18 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



parts for union has been given the name of 

 LOVE. And so, adds the sage, by way of 

 moral, "let us take care not to offend the 

 gods, lest we be cleft in twain, and have to 

 go about with noses slit down, and have to 

 stand for the future on one leg alone ! "* 



One of your modern scientists, in his 

 description of the Egyptian cosmogony, 

 shows that it did not materially differ from 

 the dual principle mentioned by Plato : as 

 he defines it on this wise " When the 

 first chaotic mass had been produced in 

 the form of an egg by a self-dependent and 

 eternal Being, it required the mysterious 

 functions of this masculo-feminine demiurgos 

 to reduce the component elements into 

 organised forms " adding, with malicious 

 gravity, "Although it is scarcely possible to 

 recall to mind this conceit without smiling, 

 it does not seem to differ essentially in principle 

 from some cosmological notions of men of 

 great genius and science in modern 

 Europe." f 



* Plato's Banquet, 1619. 



t Sir diaries Ly ell's Principles of Geology, ch. ii. 



