hurch-religions
is the only true one, and which of the innumerable and contradictory
dogmas are to form the sure basis of instruction. We all know that
each Church regards itself as the only truly saving one, and her own
dogma as the only true one. But as to whether it is to be
Protestantism or Catholicism, the Reformed or the Lutheran confession,
whether the Anglican or the Presbyterian dogma, whether the Roman or
the Greek Church, the Mosaic or the Mohammedan dispensation, whether
Buddhism or Brahmanism, whether, finally, it is to be one of the many
fetish-religions of the Indians and Negroes that is to form the
permanent and sure basis of instruction, let us hope that Virchow will
at the next meeting of German naturalists and physicians divulge his
opinion.

At any rate, the "instruction of the future, according to Virchow," will
be greatly simplified if he will do this. For the dogma of the Trinity
in Unity as a basis of mathematics, the dogma of the resurrection of the
body as a basis of medicine, the dogma of infallibility as a basis of
psychology, the dogma of the immaculate conception as a basis of genetic
science, the dogma of the staying of the sun as a basis of astronomy, the
dogma of the creation of the earth, animals, and plants as a basis of
geology and phylogenesis--these or any other dogma, at pleasure, from any
other church will make all other doctrine quite superfluous. Virchow,
"that critical spirit," knows as well as I, and as every other naturalist,
that these dogmas are not true, and nevertheless, in his opinion, they
are not to be supplanted as the "basis of instruction" by those theories
and hypotheses of modern natural science of which Virchow himself says
that they may be true, that in a great measure they probably are true,
but are not yet "quite certainly proved."

At pages 15, 24, 26, 28, and elsewhere in his Munich address, Virchow
strongly insists that only that objective knowledge may be taught
which we possess as absolutely certain fact! and then at page 29 he
requires us to conclude that the basis of instruction shall continue
to be the purely subjective dogmas of the Church; revelations and
dogmas which not only are not proved by any facts whatever, but on the
contrary, stand in the most trenchant contradiction to the most
obvious facts of natural experience and fly in the face of all human
reason. These contradictions, to be sure, are no greater than some
others which stand out cons