Last Words on Evolution: A Popular Retrospect and SummaryHaeckel, Ernst
Religion
Last Words on Evolution: A Popular Retrospect and Summary
Haeckel, Ernst
Evolution -- History; Religion and science
My famous teacher, Rudolf Virchow, whom I had met at Würtzburg in
1852, and was soon associated with in the most friendly relations
as special pupil and admiring assistant, played a very curious
part in this great controversy. I am, I think, one of those
elderly men who have followed Virchow's development, as man and
thinker, with the greatest interest during the last fifty years.
I distinguish three periods in his psychological metamorphoses.
In the first decade of his academic life, from 1847 to 1858,
mainly at Würtzburg, he effected the great reform of medicine that
culminated brilliantly in his cellular pathology. In the following
twenty years (1858-1877) he was chiefly occupied with politics
and anthropology. He was at first favourable to Darwinism, then
sceptical, and finally rejected it. His powerful and determined
opposition to it dates from 1877, when, in is famous speech on "The
Freedom of Science in the Modern State," he struck a heavy blow
at that freedom, denounced the theory of evolution as dangerous
to the State, and demanded its exclusion from the schools. This
remarkable metamorphosis is so important, and has had so much
influence, yet has been so erroneously described, that I will
deal with it somewhat fully in the next chapter, especially as
I have then to treat one chief problem, the descent of man from
the ape. For the moment, I will merely recall the fact that in
Berlin, the "metropolis of intelligence," as it has been called,
the theory of evolution, now generally accepted, met with a more
stubborn resistance than in most of our other leading educational
centres, and that this opposition was due above all to the powerful
authority of Virchow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account