The Project Gutenberg EBook of Freedom in Science and Teaching., by
Ernst Haeckel and T. H. Huxley

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Title: Freedom in Science and Teaching.
from the German of Ernst Haeckel

Author: Ernst Haeckel
T. H. Huxley

Release Date: June 6, 2008 [EBook #25711]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FREEDOM IN SCIENCE AND TEACHING. ***

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FREEDOM
IN
SCIENCE AND TEACHING.

FROM THE GERMAN OF
ERNST HAECKEL.

_WITH A PREFATORY NOTE_
By T. H. HUXLEY, F.R.S.

DER TELEOLOG
"Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenschoepfer der gnaedig.
Als er den Korkbaum schuf, gleich auch die Stoepfel erfand."
XENIEN.

NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
1879.

PREFATORY NOTE.

In complying 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," emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they
have been hidden since my childish days. In fact, the hard-hitting
with which both the attack and the defence abound, makes me think with
a shudder upon the probable sufferings of the unhappy man whose
intervention should lead two such gladiators to turn their weapons
from one another upon him. In my youth, I once attempted to stop a
street fight, 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 me to place myself in a position
which, besides being fraught 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 peacemaker: not a
partisan, for there is a great deal with which I fully agree said on
both sides; not a peacemaker, because I think it is highly desirable
that the important