Dr J. W. Dawson on the Antiquity of Man. 57 



planation which those who hold an opposite view may give 

 to the cases of superior minds appearing in low races, in 

 which the transmutationists can see nothing but spontane- 

 ous elevation. It is also deserving of a passing remark, 

 that while, as Dr Gray shows, the doctrine of transmutation 

 is not subversive of all natural theology — that is, so long as 

 transmutationists admit the presiding agency of a spiritual 

 Supreme Being — the application of such views to the human 

 species attacks leading doctrines of that biblical Chris- 

 tianity which is practically of so much higher importance 

 to man than mere natural theology. 



Still some of our modern naturalists follow with as much 

 pertinacity these transmutation hypotheses, as did the old 

 alchemists their attempts to transmute chemical species 

 into each other. Perhaps the comparison is hardly fair to 

 the older school of speculators, for chemical species or 

 elements tend by their combination to form new substances, 

 w^hich animal and vegetable species do not ; and by so 

 much the balance of antecedent probability was on the side 

 of the alchemists, as compared with the transmutationists, 

 though their methods and doctrines w^ere very similar. 

 We may, however, at least hope that, like the researches 

 of the alchemists, those of their successors may develop 

 new and important truths. Leaving then this much vexed 

 topic, let us proceed to our second inquiry, as to the actual 

 antiquity of these primitive men. 



This antiquity is of course to be measured by the geologi- 

 cal scale of time, w^hose periods are marked not by years or 

 centuries, but by the extinction of successive faunas and 

 floras and the progress of physical changes. With respect 

 to the first of these marks of time, we confess that we have 

 not regarded the observations of Boucher de Perthes and 

 others as free from the suspicion that accidental mixtures 

 of human and fossil bones, or other causes not taken into 

 the account, may have vitiated their conclusions ; and this 

 suspicion still applies to some of the cases cited by Sir 0. 

 Lyell, as more or less certain proofs. After reading the 

 statements of the present volume, we think the Belgian and 

 Brixham caves may be taken as good evidence of the pro- 

 bable contemporaneousness of man with the EJephas primi- 



NEW SERIES. VOL. XIX. NO, I. JANUARY 1864. H 



