ained the abnormal appearance of the jaw from
the Moravian cave of Schipka as a result of the retention of teeth,(17)
accompanied by directly "antipithecoid" characters.
The proceedings at the meetings of the Ethnological Society in 1895, at
which Dubois was present, had an almost dramatic character.(18) In the
diverse opinions of Dubois, Virchow, Nehring, Kollmann, Krause and others,
we have almost an epitome of the present state of the Darwinian question.
Virchow doubted whether the parts put together by Dubois (the head of a
femur, two molar teeth, and the top of a skull) belonged to the same
individual at all, disputed the calculations as to the large capacity of
the skull, placed against Dubois' very striking and clever drawing of the
curves of the skull-outline, which illustrated, with the help of the
Pithecanthropus, the gradual transition from the skull of a monkey to that
of man, his own drawing, according to which the Pithecanthropus curve
simply coincides with that of a gibbon (_Hylobates_), and asserted that
the remains discovered were those of a species of gibbon, refusing even to
admit that they represented a new genus of monkeys. He held fast to his
_ceterum censeo_: "As yet no diluvial discovery has been made which can be
referred to a man of a pithecoid type." Indeed, his polemic or "caution"
in regard to the Theory of Descent went even further. He not only refused
to admit the proof of the descent of man from monkey, he would not even
allow that the descent of one race from another has been demonstrated.(19)
In spite of all the plausible hypotheses it remains "so far only a _pium
desiderium_." The race obstinately maintains its specific distinctness,
and resists variation, or gradual transformation into another. The negro
remains a negro in America, and the European colonist of Australia remains
a European.
Yet all Virchow's opposition may be summed up in the characteristic words,
which might almost be called his motto, "I warn you of the need for
caution," and it is not a seriously-meant rejection of the Theory of
Descent. In reality he holds the evolution-idea as an axiom, and in the
last-named treatise he shows distinctly how he conceives of the process.
He starts with variation (presumably "kaleidoscopic"), which comes about
as a "pathological" phenomenon, that is to say, not spontaneously, but as
the result of environmental stimulus, as the organism's reaction to
climatic and other conditions of
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