“Some sensation has been caused at the recent Anthropological Congress in Vienna by the speech of the great Berlin biologist, Professor Virchow.  About a year ago Virchow, on a similar occasion, made a severe attack on the Darwinian position, and this year he is similarly outspoken.  We make the following extracts from his long address to the Congress: 

“’Twenty years ago, when we met at Innspruck, it was precisely the moment when the Darwinian theory had made its first victorious mark throughout the world.  My friend Vogt at once rushed into the ranks of the champions of this doctrine.  We have since sought in vain for the intermediate stages which were supposed to connect man with the apes; the proto-man, the pro-anthropos is not yet discovered.  For anthropological science the pro-anthropos is not even a subject of discussion.  The anthropologist may, perhaps, see him in a dream, but as soon as he awakes he cannot say that he has made any approach toward him.  At that time in Innspruck the prospect was, apparently, that the course of descent from ape to man would be reconstructed all at once, but now we cannot even prove the descent of the separate races from one another.[194] At this moment we are able to say that among the peoples of antiquity no single one was any nearer to the apes than we are.  At this moment I can affirm that there is not upon earth any absolutely unknown race of men.  The least known of all are the peoples of the central mountainous districts of the Malay peninsula, but otherwise we know the people of Terra del Fuego quite as well as the Eskimo, Bashkirs, Polynesians, and Lapps.  Nay! we know more of many of these races than we do of certain European tribes.  I need only mention the Albanians.  Every living race is still human; no single one has yet been found that we can designate as Simian or quasi-Simian.  Even when in certain ones phenomena appear which are characteristic of the apes—­e.g., the peculiar ape-like projections of the skull in certain races—­still we cannot on that account alone say that these men are ape-like.  As regards the Lake dwellings, I have been able to submit to comparative examination nearly every single skull that has been found.  The result has been that we have certainly met with opposite characteristics among various races; but of all these there is not one that lies outside of the boundaries of our present population.  It can thus be positively demonstrated that in the course of five thousand years no change of type worthy of mention has taken place.  If you ask me whether the first man were white or black, I can only say I don’t know.’

“Professor Virchow thus summed up the question as to what anthropological science during the last forty years has gained, and whether, as many contend, it has gone forward or backward.