Chapter 12. The Fatal Bias…141 (continued 2)

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."