Freedom in Science and Teaching by Ernst Haeckel, T. H. Huxley (well read books TXT) 📕

Inasmuch as Virchow persists in treating the theory of descent as an "unproved hypothesis," inasmuch as he ignores all the forcible evidences of that hypothesis, he deprives himself of the right of speaking a decisive word in this, the most important scientific dispute of the present day. Virchow is, in fact, simply incompetent in the great question of evolution, as he is deficient in the greater part of that knowledge--more especially morphological knowledge--which is indispensable to forming a judgment upon it. Hence on the turning-point of the whole matter--viz., the problem as to the origin of species--he can have no opinion, as he has never turned his attention to the systematic treatment of species: those transitions of one species into another, which he asks to see, abound on all sides, as is well known to every systematic naturalist. Only consider, for example, the genera of Rubus and Salix among the living plants of the present period, and the Ammonites and Brachiopoda among extinct animals. Hence, too, Virchow can have no independent views as to the historical development of the higher from the lower animals, because the abundant living forms of the lower animals are almost unknown to him, and because he has hardly any conception of the marvellous strides which hundreds of industrious workers have made in this very department within the last twenty years. But there can be no doubt, indeed it is already universally acknowledged, that it is precisely the comparative anatomy of the lower--nay, of the very lowest animals--that has solved the greatest riddles of life, and removed the greatest obstacles from the path of the doctrine of descent. He simply ignores the fact that true Monads actually exist, and have been positively identified by many different observers as structureless "organisms without organs," and he turns out the poor Bathybius with a kick. And yet I believe that in "Kosmos"[15] I have conclusively proved that Monads must retain their vast elementary importance whether the Bathybius actually exists or not.

But even as regards the higher animals--nay, even as to the comparative anatomy of the highest next to man, the apes--Virchow stands apart, not understanding the views of modern morphology.

We must here examine more closely into this, because it is precisely in this department that Virchow's only morphological experiments have been made; viz., his investigations as to the skulls of apes and of men. This is precisely the one only point on which he has sought a closer acquaintance with morphology, and precisely here it is most clearly to be seen how little he is acquainted with the recent advances our science has made, and that he has hardly any conception of the extraordinary importance to that science of the theory of descent.

The skull theory, as is well known, has for a long time been a very favourite theme, not only with prominent naturalists, but also with talented amateurs. Undoubtedly the skull, viewed as the bony capsule which encloses our most important organ of sense, our brain, has a special claim to morphological importance; for the general conformation of the skull corresponds on the whole to the development of the brain, and its inner surface gives an approximate idea of the outer surface of the brain. In this correspondence lies the only sound kernel of the sickly, overgrown fancies of phrenology. The various development of the skull allows of an approximate inference as to the various degrees of development of the brain and of the mental faculties. The comparative study of the skulls of the vertebrate animals had excited the lively interest of morphologists by the end of the last century, when comparative anatomy was beginning to constitute a special science; and the genetic inquiry as to the morphological significance and development of the skull soon grew out of it. It was no less a man than our greatest German poet who first answered this question, and propounded the theory that the skull was neither more nor less than the modified foremost end of the vertebral column, and that the separate groups of bones which lie behind one another in the human skull, as in that of all the higher vertebrata, answer to the separate modified vertebræ. This "vertebral theory" of the skull, which Von Goethe and Oken simultaneously and independently attempted to prove, aroused universal interest and maintained its ground for seventy years, while many attempts were made to improve and enlarge upon it in detail.

A quite new light was thrown on this, as on every other morphological question, as soon as Darwin in 1859 had once more put into our hands the torch of the doctrine of descent. The inquiry as to the origin of the skull now assumed a real and tangible form. Since all vertebrate animals, from fishes up to man, agree so completely as to their essential internal structure that they can be rationally conceived of no otherwise than as branches of one stock and as descendants of one parent-form, the distinctly formulated question as to the skull theory which now started into prominence was this: "How, historically, has the skull of man and of the higher animals originated from that of the lower animals? How is the development of the bones of the skull from the vertebræ to be proved?" The answer to these difficult questions was supplied by the first comparative anatomist of the present day, by Carl Gegenbaur. After Huxley had pointed out that the ontogenesis or individual development of the skull by no means favoured the older hypothesis of Goethe and Oken, Gegenbaur brought forward evidence that the fundamental idea of that theory was correct; that the skull does in fact correspond to a series of coalescent vertebræ, but that the separate bones of the skull are not to be regarded as representing parts of such modified vertebræ. The skull-bones of all recent vertebrate animals are rather, for the most part, dermal bones, which have come into closer connection as supplementary to the cartilaginous primitive skull. We can even now trace the number and position of the original vertebræ, from which this primitive skull originated, by the number of the vertebral arches (gill-arches) which are attached to it, as well as by the number and position of those vertebræ, from nine to ten. Of all the recent vertebrata, the cartilaginous fishes, or Selachians, have most nearly preserved the form and structure of this primordial skull. These Selachians, the Rays and Sharks, are on the whole the creatures which throw the clearest light on the history of the lineage of the vertebrata and on the organisation of our primeval fish-natured ancestors. It is one of the particular merits of Gegenbaur that he clearly and firmly established the place in nature of the Selachians as the common ancestors of all vertebrate animals from fish up to man.

None but those who have thoroughly studied the comparative morphology of the vertebrata, who have sought the genetic issue from that labyrinth of intricate morphological problems at the hands of the theory of descent, can duly value the immeasurable service which Gegenbaur has done by this and other "Investigations into the Comparative Anatomy of the Vertebrata." These investigations are as much distinguished by a profound knowledge and careful working out of the wonderfully-extensive empirical materials for the subject, as by their critical acumen and philosophic grasp. At the same time they set in the clearest light the immeasurable value of the theory of descent in the causal explanation of the most difficult morphological problems. Gegenbaur might, therefore, with perfect right, enunciate this axiom in the Introduction to his "Comparative Anatomy." "The theory of descent will at once find a touchstone of proof in comparative anatomy. Up to this time no experience in comparative anatomy has transpired which contradicts that theory; on the contrary, they all lead up to it. Thus it will receive back from science that which it has given to scientific method: clearness and certainty." In point of fact we can adduce no morphological investigations which better support this declaration than those very phylogenetic researches "as to the cranium of the Selachians, as a basis for the critical examination of the genesis of the cranium of the vertebrata," 1872. As Virchow had formerly thoroughly studied the old skull-hypothesis, and in his admirable discourse on "Goethe as a Naturalist," 1861, had given an excellent exposition of it; as moreover he had produced most valuable contributions to the normal and pathological anatomy of the human skull, we might have expected that he would have received Gegenbaur's grand reform of the theory of the skull, and historical solution of the skull-problem, with the greatest interest, and have made it the clue to his own further researches. But we seek in vain through Virchow's latest contributions to the study of the human skull, for any indication of his knowing or appreciating Gegenbaur's investigations. On the contrary, we see him persistently moving, without any clear goal in view, on that trodden and devious path of investigation which finds the highest aim of craniological science in the measuring of skulls, or craniometry.

We are far from undervaluing the full significance of the results of exact and careful descriptions and measurements of various conformations of the skull as an empirical basis for a true and scientific study of the skull--i.e., for comparative and genetic craniology. But still we must say that the way and method by which this skull measurement has, for ten years now, been pursued by numerous craniologists can never yield corresponding scientific results; on the contrary, though it is cried up as the "exact morphology" of the skull, it simply loses itself in the domains of harmless trifling. A large amount of time has in the last ten years been squandered in disputes as to the best method of measuring skulls, while the craniologists concerned have not, in the first place, answered the obviously most important question: What end they propose to gain by this specialist measuring, what proposition they mean to prove by it? Most of those numerous skull measurers know nothing beyond the perfect human skull, or at most the skulls of a few other mammalia, while the comparative morphology and historical development of the crania of the lower vertebrata are wholly unknown to them; and yet these last contain the true key to the comprehension of the others. One single month devoted by these "exact skull measurers" to the study of Gegenbaur's theory of the skull, and to testing the hypothesis by the skulls of Selachians, would have yielded them more fruit and have given them more light than long years of describing and measuring human skulls, however various.

Virchow himself affords the most striking example of the usual results of this so-called "exact method" of studying skulls. In his popular essay on "The Skulls of Men and Apes," 1870, he concludes with this notable proposition:--"It is therefore self-evident that Man can never by any progressive development have originated from the Apes." Every evolutionist who is familiar with the surprising facts of comparative morphology will draw from them the opposite conclusion: "It is self-evident that Man could only have originated from the progressive