Note 45-* — CONCLUSION

We might just as well acknowledge, once for all, that in spite of its present-day currency in England and America, and its pre-emption of the field of “science for the people,” the theory of man’s physical and mental descent from the anthropoids, is not only not proved, but is vehemently denied by an equally able and scientific, and withal more logical, body of researchers than those who form its supporters. To fabricate a missing link in a chain (or even, as with Haeckel, several links), whose only authority is acknowledged to be its necessity in order to complete the evidence for the theory, and then to declare the theory proved because the fabricated link fits perfectly the gap it was created for, is equally vicious scientifically whether the fabrication be the work of a physicist of renown or a linguistic theorizer. Let it simply be agreed, as it now is by all science, that the evolution of form is a universal and well evidenced principle, working out through the various well established and comprehensible incidents, such as natural selection, adaptation to environment, and so on—yet this statement of the fact is not an explanation of its cause. And every scientific and logical requirement will be equally, and better, met by regarding all forms, whether physical, linguistic, or of any kind, as coming, or rather brought, into being by the force of a consciousness which needs them as the vehicles of its expanding activity. That this is absolutely true in language, anybody can see. That it is true in every department of daily life about us, everybody does see. That it should be equally true in biology and physics, would not affect the standing or verity of a single observed fact.