THE GENETIC AND DOGMATIC METHODS OF TEACHING.
The very justifiable surprise which Virchow's Munich address has
excited in many circles is due only in part to his opposition to the
theory of descent; for the rest, and in much greater part, it is due
to the astounding arguments which he has connected with it,
particularly as to freedom for instruction. These arguments so closely
resemble those of the Jesuits that they might have been inspired
direct from the Vatican, or, which is the same thing, the notorious
"court-chaplain party" in Berlin. No wonder, then, that these
propositions, which would undermine the whole liberty of science, have
met with the loudest approbation from the "Germania," the "New
Evangelical Church Times" ("Neue Evangelischen Kirchenzeitung"), and
other leading, equivocating organs of the Church militant. On the
other hand, these odious principles are already so extensively
discussed, and have been so clearly laid down in all their
indefensibility, that I may here deal with them briefly.
Virchow's politics as a pedagogue reach their highest pitch in this
demand: "that in all schools, from the poor schools to the
universities, nothing shall be taught that is not absolutely certain.
None but objective and absolutely ascertained knowledge is to be
imparted by the teacher to the learner; nothing subjective, no
knowledge that is open to correction, only facts, no hypotheses." The
investigation of such problems as the whole nation may be interested
in must not be restricted; that is liberty of inquiry; but the problem
ought not, without anything farther, to be the subject of _teaching_.
"When we teach we must restrict ourselves to the smaller, and yet how
great, departments which we are actually masters of."
Rarely indeed has such a treasonable attempt on liberty of doctrine
been made by a prominent representative of science, and a leader of
the intellectual movement too, as this by Virchow. Only inquiry is to
be free and not teaching! And where in the whole history of science is
there one single scientific inquirer to be found who would not have
felt himself quite justified in teaching his own subjective
convictions with as much right as he had to construct them from
inquiry into objective facts. And where, generally speaking, is the
limit to be found between objective and subjective knowledge? Is
there, in fact, any objective science?
This question Virchow answers in the affirmative, for he goes on to
say: "We must not forget that there is a boundary line between the
speculative departments of natural science and those that are actually
conquered and firmly established" (p. 8). In my opinion, there is no
such boundary line; on the contrary, all human knowledge as such is
subjective. An objective science which consists merely of facts
without any subjective theories is inconceivable. For evidence in
favour of this view we must take a rapid survey of the whole domain of
human science, and test the chief departments of it to see how far
they contain, on the one hand, objective knowledge and facts, and on
the other, subjective knowledge and hypotheses. We may begin directly
with Kant's assertion that in every science only so much true--that is
objective--knowledge is to be found as it contains of mathematics.
Unquestionably mathematics stand at the head of all the sciences as
regards the certainty of its teaching. But how as to those deepest and
simplest fundamental axioms which constitute the firm basis on which
the proud edifice of mathematical teaching rests? Are these certain
and proved? Certainly not. The bases of its teaching are simply
"axioms" which are incapable of proof. To give only one example of how
the very first principles of mathematics might be attacked by
scepticism and shaken by philosophical speculation, we may remember
the recent discussions as to the three dimensions of space and the
possibility of a fourth dimension; disputes which are carried on even
at the present day by the most eminent mathematicians, physicists, and
philosophers. So much as this is certain, that mathematics as little
constitute an absolutely objective science as any other, but by the
very nature of man are subjectively conditioned. A man's subjective
power of knowing can only discern the objective facts of the outer
world in general so far as his organs of sense and his brain admit in
his own individual degree of cultivation.
However, granting that mathematics practically constitute an
absolutely certain and objective science, how is it with the rest of
the sciences? Undoubtedly the most certain among them are those "exact
sciences" whose principles are to be directly proved by mathematics;
thus, in the first place, a great part of physics. We say, "a great
part," for another large part--to speak accurately, by far the
greatest--is incapable of any exact mathematical proof. For what do we
know for certain of the essential nature of matter, or the essential
nature of force? What do we know for certain of gravitation, of the
attraction of mass, of its effects at great distances, and so on?
Newton's theory of gravitation is regarded as the most important and
certain theory of physics, and yet gravitation itself is a hypothesis.
Then, as to the other branches of physics--electricity and magnetism.
The whole scheme of these important sciences rests on the hypothesis
of "electric fluidity," or of imponderable matter of which the
existence is nothing less than proved. Or optics? Optics certainly
appertain to the most important and completest branch of physics, and
yet the undulatory theory of light, which we accept now as the
indispensable basis of optics, rests on an unproved hypothesis, on the
subjective assumption of an ethereal medium, whose existence no one is
in a position to prove objectively in any way. Nay, further, before
Young set up the undulatory theory of light, for a hundred years the
emanation theory as taught by Newton obtained exclusively in physics;
a theory which at the present day is universally regarded as
untenable. In our opinion the mighty Newton won the greatest honours
in the development of the science of optics, inasmuch as he was the
first to connect and explain the vast mass of objective optical facts
by a subjective and pregnant hypothesis. But, according to Virchow's
view, Newton on the contrary transgressed greatly by teaching this
erroneous hypothesis; for even in "exact" physics none but
"independent and certain facts" are to be taught and established by
"experiment as the highest means of proof." Physics as a whole, as
resting on mere unproved hypotheses, may be indeed an object of
inquiry but not of teaching.
Of course the same is true of chemistry; nay, this stands on much
weaker feet, and is even less proved than physics. The whole
theoretical side of chemistry is an airy structure of hypotheses such
as does not exist in any other science. In the last three decades we
have seen a whole series of the most different theories rapidly
succeed each other, none of which can be positively proved, though at
least one of them is taught by every professor of chemistry. But what
is worst of all, the common basis of all the most dissimilar chemical
theories, viz., the atomic theory, is as unproved and unprovable as
any hypothesis can be. No chemist has ever seen an atom, but he
nevertheless considers the mechanism of atoms as the highest term of
his science, he nevertheless describes and constructs the connection
of atoms in their various combinations as though he had them before
him on the dissecting-table! All the conceptions which we possess as
to chemical structure and the affinities of matter, are subjective
hypotheses, mere conceptions as to the position and changes of
position of the various atoms, whose very existence is incapable of
proof. Away, then, with chemistry from our schools! The chemist must
only describe the properties of the different elements and those
combinations which can be put before the pupil as ascertained facts
founded in experiment, "the highest means of proof." Everything that
goes beyond this is mischievous, particularly every suggestion as to
the essence and chemical constituents of bodies; matters as to which,
in the nature of things, we can only form uncertain hypotheses. For as
all chemistry, viewed as a system of doctrine, rests solely on such
hypotheses, it may be indeed a subject of investigation but not of
teaching.
Having thus convinced ourselves that chemistry as well as physics,
those "exact sciences," those "mechanical" bases of all other
sciences, rest on mere unproved hypotheses, and so must not be taught,
we may make short work of the other faculties. For they collectively
are more or less historical sciences and dispense wholly or in part
with even those half-exact, fundamental principles on which physics
and chemistry are based. In the first place, there is that grand,
historical, natural science, geology; the great doctrine of the
structure and composition, the origin and development of our globe.
According to Virchow this too must be limited to the description of
ascertained facts, such as the structure of mountain masses, the
character of the fossils they contain, the formation of crystals, and
so forth. But not for the world must anything be taught as to the
evolution of this globe; for this rests from beginning to end on
unproved hypotheses. For even to the present day the Plutonic and
Neptunic theories are disputing the field, and to this day we know not
as to many of the most important rocks, whether they originated by the
agency of fire or of water. The new and remarkable discoveries of the
great Challenger-expedition threaten to subvert a great many
geological notions which had long been regarded as certain. Then
again, as to fossils. Who can prove with any certainty that these
petrifactions are in truth the fossilised remains of extinct
organisms? They may be--as many distinguished naturalists of even the
last century maintained--marvellous sports of nature, mysterious
"Lusus naturae," or mere rough, inorganic models of the labouring
Creator into which He subsequently "breathed the breath of life;" or
perhaps "stone-flesh" (caro fossilis) brought into existence, on the
dead rocks by the "fertilising air" (aura seminalis), and so forth.
But I am wrong! for with regard to petrifactions, Virchow is in the
highest degree speculative, and accepts without any hesitation the
rash hypothesis that fossils are actually the remains of extinct
organisms, although no "certain proof" whatever can be offered in its
favour, and although experiment, the "highest means of proof," has
never yet produced a single fossil. According to him these are actual
"objective, material evidences," only here we must go no further than
certain experience teaches us, and base no subjective conclusions on
these objective facts. Thus, for instance, in the long series of the
mesozoic formations, in the different strata of the Trias, Jurassic,
and Chalk formations, for the deposition of which a lapse of many
millions of years has been required, we find absolutely no remains of
fossil mammalia beyond lower jaws; seek where we will, nothing is
anywhere to be found but lower jaws, and no other bones whatever. The
simple reasons of this striking imperfection of the palaeontological
record have been clearly expounded by Lyell, Huxley, and others.
(Comp. my "History of Creation," vol. ii. p. 32.) These great
investigators, in accordance with all other palaeontologists, have
demonstrated that these jaw-bones of the mesozoic period are the
remains of mammalia, accurately speaking of marsupials, on the simple
ground that the nether jaws of the extant recent marsupials show a
similar characteristic form with the fossil ones. They therefore
unhesitatingly assume that the rest of the bones in the bodies of
these extinct animals corresponded to those of living mammals. But
this is a quite inadmissible hypothesis devoid of any "certain proof!"
Where, then, are the other bones? Let us see them! till then we
decline to believe in them. According to Virchow, we ought rather to
assume that the lower jaw was the only bone in the body of these
extraordinary beasts. Are there not, in fact, snails, in which an
upper jaw is the only representation of a skeleton.
We cannot omit taking this opportunity of casting a side glance at the
very hazardous position which Virchow, in total opposition to his
boasted cool scepticism, has taken up in anthropology as it is called,
now his favourite branch of science. In his Munich address he tells us
that he is pursuing the study of anthropology with delight, and then
asserts that "the quarternary man" is an universally-accepted fact.
Quite apart from this statement, we have seen that Virchow can never
attain to a profound and really scientific study of anthropology
simply for this reason, that he is lacking in that comprehensive
knowledge of comparative morphology which is indispensable to it; nay,
comparative anatomy and ontogenesis must be, according to him,
unpermitted speculations and the phylogenesis of man, the key to all
the most important questions of anthropology, being based upon these,
is devoid of all certain proof. All the more must we wonder at the
speculative levity with which even the sceptic Virchow in the
"Primeval History of Man" and "Fossil Anthropology," embarks in the
most hazardous conjectures, and gives out uncertain, subjective
hypotheses as certain, objective facts.
There is, in fact, at the present day no department of science in
which the wildest and most untenable hypotheses have blossomed out so
freely as in anthropology and ethnology, so-called. All the
phylogenetic hypotheses which I myself have put forward in my
"Evolution of Man" as to the animal ancestry of man, or in my "Natural
History of Creation" as to the affinities of animal races--all the
other genealogical hypotheses which are now advanced by numerous
zoologists and botanists as to the phylogenetic evolution of the
animal and plant worlds--all these hypotheses together, which Virchow
rejects in a lump, are, critically considered as hypotheses, far
better grounded in facts, far better supported by facts, than the
majority of those innumerable airy and fanciful hypotheses with which,
for the last twelve years, the "Archiv fuer Anthropologie" and
"Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie," edited by Virchow and Bastian, have
filled their columns. This last periodical has at least the merit of
being a tolerably consistent opponent of the doctrine of evolution,
while in the former, during twelve years, essays on both sides have
been mixed up in cheerful confusion. And how fanciful are the
short-sighted hypotheses which there blossom forth from the mixed mass
of facts, chaotically flung together. Only think of the disputes over
the stone age, bronze age, and iron age; think of the motley
discussions as to the varieties of skull-conformation and their
significance; on the races of man, the migrations of peoples and the
like. Most of these very intricate historical problems are far more
buried in obscurity, and the hypotheses to explain them dispense far
more largely with any basis of facts, than is the case with our
phylogenetic hypotheses; for these are more or less "objectively"
based on the facts of comparative anatomy and ontogenesis.
But no one of these historical hypotheses is so daring, so little
"certainly proved," as the group of very various and contradictory
hypotheses which have been put forward as to the antiquity and first
appearance of the human species; and Virchow asserts positively "The
pleistocene man is an universally accepted fact. The tertiary man is,
on the other hand, a problem, though indeed a problem which is already
under substantial discussion!" As if the distinction between the
tertiary and quarternary periods were not itself a geological
hypothesis, and as if the significance of the fossil animal-remains,
which play the largest part in it, did not also rest on mere
hypotheses which escape all certain proof! Where, then, is the actual
experiment "as the highest means of proof," which gives evidence for
these "certain facts"? The whole discussion in general about
prehistoric man, which Virchow has mixed up with his Munich address
(pp. 30, 31), is the clearest evidence of the uncritical spirit in
which he deals with these historical problems as "exact natural
sciences." He assures us that "not one single ape's skull, nor skull
of an anthropoid ape, has ever been found which could actually have
belonged to a human owner!" and he adds this sentence, in italics, "We
cannot teach, for we cannot regard it as a real acquisition of
science, that man is descended from the ape or from any other animal!"
Then evidently no alternative remains but that he is descended from a
god, or from a clod!
But let us go over the rest of the sciences to see what, according to
Virchow, may be taught in each without endangering the safety of
science. In the whole department of biology, as well as in
zoology--including anthropology--and in botany, instruction must be
limited to imparting those trifling fragments of knowledge which
either consist of mere descriptions of dry facts, or which supply an
explanation of them by mathematical formulas. Morphology must be
taught as mere descriptive anatomy and systematising, the history of
development as mere descriptive ontogenesis. Comparative anatomy and
phylogenesis, which by their explanatory hypotheses raise those dead
masses of facts to the place of true and living sciences--these must
not be taught at all. And how then do matters stand with regard to the
cell-theory, that fundamental theory on which every element of our
morphology and physiology depends, and by applying which Virchow
himself reached his grandest results?
Since Schleiden in Jena, forty years ago, first put forward the
cell-theory, and Schwann immediately after applied it to the animal
kingdom and so to the whole organic world, this fundamental doctrine
has undergone very important modifications, for it is indeed a
biological theory, but not a fact. We may recollect under what
different aspects its main principles have appeared in the course of
these four decades: what changes have taken place in the conception of
the cell itself. After the organic cell had originally been conceived
of as a vesicle, consisting of a firm capsule and a fluid content, we
subsequently discerned it to be composed of a glutinous semi-fluid
cell-substance, the protoplasm, and convinced ourselves that this
protoplasm and the cell-core or nucleus enclosed in it are the most
important and indispensable constituent parts of the cell, while the
external firm capsule, the cell-membrane, is not essential and very
frequently wanting. But even now opinions widely differ as to how the
conception of a cell should be precisely defined, and what
consequences must be inferred from the cell-theory, and attempts have
not been wanting to upset it altogether and to treat it as worthless.
The anatomist Henle, of Goettingen, in particular, has repeatedly made
such an attempt, that "gifted" anatomist who, in the preface to his
bulky text-book of human anatomy, declared that scientific ideas are
mere worthless paper money, and that the noble metal of facts, on the
contrary, is the only genuine article. Not long since a bulky volume
in quarto appeared, by one Herr Nathusius-Koenigsborn, in which the
cell is explained to be a subordinate plastic element, and the
cell-theory is eliminated as superfluous; and this monstrous volume,
full of the most amusing nonsense, is dedicated to Herr Henle. Virchow
formerly was one of the victorious opponents of the Goettingen
physician, and wrote brilliant articles against the "rational
pathology" of "irrational Herr Henle;" now apparently he agrees with
him that the paper money of ideas is worthless as compared with the
noble metal of facts. Of course the cell-theory then loses all its
value, and cannot be a subject of instruction; for the cell itself is
not a certain and undoubted fact, but only an abstraction, a
philosophical idea.
Nothing more clearly shows what a complete change Virchow has
undergone in his most important principles, and what an utter
metapsychosis in this special province, than his famous axiom,
uttered in 1855--"Omnis cellula e cellula." That is unquestionably the
boldest generalisation to which the youthful, independent Virchow ever
attained, and one on which he justly prided himself not a little. He
himself repeatedly compared it with Harvey's saying, which marked an
epoch--"Omne vivum ex ovo." But neither of these axioms is universally
correct. On the contrary, we now know that every cell does not
necessarily originate from a cell, any more than that every organic
individual originates from an ovum. In many cases true nucleated cells
proceed from un-nucleated cytods, as in the Gregarinae, Myxomycetae and
others. Nay more, the primordial organic cells could only have
originated in the first instance from non-cellular plastides or monads
by their homogeneous plasson resolving itself into an internal nucleus
and an external protoplasm. Thus, as we subsequently learnt to know
most of the exceptions to this generalisation of Virchow, it appeared
all the bolder; the more so as we were at that time far from being
able to refer all the different tissues of the higher animals with any
certainty to cells, and as not a few experiments seemed to point to
the hypothesis of free cell-formation. That guiding axiom, which so
powerfully furthered the cell-theory, Virchow, from his present
standpoint, must wholly condemn as a crime against exact science, and
he surely can never forgive himself for having propounded this
hypothesis--which was afterwards found to be not universally true--as
an important doctrinal axiom.
We shall indeed find much worse sins against his own principles of
to-day if we turn to Virchow's own special department of science,
namely, pathological anatomy and physiology, the most important
division of theoretic medicine. The great and incomparable services
which Virchow here effected do not depend on the numerous independent
new facts which he discovered, but on the theories and hypotheses by
which, like an inspired pioneer, he sought to open a way through the
dead waste of pathological knowledge and to form it into a living
science. These new theories and the hypotheses on which they were
founded, Virchow then propounded to us, his disciples, with such
incisive assurance that every one of us was convinced of their truth;
and yet later experience has shown that they were in part
insufficiently proved and in part wholly false. For example, I will
only here recall his famous theory of the connective-tissue, for which
I myself in several of my early works (1856 to 1858) broke a lance.
His theory seemed to explain a host of the most important
physiological and pathological phenomena in the simplest manner, and
yet it was afterwards proved to be false. In spite of this, I declare
to this day that it was of the greatest service for the development of
our acquaintance with the formation of the connective-tissue; as a
guiding hypothesis and as a provisional clue to our investigations.
Virchow, on the contrary, if he impartially reflects on the part he
took in the diffusion of this misleading doctrine, must reproach
himself severely for it. For "we must draw a hard and fast line
between what we are to teach and what we are to investigate. What we
investigate are problems," but "the problem ought not to be the
subject of teaching." That Virchow, in his course of instruction,
every day belied this, his present view of teaching, that he every
hour taught his disciples some unproved theory and problematical
hypothesis, every one knows who, like myself, for years and with the
deepest interest, enjoyed his distinguished instruction. Still the
captivating charm of this instruction--in spite of the defective
method of unprepared lectures--lay precisely in this, that Virchow as
a teacher constantly let us, his pupils, enter into those problems
with which he himself at the moment was occupied; that he propounded
to us his personal hypothesis for the elucidation of the given facts.
And what really gifted teacher who lives in his science would not do
the same? Where is there, or where has there ever been, a great master
who in his teaching has confined himself to only imparting certain
and undoubtedly ascertained facts? Who has not, on the contrary, found
that the charm and value of his instruction lay precisely in
propounding the problems which link themselves with those facts, and
in teaching the uncertain theories and fluctuating hypotheses which
may serve to solve these problems? Or is there for the young and
struggling mind anything better, or more conducive to culture, than to
exercise the intelligence in problems of investigation?
How unpractical and how absurd is Virchow's demand--that only
ascertained facts and no problematic theories shall be admitted in
teaching--will be still more strikingly shown by a glance over the
remaining provinces of human knowledge. What, indeed, will be left of
history, of philology, of political science, of jurisprudence, if we
restrict the teaching of them to absolutely-ascertained and
established facts. What of "science" will remain to them if the idea
which endeavours to discern the causes of the facts is banished? if
the problems, the theories, the hypotheses, which seek these causes
may not be generally taught? And that philosophy--the science of
knowing--by which all the common results of human knowledge are to be
bound up into one grand and harmonious whole--that philosophy, I say,
must not be generally taught, is, according to Virchow, quite
self-evident.
Finally, there remains nothing but theology. Theology alone is the one
true science, and its dogmas alone may be taught as certain. Of
course! for it proceeds directly from revelation, and only divine
revelation can be "quite certain;" it alone can never err. Yes,
incredible as it sounds, Virchow, the sceptical opponent of dogma, the
leader of the fight for "liberty of science," Virchow now finds the
only sure basis for instruction in the dogmas of the Church. After all
that has gone before, the following memorable sentence leaves no doubt
on this score:--"Every attempt to transform our problems into dogmas,
to introduce our conjectures as a basis of instruction, particularly
any attempt simply to dispossess the Church and to supplant her dogma
by a creed of descent--ay, gentlemen--this attempt must fail, and in
its ruin will entail the greatest peril on the position of science in
general."
The shouts of triumph of the whole clerical press over Virchow's
Munich address is thus rendered perfectly intelligible, for it is well
known that "there is more joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth
than over ten just men." When Rudolf Virchow, the "notorious
materialist," the "advanced radical," the "great supporter of the
atheism of science," is so suddenly converted, when he proclaims
loudly and publicly that the dogmas of the Church are the only sure
basis of instruction, then the Church militant may well sing "Hosanna
in the highest!" Only one thing is to be regretted, that Virchow has
not more clearly defined which of the many different church-religions
is the only true one, and which of the innumerable and contradictory
dogmas are to form the sure basis of instruction. We all know that
each Church regards itself as the only truly saving one, and her own
dogma as the only true one. But as to whether it is to be
Protestantism or Catholicism, the Reformed or the Lutheran confession,
whether the Anglican or the Presbyterian dogma, whether the Roman or
the Greek Church, the Mosaic or the Mohammedan dispensation, whether
Buddhism or Brahmanism, whether, finally, it is to be one of the many
fetish-religions of the Indians and Negroes that is to form the
permanent and sure basis of instruction, let us hope that Virchow will
at the next meeting of German naturalists and physicians divulge his
opinion.
At any rate, the "instruction of the future, according to Virchow," will
be greatly simplified if he will do this. For the dogma of the Trinity
in Unity as a basis of mathematics, the dogma of the resurrection of the
body as a basis of medicine, the dogma of infallibility as a basis of
psychology, the dogma of the immaculate conception as a basis of genetic
science, the dogma of the staying of the sun as a basis of astronomy, the
dogma of the creation of the earth, animals, and plants as a basis of
geology and phylogenesis--these or any other dogma, at pleasure, from any
other church will make all other doctrine quite superfluous. Virchow,
"that critical spirit," knows as well as I, and as every other naturalist,
that these dogmas are not true, and nevertheless, in his opinion, they
are not to be supplanted as the "basis of instruction" by those theories
and hypotheses of modern natural science of which Virchow himself says
that they may be true, that in a great measure they probably are true,
but are not yet "quite certainly proved."
At pages 15, 24, 26, 28, and elsewhere in his Munich address, Virchow
strongly insists that only that objective knowledge may be taught
which we possess as absolutely certain fact! and then at page 29 he
requires us to conclude that the basis of instruction shall continue
to be the purely subjective dogmas of the Church; revelations and
dogmas which not only are not proved by any facts whatever, but on the
contrary, stand in the most trenchant contradiction to the most
obvious facts of natural experience and fly in the face of all human
reason. These contradictions, to be sure, are no greater than some
others which stand out conspicuous and incomprehensible in Virchow's
discourse. Thus at the beginning of his address he glorifies Lorenz
Oken and deeply laments "that he, that highly-valued and honoured
master, that ornament of the high school of Munich, had been forced
to die in exile! That cruel exile which oppressed Oken's latter years,
which left him to perish far from those cities to which he had
sacrificed the best powers of his life, that exile will be remembered
as the note of the time which we have passed through. And so long as
there continue to be meetings of German naturalists, so long may we
gratefully remember that this man to his death bore upon him all the
signs of a martyr, so long shall we point to him as one of the
witnesses who have fought for us and for the liberty of science."
Verily these words from Virchow's lips sound like the bitterest irony;
for was not Lorenz Oken one of the foremost and most zealous champions
of that monistic doctrine of development against which Rudolf Virchow
at this day is most violently striving? Did not Oken himself proceed
farther in the construction of bold hypotheses and comprehensive
theories than any supporter of the doctrine of evolution at the
present time? Is not Oken justly considered as the one typical
representative of that older period of natural philosophy who rose to
much higher and bolder flights of fancy, and left the solid ground of
facts much farther behind him than any tyro of the new philosophy? And
this makes the irony seem all the greater with which Virchow at the
beginning of his address glorifies Oken the free teacher, as a martyr
to the freedom of science, and at the end of it insists that this
freedom applies only to inquiry and not to teaching, and that the
master must teach no problem, no theory, no hypothesis.
While this unheard-of demand sets Virchow's views of teaching in the
most extraordinary light, and while every unprejudiced and experienced
teacher must most emphatically protest against this strait-waistcoat
for instruction, he will feel no less bound to resist Virchow's other
strange demand, that every ascertained truth shall forthwith be taught
in all schools, down to the elementary schools. I myself, in my Munich
address, sought the instructional value of our monistic evolution
theory above all in the genetic method, in the inquiry, that is to
say, for the effective causes of the facts taught; and I added these
words--"How far the principles of the doctrine of universal evolution
ought to be at once introduced into our schools, and in what
succession its most important branches ought to be taught in the
different classes--cosmogony, geology, the phylogenesis of animals and
plants, and anthropology--this we must leave to practical teachers to
settle. But we believe that an extensive reform of instruction in this
direction is inevitable, and will be crowned by the fairest results."
I purposely avoided any closer discussion of this specialist
question, as I felt not even approximately capable of solving it, and
I believe, in fact, that none but skilled and experienced practical
teachers can undertake the solution of it with any success.
For Virchow these specialist difficulties seem not to exist; he
regards my reticence as a mere "postponement of the task," and he
answers in the following astonishing sentences:--"If the theory of
descent is as certain as Herr Haeckel assumes, then we must
demand--for it is a necessary consequence--that it shall be taught in
schools. How is it conceivable that a doctrine of such importance,
which must effect such a total revolution in all our mental
consciousness, which directly tends to create a new kind of religion,
should not be included in the school scheme of instruction? How is it
possible that such a--revelation, shall I say--should be in any
measure suppressed, or that the promulgation of the greatest and most
important advance which has been made in our views during the present
century should be left to the discretion of schoolmasters? Ay,
gentlemen, that would indeed be a renunciation of the hardest kind,
and practically it could never be carried out! Every schoolmaster who
assumes this doctrine for himself will involuntarily teach it, how can
it be otherwise?"
I must here be permitted to take Virchow exactly at his word. I
endorse almost all that he has said in these and the following
sentences. The only difference in our views is this, that Virchow
regards the theory of descent as an unproved and unproveable
hypothesis; I, on the contrary, as a fully established and
indispensable theory. How then will it be if the teachers of whom
Virchow speaks agree with my views, if--apart, of course, from all
special theories of descent--they, like me, consider the general
theory of descent as the indispensable basis of all biological
teaching? And that that is actually the case Virchow may easily
convince himself if he looks over the recent literature of zoology and
botany! Our whole morphological literature in particular is already so
deeply and completely penetrated by the doctrine of descent,
phylogenetic principles already prevail so universally as a certain
and indispensable instrument of inquiry, that no man for the future
would deprive himself of their help. As Oscar Schmidt justly
observes--"Perhaps ninety-nine per cent. of all living, or rather of
all working zoologists, are convinced by inductive methods of the
truth of the doctrine of descent." And Virchow with his magisterial
requirements will attain only the very reverse of what he aims at. How
often has it not been said already that science must either have
perfect freedom or else none at all? This is as true of teaching as
it is of inquiry, for the two are intrinsically and inseparably
connected. And so it is not in vain that it is written in section 152
of the German Code, and in section 20 of the Prussian Charter,
"Science and her teaching shall be free!"