phology lies so
far out of his ken that he has not been able to form an independent
judgment of its aims and methods; but when, in spite of all this, he
on every occasion lets fall a disparaging judgment of it, we must
dispute his competence. It is true that in his Munich address he
emphasises the statement, "That which graces me best is that I know my
ignorance," by printing it in italics. I only regret that I am forced
to deny his possession of this very grace. Virchow does not know how
ignorant he is of morphology, else he would never have uttered his
annihilating verdict on it, else he would not continually designate
the study of the theory of descent as dilettanteism and vain dreaming,
as "a fanciful private speculation which is now making its way in
several departments of natural science." In truth, Virchow does me
greatly too much honour when he designates as my "personal crotchet"
an idea which for the last ten years has been the most precious common
possession of all morphological science. If Virchow were not so
unfamiliar with the literature of morphology, he must have known that
it is penetrated throughout by this principle of descent, that every
morphological inquiry which conscientiously pursues a well-considered
problem now assumes the doctrine of descent as granted and
indisputable. Of all this he is ignorant, and so it is intelligible
that he should continue to demand "certain proofs" of this hypothesis,
although those proofs have long since been produced.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] Vol. ii., p. 334 of translation.

[13] London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1879.

[14] Jena, Zeitschriften fuer Naturwissenschaft, 1875. Vol. x.
Supplement.

CHAPTER III.

THE SKULL THEORY AND THE APE THEORY.

Inasmuch as Virchow persists in treating the theory of descent as an
"unproved hypothesis," inasmuch as he ignores all the forcible
evidences of that hypothesis, he deprives himself of the right of
speaking a decisive word in this, the most important scientific
dispute of the present day. Virchow is, in fact, simply incompetent in
the great question of evolution, as he is deficient in the greater
part of that knowledge--more especially morphological knowledge--which
is indispensable to forming a judgment upon it. Hence on the
turning-point of the whole matter--viz., the problem as to the origin
of species--he can have no opinion, as he has never turned his
attention to the systematic treatment of species: those trans