ffered by the
history of the Roman Popes is the best answer to this question. And
just as these "Vicars of God on earth" did, so did their subordinates
and accomplices, so, too, have the orthodox priests of other sects
done; never failing to set the practice of their own course of life in
the strongest possible contrast to those noble doctrines of Christian
love which were constantly on their lips.

And as with Christianity so it is with every other religious and moral
doctrine which ought to have proved its power in the wide domain of
practical philosophy, in the education of youth, in the civilisation
of nations. The theoretic kernel of this doctrine may always and
everywhere stand in the most glaring contradiction to its practical
working-out, testifying to the endless inconsistency of human nature:
but what can all this matter to the scientific inquirer? His sole and
only task is to seek for truth and to teach what he has discerned to
be the truth, indifferent as to what consequences the various parties
of state or church may happen to draw from it.

CHAPTER VII.

IGNORABIMUS ET RESTRINGAMUR.

The dangerous attempt which Virchow made in Munich against the
freedom of science is not the first of its kind. On the contrary,
five years before, it experienced a similar attack which is most
intimately connected with this later one, so that, in conclusion,
we must here add a few words on the subject. Undoubtedly the famous
"Ignorabimus-speech" of Du Bois-Reymond, which he delivered in 1872 at
the forty-fifth meeting of German naturalists and physicians in
Leipzig, forms only the first portion of that same crusade against the
freedom of science of which Virchow's "Restringamur speech" of 1877,
at the fiftieth meeting of the same society, forms the second part.

That brilliant and powerful essay by Du Bois-Reymond "on the
Limitation of Natural Knowledge" has already been discussed so often,
and from such different sides, that it might seem superfluous to say
another word about it. It seems to me, nevertheless, that by most
people the centre-of-gravity of its contents was overlooked in
admiration of the brilliant accessories of the essay. Indeed this
frequently happens with Du Bois-Reymond's articles, for he knows too
well how to conceal the weakness of his argument and evidence, and the
shallowness of his thought, by striking images and flowery metaphors,
and by all the phraseology of rhetoric in which the versa