osition at
that time. The opposition found its strongest expression in an address that
Virchow delivered at Munich four days afterwards (September 22nd), on "The
freedom of science in the modern State." He spoke of the theory of
evolution as an unproved hypothesis, and declared that it ought not to be
taught in the schools, because it was dangerous to the State. "We must
not," he said, "teach that man has descended from the ape or any other
animal." When Darwin, usually so lenient in his judgment, read the English
translation of Virchow's speech, he expressed his disapproval in strong
terms. But the great authority that Virchow had--an authority well founded
in pathology and sociology--and his prestige as president of the German
Anthropological Society, had the effect of preventing any member of the
Society from raising serious opposition to him for thirty years. Numbers of
journals and treatises repeated his dogmatic statement: "It is quite
certain that man has descended neither from the ape nor from any other
animal." In this he persisted till his death in 1902. Since that time the
whole position of German anthropology has changed. The question is no
longer whether man was created by a distinct supernatural act or evolved
from other mammals, but to which line of the animal hierarchy we must look
for the actual series of ancestors. The interested reader will find an
account of this "battle of Munich" (1877) in my three Berlin lectures
(April, 1905), _Der Kampf um die Entwickelungs-Gedanken_.[142]

The main points in our genealogical tree were clearly recognised by
Darwin in the sixth chapter of the _Descent of Man_. Lowly organised
fishes, like the lancelot (Amphioxus), are descended from lower
invertebrates resembling the larvae of an existing Tunicate
(Appendicularia). From these primitive fishes were evolved higher
fishes of the ganoid type and others of the type of Lepidosiren
(Dipneusta). It is a very small step from these to the Amphibia:

"In the class of animals the steps are not difficult to conceive which
led from the ancient Monotremata to the ancient Marsupials; and from
these to the early progenitors of the placental mammals. We may thus
ascend to the Lemuridae; and the interval is not very wide from these
to the Simiadae. The Simiadae then branched off into two great stems,
the New World and Old World monkeys; and from the latter, at a remote
period, Man, the wonder and glory of the Universe, proceeded."[