roughout followed Virchow's scientific
achievements, I am specially qualified to answer the question, a
hundred times repeated by letter or by word of mouth--"How is it
possible that a man who so long stood at the head of a party of
progress in science as in politics, who in political life indeed, has
outwardly maintained this position, has in science become an
instrument of the most perilous reaction?"

A verbal answer, which I incidentally gave in March of last year at
the Concordia Banquet at Vienna, was reported in the daily papers in
such a different sense, and was in part so misunderstood or so
intentionally misrepresented, that I am forced at last, on that
account, to publish a clear and unambiguous reply. The "Augsburger
Allgemeine Zeitung," which eagerly seizes every opportunity of
expressing its unconquerable aversion to the evolution theory, accused
me, in one of its hostile articles, of a virulent and undignified
attack on Virchow. In contradiction of this misrepresentation in the
Augsburg paper--which was copied by other journals--I must expressly
assert that not Virchow but I myself am the person attacked, and
that, therefore, the matter in question is not an unjustifiable attack
by me on a formerly revered friend, but a defence to which I am
compelled by repeated and sharp attacks on his part.

Another reason which urges me at last to break silence consists in the
continual and ample advantage that all the clerical and reactionary
organs have been taking of Virchow's address, during the last
three-quarters of a year, in favour of mental retrogression. The
shouts of triumph with which they at once hailed Virchow's "grand
moral action," that is to say, his perversion from a Free-thinker to
the side of mental darkness, was the first signal for that persistent
utilisation of his authority of which the pernicious consequences can
by no means be escaped. Friedrich von Hellwald, in his discussion on
the speeches made at Munich, has already strikingly pointed out[6] the
grave danger that exists when just such an one as Virchow, standing
under the banner of political liberalism and wrapped in the mantle of
severe science, decisively combats against the freedom of science and
of its doctrines. This serious danger has never shown so threatening
an aspect as at the present moment, when our political and religious
life appears to be encountering such a reaction as has not occurred
for a long time. The two insane att