DIFFICULTIES OF DEVELOPMENT, ETC. 63 



teen years. Formerly difficulties were exaggerated, and it was as- 

 serted that we had not sufficient knowledge to venture on any gener- 

 alizations on the subject. Now difficulties are set aside, and it is held 

 that our theories are so well established and so far-reaching, that they 

 explain and comprehend all Nature. It is not long ago (as I have 

 already reminded you) since facts were contemptuously ignored, be- 

 cause they favored our now popular views ; at the present day it 

 seems to me that facts which oppose them hardly receive due consid- 

 eration. And, as opposition is the best incentive to progress, and it is 

 not well even for the best theories to have it all their own way, I 

 propose to direct your attention to a few such facts, and to the conclu- 

 sions that seem fairly deducible from them. 



It is a curious circumstance that, notwithstanding the attention 

 that has been directed to the subject in every part of the world, 

 and the numerous excavations connected with railways and mines 

 which have offered such facilities for geological discovery, no ad- 

 vance whatever has been made for a considerable number of years, 

 in detecting the time or the mode of man's origin. The Palceolithic 

 flint weapons first discovered in the north of France more than 

 thirty years ago are still the oldest undisputed proofs of man's exist- 

 ence ; and, amid the countless relics of a former world that have been 

 brought to light, no evidence of any one of the links that must have 

 connected man with the lower animals has yet appeared. 



It is, indeed, well known that negative evidence in geology is of 

 very slender value, and this is, no doubt, generally the case. The 

 circumstances here are, however, peculiar ; for many converging lines 

 of evidence show that, on the theory of development by the same laws 

 which have determined the development of the lower animals, man 

 must be immensely older than any traces of him yet discovered. As 

 this is a point of great interest, we must devote a few moments to its 

 consideration : 



1. The most important difference between man and such of the 

 lower animals as most nearly approach him is undoubtedly in the 

 bulk and development of his brain, as indicated by the form and ca- 

 pacity of the cranium. We should therefore anticipate that these 

 earliest races, who were contemporary with the extinct animals and 

 used rude stone weapons, would show a marked deficiency in this 

 respect. Yet the oldest known crania those of the Engis and Cro- 

 Magnon caves show no marks of degradation. The former does not 

 present so low a type as that of most existing savages, but is to use 

 the words of Prof. Huxley " a fair average human skull, which might 

 have belonged to a philosopher, or might have contained the thought- 

 less brains of a savage." The latter are still more remarkable, being 

 unusually large and well formed. Dr. Pruner-Bey states that they 

 surpass the average of modern European skulls in capacity, while 

 their symmetrical forms, without any trace of prognathism, compare 



