> c , 



264 president's address. 



which is the visible expression of the Divine mind, carried on 

 in the trnth-seeking spirit of the Baconian method of observation 

 and experiment, will lead to the avoidance of dogmatism in those 

 matters of science also, which are still " open questions." In 

 the more recent utterances of many accepted leaders of scientific 

 thought, we may notice an increased caution in speaking even of 

 favourite theories of the present day. Professor Owen has lately 

 told us that his last researches bring him no nearer to the proof of 

 evolution ; and, from anatomical considerations, Professor Huxley 

 declared, many years ago, that there is " overwhelming evidence" 

 for the unity of the human race.* Philologists now begin to trace 

 out in the primitive agglutinative roots of the Turanian family 

 of languages the mother-tongue of the whole earth when it was 

 "of one language and of one speech." They are inclined to seek 

 for it, not in the Aryan Sanskrit or the Semitic Hebrew, but 

 in the language of that people which the oldest monuments 

 of Babylon show to have been the first dominant race on the 

 banks of the Euphrates, the Biblical cradle-land of our race. A 

 late and distinguished member of our Club, Mr. Loftus,f in ex- 

 amining the ruins of Babylon was struck with the rudeness of the 

 remains, as of the early stone age of modern archaeologists, coarse 

 pottery, perforated stones, and stone disks (like the threshing 

 machine with flint teeth which Mr. George Smith met with in his 

 recent visit) ; % while with these and an architecture of which 

 the character of the ornament was of the rudest conceivable 

 kind, there were proofs of incipient and "uneven" civilization 

 in the beautifully graven signet-rings with their representations 

 of figures in regal garments. || Professor Eawlinson, after along 

 and careful examination of facts in cuneiform and written re- 

 cords, with all the light of modern research before him, cannot 

 give to this period a higher antiquity than from B.C. 2300- 

 1300 ; and he considers the early civilization of Egypt and Phoe- 

 nicia to be still later. Thus, without reckoning the considerable 



* Publications of the Palaeontographical Society, Vol. XXVII. , Dec, 1875; Report on 

 the ■' Fossil Reptilia of the Kimmeridge Clay." Fortnightly Review, 1865, p. 277. 



f "Chaldrca and Susiana," p. 164. % "Assyrian Discoveries," chap. III., p. 36. 



|| Joshua VII., 21. 



