FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90  
91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>   >|  
osophical or naturalistic dogma, hold strictly to fact, and renounce with nonchalance any pretensions at completeness of knowledge if the data do not admit of it, and on these grounds hold themselves aloof from evolutionist generalisation. From among these come the counsels of "caution," admissions that the theory is a scientific hypothesis and a guide to research, but not knowledge, and confessions that the Theory of Descent as a whole is verifiable rather as a general impression than in detail. Virchow's Position. Warnings of this kind have come occasionally from Du Bois-Reymond, but the true type of this group, and its mode of thought, is Virchow. It will repay us and suffice us to make acquaintance with it through him. His opposition to Darwinism and the theory of descent was directed at its most salient point: the descent of man from the apes. In lectures and treatises, at zoological and anthropological congresses, especially at the meetings of his own Anthropological-Ethnological Society in Berlin, from his "Vortraege ueber Menschen-und Affen-Schaedel" (Lectures on the Skulls of Man and Apes, 1869), to the disputes over Dubois' _Pithecanthropus erectus_ in the middle of the nineties, he threw the whole weight of his immense learning--ethnological and anthropological, osteological, and above all "craniological"--into the scale against the Theory of Descent and its supporters. Virchow has therefore been reckoned often enough among the anti-Darwinians, and has been quoted by apologists and others as against Darwinism, and he has given reason for this, since he has often taken the field against "the Darwinists" or has scoffed at their "longing for a pro-anthropos."(13) Sometimes even it has been suggested that he was actuated by religious motives, as when he occasionally championed not only freedom for science, but, incidentally, the right of existence for "the churches," leaving, for instance, in his theory of psychical life, gaps in knowledge which faith might occupy in moderation and modesty. But this last proves nothing. With Virchow's altogether unemotional nature it is unlikely that religious or spiritual motives had any role in the establishment of his convictions, and in Haeckel's naive blustering at religion, there is, so to speak, more religion than in the cold-blooded connivance with which Virchow leaves a few openings in otherwise frozen ponds for the ducks of faith to swim in! And he has nothing
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90  
91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Virchow
 

theory

 

knowledge

 

occasionally

 

anthropological

 
Descent
 
Theory
 

religious

 
Darwinism
 

descent


religion

 

motives

 
Sometimes
 

championed

 
longing
 

anthropos

 
suggested
 
actuated
 

Darwinians

 

quoted


reckoned

 

supporters

 

craniological

 

apologists

 

Darwinists

 

scoffed

 

reason

 

osteological

 

modesty

 

blustering


establishment

 
convictions
 

Haeckel

 

blooded

 

frozen

 
connivance
 

leaves

 
openings
 

spiritual

 
instance

psychical
 

leaving

 
churches
 
science
 

incidentally

 

existence

 
occupy
 

altogether

 
unemotional
 

nature