er of the theory of
descent in physiology--his own most special province of inquiry? Why
does he not labour at that hitherto quite unworked-out branch,
physiogenesis, at the history of the evolution of functions, at the
ontogenesis and phylogenesis of vital processes? The one idea which
has lately been often spoken of as an important discovery of Du
Bois-Reymond's--[the idea which had already been anticipated by
Leibnitz, that the "innate ideas,"--intuitions _a priori_--have
originated by transmission from primordial experience, _i.e._,
empirical, _a posteriori_ convictions], was distinctly enunciated by
me long before Du Bois-Reymond (as he omits to mention), in 1866, in
my "General Morphology" (vol. ii. p. 446), and in 1868 in the "History
of Creation" (vol. i. p. 31, vol. ii. p. 344). If Du Bois-Reymond had
practically busied himself with these problems he would certainly have
thought a little about the development of consciousness, and not have
set down as an eternally insoluble problem, "How is it possible that
matter can think?"--a form of words, be it observed, which has about
as much sense as "how matter runs," or "how matter strikes the hours."
Surely he would have guarded himself in that case from uttering the
ponderous "Ignorabimus."

The question has been repeatedly asked why two such prominent Berlin
biologists as Virchow and Du Bois-Reymond availed themselves of the
particularly solemn occasions of the fiftieth anniversary and of the
fiftieth meeting of the German naturalists and physicians to lay lance
in rest against the progress and freedom of science. The eager
approbation which they both promptly met with from the party of the
clergy and of all other enemies of free thought--Virchow, indeed, in
much greater measure than Du Bois-Reymond--appears to justify this
inquiry. I believe I can contribute something towards answering it,
and as I am not fettered by any reverence for the Berlin tribunal of
science or by any anxiety as to vexing influential Berlin connections,
as most of my colleagues are who think as I do, I do not hesitate,
here as elsewhere, to express my honest conviction in the freest and
frankest manner, not troubling myself about the wrath which may be
roused in many actual--and not actual--officials in Berlin at this
exposition of the unvarnished truth.

The primary cause of their "misunderstanding," and the best excuse
that can be offered for it, in Virchow and Du Bois-Reymond alike, li