DOGMATIC METHODS OF TEACHING. 71 



speculative levity with which even the sceptic Virchow 

 in the " Primeval History of Man " and " Fossil Anthro- 

 pology," embarks in the most hazardous conjectures, and 

 gives out uncertain, subjective hypotheses as certain, 

 objective facts. 



There is, in fact, at the present day no department of 

 science in which the wildest and most untenable hypo- 

 theses have blossomed out so freely as in anthropology 

 and ethnology, so-called. All the phylogenetic hypo- 

 theses which I myself have put forward in my " Evolu- 

 tion of Man " as to the animal ancestry of man, or in 

 my " Natural History of Creation " as to the affinities 

 of animal races all the other genealogical hypotheses 

 which are now advanced by numerous zoologists and 

 botanists as to the phylogenetic evolution of the animal 

 and plant worlds all these hypotheses together, which 

 Virchow rejects in a lump, are, critically considered as 

 hypotheses, far better grounded in facts, far better 

 supported by facts, than the majority of those innumer- 

 able airy and fanciful hypotheses with which, for the 

 last twelve years, the " Archiv fur Anthropologie " and 

 " Zeitschrift fur Ethnologic," edited by Virchow and 

 Bastian, have filled their columns. This last perio- 

 dical has at least the merit of being a tolerably 

 consistent opponent of the doctrine of evolution, 

 while in the former, during twelve years, essays on 

 both sides have been mixed up in cheerful confusion. 



