The speech was as clear as crystal, and is still useful as an introduction to the Darwinian question. He at once strikes the greatest and the dominant note. Darwin means a new philosophy. All organisms descend from a few primitive forms, possibly from one; and man is one of these organisms. What Darwin had merely hinted in his concluding passage, what the aged Bronn had excluded altogether from his translation as too dangerous, was now set forth emphatically in the very beginning of his speech. “As regards man himself, if we are consistent we must recognise his immediate ancestors in ape-like mammals; earlier still in kangaroo-like marsupials; beyond these, in the secondary period, in lizard-like reptiles; and finally, at a yet earlier stage, the primary period, in lowly organised fishes.” There is something monumental in this passage, as in the previous confession of Darwinism in the _Monograph on the Radiolaria_. Others may have come to similar conclusions at the time on reading Darwin’s work. Here we have the profession made at the psychological moment, a trumpet-blast that sent its thrilling alarm from the threshold of a new age, for friend or foe to hear. The speech gives a slightly exaggerated account of the struggle that already existed. All was in confusion. Science was breaking up into two camps. On the one side evolution and progress, on the other the creation and immutability of species. Already there are distinguished leaders of science in favour of evolution. It is time to discuss the matter in full publicity—and the thing is done. There was, let me say parenthetically, on the Continent at least no question at that time of this clear division, or even of a serious agitation. It was partly this speech, together with Haeckel’s next work, that was to bring it about. To the highest authorities the subject seemed to be below the level of discussion. We must recall a passage that the Professor of Zoology at Göttingen, Keferstein, had written a year before in the _Göttinger Gelehrte Anzeiger_. “It gives great satisfaction to the earnest scientific worker,” we read, “to see a man like Agassiz, with an authority based on the finest zoological works, reject unreservedly a theory [Darwin’s] that would discredit the whole work of classifiers for a century, and to see that the views built up by several generations and the general consent of humanity hold a stronger position than the views of a single individual, however eloquently they may be stated.” There is no idea in this of two regular camps of scientists. Humanity is adduced as the one party; against it stands the anarchist, trying to blow up the work of centuries, Darwin. But that gave no concern to the young orator; he saw a whole decade of success in the first attack.