of universal evolution
ought to be at once introduced into our schools, and in what
succession its most important branches ought to be taught in the
different classes--cosmogony, geology, the phylogenesis of animals and
plants, and anthropology--this we must leave to practical teachers to
settle. But we believe that an extensive reform of instruction in this
direction is inevitable, and will be crowned by the fairest results."
I purposely avoided any closer discussion of this specialist
question, as I felt not even approximately capable of solving it, and
I believe, in fact, that none but skilled and experienced practical
teachers can undertake the solution of it with any success.

For Virchow these specialist difficulties seem not to exist; he
regards my reticence as a mere "postponement of the task," and he
answers in the following astonishing sentences:--"If the theory of
descent is as certain as Herr Haeckel assumes, then we must
demand--for it is a necessary consequence--that it shall be taught in
schools. How is it conceivable that a doctrine of such importance,
which must effect such a total revolution in all our mental
consciousness, which directly tends to create a new kind of religion,
should not be included in the school scheme of instruction? How is it
possible that such a--revelation, shall I say--should be in any
measure suppressed, or that the promulgation of the greatest and most
important advance which has been made in our views during the present
century should be left to the discretion of schoolmasters? Ay,
gentlemen, that would indeed be a renunciation of the hardest kind,
and practically it could never be carried out! Every schoolmaster who
assumes this doctrine for himself will involuntarily teach it, how can
it be otherwise?"

I must here be permitted to take Virchow exactly at his word. I
endorse almost all that he has said in these and the following
sentences. The only difference in our views is this, that Virchow
regards the theory of descent as an unproved and unproveable
hypothesis; I, on the contrary, as a fully established and
indispensable theory. How then will it be if the teachers of whom
Virchow speaks agree with my views, if--apart, of course, from all
special theories of descent--they, like me, consider the general
theory of descent as the indispensable basis of all biological
teaching? And that that is actually the case Virchow may easily
convince himself if he looks over the rec