114 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



the missing link, to the great chagrin of 

 Darwin, never has been, and you may rest 

 assured never will be, found. Hence he 

 is unwillingly constrained to admit, that 

 " the great break in the organic chain between 

 man and his nearest allies, which cannot be 

 bridged over by any . extinct or living 

 species, has often been advanced as a grave 

 (? insuperable) objection to the belief that 

 man is descended from some lower form"* 



I am aware that Darwin asserts that 

 "this objection will not appear of much 

 weight to those who believe in the gene- 

 ral principle of Evolution ; " but this is 

 because he treats with singular levity all 

 the evidence to be derived from revelation, 

 tradition, observation, experience, experi- 

 ments, the reasoning of philosophers in 

 short, any thing and every thing which 

 militates against his pet theory. This 

 habit of wilfully closing his eyes against 

 all evidence has caused him to be com- 

 pared to a horse with his blinkers on, 



* Descent of Man, i. ? p. 200. 



