A critical reader of the works of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, Haeckel,
Romanes, Weismann, Mivart, Cope and other writers, on organic
evolution, will find that there is much diversity in the views of
these writers. Darwin believes that the first one, or the first few,
animals and plants were directly and specially made by the Creator;
Haeckel says the primordial forms arose “by spontaneous generation from
inorganic matter.” Referring to the origin of life, Romanes says that
“science is not in a position to furnish so much as suggestion upon the
subject.” Neither Huxley, Weismann, Mivart nor Cape has anything to say
on the origin of life. No two of these writers agree as to the work of
the “factors” of evolution. According to Darwin, Romanes and Weismann,
natural selection did substantially the entire work of evolving all the
species of animal and plant. But Cope, and other evolutionists of the
Lamarckian school, hold that use, disuse, pressure, friction and motion
did it.
Weismann argues that the inheritance of “acquired characters” is
impossible; while Spencer, Romanes and other evolutionists say that
Weismann’s views are highly absurd and would entirely destroy the
theory of evolution; and I think they are correct in this view. There
are many evolutionists for and against Weismann’s theory of heredity.
Writers on evolution differ as widely on other important questions, as
on these.
Many of the theories of the evolutionists are quite absurd. Among
these may be mentioned the theory of “protective mimicry” and “sexual
selection.” So their belief that the blind “factors,” working by chance
and accident, have differentiated one part of a minute individual into
a set of male sexual organs, and another part of the same individual
into a set of female sexual organs, as in hermaphroditic animals and
plants, appears to be quite preposterous. So it is impossible to
believe these “factors” have differentiated one-half of the individuals
of each species of mammal into males and the other half into females,
for example into men and women. If time and space permitted me, I
could easily point out divers other absurdities in the views of the
evolutionists.
To be consistent, every evolutionist must maintain that characters,
acquired by the parent, are transmitted by heredity to their offspring;
for the whole theory of evolution is based on the hypothesis of
accumulated “adaptations and variations.” Thus, suppose a pair of
snakes have ten vertebræ (joints) in their spinal columns; that each
of them acquires one, making eleven; that their offspring start with
eleven and acquire one, and so on until the ninetieth generation, which
would have a hundred vertebræ. Such a thing might happen, according to
the evolutionist; but I do not believe any such thing ever did happen.
But no evolutionist has ever shown how or why the offspring happen
to resemble one or both of their parents. In brief, the mechanism of
heredity is wholly unknown. The evolutionist tells us that “heredity
and adaptation” have evolved all the species of animal and plant.
Having done this, he appears to think that he has explained all the
phenomena of reproduction, heredity and life. But his solution of the
vital equation contains an unknown quantity, namely: “heredity;” and it
is, therefore, no solution at all.
The evolutionist and materialist maintain that the blind unthinking
atoms and cells, of which the embryo body is made, do, spontaneously
and automatically, without the aid or guidance of any extraneous,
psychic or creative force, group themselves into the chemical
combinations and mechanical arrangements, which are necessary to build
up the embryo body with all its organs and parts--its brain, eyes,
ears, heart, lungs, etc. This is the most preposterous of all their
propositions.