When Darwin's work appeared in 1859, and fell like a flash of lightning on the dark world of official biology, I was engaged in a scientific expedition to Sicily and taken up with a thorough study of the graceful radiolarians, those wonderful microscopic marine animals that surpass all other organisms in the beauty and variety of their forms. The special study of this remarkable class of animals, of which I afterwards described more than 4,000 species, after more than ten years of research, provided me with one of the solid foundation-stones of my Darwinian ideas. But when I returned from Messina to Berlin in the spring of 1860, I knew nothing as yet of Darwin's achievement. I merely heard from my friends at Berlin that a remarkable work by a crazy Englishman had attracted great attention, and that it turned upside down all previous ideas as to the origin of species.
I soon perceived that almost all the experts at Berlin—chief amongst them were the famous microscopist, Ehrenberg; the anatomist, Reichert; the zoologist, Peters; and the geologist, Beyrich—were unanimous in their condemnation of Darwin. The brilliant orator of the Berlin Academy, Emil du Bois-Reymond, hesitated. He recognised that the theory of evolution was the only natural solution of the problem of creation; but he laughed at the application of it as a poor romance, and declared that the phylogenetic inquiries into the relationship of the various species had about as much value as the research of philologists into the genealogical tree of the Homeric heroes. The distinguished botanist, Alexander Braun, stood quite alone in his full and warm assent to the theory of evolution. I found comfort and encouragement with this dear and respected teacher, when I was deeply moved by the first reading of Darwin's book, and soon completely converted to his views. In Darwin's great and harmonious conception of Nature, and his convincing establishment of evolution, I had an answer to all the doubts that had beset me since the beginning of my biological studies.
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.
We can only glance briefly here at the victorious struggle that the idea of evolution has conducted in the last three decades of the nineteenth century. The violent resistance that Darwinism encountered nearly everywhere in its early years was paralysed towards the end of the first decade. In the years 1866-1874 many works were published in which not only were the foundations of the theory scientifically strengthened, but its general recognition was secured by popular treatment of the subject. I made the first attempt in 1866, in my General Morphology, to present connectedly the whole subject of evolution and make it the foundation of a consistent Monistic philosophy; and I then gave a popular summary of my chief conclusions in the ten editions of my History of Creation. In my Evolution of Man I made the first attempt to apply the principles of evolution thoroughly and consistently to man, and to draw up a hypothetical list of his animal ancestors. The three volumes of my Systematic Phylogeny (1894-1896) contain a fuller outline of a natural classification of organisms on the basis of their stem-history. There have been important contributions to the science of evolution in all its branches in the Darwinian periodical, Cosmos, since 1877; and a number of admirable popular works helped to spread the system.
However, the most important and most welcome advance was made by science when, in the last thirty years, the idea of evolution penetrated into every branch of biology, and was recognised as fundamental and indispensable. Thousands of new discoveries and observations in all sections of botany, zoology, protistology, and anthropology, were brought forward as empirical evidence of evolution. This is especially true of the remarkable progress of paleontology, comparative anatomy, and embryology, but it applies also to physiology, chorology (the science of the distribution of living things), and œcology (the description of the habits of animals). How much our horizon was extended by these, and how much the unity of our Monistic system gained, can be seen in any modern manual of biology. If we compare them with those that gave us extracts of natural history forty or fifty years ago, we see at once what an enormous advance has taken place. Even the more remote branches of anthropological science, ethnography, sociology, ethics, and jurisprudence, are entering into closer relations with the theory of evolution, and can no longer escape its influence. In view of all this, it is ridiculous for theological and metaphysical journals to talk, as they do, of the failure of evolution and "the death-bed of Darwinism."
Our science of evolution won its greatest triumph when, at the beginning of the twentieth century, its most powerful opponents, the Churches, became reconciled to it, and endeavoured to bring their dogmas into line with it. A number of timid attempts to do so had been made in the preceding ten years by different free-thinking theologians and philosophers, but without much success. The distinction of accomplishing this in a comprehensive and well-informed manner was reserved for a Jesuit, Father Erich Wasmann of Luxemburg. This able and learned entomologist had already earned some recognition in zoology by a series of admirable observations on the life of ants, and the captives that they always keep in their homes, certain very small insects which have themselves been curiously modified by adaptation to their peculiar environment. He showed that these striking modifications can only be rationally explained by descent from other free-living species of insects. The various papers in which Wasmann gave a thoroughly Darwinian explanation of the biological phenomena first appeared (1901-1903) in the Catholic periodical, Stimmen aus Maria-Laach, and are now collected in a special work entitled, Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution.
This remarkable book of Wasmann's is a masterpiece of Jesuitical sophistry. It really consists of three entirely different sections. The first third gives, in the introduction, what is, for Catholics, a clear and instructive account of modern biology, especially the cell-theory, and the theory of evolution (chapters i.-viii.). The second third, the ninth chapter, is the most valuable part of the work. It has the title: "The Theory of Fixity or the theory of Evolution?" Here the learned entomologist gives an interesting account of the results of his prolonged studies of the morphology and the œcology of the ants and their captives, the myrmecophilæ. He shows impartially and convincingly that these complicated and remarkable phenomena can only be explained by evolution, and that the older doctrine of the fixity and independent creation of the various species is quite untenable. With a few changes this ninth chapter could figure as a useful part of a work by Darwin or Weismann or some other evolutionist. The succeeding chapter (the last third) is flagrantly inconsistent with the ninth. It deals most absurdly with the application of the theory of evolution to man. The reader has to ask himself whether Wasmann really believes these confused and ridiculous notions, or whether he merely aims at befogging his readers, and so preparing the way for the acceptance of the conventional creed.
Wasmann's book has been well criticised by a number of competent students, especially by Escherich and Francé. While fully recognising his great services, they insist very strongly on the great mischief wrought by this smuggling of the Jesuitical spirit into biology. Escherich points out at length the glaring inconsistencies and the obvious untruths of this "ecclesiastical evolution." He summarises his criticism in the words: "If the theory of evolution can really be reconciled with the dogmas of the Church only in the way we find here, Wasmann has clearly proved that any such reconciliation is impossible. Because what Wasmann gives here as the theory of evolution is a thing mutilated beyond recognition and incapable of any vitality." He tries, like a good Jesuit, to prove that it does not tend to undermine, but to give a firm foundation to, the story of supernatural creation, and that it was really not Lamarck and Darwin, but St. Augustin and St. Thomas of Aquin, who founded the science of evolution. "God does not interfere directly in the order of Nature when he can act by means of natural causes." Man alone constitutes a remarkable exception; because "the human soul, being a spiritual entity, cannot be derived from matter even by the Divine omnipotence, like the vital forms of the plants and animals" (p. 299).
In an instructive article on "Jesuitical Science" (in the Frankfort Freie Wort, No. 22, 1904), R. H. Francé gives an interesting list of the prominent Jesuits who are now at work in the various branches of science. As he rightly says, the danger consists "in a systematic introduction of the Jesuitical spirit into science, a persistent perversion of all its problems and solutions, and an astute undermining of its foundations; to speak more precisely, the danger is that people are not sufficiently conscious of it, and that they, and even science itself, fall into the cleverly prepared pit of believing that there is such a thing as Jesuitical science, the results of which may be taken seriously."[4]