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Title: Evolution
       An Investigation and a Critique


Author: Theodore Graebner



Release Date: September 18, 2006  [eBook #19321]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)


***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVOLUTION***


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Services at Concordia College, Bronxville, New York, USA



EVOLUTION.

An Investigation and a Criticism

by

TH. GRAEBNER,
Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Mo.







Milwaukee, Wis.
Northwestern Publishing House,
1921.



_Species tot sunt, quot diversas formas ab initio produxit Infinitum
Ens. Linne._



To the Memory of my teacher (New Ulm, 1892) John Schaller Educator,
Theologian, Student of Science these chapters are dedicated by The
Author




TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Chapter 1. An Outline of the Theory...11
Definition--Historical Review--The Darwinian Hypothesis--Lines of
Evidence--The Descent of Man--The Nebular Hypothesis--The Origin of
Life--The Bearing of Evolution on Christianity.

Chapter 2. Unexplained Origins...29
The Origin of the Universe--The Origin of Life--Biological Barriers--
Man.

Chapter 3. The Testimony of the Rocks...47

Chapter 4. The Fixity of Species...62

Chapter 5. Rudimentary Organs...70

Chapter 6. Instinct...74

Chapter 7. Heredity...80

Chapter 8. A Scientific Creed Outworn...87

Chapter 9. Man...94

Chapter 10. The Verdict of History...113

Chapter 11. Evidences of Design...124

Chapter 12. The Fatal Bias...141



PREFATORY.

I first read Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species" in the library of my
sainted uncle, John Schaller, at New Ulm, Minnesota, in 1892. I did not
comprehend all of it then, a cause, to me, of considerable chagrin, for
which I later found some consolation in the opinion of Dr. Frederick
Lynch, who pronounces Darwin's epochal work "one of the two most
difficult books in the English language." But like many others, I
understood enough of Darwin's book to catch glimpses of the grandeur of
the conception which underlies its argumentation. It was then that my
beloved uncle, out of that wide and accurate reading which so
frequently astonished his friends, and with that penetrating dialectic
of his, opened my eyes to certain fallacies in Darwin's argument,
especially to the fatal weakness of the chapter on Instinct. The
reading of St. George Mivart's book "The Genesis of Species" later
convinced me of the accuracy of my uncle's judgment. But the fascination
of the subject persisted, and for a time Herbert Spencer's "Synthetic
Philosophy," by the comprehensiveness of its induction and its vast
array of data, exercised its thrall. Alfred Russel Wallace's
"Darwinism," Huxley's "Lectures on Evolution," Tyndall's "The Beginning
of Things," Grant Allen's "The Evolutionist at Large," Eimer's
"Orthogenesis," Clodd's "Story of Creation," occupied me in turn, until
the apodictic presentation of John Fiske's Essays on Darwinism, no less
than the open and haggard opposition to Christianity which prevails in
Huxley's "Science and Hebrew Tradition" and in Spencer's chapters on
"The Unknowable" (so the Synthetic Philosophy denominates God), caused
a revulsion of sentiment,--the anti-religious bias of evolution
standing forth the clearer to my mind, the longer I occupied myself with
the subject.

I determined to investigate for myself the data on which the
speculations whose mazes I had trod these years were built up. The
leisure hours of three years were devoted to the study of first-hand
sources of Comparative Religion. The result of this research was
deposited in two articles contributed to the _Theological Quarterly_ in
1906 and 1907. I fear that the forbidding character of the foot-notes
served as an effective deterrent to the reading of these articles. I
have now given, in several chapters of this little volume, in popular
language the argument against evolution to be derived from the study of
Religion. The reading of Le Conte's and Dana's text-books of geology
and various other treatises supplied the data on palaeontology embodied
in the first chapters of the book. The notable circulus in concludendo
("begging the question") of which evolutionists here are guilty was
first pointed out to me by Prof. Tingelstad of Decorah, Iowa, who was
in 1908 taking a course in Evolution at Chicago University, and who
called on me for discussion of the doctrine as he received it from
"head-quarters."

An an excursus in the subject of Pedagogy, I have treated in my
Seminary lectures the past years, under the head of natural sciences,
the argument against evolution, and the outlines of these lectures have
furnished the framework for the present volume. It is hoped that
especially our young men and women who take courses at our universities
will examine the case against the fascinating and in some respects
magnificent conception of evolution as this case is presented in the
following chapters. I realize that they, as well as intelligent readers
generally, may not meet with confidence the statements of a theologian
on a scientific question, least of all when he essays to treat such a
question from the standpoint of science. He is presumed to be at home
in theology, but a stranger in the domain of geology, astronomy, and
biology. It is for the purpose of obtaining a hearing at all that these
introductory remarks are written. But the argument must stand on its own
merits. The writer will now retire to the background. The facts shall
speak.

TH. G.



EVOLUTION.

CHAPTER ONE.
An Outline of the Theory.
Definition.

Evolution is a name comprehending certain theories which seek to account
for all operations of nature as carried on according to fixed laws by
means of forces resident in nature. Prof. J. LeConte of the University
of California defines evolution as: "Continuous progressive change
according to certain laws and by means of resident forces." Evolution is
a theory, a philosophy, it is not a science. The theory is called
_organic_ evolution in its relation to living forms (plant and animal
life), _cosmic_ evolution, inasmuch as attempts have been made to
account by certain laws and the working of resident forces for the
development of the universe,--the earth, the sun, and the starry
heavens. Also the development of society, of religion, morals, politics,
art, and mechanical inventions is accounted for on the theory that there
are forces which, acting according to certain laws, have through many
changes made human life and institutions as we see them today.

The doctrine of Evolution briefly stated, is as follows: That in some
infinitely remote period in the past, how or from whence science does
not affirm, there appeared matter and force; that within matter and in
association with force there also appeared a primordial cell, how or
from whence no man knoweth, in which there was a spark of life; and that
from this cell all things animate have emerged, being controlled by
certain laws variously stated by various evolutionists; that these laws
in connection with the modifying influences of environment
(surroundings,--soil, climate, etc.) account for and explain the various
species that have existed in the past and now exist upon earth, man
included. That there are no gaps in the process but that there is
demonstrable a steady ascent from lower to higher (simple to more
complex) forms of life, until man is reached, the acknowledged highest
product of evolution.

The extreme evolutionists hold that all the power and potency of the
universe was stored up in that primordial cell, and that all things have
been worked out without any superintending agency other than the forces
resident in matter. Every operation of God is ruled out, or deemed
unnecessary. This is sometimes called atheistic evolution.

The theistic evolutionist ("theistic" from "theism," the belief in a
personal God) makes place for God in the beginning and all along the
line of development, as overlooking the process, perhaps reinforcing and
to a certain extent directing the energy, but not interfering with the
fixed law or rule of evolution. According to theistic evolution, God did
not create plants and animals as separate species (as related in Genesis
1) but created matter as a crude form and placed it under certain laws,
by which this matter was, during untold ages, gradually evolved into
worlds. That out of this matter, called inorganic, plants came into
existence, from some germ or property existing in matter. The origin of
animal life is explained in various ways by the so-called theistic
evolutionists. Some hold that the primordial plant life contained
potentially the lowest and simplest principles of animal life, and from
it the simplest animal forms were evolved; that from these latter were
evolved forms a little higher, until, after long ages, all the
gradations were passed through until man, the highest form, was the
result. Others believe that there is such an essential difference
between plants and animals that the latter could not have come from the
former, that there must be a new start on the animal side of life.
Therefore they claim that when the evolutionary development of matter
reached a certain stage, God appeared on the scene and endowed certain
forms with the principle of animal life, in its lowest elements. These
lowest forms of animal life then entered upon a series of evolutionary
growth, each lower form evolving one a little more complex, each series
gaining the use of and developing organs which existed essentially in
the lower form but were small, imperfect, and useless, because not
needed. Thus the hand and arm in man are structurally or essentially the
same as the leg of the brute, the wing of the bird, the flipper of the
whale, and the fin of the fish; and the endeavor to adapt itself to the
water caused the bird to develop a fin, as by a similar process the
fore-leg of brutes developed into the human arm and hand.

For our present consideration, we need not distinguish between atheistic
and theistic evolution, as the latter is subject to the fundamental
objections urged against evolution in general, and is, like atheistic
evolution, without a single fact to support it and in direct
contradiction of all that is known of the laws in operation now, and as
far back as knowledge penetrates. Moreover, so-called "theistic"
evolution is universally approved by infidels and skeptics and is used
by them as a favorite means of assault on revealed Truth.

Historical Review.

While in our own day the names of certain English and German scientists
(Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Tyndall, Romanes, Buechner, Vogt, Haeckel) are
inseparably connected with a history of this hypothesis, its roots are
found far back in the early ages of Greek philosophy. A theory of
evolutionary development was first propounded by Greek thinkers living
about 600 years B. C. The human mind is ever on the search for unifying
principles, principles which account for entire groups of natural
phenomena, and not for isolated phenomena only. The Greek mind sought a
principle by which to account for the manifold and diverse forms of life
in nature. Whence do all things come? How have they come to be what they
are? Questions about the nature of the universe in which we live have
been asked from the very beginning. The moment the human mind began to
reflect the notion that the vegetation which covers the earth, the
animals which inhabit it, the rocks and hills, the mountains and valleys
which constitute its physical features, may have undergone changes in
past time, and that all the phenomena which constitute the animal,
vegetable and mineral worlds as they now exist, are but modifications of
other forms which have had their day and their philosophy, the idea of
development became prominent. The early Greek philosophers were the first
to attempt answers to these problems. Many of them held that all things
natural sprang from what they called the original elements--fire, air,
earth, water. Anaximander held that animals were begotten from the earth
by means of heat and moisture; and that man was developed from other
beings different in form. Empedocles had a fantastic theory, viz., that
the various parts of man and animals at first existed independently, and
that these--for instance, arms, legs, feet, eyes, etc., gradually
combined--perhaps after the manner in which automobiles are assembled;
and that these combinations became capable of existing and even of
propagating and reproducing themselves. Anaxagoras was of opinion that
animals and plants sprang from the earth by means of germs carried in
the atmosphere which gave fecundity to the earth. Aristotle held opinions
not very unlike those of our own day. All of which goes to show that
speculation about the origin of the universe and the why and wherefore of
living things did not come into existence with the Darwinian hypothesis
and that the doctrine of descent with modification as an explanation of
all biological phenomena antedates by over two thousand years the
publication of the "Origin of Species."

In modern times a theory of development was first suggested by Goethe in
his _"Italienische Reise."_ Acting under the same mental urge for seeing
diverse forms under a unifying principle, Goethe looked for the original
form of plant life, the _Urpflanze_, the plant which would be at once
simple enough to stand for a type of all plants and yet susceptible to
variation in so many directions that all plants might derive from it
their origin. Goethe has also clothed this conception in poetic form.

The first philosophic statement of the hypothesis is found in Immanuel
Kant's _"Kritik der Urteilskraft,"_ 1790. In paragraph 80 we find a
discussion of the similarity between so many species of animals, not
only in their bony structure, but also in the arrangement of their other
parts, a similarity which, says Kant, "casts a ray of hope," that all
forms may be traced back to original simple forms, to "a generation from
a common ancestor," rising from the lowest forms to man, "according to
mechanical laws." Kant assumes that, for instance, certain aquatic
animals by and by formed into amphibia, and from these after some
generations were produced land animals. A treatise of the same
philosopher entitled _"Presumable Origin of Humanity"_ suggests that man
in the early age of the world was developed from "mere animal creatures."
Even a universal law of world-formation (cosmic evolution) was set forth
by Kant in a work which he published anonymously in 1775.

In its relations to animal life a development theory was first
clearly set forth by Karl Ernst von Baer (died 1876). In his
_"Entwickelungsgeschichte der Tiere"_ (1828), the author explains
"Entwickelung" as a progress from simple to complex forms. He believes
that in evolution there is a fundamental idea that "goes through all the
forms of cosmic and animal development." A predecessor of von Baer had
been the Frenchman, Lamarck. From von Baer, Herbert Spencer, about 1850,
adopted the definition of evolution.

The hypothesis entered a new phase through Charles Darwin's epochmaking
work: _"The Origin of Species."_ The keynote of Darwin's theory is
Natural Selection, by which term the development of all living forms is
referred to the working of certain laws which in the reproduction of
plants and animals preserved those individuals which were best fitted to
survive the struggle for existence. The Darwinian theory may be
summarized thus:

The Darwinian Hypothesis.

1. Every kind of animal and plant tends to increase in numbers in a
geometrical progression.

2. Every kind of animal and plant transmits a general likeness, with
individual differences, to its offspring.

3. Past time has been practically infinite.

4. Every individual has to endure a very severe struggle for existence,
owing to the tendency to geometrical increase of all kinds of animals
and plants, while the total animal and vegetable population (man and his
agency excepted) remains almost stationary.

5. Thus, every variation of a kind tending to save the life of the
individual possessing it, or to enable it more surely to propagate its
kind, will in the long run be preserved and will transmit its favorable
peculiarity to some of its offspring, which peculiarity will thus become
intensified till it reaches the maximum degree of utility. On the other
hand, individuals presenting unfavorable peculiarities will be
ruthlessly destroyed (_Survival of the Fittest_), [tr. note: sic
punctuation]

The basis of the theory then is that animals and plants multiply very
rapidly and, second, that the offspring always vary slightly from the
parents, though generally very closely resembling them. Mr. Alfred
Russel Wallace says: "From the first fact or law there follows,
necessarily, a constant struggle for existence; because while the
offspring always exceeds the parents in number, generally to an
enormous extent, yet the total number of living organisms in the world
docs not, and can not, increase year by year. Consequently every year,
on the average, as many die as are born, plants as well as animals;
and the majority die premature deaths. They kill each other in a
thousand different ways; they starve each other by some consuming the
food that others want; they are destroyed largely by the powers of
Nature--by cold and heat, by rain and storm, by flood and fire. There is
thus a perpetual struggle among them which shall live and which shall
die; and this struggle is tremendously severe, because so few can
possibly remain alive--one in five, one in ten, often only one in a
hundred or even in a thousand.

"Then comes the question, Why do some live rather than others? If all
the individuals of each species were exactly alike in every respect, we
could only say it is a matter of chance. But they are not alike. We find
that they vary in many different ways. Some are stronger, some swifter,
some hardier in constitution, some more cunning. An obscure color may
render concealment more easy for some, keener sight may enable others to
discover prey or escape from an enemy better than their fellows. Among
plants the smallest differences may be useful or the reverse. The
earliest and strongest shoots may escape the slug; their greater vigor
may enable them to flower and seed earlier in a wet autumn; plants best
armed with spines or hairs may escape being devoured; those whose
flowers are most conspicuous may be soonest fertilized by insects. We
can not doubt that, on the whole, any beneficial variations will give
the possessors of it a greater probability of living through the
tremendous ordeal they have to undergo. There may be something left to
chance, but on the whole _the fittest will survive." (_"Darwinism"_
p. 7)_.

The same writer gives a probable instance of the working of _Natural
Selection_ in the origin of certain aquatic birds called dippers. He
says: "An excellent example of how a limited group of species has been
able to maintain itself by adaptation to one of these 'vacant places' in
Nature, is afforded by the curious little birds called dippers or
water-ouzels, forming the genus _Cinclus_ and the family _Cindidae_ of
naturalists. These birds are something like small thrushes, with very
short wings and tail, and very dense plumage. They frequent, exclusively,
mountain torrents in the northern hemisphere, and obtain their food
entirely in the water, consisting, as it does, of water-beetles,
caddis-worms, and other insect-larvae, as well as numerous small
fresh-water shells. These birds, although not far removed in structure
from thrushes and wrens, have the extraordinary power of flying under
water; for such, according to the best observers, is their process of
diving in search of their prey; their dense and somewhat fibrous
plumage retaining so much air that the water is prevented from touching
their bodies or even from wetting their feathers to any great extent.
Their powerful feet and long curved claws enable them to hold on to
stones at the bottom, and thus to retain their position while picking
up insects, shells, etc. As they frequent chiefly the most rapid and
boisterous torrents, among rocks, waterfalls, and huge boulders, the
water is never frozen over, and they are thus able to live during the
severest winters. Only a very few species of dipper are known, all those
of the old world being so closely allied to our British bird that some
ornithologists consider them to be merely local races of one species;
while in North America and the northern Andes there are two other
species.

"Here, then, we have a bird, which, in its whole structure, shows a
close affinity to the smaller typical perching birds, but which has
departed from all its allies in its habits and mode of life, and has
secured for itself a place in Nature where it has few competitors and
few enemies. We may well suppose,* [[*Note characteristic phrase "We may
suppose that,--." G.]] that, at some remote period, a bird which was
perhaps the common and more generalized ancestor of our thrushes,
warblers, wrens, etc., had spread widely over the great northern
continent, and had given rise to numerous varieties adapted to special
conditions of life. Among these some took to feeding on the borders of
clear streams, picking out such larvae and mollusks as they could reach
in shallow water. When food becomes scarce they would attempt to pick
them out of deeper and deeper water, and while doing this in cold
weather many would become frozen and starved. But any which possessed
denser and more hairy plumage than usual, which was able to keep out the
water, would survive; and thus a race would be formed which would depend
more and more on this kind of food. Then, following up the frozen
streams into the mountains, they would be able to live there during the
winter; and as such places afforded them much protection from enemies
and ample shelter for their nests and young, further adaptations would
occur, till the wonderful power of diving and flying under water was
acquired by a true land-bird." (_"Darwinism,"_ p. 81-82.)

Lines of Evidence.

The evolutionary hypothesis (both in its atheistic and theistic or
"Christian" form) is understood to rest on the following lines of proof:

i. _Primary:_ The evidence of palaeontology (the study of fossil remains
in the rocks). The surface of the earth underneath the top soil consists
of layers of rock. Some of them are made up of lime deposits, others of
the shells of shell-fish, others of sand-stone, others of dead trees of
the forest (coal), all of them turned hard by the pressure of the weight
lying on top of them. Besides these sedimentary rock there are
formations like granite, showing the influence of heat. Digging among
the sedimentary rock (limestone, sand-stone, principally) we come across
preserved remains of all sorts of animals; some just like those which
live to-day, some similar but somewhat different, others quite
dissimilar from living animals of our day. These are the fossils. Now,
evolutionists assert that the oldest and simplest animal and plant
remains are found in the oldest layers of rock. This is said to prove
that in the history of plants and animals on earth, the simplest forms
are the oldest and that later the more complex forms were developed
from these. LeConte states the matter thus: "The farther back in time
we go, the simpler the forms of animal and plant life become, and these
forms occur in the order of their origination, just as if they were
developed one from another."

2. _Corroborative:_ a) The Argument from Morphology (Structure). The
resemblance of the structure of various animal types is asserted to
imply a community of descent. "Large groups of species, whose habits are
widely different, present certain fundamental likenesses of structure.
The arms of men and apes, the fore-legs of quadrupeds, the paddles of
whales, the wings of birds, the breast-fins of fishes, are constructed
on the same pattern, but altered to suit their several functions. Nearly
all mammals, from the long-necked giraffe to the short-necked elephant,
have seven neck-bones; the eyes of the lamprey are moved by six muscles
which correspond exactly to the six which work the human eye; all
insects and Crustacea--moth and lobster, bettle [tr. note: sic] and
cray-fish---are alike composed of twenty segments; the sepals, petals,
stamens, and pistils of a flower are all modified leaves arranged in a
spire." (Clodd, _"The Story of Creation,"_ p. 102.) These _resemblances_
are looked upon as evidence of a common origin.

b) The Argument from Embryology. The individual animal in embryonic
development passes through temporary stages which are similar to
permanent conditions in some of the lower forms in the same group.
Evolutionists believe that these forms were actually possessed by the
ancestors of these animals in the course of their evolution. They hold
that the changes which take place in the embryos epitomize the series of
changes through which the ancestral forms passed. Because the embryos of
some four-footed animals have gill-slits, this is pointed out as
evidence that land animals are evolved from fishes.

c) Geographical Distribution. In geological time, natural barriers have
sprung up which separated the species which have since developed. In
this way the existence of marsupials (pouched animals--kangaroo,
oppossum) [tr. note: sic] on certain limited areas, the limitation of
certain plants to certain islands, etc., are explained.

d) Classification. The so-called Tree of Life. All living forms can be
arranged in a diagram called the Tree of Life. The Tree has a short
trunk, indicating common origin of the living from the non-living, and
is divided into two large trunks representing plants and animals
respectively. "From each of these start large branches representing
classes, the larger branches giving off smaller branches representing
families, and so on with smaller and smaller branches representing
orders and genera, until we come to leaves as representing species, the
height of the branch from which they are hanging indicating their place
in the growth of the great life-tree." (Clodd, _"Story of Creation,"_
p. 103.) There is an exact gradation from the lowest life forms to the
highest. First such simple forms as the sponges and corals, then,
through the worms, crabs, oysters, and snail to the fish, and thence
through amphibia, reptiles, beasts of prey, ungulates (hoofed animals)
and apes to man. Evolutionists say that in this gradation of life we
see illustrated the evolution of complex from simple forms.

The Descent of Man.

According to the evolutionary hypothesis man is related to the animal
kingdom by descent from a brute ancestor, who, apelike in appearance,
is the common ancestor of ape and man. The evidence of such derivation
is believed to be:

i. Rudiments of structure which were useful in some brute ancestor.
There remain in man a few elementary muscles for twitching the skin, as
in the forehead; and it is pointed out that many animals have such
muscles at the present time, and it is argued that the ability of some
men to move the whole scalp points to the existence of muscles with such
function in our brute ancestors. The vermiform appendix in man is
termed rudimentary, being but a remnant of the much longer and more
complex appendix of the same nature in living animals today.

2. Embryonic Development. Because the young of all animals resemble one
another while in the embryo stage, and since such resemblances are
found in man, it is concluded that the evolution of man from some
related animal form must be accepted as the most reasonable explanation.

3. Some diseases are common to animals and man (tuberculosis, cholera,
hydrophobia, etc.).

4. The similarity in structure of man and the apes.

5. The fossil remains of man. Certain skulls and leg bones have been
found which are said to represent forms higher than the ape and lower
than man. On the strength of such finds it is said that the "missing
link" has now been supplied.

The Nebular Hypothesis.

The Frenchman de La Place (1827) first promulgated in modern terminology
the theory once held by Greek philosophers, that the earth and the
system in which it is a member originated from a primitive cosmic-vapor
or universal fire-mist filling all space with infinitely small atoms.
In this homogeneous mass _motion_ originated, resulting in a
concentration at one point. This condensation resulted in heat and
light. The planetary system at first consisted of a huge gas-ball which
gradually cooled, contracting into a molten mass which under the
influence of centrifugal force began to rotate. This rotation became
more rapid as the mass condensed, throwing off the planets, in which
the process was repeated (the moons being cast off), until the earth
became sufficiently cool to sustain life.

The Origin of Life.

When asked about the origin of life on earth, the evolutionists
generally reply that this is not a question for science but for
philosophy to answer. However, the question comes with such insistent
force that the biologist finds himself constrained to offer some
explanation of the origin of the simplest plant and animal life after
the globe had, according to the hypothesis, sufficiently cooled to
present areas in which life might arise. Necessarily, the assumption
must be that life was generated out of lifeless matter. Huxley says:
"If the hypothesis of evolution be true, living matter must have arisen
from not-living matter, for by the hypothesis, the condition of the
globe was at one time such that living matter could not have existed on
it, life being entirely incompatible with a gaseous state." (The earth
having been a ball of gases at the time.) Tyndall is a little more
specific; he says that the combination of electrical and chemical
forces acting on the primal ooze caused germs of life to originate in
small bubble-like forms, (vesicles). His words are: "The first step in
the creation of life upon this planet was a chemico-electric operation
by which simple germinal vesicles were produced." The vesicles
consisted of protoplasm, the simple substance (white-of-egg) which
exists in the cells of animal and vegetable tissues, and which is
composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and traces of other
elements. From this original protoplasm the great variety of living
things has been developed.

The Bearing of Evolution on Christianity.

It is evident that the evolutionary theory not only contradicts the
Bible story of creation but, if true, deprives Christianity of every
claim of being the true religion. If all things have come into being
through the action of forces residing in matter then the world did not
come into being through a divine fiat or command. As Haeckel says:
_"Every supernatural creation is completely excluded."_ (Quoted by John
Fiske in _"A Century of Science,"_ 1899, p. 51.) Thomas Huxley is quite
as definite: "Not only do I hold it to be proven that the story of the
Deluge is a pure fiction; but I have no hesitation in affirming the same
thing of the story of the Creation." (_"Science and Hebrew Tradition,"_
1896, p. 230.) Furthermore, the theory, by its implications, disposes
summarily of the _immortality of the soul_. The belief in an immortal
soul is termed by Haeckel as "quite excluded" by the bearing of
evolution on the origin of man. The _fall of man_ becomes a myth, since
man has not fallen from a high estate but has through many ages of slow
development arrived at the use of reason and the dominion over nature;
not a perfect man, made in the image of God, but a cousin to the
tail-less apes, newly accustomed to walking on two feet, is the ancestor
of our race. Without a fall of man there is no possibility nor even a
necessity of _redemption;_ our entire Christian theology would be
dealing with shadowy abstractions, unreasonable fears and hopes, and
purposeless strivings. The belief of the Christian is to the
evolutionist of some value as a phenomenon in the history of the mind,
but not the slightest intrinsic value is recognized in any of the
doctrines of Christian faith, not even in the belief in a _personal
God_. God is, according to Spencer, _the Unknowable_. Naturally, there
can not be _miracles,_ since all processes in nature are conceived as
governed by laws not directed by a Divine Intelligence but by forces
resident in nature. Hence, too, there can be no inspired _revelation_ of
God, since that would presume not only the existence of a personal God
but an intervention in natural processes of thought (miracle). John
Fiske wrote: The hypothesis of inspiration "conveys most certainly a
conception of Divine action as local, special, and transitory; and in
so far as it does this, it bears the marks of that heathen mode of
philosophy which was current when Christian monotheism arose."
(_"Darwinism and Other Essays,"_ 1895.) Evolution says: If there is a
God we have no means of knowing Him; and what we know of nature
certainly precludes the idea that God, if He exists, will concern
Himself about man or break down the laws of nature even for an instant
in his behalf. The conclusion is, that there is no inspired Bible. Nor
indeed an absolute religion. All religious truths are considered
relative, with no such distinction as true religion and false religion,
since there is no criterion revealed (according to the theory) by
which we can test a religion whether it be true or false. Finally,
there is no absolute _standard of morals_. Moral truths, like the
religious, are relative only. In other words, the teaching that "Christ
has atoned for sin," is as little to be accepted as an absolute truth,
as the command: "Thou shalt not steal" must be accepted as embodying an
absolute rule of conduct. Clodd says in _"The Story of Creation"_: "Man
by himself is not only unprogressive, he is also not so much immoral as
unmoral. For where there is no society there is no sin! Therefore the
bases of right and wrong lie in conduct towards one's fellow; the moral
sense or conscience is the outcome of social relations, themselves the
outcome of the need of living..... While the lower instincts, as hunger,
passion, and thirst for vengeance, are strong, they are not so enduring
or satisfying as the higher feelings which crave for society and
sympathy. And the yielding to the lower, however gratifying for the
moment, would be followed by the feeling of regret that he had thus
given way, and by resolve to act differently for the future. Thus at
last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit,
that it is best for him to obey his more persistent impulses..... Morals
are relative, not absolute; _there is no fixed standard of right and
wrong_ by which the actions of all men throughout all time are
measured..... That which man calls sin is shown to be more often due to
his imperfect sense of the true proportion of things, and to his lack
of imagination, than to his willfulness." Clodd adds that if conduct has
been made to rest on _"supposed divine commands_ (!) as to what man
shall and shall not do," that is an assumption which at best serves to
restrain the "brutal and ignorant."

J. B. Warren, of the University of California, has well stated the
effects of the evolutionary theory on religion and morals:

"Its legitimate tendency is to degrade mankind from that mental and
moral dignity that is always recognized as belonging to them, and to
place them on an essential level with the brute creation--even with the
lowest forms of vegetable and animal existence. According to that
theory, man differs from the lower organisms not in kind so much as in
the degree of development. Mr. Darwin himself was troubled about the
value of his own convictions, on the ground that his mind was evolved
from that of lower animals. That is to say, he reckoned his own mental
actions as valueless and untrustworthy, because of the essential
identity between his mind and that of the lowest creatures that live in
the mud of our swamps. Thus we see the legitimate tendency of this
theory to degrade the mental dignity of man. And it also degrades the
moral nature and faculties of man, and undermines the very foundations
of moral and religious principle, in that it teaches that man is only a
better developed brute--the natural result being that man is no more
under moral obligation than the brute, or has no different basis of
moral obligation from the brute, but only a better idea of right and
wrong, because on a higher plane in the process of evolution. It
strikes at the root of the doctrine that men are, by their origin and
nature, under peculiar and special obligations to God. In the words of
the late Dr. Robert Patterson, such a theory tends to 'obliterate a
belief in the divine origin and sanction of morality, and in the
existence of a future life of rewards and punishments, and to promote
the disorganization of society, and the degradation of man to the level
of the brutes, living only under the laws of their brutal instincts.'
Such a theory is dishonoring to man and offensive to God."

When these discrepancies between a world-view governed by the
Christian's faith in Revelation and one governed by the theory of
evolution are once clearly understood, there will be no need to inquire,
why, on the one hand, enemies of the Bible in all ranks of life greeted
with such joyous acclaim the principle announced by Darwin and, why, on
the other hand, a chief purpose of Christian apologetics has become the
demonstration that Christianity _is justified even by reason_ in the
world-view which it inculcates, and that, on the other hand, _the
evolutionary hypothesis is contradicted by the facts of religion, of
history, and of natural science_.


CHAPTER TWO.
Unexplained Origins.

The evolutionary scheme of development is, by its originators and
defenders, accepted as a working hypothesis by which it is believed that
the origin of all forms which matter has taken, and of the activities of
living things, including man and human society, can be accounted for. It
is an attempt to answer the old question, suggested to the thinking mind
by a contemplation of nature: _Whence_ these things? It it a theory of
origins.

Now, a hypothesis, being "a theory, or supposition, provisionally
employed as an explanation of phenomena," must be verified before it can
be accepted as truth. Moreover, it can stand _even as a hypothesis_ only
if it meets the test of observation and experiment. It it can
demonstrate its adaption to explain all the facts, it may, until another
and better theory is propounded, be accepted as a theory. When it does
not explain the facts, it must be modified or abandoned.

Since the evolutionary hypothesis is employed as an explanation of
certain origins, a legitimate test of the theory is its adaptation to
explain these origins. This test we now shall apply. We shall try to
answer the question: Is the evolutionary theory entitled to the name of
a working hypothesis? Is it able to account for those things which it is
set forth by its spokesmen to account for? Does it account for the
origin of the universe, of life, and of the various forms of life?

Scientists as a rule disclaim any intention to account, on the basis of
their hypothesis, for the origin of matter. When it is suggested to them
that any theory of origins should also account for the FIRST ORIGIN, the
beginning of things, they direct us to philosophy: "Evolution is not
concerned with the origin of matter; it takes matter for granted; the
origin of matter is properly a philosophical and not a scientific
problem."

Let us note the fallacies of this position. In the first place it is not
proper to introduce the word "science" into this plea. Science is,
indeed, only concerned with things that can be demonstrated by
observation and from experience; and since no one has seen the beginning
of matter, science is very properly not concerned with it. But evolution
is not a science. It is a hypothesis, a theory. It is an explanation
proposed for certain phenomena. 'And we have a right to demand that, if
it wants recognition even as a theory, it must explain those phenomena.
Now the principle of evolution is: All things have developed through
certain forces which inhere in matter. In other words, without being
acted upon from the outside, (without a creative word of God, for
instance,) the unvierse [tr. note: sic] has come to be what it is
to-day. In matter there are from the beginning certain forces
inseparable from matter. These acted in such a way that very simple
plants and animals became very complex; and this without any directing
Intelligence. This is the evolutionary theory. Now, we hold that a
theory which claims to account for the beginning of all animal life
(and every species of animal life), for the beginning of plant life
(and of every species of plant life), for the beginning of life germs,
of the globe, of the sun and stars, cannot stop short when we press
our questions still farther and ask: Whence is matter? Whence is force?

Nor, indeed, do evolutionists hesitate to express an opinion concerning
the origin of matter and force. The universe, as it exists to-day, is
made up of matter disposed in various forms,--stars, rock, plants,
animals,--and endowed with energy in various forms; and from the
earliest age of speculation, as we have seen, the human mind conceived
of a time in which there was _unorganized_ matter, substance without
form. Like the ancient Greek philosophers, evolutionists to-day try to
formulate a working hypothesis to account for the origin of the
universe. It is believed that, in a broad way, the _Nebular Hypothesis_
put forth by La Place indicated the manner in which the earth and the
system to which it belongs have been evolved. We have outlined, briefly,
in our first chapter, the main features of this theory. We shall now
indicate the difficulties which stand in the way of its acceptance even
as a working hypothesis.

1. The Nebular Hypothesis assumes that during a past endless time there
has existed an incalculable number of original atoms. Let us understand
that according to the so-called atomic theory, matter is composed of
indivisible particles, called _atoms_. Since the discovery of radium
this theory has been considerably modified, each atom now being
understood to consist of many thousands of smaller particles, called
electrons. However, whether we call them atoms or electrons, the
smallest, indivisible particles of matter are assumed to have existed
during infinite past time. Now, the origin of these simplest component
parts of matter _remains an unsolved mystery_. The mind is unable even
to formulate a guess with reference to their organization.

2. A second postulate of the Nebular Hypothesis is the _origin of force
and motion_ in the huge gas ball which existed in the beginning. La
Place says that "at some point concentration took place in the
homogeneous mass, this contraction produced radiation of heat and light,
and through the differences in temperature, _motion_ and dynamic
reaction were produced." The difficulty which inheres in this postulate
is the unquestioned fact that all motion in nature follows certain
immutable _laws_*, [*These laws, so far as known, form the basis of what
we call physics and chemistry.] and _the origin of these laws_ is not
accounted for by the theory. Laws never make themselves, and their
complexity,--immeasurably beyond our power of exploration--yet
everywhere adjusted to a definite end, is so intricate that their origin
can by no means be accounted for by chance.

3. According to the theory matter was first in _"nebular" (gas) form,_
and that the gases existing diffused through space were, through the
motion which originated, changed from a huge ball of fire-mist to a
semi-solid sphere, which threw off smaller spheres (the planets) that
gradually became solid. Now, this is contrary to our knowledge of gases.
Gases may be produced from solids, but an incandescent gas will not,
through simple motion, become a solid substance. Gases may be solidified,
but only in two ways, by pressure or when greatly cooled,--when they
become ice. But they do not retain this form when the pressure or the
cooling agency is removed. Gases, as we know them, all have a tendency
to expand indefinitely. They have no tendency to solidify, as the
hypothesis presumes.

4. La Place assumed that the solar system when still in gaseous state,
began to revolve upon its axis, and that, as the gas ball continued to
revolve, it condensed. As condensation went on, the rotation became
faster, and a ring of matter was thrown off from the hardening core.
This ring again resolved itself into a rotating globe which, still in a
fluid state, threw off other balls, which revolved around their mother,
the first planet, even as the latter continued to follow an orbit around
the central body, the sun. In this way the planets of the solar system,
including the earth, (according to the theory), were evolved together
with their satellites or moons. The difficulty attending this view of
planetary evolution is found in the difference _between the movements of
a number of satellites_ around the planets. While the satellites of the
earth, of Jupiter and of Saturn revolve _from west to east,_ the moons
of Uranus and Neptune have an orbital movement _from east to west_. This
is regarded also by the friends of the Nebular Hypothesis as one of the
gravest difficulties, since no mechanical law will explain the reverse
movement of the satellites of the remotest planets when they, as well as
Jupiter, Saturn, and the rest are supposed to have been cast off by the
same central body.

5. According to the theory, the original atoms during the process of
world-making united into _molecules_. The laws according to which atoms
unite,--so that, for instance, the hydrogen atom each unites with two
atoms of oxygen, and so down the list of all known existences,--these
laws are among the assured results of scientific study. Now, the entire
science of chemistry in all its branches is built upon the axiom that
molecules are _absolutely unalterable_ and that molecules of the same
kind are always absolutely identical. A molecule of water is always and
invariably composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. A
molecule of sulphuric acid invariably contains two atoms of hydrogen,
one of sulphur, and four of oxygen. A molecule of potassium chlorate is
always composed of just one atom of potassium chloride and three atoms
of oxygen. Never is there any variation of these proportions in the same
element, and a chemist will, without handling the elements, merely by
mathematical calculation, unerringly produce new combinations, relying
on the absolute constancy of the relations of atoms and molecules. Now,
the theory that in the beginning of things, out of a mass of atoms
diffused without form through space, molecules came into being, each
kind or type composed of atoms according to a proportion peculiarly its
own, cannot be accepted unless it is shown in what manner the laws came
into existence according to which these combinations take place. Clerk
Maxwell concludes a masterly statement of this aspect of the hypothesis
by asking: "Who can restrain the ulterior question, Whence then these
myriad types of the same letter imprinted on the earth, the sun, the
stars, as if the very mould used here had been lent to Sirius, and
passed on through the constellations? No theory of evolution can be
formed to account for the similarity of the molecules throughout all
time, and throughout the whole region of the stellar universe; for
evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule (as
known to science) is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or
destruction."

The Origin of Life.

The origin of life on our globe is not accounted for on the basis of the
evolutionary hypothesis. At some time in the remote past, there must,
according to the theory, have been a development of living substance
from a mineral base. But if scientific experiment has shown anything it
has shown the unreality of what was called "spontaneous generation."
This term was very popular with the scientists of a century or two ago.
It was believed that certain animal and vegetable forms gave birth, in
the process of decay, to insect life. Putrefying meat gives rise to
maggots. The origin of these grubs was referred to the power of
"spontaneous generation." When the Italian naturalist Redi discovered
that an exclusion of flies from meat was all that was necessary to
prevent the production of grubs, the doctrine of spontaneous generation
was thoroughly upset, for his time at least. But the microscope revealed
in "pure" water the presence of thousands of small creatures, the
infusoria. Again spontaneous generation was appealed to in order to
explain their presence. But the famous experiments of Pasteur (related
by Huxley in his lectures on The Origin of Species, Lecture III), proved
conclusively that sterilized water will not produce living forms when
the germs floating everywhere about in the air are excluded. Since that
time all men of science agree that there is no such thing demonstrable
as spontaneous generation. It has become an axiom that "Life only comes
from life." But how the first germs of life originated, is a question
for which there is no answer. Huxley admits: "Of the causes which led to
the origination of living matter it may be said that we know absolutely
nothing." "The present state of knowledge furnishes us with no link
between the living and the not living."

However, while spontaneous generation is "absolutely inconceivable"
(Darwin), and while no experiments made on dead matter have ever
produced living (plant and animal) matter, life must have originated at
some time from non-life according to the evolutionary hypothesis. The
theory assumes that at some time the globe was in an incandescent stage.
At that time there could not have been any life on our earth. But as the
earth cooled, it is held that by some chemico-electric action (electric
force acting upon elements in favorable combinations), inert, lifeless
matter became endowed with the property which we call life, and this
original living substance is called protoplasm. From it, by successive
modifications, slow in their operation, the teeming variety of living
things is believed to have developed. Now it is a notable fact, that
many evolutionists (among them Alfred Russell Wallace, the co-discoverer
of the theory which goes under Darwin's name) frankly admit the
inability to account for the origin of protoplasm. From mineral
substances, protoplasm differs in that it possesses the power of growth,
development, and reproduction. The very first vegetable cell "must have
possessed altogether new powers," says Mr. Wallace, "that of extracting
carbon from the air and that of indefinite reproduction. Here,"--note
this admission,--"we have indications of _a new power_ at work." In
other words, forces resident in matter no longer suffice. The
evolutionistic principle breaks down.

Some fifty years ago it was thought that experimental proof had been
found for the presence on earth of the original, simple, unorganized
protoplasm; that the basis of all life on earth had been discovered,--in
the depths of the ocean. The story of this "discovery" is entertainingly
told by the Duke of Argyle in the _"Nineteenth Century"_ magazine. We
quote from his article.

"Along with the earlier specimens of deep sea deposits sent home by
naturalists during the first soundings in connection with the Atlantic
telegraph cable, there was very often a sort of enveloping slimy mucus
in the containing bottles which arrested the attention and excited the
curiosity of the specialists to whom they were consigned. It was
structureless to all miscroscopic examination. But so is all the
protoplasmic matter of which the lowest animals are found. Could it be a
widely diffused medium of this protoplasmic material, not yet
specialized or individualized into organic forms, nor itself yet in a
condition to build up inorganic skeletons for a habitation? Here was a
grand idea. It would be well to find missing links; but it would be
better to find the primordial substance out of which all living things
had come. The ultra-Darwinian enthusiasts were enchanted. Haeckel
clapped his hands and shouted _Eureka!_ loudly. Even the cautious and
discriminating mind of Professor Huxley was caught by this new and grand
generalization of the 'physical basis of life;' It was announced by him
to the British Association in 1868. Dr. Will Carpenter took up the
chorus. He spoke of 'a living expanse of protoplasmic substance,'
penetrating with its living substance the 'whole mass' of the oceanic
mud. A fine new Greek name was devised for this mother slime, and it was
christened 'Bathybius,'" (from two Greek words meaning "depth" and
"life,"), "from the consecrated deeps in which it lay. The conception
ran like wildfire through the popular literature of science. Expectant
imagination soon played its part. Wonderful movements were soon seen in
this mysterious slime. It became an 'irregular network,' and it could be
seen gradually 'altering its form,' so that 'entangled granules changed
their relative positions."

Such was Bathybius, which once raised such a commotion in the world of
science, but which is never heard of or even alluded to in scientific
circles today. And now for the issue of this discovery of such mighty
promise. In the year 1872, the "Challenger," commanded by John Murray,
set out on a voyage of deep-sea exploration. "The naturalists of the
'Challenger' began their voyage in full Bathybian faith. But the sturdy
mind of Mr. John Murray kept its balance--all the more easily since he
never could himself find or see any trace of this protoplasm _when the
dredges of the 'Challenger' came fresh from the ocean bottom_. Again and
again he looked for it, but never could he discover it. It always hailed
from England. The bottles sent there were reported to yield it in
abundance, but somehow it seemed to be hatched in them. The laboratory
in London was its unfailing source. The ocean never yielded it until it
had been bottled. At last, one day on board the 'Challenger,' an
accident revealed the mystery. One of Mr. Murray's assistants poured a
large quantity of spirits of wine into a bottle containing some pure
sea-water, when lo! the wonderful protoplasm Bathybius appeared! It was
_the chemical precipitate of sulphate of lime_ produced by the mixture
of alcohol and sea-water! Thereafter 'Bathybius' disappeared from
science."

The term "protoplasm" has, indeed, been retained by writers on biology.
The whole body of an animal, and the structure of plants, are understood
to consist of cells. The cells consist of a colorless substance, and
this is called "protoplasm." It is a substance of very complex chemical
and physical make-up, in fact, no chemist has yet been able to analyze
it and a famous biologist says that very probably it may never be
analyzed (David Starr Jordan.) Protoplasm, like the white of egg, is the
basic substance of life, yet in the variety of forms which it takes it
is of _"almost unlimited complexity"_ (Jordan). Now, a new difficulty
develops when this complex character of protoplasm as it is now found in
animals and plants is considered. Clear (unmodified) protoplasm, as
found in white of egg and in the white cells of the blood, is the
structureless substance called albumen. However, protoplasm varies
almost infinitely in consistency, in shape, in structure, and in
function. It is sometimes so fluid as to be capable of forming in drops,
sometimes semifluid, sometimes almost solid. In shape the cells may be
club shaped, globe shaped, threaded, flat, conical. Some protoplasm
produces fat, others produce nerve substances, others brain substances,
bone, muscle, etc., each producing only its own kind, uninterchangeable
with the rest. Lastly, there is the overwhelming fact that there is an
infinite difference of protoplasm in the infinitely different plants and
animals, in each of which _its own protoplasm but produces its own kind_.
"Here are several thousand pieces of protoplasm; analysis can detect no
difference in them. They are to us, let us say, as they are to Mr.
Huxley, identical in power, in form, and in substance; and yet on all
these several thousand little bits of apparently indistinguishable matter
an element of difference so pervading and so persistent has been
impressed, that of them all, not one is interchangeable with another!
Each seed feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more
grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. Protoplasm is
protoplasm; yes, but man's protoplasm is man's protoplasm, and the
mushroom's the mushroom's." (Dr. Sterling, _"As Regards Protoplasm."_)
Hence we are compelled to acknowledge not an identity of protoplasm in
all substances, but an infinite diversity. It follows that the
derivation of all plant and animal forms from an original speck or germ
of living matter is not only un-proven, but is contradicted by
biological science.

Darwin himself, like his co-laborer Wallace, was constrained to admit
that the origin of life constitutes an unsolved problem. Matter and
force do not account for it. Darwin accepted a divine fiat somewhere in
the beginning. He says. "There is grandeur in this view of life, with
its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into
the first forms or into one." In other words, the creation of the first
living being was an exceptional kind of power. But if, as Mr. Darwin
says, life was breathed by the Creator into the first forms, this
constitutes a break in the sufficiency of natural causes alone to
produce life. If a special fiat was necessary at this point, why may it
not have been at others? If by divine omnipotence, life is believed to
have been originated, why shall we not believe that by divine
omnipotence the various species of plants and animals were brought forth
as related in the first chapter of the Bible? "If the Creator could
breathe life into a few forms or into one, as Darwin thinks he did,
without violating the law of his own being, and in accordance with the
laws which he has established, it seems evident that he might at other
times breathe life into other forms in accordance with his laws. I see
no necessity for a logic that would compel the Creator to confine the
number of his creative fiats to a few, or to one, nor which would limit
the fiats to one time." (Fairhurst, _"Organic Evolution Considered."_)

Biological Barriers.

The atom, the molecule, the life-germ,--these are the barriers which
stand against the evolutionistic conception of origins on the physical
side. We proceed to investigate the points at which _biology_ touches
our problem, and again three barriers call for notice and investigation:
The difference between plants and animals; the difference between
vertebrates and invertebrates; and the difference between mammals and
all other vertebrates.

1. _Whence the animal kingdom?_ This stage in the scale of life, the
advance from vegetable to the animal kingdom, is, to quote Mr. Wallace,
again "completely beyond all possibility of explanation by _matter,_ its
laws and forces. It is the introduction of _sensation or consciousness,_
constituting the fundamental distinction between the animal and
vegetable kingdoms." Plants live, animals live _and feel;_ and they have
consciousness. At this point again, only a thorough-going materialist
will deny the working of an outside power, a power not resident in
matter, but altering and molding matter from without and endowing it
with new abilities. Only an act of this Power Without could endow living
substance with feeling and consciousness. No one can here any longer
appeal to that undefined chemico-electric action by which some attempt
to account for protoplasm. Mr. Wallace says: "Here all idea of mere
complication of structure producing the result is out of the question.
We feel it to be altogether preposterous to assume that at a certain
stage of complexity of atomic constitution, and as a necessary result of
that complexity alone, an _ego_ should start into existence,--a thing
that _feels,_ that is _conscious_ of its own existence. Here we have the
certainty that something new has arisen,--a being whose nascent
consciousness has gone on increasing in power and definiteness till it
has culminated in the higher animals. No verbal explanation or attempt
at explanation--such as the statement that life is 'the result of the
molecular forces of the protoplasm,' or that the whole existing organic
universe from the amoeba up to man was latent in the fire-mist from
which the solar system was developed--can afford any mental satisfaction,
or help us in any way to a solution of the mystery."

2. _Whence the backbone?_ All animals are divided into vertebrates and
invertebrates, the animals with a backbone and animals without. Between
these two groups the barrier of backbone stands impassable till it is
explained how a butterfly could become a bird, or a snail a serpent, or
a star fish acquire the skeleton of the shark. These two groups, the
vertebrate animals and the invertebrate, must be regarded as
fundamentally distinct.

3. _Whence the breast?_ Vertebrates are either mammals or submammals.
The breastless tribes are brids, [tr. note: sic] reptiles, and fishes.
These are far beneath in the scale, while the mammal, by its peculiar
endowment in that it gives suck to its young, stands elect, aloft, and
apart. Till it is shown how an animal that never got milk from its
mother stumbled on the capacity of giving what was never given it, _the
breast_ will stand, against all dreams of development, companion-barrier
to the backbone. Nor is there an animal that can be regarded as a
connecting link between these two master groups.

The "theistic" evolutionist, who believes that God at various times
"helped out" the forces residing in matter, by creating something new,
is inclined to say that at each of these points,--the origin of the
first sentient animal, the origin of the first vertebrate, and of the
first mammal,--God by his omnipotence caused a new type to originate.
Aside from the fact that "forces resident in matter," the basic idea of
the evolutionistic theory, here begins to become somewhat faint as a
background even for a "theistic" conception of development, it is
evident that we have already reached a point far down the scale of
organic evolution in which the admission must be made that no possible
working of forces within matter can account for the change. Again we
say, if we already admit that the various great types of animal life
could not originate without a special creative act of God, then why
should we not accept the record of Genesis which says that the various
species of plants and the various species of animals were created, each
a separate species, in the beginning? Once admit special creative acts,
and there is no longer any need for a hypothesis of evolution.

Man.

The difficulty which stands in the way of accepting, on purely
scientific grounds, the descent of man from a brute ancestor, is, first
of all a biological (physiological) difficulty. Among all the mammalia
(to accept the classification of man with that group), man alone has a
perfect brain. By this we mean the physiologically and structurally
perfect brain. It is present even in the lowest man--present in the
negro or the Australian Bushman as in the civilized American; and absent
in all living beings below man--absent in the ape or the elephant as
truly as in the lowest mammals, the kangaroo or the duckbill. Its sign
is _language,_ capacity of _progress, culture_. All healthy human
brains are structurally perfect; the highest brute brains are
structurally imperfect. The least cultivated human being is susceptible
of culture; a savage not only possesses the endowment of language but
may be educated to appreciate the art of a Raphael or a Shakespeare. The
brains of all other living beings are circumscribed by instinct, which
never progresses. The perfect brain thus introduces another impassable
biological barrier dividing the world of life.

However, the derivation of man from brute ancestry is attended by
another and even greater difficulty. The brain, after all, is but an
organ, it is the organ of _Mind_. Man possesses faculties of intellect
(reason, imagination, the artistic faculties, etc.) and, above all, a
moral nature, which raises him far above the brute. These faculties
could not possibly have been developed by means of forces resident in
matter or by means of the laws which are made to account for the
physical universe.

The very term "evolution" implies the development of something that was
at first involved, or essentially infolded, in that in which evolution
began. In man there are attributes and faculties not shown by lower
orders. Evolution, seeking to be consistent, answers: "It is true that
faculties cannot be evolved out of a thing unless they exist in a crude
and undeveloped state in that thing, but these higher faculties _do
exist_ in the lower orders, potentially, or in a germ form and are
developed and become operative only in the higher forms of life."

Evolutionists do not shrink from this application of their theory to the
human mind. The attributes of a Shakespeare and the moral nature of a
Paul were, essentially or potentially (capable of development), in the
star fish and the jelly fish. The difference is not one of kind but of
development and degree. Man has these faculties developed, the animals
have them undeveloped. In the _"Life and Letters of Charles Darwin,"_
published by his son, is a letter from Mr. Darwin to W. Graham, written
in 1881, from which I quote the following: "I have no practice in
abstract reasoning, and I may be all astray. Nevertheless, you have
expressed my inward conviction, though far more vividly and clearly
than I could have done. But then, with me, the horrid doubt always
arises _whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed
from the lower animals, are of any value, or are at all trustworthy."_
Again he says (p. 528), in another letter written to Sir C. Lyell:
"Grant a simple archetypal creature, like the mud-fish or lepidosiren
(mud eel) with five senses and some vestige of mind, and I believe
natural selection will account for the production of every vertebrate
animal, including, of course, man."

Observe that this language is very definite. It says that the mind of
man, with all its wonderful attributes and faculties, was evolved from
the mind of the lower animals--and he goes as low as the mud-fish and
the eel that live in the slime of the swamps. Now, whoever wishes to
believe such a preposterous assumption can do so. He is able to believe
almost anything, and to disbelieve everything. Mr. Darwin himself says
he looks upon man's convictions as of no value, because they are the
convictions of a mind derived from the mind of lower animals; nor can
one blame him for being skeptical. Our point, however, is that there is
such a tremendous difference between the intellectual and moral
faculties of man and the barely instinctive impulses of the lower
creatures, that no one can see any connection between the two, unless
there is some serious defect in his own mental or moral perceptions.
Every instinct and conviction of the human mind rises in indignant
repudiation of the theory of man's descent.

There are even among thoroughgoing Darwinians some who draw the line at
this (necessary) application of the development idea. Wallace says, at
the conclusion of his defense of Darwinism: "The faculties of man could
not possibly have been developed by means of the same laws which have
determined the progressive development of the world in general, and
also of man's physical organism"--the human body. He finds in the origin
of Mind clear indications of "an unseen universe--a world of spirit, to
which the world of matter is altogether subordinate." (_"Darwinism,"_ p.
320.) Yet the development of mind through merely physical forces is
upheld to the present day by the majority of evolutionists. The doctrine
is even found in public school texts. In Davis' _"Physical Geography,"_
a high-school text, we read page 341:

"The greater intelligence of many land animals than of sea animals
should also be regarded as a result of the development of land animals
amid a greater variety of geographical conditions than is found in the
seas. . . . The wonderful intelligence of man has been developed on the
lands, because only on the lands is to be found the great variety of
form, climate and products which can stimulate the development of high
intelligence. It would have been as impossible for man to develop as an
inhabitant of the dark and monotonous ocean floor as it has been for
civilization to arise out of the frozen and lonesome lands of the
Antarctic regions."

Thus even the children of our generation are taught a doctrine which is
not only unproven but so far falls short of explaining that which it was
invented to explain that it cannot, by any correct definition, even be
dignified with the name of a "working hypothesis." It is a theory of
origins which fails to account for one thing precisely--Origins.


CHAPTER THREE.
The Testimony of the Rocks.

We have seen that the principal argument for a development of the higher
types of life from lower organisms is based upon a study of fossil
remains (paleontology). The older the strata in the earth's surface, the
simpler the animal forms imbedded therein; the more recent the strata,
the more complex and highly developed the fossil remains. Popular
scientific works, and books of refence [tr. note: sic] generally, quote
it as an axiom: In the oldest rocks the simplest fossils are found,
hence the higher animals are developed from the lower. Davis "Physical
Geograhy" [tr. note: sic] says (page 17):

"Age of the Earth.--It is impossible to say what the age of the earth
and the solar system is, but it certainly should be reckoned in millions
and millions of years. There is every reason to believe that the sun and
the planets existed for an indefinitely long period before the condition
of the earth's surface was such as to allow the habitation of the planet
by plants and animals. It is well proved by the prints or fossils of
various plants and animals in ancient rock layers that these lower forms
of life existed upon the earth for a vast length of time, millions and
millions of years before man appeared."

Here, then, we are squarely confronted by the issue. Either the rocks
testify to a slow evolution of plant and animal life, or they supply no
such testimony. Professor Downing of Chicago University, says that this
is indeed, the one primary argument for evolution, the rest being simply
corroborative. On this _rock_ evolutionists build their scientific
Faith. Let us investigate.

We shall note, to begin with, that there are, indeed, a larger number of
species, both of animals and plants, preserved in the rocks,--thousands,
in fact. There are lowly organisms, of the crab and cuttle fish variety,
and more highly organized forms, fishes and birds, and there are the
prints and fossilized bones of great monsters, huge lizards and sloths
and other mammalia. It is possible to establish a gradation in this great
catalog of fossils, beginning with the largest or most perfectly
developed, and ending with the animals lower in the scale of life; or
vice versa. The evolutionists say, _vice versa,_ the simplest first, the
most complex last, and then they add: _So_ they have developed.

At this point we shall first quote one of the earliest palaeontologists,
and one of the most famous, Hugh Miller, whose _"Old Red Sandstone,"_
first published in 1841, has now been republished in the _"Everyman
Library."_ In this brilliant work, Miller pays his respects to the
evolutionists of his age. He refers to Lamarck and says: "The ingenious
foreigner, on the strength of a few striking facts which prove that to a
certain extent the instincts of species may be improved and heightened,
and their forms changed from a lower to a higher degree of adaptation to
their circumstances, has concluded that there is a natural progress from
the inferior order of being towards the superior, and that the off-spring
of creatures low in the scale in the present time may hold a much higher
place in it, and belong to different and nobler species, a few thousand
years hence. . . . He has argued on this principle of improvement and
adaptation,--which, carry it as far as we rationally may, still leaves
the vegetable a vegetable, and the dog a dog,--that in the vast course
of ages, inferior have risen into superior natures, and lower into higher
races; that molluscs and zoophytes have passed into fish and reptiles,
and fish and reptiles into birds and quadrupeds; that unformed gelatinous
bodies, with an organisation scarcely traceable, have been metamorphosed
into oaks and cedars; and that monkeys and apes have been transformed
into human creatures, capable of understanding and admiring the theories
of Lamarck.

"It is a law of nature," continues Mr. Miller, "that the chain of being,
from the lowest to the highest form of life, should be, in some degree,
a continuous chain; that the various classes of existence should shade
into one another, so that it often proves a matter of no little
difficulty to point out the exact line of demarcation where one class or
family ends and another class or family begins. The naturalist passes
from the vegetable to the animal tribes, scarcely aware, amid the
perplexing forms of intermediate existence, at what point he quits the
precincts of the one, to enter on those of the other. All the animal
families have, in like manner, their connecting links; and it is chiefly
out of these that writers such as Lamarck and Maillet construct their
system. _They confound gradation with progress_. Geoffrey Hudson was a
very short man, and Goliath of Gath a very tall one; and the gradations
of the human stature lie between. But gradation is not progress; and
though we find full-grown men of five feet, five feet six inches, and
six feet and a half, the fact gives us no earnest whatever that the race
is rising in stature, and that at some future period the average height
of the human family will be somewhat between ten and eleven feet. And
equally unsolid is the argument that from a principle of gradation in
races would reduce a principle of progress in races. The tall man of six
feet need entertain quite as little hope of rising into eleven feet as
the short man of five; nor has the fish that occasionally flies any
better chance of passing into a bird than the fish that only swims.
Geology abounds with creatures of the intermediate class. _But it
furnishes no genealogical link to show that the existences of one race
derive their lineage from the existences of another_. The scene shifts
as we pass from formation to formation; we are introduced in each to a
new dramatis personae. Of all the vertebrata, fishes rank lowest, and in
geological history appear first. Now, fishes differ very much among
themselves: some rank nearly as low as worms,--some nearly as high as
reptiles; and if fish could have risen into reptiles, and reptiles into
mammalia, we would necessarily expect to find lower orders of fish
passing into higher, and taking precedence of the higher in their
appearance in point of time. If such be not the case,--if fish made
their first appearance, not in their least perfect, but in their most
perfect state,--not in their nearest approximation to the worm, but in
their nearest approximation to the reptile,--there is no room for
progression, and the argument falls. Now, it is a geological fact, that
_it is fish of the higher orders that appear first on the stage,_ and
that they are found to occupy exactly the same level during the vast
period represented by five succeeding formations. There is no
progression. If fish rose into reptiles, it must have been by sudden
transformation. There is no getting rid of miracle in the case,--there
is no alternative between creation and metamorphosis. The infidel
substitutes progression for Deiety;--Geology robs him of his God."

Mr. Miller then relates his discovery of the winged fish (Pterichtys):
"Of all the organisms of the Old Red Sandstone, one of the most
extraordinary, and the one in which Lamarck would have most delighted,
is the Pterichtys, or winged fish. Had Lamarck been the discoverer, he
would unquestionably have held that he had caught a fish almost in the
act of wishing itself into a bird. Here are wings which lack only
feathers, a body which seems to have been as well adapted for passing
through the air as the water and a tail by which to steer. I fain wish
I could communicate to the reader the feeling with which I contemplated
my first-found specimen. It opened with a single blow of the hammer;
and there on a ground of light-colored limestone, lay the effigy of a
creature fashioned apparently out of jet, with a body covered with
plates, two powerful-looking arms articulated at the shoulders, a head
as entirely lost in the trunk as that of the ray or the sun-fish, and
long angular tail." Miller says that he at first thought he had
discovered a kind of turtle that partook of the characteristics of a
fish. But he continues: "I had inferred somewhat too hurriedly, though
perhaps naturally enough, that these wings or arms, with their strong
sharp points and oar-like blades, had been at once paddles and spears,
--instrument of motion and weapons of defence; and hence the mistake of
connecting the creature with the Chelonia (turtles). I am informed by
Agassiz, however, that they were weapons of defence only, which, like
the spines of the river bull-head, were erected in moments of danger or
alarm, and at other times lay close by the creature's side; and that
the sole instrument of motion was in the tail. The river bull-head, when
attacked by an enemy, or immediately as it feels the hook in its jaws,
erects its two spines at nearly right angles with the plates of the head,
as if to render itself as difficult of being swallowed as possible. The
attitude is one of danger and alarm; and it is a curious fact, that in
this attitude nine-tenth of the Pterichthyes of the Lower Old Red
Sandstone are to be found."

A century has passed since Miller thought he had discovered a turtle
which was so modified in structure as to be a link between the turtles
and the fish. But to the present day geology has failed to furnish
evidence that such a link at one time existed.

This _absence, in the geological record, of transitional forms,_ is one
of the greatest difficulties of the evolutionistic theory. According to
the theory, the fossils found in the various layers of rock ought to
show gradual modifications, linking the various species of animals and
plants in a finely graduated system, with thousands of forms showing in
rudimentary structure those organs which in the more advanced forms
have become fully developed. However, no such progress from more to
less generalized types has been demonstrated, although many trained
investigators have searched the fossiliferous rocks for such evidence
of evolution. Professor Huxley in his _"Lay Sermons"_ admits that an
impartial survey of the positively ascertained truths of paleontology
"Either shows us no evidence of such modification, or demonstrates
such modification as has occurred to have been very slight; and as to
the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever that
the earlier members of any long-continued group were more generalized in
structure than the later ones." LeConte says: "Although the species
change greatly, and perhaps many times, in passing from the lowest to
the highest strata, we do not usually, it must be acknowledged, find the
gradual transitions we would naturally expect, if the change were
effected by gradual transitions." He further speaks of the absence of
connecting links as "the greatest of all objections" against the theory
of evolution. (_"Evolution,"_ p. 234.) This absence of transitional
forms between different species has always been recognized as a serious
difficulty; and Mr. Darwin, in the attempt to obviate it, succeeds only
in showing how very serious it is. These are his words: "Geology
assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and
this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be
urged against my theory."

Alfred Fairhurst says, in his _"Organic Evolution Considered"_ (p. 93):

"According to the theory of evolution, and especially of natural
selection, if we start with any organism and trace its history backward,
we would find that through an endless number of generations it had been
very slightly changing, so that any individual is always a transitional
form between its immediate ancestors and its own offspring. This being
true, one would expect, if the theory of evolution is true, to find vast
numbers of transitional forms connecting earlier and later species in
the various periods where fossils are well preserved. This, however, is
not true. Species, when they first appear, stand sharply defined. Darwin
expresses his disappointment at the absence of transitional forms as
follows: 'But I do not pretend that I should ever have suspected how
poor was the record in the best preserved geological sections, had not
the absence of innumerable transitional links between the species which
lived at the commencement and close of each formation pressed so hardly
on my theory.'"

Even a cursory study of such texts as Dana's _"Manual of Geology"_ will
reveal that the development of the plants and animals through the "ages"
of speculative geology does not move forward like a steadily rising
flood. There is rather a series of great waves, each rising abruptly,
new forms often appearing suddenly and together. The very simplest known
fossils, the trilobites, of which nearly a hundred species are known in
America alone, and certain cephalopods (sea snails) are animals highly
complex in structure and regarded by Le Conte as "hardly lower than the
middle of the animal scale." The trilobites possess well developed
compound eyes and the cephalopods have simple eyes, almost as complex as
the eyes of man, possess a well defined stomach, a systemic heart, a
liver, and a highly developed nervous system [tr. note: no period in
original] Observe, that these two highly organized forms of animals,
"hardly to be regarded as lower than the middle of the animal scale,"
are the very "oldest" animals found in fossil form! In other words, of
at least one half of the total progress of the animal kingdom every
vestige is lost. If we turn a few pages in Dana's _"Manual"_ we find in
the sandstone of the "Devonian Era" gigantic species of fish. The entire
record of evolution from the mollusk to the fish is lost! There is not a
single transitional form. These fishes have organs as complex and
perfect as the fishes of to-day. Suddenly, in the "carbonic age"
amphibia and reptiles appear, and then come, in the "Triassic" the huge
reptiles known as dinosaurs. Insects and scorpions have been found in
the "Silurian." [tr. note: sic on punctuation] They stand among the
highest of even _living_ articulates, and they are the "oldest" known
airbreathing animals. "We seek in vain for the progenitors of these
highly organized articulates or for some conceivable method by which
their wings and special breathing apparatus could have evolved. We do
not know that these first insects and scorpions have made any material
progress through all the ages." (Fairhurst.)

Professor Huxley in delivering the anniversary address to the Geological
Society for 1870, quotes the following from an address before the same
society in 1862: "If we confine ourselves to positively ascertained
facts, the total amount of change in the forms of animal and vegetable
life since the existence of such forms is recorded, is small. When
compared with the lapse of time since the first appearance of these
forms, the amount of change is wonderfully small. Moreover, in each great
group of the animal and vegetable kingdoms, there are certain forms which
I termed Persistent Types, which have remained, with but very little
apparent change, from their first appearance to the present time. In
answer to the question, 'What then does an impartial survey of the
positively ascertained truths of paleontology testify in relation to the
common doctrines of progressive modification, which suppose that
modification to have taken place by necessary progress from more to less
embryonic forms, from more to less generalized types within the limits of
the period represented by the fossiliferous rocks?' I reply, It negatives
these doctrines; for it either shows us no evidence of such
modifications, or demonstrates such modification as has occurred to have
been very slight. The significance of persistent types and of the small
amount of change which has taken place even in those forms which can be
shown to have been modified, becomes greater and greater in my eyes, the
longer I occupy myself with the Biology of the past."

From the fact that the trilobites, so highly organized, appeared in the
"primordial," or "oldest" strata, it would seem that they were specially
adapted to make progress. They lived through "Paleozoic" time, which,
according to Dana, represents twelve of the sixteen parts of all
geological time, beginning with the Primordial; or, calling the whole
geological time 48 millions of years, the trilobites lived 36 million of
years, or three-fourths of all geological time. From their great
persistence in time (accepting, for the sake of argument, the "ages" of
speculative geology) it would seem that they had a remarkably good
opportunity to make wonderful progress in structure. During that time
there were thousands of species, yet they made no progress. We do not
know that in all those "millions of years" a single higher form was
evolved from any one of the great multitude of species of trilobites. As
Darwin says of the goose, so one may say of the trilobite; it "had a
singularly inflexible organization." The remarkable thing about this,
however, is that previous to the "Primordial," while it was becoming a
trilobite, it must have had a singularly flexible organization, otherwise
it could not have obtained its complex structure; but when it reached the
"Primordial" it became very conservative.

Fairhurst says, in the work already quoted:

"It is a most remarkable fact that in the first geological period in
which undoubted fossils occur, all the sub-kingdoms except that of the
vertebrates are well represented, and that there is no evidence from
fossils that one sub-kingdom, or even that different classes of the same
sub-kingdom were evolved from each other. The great gulfs that separate
the animal kingdom into sub-kingdoms and classes existed then, and have
continued till the present time.... If we rely on known fossils as
evidence, we would be obliged to conclude that highly organized fishes
were suddenly introduced. The break in the supposed chain of evolution
between the invertebrates and the highly organized vertebrates of the
Lower Silurian is one of the greatest in the whole geological record. The
vast gulf between these structures must, I think, remain unbridged except
by the imagination."

The late Prof. Joseph LeConte, of the University of California, writes
in his book, "Religion and Science:" "The evidence of geology to-day is
that species seem to come in suddenly and in full perfection, remain
substantially unchanged during the term of their existence, and pass
away in full perfection. Other species take their places apparently by
substitution, not by transmutation."

Dr. Robert Watts uses these emphatic words: "The record of the rocks
know nothing of the evolution of a higher form from a lower form.
Neither the paleozoic age nor the living organisms of our world reveal
an authentic instance of such evolution. Both nature and revelation
proclaim it as an inviolable law that like produces like."

And Hugh Miller went one step further when he testified: "I would ask
such of the gentlemen whom I now address as have studied the subject
most thoroughly, whether, at those grand lines of division between the
Palaeozoic and Secondary, and again between the Secondary and Tertiary
periods, at which the entire type of organic being alters, so that all
on the one side of the gap belongs to one fashion, and all on the other
to another and wholly different fashion,--whether they have not been as
thoroughly impressed with the conviction that there existed a Creative
Agent, to whom the sudden change was owing, as if they themselves had
witnessed the miracle of creation?" (Presidential address before the
Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, 1852.)

But we have not yet done with this part of our investigation. The
argument from geology is based on the assumption that the chronological
order of the earth's layers _has been determined_ at least with great
approximation to certainty, so that we may say with some assurance that
this layer of limestone or sandstone is of earlier, that, of later
origin. As a matter of fact, the textbooks do treat the various "ages"
of geology as if they corresponded to certain strata of the earth's
crust. _But by what method is the age of the various layers determined?_
James D. Dana in his "Manual of Geology" (Fourth edition, p. 398 f.)
says that there are four methods by which we may decide the relation of
one layer to another. The first is, naturally, the order in which the
layers rest upon one another; the lower strata, are, of course, older
than the upper. However, he points out in four "precautions" the
inability of the investigator to depend on this method, since "for the
comparing of rocks of disconnected regions, this criterion must fail."
Also the color and mineral composition can be used only "with distrust"
and must be "usually disregarded." Then the _Manual_ proceeds: "4
 _Fossils_.--The criterion for determining the chronological order of
strata dependent on kinds of fossils takes direct hold upon time, and
therefore, _is the best;_ and, moreover, it serves for the correlation
of rocks all over the world." Now observe how, in the following, the
geologist leans upon the evolutionist: _"The life of the globe has
changed with the progress of time. Each epoch has had its peculiar
species, or peculiar groups of species._ Moreover, the succession of
life has followed a grand law of progress, involving under a single
system a closer and closer approximation in the species, as time moved
on, to those which now exist. It follows, therefore, that _identity of
species of fossils proves approximate identity of age."_ Let us bear
this in mind. Dana _takes for granted_ the evolutionary process. The
simpler forms of animal life indicate the older strata, the complex
forms, the more recent. We do not misunderstand Mr. Dana. Such
expressions as the following abound: "Where direct paleontological
observation has ascertained in particular cases the steps of progress in
the development of organs, as, for example, those of the teeth in
Mammals, the facts become a basis for further use in the same
direction." (p. 402.) "The grander divisions of geological time should
be based, in a comprehensive way, on organic progress" (from simple to
more complex structures) (p. 404.) "When the relations of the beds to
those recognized in other regions have been ascertained through
fossils..." (p. 405.)

The principle announced by Dana is accepted by geologists generally.
Angelo Heilprin in _"The Earth and its Story,"_ p. 153 ff. has the
following: "There has been a steady and progressive advance in the
general type of organization from the oldest to the newest periods; more
highly developed or more complicated forms have successively replaced
forms of simpler construction; and this advance is still continuing
to-day. Once more, the correctness of the evolutionary hypothesis is
taken for granted. In the oldest rocks, for example, no trace of
backboned animals has yet been detected; when such do appear for the
first time, they show themselves in their lowest types, the fishes;
these are succeeded later by the amphibians (frogs, newts, salamanders),
and these again by reptiles. And if we take the fishes by themselves, we
find that they, too, begin with their lower, if not absolutely the
lowest types, and progressively develop their higher ones. This history
is repeated in the cases of the reptiles and quadrupeds--in fact, with
every class of animals that is known to us. _Naturalists_ (evolutionists)
are to-day well agreed among themselves that all animal and vegetable
forms are derivatives from forms that preceded them..... Hence it is,
that, in following the geological record, we speak of progressive
evolution, the evolving of higher or more complicated types of organisms
from those simpler and more general in structure." Now read carefully
the following: _"This fact_ has permitted geologists to mark off
distinct eras or periods in the life-history of the planet, each of them
determined by certain characteristic animal or vegetable forms, which
either do not appear before or after such period, or else are by numbers
so distinctive of it as to typify it clearly." Evidently, the
Philadelphia professor, too, _assumes_ "progressive evolution" _as an
ascertained fact_ and in accordance therewith classifies the layers of
the earth's surface. "Almost every species of fossil has a definite
position in the geological scale, and would by itself serve to locate a
formation; but oftentimes the determination of species, owing to
insufficiency of knowledge of the obliteration of characters, is a most
difficult task, and then recourse is had to the aspect of the entire
group 'of fossils which a given rockmass contains. This generally _gives
the age_ or position without difficulty." Edward Clodd, in _"The Story
of Creation, a Plain Account of Evolution,"_ says, page 18. "The
relative _age and place of each stratum .... are fixed by the fossils."_

Now, is not this a most extraordinary situation? The evolutionist says:
The science of paleontology furnishes the basic argument for our
hypothesis,--the older the strata of the earths surface, the simpler the
fossils found therein. This sounds impressive. But we ask him: How do
you know the age of the strata,--and the answer is, that, of course, is
the business of the geologist to determine. We now turn to the geologist
and ask: How do you determine the age of the strata? And the geologist
answers: Why, evolutionary science has proven that the simplest animals
and plants appeared first; hence, where I find simple fossils, I know
that I have a more ancient bed of lime-stone or sand-stone than the
strata which contain more complex forms,--which appeared later. Note
well, the geologists which we have quoted assert that this is the best
and final proof for the position of a stratum in the scale of geological
history. The geologist depends on the fossils. But he believes these to
belong to an earlier or more recent age because he accepts _the
evolutionist's_ word for it. And the evolutionist says: the _geologist_
says these rocks are oldest; but in them I find the simplest forms;
hence the evolutionary theory is proven.

We repeat it,--is not this a very, very extraordinary situation? Have we
not here a perfect case of what logicians call "reasoning in a circle,"
or "begging the question?" How can the evolutionist quote the geologist
when the geologist asserts that he classifies his layers of rock
according to the fossils,--and that he accepts what the evolutionists
asserts [tr. note: sic] regarding these?

What, in view of this situation, becomes of the evolutionist's argument
from fossils? And what becomes of the "ages" of speculative geology?


CHAPTER FOUR.
The Fixity of Species.

A writer in the _"Lutheran Companion"_ recently said that his seven year
old boy brought home a text book some months ago, called _"Home
Geography for Primary Grades."_ On page 143 is found this statement
about birds: "Ever so long ago, their grandfathers were not birds at
all. Then they could not fly, for they had neither wings nor feathers.
These grandfathers of our birds had four legs, a long tail and jaws with
teeth. After a time feathers grew upon their bodies and their front legs
become changed for flying. These were strange looking creatures. There
are none living like them now."

One is tempted to disgress, [tr. note: sic] for a moment, from the
subject at hand in order to draw, from this incident, an argument for
the Christian Day School; but we shall desist. The quotation is here
adduced to illustrate the vogue which evolution, specifically Darwinism,
still maintains in the literature, even in the school-texts of our day.
Babes and sucklings are introduced to the theory of evolutionary
development, and the theory is presented with an assurance as if it were
scientific truth. The words of Agassiz, prince of naturalists, apply
to-day. "The manner in which the evolution theory in zoology is treated
would lead those who are not special zoologists to suppose that
observations have been made by which it can be inferred that there is
in nature such a thing as change among organized beings actually taking
place." He adds: "There is no such thing on record. It is shifting the
ground from one field of observation to another to make this statement,
and when the assertions go so far as to exclude from the domain of
science those who will not be dragged into this mire of mere assertion,
then it is time to protest."

Dr. J. B. Warren, of the University of California, more recently said:
"If the theory of evolution be true, during the many thousands of years
covered in whole or in part by present human knowledge, there would
certainly be known at least a few instances, or at least one instance,
of the evolution of one species from another. No such instance is known.
Abstract arguments sound learned and appear imposing, so that many are
deceived by them. But in this matter we remove the question from the
abstract to the concrete. We are told that facts warrant the
evolutionary theory. But do they? Where is one single fact?"

The hypothesis assumes that through environment, certain varieties of
species (both of plants and animals) arose, and that the varieties best
fitted, through their habits, structure, or color, to maintain
themselves in the struggle for existence, survived the species less
favorably endowed, and hence persisted. (We have quoted in our initial
chapter the classical illustration of the dipper-birds from Wallace's
_"Darwinism."_)

Now, as a matter of fact, we cannot prove that a single species has
changed. These are the words of Darwin himself, quoted from _"Life and
Letters,"_ Vol. III, p. 25: "There are two or three million of species
on earth, sufficient field, one might think, for observation. But it
must be said to-day that in spite of all the efforts of trained
observers, not one change of a species into another is on record." Dr.
N. S. Shaler, Professor of Geology in Harvard, asserts that "it has not
been proved that a single species has been established solely or even
mainly by the operation of Natural Selection." Professor Fleischmann, of
Erlangen, has gone so far as to say that "the Darwinian theory of
descent has, in the realms of nature, not a single fact to confirm it."
Dr. Ethridge of the British Museum says: "In all this great museum there
is not a particle of evidence of transmutation of species. Nine-tenths
of the talk of evolutionists is sheer nonsense, not founded on
observation and wholly unsupported by facts." Prof. Owen declares that
"no instance of change of one species into another has ever been
recorded by man." Dr. Martin, Sanitaetsrat, of Germany, who has
conducted some highly technical experiments in the blood reactions of
various animals and man, on which he bases his conclusions, says: "Since
Darwin we have been accustomed to consider the concept 'species' as
something insecure and unstable. The whole organic world must be thought
of as fluid if the evolution theory is to find room for action. It
required, indeed, all the great investigator's keenness to fence his
theory against the difficulty which the lack of transitional forms
occasioned, and against the fact that the rise of a new species has
never been observed, much more against the fact that all processes in
artificial breeding have not sufficed to fix permanently the changes
which have been attained. We admire the clever structure of the theory,
but there is no doubt that the obstinacy with which the organism clings
to its species-characteristics is the point on which it is mortal. One
is, [tr. note: sic] in fact, as much justified in speaking of a struggle
to retain these characteristics as to speak of a struggle for existence."

Man has been able greatly to modify many vegetable productions. Witness
the comparatively recent changes in the potato plant. The small, almost
worthless tubers of the wild potato have changed, under the force of
intelligent cultivation, to the large, starchy, nutritious vegetables,
which furnish so many people a large portion of their food. Mind has
been at work; mind and nature have changed the size, the quality, the
productiveness of the _solatium tubcrosum;_ but neither mind nor nature,
nor both combined, have, so far as we know, ever in the slightest degree
changed the species. Potatoes are potatoes still, and always will be.
The present law of vegetation is that intelligent cultivation of almost
any plant will either change the original in one way or another, or,
what is more likely, will produce several distinct varieties; but that
all these changed forms are but mere modifications of the original
species, and that, when deprived of intelligent cultivation, they all
tend to revert to the original form. It is true that we see many and
very diverse varieties of certain species, especially those that have
received the most attention from the hands of man. The dog, for
instance, exists as the great, shaggy Newfoundland or St. Bernard, or as
the tight girted greyhound, as the petted poodle or the despised "yellow
dog;" but in every case he is a dog, and not a wolf, and his fellow dogs
recognize him as such, too. Hens differ amazingly; new breeds
periodically come into existence and into fashion; but turn them loose,
and they will all seek the barnyard, and soon your fancy breeds will
become corrupt. They "revert to type." By the exercise of intelligent
selection and training, man is able to emphasize certain points and to
produce new breeds, but not to change the essential structure nor to
alter the specific characteristics. The species are _fixed_. Huxley says:

"If you breed from the male and female of the same race, you of course
have offspring of the like kind, and if you make the offspring breed
together, you obtain the same result, and if you breed from these again,
you will still have the same kind of offspring; there is no check. But
if you take members of two distinct species, however similar they may be
to each other, and make them breed together, _you will find a check_. If
you cross two such species with each other, then--although you may get
offspring in the case of the first cross, yet, if you attempt to breed
from the products of that crossing, which are what are called hybrids--
that is, if you couple a male and a female hybrid--then the result is
that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred you will get no offspring at
all; there will be no result whatsoever.

"The reason of this is quite obvious in some cases; the female hybrids,
although possessing all the external appearances and characteristics of
perfect animals, are physiologically imperfect and deficient in the
structural parts of the reproductive elements necessary to generation.
It is said to be invariably the case with the male mule, the cross
between the ass and the mare; and hence it is that although crossing
the horse with the ass is easy enough, and is constantly done as far as
I am aware, if you take two mules, a male and a female, and endeavor to
breed from them, you get no offspring whatever; no generation will take
place. This is what is called the sterility of the hybrids between two
distinct species." (Huxley, _"On the Origin of Species."_ p. 212.) He
continues:

"Thus you see that there is a great difference between 'mongrels,' which
are crosses between distinct races, and 'hybrids,' which are crosses
between distinct species. The mongrels are, so far as we know, fertile
with one another. But between species, in many cases, you cannot succeed
in obtaining even the first cross; at any rate it is quite certain
that the hybrids are often absolutely infertile one with another.

"Here is a feature, then, great or small as it may be, which
distinguishes natural species of animals. Can we find any approximation
to this in the different races known to be produced by selective
breeding from a common stock? Up to the present time the answer to that
question is absolutely a negative one. As far as we know at present,
there is nothing approximating to this check. In crossing the breeds,
between the fantail and the pouter, the carrier and the tumbler, or any
other variety or race you may name--so far as we know at present--there
is no difficulty in breeding together the mongrels." However, he
continues, as soon as you remove the conditions which produced the new
variety,--as when you permit pigeons to mate promiscuously,--no matter
how different the varieties may have been, you will have, in a few
generations of pigeons, the same blue rock pigeon with the black bars
across the wings. No new species has originated. All varieties, in a
free state, revert to type. "This," says Huxley, "is certainly a very
remarkable circumstance."

Fairhurst points out the difficulties in which the evolutionist becomes
involved through the fixity of species. He writes: "It is well known
that as a rule distinct species will not cross, and that if they do
cross the offspring are not fertile. On the other hand, it is true that
all _varieties_ of a species readily cross, producing fertile offspring.
This has commonly been regarded as a well-defined distinction between
varieties and species. If the varieties of pigeons which are so
different from each other did not freely cross, and if the mongrel
offspring were not fertile, Darwin's argument as to the production of
new _species_ under domestication would be complete. The fact is, we do
not know of the origin of any two species of animals that do not cross
and whose offspring are not fertile; in other words, we do not know of
the origin of _species,_ but only of _varieties_. The origin of species
that will not cross and produce fertile offspring is _assumed_ from the
origin of varieties that do cross and produce fertile offspring. This
leaves the evolutionists to account for one of the most difficult things
in connection with this theory, namely, how did varieties of animals of
the same species become cross-sterile?* [[*So that they were unable to
interbreed. Only if such cross-sterility exists, could they exist
thereafter as independent new species.--G.]] Several things must occur
simultaneously before cross-sterility between parent and offspring
could occur and become effective, namely, a number of individuals must
be born at the same time possessing the same variation, the variation
must be useful, these individuals must be fertile with each other, they
must be cross-sterile with the parent form," as, otherwise, the
offspring would revert to type, "and, finally, the few, if any,
individuals thus produced and being widely scattered through the
species, must find each other before they could propagate. I regard it
impossible that these things could all occur simultaneously." (_"Organic
Evolution,"_ p. 333.)

Mr. Huxley is forced to this admission: "After much consideration, and
with assuredly no bias against Mr. Darwin's views, it is our clear
conviction that, as the evidence stands, it is not absolutely proven
that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species
in nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or
natural." And again. "Our acceptance of the Darwinian hypothesis must be
provisional so long as one link in the chain of evidence is wanting; and
so long as all the animals and plants certainly produced by selective
breeding from a common stock are fertile with one another, that link
will be wanting."

In a recent book, _"Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry,"_
George Ticknor Curtis says: "The whole doctrine of the development of
distinct species out of other species makes demands upon our credulity
which the [tr. note: sic] irreconcilable with the principles of belief
by which we regulate, or ought to regulate, our acceptance of new
matter of belief."


CHAPTER FIVE.
Rudimentary Organs.

Darwinism does not account for the fact that the various organs of
animals while in process of evolution, must have through many
generations, been in a rudimentary, incomplete state. Since it is a
basic doctrine of evolution that useful variations were transmitted from
parent to offspring _because they were useful_; and since furthermore,
only the fully developed eye, the hearing ear, the actively functioning
poison glands of insects and reptiles, etc., as well as the fully
developed means of defense, were useful, it is not possible to
understand how these organs in their rudimentary state (the half
developed eye, not yet capable of vision; the rudimentary spinneret of
the spider, not yet capable of producing a thread, etc.) could serve
any purpose which would make their transmission advantageous to the
species.

Conversely, the existence of rudimentary organs in living species (the
rudimentary spurs of female birds, the rudimentary legs of skeleton of
serpents) proves that organs do not change by use or disuse, otherwise
they would long ago have disappeared.

With regard to this difficulty, Darwin says: "If it could be
demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly
have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my
theory would absolutely break down. But I can find no such case." Let
us see.

A difficult organ to account for is the electric organ of the skates. In
these fishes it has been shown to be a true electric battery, but the
discharges from this battery, even in the adults, are so feeble that
they are of no practical use so far as has been ascertained. It is well
known that the electric eel and the torpedo use their batteries for
stunning other animals. It is evident that, according to the theory of
natural selection, these batteries could not have been preserved through
their long functionless and useless stages, for that theory assumes that
they were preserved because they were useful.

It is asserted by evolutionists that wings as organs of flight have been
independently evolved in at least four different lines--namely, in
insects, the fossil pterodactyls, birds and bats. That an organ so
highly specialized as any one of these wings could be evolved seems
improbable; while the evolution of the four different kinds,
independently of each other, only increases the improbability. The
difficulty, however, is to account for the evolution of any known kind
of wing. In each case there exists the insuperable difficulty of
preserving the organ through the rudimentary stages. The wings of an
insect in the first generation of its evolution would be almost
imperceptible and entirely useless for any purpose whatever, and so it
would continue to be for a great number of generations. It is evident,
therefore, that they could not have been preserved through their long
rudimentary stage on the ground that they were useful, nor do we know of
any theory that will account for their evolution. To say that they were
evolved is easy, but to account for their evolution seems impossible.
Fairhurst refers to the delicate and complex organs of spiders. "The
organs which spiders possess for secreting material and for making a web
could not have been gradually evolved. The whole apparatus involved in
making the web would be useless until sufficiently developed to make a
web. The same is true," he continues, "of the sting of the scorpion, the
stings of bees, the mandibles of spiders with the gland of poisonous
fluid at the base, and the poison apparatus of serpents. All of these
glands for secreting poison would be useless until they could secrete a
harmful fluid. The spurs of birds present further difficulties to the
theory of evolution. Most birds have no spurs. When they possess them,
as a rule the males alone have them well-developed, while they are
rudimentary in the females. In some cases, however, both sexes possess
them in a well-developed form. But how could a spur be evolved in either
sex? As a rudiment, it would for many generations be entirely useless
for any purpose, and consequently it would not be preserved by natural
selection, nor in any other possible way, so far as I can see. The spurs
are in the best possible position on the legs for combat. Why did they
appear in the best place and nowhere else? As useless rudiments they
would be quite as likely to survive in one place as in another. If spurs
could not have been preserved by natural selection through their
rudimentary stage, why assume that they have been evolved according to
this law? If they could survive through the critical rudimentary period
till they became of use, why not assume that their evolution was
continued according to the same law? The fact is, however, that we know
of no law according to which they could have been evolved." The bat is
another highly specialized animal. In many respects it resembles the
mole, but its hands are, enormously expanded, and the exceedingly long
fingers are connected by a soft membrane, making a most serviceable wing.
It is not extremely likely, assuming the development theory to be true,
that both the mole and the bat sprang from a common ancestor? And was
not that ancestor probably a wingless, though not a legless mammal? Now,
how came the bat to acquire his wings? Did he attempt to spring into the
air and seize a passing insect, and reach out his paws to catch it? And
did those paws gradually become enlarged, till, after some generations,
they were real wings? But what happened in the meantime to those
connecting links whose wings were but partly developed? A bat with wings
only half grown would be a helpless creature, and would surely perish. A
mole with hands terminating in long, slender fingers, would be helpless,
and would perish. There is no middle ground. If the ancestor of the bat
was a terrestrial creature, with limbs fitted for walking, then it must
have given birth to a full-fledged bat, fitted for flying. There could
have been no middle stage, for such a creature would have been helpless,
and must have perished.

All this applies with equal force to the diversified and often highly
complex structure of plants. As the organs of the various plants are now
constituted, they most admirably serve their purpose. Given a slight
change, an underdevelopment, and the individual would perish. But such
underdeveloped stages must have occurred in the history of every
life-form on earth, if a change through slow adaptations is to be
accepted as a hypothesis to account for their present form. To our mind,
this matter of rudimentary structures presents an insuperable obstacle
to acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis even on scientific grounds.


CHAPTER SIX.
Instinct.

How the various instincts of animals, the homing instinct of birds and
insects, the building instincts, the migrating instinct, etc., could
have been developed though forces working by natural selection or any
other law, is a question which has called forth much discussion. It
cannot be said that the explanations contained in the pages of Darwin,
Romanes, and Spencer are satisfying. The difficulty that remains
unsolved is similar to that (already considered) of rudimentary
structures. On instinct depends the existence of most animals.
According to the theory these instincts have been developed by slow
degrees. Hence there must have been a time when these instincts,
because not yet completely developed, were useless to the animal. But
if useless, the animal must have perished. The strength of this
objection to the evolutionary hypothesis will become clear from a brief
study of the manner in which animal life is bound up with the proper
functioning of instinct.

Consider, for instance, the dependence of the honey bee and her hive on
the functions, every one instinctive, of queen, workers, and drones.
There is the queen, whose sole work is to lay eggs; the drones, or
males, whose function it is to fertilize the queen; and the workers,
which are females undeveloped sexually. In these three kinds of
individuals we see a combination of many most remarkable instincts and
peculiarities of structure which look to the good of the community. How
could they have been produced by evolution? The workers are sterile and
leave no offspring, consequently their instincts cannot be inherited
from bees of their own class. Each generation of workers is isolated
from all succeeding generations. A colony of bees is not like a
community of civilized human beings in whom many of the wants are
artificial, and which may remain unsupplied, with simply a certain
amount of discomfort, but the wants which the instincts of bees supply
are imperative, and, therefore, the instincts themselves, as a whole,
are necessary to the existence of the bees. Their instincts are all
linked together as a necessary chain, so that if one should fail the
community would perish. Each kind of work is perfectly done, and yet the
workers are totally unconscious as to what will be the result of their
labors. For the most part they work for future generations of their
colony, and not for themselves, and yet they are as careful and diligent
as if they were guided by the highest intelligence and the most selfish
motives [tr. note: sic no punctuation]. Fairhurst, whom we are quoting,
adds: "There is nothing more wonderful and mysterious in nature than the
instincts of bees. What can be more remarkable than that instinct of the
workers which causes them to prevent the queen from stinging to death
the young queens in their cells? Here we see the instinct of the workers
opposing that of the queen, and thus saving the colony and insuring the
propagation of the species. And yet at other but proper times the
workers permit the old queen to kill the young ones in their cells. How
could these instincts in the workers, which act in exactly opposite ways
by just the right times for the welfare of the community, have ever been
evolved? Or how could that instinct have arisen which causes two queens
when engaged in combat to refrain from inflicting the mortal sting if
they would mutually destroy each other, and thus leave the hive without
a queen?--acting as if they knew that the life of one of them was
necessary for the welfare of the community."

Concerning the modifications of structure and the instincts necessary to
produce the web of the spider, Fairhurst quotes the following from
Orton's _"Zoology."_ "Spiders are provided at the posterior end with two
or three pairs of appendages called spinnerets, which are homologous
(correspond structually) [tr. note: sic] with legs. The office of the
spinnerets is to reel out the silk from the silk-glands, the tip being
perforated by a myriad of little tubes through which the silk escapes in
excessively fine threads. An ordinary thread, just visible to the naked
eye, is the union of a thousand or more of these delicate streams of
silk. These primary threads are drawn out and united by the hind legs."
From this we see that two special glands, capable of secreting a soft
material that can be readily drawn into the finest threads of the
greatest strength, requiring no perceptible time for drying, and two to
four spinnerets perforated by more than a thousand of the smallest
apertures, and hind legs modified so that they can be used to draw out
the web through the spinnerets, and also the instincts which enable the
spider to use its web to advantage, must all have been evolved. To
evolve the silk glands would have required, as for most other organs, a
long period of incipiency, during which they would have been useless.
We can not assume that a substance so exceptional in its character as
the web of the spider could have been suddenly produced by evolution.
But the glands would be useless without spinnerets. The hypothesis asks
us to assume that two or three pairs of legs that were probably at one
time useful for locomotion became so modified that they could perform
the function of spinnerets. But in what conceivable way could
locomotive legs have become so modified and pierced with more than a
thousand apertures through which the web is drawn? And how could these
organs serve their purpose while the complex instincts required for
their functioning were only in course of development?

From a German monthly devoted to aquaria, we quote the following: "But
now, dear readers, we come to a fish which shows an exceptionally
peculiar and touching care for its young--the mouth-brooder,
_Haplochromis Strigigena_ (formerly _Paratilapia Multicolor_). This
fish is so much concerned about the safety of its young, that it knows
no better and no more secure place than its own mouth in which to
preserve them. In no other division of the animal kingdom can we find
such an interesting example of fostering care for the young as we find
in this species of fish. Immediately after emitting the spawn the female
again gathers up the eggs and packs them away in her mouth like herring
in a barrel. She naturally must employ the organs of the throat and also
the organs between the gills and thus the appearance of the animal is
greatly changed even to the extent that it looks very much like as if
she had a craw. Furthermore, during ths [tr. note: sic] entire period,
which is about fourteen days, the little animal cannot take food and is
hampered very much in her movements. Therefore in case of imminent
danger it becomes necessary for her to cast out the entire brood which
then wretchedly perish, and for this reason it is to be recommended to
disturb or disquiet these animals during this period as little as
possible. Even after the young leave the mother of their own accord,
they always flee to her protecting mouth, and thus they present an
exciting aspect, when they are first seen peacefully and contentedly
playing about the mother fish, until a shadow or a sudden thrust warns
them of danger and quick as lightning they dart into her mouth.

"If the fostering care of this mouth-brooding fish is regarded as
wonderful and singular, what should one then say, if another fish is
spoken of which does not regard this kind of protection as sufficient,
and which therefore causes its eggs to hatch outside the surface of the
water.  The exceedingly adorned and elegant _Phyrrhylima Filamentosa_
performs this masterpiece of truest love. With great dexerity [tr. note:
sic] this fish darts from 5 to 7 cm. above the surface of the water and
there fastens its eggs on the walls of the aquarium--usually in one
corner. Even though one must and can preserve damp air by covering the
aquarium, the spawn would nevertheless surely dry up, if the fish itself
were not constantly concerned to keep the spawn damp by an extended
bombardment of little drops of water. In the performance of this act the
fish remains near the surface of the water and then by a quick upward
movement of the fins of the tail it throws a drop of water upon the
spawn in such an expert manner as is truly admirable. One must also
keep in mind here that the spawn require from three to five days for
hatching, and now one can understand what a huge task this little fish
performs and what efforts are required. Later on the young hatch and
then slide down the slick wall of the aquarium into their native
element."  (V. Schloemp in _"Blaetter fuer Aquarien und Terrarienkunde,"_
Stuttgart, Sept. 1913.)

In all the domain of natural science there are no wonders more amazing
than those of instinct. The subject is simply inexhaustible. Moreover,
every animal is absolutely dependent on instinctively performed actions
and habits. The life-story of many wasps, of the various ants,--someone
has called the brain of the ant the most wonderful speck of protoplasm
in the world,--and of the insects generally, is bound up with instincts
that partly interlock marvellously with the life-story of plants, and
which are, even viewed in themselves, the greatest wonders of creation.
The questions insistently call for an answer: How could these instincts
preserve the animal when they were still in an incipient, undeveloped
state? How could they arise through natural selection (which is simply
_accident,_ of course), at all? Darwin says that there are instincts
"almost identically the same in animals so remote in the scale of
Nature, that we cannot account for their similarity by inheritance from
a common progenitor, and consequently must believe that they were
independently acquired through natural selection." Again he says "Many
instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear
to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overcome my whole theory."

And here, in the vernacular of the day, we would depose that Mr. Darwin
_"said something."_


CHAPTER SEVEN.
Heredity.

The subject of heredity is intimately bound up with the evolutionary
hypothesis and, it must be admitted, creates a new difficulty for the
acceptance of the theory. Indeed, the laws of heredity, so far as
understood, appear to contradict the theory of Lamarck and Darwin at a
vital point, if not at _the_ vital point of the entire structure raised
in the _"Origin of Species."_ It is necessary in order to appreciate the
strength of this objection, to recall once more the outstanding features
of the hypothesis by which scientists have attempted to account for the
variety of living forms. The various theories of organic evolution,
whether Lamarckian, neo-Lamarckian, or Darwinian, are based upon the
assumption that animals and plants have a tendency to perpetuate by
transmission to offspring a variation which has proven useful as an aid
to the particular species in its struggle for existence. We have just
discussed, in the chapters on the Fixity of Species and on Rudimentary
Organs, certain difficulties which loom up when the question is raised,
How did varieties become distinct species? However, even if it were to
be assumed that some satisfying answer might be found to this question
so far as the stages of incomplete organs are concerned, there is one
fact in heredity which, it would seem to me, strikes at the very heart
of the theory.

In his _"Philosophic Zoologique"_ (1809), Lamarck first explicitly
formulated his ideas as to the transmutation of species, though he had
outlined them as early as 1801. The changes in the species have been
wrought, he said, through the unceasing efforts of each organism to meet
the needs imposed upon it by its environment. Constant striving means
the constant use of certain organs, and such use leads to the
development of those organs. Thus a bird running by the sea-shore is
constantly tempted to wade deeper and deeper in pursuit of food; its
incessant efforts tend to develop its legs, in accordance with the
observed principle that the use of any organ tends to strengthen and
develop it. But such slightly increased development of the legs is
_transmitted to the offspring_ of the bird, which in turn develops its
already improved legs by its individual efforts, and transmits the
improved tendency. Generation after generation this is repeated, until
the sum of the infinitesimal variations, all in the same direction,
results in the production of the long-legged wading-bird. In a similar
way, through individual effort and _transmitted tendency,_ all the
diversified organs of all creatures have been developed--the fin of the
fish, the wings of the bird, the hand of man; nay, more, the fish
itself, the bird, the man, even.

Note well, the fundamental assumption is that such acquired
characteristics,--greater length of leg, or of neck, a coating of hair,
a protective coloring, etc.,--however acquired, can be transmitted
from the parent animal possessing them, to its offspring. The question
arises: Can such characteristics be transmitted? And the students of
heredity answer: They _cannot!_

I find in G. Archibald Reid _"Alcoholism, a Study in Heredity,"_ a
lucid exposition of this subject. (Reid is a F. R. S. E. His book was
published by T. Fisher Unwin, London, a few yars [tr. note: sic] ago.)

"All the characters of a living being, every physical structure and
every mental trait, may be placed in one of two categories. Either
they are inborn or they are acquired. An inborn or innate character is
one which, in common parlance, arises in the individual 'by nature.'
Thus arms, legs, eyes, ears, head, etc., and all inborn characters.
The child inherits them from his parent. But, if during its
development, or after the completion of the development any one of the
inborn characters of an individual is modified by some occurrence, the
change thus produced is known as an acquired character, or, shortly,
as an acquirement.

"Thus all the effects of exercise are acquirements; for example the
enlargement which exercise causes in muscles. The effects of lack of
exercise are also acquirements; for example, the wasting of a disused
muscle.

"The effects of injury are acquirements; for example, the changes in a
diseased lung or injured arm. Every modification of the mind is also an
acquirement; for example, everything stored within the memory.

"If a man be blinded by accident or disease, his blindness is acquired.
But if he comes into the world blind, if he be blind by nature, his
blindness is inborn. If a son be naturally smaller than his father, then
his inferiority of size is inborn; but if his growth be stunted by ill
health or lack of nourishment or exercise, his inferiority is acquired.

"Lamarck held, as people in all ages have held, that characters acquired
by parents are also transmissible to some extent, and that evolution
results from their accentuation during succeeding generations. _Lamarck's
theory is rejected totally by the modern followers of Darwin_.

"Ten thousand men might break their fingers, yet among their offspring
not one might have a crooked finger. Consider on the other hand for how
many generations women have bored their ears and noses in India. Yet
when is a girl born with ears and nose already pierced? For how many
generations have we amputated the tails of terriers, and yet their
tails are no shorter. It will then be perceived how overwhelming is the
case against the doctrine of the transmission of acquirements.

"The general question of the transmission of acquirements is too big
and too abstruse to be treated adequately here. Two arguments more I
may use, however, partly because they have not been developed, to my
knowledge, by other writers, and partly because they seem to me
well-nigh decisive. The more than normal development of the
blacksmith's arm is rightfully called an acquired trait, since it
arises from exercise, from use, not from germinal conditions. But no
infant's arm develops into an ordinary adult arm without exercise
similar in kind to that which develops the blacksmith's arm, though
less in degree.

"Every single thing contained within the memory of man, every single
word of a language, for instance, is an acquirement. But when are the
contents of a parent's mind transmitted to the child?

"Again, a man is capable of becoming a parent at any time between
extreme youth and extreme old age; a woman from the age of thirteen to
fourteen till nearly fifty. Between the birth of the first child and the
last such an individual changes vastly. Under stress and fear of
circumstances, under the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, all
sorts of acquirements are made. The body becomes vigorous and then
feeble, the mind grows mature, and then senile. He or she grows
wrinkled and bowed and perhaps very wise, or perhaps much the reverse.
Yet no one viewing a baby show, a children's party, or an assembly of
adults, of whom he has no previous knowledge, can say which is the
child of the youthful and which of aged parents.

"Apparently, therefore, the whole of the parent's acquirements have no
effect on the child. _Surely no evidence could be stronger."_* [[* The
undoubted transmission of siphilis [tr. note: sic] to off-spring might
be regarded as a case of transmission of an acquired characteristic. But
the case is not in point since congenital siphilis [tr. note: sic] is,
properly, due to a prenatal infection, the bacillus entering the very
germ-plasm of the human ovum (egg). Medical science, generally, has
become very cautious in the use of the word "hereditary." There is
almost unanimity among medical men in the denial of heredity as a factor
in tuberculosis and cancer. Most physicians are honest enough to say
that they know considerably less about these things than was "known" ten
and twenty years ago.]]

Herbert Spencer claims that "the inheritance of acquired characters" is
a necessary supplement to natural selection. "Close contemplation of
the facts impresses me more strongly than ever with the two
alternatives--either there has been inheritance of acquired characters,
or there has been no evolution." Again, "the inheritance of acquired
characters, which it is now the fashion of the biological world to deny,
was by Mr. Darwin fully recognized and often insisted on." "The
neo-Darwinists, however, do not admit this cause at all." He admits that
known facts which show that acquired characters are inherited are few,
but he thinks that they are "as large a number as can be expected,
considering the difficulty of observing them and the absence of search."
From the above, we see that the biological world is against Mr.
Spencer's view; that he would abandon the theory of evolution unless
acquired characters had been inherited, but that facts in support of
this theory are meager. "Biologists in the above instance, as well as in
others, differ in theory as to fundamental principles of evolution. He
who imagines that the theory of organic evolution has been proved to the
point of demonstration, has but to read the contentions of evolutionists
themselves with regard to the most important things involved in the
theory, in order to satisfy his mind that there is great diversity of
opinion." (Fairhurst.)

The general abandonment of the Darwinian hypothesis by biologists,
adverted to in our next chapter, is mainly due to the failure of
heredity to account for the gradual modification of organs and of
habits.

Various expedients are resorted to by Haeckel and a few others in their
attempts to bolster up a theory which has broken so signally on the
rock of heredity. Principal among these is the reference to unlimited
time. It is asserted that, after all, such minute differences might, in
the course of many ages, result in new and more perfect organs. However,
here a new and unexpected difficulty presents itself. The physicist, who
has measured the heat of the sun, rises up and says that the age of the
earth, as estimated by specialists like Lord Kelvin, is not nearly so
great as is demanded by the Darwinian. The period which the physicists,
in their mercy, appear to be willing to grant the inhabitable globe is
from twenty to forty million years. But the evolutionists maintain with
great fervor that this period is far too short for the production of
such complicated types of organism as now live on the earth; they demand
from two hundred to a thousand million years! And so these two groups of
scientists, the evolutionistic biologist and the physicists are
hopelessly at odds.

A new generation of evolutionists has within the past twenty years
arisen which holds that the changes in the organizations of plants and
animals do not come by slow growth of favorable characteristics, but
arise suddenly. Such is the "Mutation" theory of Hugo de Vries. But
science has failed to receive this and similar theories with the same
acclaim which once greeted Darwin's _"Origin of Species."_ Naturalists
have become cautious. They remember the inglorious collapse of the
Darwinian regime and they are slow to hail another "Abraham of
scientific thought." They are, in a general way, believers in some kind
of evolution; but they prefer not to specify exactly the laws which
have been operative in past "geological time." It is only in high-school
texts in physical geography, zoology, and botany, that the evolutionary
theory as propounded by Darwin is still treated as if it enjoyed among
scientific men the same respect as the multiplication table. Speaking in
the Darwinian dialect we should say that the authors of these
school-texts constitute a case of "arrested development."


CHAPTER EIGHT.
A Scientific Creed Outworn.

The preceding chapter concludes our investigation of that stage of
evolutionistic thought which owes its origin and name to Charles Darwin.
The question suggests itself, do scientists to-day believe as Darwin did?
A great many do. Darwin remains to many scientists what Huxley, I think,
called him, the "Abraham of scientific thought." But if we examine the
roster of these, we find that they belong, with a single exception
(Haeckel), to those whose departments of investigation have nothing to do
with the study of life forms (biology, zoology, botany), and who
consequently do not speak from first hand knowledge of the facts.
Anthropologists (students of the races of man), sociologists,
psychologists, and many educated persons generally, accept the Darwinian
scheme of evolution as a fact and build their theories on it in turn.
They accept the theory and ask no question. The vogue which Darwinism
still enjoys among writers of school-texts has already been noted.

However, the specifically Darwinian phase of evolutionistic thought, as
laid down in Spencer's interminable volumes, for instance, is given up
by reputable biologists the world over. There is pretty much of a Babel
among them, when it comes to a definition of evolution. There are dozens
of theories,--mutation, orthogenesis, Weismanism, Mendelianism, etc.,--
and each has its adherents,--but they agree in one thing, that "Natural
Selection" does not account for the forms of life on earth to-day.

The revolt against "Natural Selection" came some forty years ago. It was
announced in two famous declarations by Spencer and Huxley. This
constitutes one of the most remarkable and important, as well as one of
the most significant episodes, in the history of evolution. In two of
the most remarkable essays which ever appeared in the _"Nineteenth
Century"_ magazine, now over thirty years ago, Herbert Spencer stepped
on to the stool of repentance and read his recantation and renunciation
of the doctrine of natural selection and the survival of the fittest;
first doing vicarious penance (unauthorized, however) for Darwin, and
then, in no uncertain terms, for himself. There was no mistaking
Spencer's meaning. His language was explicit. "The phrases (natural
selection and survival of the fittest) employed in discussing organic
evolution," he told his readers, "though convenient and needful, are
liable to mislead by veiling the actual agencies." "The words 'natural
selection,' do not express a cause in the physical sense." "Kindred
objections," he continues, "may be urged against the expression into
which I was led when seeking to present the phenomena in literal terms
rather than metaphorical terms--'the survival of the fittest.' In the
working together of those many actions, internal and external, which
determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the
words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' are applicable in the physical sense."
And he continues: "Evidently, the word 'fittest' as thus used _is a
figure of speech."_ Had the sun fallen from the heavens the shock to the
followers of Darwin could not have been more stunning than this open
apostasy from the Darwinian faith.

Nor was this all. New surprises were still in store for the faithful who
still clung to the cherished dogma. Now they find their faith itself
assailed, and this, too, by these very selfsame leaders, who had been at
such pains to make them proselytes. There can be little doubt that
misgivings regarding the truth of their claims began to haunt the
champions of the Darwinian hypothesis. They were just then masters of
the whole field of scientific thought. They had brought all science to
the feet of Darwin. The few benighted dissenters who still held out
against the doctrine were looked upon as not worthy even of contempt.
The whole world had adopted the creed of evolution. Was it wantonness
then, or was it conscience, that prompted Huxley in what is now a
historically famous speech, delivered at the unveiling of a statue to
Darwin in the Museum at South Kensington, to openly declare that it
would be wrong to suppose "that an authoritative sanction was given by
the ceremony to the current ideas concerning evolution?" Well might his
hearers be astonished! But they must have held their breath, when they
heard him add boldly and bluntly, in no uncertain tones, that "science
commits suicide when it adopts a creed." A creed, indeed! What had
science been doing in the field of evolution ever since Darwin has given
his doctrine to the world, but proclaiming its faith in the Darwinian
creed?

There was no blinking the inevitable conclusions. Both Huxley on the
platform and Spencer in the _"Nineteenth Century"_ had acknowledged
before the whole world that they had lost faith in the idol which for
thirty years they had so vociferously worshipped. It is true that both
Spencer and Huxley might have intended to warn biologists merely against
a too implicit faith in natural selection or the survival of the
fittest. But even so, the position of their followers was little to be
envied. Their leaders had confidently assured them that Darwin had given
to the world coveted knowledge never known until he had discovered it.
This had been loudly and confidently proclaimed from the housetops of
science; and now--strange reversal--those same leaders tell them that
their preachments were of a faith without foundation.

The words of Professor Osborn may be adduced: "Between the appearance of
_'The Origin of Species'_ in 1859 and the present time there have been
great waves of faith in one explanation and then in another; each of
these waves of confidence has ended in disappointment, until finally we
have reached a stage of very general scepticism. Thus the long period of
observation, experiment and reasoning which began with the French
philosopher Buffon, one hundred and fifty years ago, ends in 1916 with
the general feeling that our search for causes, far from being near
completion, has only just begun."

Sir William Dawson, of Montreal, the eminent geologist, said that the
evolution doctrine is "one of the strangest phenomena of humanity, a
system destitute of any shadow of proof," (_"Story of the Earth and
Man,"_ p. 317). Even Professor Tyndall in an article in the
_"Fortnightly Review"_ said: "There ought to be a clear distinction made
between science in the state of hypothesis and science in the state of
fact. And inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage the ban of
exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of Evolution. I agree with
Virchow that the proofs of it are still wanting, that the failures have
been lamentable, that the doctrine is utterly discredited."

One of the ablest evolutionists today is Professor Henslow, formerly
President of the British Association. In his book, _"Modern Rationalism
Critically Examined,"_ he shows that Darwinian natural selection is
absolutely inadequate to account for existing facts.

Professor Bateson, who gave the Presidential Address at the Meeting of
the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in 1914, bore
striking testimony to the modifications made by recent science in
connection with the Darwinian theory. This is what he said among other
things: "The principle of natural selection cannot have been the chief
factor in delimiting the species of animals and plants. We go to Darwin
for his incomparable collection of facts. We would fain emulate his
scholarship, his width and his power of exposition, but to us he speaks
no more with philosophical authority. We have done with the notion that
Darwin came latterly to favor, that large differences can arise by
accumulation of small differences."

St. George Mivart as long as thirty years ago wrote an exhaustive
treatise entitled, _"The Genesis of Species,"_ in which he subjects the
Darwinian hypothesis to a searching examination, and discards it as
unproven in every particular and contradicted by the facts of nature in
many points. He called it "a puerile (childish) hypothesis."

Professor H. H. Gran of Christiana University, an expert in biology,
says he believes in evolution, but declares Darwin's explanation of it
to be inadequate. His words are: "Darwin collected a great mass of stuff
both from the animal as well as from the vegetable kingdom, but these
collections were not thoroughly sifted and cannot be used as the basis
of theoretical conclusions as Darwin did."

Prof. Fleischman, of Erlangen, says: "There is not a single fact to
confirm Darwinism in the realm of Nature." Drs. E. Dennert, Hoppe and
von Hartmann; Profs. Paulson and Rutemeyer, and the talented scientists
Zoeckler and Max Wundt, have given Darwinism up. Men like our own H. F.
Osborn may still cling to the beloved theory and furnish imaginary
pictures of ape-men as proof, in recent books; but hear Prof. Ernest
Haeckel himself: "Most modern investigators of science have come to the
conclusion that the doctrine of evolution, and particularly Darwinism,
is an error, and cannot be maintained." This was said some years before
the Great War. Other names (Friedmann, de Cyon) might be added.

The present attitude of naturalists toward the theory may be learned
from a symposium by a number of eminent writers in a recent number of
the "Biblical World" (February, 1913), on the theme, "Has Evolution
Collapsed?"

Prof. Moulton, of Chicago, says: "The essence of evolution is that the
order which exists one day changes into the order which will exist on
succeeding days, in a systematic manner, rather than in an irregular
and chaotic one." This states the theory, but adds a mere platitude,
for all believe that the universe is orderly and not chaotic. The real
question is, What is the nature and the cause of the prevailing order?
This question he does not attempt to answer.

Prof. Lillie, of Chicago, tells us that there are "differences in
opinion among recent investigators concerning the method of evolution,"
and says: "Opinion in reference to this matter is in a state of flux."

Prof. Mathews, of Chicago, says: "While the fact of evolution is
universally admitted, the means by which evolution is brought to pass
are uncertain."

Prof. Patten, of Darmouth, says: "As for biologists, they are now
farther from agreement as to what constitutes the processes and
conditions essential to organic evolution, * * * [tr. note: sic] than
they were a generation ago."

Prof. Mall, of Johns Hopkins, says: "It is true that gradual evolution,
as advocated by Darwin, is seriously questioned by those who believe
that it takes place by 'rapid jumps.'"

Prof. Williston, of Chicago, says: "The causes of organic evolution are
still an unsolved problem; and he will be a greater man than Darwin, who
finally demonstrates them."

Thus these recognized authorities, while accepting the theory, add many
limitations and admit that the "method," the "manner," the "process,"
the "conditions" and the "causes" of the movement are still unknown.
What, then, remains of the theory? Not much but the name.


CHAPTER NINE.
Man.

"There is no longer any doubt among scientists that man descended from
the animals." This sweeping statement was made in 1920 by Edwin Grant
Conklin professor of biology in Princeton University. And so
evolutionists generally, while giving up geology as hopeless in regard
to the evolution of plants and animals, cling to the doctrine that man
has ascended, through long ages of development, from the brute. We have
seen that Wallace and other profound students of the subject recognize
the essential difference between the faculties of man and the instincts
of animals. They admit that forces resident in matter do not account for
the origin of Thought. They believe that Spirit,--God,--created
something new when intelligence first entered the brain of man. But even
Wallace holds that the human body is a product of evolution; that there
was a common brute ancestor, both for apes and the men. The search for
the missing link between man and his animal ancestor is still going on.
As soon as any human remains are dug up in the earth, evolutionists
begin to measure the skull and bones, and to find how many points of
resemblance they have to the apes. If the brain-pan is a bit shallow, or
small, or the eyebrows prominent, or the slope of the face acute, or the
teeth and jaws large, they announce with much confidence that the
"missing link" has been found. But after a while they begin to grow more
modest and end in finding other points which show that the specimen was
an unmistakable ape, or an unmistakable man, and not something between
the two. One could fill a museum with discarded missing links; and yet
men refuse to learn caution, and repeat their shoutings every time a new
find is announced. It will be instructive to pass in review a few of the
more famous prehistoric remains of man which have at one time and
another been declared undeniable proof of a development, through
intermediate stages, of the human body from the body of a brute.

_Pithecanthropus Erectus_ is the name invented by Haeckel for the
"missing link," and given by Dr. Eugene Du Bois, a Dutch physician, to
certain remains discovered by him on the island of Java in 1891. The
remains consist of "an imperfect cranium, a femur bearing evidence of
prolonged disease, and a molar tooth." (Dana, _"Manual of Geology,"_ p.
1036.) The discoverer of these bones believed that they are the remains
of a being between the man-apes and man. Prof. Virchow and other
specialists in anatomy examined this find. It was established that the
femur was found a year after the cranium. Some regard the remains as
belonging to a low-grade man or to an idiot. (Dana, _I c_.) The cubic
measurement of the skull is 60 cubic inches, about that of an idiot,
that of a normal man being 90 cubic inches and that of an ape 30. These
specimens were found in separate places. The skull is too small for the
thigh-bone. The age of the strata in which they were found is uncertain.
An authority of the first rank, Prof. Klaatsch, of Heidelberg University,
says that the creature "does not supply the missing link."

Dr. Smith Woodward and Dr. Charles Dawson, in reconstructing a man from
the _Piltdown skull_, discovered in 1912 on Piltdown Common, near
Ucksfield, Sussex, England, built up something essentially monkey-like,
with receding forehead, projecting brows, and a gorilla-like lower jaw.
Prof. Keith, a renowned specialist, checking up on this reconstruction,
comes to an entirely different conclusion. He finds that the work of Drs.
Dawson and Woodward was done "in open defiance of all that scientists
know about skulls, whether ancient or modern." His words are: "I soon saw
that the parts of the reconstructed Piltdown skull had been apposed in a
manner which was in open defiance of all that was known of skulls,
ancient and modern, human and anthropoid. Articulating the bones in a
manner which has been accepted by all anatomists in all times, I found
that the brain-chamber, instead of measuring 1,070 cubic cm., as in Dr.
Smith Woodward's reconstruction, measured 1,500 cubic cm.,--a large brain
chamber for even modern man."

The _Neanderthal skull_ was found in 1856 in the neighborhood of
Duesseldorf by Dr. Fuhlrott, of Elberfeld. When the skull and other parts
of the skeleton were exhibited at a scientific meeting held at Bonn the
same year, a wide divergence of opinion at once developed among the
specialists. By some, doubts were expressed as to the human character of
the remains. Others held that the remains indicate a person of much the
same stature as a European of the present day, but with such an unusual
thickness in some of them as betokened a being of very extraordinary
strength. Dr. Meyer, of Bonn, regarded the skull as the remains of a
Cossack killed in 1814. Other scientists agreed with him. Modern science
accepts the antiquity of the Neanderthal man, but the controversy has
never ceased. The great Virchow declared the peculiarities of the bones
to be the result of disease.

Near Liege, in Belgium, not more than seventy miles from the Neanderthal,
the _Engis skull_ was found. After careful measurement it was proved not
to differ materially from the skulls of modern Europeans.

Such experiences should prevent us from making any assertions respecting
the primitive character, in race or physical conformation, of these
cave-dwellers. Indeed. Prof. Huxley, in a very careful and elaborate
paper upon the Neanderthal and Engis skulls, places an average skull of
a modern native of Australia about half-way between those of the
Neanderthal and Engis caves. Yes, he says that, after going through a
large collection of Australian skulls, he "found it possible to select
from these crania two (connected by all sorts of intermediate
gradations), the one of which should very nearly resemble the Engis
skull, while the other would somewhat less closely approximate to the
Neanderthal skull in size, form, and proportions." "The Engis skull,
perhaps the oldest known, is," according to Prof. Huxley, "a fair
average skull, which might have belonged to a philosopher, or might have
contained the thoughtless brain of a savage." In this opinion Mr. Huxley
is supported by one of the greatest anthropologists of his time, Daniel
G. Brinton, who says concerning the cave-man of France and Belgium:
"Neither in stature, cranial capacity, nor in muscular development did
these earliest members of the species differ more from those now living
than do these among themselves. We have no grounds for assigning to
these earliest known men an inferior brain or a lower intelligence than
is seen among various savage tribes still in existence."

Every new find, upon investigation, proves the truth of Virchow's words:
"We must really acknowledge that there is a complete absence of any
fossil type of a lower stage in the development of man. Nay, if we gather
together all the fossil men hitherto found, and put them parallel with
those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are
among living men a much greater proportion of individuals which show a
relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to
this time. . . . Every positive progress which we haw made in the region
of prehistoric anthropology has removed us farther from the demonstration
of this theory!"

Quite recently (in 1913) a remarkable fossil was found in the Oldoway
gulch in northern German East Africa, by an expedition of the Geological
Institute of the University of Berlin. The remains consist of a complete
skeleton, which was found deeply imbedded in firm soil. Unquestionably
ancient as these remains are,--the bones are completely fossilized,--they
contained lamentably few "primitive characteristics," and hence have not
been exploited in the interest of the evolutionary theory. A fragment of
skull, a tooth, a thigh-bone, offer much more inviting fields to the
evolutionists, since they permit his imagination to range without the
restraint of fact. The Oldoway fossil, which is in every essential
respect a normal human skeleton, possesses no special attractions for
those who would represent man as a descendant of brutish ancestors.

Says Prof. Virchow: "We seek in vain for the missing link; there exists
a definite barrier separating man from the animal which has not yet been
effaced--heredity, which transmits to children the faculties of the
parents. We have never seen a monkey bring a man into the world, nor a
man produce a monkey. All men having a Simian (monkey-like) appearance
are simply pathological variants, (abnormal varieties, due to some
diseased condition). It was generally believed a few years ago that
there existed a few human races which still remained in the primitive
inferior condition of their organization. But all these races have been
objects of minute investigation, and we know that they have an
organization like ours, often, indeed, superior to that of the supposed
higher races. Thus the Eskimo head and the head of the Terra del
Fuegians belong to the perfected types. All the researches undertaken
with the aim of finding continuity in progressive development have been
without result. There exists no proanthrope, no man-monkey, and the
'connecting link' remains a phantom."

Dr. Berndt, of Berlin, recently said in the _"Naturwissenschaftliche
Rundschau der Chemikerseitung"_ (April, 1914): "Max Weber, one of the
best authorities on mammals, regards the anthropoid apes of to-day as a
branch _parallel_ to the human branch. Scholars like Cope, Adloeff,
Klaatsch, prefer to push the origin of man back to the earliest age of
terrestrial life, whence he went his way _from the very outset_ separate
from the apes." This is a highly significant utterance. It means nothing
more than this: there is not one recognizable link which unites man with
the animal kingdom. All the intermediate forms between man and the
original jelly-fish, which according to Haeckel and Vogt was his
ancestor, have disappeared. For their existence we have nothing but the
word of speculative scientists.

Concerning the Neanderthaler, the Cro-Magnon man. etc., Dr. Dawson has
said: "Geological evidence resolves itself into a calculation of the
rate of erosion of river valleys, of deposition of gravel and
cave-earths, and of formation of stalagmite crusts, all of which are so
variable and uncertain that, though it may be said that an impression
of great antiquity beyond the time of received history has been left on
the minds of geologists, no absolute antiquity has been proved; and
while some, on such evidence, would stretch the antiquity of man to
even half a million years, the oldest of these remains may, after all,
not exceed our traditional six thousand. These skeletons tell us that
primitive man had the same high cerebral organization which he
possesses now, and we may infer the same high intellectual and moral
nature, fitting him for communication with God and headship over the
lower world." Similarly Figuier held that "we know of no archaeological
find (stone hatchets, etc.) that could not be pronounced only five
thousand years old as well as fifty thousand."

Lionel S. Beale, the famous microscopist, testifies: "In support of all
naturalistic conjectures concerning man's origin, there is not at this
time the shadow of scientific evidence."

William Hanna Thomson, M.D., LL.D., Physician to the Roosevelt Hospital;
Consulting Physician to New York State Manhattan Hospital for the
Insane, who has held a professorship in New York University Medical
College; been president of the New York Academy of Medicine, etc, in
his recent book. _"What is Physical Life?"_ says concerning the doctrine
of evolution: "No contradiction could be greater than that between this
doctrine and the greatest truth which underlies this human world."

The Russo-French physiologist, M. Elie DeCyon, for many years professor
in the Faculty of Sciences and in the Academic Medico-chirurgicale at
the University of Petrograd, has lately published a book of essays in
which he says that the theory of evolution, especially in its relation
to the ancestry of man, is a "pure assumption." He quotes Prof. Fraas,
who devoted his long life to the study of fossil animals: "The idea that
mankind has descended from any Simian (ape) species whatsoever, is
certainly the most foolish ever put forth by a man writing on the
history of man. It should be handed down to posterity in a new edition
of the Memorial of Human Follies. No proof of this baroque theory can
ever be given from discovered fossils." And to quote from another
address by Virchow, delivered at Vienna: "I have never found a single
ape skull which approaches at all the human one. Between men and apes
there exists a line of sharp demarcation."

One of the most recent authoritative publications by a German
anthropologist urges that "the apes are to be regarded as degenerate
branches of the pre-human stock." This means, in a word, that man is not
descended from the ape, but the ape from man. This is almost what may be
called _reductio ad absurdum,_ and yet it is one of the latest
pronouncements of scientific thought (Editorial in _"New York Herald,"_
December 30, 1916). To the same effect are the words of Professor
Wood-Jones, Professor of Anatomy in the University of London, England,
who recently pointed out that so far from man having descended from
anthropoid apes, it would be more accurate to say that these have been
descended from man. This was claimed not only by reason of the best
anatomical research, but to be "deducible from the whole trend of
geological and anthropological discovery." On this account Professor
Wood-Jones appealed for "an entire reconsideration of the post-Darwinian
conceptions of man's comparatively recent emergence from the brute
kingdom." (Quoted by W. H. Griffith Thomas in _"What about Evolution?"_
p. 10.)

It is refreshing to turn aside from speculation to revelation, from
conjectures and theories to proven facts, and no one has stated
ascertained facts, touching the origin of man, more succinctly and more
clearly than Prof. Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of Natural Science in
the University of Erlangen. He shows conclusively that the age of man is
comparatively brief, extending only to a few thousand years; that man
appeared suddenly; that the most ancient man known to us is not
essentially different from the now living man, and that transitions
from the ape to the man, or from the man to the ape, are nowhere found.
The conclusion he reaches is that the Scriptural account of man, which
is one and selfconsistent, is true; that God made man in his own image,
fitted for fellowship with himself and favored with it--a state from
which man has fallen, but to which restoration is possible through Him
who is the brightness of his Father's glory, and "the express image of
his Person."

We cannot refrain from reverting, in this connection, to the essential
difference between the animal instincts and the intellect of man, and
would quote, on this subject, the forceful statement of the case by Paul
Haffner in his _"Materialismus"_ (Mainz, 1865). We translate: "If the
hypothesis of materialism were acceptable, if we were to believe that a
merely animal form of consciousness might develop into spiritual and
intellectual perceptions, we ought to be able to observe such capacities
of change and growth also in the animal world of to-day. Yet this is not
the case. For thousands of years we have observed the domestic animals,
and still we can see no trace of a dawn of intellect. We expend much
training upon them; we make them our confidants and treat them with
inexhaustible tenderness, and still we never see them rise out of their
narrow sphere and out of the bonds of their primitive desires and
instincts. We note external imitation of human activities, such as the
ludicrous virtuosity of the apes, and that superficial adaptation which
we call 'animal training' and which is nothing but a development of
sense stimuli; the animal does not know what it is doing, it is duped by
man who knows how to employ its instincts and make them serviceable to
his purposes. We cannot fail to note that never, not even under the most
favorable conditions, do the animals step out of their original sphere;
that neither by their own efforts nor through the aid of man are they
able to rise into ideas of a spiritual or suprasensual nature; that
they remain forever what they were in the beginning. Hence it cannot be
denied that also men would have remained what they once were according
to the notions of materialists. Only if from the beginning the light of
spiritual life was enkindled in them, could they become, what they are
to-day." (_"Materialismus,"_ p. 59 f.)

It will be noted that when we hear the specialists in anatomy and
biology, their expressions on the subject of man's ancestry are, as a
rule, characterized by a strong dissent from the development theory,
while the belief in a development of man from an ape-like ancestor,
uttered with a note of cocksureness, is found mainly among amateurs in
these sciences. Moreover, even among the believers in a rise of our race
from brute origins, many, and the most distinguished among them, assert
that the faculties of the human mind are indeed to be accounted for only
on the basis of a special creative act of God. They cling, however, to
the notion that the body of man is evolved from the lower animals--a
view which has been very ably met by Prof. Orr of Glasgow, one of the
foremost Biblical scholars of our time. He writes:

"It is well known that certain distinguished evolutionists, while
handing over man's body to be accounted for by the ordinary processes of
evolution, yet hold that man's mind cannot be wholly accounted for in a
similar manner. The rational mind of man, they urge--I agree with the
view, but am not called upon here to discuss it--has qualities and
powers which separate it, not only in degree, but in kind, from the
animal mind, and put an unbridgeable gulf, on the spiritual side,
between man and the highest of the creatures below him. In other words,
there is, in man's case, a rise on the spiritual side--the constitution
of a new order or kingdom of existence--which requires for its
explanation a distinct supernatural cause. Now the weakness of this
theory, I have always felt, lies in its assumption that, while man's
mind needs a supernatural cause to account for it, his body may be left
to the ordinary processes of development. The difficulty of such a view
is obvious. I have stated the point in this way. 'It is a corollary from
the known laws of the connection of mind and body that every mind needs
an organism fitted to it. If the mind of man is the product of a new
cause, the brain, which is the instrument of that mind, must share in
its peculiar origin. You cannot put a human mind into a Simian brain.'
In other words, if there is a sudden rise on the spiritual side, there
must be a rise on the physical--the organic--side to correspond."
(_"Virgin Birth of Christ,"_ p. 199.)

Can anything be more cogent, more conclusive?

The strongest _direct_ proof against the "ascent of man," however, has
so far only been touched upon. I refer to the evidences derived from the
history of Religion. To this I now invite the reader's close attention.

If man was developed from a lower order of creatures, or from any member
of the animal kingdom, religion must have been a late development. That
this "tailless, catarrhine, anthropoid ape" should have had anything
resembling a religion, is, of course, not to be thought of. To imagine
that he had a knowledge of the one, true God, his nature and his
attributes, would be preposterous. How then explain the origin and rise
of religion? The evolutionists do not agree on this subject. Herbert
Spencer maintains that _Animism_ was the most primitive form of faith.
Man reverenced spirits, the ghosts of the departed, then raised them to
the eminence of divinities and finally developed the idea of _one_
absolute being, God. Others suggest, that primitive man first adored the
terrible powers and awful phenomena of nature, was thus led to
Polytheism (a religion of many Gods) and finally evolved Monotheism (a
belief in one God). But all agree in this, that Religion in its earliest
form was of a very crude and elementary character, and only in the
course of many thousands of years, attained to the conception of one
Supreme Being. There was at first a faith in gods,--Polytheism, and much
later a faith in God--Monotheism.

Now, let is [tr. note: sic] be observed that this is the only _possible_
view from the standpoint of Evolution. Remember that this doctrine is
not only conceived as bearing on the development of the animal kingdom.
The principle is assumed to operate in the development of the earth, of
man, of society, of government, of manufactures, of language, of
literature, science, art, and religion. According to the theory, there
must have been progress from a crude form of spirit-worship to a
worship of gods, and thence to a worship of one God. But what are the
facts? Has religion so developed? It has not.

_Not only has history failed to show a single form of belief which has
advanced in the manner demonstrated, but every religion, no matter how
pure and exalted, has gone through a process of degeneration, of
devolution_.

The founders of the comparative study (or Science) of Religion, and the
greatest authorities in its various departments, are practically
unanimous in their opinion, that all pagan systems of mythology and
religion contain remnants of a more exalted form of belief, of a higher,
clearer knowledge of the Divinity, which gradually became dimmed and
corrupted.

From Max Mueller's Lecture on the _Vedas_ (the ancient hymns of India)
we quote the following: As a result "to which a comparative study of
religion is sure to lead, we shall learn that religions in their most
ancient form, or in the minds of their authors, are generally free from
many of the blemishes that attach to them in later times."

Le Page Renouf expresses his entire agreement with the "matured
judgment" of Emmanuel Rouge: "The first characteristic of the Egyptian
religion is the Unity of God most energetically expressed: God, One,
Sole and Only--no others with Him.... the Only Being .... The belief in
the Unity of the Supreme God and in His attributes as Creator and
Lawgiver of man, whom He has endowed with an immortal soul, .... _these
are the primitive notions,_ enchased in the midst of mythological
superfetations accumulated in the centuries." Franz Lenormant reached
the same conclusion. Elsewhere, Renouf says: "It is incontestably true,
that the sublimer portions of the Egyptian religions are not the
comparatively late result of a process of development. The sublimer
portions are demonstrably ancient; and the last stage of the Egyptian
religion .... was by far the grossest and most corrupt." (_"Religion of
Ancient Egypt,"_ p. 95.) This opinion is supported by the testimony of
the Egyptian inscriptions. In the very oldest inscriptions reference is
had to a Supreme God and Lord of all, to whom no shrines were raised,
whose abode was unknown, who was not graven in stone, while the Egptian
[tr. note: sic] of a later day adored the crocodile, the ichneumon,
serpents, bulls, cats, and ibises.

The history of Hindu belief presents testimony of a still more startling
nature. In the Vedas we find statements and prayers which are clear
proof of an early Monotheism. Thus the IX book of the Rig Veda contains
the following prayer. "Who is the God to whom we shall offer our
sacrifice? The one-born Lord of all that is; he established the heaven
and sky; he is the one king of the breathing and awakening world; he
through whom the heaven was established; he who measured out the light
in the air--he who alone is God above all gods." Here the belief in one
Supreme Being is clearly set forth. And yet this faith in one God in the
course of time degenerated into a worship of 33,000 divinities--until
Gautama the Buddha evolved a system that denied the very existence of
God.

Turning to Greece we have the testimony of Prof. Max Mueller to this
effect: "When we ascend to the distant heights of Greek history the idea
of God, as the Supreme Being, stands before us as a simple fact."
(_"Essays,"_ II, p. 146.) Carl Boettcher, in his great work on the
Treeworship of the Greeks, maintains: "As far as the legends of the
Greeks can be traced into prehistoric ages, the entire nation worshipped
a single God, nameless, without statues, without a temple, invisible and
omnipresent." This he regards as a tradition of "irrefutable inner
truthfulness.... The beginning of Polytheism therefore represents the
_second_ phase of Greek religion, which was preceded by a Monotheism."
Every student of Greek literature knows that this original belief at an
early age gave place to a worship of the gods on Olympus, a worship
which in turn gave way to openly avowed atheism. The Greeks were aware
of this decay. Plato, in his Phaidros (274 B) quotes Socrates as saying:
"I know of an old saying, that our ancestors knew what constituted the
true worship of God; if we could but discover what it was, would we then
have need of _human_ theories and opinions on the matter?" Certainly a
startling statement from the lips of a pagan. Undoubtedly Welcker was
right when he asserted, as the ultimate result of his researches: "This
(Greek) polytheism has settled before the eyes of men like a high and
continuous mountain range, beyond which it is the privilege only of
general historical study to recognize, as from a higher point of view,
the natural primitive monotheism." Concerning the monotheistic ideas of
later Greek thought, the same author says that they are to be regarded
not as a result of an ascending line of evolution ("aufsteigende Linie
der Entwickelung"), but as "a _return_ of the profound wisdom of old
age to the feeling of primitive simplicity."

Of the Phoenicians the greatest student of their history and religion,
F. K. Movers, says: "Nature worship gradually obscured the purer God-idea
of a more ancient stage of belief, but has never entirely obliterated
it." He refers to an evident "adulteration of a purer and more ancient
God-idea."

Regarding the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia, M. Haug, the famous Zend
scholar, asserts that "Monotheism was the leading idea of Zoroaster's
theology;" he called God Ahura-mazda, i. e., "the Living Creator."
Zoroaster did not teach a theological Dualism. He arrived "at the idea
of the unity and indivisibility of the Supreme Being," and only as "in
course of time this doctrine was changed and _corrupted_ ... the dualism
of God and the devil arose." "Monotheism was _superseded_ by Dualism."

Both Dr. F. Hommel and Friedrich Delitzsch agree on the question of an
early Arabian and Sumerian monotheism. Dr. Hommel demonstrates from the
personal surnames contained in the inscriptions the existence of a "very
exalted monotheism" in the most ancient times of the Arabian nation,
about 2500 B. C., and among the Semitic tribes of northern Babylonia.
This "monotheistic religion" degenerated under the influence of
Babylonian polytheism. The same opinion was held years ago by Julius
Oppert, the Assyriologist, who was led to a belief in "a universal
primitive monotheism as the basis of all religions."

Expressions similar to the above might be adduced from Rawlinson, Legge
(_"Religions of China"_), Doellinger, Victor v. Strauss-Torney (the
Egyptologist), Jacob Grimm, and others. In short, the majority of
independent and unprejudiced students of heathen beliefs, from the days
of A. W. v. Schlegel to our own, have reached the conclusion, that all
religions in their later stages exhibit a much lower conception of the
Divinity than in their earlier form. It is only the hopelessly
prejudiced who can say, as does John Fiske, that "to regard classic
paganism as one of the degraded remnants of a primeval monotheism, is to
sin against the canons of a sound inductive philosophy." Sinning against
the consonant testimony of universal history is a venial offense, it
would seem, when the integrity of this "sound inductive philosophy"--that
is, of the Spencerian theory--is at stake. It needs but a glance at the
well-known facts of religious history to show the working of this _Law
of Decay_ as influencing the development of every system of ethnic belief
which has a recorded history or a literature.

The workings of this law can be traced even in the case of the savage
tribes of our own day. Of the African negroes, P. Bandin says that "their
traditions and religious doctrines ... show clearly that they are a
people in decadence.... They have an obscure and confused idea of the
only God, .... who no longer receives worship." (_"Fetichism,"_ p. 7-10.)
Winwood Reade testifies: "The negroes possess the remnants of a noble and
sublime religion, though they have forgotten its precepts and debased its
ceremonies." They still retain a recollection "of God, the Supreme, the
Creator." Concerning the Zulus, Bastian records that they informed him
that "their ancestors possessed the knowledge of .... that _source of
being_ which is above, which gives life to men." (_"Vorgeschichtliche
Schoepfungslieder."_) A missionary of the Lutheran General Synod, Rev. J.
C. Pedersen, wrote in _"Lutheran Observer,"_ August, 1910, concerning the
African natives that they still have a considerable display of religion,
but "ask him, who is the God in whom you trust? what do you mean by
trusting? how can he help you? and he will answer, 'I don't know, but the
old people used to say so, and taught us to say so.'" John Hanning
Speke, in his _"Journal of the Discovery of the Sources of the Nile"_
records reminiscences among the degraded savages among whom he dwelt, of
a supreme God who dwells in heaven, but who no longer received worship.
Mungo Park, in the diary of his _"Travels in the Interior of Africa,"_
says that the Mandingoes, a degenerate race of fetish worshippers, still
possessed the knowledge of one God, but do not offer up prayers and
supplications to him.

In the record of his famous circumnavigation of the globe, Captain Cook
says that the cannibals of New Zealand still acknowledged a superior
being, although their religion was a crude system of spiritualistic
practices.

Concerning the Koreans Mrs. L. H. Underwood, medical missionary, says
that a thousand unworthy deities now crowd the temples, although the
great universal Ruler is still worshipped at times, and the "ancient
purity of faith and worship has become sadly darkened."

The foremost student of modern missions, Johann Warneck, in _"The Living
Christ and Dying Heathenism"_ (F. H. Revell Co.,) comes to the
conclusion that the Christian religion and its monotheism are not only
not a development from lower origins, but that the heathen religions,
historically considered, are a degeneracy from a higher knowledge of
God. In other words, the application of the doctrine of evolution to the
field of comparative religion is a mistake. "Any form of Animism known
to me has no lines leading to perfection, but only incontestable marks
of degeneration," says the author. "In heathenism the gold of the divine
thought becomes dross."

Says he, "I have been counselled to recognize that the idea of evolution
at present ruling the scientific world must also rule in the
investigation of religion. I am not unacquainted with the literature of
the subject, I have described animistic heathenism as concretely as I
could; I confined myself strictly to that. I began with the facts of
experience; then I drew inferences from them. If these do not agree with
the dominant hypothesis of evolution, that is due to the brutal facts,
and not to the prepossessions of the observer.

"I do not deny that something can be said for the idea of evolution in
the religions of mankind, but the study of Animism, with which I have
long been familiar as an eyewitness, did not lead me to that idea.
Rather the conviction which I arrived at is, that animistic heathenism
is not a transition stage to a higher religion. There are no facts to
prove that animistic heathenism somewhere and somehow evolved upwards
towards a purer knowledge of God. I have worked as a missionary for
many years in contact with thousands of the adherents of animistic
heathenism and I have been convinced that the force of that heathenism
is hostile to God."

In the same work Dr. Warneck says that among the Battaks of Sumatra
there are "remains of a pure idea of God." but there is also a host of
spirits, born of fear, which thrust themselves between God and man. "The
idea of God which is found in the religions of the Indian Archipelago,
and probably also of Africa, cannot have been distilled from the motley
jumble of gods and of nature, for it exists in direct opposition to the
latter. The idea of God is preserved, but His worship is lost." In
reviewing this book the late Dr. Schmauk said in 1910: "A dispassionate
study of heathen religions confirms the view of Paul that heathenism is
a fall from a better knowledge of God. The idols come between God and
man."

W. St. Clair Tisdale, concludes an exhaustive study of _"Christianity
and Other Faiths"_ with the statement: "It follows that Monotheism
historically preceded Polytheism, and that the latter is a corruption of
the former. It is impossible to explain the facts away. Taken together
they show that, as the Bible asserts, man at the very beginning of
history knew the One True God. This implies a Revelation of some sort
and traces of that Revelation are still found in many ancient faiths."

We conclude that the history of religion does not only fail to support
the evolutionistic postulate of a slow upward development of religions
from crude original beliefs, but quite the reverse. It is true that the
popular handbooks of comparative religion quite generally teach a
development of religious belief through animism, fetishism, and
polytheism to monotheism. But the consonant testimony of specialists in
the field of historical study and of those who have had first-hand
acquaintance with the aborigines of heathen lands, is a strong dissent
from this position. Here again we find confident assertion of an
evolutionistic process mainly among those who lack the qualifications
of original research. Even as it is not the specialist in biology that
still maintains the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection, but the
non-professional and the amateur, even so the specialist acquainted
with the original sources, and the explorer, possessing first hand
knowledge, asserts a decline, through history, from purer to less
spiritual faiths, while the bias of the evolutionist, who has no first
hand knowledge of the sources constrains him to begin his scheme of
religion with animism and fetish-worship. The theory which holds him in
thrall demands such a construction. But the theory is contradicted by
the facts, which point unmistakably to a degeneration of the race, to a
Fall of Man.


CHAPTER TEN.
The Verdict of History.

John Fiske, who, in the seventies of the last century, popularized
Darwinism in the United States, asserts that the scope of evolution is
much wider than the organic field. "There is no subject great or small"
he wrote in _"A Century of Science,"_ "that has not come to be affected
by this doctrine." A development has been recognized in plants,
mountains, oysters, subjunctive moods, and the confederacies of savage
tribes (p. 35). Fiske is one of those defenders of the evolutionistic
philosophy who irritate by reason of their cocksureness. Hear him, in
_"Darwinism and Other Essays_:" "One could count on one's fingers the
number of eminent naturalists who still decline to adopt it"--the
Darwinian hypothesis. That was in 1876. To-day we know that one cannot
on one finger the eminent naturalists of the present century who still
accept it--Haeckel. It is possible that Fiske's extension of the
development theory, along lines laid down by Herbert Spencer, to all
human history, even to "tribal confederacies," is likewise subject to a
revision. Indeed, it would seem that even without special or detailed
knowledge, the failure of human history to conform with this universal
law would be apparent. Consider once more the basic concepts of
Evolution. They are two in number, 1. Everything that is, has been
evolved, having been involved (potentially, as a possibility) in that
which preceded it. Potentially, the feather of the blue-bird was in the
speck of original protoplasm, potentially the flights of Dante's and
Goethe's genius were in the primordial cell. All that has occurred in
history has _developed_ out of antecedents. Furthermore: 2. All that
exists has developed _according to natural laws_. Scientists have given
up the law which Darwin called "Natural Selection," and Spencer himself
cashiered the law which he had called "Survival of the Fittest." But
evolutionists continue to assert that somehow, by the action of certain
laws, that which exists has naturally--there is no need of divine
Providence, overruling the affairs of men,--has naturally been developed
out of its antecedents. And so history is read by the evolutionist. He
sees in all the institutions of civilization, in every department of
culture, in the rise and fall of nations, the progress and decay of
literatures, a result of natural laws, working out the evolution of
human society as it exists to-day.

What, then, is the verdict of history? Does it conform to this scheme?
Is there a demonstrable development, by inherent forces, of human
society, from lower to higher ranges of culture? Civilization [tr note:
sic] have risen, civilizations have perished: is there in this traceable
the working of natural law?

Dr. Emil Reich, in the _"Contemporary Review,"_ 1889. p. 45 ff. pointed
out the failure of the development theory as applied to human culture.
Hebrew religion as well as the Hebrew state were not derived from
Babylonian, Egyptian, Arabic or Hittite culture; Greek art is not a
derivative product of Egyptian, Assyrian, or Phoenician art; Greek
religion and mythology are not derived from other pagan systems; Roman
law has not been developed out of Greek, Aryan, or Egyptian law; the
English constitutional form of government has no antecedents in German
or Norman-French history; German music is not a result of development
out of Dutch, French, or Italian music. Dr. Reich sums up the matter:
"Institutions do not 'evolve,' nor are they 'derived,' they step into
existence by fulguration"--sudden flashes--, "by a process that is
technically identical with the theological idea of creation. The whole
concept of evolution does not at all apply to history."

In this argument there is considerable force. For, indeed, what natural
law can account for the rise of human institutions, so infinitely
diversified in their structure? Every age is divided into epochs, and at
the center of each epoch there is some personage of force and genius.
But how did Cromwell, Lincoln, Bismarck arise? What force produced them?
Whence did they evolve? Yet without these three names, three great
periods in the world's history would be meaningless.

By what combination of forces shall we say that the various geniuses
have developed which, in a manner almost spectacular, rise before us as
we study the literatures of the past? The youthful years of Shakespeare
were spent under circumstances which might have produced in him one dull
and unaspiring British country lout, like, as one egg to another, to a
hundred thousand others who lived in his age. What made this one country
boy the most astonishing genius in all the history of literature? Study
the youth of Robert Burns, of Heinrich Heine, or Coleridge, and then
tell me why the first two should become the greatest lyric poets of
their time, and the third, one of England's deepest thinkers? Why did
they not develop, one into a satisfied Scottish farmer, the other into
a peddler of notions, and the third into a fat and comfortable English
banker?

We quote from an article which appeared in _"Theological Quarterly"_
some twenty years ago:

"What process of evolution resulted in the lives and deeds of such men
as Alexander the Great, Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] Constantine the
Great, Luther, Napoleon I, and Bismarck? All these great makers of
history were what they were far less in consequence and by the
continuation of the course of previous events or developments, than
largely in spite of the past and in direct opposition to forces which
had worked together in shaping the condition of things with which they
had to deal. The Macedonian empire would never have sprung into being
but for an Alexander, in whose mind the chief facts for its realization
were united. The Rome which Julius Ceasar [tr. note: sic] left behind
him was not that which he had found, only carried forward to a new stage
of development, but the embodiment of ideas conceived in his mind, a
quantity which under God the greatest Roman had _made_ out of a quantity
which he had found. The distinctive features of the Constantinian empire
as compared with that of Diocletian, or of the tetrarchy of which he was
the head, were not evolved from earlier political principles, but stood
out in bold contrast and even in direct opposition to the very
fundamentals of antique statesmanship, and so new in politics that even
Constantine permitted them to slip away from his grasp long before the
sunset of his life had come. Luther was not a more fully developed Hus
or Savonarola, and the Reformation was not the more advanced stage or
completion of a movement inaugurated by the Humanists, but a work of God
the actuating spirit of which was as diametrically contrary to the
rationalistic spirit which animated Erasmus and, in a measure, Zwingli
and his abettors, as it was to anti-christian Rome,--which was in 1517
essentially what it had been in 1302, when Boniface VIII issued his bull
_Unam sanctum_ as a definition of the rights and powers of Popery.
Napoleon did not carry onward but broke away from the tumult of French
politics when he laid the greater part of western Europe at his feet,
and the battle of Austerlitz and the rule of the Hundred Days were no
more evolved from the French Revolution as by intrinsic necessity than
the burning of Moscow and the Russian snows which turned to naught the
campaign of 1812." (A. L. Graebner.)

According to the theory we would expect that in the various departments
of _art,_ perfection would be a late blossom, burgeoning forth only after
ages of feeble experiment and attempt. But what are the facts? As we
study the history of any art,--be it literature or any department of
literature; be it architecture, sculpture, the domestic arts, or even
the art of war,--we find the highest culmination either at points which
specifically exclude the idea of a development or, indeed, perfection
shines forth in the very beginning, all subsequent art being decay and
apostasy from that primal perfection.

In epic poetry, the greatest work does not stand at the end of a long
period of development, but the first and oldest is the greatest. Nothing
has ever been produced to equal the Iliad and Odyssey, written 900 B. C.
We have epics that will always hold a prominent place in literature,
Virgil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, but neither these nor the many
flights attempted into epic poetry before or since will be seriously
considered as rivalling the rhapsodies of Homer.

The first novel ever written, Cervantes' Don Quijote, [tr. note: sic]
remains one of the greatest.

The oldest dramatists, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles, have never been
surpassed.

And so in every department of art, the earliest stage of development
seems to be the very most perfect. Pyramid building was a pastime of the
earliest Pharaos; [tr. note: sic] the later did not attempt to rival
these structures with any of their own. No finer jewelry can be produced
to-day than the gold ornaments found in the oldest tombs of Egypt. The
finest examples of East Indian architecture are the oldest. Gothic art
was not a slow development but came to utter perfection in its earliest
examples,--as in the Cathedral of Amiens.

Evolution represents the history of our race as a constant climb, from
brute or near-brute beginnings, to ever higher forms of civilization,
until the heights which our race has reached in the present century were
attained. In reality, the reverse process, a constant and invariable
process of degeneration characterizes the history of nations and peoples.
Where Christianity entered as a factor, as in the history of Western
Europe and in the results of Christian missions in heathen lands, we can
indeed observe a rise out of barbaric or savage conditions to refinement
and culture. But only where the Christian gospel is preached, was the
natural process of decay, of degeneration, interfered with. Elsewhere,
that is to say, where purely natural forces were given free play,
mankind has declined physically, mentally, spiritually. All
civilizations illustrate this law of decay. Wilhelm F. Griewe, in his
_"Primitives Suedamerika"_ (Cincinnati, 1893), summarizes his
observations on the South American continent as follows: "The Malaysian
aborigines of South America, in a period of 3,000 years, failed to
advance in development. The Japanese discoverers of Peru testify that
they found the natives in a condition of extreme decay; within a period
of 1,500 years they had made no progress but had retrogressed. When the
Spaniards came, they described the natives of Chile and Argentina in
such a manner that it is quite evident how little these tribes had
progressed in 3,000 years. The Araucanians of Chile have, even in
historic times, greatly degenerated; they have lost the very meaning of
many words; retaining the shell, they have lost the kernel. In Peru,
the age of heroic deeds and wonderful architecture was followed by decay,
--religious, moral, intellectual decay. The population was all but
destroyed by vices and cruelty. Their neighbors, the Chibchas, likewise
described an arc which ended in devil-worship. Similarly, the history of
the Botokudes is degeneration, vice, atrocities. The negro tribes in the
north and east of South America record no progress, but, on the other
hand, sank into abominations, slavery, cannibalism. Where, then, is
there support for the evolutionary theory, with its assumption of an
upward trend from a brute condition to civilized and cultured life?
Everywhere in primitive South America we see before our very eyes the
process of decline and decay. Also the religious idea became obscured.
Some of these tribes had an original monotheism. They recognized a
supreme creator of all things and gave him various names. But the
spiritual character of their knowledge of God was gradually obscured,
God was dragged into the sphere of sense and lower divinities were
associated with Him,--a downward development which absolutely contradicts
the Darwinian hypothesis. From an original, pure, spiritual worship to
gross idolatry,--that is the religious decay which in the world outside
the Bible meets us everywhere, also among the original races of South
America."

Thus in the history of human society, we observe, unless the divine power
of the gospel supplies the sole preserving and regenerating element, a
universal law of decay in human affairs. Innumerable times, and at the
most crucial moments of human history, not the fittest but the unfittest
survived. Dr. A. L. Graebner said: "The principle of the 'survival of the
fittest' is so far from accounting for the phenomena of history, that the
principle itself is flatly contradicted and utterly exploded by a sober
investigation of historical facts. That there are in nature numerous
instances of a survival of the _un_fittest, is not only conceded by our
evolutionists, but has been deliberately forged into an argument against
teleology (divine purpose) and divine providence! And, we ask, was it by
the survival of the fittest that Julius Ceasar, [tr. note: sic] one of the
grandest rulers of all ages, should succumb under the daggers of Brutus
and Cassius: that Paul and Seneca should die by authority of their
inferior, Nero; that Popery, rotten to the core and represented by men
who would have brought on the ignominous [tr. note: sic] collapse or
extinction of every other dynasty in the days of the Roman pornocracy,
should survive, while the illustrious house of Henry I. sank away to
ruin in the third and fourth generation; that John Hus should die at the
stake and Jean Charlier de Gerson in timid monastic retirement, while
Balthasar Cossa, by far their inferior in talents and learning, and
every inch an infamous scoundrel, having for a time disgraced even the
Roman see as John XXIII, ended his days as a Cardinal and Bishop of
Tusculum and Dean of the Sacred College; that Girolamo Savonarola, one
of the most remarkable and pure-minded leaders of his day and of all
times, should be fought down and crushed in a struggle with men not one
of whom was worthy of unloosing his shoe's latchet, among them Alexander
VI, one of the most scandalous wretches of all history? Survival of the
fittest!"

The article from which we have quoted points out the relevancy, to the
question at issue, of the principle of degeneration and gradual decay in
historical organisms or institutions. "Our scientists who bother
themselves and others about the descent of man have favored with a keen
interest the Bushmen of Australia and other types of savage humanity,
with receding skulls, flat noses, thin legs, little or no clothing, and
not much of morals or religion. The lower in the scale and the farther
remote from the civilized Caucasian a newly discovered or investigated
tribe or specimen, living or dead, would appear to be, the greater was
the value set on the discovery, because the nearer science was supposed
to have come to the missing link, the transition from brute to man. Of
course, the missing link will never be discovered, because it never
existed. There is no transition from brute to man, and never was. But if
there were a species of beings which might be classed either with man or
with brutes, a transitional species, even that would not necessarily
represent a transition in the direction from brute to man. We do not say
that a transition from man to brute is possible; for it is not; but we
do say that the evolutionist who sees in Bushmen and other savages
specimens of humanity representing the earlier stages of development,
through which the more highly developed species had long since passed on
the way from the primitive state of man to their present state, makes a
great, fundamental mistake, the same mistake which one would make in
supposing that the pale and decrepit inmates of a city hospital or a
country poorhouse represented the lower stage of development from which
the strong and healthy men and women in the surrounding country had been
evolved. Our evolutionists are in very much the same plight with Mark
Twain and his friend, who, having slept all day, rushed from the hotel
in scanty clothing, climbed the observatory and to the amusement of the
guests loudly admired what they took to be the famous Rigi sunrise,
while in fact they were vociferating and gesticulating at the setting
sun. But while our tourists had soon found out their mistake, our
evolutionists have not; which does not make it any less a mistake. St.
Paul has drawn a vivid picture of the degenerating influence of sin upon
the nations under the righteous wrath of God,* [[* Rom. 1, 18-32.]] and
the course which the Greek nation and the Roman would have run from
their pristine vigor exhibited in the days of Thermopylae and Cannae
down to the state of _marasmus senilis_ pictured by Juvenal, a state of
rottenness which even the transfusion of German blood into the putrid
veins of that degenerate and decaying race could not remedy, is a
fearful corroboration of the apostle's testimony."

We cannot leave this subject without briefly adverting to a great
historic fact, indeed, the most massive and significant fact in all
history, which, in its remoter bearings, not only strikes at the very
heart of the evolutionistic philosophy, but at the same time wounds it
mortally in all its parts. I refer to the Resurrection of our Lord. The
resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central fact of our Christian belief
and it is, rightly understood, the all-sufficient answer to the theory
of evolution. Christ's resurrection is an historical fact fully as much
as the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis in 480 B. C., the discovery of
America by Columbus in 1492, and the peace of Versailles of 1919 are
historical facts, proven by the word and record of contemporary
witnesses. But if Christ was raised then we have proof for the following
tenets, all contradicting evolutionary speculation at so many vital
points: 1) The existence of a personal God who is concerned with human
affairs; 2) The reality of miraculous interference with natural forces;
3) The truth of atonement and the redemption, and 4) The inspiration of
the Old Testament Scriptures (hence also of the creation account in
Genesis). The details of the argument are beyond the scope of this paper,
but a little patient study will bring to light the fact that each of
these four basic ideas is dove-tailed, mortised and anchored so firmly
in the fact of Christ's resurrection, that you can get rid of them all
only by denying that fact. Hence it is, aside from any investigation of
proofs of evolutionism, clear to the Christian student that there must
be some fault either in reason or in observation that vitiates the whole
theory. The resurrection of Christ is a fact, a fact to which the entire
history of Christianity testifies, the most tremendous fact in the
history of the world. And it stands fore-square against a theory which
says that there is no personal God, that there is no sin, no redemption;
that there are no miracles, no revelation, no inspiration; that there is
no absolute religion nor an absolute standard of right and wrong.


CHAPTER ELEVEN.
Evidence of Design.

Compare all that has been said by scientists themselves about the
evolutionary theory, and what remains? This, only, that some how, we do
not know when, life arose, and some how, we do not know by what laws,
one form evolved from another, until we and the world about us have
become what we are now. Now, the fact that no _laws_ have so far been
discovered by scientists to account for this presumed development of all
things by inherent forces, is very significant and the conclusions which
logically follow from it deserve our attention. Since Darwin's solution,
Natural Selection, was discarded, twenty or thirty years ago, many other
solutions have been propounded, but none has received the assent of even
a respectable group of scientists, let alone by all. These solutions,
--such as the theories of de Vries and Mendel, are frankly no more than
guesses based on certain observation in plant life and insect life and
their originators by no means assert that they have found a law by which
the universe can be accounted for. But if there is no universal law,
there is only _chance_. Hence it is clear that what we are asked to
believe is that ancient Greek speculation was after all not far from the
truth, that through a fortuitous (accidental) concourse of atoms the
world came into being, and that by chance combinations of elements the
great variety of living things arose.

Such is the condition of evolutionistic thought to-day. That there is no
_direct_ evidence for organic evolution is generally admitted. That
geology cannot be quoted for it is also quite generally conceded, since
the sudden rise of perfect (not half-developed) insects, of perfect
fish, of perfect mammals, is clear even to the man who merely turns the
leaves of Geikie's, Le Conte's, and Dana's text books, or visits Field's
Museum. Yet _some-how_ things must have gotten to be what they are by
development from earlier forms,--this about sums up what is really
contained in the concept of evolution as it appears in most recent
scientific literature, so far as scientists at all touch upon the
subject. However, they by no means urge the evolutionary principle as
they used to do. Bacteriologists especially, so I am informed by a
chemist of international repute, Dr. P. A. Kober, of New York, as a
class are inclined to give up the theory as a "bad guess." Why, they
find in fossil fish diseased portions which bear unmistakable traces of
the action of bacteria which live to-day, in other words, which in
"countless millions of years" have not progressed enough to show any
change recognizable under the most powerful miscroscope! [tr. note: sic]
Anthropologists shake their head when they are told by evolutionists
that the animal which shows clearest "resemblance" in a structural way,
to certain points in human anatomy, is a small fossil ape, about the
size of a house cat, with a skull one inch in diameter! There remains no
proof, direct or indirect, of any _principle_ working the changes which
are believed to have occurred. All things have evolved, if they have
evolved at all, _by chance_.

Now, over against this doctrine of chance there stands the monumental
fact that throughout nature, living and non-living, there runs a
principle of _design_. The minerals, the plants, the animals, all
exhibit, as even the superficial observer knows or might know, a plan.
There is design in the crystals in which elements exist when they pass
from a liquid into a solid state; there is design in the leaf and flower
of every plant; there is plan, design, in the structure and physiology
of animals. We would add, there is an evident plan in the history of the
Chosen Race, the Jews, as we possess it in the Old and New Testaments;
there is a plan in the moral sphere, laws producing unvaried results;
there is an ordered scheme even in the life of the individual. But let
us limit our investigation to the domain of nature. Let us note how
little necessity there is for assuming that by mere chance things have
come to be what they are.

As a rule each chemical substance has an individual crystal by which it
can be distinguished. It is possible to classify the thousands of
different crystals, since all belong to one of six classes, according as
their surfaces are grouped symmetrically around the axes of the crystal.
The salt crystal has one form, the topaz another, quartz and beryl
another, borax another, and these forms are absolutely unvaried wherever
these substances are found in nature or in the chemist's retort. It is
not here our intention to point out how impossible it is to assume that
there has been an evoluton [tr. note: sic] of one of these forms out of
another. The point is that there is not chance, but orderly arrangement,
symmetrical shape, in a word, most evident design.

Turning to plant life, even the amateur student cannot fail to observe
that the entire world of plants is built on a beautiful system which
argues most powerfully not for accidental arrangement but for plan. The
place of every leaf on every plant is fixed beforehand by unerring
mathematical rule. As the stems grow on, leaf after leaf appears exactly
in its predestined place, producing a perfect symmetry;--a symnetry [tr.
note: sic] which manifests itself not in one single monotonous pattern
for all plants, but in a definite number of forms exhibited by different
species, and arithmetically expressed by the series of fractions, 1/2,
1/3, 2/5, 3/8, 5/13, 8/21, etc., according as the formative energy in
its spiral course up the developing stem lays down at corresponding
intervals 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, or 21 ranks of alternative leaves.

The position of each blossom is determined beforehand by that of the
leaves; so that the shape of every flower-cluster in a boquet [tr. note:
sic] is given by the same simple mathematical law which arranges the
foliage. Every flower has a "Numerical Plan." Although not easy to make
out in all cases, yet generally it is plain to see that each blossom is
based upon a particular number, which runs through all or most of its
parts. And a principal thing which a botanist notices when examining a
flower is its numerical plan. It is upon this that the symmetry of the
blossom depends. Thus the stonecrop and the flax are based upon the
number five, which is exhibited in all their parts. Some flowers of this
same stonecrop have their parts in fours, and then that number runs
throughout; namely, there are four sepals, four petals, eight stamens
(two sets), and four pistils.

Next let us touch upon the plan which connects the plant with the animal
world. The wonderful adaptations of many flowers and insects to each
other, as to the fertilization of the former, and as to the life of the
individual insect and the propagation of its kind, are evidence of
design. For example, there are certain species of plants that are
dependent for their fertilization on certain species of moths which
live in the flowers, and the moths, in turn, are dependent on the
plants. They deposit their eggs in the ovaries of the flowers where the
young are hatched and nourished. The moths in some cases carry the
pollen and place it on the stigmas of the flowers, as if guided by
intelligence. So marvellous are the provisions which are made to ensure
the fertilization of plants that the dean of Amercan [tr. note: sic]
botanists, Professor Asa Gray, exclaims: "If these structures and their
operations do not argue intention, what stronger evidence of intention
in nature can there possibly be? If they do, such evidences are
countless, and almost every blossom brings distinct testimony to the
existence and providence of a Designer and Ordainer, without whom, we
may well believe, not merely a sparrow, not even a grain of pollen, may
fall." (On this entire subject read Selina Gaye's _"The Great World's
Farm,"_ published by the MacMillan Co., New York.)

We can only lightly touch on the wonders of design in the structure and
functions of animals. Here is a feather, any feather, say, the feather
of an eagle. We quote the following on "One of Nature's Wonders--the
Feather'' from an article in a popular magazine:

"To most people a feather is just a feather, either pretty or plain
according to how the coloring strikes their individual fancy. Yet when
a feather is examined critically, it becomes a wonder and yet more
wonderful--it is amazing when its details are understood. Never was
there a thing better planned and builded for the uses intended.

"Take, for instance, a plain feather--say the tail feather of an eagle.
The long quill is made of feather-bone, that wonderfully light, yet
strong material that forms the rigid part of all feathers, so tough that
it is almost impossible to break it, yet so flexible it will bend into a
circle and then spring back like a bit of whalebone! Nothing that man
has ever been able to make can equal it.

"There is no blood, no nerves, no circulation and apparently no life in
a full grown feather, yet it does not decompose; indeed, it is one of
the hardest things in the world to destroy by any process of
decomposition. It retains its resiliency and all its flexibility for
years--all that is necessary is to keep it dry. It is finished all along
the rib (or quill) with a hard, glossy enamel on the outside and this
enamel keeps its polish as long as the feather lasts.

"From [tr. note: sic on punctuation] an engineering standpoint, or the
standpoint of the mechanic or artisan, there is absolutely no suggestion
of betterment to be made, for the feather is an exact, perfectly
finished product. Its long central quill tapers from base to point with
geometric precision, thereby giving perfect resistance to bending force,
and this is one of the combination of secrets that enables the bird to
fly as easily as man can walk. Also this long quill is hollow, thereby
all extra weight is done away with and added strength gained because of
the tube contraction; and to make it perfect from a mechanical
standpoint, the under side of the quill is reinforced by a doublerolled
thickening of the shell of the quill itself so that strains are
equalized.

"This long quill is also curved slightly, to meet air resistance again
and overcome it when the whole tail is spread, fan-like, to suddenly
alter a direction or check speed in flight.

"The long, soft side masses are formed of a multitude of tiny feathers,
each one perfectly equipped, perfectly made, mechanically and
geometrically without fault. Each of these tiny side feathers has its
own midrib that tapers from base to tip, and each of these midribs
carries its own equipment of side 'hairs' so beautifully constructed
that it locks automatically into the one on each side of it in such a
way that it makes a solid yet flexible mass of the whole surface,
against which the air flows as the bird flies.

"If these side feathers be split apart they will come back into place
so exactly that the split cannot be detected. Nothing else in nature
repairs itself with such precision. Many things, for instance the claw
leg of the crawfish, will replace itself exactly when destroyed, but
the feather alone _repairs_ its own breaks precisely and automatically.

"Taken as a whole, the feather is one of the most perfect products of
nature because the material used is the one best thing throughout, the
engineering principles involved are without fault, the mathematical
plan is precise, the construction is perfect, the coloring and artistry
are flawless, and there is not one single point about it that can be
constructively criticized.

"This short article can only hint at the wonderful things one may find
in a single feather, and it is something well worth not an hour, but
weeks or months of the most painstaking and careful study, for it covers
an amazing field."

The electric battery in certain fishes is so palpable a case of design
that Charles Darwin admitted his inability to account for it by Natural
Selection. The electric ray, or torpedo, for instance, has been provided
with a battery which, while it closely resembles, yet in the beauty and
compactness of its structure, it greatly exceeds the batteries by which
man has now learned to make the laws of electricity subservient to his
will. In this battery there are no less than 940 hexagonal columns, like
those of a bee's comb, and each of these is subdivided by a series of
horizontal plates, which appear to be analogous to the plates of the
batteries used in automobiles. The whole is supplied with an enormous
amount of nervous matter, four great branches of which are as large as
the animal's spinal cord, and these spread out in a multitude of
thread-like filaments round the prismatic columns, and finally pass into
all the cells. "A complete knowledge of all the mysteries which have
been gradually unfolded from the days of Galvani to those of Faraday,
and of many others which are still inscrutable to us, is exhibited in
this structure." Well may Mr. Darwin say, "It is impossible to conceive
by what steps these wondrous organs have been produced. We see the
purpose--that a special apparatus should be prepared; but we have not
the remotest notion of the means employed. Yet we can see so much as
this, that here again, other laws, belonging altogether to another
department of nature--laws of organic growth--are made subservient to a
very definite and very peculiar purpose.' [tr. note: sic on punctuation]

"The new-born kangaroo," says Professor Owen, "is an inch in length,
naked, blind, with very rudimental limbs and tail; in one which I
examined the morning after the birth, I could discern no act of sucking;
it hung, like a germ, from the end of the long nipple, and seemed unable
to draw sustenance therefrom by its own efforts. The mother accordingly
is provided with a peculiar adaptation of a muscle (_cremaster_) to the
mammary gland, by which she can inject the milk from the nipple into the
mouth of the pendulous embryo. Were the larynx of the creature like that
of the parent, the milk might, probably would, enter the windpipe and
cause suffocation: but the larynx is cone-shaped, with the opening at
the apex, which projects, as in the whaletribe, into the back aperture
of the nostrils, where it is closely embraced by the muscles of the
'soft palate.' The air-passage is thus completely separated from the
fauces (mouth), and the injected milk passes in a divided stream, on
either side the base of the larynx, into the oesophagus. These
correlated modifications of maternal and foetal structures, _designed_
with especial reference to the peculiar conditions of both mother and
off-spring, afford, as it seems to me, irrefragable evidence of
_creative forsight_. The parts of this apparatus cannot have produced
one another; one part is in the mother, another part in the young one;
without their harmony they could not be effective; but nothing except
design can operate to make them harmonious. They are intended to work
together; and we cannot resist the conviction of this intention when
the facts first come before us."

We cannot stop to pass in review the structural marvels of the human eye
and ear, of the digestive organs, and circulatory system of animals, of
adaptations of fishes to the watery element. But we must mention an
outstanding feature of all animal life, the evident likeness of plan
upon which the _entire kingdom_ of sentient life is constructed. From
amoeba and other infusorial animals of simplest structure, through coral
and oyster, bird, reptile, to mammals, there is an evident gradation,
many structures being represented in entire great groups of living
beings, such as the air-breathing lung. Here is a grand plan of animal
life, which permits us to classify all living things into a system.
There are classes and subclasses, orders or families, suborders, tribes,
sub-tribes, genera, species, and varieties, just as in the world of
plants and even, according to their atomic weight, among the elements.
We see in all this, Creative Design. The evolutionist believes that he
can percive [tr. note: sic] stages of progress. Similarity of plan is
interpreted as proof that there is a common origin. Are we to admit, in
the face of all that has been said about the fixity of species (to
mention only this), the reasonableness of such an assumption? Does
orderliness and plan argue for development? The steam-engine is a
machine of remarkable structure. It has had, in one sense of the term,
a wonderful "evolution." It is based on certain principles, the
foundation one of which is the expansibility of steam, and its ability,
when confined in a cylinder, to give motion to a piston. The
steam-engine was first used for pumping, then for turning machinery,
then for propelling boats, and now its crowning department is seen in
the locomotive. There is a plan, a likeness, a similarity, which runs
through all steam-engines, whether they be found in the mine, in the
mill, beneath the deck of the steamship, or on the railroad track. But
the locomotive is not formed from the mine engine; it is made new, and
is a distinct type. And yet, the same principles are seen in both. Even
so it is with the genera of animals. The whale and the elephant both
have backbones, jointed limbs, warm blood, and a hundred homologous
organs. They are both mammals, both are sagacious, and are gifted with
acute senses. But otherwise they are unlike as the monster locomotive
that pulls the heavy train over the Sierras, and the compound engines of
the _Vaterland_. Similarity of structures argues powerfully for unity of
plan, but by no means proves identity of origin.

The evidence of design in nature conflicts with the idea that all things
in the organic domain have come to be what they are by chance. But it
agrees perfectly with the Christian view of animal nature. What is that?
It is that God created the different classes of existences in the strict
sense; that is, that he created them separate classes and species, each
with its own peculiarities and habits, while, at the same time, they
rise one above the other in general and steady order, with certain
general organs and functions, which run through nearly all except the
lowest classes, each higher class having also some distinct and
additional peculiarities not found in those below it. In other words, to
the Christian the steadily ascending scale in the work of creation is
only the unfolding or development of the great plan of creation that was
in the mind of God. He believes that God did not create one or more
simple cells or germs, and cause all higher forms to be evolved from
them, interfering only once or twice (when the backbone appeared, the
nourishing breast, the mind of man, etc.), but that he, in the execution
of his plan, created successively as distinct orders and species those
things and beings which now exist as distinct orders and species, and
many of which have become extinct. This is the Story of Creation as
given in Genesis: Each plant, each animal, created in its own place in
the scale of living thing, but each created as a species,--"after their
kind," the phrase repeated after each creative act of the third, fifth,
and sixth day, except with reference to man, who was not created as a
"species" but after the image of God.

But the evidences of design are yet of a higher nature than we have so
far considered. There is not only Creative Intelligence at work in the
pollen of flowers, the breathing of sponges, and the eagle's orb of
vision; Mind dominates _the universe as a whole_. Everywhere there is
law and periodic, rhythmical motion. The Lord, speaking to Job, refers
to the "measures" of the earth, the "lines" which He has stretched upon
it. He asks, concerning the heavenly bodies: "Canst thou bind the sweet
influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring
forth Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide Arcturus with his
sons?" And Job answers: "I know that Thou canst do everything."

And so there is a Reign of Law in the dew on the grass (Job 38, 28), and
in the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. The Universe is ruled by Mind.

Professor Koelliker (Leipsic) says in his work _"Ueber die Darwinsche
Schoepfungstheorie"_ (1904): "The development theory of Darwin is not
needed to enable us to understand the regular harmonious progress of the
complete series of organic forms from the simpler to the more perfect.
The existence of general laws of nature explains this harmony, even if
we assume that all beings have arisen separately and independent of one
another. Darwin forgets that inorganic nature, in which there can be no
thought of a genetic connection of forms," that one form of crystal, for
instance, arose out of another, "exhibits the same regular plan, as the
organic world (of plants and animals), and that, to cite only one
example, there is as much a natural system of minerals as of plants and
animals." We can go a step farther and say that there is system and
orderly design even in the position and movements of the stars,--which
certainly have not been evolved one from the other.

More marvellous still, we are permitted to believe that there is an
identity of plan connecting the arrangement of atoms in a molecule and
the position of the stars and planets. Dr. Charles Young, Professor of
Astronomy in Princeton College, says in his larger text-book upon his
special theme that "our planetary system (the sun and planets) is not a
mere accidental aggregation of bodies," that "there are a multitude of
relations actually observed which are wholly independent of gravitation."
In other words, in the position and motions of the planets there are
evidences of design which cannot be accounted for by natural law. We
shall point out an instance of such arrangement,--the progressive
distance of the planets from the sun, as first discovered by Titius of
Wittenberg, and later (in 1772) brought to the attention of the
scientific world, by Johann Bode, the celebrated German astronomer. It
is exhibited by writing a line of nine 4's and then placing regularly
increasing numbers under the several 4's, beginning with the second.
Thus 3, 6, 12, 24, 48, 96, 192, and 384, each increased by 4, will give
the resultant series, 4, 7, 10, 16, 28, 52, 100, 196, 388. These numbers
divided by 10 are approximately the true distance of the planets from
the sun in terms of the radius of the earth's orbit, with the exception
of Neptune. Hence there is, in the arrangmeent of the planets, as
orderly a system as we have noted with reference to the leaves on a
plant. Any rational man on earth, finding an orderly system of materials
arranged in such relation by such means, would instantly conclude that
it must be due to intelligence and not to mere chance.

Now, it is a remarkable fact that in the so-called Periodic Law of the
elements constituting matter the same relation is observed. Of the
eighty elements, no two now known have exactly the same capacity to
resist heat, and no two atoms of the same elements have the same weight
as compared with an atom of hydrogen. But these differences in
resistance to heat and in weight, are not haphazard, but are so
regularly progressive that they can be arranged in a series of regularly
progressive increasing intervals. Most marvellous of all, however, when
these differences in specific gravity are examined, we find that they
bear a close resemblance to the arrangement of the planets in
progressive distances from the sun. "There appears to be one law for
atoms and for worlds."

Again we ask, when there is such orderly arrangement and plan throughout
nature, should the orderly plan of plant and animal life be regarded as
a proof of evolution? Certainly, atoms have not evolved from atoms, nor
planets from planets.

And again, since omnipotence alone can account for the "sweet influences
of the Pleiades," the "bringing forth of Mazzaroth"--the constellations
of the heavens in their nightly revolutions,--why resist the conviction
that omnipotence, voiced forth in the beginning, accounts for the life
on earth that now exists?

One more consideration, and we have done. Life on earth exists only
through a combination of very complex physical conditions. These
conditions are such as cannot, in their combination, be referred to
chance, Fairhurst says, in his _"Organic Evolution Considered:"_ "The
simple substances which constitute the earth are of such kinds and are
found in such relative quantities as not only to render life possible,
but also to contribute to the well-being of man as an intelligent and
moral agent. I look upon the concurrence of all these things, according
to any theory of _chance,_ as being entirely impossible. The conditions
that must be fulfilled before living beings are possible are so complex
that _nothing short of the wisdom of a Supreme Intelligence could have
produced them."_ (cf. Rom. 1, 20.)

This view has found support in a most unexpected quarter. No less a
person than Alfred Russel Wallace, famed as the discoverer, independently
of Darwin, of the principle of Natural Selection, in his last book,
_"Man's Place in the Universe,"_ (1903) defended a position so subversive
of every cherished belief (or unbelief) of scientists that it easily
ranks as the greatest literary sensation, in the domain of natural
science, of the century. Wallace assembled all the latest astronomcial
[tr. note: sic] and other scientific discoveries and all knowledge
bearing on the subject announced in his title. He deduces therefrom the
theory:--First, that the earth or solar system is the physical center of
the stellar universe. Second, _that the supreme end and purpose of this
vast universe was the production and development of a living soul in the
perishable body of man._

"Modern skeptics," says Wallace, "in the light of accepted astronomical
theories (which regard our earth as uttterly insignificant compared with
the rest of the universe) have pointed out the irrationality and
absurdity of supposing that the Creator of all this unimaginable
vastness of suns and systems should have any special interest in so
pitiful a creature as man, an imperfectly developed inhabitant of one of
the smaller planets attached to a second or third rate sun, while that
He should have selected this little world for a scene so tremendous and
so necessarily unique as to sacrifice His own son in order to save a
portion of these miserable sinners from the natural consequences of sins,
is in their view a crowning absurdity, not to be believed by any rational
being."

We cannot follow Mr. Wallace's argument in detail. Suffice to say, that
he adduces a vast amount of data showing, first, that the universe is not
infinite, but has certain bounds, and that our earth and its system are
in the center of it, and, secondly, that the entire purpose of the
production of the universe is the human race. The earth, says Wallace, is
the only body capable of sustaining life. Life is not possible on any of
the planets, because they are either too close or too far distant from
the sun; some are probably composed of gas. He proves, on the basis of
accepted calculations, that of all the stars in the heavens there is not
even a remote probability that any are attended by bodies which can
provide the elements of life. Now, he says, this very peculiar position
of the earth cannot have been due to accident. He refuses to believe that
the earth should occupy this favored position "as the result of one out
of a thousand million chances."

"On the other hand," he says, "those thinkers may be right who, holding
that the universe is a manifestation of mind, and that the orderly
development of living souls supplies an adequate reason why such a
universe should have been called into existence, believe that we
ourselves are its sole and sufficient result and that nowhere else than
near the central position in the universe which we occupy could that
result have been attained."

This conclusion of Mr. Wallace has, indeed, not found acceptance among
scientists. Naturally not. If a materialistic conception of the universe
is to prevail, if evolution in some form is to be accepted, we must have
a universe of chance, not of a plan which spans the remotest star and
the soul of the new-born infant in one tremendous arc. But it is highly
instructive to observe how the scientists in 1903 met Wallace's argument.
One very distinguished reviewer said:

_"Too little is known,_ the most essential astronomical theories are too
much _a matter of conjecture,_ to give much strength to a theory built
up entirely of _such conjectural materials_. The argument from
_probabilities_ can easily be turned against the author, for when a
chain of reasoning depends upon _a long series of problematic premises,_
the doubt of these premises increases in a mathematical ratio. Weakness
in an argument is as cumulative as strength and while such of Dr.
Wallace's conclusions taken separately may receive the support of eminent
scientists, hardly any of them has received such demonstration as to
entitle it to unreserved credence."

This, at last, is a frank admission. Wallace quoted the generally
accepted results of scientific calculation and research. On the basis of
these results he demonstrates that the entire object of Evolution (to
demonstrate the development of all things by natural causes, without a
directing intelligence), is negatived by a proper consideration of
"ascertained data,"--since these data, taken all together, prove a
stupendous plan behind all natural phenomena, and the end of this plan,
the human soul. In rebuttal we are now told that "the most essential
astronomical theories"--as e.g. the Copernican System, Herschel's laws,
the Newtonian theory of gravitation,--"are matter of conjecture" (in
plain English, are blind guesses), are "problematic," and "hardly any
entitled to unreserved credence."

Thus do we find, that the greatest of Darwinians, on a mature
consideration of the subject, reached a conclusion which makes evolution
as a theory quite unnecessary; he found that the world is ruled not by
blind forces inherent in matter but by Supreme Intelligence. And in
their effort to keep themselves from being engulfed in the apostacy of a
great leader, the scientists, as by a unanimous chorus, announce that
the scientific dogmas which enter more or less essentially into their
atheistic conception of the universe, are nothing but surmises!

What reason has a Christian to surrender his faith on account of the
contradiction of scientists? He has the oracles of God, the sure Word of
Him Who created all things in six natural days. And if he but escape the
fascination of scientific speculations, and study the works of God
without bias, he will find in Nature nothing that does not agree with
the Book.


CHAPTER TWELVE.
The Fatal Bias.

If the theory of evolution is contradicted as we believe by the data of
experimental science, by the history of civilization, by the facts
especially of religion, more especially of Christianity, then the
question is justifiable: Why do scientists uphold the evolutionary
theory in some form or other, in spite of such absence of proof and such
insufficiency of the hypothesis?

In answering this question let us first observe that scientists do not
stand opposed to Christian belief _as representatives of science_. It is
not science, but the scientists, not geology, but the geologists, not
physics, but the physicists that oppose Christian theology. In other
words, there is no conflict between the _facts_ of science and the facts
of revelation. Why should one not be able to maintain Christian faith
though one accept the fact that the volume of expired air is one-fifth
less than inspired air; that plant substance is composed of cells; that
Halley's comet returns to our system every seventy five years; that
Sicily was part of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus? These
physiological, botanical, astronomical, and historical facts are not in
conflict with the religious beliefs based on Scripture. The same holds
good with reference to the so-called laws of nature. These "laws" are
but group-names for certain phenomena. Thus we speak of the law of
gravity, of the conservation of energy, the Laws of Charles and Mariotte
regarding gaseous bodies, zoological laws, physiological, and
psychological laws. A book which merely records and classifies these
laws and describes the phenomena underlying them, is a truly scientific
book, yet the acceptance of all that it contained would not force the
surrender of any point of Christian doctrine. Hence we say that there is
no contradiction between science and theology, between nature and
religion.

It is otherwise with the _constructions and the interpretations_ which
the scientists place upon the facts of science. For instance, there is
an evident similarity of structure in many animals; they are built on a
similar plan; their organs have similar or even identical functions.
These are simply facts ascertained by observation. Their acceptance does
not place any burden on Christian faith. But scientists interpret these
facts to mean that there is progressive development in animal and plant
life. They have found certain laws (Natural Selection and others) by
means of which they require only forces resident in matter to explain
the universe. On their hypothesis there is no necessity of miracles nor
need we believe in God. Observe, this is the result of speculation, not
observation; interpretation of facts, but not a conclusion drawn from
facts themselves. It is not science but scientists that are opposed to
the Christian religion.

This view is supported also by the reflection that the history of
speculative thought has ever revealed an anti-Christian intent and
purpose, a fatal bias of scientists and philosophers against the
teachings of Christianity. The modern anatomist and physiologist may
declare that his science precludes the necessity of faith in God and of
prayer; that through his research he has become a materialist, an
atheist. But even in the Middle Ages, when practically all of anatomy
and physiology was yet unexplored, the physicians of that day were as
materialistic as those of our own. The medieval saying was: "Tres
physici, duo athei," "of every three physicians, two are atheists." The
science of the Middle Ages differed very materially from the science of
our own day. Is it not clear that the same result cannot be produced by
causes so dissimilar? That materialism and atheism which scientists
announce as a result, is really the starting point of their speculations.
Otherwise, how account for the fact that physicists are, as a rule,
gross materialists now as they were forty years ago, although all
theories regarding the composition of matter have been radically altered
since that day? Evidently, the modern scientist is not on account of his
research and speculation induced to proclaim himself as agnostic; quite
the reverse, the fact that on _any_ system of physics, zoology,
psychology, the conclusions remain the same, proves that these
conclusions were in the mind before the facts were investigated.
Unbelief is not a product of scientific and philosophic speculation, it
is rather their origin and source. There is a settled purpose in
relation to which the facts are classified and interpreted. Not all
scientists are as honest as Huxley who announces this purpose in the
introduction of his _"Science and Hebrew Tradition:"_ "These essays are
for the most part intended to contribute to the process of destroying
the infallibility of Scripture."

Additional light is received from the observation that scientists adhere
to their agnostic conclusions even after the premises have been found at
fault, on which they based their conclusions. It is the end and aim of
evolution to demonstrate that all processes of life and the history of
living organisms may be accounted for without the assumption of a
personal Creator. Thus the very beginning of our universe is accounted
for (in the nebular hypothesis) by the origin of force and motion in
matter. However, President Lowell, of Harvard, twenty years ago said
that the nebular hyopthesis was "founded on a fundamental mistake."
(_"The Solar System,"_ p. 119.) Do we find that scientists, though
forced to surrender this prop, have given up atheistic evolution? By no
means. Evidently, their atheism is older than their evolution.

Fifty years ago it was thought that in the heavenly bodies called
nebulae the material of which the world was made had been discovered. It
was assumed that these nebulae were worlds in the process of formation.
In 1914 the scientists at Lick Observatory concluded, from the great
speed at which the nebulae traveled, that they are the _remains_ of
worlds which _have been_ or are passing, and are not the constituents
of worlds to be. This destroyed another supposition favoring the theory,
but we do not notice that scientists have become more friendly to
Christianity. Or consider the latest speculations on the composition of
matter as contained in the works of Lodge, Crookes, and Lord Kelvin. It
is now believed that matter is composed of electrical particles smaller
than atoms, called electrons. An atom of gold is said to consist of
137,200 electrons. Now, if one considers how closely physical theories
are bound up with the principle of evolution, should we not expect
scientists to renounce this principle when another stone in its
foundation has been destroyed? And since there is no such renunciation,
is it not plain that this class of scientists insists upon an atheistic
interpretation of the universe, no matter on what hypothesis? For the
slow increase of variations in plants and animals, by which Darwin
accounts for the origin of species, the evolutionists demanded more
than 400,000,000 years. But it is asserted on the strength of certain
calculations by physicists that the earth cannot possibly have existed
more than 40,000,000 years. This latter figure, based especially on the
calculations of Lord Kelvin, caused doubts to be raised regarding
evolution which prompted many scientists to renounce it as a working
theory. Rudimentary structures received attention, and as a result, St.
John Mivart says: "It is an absolute fad that there is no instance of
transmutation of species." Dr. Nathaniel S. Shaler, Professor of Geology
in Harvard, wrote: "It is not proved that a single species of the two or
three millions now on earth has been established by natural selection."
Thus the evolutionary philosopher is compelled to relinquish one theory
after another; the biologist knocks out the under-pinning, the
geologists and physicists demolish most of the residue; yet the
advocates of evolutionism adhere to their purpose to banish God from the
universe. In this we have conclusive proof that what evolutionists
pretend to find as the conclusion of their research, in reality was a
settled conviction in their minds before they commenced their
investigation, and to which, in their bias, they propose to hold fast,
no matter what happens to the evidence once announced as final.

The warfare of philosophy against Christian faith is readily explained.
Man is corrupt. He loves sin. He is conscious of his guilt and fears the
penalty. Hence every avenue of escape is welcome, if only he can
persuade himself that there is no God, that there is no judgment. Man is
proud, he desires no Savior. Hence the tendency to prove that no Savior
is necessary; that there is no guilt attaching to sin, that there is no
absolute right and wrong. Hence, too, the doctrine of the agnostic, that
we can ascribe no attribute to God. When we read the _"Synthetic
Philosophy"_ of Spencer, we are apt to belive [tr. note: sic] that the
agnosticism there set forth is the result of deep philosophic
speculation. Nothing further from the truth. Man, even cultured,
philosophic man, wants no restrictions placed upon pride and selfishness;
hence it is necessary to rid the mind of the fear of divine justice;
hence we have an interest in demonstrating that God "has no attributes"
--such as "just," for instance. The Psalmist describes this attitude:
"Let us break their bands asunder and cast away their cords from us."

No man who has grasped the inner motive of all scientific effort to
demolish faith can fail to understand why the rabble greets with such
jubilant acclaim every new attack upon the Biblical narrative. No man
who has pondered this motive can be ensnared in the net of science
falsely so called. He has seen its inwardness, its fatal bias.

Thus a Christian may preserve an attitude of mental balance over against
science. The Christian believer may admire the achievements of science
without being carried away by the speculations of scientists. Great is
the progress of modern medicine, so great, that even the past ten years
have witnessed great advances in treating disease. Chemistry has
developed greater marvels than was ever ascribed to the wizard's wand
by Oriental poets. What astounding performances in applied science--the
Panama Canal, the Hudson Tunnels, the development of the automobile and
of the airplane, and the perfection of the telephone and the moving
picture! We may exult in all these victories of mind over matter, and
yet stoutly oppose those theories which would make of the mind which
created all these marvels merely a development of the instincts of the
ape.

It is possible, even, to be a scientist and in no wise compromise one's
Christian faith and honesty of Christtian [tr. note: sic] profession.
Wherever men have contented themselves with purely scientific research,
with investigating and tabulating the phenomena of nature and
establishing the laws of life and motion in the universe, they have
found no difficulty in retaining a child-like faith. Among those
scientists of the first rank who, far from being forced to the
atheistic conclusion, recognized a wonderful harmony between science
and revelation, was a Kepler, who was led by meditations on the harmony
of theology with mathematics to follow those laborious calculations by
which he first established the orbit of Mars and then of other planets;
among them was a Newton, called by Justus Liebig "the most sublime
genius in a thousand years," who asserted that his entire system of
mechanics was untenable without the supposition of divine Power; a
Davy, prince of chemists, who "saw in all the forces of matter the
tools of Divinity;" a Linne, called by Prof. Fraas the "greatest
naturalist of all times," who commences his "System of Nature" thus:
"Awakening I saw God, the Eternal, the Infinite, the Omniscient, the
Omnipotent, and I was amazed. I read some of His traces in creation.
What unspeakable perfection!" We find in the roster of scientists who
believed in an inspired Bible and a divine Savior, such men as Hans
Christian Oerstedt, the great discoverer of electro-magnetism and the
father of all modern electrical science, who declared that he "had but
a desire to lead men to God by his books;" Lavoisier, father of modern
chemistry, a Christian; Maedler, who reached the front rank of modern
astronomers without relinquishing his childhood faith and who said: "A
real scientist cannot be an infidel;" Ritter, greatest of geographers,
who said: "All the world is replete with the glory of the Creator;"
Virchow, the surgeon of worldwide fame, who all his life was an
outspoken opponent of the evolutionary theory and whose last prayer,
uttered in the presence of his fellow-scientists, was: _"Christi Blut
und Gerechtigkeit . . . ."_

Speaking of the triumphant Redeemer the Lord says Isa. 53: "I will
divide Him a portion with the great and He shall divide the spoil with
the strong. The kings of the earth shall serve Him." The prophecy was
fulfilled when kings not only on material thrones but kings in the world
of intellect and giants of learning have paid homage to the God-man
Jesus Christ. Throughout the record of modern science and erudition
there are shining examples of the truth that great mental power and
profound research are not incompatible with humble acceptance of Bible
teachings. The spiritual blindness of natural man, his intellectual
pride, and the depravity of his will account for the attitude of many
scientists over against the facts of revelation. From the shifting
quicksand of their speculation we may rise unharmed on the pinions of a
faith guided by the principle: "It is written."



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