218 THE NEANDERTHAL SKULL. 



towards the former state no one has 

 adduced any evidence in proof of these 

 conclusions, which are, in fact, dictatorial 

 assertions only, and no specimen of any kind of 

 matter which is actually passing from the non- 

 living to the living state, or which can be 

 shewn to establish any connection between 

 these absolutely different conditions of 

 matter, has been or can be at this time brought 

 forward. We must not allow the mind to 

 be diverted by fanciful comparisons and 

 asserted resemblances of the living to the 

 non-living, from the careful consideration 

 of the real differences between that which 

 is alive, and that which is "not."* 



Happily, Mr. Darwin's " hypothesis" is 

 not affected by the above remarks ; but I 

 may venture to quote the following from 

 a paper in Blackwood of Nov. 1874, 

 entitled, Modern Scientific Materialism, as a 

 fair and impartial judgment of the illus- 

 trious deceased. 



* Lecture on Dictatorial Scientific Utterances and the 

 Decline of Thought, before the Victoria Institute, by 

 Professor Lionel Beale, F.K.S. 



