160 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



German Naturalists, September, 1878, 

 which was subsequently published with 

 the title of The Freedom of Science in the 

 Modern State. The address forms a re- 

 markable exception to the bold assump- 

 tion of the Darwinians, that mankind has 

 come to the front through endless changes 

 from lower to higher forms of life. The 

 address is a most impressive protest in the 

 name and interest of true science against 

 that pseudo-scientific dogmatism which 

 first propounds unverified speculations as 

 the conclusions of science, and then 

 reiterates them in the circle of admiring 

 disciples as infallibly true, till their 

 universal acceptance is boldly assumed, 

 and all who doubt their crude assump- 

 tions are branded, to use the coarse words 

 of Louis Buchner, as " mental slaves," 

 " speculative idiots," " yelping curs," &c. 

 In reply to this specimen of Atheistic folly, 

 Professor Virchow justly points out that 

 u every positive progress in the region 

 of prehistoric anthropology has remove'd 

 further the theory that whenever a skull 



