THEY FIRST WISH IT TO BE SO, THEN SOON, WITHOUT PROOF, THEY ASSERT THAT
IT IS SO!
(_From the Cincinnati Gazette, of June 26, 1880._)
"Prof. Huxley is assured that the doctrine of evolution, so far as the
animal world is concerned, is no longer a speculation, but a statement
of historical fact, taking its place along side of those accepted truths
which must be taken into account by philosophers of all schools."
This statement was the summing up of an address delivered at the Royal
Institution on the 19th of March. The address was specifically an
account of "The Coming of Age of the Origin of Species"--it being nearly
twenty-one years since Darwin's work bearing that name was first
published.
The lecturer glanced at the general replacement of the catastrophic
theory of geology by the uniformitarian hypothesis, claimed that many of
the most important breaks in the line of the descent of plants and
animals had been filled, noticed the great advance made in the science
of embryology, and held that the amount of our knowledge respecting the
mammalia of the Tertiary epoch had increased fifty-fold since Darwin's
work appeared, and in some directions even approaches completeness. The
lecture closed with these words: "Thus when, on the first of October
next, 'The Origin of Species' comes of age, the promise of its youth
will be amply fulfilled and we shall be prepared to congratulate the
venerated author of the book, not only that the greatness of his
achievement and its enduring influence upon the progress of knowledge
have won him a place beside Harvey, but, still more, that, like Harvey,
he has lived long enough to outlast detraction and opposition, and to
see the stone that the builders rejected become the head-stone of the
corner."
This is plain and emphatic speaking, but it has not been suffered to
pass unchallenged.
Dr. Charles Elam, a writer who has already more than once measured
swords with the school of naturalists of which Professor Huxley is a
foremost champion, has been moved to respond to this latest utterance.
He has contributed to the _Contemporary Review_ a paper entitled "The
Gospel of Evolution," which, whatever may be its conclusiveness, is one
of the sharpest attacks recently sustained by the opposing party.
Acknowledging at the start Mr. Darwin's pre-eminence as a naturalist,
and Prof. Huxley's equal accomplishments in the department of biology,
he yet ventures to continue his doubt regarding the evidence of their
peculiar doctrines. He first cites Darwin's admissions that it would be
fatal to his theory if any organs existed which could not have been
evolved by minute selective modifications, and his further concession
that "man, as well as every other animal, presents structures which, as
far as we can judge, are not now of any service to him, nor have been so
during any former part of his existence. Such structures can not be
accounted for by any form of selection or by the inherited effects of
the use and disuse of parts."
Having contrasted Darwinism proper with its exaggerations, in the system
of Haeckel, who regards Darwin's admissions of an original creation as
contemptible, and recognizes only one force in the universe--the
mechanical, Dr. Elam compares Huxley's statement in his American
addresses that belief which is not based upon evidence is not only
illogical but immoral, with his last assertion that evolution is a fact,
doubted only by persons "who have not reached the stage of emergence
from ignorance." In 1862 Huxley also said--republishing the statements
as late as 1874:
"Obviously, if the earliest fossiliferous rocks now known are coeval
with the commencement of life, and if their contents give us any just
conception of the nature and the extent of the earliest fauna and flora,
the insignificant amount of modification which can be demonstrated to
have taken place in any one group of animals or plants is quite
incompatible with the hypothesis that all living forms are the results
of a necessary process of a progressive development, entirely comprised
within the time represented by the fossiliferous rocks."
Since this confession was uttered, whatever discoveries may have been
made, there has not been the faintest indication of the development of
any new species by artificial selection, the individuals of which are
fertile among themselves and infertile with the parent stock. It may
properly be alleged that there has not been time enough for such a slow
process, but it yet remains as true as ever that there is no direct
evidence in nature of what the Darwinians call _favorable variation_. It
is the unwritten law of nature that one race must die that another may
live, this other, in its turn, subserving the same end. Without this law
nature would be a chaotic impossibility. If natural selection were a
real agency, we ought to meet with frequent, if not constant, evidences
of transition, and a slow and gradual, but perceptible improvement in
species, especially marked in those whose generations succeed each other
rapidly. But we see nothing of the kind. But did selection really exist,
it would be incompetent to account for a multitude of structures and
functions to which any efficient cause should be applicable, notably to
the earliest rudiments of useful organs. Such organs as the eye and the
internal ear are quite out of reach of any explanation by natural
selection. Since the development of the eyes, due to the simultaneous
growth of parts from within and without, the organ itself would be
absolutely useless until it had attained such a degree of development as
to admit of these separate parts meeting, and so the principle of
preserving any useful variety would be quite inapplicable. The same is
true of the internal ear.
Dr. Elam next passes in review Haeckel's Geneology of Man from the
Lowest Monera to his Present Station as Lord of Creation. What the
Germans call invention of species to fill troublesome gaps is
illustrated in many ways, but we have room only for a single example:
"The vertebrata must be developed from something, and as yet there has
been no smallest indication of anything like a spine or a rudiment of
anything that could represent or be converted into one. It costs our
author nothing but a stroke of his pen to invent the 'Chordonia,' and
whence did they come? They were developed from the worms by the
formation of a spinal marrow and a _chorda dorsulis_. Nothing more--the
most trifling modification!--and we are at once provided with the root
and stem of the whole vertebrata divisions. It is scarcely any drawback
to this stroke of genius to say that there is no evidence whatever that
such an order of living beings ever existed; that no one has the least
conception of what they were like, or of any of their attributes. Prof.
Huxley's responsibility for this imaginative science is evidenced by his
declaration that the conception of geological time is the only point
upon which he fundamentally and entirely disagrees with Haeckel."
It still remains true that all our positive and direct knowledge as to
species contradicts the evolution hypothesis. Its evidence is purely
inferential, and, as Dr. Elam quietly says, "As a psychological study it
is interesting to observe how many things are deemed impossible to the
infinite wisdom and power (which by the terms of the supposition,
presided over the arrangements of our world) which are perfectly clear
and comprehensible when considered as the result of blind chance and the
operation of mechanical causes only." Omitting for lack of space his
keen analysis of Huxley's claim of the evidence of evolution from the
orchippus to the modern horse, we follow our author from his array of
what is not proved to what is actually taught by geology. We quote:
"THE SUCCESSION OF FORMS OF LIFE ON OUR GLOBE IS DEMONSTRABLY NOT SUCH
AS OUGHT TO BE THE CASE ON THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION." It was not the small
and feeble species or most generalized forms that first appeared,
either among mollusks, fish, reptiles or mammalia. We look in vain now
for the representatives of the gigantic fishes of the Old Red Sandstone.
And where are the mighty reptile tyrants of air, earth and water of the
Oolite? * * * These races appeared in the plenitude of their development
and power; and, as their dynasty grew old, it was not that the race was
improved or preserved in consequence, but they dwindled, and were, so to
speak, degraded, as if to make room in the economy of nature for their
successors.
Next follows a closely linked argument that will not bear abridgement,
showing the physical improbability that man, a walking animal, was
descended from a climbing one, and the deplorable consequences which
obliterate free will and necessitate the secularization of morals, as
elaborated by Prof. Huxley's friend, Mr. Herbert Spencer. This part of
the subject has a special interest to Americans, since the work in which
Mr. Spencer's views are inculcated has been introduced as a manual in
one of our oldest colleges, but its reproduction would widely lengthen
our article. It is sufficient to say that Dr. Elam concludes that Mr.
Spencer's doctrine, that "actions are completely right only when,
besides being conducive to future happiness, they are immediately
pleasurable," would justify him in concealing any injury done by him to
a friend's scientific apparatus, provided he could attribute it to the
weather, or the intrusion of a dog.
Such, in brief, are the points of an essay which, as a whole, is one of
the most brilliant responses that the declarations of leading
evolutionists have called forth. Of course, all its points are not new,
but old objections have been skillfully refurbished and new ones brought
into play.
* * * * *
To mourn for the dead, is to mourn for the lost casket when you still
retain the jewel it held. The memories of the dead one's virtues are the
jewels, and the cold clay but the casket.