Freedom in Science and Teaching. from the German of Ernst Haeckel

In complying with the wish of the publishers of Professor Haeckel's[v] reply to Professor Virchow, that I should furnish a prefatory note expressing my own opinion in respect of the subject-matter of the controversy, Gay's homely lines, prophetic of the fate of those “who in quarrels interpose, ” emerge from some brain-cupboard in which they have been hidden since my childish days. In fact, the hard-hitting with which both the attack and the defence abound, makes me think with a shudder upon the probable sufferings of the unhappy man whose intervention should lead two such gladiators to turn their weapons from one another upon him. In my youth, I once attempted to stop a street fight, and I have never forgotten the brief but impressive lesson on the value of the policy of non-intervention which I then received.