light was thrown on the deep mystery of the _origin_ of individualities, material and spiritual. Haeckel devoted himself afterwards to the question with all his energy. But at the time it was Virchow who, unconsciously enough, started the great wave that welled up from the depths of his theory. He had marked out his path very clearly in the first part of his speech. Scientific research collects facts. It puts them before us without any reference to philosophy. The less philosophy there is in the investigation of facts the better. But the other side of the matter is that no power in heaven or on earth has anything to say as regards its work on things that it holds to be facts. The only possible logical conclusion from this, with reference to the question of the cell-soul, was for the investigator of facts to say: Even in respect of the psychic life we go our way and look neither to right nor left, whatever conclusions and assumptions the philosopher makes. Virchow acted very differently. He first grants that this dissolution of man into a federal unity of countless cells _must_ somehow affect the “unified soul.” We are compelled “to set up a plurality even in the psychic life.” He has reached the limit of his radicalism. We expect him to continue: Hence, as in the case of the Mosaic story of creation, of Darwinism, of the cell-theory as a whole, so here we men of science go our way unmoved; even if the whole of the teaching that has hitherto prevailed in philosophy and theology in regard to the soul breaks down, we simply go our way, and do not ask anybody’s permission. This he does not do. Take one step further, he says, and we “can easily believe that it is necessary to split up our whole psychic life in this way and ascribe a soul to each individual cell.” Haeckel believed a little later that this _was_ necessary; that the most rigorous logic compelled us to do it. But, says Virchow suddenly, we must protest most vigorously against this. This deduction from the cell-state theory reaches a point where “science is incompetent,” namely, “the facts of consciousness.” Taboo! The path of the scientific inquirer is barricaded. What follows rests on no scientific grounds, but is a sort of confession. Up to the present natural science has not been able to say anything as to the real nature, the locality, and the ground of consciousness. “Hence I have always said that it is wrong to refuse to recognise the peculiar character of these facts of consciousness that dominate our whole higher life, and to yield to the personal craving to bring these facts of consciousness into accord with an independent soul, a spiritual force, and let the individual formulate his religious feeling according to his conscience and disposition. That is, I think, the point where science makes its compromise with the Churches, recognising that this is a province that each can survey as he will, either putting his own interpretation on it