ing those of
inheritance and selection.

If any one still has doubts on the matter, let him read the jubilant
hymns of triumph with which Virchow's friend and collaborator, Adolf
Bastian, greeted his Munich discourse. This "enfant terrible" of the
school--this well-nicknamed "Acting privy counsellor of the board of
confusion"[10]--whose merits in involuntarily advancing the cause of
metamorphism I have already done justice to in the preface to the
third edition of my "Natural History of Creation"[11]--expresses
himself in the "Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie," which is edited by him
and Virchow (tenth yearly part, X. 1878, p. 66) as follows:--"At the
Munich meeting of naturalists, Virchow by a few weighty words cleared
the atmosphere, which was heavy and stifling under the pressure of the
incubus called Descent, and once more freed science from that
nightmare which it has so long--in many opinions so much too
long--allowed to weigh upon it; freed it, let us hope, once and for
ever. The forecasts of this storm were discernible many years since,
and its whole course has been a strictly normal one. When the germs
planted by Darwin, and that promised so much, were forced into growth
by a feverish, hot-house heat, and began to sprout into sterile weeds,
their small vitality was plain to our eyes. So long as the waves run
too high under the pressure of a psychical storm, it is almost useless
to protest against it, for every ear is too much deafened by the
noise all round to hear the voice of individuals. It is best to leave
things to go their own way, deeper and deeper into the mire, till they
come to a stand-still there of their own accord; for 'Quos deus vult
perdere prius dementat.' Thus it is in this case. When the
extravagances of the descent hypothesis, encouraged as they were by
mutual incitement, had reached their highest pitch in the ravings that
were uttered at Munich, the too pointed point broke in this
superabundance of absurdity almost by its own pointedness, and so we
were quit of it with one blow. Now, happily, all is over with the
theory of descent, or ascent, but natural science will not on that
account fare any the worse, for many of its adherents belong to her
ablest youth, and as they now need no longer waste their best time on
romantic schemes, they will have it to use at the orders and for the
advancement of science, so as to enrich her through real and solid
contributions."

Furthermore, Bastian quotes V