Freedom in Science and Teaching. from the German of Ernst Haeckel

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and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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  FREEDOM
  IN
  SCIENCE AND TEACHING.


  FROM THE GERMAN OF
  ERNST HAECKEL.


  _WITH A PREFATORY NOTE_
  By T. H. HUXLEY, F.R.S.

  DER TELEOLOG
  "Welche Verehrung verdient der Weltenschoepfer der gnaedig.
  Als er den Korkbaum schuf, gleich auch die Stoepfel erfand."
      XENIEN.

  NEW YORK:
  D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
  549 AND 551 BROADWAY.
  1879.




PREFATORY NOTE.


In complying with the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's
reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note
expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the
controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those "who
in quarrels interpose," emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they
have been hidden since my childish days. In fact, the hard-hitting
with which both the attack and the defence abound, makes me think with
a shudder upon the probable sufferings of the unhappy man whose
intervention should lead two such gladiators to turn their weapons
from one another upon him. In my youth, I once attempted to stop a
street fight, and I have never forgotten the brief but impressive
lesson on the value of the policy of non-intervention which I then
received.

But there is, happily, no need for me to place myself in a position
which, besides being fraught with danger, would savour of presumption:
Careful study of both the attack and the reply leaves me without the
inclination to become either a partisan or a peacemaker: not a
partisan, for there is a great deal with which I fully agree said on
both sides; not a peacemaker, because I think it is highly desirable
that the important questions which underlie the discussion, apart from
the more personal phases of the dispute, should be thoroughly
discussed. And if it were possible to have controversy without
bitterness in human affairs, I should be disposed, for the general
good, to use to both of the eminent antagonists the famous phrase of a
late President of the French Chamber--"_Tape dessus._"

No profound acquaintance with the history of science is needed to
produce the conviction, that the advancement of natural knowledge has
been effected by the successive or concurrent efforts of men, whose
minds are characterised by tendencies so opposite that they are forced
into conflict with one another. The one intellect is imaginative and
synthetic; its chief aim is to arrive at a broad and coherent
conception of the relations of phenomena; the other is positive,
critical, analytic, and sets the highest value upon the exact
determination and statement of the phenomena themselves.

If the man of the critical school takes the pithy aphorism "Melius
autem est naturam secare quam abstrahere"[1] for his motto, the
champion of free speculation may retort with another from the same
hand, "Citius enim emergit veritas e falsitate quam e confusione;"[2]
and each may adduce abundant historical proof that his method has
contributed as much to the progress of knowledge as that of his rival.
Every science has been largely indebted to bold, nay, even to wild
hypotheses, for the power of ordering and grasping the endless details
of natural fact which they confer; for the moral stimulus which arises
out of the desire to confirm or to confute them; and last, but not
least, for the suggestion of paths of fruitful inquiry, which, without
them, would never have been followed. From the days of Columbus and
Kepler to those of Oken, Lamarck, and Boucher de Perthes, Saul, who,
seeking his father's asses, found a kingdom, is the prototype of many
a renowned discoverer who has lighted upon verities while following
illusions, which, had they deluded lesser men, might possibly have
been considered more or less asinine.

On the other hand, there is no branch of science which does not owe at
least an equal obligation to those cool heads, which are not to be
seduced into the acceptance of symmetrical formulae and bold
generalisations for solid truths because of their brilliancy and
grandeur; to the men who cannot overlook those small exceptions and
insignificant residual phenomena which, when tracked to their causes,
are so often the death of brilliant hypotheses; to the men, finally,
who, by demonstrating the limits to human knowledge which are set by
the very conditions of thought, have warned mankind against fruitless
efforts to overstep those limits.

Neither of the eminent men of science, whose opinions are at present
under consideration, can be said to be a one-sided representative
either of the synthetic or of the analytic school. Haeckel, no less
than Virchow, is distinguished by the number, variety, and laborious
accuracy of his contributions to positive knowledge; while Virchow, no
less than Haeckel, has dealt in wide generalisations, and, until the
obscurantists thought they could turn his recent utterances to
account, no one was better abused by them as a typical free-thinker
and materialist.