in which the whole nation may be interested, cannot be restricted to any one. This is freedom of inquiry. 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 potential’ 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 imperiling 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 emphasized 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, in regard to science, 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. From school-teaching the former ought to be excluded. And, inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought 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 recognized 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. In dealing with the community great changes must have timeliness as well as truth upon their side. But, if the mouths of thinkers are stopped, the necessary social preparation will be impossible; an unwholesome divorce will be estab-
