millions of years ago there appeared a nebulous mass possessing a rotary
motion, and unequally distributed through space. This is what science
calls a beginning, and may assert that every physical event of a hundred
million of ages existed potentially in that nebulous mass. But this is
really no explanation of the ultimate and real cause of anything. Reason
demands the cause of this beginning, the source that gave to the
nebulous mass its rotary motion; the power that distributed the matter
in space; the antecedents of the cosmical vapor. In absence of
antecedents, what was the cause of this fire-mist--of these forces
active in it? Reason will never remain satisfied until these questions
are answered. But physical science can trace the thread no further back,
and must be dumb to all ulterior inquiries. It is true, then, as
physicists assert, "that their science does not mount actually to God."
[Illustration: FIG. I.--Represents Man-like Apes (Anthropoides). The
Male Gorilla. (Natural History, by _Duncan_.)]
[Illustration: FIG. II.--Represents Ape-like Men (Pithecanthropi).
Imaginative. (From Scientific American.)]
[Illustration: FIG. III.--Men (Homines). From Woolly-haired Men
developed the Papuans. (Scientific American, March 11, 1876.)]
[Illustration: FIG. I.--The Monkey Men of Dourga Strait. (Natural
History, by _Rev. Dr. Wood_.)]
To God then, in strict accordance with our reason, is to be attributed
not only the origination of matter, but all its future developments.
When I speak of matter, it must be understood that I mean force;
for "if matter were not force, and immediately known as force, it could
not be known at all, could not be rationally inferred. The operation of
force could furnish no evidence of the existence of forceless matter. If
force is not matter, then force can exist and operate without matter;
its existence and operation are no evidence of the existence of matter.
And as matter is forceless, it can itself give no evidence of its own
existence, for that would be an exercise of force. If force cannot exist
and operate without matter, then force depends for its existence and
operation on the forceless, which destroys itself; or force depends for
its existence on matter as some property or force, and so matter and
force are identified, and force depends on itself only, as it must."[30]
The idea, then, that force is an attribute of matter and inherent in it,
is absurd, for there is not a shadow of evidence that force is or can be
an attribute of matter. We have no knowledge of the origin of any force
save of that which emanates from human volition. All our knowledge of
force presents it as an effort of intelligent will. "We are driven,"
says Winchell, "by the necessary laws of thought, to pronounce those
energies styled gravitation, heat, chemical affinity and their
correlates, nothing less than intelligent will. But as it is not human
will which energizes in whirlwind and the comet, it must be divine
will." "In all cases, the creative power of God is an act of power, and
the power does not perish with its inception, but continues to operate
until the act is reversed and undone; so that everything that God has
created constitutes a positive and intrinsic force, though borrowed from
Him. Every incident runs back to God as its originator and real cause.
The true philosophical doctrine makes God distinct from all his works,
and yet acting in them. This doctrine has been held by the greatest
thinkers the world has ever produced, such as Descartes, Lerbrisky,
Berkeley, Herschel, Faraday, and a multitude of others." "It seems to be
required," says Dr. McCosh, "by that deep law of causation which not
only prompts us to seek for a law in everything but an adequate cause,
to be found only in an intelligent mind." "Our greatest American
thinker, Jonathan Edwards," says Dr. McCosh, (whom I can claim as my
predecessor,) "maintains that, as an image in a mirror is kept up by a
constant succession of rays of light, so nature is sustained by a
constant forth-putting of the divine power. In this view Nature is a
perpetual creation. God is to be seen not only in creation at first, but
in the continuance of all things." "They continue to this day according
to Thine ordinances."
Returning now to the history of the creation given by Moses, Haeckel
says, "Although Moses looks upon the results of the great laws of
organic development as the direct actions of a constructing Creator, yet
in his theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive
development and a differentiation of the originally simple matter. We
can therefore bestow our just and sincere admiration on the Jewish
lawgiver's grand insight into nature, without discovering in it a
so-called 'divine revelation.' That it cannot be such is clear from the
fact that two great fundamental errors are asserted in it, namely, first
the _geocentric_ error, that the earth is the fixed central point of the
whole universe, round which the sun, moon and stars move; and secondly,
the _anthropocentric_ error that man is the premeditated aim of the
creation of the world, for whose service alone all the rest of nature is
said to have been created. The former of these errors was demolished by
Copernicus' System of the Universe in the beginning of the sixteenth
century, the latter by Lamarck's Doctrine of Descent in the beginning of
the nineteenth century."
[Illustration: FIG. I.--Australian Savage.--_Orton._]
[Illustration: FIG. II.--Skull of Orang-utan (Simia satyrus).--_Orton._]
[Illustration: FIG. III.--Skull of Chimpanzee (Troglodytes niger).]
[Illustration: FIG. IV.--Skull of Gorilla.--_Duncan._]
[Illustration: FIG. V.--Skull of European.]
[Illustration: FIG. VI.--Skull of Negro.--_Orton._]
Prof. Huxley, in his lecture on "Evidences of Evolution," spoke of the
Mosaic account as Milton's hypothesis. First, "because," says Huxley,
"we are now assured upon the authority of the highest critics, and even
of dignitaries of the church, that there is no evidence whatever that
Moses ever wrote this chapter, or knew anything about it;" and second,
as this hypothesis is presented in Milton's work on "Paradise Lost," it
is appropriate to call it the Miltonic Hypothesis. "In the Miltonic
account," says Huxley, "the order in which animals should have made
their appearance in the stratified rocks would be this: Fishes,
including the great whale, and birds; after that all the varieties of
terrestrial animals. Nothing could be further from the facts as we find
them. As a matter of fact we know of not the slightest evidence of the
existence of birds before the jurassic and perhaps the triassic
formations. If there were any parallel between the Miltonic account and
the circumstantial evidence, we ought to have abundant evidence in the
devonian, the silurian, and carboniferous rocks. I need not tell you
that this is not the case, and that not a trace of birds makes its
appearance until the far later period which I have mentioned. And again,
if it be true that all varieties of fishes, and the great whales and the
like, made their appearance on the fifth day, then we ought to find the
remains of these things in the older rocks--in those which preceded the
carboniferous epoch. Fishes, it is true, we find, and numerous ones; but
the great whales are absent, and the fishes are not such as now live.
Not one solitary species of fish now in existence is to be found there,
and hence you are introduced again to the difficulty, to the dilemma,
that either the creatures that were created then, which came into
existence the sixth day, were not those which are found at present, or
are not the direct and immediate predecessors of those which now exist;
but in that case you must either have had a fresh species of which
nothing has been said, or else the whole story must be given up as
absolutely devoid of any circumstantial evidence."
It is for these and many other reasons that I feel bound to omit the
Mosaic account, no matter how near some portions of it coincide with the
facts the earth has opened out to the scientist.
KANT'S COSMOGONY.
It is maintained by Kant's Cosmogony that every substance, be it solid
or liquid, constituting the entire universe, was, inconceivable ages
ago, in their homogeneous gaseous or nebulous condition. Owing to an
impulse being given to the nebulous mass, it acquired a rotary movement,
which divided the nebulous mass up into a number of masses which, owing
to the rotation, acquired greater density than the remaining gaseous
mass, and then acted on the latter as central points of attraction. Our
solar system was thus a gigantic gaseous or nebulous ball, all the
particles of which revolved around a common central point--the solar
nucleus. This nebulous ball assumed by its continual rotation a more or
less flattened spheroidal form. By the continual revolution of this
mass, under the influence of the centripetal and centrifugal forces, a
circular nebular ring separated (like the present ring around Saturn)
from the rotating ball. In time the nebulous ring condensed to a planet,
which began to revolve around its own axis. When the centrifugal force
became more powerful than the centripetal force in the planet, rings
were formed, which, in turn, formed planets which revolved around their
axes, as also around their planets, as the latter moved around the sun,
and thus arose the moons, only one of which moves around our earth,
while four move around Jupiter and six around Uranus. This order of
things was repeated over and over again until thereby arose the
different solar systems--the planets rotating around their central suns,
and the satellites or moons moving around their planets. By a continuous
increasing of refrigeration and condensation, a fiery fluid or molten
state occurred in these rotating bodies. They then emitted an enormous
amount of heat by rapid condensation, and the rotating bodies--suns,
planets, and moons--soon became glowing balls of fire, emitting light
and heat. The 1/1000 part of a pound of magnesium wire, burning in the
open air, will give a light which will last during one second, and can
be seen at a distance of thirty miles; imagine, then, what the light
would be from these huge balls of fire floating through space. The earth
forms a small part--nay, even the sun whose mass is equal to 354,936
earths like ours, is but an infinitesimal portion of the whole. By the
continual emitting of heat, however, these fiery balls had a crust form
on the outside, which enclosed a fiery fluid nucleus. The crust for a
time must have been a smooth sheet, but afterward very uneven, having
protuberances and cavities form over its surface, owing to the molten
mass within becoming condensed and contracted; the crust not following
this change sufficiently close, must have fallen in, and thus produced
the cavities.
[Illustration: Mongolian.]
[Illustration: Malay.]
[Illustration: Ethiopian.]
[Illustration: American Indian.]
[Illustration: FACIAL ANGLE, by _Prof. Nelson Sizer_. 1, Snake; 2, Dog;
3, Elephant; 4, Ape; 5, Human Idiot; 6, The Bushman; 7, The
Uncultivated; 8, The Improved; 9, The Civilized; 10, The Enlightened;
11, The Caucasian (highest type).]
[Illustration: Caucasian (after _Van Evrie_).]
[Illustration: Head of Nose-Ape (after _Brehm_).]
[Illustration: Julia Pastrana (Photographed by _Hintye_).]
[Illustration: Living Idiot (on Blackwell's Island).]
All the time, by the condensation, the diameter of the earth was being
diminished. The irregular cooling of the crust caused irregular
contractions on the surface, and as the diameter of the molten mass
within was continually diminishing, many elevations and depressions were
caused, which were the foundations of mountains and valleys.
After the temperature of the earth had been reduced by the thickening of
the crust--when it became sufficiently cool--the water which existed in
steam was condensed and precipitated, falling in torrents, washing down
the elevations, filling the depressions with the mud carried along, and
depositing it in layers. It was not until the earth became covered with
water that life was possible in any form, as both animals and plants
consist to a very great extent of water. At this stage in the history of
the earth, then, the little mass of protoplasm, which we have spoken so
much about, came into existence in all probability, as has been stated,
by spontaneous generation.
LAWS OF EVOLUTION.
Let us now examine some of the laws of evolution, as also some of the
connecting links which blend one stage of man's development with
another, which at first thought would seem unexplainable.
Haeckel[31] summarizes the inductive evidences of Darwinism as follows:
1. Paleontological series (phylogeny); 2. Embryological development of
the individual (ontogeny); 3. The correspondence in the terms of these
two series; 4. Comparative anatomy (typical forms and structures); 5.
Correspondence between comparative anatomy and ontogeny; 6. Rudimentary
organs (dipeliology); 7. The natural system of organisms (classification);
8. Geographical distribution (chorology); 9. Adaptation to the environment
(oecology); 10. The unity of biological phenomena.
It will of course be impossible to consider even hastily all of the
inductive evidence belonging to the several groups mentioned above, for
the scope of this work would not permit of it. Only such facts as
present themselves most forcibly to the mind will be considered.
Darwinism, as has already been stated, is not the doctrine of evolution;
it is, however, a successful attempt to explain the law or manner of
evolution. The _law of natural selection_, pointed out by Darwin, is
called by Herbert Spencer, _The struggle for existence_. Darwin
discovered that natural selection produces fitness between organisms and
their circumstances, which explains the law of _the survival of the
fittest_.
It is a well-known fact that man can, by pursuing a certain method of
breeding or cultivation, improve and in various ways modify the
character of the different domestic animals and plants. By always
selecting the best specimen from which to propagate the race, those
features which it is desired to perpetuate become more and more
developed; so that what are admitted to be real varieties sometimes
acquire, in the course of successive generations, a character as
strikingly distinct, to all appearances, from those of the varieties, as
one species is from another species of the same genus. It is evident
that both natural and artificial selection depends on adaptation and
inheritance. The difference between the two forms of selection is that,
in the first case, the will of man makes the selection according to a
plan, whereas in natural selection the struggle for life and the
survival of the fittest acts without a plan other than that the most
adaptable organism shall survive which is most fit to contend with the
circumstances under which it is placed. Natural selection acts,
therefore, much more slowly than artificial selection, although it
brings about the same end. Adaptation in the struggle for life is an
absolute necessity.
In every act of breeding, a certain amount of protoplasm is transferred
from the parents to the child, and along with it there is transferred
the individual peculiar molecular motion. Adaptation or transmutation
depends upon the material influence which organism experiences from its
surroundings, or its conditions of existence; while the transmission
from inheritance is due to the partial identity of producing and
produced organisms.
Organized beings, as a rule, are gifted with enormous powers of
increase. Wild plants yield their crop of seed annually, and most wild
animals bring forth their young yearly or oftener. Should this process
go on unchecked, in a short time the earth would be completely overrun
with living beings. It has been calculated that if a plant produces
fifty seeds (which is far below the reproductive capacity of many
plants) the first year, each of these seeds growing up into a plant
which produces fifty seeds, or altogether two thousand five hundred
seeds the next year, and so on, it would under favorable conditions of
growth give rise in nine years to more plants by five hundred trillions
than there are square feet of dry land upon the surface of the earth.
Slow-breeding man has been known to double his number in twenty-five
years, and according to Euler, this might occur in little over twelve
years. But assuming the former rate of increase, and taking the
population of the United States at only thirty millions, in six hundred
and eighty-five years their living progeny would have each but a square
foot to stand upon, were they spread over the entire globe, land and
water included. But millions of species are doing the same thing, so
that the inevitable result of this strife cannot be a matter of chance.
Evidently those individuals or varieties having some advantage over
their competitors will stand the best chance to live, while those
destitute of these advantages will be liable to destruction. Nature may
be said (metaphorically) to choose (like the will of man in artificial
selection) which shall be preserved and which destroyed.
That portion of the theory of development which maintains the common
descent of all species of animals and plants from the simplest common
origin, I have already stated with full justice should be called
Lamarckism. Progress is recognized by all scientists to be a law of
nature. Some of the more important facts which sustain the theory of
development, I propose now to present as briefly as possible.
RUDIMENTARY ORGANS.
One of the strongest arguments in favor of the hypothesis of a genetic
connection among all animals (including man), at least among all those
belonging to the same great types, is the presence of rudimentary parts.
By rudiments in anatomy are meant organs or structures imperfectly
developed, so as to be almost or entirely without functional use. "Each
of them represents in germ, as it were, in one animal (or plant), that
which is perfect and useful in another type."
For a few examples: The little fold of caruncle at the inner margin of
the eye in man, represents the nictitating membrane of birds. Eyes which
do not see form a striking example. These are found in very many animals
which live in the dark, as in caves or underground. Their eyes are often
perfectly developed but are covered by a membrane, so that no ray of
light can enter and they can never see. Such eyes, without the function
of sight, are found in several species of moles and mice which live
underground, in serpents and lizards, in amphibious animals (proteus,
cæcilia) and in fishes; also in numerous invertebrate animals which pass
their lives in the dark, as do many beetles, crabs, snails, worms, etc.
Other rudimentary organs are the wings of animals which cannot fly. For
example, the wings of the running birds, like the ostrich, emeu,
cassowary, etc., the legs of which become exceedingly developed. The
muscles which move the ears of animals are still present in man, but of
course are of no use; by continual practice persons have been able to
move their ears by these muscles. The rudiment of the tail of animals
which man possesses in his 3-5 tail vertebræ, is another rudimentary
part--in the human embryo it stands out prominently during the first two
months of its development; it afterwards becomes hidden. "The
rudimentary little tail of man is irrefutable proof that he is descended
from tailed ancestors." In woman the tail is generally, by one vertebra,
longer than in man. There still exists rudimentary muscles in the human
tail which formerly moved it.
Another case of human rudimentary organs, only belonging to the male,
and which obtains in like manner in all mammals, is furnished by the
mammary glands on the breast, which, as a rule, are active only in the
female sex. However, cases of different mammals are known, especially of
men, sheep and goats, in which the mammary glands were fully developed
in the male sex, and yield milk as food for their offspring. The
vermiform appendix of the large intestine in man, is another
illustration of a part which has no use, but in one marsupial is three
times the length of its body. The rudimentary covering of hair over
certain portions of the body, is not without interest. Over the body we
find but a scanty covering, which is thick only on the head, in the
armpits, and on some other parts of the body. The short hairs on the
greater part of the body are entirely useless, and are the last scanty
remains of the hairy covering of our ape ancestors. Both on the upper
and lower arm the hairs are directed toward the elbow, where they meet
at an obtuse angle--this striking arrangement is only found in man and
the anthropoid apes, the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and several species
of gibbons. The fine short hairs on the body become developed into
"thickset, long, and rather coarse dark hairs," when abnormally
nourished near old-standing inflamed surfaces.[32] The fine wool-like
hair or so-called lanugo with which the human foetus, during the fifth
and sixth months, is thickly covered, offers another proof that man
is descended from an animal which was born hairy, and remained so during
life. This covering is first developed during the fifth month, on the
eyebrows and face, and especially around the mouth, where it is much
longer than that on the head. Three or four cases have been recorded of
persons born with their whole bodies and faces thickly covered with fine
long hairs. Prof. Alex. Brandt compared the hair from the face of a man
thus characterized, aged thirty-five, with the lanugo of a foetus, and
finds it quite similar in texture. Eschricht[33] has devoted great
attention to this rudimentary covering, and has thrown much light on the
subject. He showed that the female as well as the male foetus
possessed this hairy covering, showing that both are descended from
progenitors, both sexes of whom were hairy. Eschricht also showed, as
stated above, that the hair on the face of the fifth month foetus is
longer on the face than on the head, which indicates that our semi-human
progenitors were not furnished with long tresses, which must therefore
have been a late acquisition. The question naturally arises, is there
any explanation for the loss of hair covering?
[Illustration: FIG. I.--The Hairy-Faced Burmese Family. (From Scientific
American, Feb. 20, 1875.)]
Darwin is of the opinion that the absence of hair on the body is, to a
certain extent, a secondary sexual character; for, in all parts of the
world, women are less hairy than men. He says: "Therefore we may
reasonably suspect that this character has been gained through sexual
selection." As the body in woman is less hairy than in man, and as this
character is common to all races, we may conclude that it was our female
semi-human ancestors who were first divested of hair.
Professor Grant Allen[34] has given much study to the subject of the
loss of hair in the human being; and his investigations are worthy of
careful consideration. He shows conclusively that those parts of an
animal which are in constant contact with other objects are specially
liable to lose their hair. This is noticeable on the under surface of
the body of all animals which habitually lie on the stomach. The soles
of the feet of all mammals where they touch the ground are quite
hairless; the palms of the hands in the quadrumana present the same
appearance. The knees of those species which frequently kneel, such as
camels and other ruminants, are apt to become bare and hard-skinned. The
friction of the water has been the means of removing the hair from many
aquatic mammals--the whales, porpoises, dugongs, and manatees are
examples.