Note 164 — Chapter XIV · The Struggle of Women for Education.

Ziegler denies that this was the sense of Virchow’s remarks, but his own report of Virchow’s speech only confirms it. Virchow said: “Now, just picture how the theory of evolution is conceived even to-day by the brain of a Socialist! (Laughter) Yes, gentlemen, that may seem amusing to some of you, but it is a very serious matter, and I only hope the theory of evolution may not bring us such horrors as similar theories have brought about in our neighboring country. If this theory is consistently followed out it is very hazardous, and you cannot have failed to observe that Socialism is in sympathy with it. We should make this perfectly clear.”—Well, we have done what Virchow feared, we have drawn the conclusions of the Darwinian theories that Darwin himself and many of his followers either failed to draw or drew incorrectly, and Virchow warned against the dangers of these doctrines because he perceived that Socialism would draw and would have to draw the conclusions that are involved in them.