TBANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 783 



Section, has been most rapid. Still that advance has been steady and sustained ; 

 there has been no cataclysm, no deluge, no break in the advancement of our science, 

 and nothing seems to me to prove its healthy growth more clearly than this un- 

 interrupted continuity which unites the past with the present, and will, I hope, 

 unite the present with the future. 



No paper is in that respect more interesting to read than the address which 

 Bunsen prepared for the meeting in 1847, and which you will find in the ' Trans- 

 actions ' of that year. Its title is ' On the Results of the recent Egyptian Researches 

 in reference to Asiatic and African Ethnology, and the Classification of Languages.' 

 But you will find in it a great deal more than what this title would lead you to 

 expect. 



There are passages in it which are truly prophetic, and which show that, if 

 prophecy is possible anywhere, it is possible, nay, it ought to be possible, in the 

 temple of science, and under the inspiring influence of knowledge and love of truth. 



Allow me to dwell for a little while on this remarkable paper. It is true, we 

 have travelled so fast that Bunsen seems almost to belong to ancient history. This 

 very year is the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and this very day the cente- 

 nary of his birth is being celebrated in several towns of Germany. In England 

 also his memory should not be forgotten. No one, not being an Englishman by 

 birth, could, I believe, have loved this country more warmly, and could have 

 worked more heartily, than Bunsen did to bring about that friendship between 

 England and Germany which must for ever remain the corner-stone of the peace of 

 Europe, and, as the Emperor of Germany declared the other day in his speech at the 

 Mansion House, the sine qua non of that advancement of science to which our A sso- 

 ciation is devoted. Bunsen's house in Carlton Terrace was a true international 

 academy, open to all who had something to say, something worth listening to, a kind of 

 sanctuary against vulgarity in high places, a neutral ground where the best repre- 

 sentatives of all countries were welcome and felt at home. But this also belongs 

 to ancient history. And yet, when we read Bunsen's paper, delivered in 1 847, 

 it does not read like ancient history. It deals with the problems which are still 

 in the foreground, and if it could be delivered again to-day by that genial repre- 

 sentative of German learning, it would rouse the same interest, provoke the same 

 applause, and possibly the same opposition also, which it roused nearly half a 

 century ago. Let me give you a few instances of what I mean. 



We must remember that Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' was published in 1859, 

 his ' Descent of Man' in 1871. But here in the year 1847 one of the burning 

 questions which Bunsen discusses is the question of the possible descent of man from 

 some unknown animal. He traces the history of that question back to Frederick 

 the Great, and quotes his memorable answer to D'Alembert. Frederick the Great, 

 you know, was not disturbed by any qualms of orthodoxy. 'In my kingdom,' he 

 used to say, ' everybody maj^ save his soul according to his own fashion.' But 

 when D'Alembert wished hiui to make what he called the salto mortale from 

 monkey to man, Frederick the Great protested. He saw what many have seen 

 since, that there is no possible transition from reasonlessness to reason, and that with 

 all the likeness of their bodily organs there is a barrier which no animal can clear, 

 or which, at all events, no animal has as yet cleared. And what does Bunsen 

 himself consider the real barrier between man and beast ? ' It is language,' he 

 says, ' which is unattainable, or at least iinattained, by any animal except man.' 

 In answer to the argument that, given only a sufficient number of years, a transi- 

 tion by imperceptible degrees from animal cries to articulate language is at least 

 conceivable, he says : ' Those who hold that opinion have never been able to show 

 the possibility of the first step. They attempt to veil their inability by the easy 

 but fruitless assumption of an infinite space of time, destined to explain the gradual 

 development of animals into men ; as if millions of years could supply the want of 

 the agent necessary for the first movement, for the first step, in the line of pro- 

 gress ! No numbers can efiect a logical impossibility. How, indeed, could reason 

 spring out of a state which is destitute of reason ? How can speech, the expres- 

 sion of thought, develop itself, in a year, or in millions of years, out of inarticulate 

 sounds, which express feelings of pleasure, pain, and appetite ? ' 



