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Darwin Correspondence Project

To John Price   10 February [1878]1

Down | Beckenham Kent. &c.

Feb 10th.

My dear Price.

I am very much obliged for your kind congratulations about the L.L.D.—2 Why the Senate conferred it on me I know not in the least. I was astonished to hear that the R. Prof: of Divinity3 & several other great Dons attended, & several such men have subscribed, as I am informed for the picture for the University to commemorate the honour conferred on me—4

I am very sorry to hear that you are an invalid at present, but trust your own mountain air will do you good.

I have no copy in German of Virchow’s address.5 Naturally I did not admire it as much as you do & he seemed to me to lecture in a very arrogant manner many of his audience, who knew much more of natural science than he does, Not that I mean Virchow has not done good work, though many think his famous aphorism “omnis cellula e cellulâ”, false—6 If we were to meet I dare say neither of us wd. recognise the other!7

Hoping that you may soon get stronger. Yours very faithfully: | Ch Darwin

Footnotes

The year is established by the reference to the award of an honorary LLD to CD; see n. 2, below.
The letter from Price has not been found. CD was awarded an honorary LLD degree by the University of Cambridge on 17 November 1877 (Emma Darwin’s diary (DAR 242)).
The regius professor of divinity at Cambridge was Brooke Foss Westcott.
Rudolf Carl Virchow had given the address Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat (The liberty of science in the modern state; Virchow 1877) to the Assembly of German Naturalists and Physicians at Munich on 22 September 1877. He argued that there was no room for speculative theories in the new German empire, only established scientific facts (see Weindling 1981, pp. 118–20). Price was an opponent of evolutionary theories on the grounds of their speculative nature (see Price 1863–4, p. 94).
The doctrine ‘omnis cellula e cellula’ (every cell comes from a cell; Latin) was popularised in Virchow 1858. CD discussed it in Variation 2: 370. For more on Virchow’s cell theory and CD’s hypothesis of pangenesis, see Geison 1969, pp. 391–3. On Virchow’s criticism of the materialistic Darwinism of Ernst Haeckel, see Weindling 1981, p. 118.
CD and Price were school-friends in Shrewsbury (see Correspondence vol. 1).

Bibliography

Correspondence: The correspondence of Charles Darwin. Edited by Frederick Burkhardt et al. 29 vols to date. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1985–.

Geison, Gerald L. 1969. Darwin and heredity: the evolution of his hypothesis of pangenesis. Journal of the History of Medicine 24: 375–411.

Price, John. 1863–4. Old Price’s remains; præhumous, or during life. 12 pts. London: Virtue, Brothers & Co.

Variation: The variation of animals and plants under domestication. By Charles Darwin. 2 vols. London: John Murray. 1868.

Virchow, Rudolf. 1877. Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat: Rede gehalten in der dritten allgemeinen Sitzung der fünfzigsten Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Aerzte zu München am 22. September 1877. 2d edition. Berlin: Wiegandt, Hempel & Parey.

Weindling, Paul. 1981. Theories of the cell state in imperial Germany. In Biology, medicine and society, 1840–1940, edited by Charles Webster. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Summary

Thanks JP for congratulations on LL.D. [awarded by Cambridge University].

Comments on Rudolf Virchow’s book [Die Freiheit der Wissenschaft im modernen Staat (1877)].

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-11350
From
Charles Robert Darwin
To
John Price
Sent from
Down
Source of text
DAR 147: 280
Physical description
C 1p

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 11350,” accessed on 29 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-11350.xml

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