Freedom in Science and Teaching

Freedom in Science and Teaching is from the German of Ernst Haeckel, with a prefatory note by T. H. Huxley, F.R.S. The prefatory note is furnished at the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's reply to Professor Virchow, expressing the writer's own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy.

A declaration discussed in the note holds that the modern development of science is essentially due to the constant encroachment of experiment and observation on the domain of hypothetical dogma. The note says the most difficult, as well as the most important, object of every honest worker is to get rid of his preconceived notions and to keep his hypotheses well in hand, as the good servants and bad masters that they are. The writer says that beyond a doubt the whole stock or polity of Siphonophora has a very definite united will and a united sensibility, and yet each of the individual persons of which this stock is composed has its own personal will and its own particular sensations.