ruth did Bacon say of old "_Scientia est potentia_." But
he also defined that knowledge; and the knowledge he meant was not
speculative knowledge, not the knowledge of hypotheses, but it was
objective and actual knowledge. Gentlemen, I think we should be
abusing our power, we should be imperilling our power, unless in our
teaching we restrict ourselves to this perfectly safe and unassailable
domain. From this domain _we may make incursions into the field of
problems_, and I am sure that every venture of that kind will then find
all needful security and support.' I have emphasised by italics two
sentences in the foregoing series of quotations; the other italics are
the author's own.

Virchow's position could not be made clearer by any comments of mine
than he has here made it himself. That position is one of the highest
practical importance. Throughout our whole German Fatherland,' he
says, men are busied in renovating, extending, and developing the
system of education, and in inventing fixed forms in which to mould
it. On the threshold of coming events stands the Prussian law of
education. In all the German States larger schools are being built,
new educational establishments are set up, the universities are
extended, "higher" and "middle" schools are founded. Finally comes
the question, What is to be the chief substance of the teaching?' What
Virchow thinks it ought and ought not to be, is disclosed by the
foregoing quotations. There ought to be a clear distinction made
between science in the state of hypothesis, and science in the state
of fact. In school teaching the former ought to be excluded. And, as
he assumes it to be still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of
exclusion ought, he thinks, to fall upon the theory of evolution.

*****

I now freely offer myself for judgment before the tribunal whose law
is here laid down. First and foremost, then, I have never advocated
the introduction of the theory of evolution into our schools. I
should even be disposed to resist its introduction before its meaning
had been better understood and its utility more fully recognised than
it is now by the great body of the community. The theory ought, I
think, to bide its time until the free conflict of discovery,
argument, and opinion has won for it this recognition. A necessary
condition here, however, is that free discussion should not be
prevented, either by the ferocity of reviewers or the arm of the law;
othe