Decadence of Darwinism 71 ing in a grandson—is as credible as reversion under similar conditions. Backing up is hardly in harmony with the twen tieth century. The teaching of Darwinism, as an approved science, to the children and youth of the schools of the world is the most deplorable feature of the whole wretched propaganda. It would be difficult to fix the responsibility of it. Darwin himself hesitated. Virchow tried, nobly, to protect the primary schools of Germany. The burden of his lecture at Munich is throughout a caution against evading the distinc tion between the problematical and the proven; they are not on the same evidential level. “He would teach”, he said, “evolution, if it were only proven; it is, as yet, in the hypo thetical stage; the audience ought to be warned that the speculative is only the possible, not actual truth; that it be longs to the region of belief, and not to that of demonstration. As long as a problem continues in the speculative stage, it would be mischievous to teach it in our schools. We ought not to represent our conjecture as a certainty, nor our hypo thesis as a doctrine.” Haeckel, always rash, advocated it. As they struggled, somebody lighted the fire. I t was like the burning of the temple at Jerusalem. Titus had issued an order to spare it, but a Roman soldier threw a blazing torch into a small window and the whole structure was in flames. I t was like the revenge of the Pied Piper of Hamlin Town. I t was “Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they were not”.
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