ew it to be the case, the knowledge
would not lighten our darkness. On both sides of the zone here
assigned to the materialist, he is equally helpless. If you ask him
whence is this "matter" of which we have been discoursing--who or what
divided it into molecules, and impressed upon them this necessity of
running into organic forms--he has no answer. Science is also mute in
regard to such questions. But if the materialist is confounded and
science is rendered dumb, who else is prepared with an answer? Let us
lower our heads and acknowledge our ignorance, priest and philosopher,
one and all.'

*****

The roll of echoes which succeeded the Lecture delivered by Professor
Virchow at Munich on September 22, 1877, was long and loud. The
'Times' published a nearly full translation of the lecture, and it was
eagerly commented on in other journals. Glances from it to an Address
delivered by me before the Midland Institute in the autumn of 1877,
and published in this volume, were very frequent. Professor Virchow
was held up to me in some quarters as a model of philosophic caution,
who by his reasonableness reproved my rashness, and by his depth
reproved my shallowness. With true theologic courtesy I was
sedulously emptied, not only of the 'principles of scientific
thought,' but of 'common modesty' and 'common sense.' And though I am
indebted to Professor Clifford for recalling in the 'Nineteenth
Century' for April the public mind in this connection from heated
fancy to sober fact, I do not think a brief additional examination of
Virchow's views, and of my relation to them, will be out of place
here.

The key-note of his position is struck in the preface to the excellent
English translation of his lecture--a preface written expressly by
himself. 'Nothing,' he says, 'was farther from his intention than any
wish to disparage the great services rendered by Mr. Darwin to the
advancement of biological science, of which no one has expressed more
admiration than himself. On the other hand, it seemed high time to
him to enter an energetic protest against the attempts that are made
to proclaim the problems of research as actual facts, and the opinions
of scientists as established science.' On the ground, among others,
that it promotes the pernicious delusions of the Socialist, Virchow
considers the theory of evolution dangerous; but his fidelity to truth
is so great that he would brave the danger and teach the theory, if it