to resist its introduction before its meaning had been better understood and its utility more fully recognised than it is now by the great body of the community. The theory ought, I think, to bide its time until the free conflict of discovery, argument, and opinion has won for it this recognition. A necessary condition here, however, is that free discussion should not be prevented, either by the ferocity of reviewers or the arm of the law; otherwise, as I said before, the work of social preparation cannot go on. On this count, then, I claim acquittal, being for the moment on the side of Virchow.

Besides the duties of the chair, which I have been privileged to occupy in London for more than a quarter of a century, and which never involved a word on my part, pro or con, in reference to the theory of evolution, I have had the honour of addressing audiences in Liverpool, Belfast, and Birmingham; and in these addresses the theory of evolution, and the connected doctrine of spontaneous generation, have been more or less touched upon. Let us now examine whether in my references I have departed from the views of Virchow or not.

In the Liverpool discourse, after speaking of the theory of evolution when applied to the primitive condition of matter, as belonging to 'the dim twilight of conjecture,' and affirming that 'the certainty of experimental enquiry is here shut out,' I sketch the nebular theory as enunciated by Kant and Laplace, and afterwards proceed thus: 'Accepting some such view of the construction of our system _as probable_, a desire immediately arises to connect the present life of our planet with the past. We wish to know something of our remotest ancestry. On its first detachment from the sun, life, as we understand it, could not have been present on the earth. How, then, did it come there? The thing to be encouraged here is a reverent freedom--a freedom preceded by the hard discipline which checks licentiousness in speculation--while the thing to be repressed, both in science and out of it, is dogmatism. And here I am in the hands of the meeting, willing to end but ready to go on. _I have no right to intrude upon you unasked the unformed notions which are floating like clouds, or gathering to more solid consistency in the modern speculative mind_.'

I then notice more especially the basis of the theory. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution _are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional assent_. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable; and, in the utter absence of any proof of the illegality of the act, they prolong the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Having determined the elements of their curve in a world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.' Thus it appears that, long antecedent to the publication of his advice, I did exactly what Professor Virchow recommends, showing myself as careful as he could be not to claim for a scientific doctrine a certainty which did not belong to it.

I now pass on to the Belfast Address, and will cite at once from it the passage which has given rise to the most violent animadversion. 'Believing as I do in the continuity of nature, I cannot stop abruptly where our microscopes cease to be of use. At this point the vision of the mind authoritatively supplements that of the eye. By an intellectual necessity I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that "matter" which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and notwithstanding our professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.' Without halting for a moment I go on to do the precise thing which Professor Virchow declares to be necessary. 'If you ask me,' I say, 'whether there exists the least evidence to prove that any form of life can be developed out of matter independently of antecedent life, my reply is that evidence considered perfectly conclusive by many has been adduced, and that were we to follow a common example, and accept testimony because it falls in with our belief, we should eagerly close with the evidence referred to. But there is in the true man of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to have them true. And those to whom I refer as having studied this question, believing the evidence offered in favour of "spontaneous generation" to be vitiated by error, cannot accept it. They know full well that the chemist now prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of substances, which were some time ago regarded as the products solely of vitality. They are intimately acquainted with the structural power of matter, as evidenced in the phenomena of crystallisation. They can justify scientifically their _belief_ in its potency, under the proper conditions, to produce organisms. But, in reply to your question, they will frankly admit their inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof that life can be developed, save from demonstrable antecedent life.' [Footnote: Quoted by Clifford, 'Nineteenth Century,' 3, p. 726.]

Comparing the theory of evolution with other theories, I thus express myself: 'The basis of the doctrine of evolution consists, not in an experimental demonstration--for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof--but in its general harmony with scientific thought. From contrast, moreover, it derives enormous relative strength. On the one side we have a theory, which converts the Power whose garment is seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, as man is seen to act. On the other side we have the conception that all we see around us and feel within us--the phenomena of physical nature as well as those of the human mind--have their unsearchable roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of man.' Among thinking people, in my opinion, this last conception has a higher ethical value than that of a personal artificer. Be that as it may, I make here no claim for the theory of evolution which can reasonably be refused.

'Ten years have elapsed' said Dr. Hooker at Norwich in 1868 [Footnote: President's Address to the British Association.] 'since the publication of "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection," and it is therefore not too early now to ask what progress that bold theory has made in scientific estimation. Since the "Origin" appeared it has passed through four English editions,' [Footnote: Published by Mr. John Murray, the English publisher of Virchow's Lecture. Bane and antidote are thus impartially distributed by the same hand.] two American, two German, two French, several Russian, a Dutch, and an Italian edition. So far from Natural Selection being a thing of the past [the 'Athenaeum' had stated it to be so] it is an accepted doctrine with almost every philosophical naturalist, including, it will always be understood, a considerable proportion who are not prepared to admit that it accounts for all Mr. Darwin assigns to it.' In the following year, at Innsbruck, Helmholtz took up the same ground. [Footnote: 'Noch besteht lebhafter Streit um die Wahrheit oder Wahrscheinlichkeit von Darwin's Theorie; er dreht sich aber doch eigentlich nur um die Grenzen, welche wir fuer die Veraenderlichkeit der Arten annehmen duerfen. Dass innerhalb derselben Species erbliche Racenverschiedenheiten auf die von Darwin beschriebene Weise zu kommen koennen, ja dass viele der bisher als verschiedene Species derselben Gattung betrachteten Formen von derselben Urform abstammen, werden auch seine Gegner kaum leugnen.'--(Populaere Vortraege.)] Another decade has now passed, and he is simply blind who cannot see the enormous progress made by the theory during that time. Some of the outward and visible signs of this advance are readily indicated. The hostility and fear which so long prevented the recognition of Mr. Darwin by his own university have vanished, and this year Cambridge, amid universal acclamation, conferred on him her Doctor's degree. The Academy of Sciences in Paris, which had so long persistently closed its doors against Mr. Darwin, has also yielded at last; while sermons, lectures, and published articles plainly show that even the clergy have, to a great extent, become acclimatised to the Darwinian air. My brief reference to Mr. Darwin in the Birmingham Address was based upon the knowledge that such changes had been accomplished, and were still going on.

That the lecture of Professor Virchow can, to any practical extent disturb this progress of public faith in the theory of evolution, I do not believe. That the special lessons of caution which he inculcates were exemplified by me, years before his voice was heard upon this subject, has been proved in the foregoing pages. In point of fact, if he had preceded me instead of following me, and if my desire had been to incorporate his wishes in my words, I could not have accomplished this more completely. It is possible, moreover, to draw the coincident lines still further, for most of what he has said about spontaneous generation might have been uttered by me. I share his opinion that the theory of evolution in its complete form involves the passage from matter which we now hold to be inorganic into organised matter; in other words, involves the assumption that at some period or other of the earth's history there occurred what would be now called 'spontaneous generation.' I agree with him that the proofs of it are still wanting.' 'Whoever,' he says, recalls to mind the lamentable failure of all the attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for the _generatio aequivoca_ in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any way accepted as the basis of all our views of life.' I hold with Virchow that the failures have been lamentable, that the doctrine is utterly discredited. But my position here is so well known that I need not dwell upon it further.