THE NEANDEETHAL SKULL. 181 



manner, in place of the clergy of the 19th, 

 he would have been far nearer the truth 

 than he was when he delivered his ad- 

 dress at Sion College in the year 1867 ; 

 for Lecky, in his instructive work on the 

 History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit 

 of Rationalism in Europe, relates that " Ac- 

 cording to the great philosophers of the 

 17th century, our world was a vast and 

 complicated mechanism called into existence 

 and elaborated instantaneously in all its parts 

 by the creative fiat of the Deity " (vol. i., 

 p. 315). ^ 



Moreover, Professor Huxley ought to 

 have known that Bacon, the prince of lay 

 philosophers (who, as Lecky points out, 

 " notwithstanding his great genius, was 

 totally unable to grasp the discoveries of 

 Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho Brahe, Kepler 

 and Gilbert"), rejected the greatest dis- 

 covery of the age in the Copernican 

 system; and possibly the professor may 

 not have been aware that Copernicus was 

 numbered amongst that class which he 

 appears so heartily to despise viz., the 



