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than in conformity with, the ordinary method. Dr. Virchow has 
recently protested against the ex cathedra teaching of evolution. I 
am willing to some extent to admit the justice of his protest ; hut I 
cannot allow that the alternative hypothesis, and there is only one 
other hypothesis possible, should he looked upon and taught as 
unquestionably true, merely because in the childhood of science it 
was so regarded. 
But it is urged that there are special objections to evolution in the 
case of man. One such has recently been advanced by a wellknown 
physician in this city, in a work published during the past year.* 
While acknowledging the value of the author’s researches into the 
subject of cerebral disease, I regret that I am altogether unable to ad- 
mit the force of his argument as against the theories of Mr. Darwin. 
I anticipate, in limine, the criticism, in the larger circle to 
which unfortunately my remarks may possibly come, that the 
time has passed when it is necessary to reply to attacks on 
evolution. Whatever may be the case elsewhere, or even among 
my present audience, the publication and endorsement of the book 
I have referred to, by two such representative men as those whose 
names are associated with it, justify me, I think, in the name of this 
Society, in attempting to traverse arguments that otherwise, to a 
large number of our fellow- citizens, might appear unanswerable. 
Dr. Bateman urges first, that speech is a distinctive and universal 
attribute of man. This proposition that men can and apes cannot 
speak does not seem to me either startling or new, and I 
think hardly deserves the labour which has been bestowed on the 
proof of it. He might have added, neniine cuntradicente, that 
the former can calculate, and express ideas by writing, pictorially 
or otherwise, and play games of skill, and construct tools, and the 
latter cannot. The enormous mental difference between man and 
the rest of creation is universally admitted. The fact, however, 
that two places are separated by an immense distance, or by what 
seems, at first sight, an impassable barrier, is not sufficient to 
prove that there cannot possibly bo a road from one to the other. 
* Darwinism tested by Language, by F. Bateman, M.D., with a preface 
by the Bean of Norwich. 
