Dawson speaks of the nearly entire human skeleton described by Quatrefages from the Lower Pliocene beds of Castelnedolo, near Brescia, and only answers it with a sarcastic remark about the well developed skull of this ancient man.
"Unfortunately the skull of the only perfect skeleton is said to have been of fair proportions and superior to those of the ruder types of post-Glacial men. This has cast a shade of suspicion on the discovery, especially on the part of evolutionists, who think it is not in accordance with theory that man should retrograde between the Pliocene and the early modern period instead of advancing."[89]
Lastly, we have the following about the Miocene:
"There are, however, in France two localities (Puy, Courney and Thenay), one in the Upper and the other in the Middle Miocene, which have afforded what are supposed to be worked flints."
He adds that "The geological age of the deposits seems in both cases beyond question;" but contents himself with a derisive answer about these chipped flints being possibly "the handiwork of Miocene apes."
This language, coming from such a source, would seem as good evidence as is needed to prove that Man was contemporary with, and that his remains are now found among the fossils of the Middle Miocene. For it must be remembered that these are reluctant admissions drawn from this illustrious scientist, who was one of the last champions of the old ideas about the "recent" origin of Man. As Pres. Asa Mahan of Cornell has said, "Admissions in favor of truth from the ranks of its enemies constitute the highest kind of evidence." At any rate, I shall treat this point as already proved, for whether this particular instance is accepted or not, practically all modern writers admit the fact of "Middle Tertiary Man."
I have already alluded to the recently discovered paintings on the cave walls of Southern France, where reindeer, aurochs, horses and mammoths have been reproduced with striking accuracy and skill, and of such an age that they have in places been covered by stalactites over two inches in thickness. The Marquis De Nadaillac,[90] who has given the best description of these interesting antiquities that I have been able to see, remarks that "the drawing is wonderful," and that "we are justly astonished to find such artistic performances in times so distant from ours, and in which we did not suppose a like civilization."
I have not seen the geological date to which these remains have been assigned, but doubtless it is the very "latest" part of the Pleistocene—they show far too high a development for "Miocene" or even "Pliocene times." But I should like to be shown some good and sufficient reason for saying that these men are not just as likely to have been contemporary with the Middle Tertiary fauna and flora as any others. Some men were as commonly admitted. And in the name of sacred common sense, if the human period is thus elastic enough to stretch out over the Pleistocene, the Pliocene, and clear back to the "Middle Miocene," why can't we do the same for all of man's strange companions, the mammoth and the Cape hyena, the reindeer and the hippopotamus, the lion and the musk-ox, etc.? The usual sneers about it being impossible for this apparently incongruous mixture to live side by side in the same district must now cease. They certainly did live side by side, as is shown by these companion pictures of the mammoth and the reindeer in the very southern part of sunny France, to say nothing of the numerous cases where the bones of the above mentioned animals are all mixed together indiscriminately. How is it unreasonable to suppose that these elephants, lions and hippopotami lived beneath the "early" Tertiary palms, cinnamons, and mimosas of the lower elevations, while the reindeer, musk-ox and glutton lived beneath the maples, birches and beeches of the high mountain sides? Some such conditions must have existed, for that magnificent world, whose ruins we now find buried beneath our feet, was a homogeneous and harmonious unit in its plant and animal life, in spite of the fables upon which we have so long been fed in the name of geological science. Things which are equal to the same thing must be equal to one another; hence the plants and animals which were contemporary with the same creature (Man) must have been contemporary with each other; and hence there is absolutely nothing to forbid the idea that Man and his Pleistocene companions were really contemporary with the flora and fauna of the Middle Tertiary.
Hence we may now proceed to inquire what geological changes have occurred since the "Middle of the Miocene," according to the accepted teachings of geology.
Our first point must be that of climate, and I have already given abundant evidence to show that at that "time" an abundant warm-climate vegetation mantled all the Arctic regions. As already quoted from Wallace, throughout the whole Arctic regions, and during the whole of geological time, "we find one uniform climatic aspect of the fossils," and "It is quite impossible to ignore or evade the force of the testimony as to the continuous warm climate of the North Temperate and Polar Zones throughout Tertiary times."
That this astonishingly mild and uniform climate prevailed over these regions until and during the time of the mammoth, we ought not to have a shadow of doubt. What single bit of positive evidence is there to show that it did not? That he must have had some such vegetation on which to feed is certain, and there is no proof of any previous interruption of these conditions save a series of hypotheses. He and his fellows browsed on semi-tropical and warm temperate plants far within the Arctic Circle, if there happened to be land there, doubtless over the very Pole itself; but suddenly!! lo, something caught him with the grip of death—
"And wrapped his corpse in winding-sheet of ice,
And sung the requiem of his shivering ghost."
Who has not read of their untainted meat now making food for dogs and wolves? Their stomachs are well filled with undigested food, showing, as one author remarks, that they "were quietly feeding when the crisis came." Dr. Hertz recently reported one not only with its stomach full of food, but with its mouth full, too. No wonder that even an orthodox geologist like Prof. Dana is compelled to say that these things prove "that the cold finally became suddenly extreme, as of a single winter's night, and knew no relenting afterward."
Here then is one very notable geological event which has taken place within the human epoch, and the only thing of its kind of which geology has an undeniable record, viz., a sudden and radical change in the earth's climate; a cosmic affair, and not a local phenomenon. I need not here attempt to discuss the how of this world catastrophe as it must have been, or the other changes inseparably involved. The fact itself is as certain as Man's own existence.
The next division of our subject, in further consideration of the changes that have taken place since Man's existence, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, relates to the changes of land and water distribution since "Middle Miocene times." And here again I shall try to take the classification of these rocks just as I find them.
The first thing which impresses us is the extremely fragmentary distribution of the Miocene and Pliocene beds. Not, however, that they are uncommon nor yet of small extent. On the contrary they are scattered over America and Eurasia—and all the rest of the globe for that matter—like the spots on a leopard, or the warts on a toad's back, till it becomes one of the unsearchable mysteries of the science how these innumerable patches can be got down under the ocean to receive their load of sediment, without deluging the surrounding regions in a similar manner. But then, to be sure, fresh-water lakes will answer the same purpose, and are particularly indicated when the proportion of plants and terrestrial animals is in excess of the true marine fossils. And so enormous fresh-water basins are described here and there, with the great mammals crowding about their margins in their zeal to become fossilized, that the mountain tops may be saved from going under once more—or perhaps I should say to enable the modern writers to get some of these strata puckered up to their full height before these "late" Tertiary deposits were made. This mountain making business is another affair that geologists would like to have take place on the installment plan, but unfortunately it seems to have been nearly all postponed till the very close of "geological time." This arrangement of fresh-water lakes saves the central Rocky Mountain region from going down again beneath the deep. But it cannot save the Alps, Juras and Appennines in Europe, nor parts of the Himalayas, and I know not what other mountains in Asia, nor the coast region of California and Oregon in America, to say nothing of large parts of the Andes in South America, with regions in Africa and Australia.
But what is the use of trying to figure out the amount of our earth which has been under the ocean since "Middle Tertiary times," and thus since Man was upon it? To save the northern half of Europe with all of Canada from again going under at the close of the "Tertiary period," geologists have spread out their continental ice sheets, and have asked them to do duty instead of water. But this is hardly sufficient, for the "upper" or "later" part of the so-called "Glacial" deposits are clearly stratified; and so they either invoke a "flood vast beyond conception," as Dana does in America for the "final event in the history of the glacier," or, as others prefer, the whole region is baptized again. As Dawson says in his "Meeting-Place of Geology and History," "No geological event is better established than the post-Pliocene submergence."
But I must not weary the reader by dwelling on this monotonous repetition of catastrophes—for must they not have been catastrophic if such ups and downs of whole continents are crowded within the human period? We may allow a number of thousands of years for Man's possible existence, but Archaeology and History alike protest against the millions of years required to explain these continental oscillations on any basis of uniformity. One such period of horror ought to be enough for us, and to understand or explain it in a truly scientific manner, we must with it correlate the sudden and world-wide change of climate already described.
One more point demands consideration ere we complete this subject of what Man has witnessed of geological change. For, according to current theory almost all the mountains have been either wholly formed or at least completed within quite "recent" times: indeed many of the greatest mountain chains have been puckered up from the position of horizontal strata wholly since "Miocene times," which for us means since Man was upon the globe.
Thus Dana in speaking of the part of Western America which has been elevated since "Miocene times," says that it—
"... probably included the whole of the Pacific mountain border, from the line of the Mississippi Valley to the Pacific coast line and outside of this line for one or more scores of miles."[91]
And he adds the significant words:
"Contemporaneously, similar movements were in progress over the other continents: along the Andes, affecting half, at least, of South America; the Pyrenees, Carpathian Alps, and a large part of Europe; the Himalayas and much of Asia." (p. 365.)
Let us now take a brief glance at a few of the details of what these mountains were thus doing while Man was living in semi-tropical England, or at least Western Europe.
In speaking of foreign examples of Tertiary mountain-making this author devotes especial attention to the Alps and the Juras, for their structure is better understood, having been more carefully studied. And of an example described by Heim, already spoken of, he says:
"One of the overthrust folds in the region has put the beds upside down over an area of 450 square miles. Fifty thousand feet of formations of the Jurassic, Cretaceous, Eocene Tertiary and Miocene Tertiary, were upturned at the close of the Miocene period."[92]
With what a whack must this mighty mass of rocks have fallen on itself—miles in thickness, and turned "upside down over an area of 450 square miles"!!!
Of course I am here taking the record just as I find it, as I have already discussed this matter of "overthrust folds."
I need not give further examples from the other great mountain ranges. Their structure is not so well understood as that of the Alps, though doubtless when examined they will be found just as "young," and just as full of astonishing mountain movements as those already examined. But this much is already certain, that practically over all the world the mountains were either completed or wholly raised from the sea level during "late Tertiary" and "early Quaternary time." No wonder Dana says that this fact "is one of the most marvelous in geological history."
"It has been thought incredible that the orographic climax should have come so near the end of geological time, instead of in an early age when the crust had a plastic layer beneath, and was free to move; yet the fact is beyond question." ("Manual," p. 1020.)
I think I have now abundantly proved the various heads of the proposition with which I began this chapter, viz., that even from the standpoint of the current theories:—[93]
(1) Man must have seen the entire elevation or at least the completion of practically all the great mountains of the world, such as the Rockies, Andes, Alps, Himalayas, etc.
(2) The relative distribution of land and water surface has—since Man's advent as commonly stated—changed completely. The land and water have practically changed places over the greater part of the globe.
(3) Man lived while the Arctic regions had a mild soft climate, and he lived to see these conditions so suddenly changed that some of his dumb brute companions were caught in the waters and frozen so speedily that their flesh has remained untainted. Other considerations show this change of climate to have affected the whole globe.
The lesson to be drawn from this as the last fact in the line of cumulative evidence here presented, will be considered in the following chapter.
CHAPTER XIII
INDUCTIVE METHODS
In the First Part of this book I tried to examine into the facts and methods which are commonly supposed to prove that there has been a succession of life on the globe. We found that this life succession theory has not a single fact to support it; that it is not the result of scientific research, but wholly the product of an inventive imagination; that no one kind of fossil has even been proved or can be proved to be intrinsically older than another, or than Man himself; and hence that a complete reconstruction of geological theory is imperatively demanded by our modern knowledge.
In the Second Part I have brought out the following additional facts:
1. The abnormal character of much of the fossiliferous deposits.
2. A radical and world-wide change of climate.
3. The marked degeneration in passing from the fossil world to the modern one.
4. The fact that the human race, to say nothing of a vast number of living species of plants and animals, has participated in some of the greatest of the geological changes—we really know not how to limit the number or character of these changes.
Surely a true spirit of scientific investigation would now begin to inquire, How did these changes take place? Discarding the use of stronger language, it is at least utterly unscientific to begin somewhere at the vanishing point of a past eternity and formulate our pretty theories as to how this deposit was made, and how that was laid down, and the exact order in which they all occurred; while these "recent" deposits, in which our race and the plants and animals living about us are acknowledged to be concerned, are left over till the last, and we then find that they admit of absolutely no explanation. We ourselves, to say nothing of thousands of living species of plants and animals, have participated in some of the very greatest of the geological changes—we know not how many or how great. These things must be first explained. Has anything happened to our world that will explain them? Are there known forces and changes now in operation which, granting time enough, will amply and sufficiently explain these facts, as simply one in kind with those of the present day?
To this last question we must admit that our historic experience, prolonged over several thousand years, utters a thundering NO! Volcanoes are every now and then breaking forth; but volcanoes and mountain ranges have nothing in common with one another as to structure and origin. No one claims that a single mountain flexure is now being formed or has been formed within the historic period. There are indeed "creeps" in the rocks in certain places, but these are not such as to contribute to the height of the mountains in which they occur, but rather the reverse. Sudden changes of level within small areas have occurred, but neither in extent nor in kind do they furnish any key as to past changes of level; while the so-called "secular" changes are so microscopic in extent and so doubtful in character that they are utterly unworthy of consideration in view of the stupendous problems which we are trying to explain. The well-known work of Eduard Suess is a standing protest that such geological chances are not now in progress; for, in speaking of how the land and ocean have exchanged places in the past, Zittel represents him as teaching that their "cause of origin until now has not yet been discovered."[94]
Or, to quote the expressive words of Suess himself, with which he concludes his discussion of this very subject:
"As Rama looks across the ocean of the universe, and sees its surface blend in the distant horizon with the dipping sky, and as he considers if indeed a path might be built far out into the almost immeasurable space, so we gaze over the ocean of the ages, but no sign of a shore shows itself to our view." (Id. p. 294.)
As for climate, I never heard any one suggest that cosmic changes of climate are now known to be going on, much less that sudden changes of the kind indicated by the North Siberian "mummies" are in the habit of occurring. In fact, we must all own that the mountains, the relative position of land and water, as well as the climate of our globe, are each and all now in a state of stable equilibrium, and have been in this state since the dawn of history or of scientific observation.
Accordingly I ask, How much time is needed to account for the facts before us on the basis of Uniformity? In common honesty will a short eternity itself satisfy the stern problem before us? I cannot see that it holds out the slightest promise of solving it; while, on the other hand, I am sure that, in dealing with the past of Man's existence (theories of evolution and all other theories of origins whatever cast aside), we are not at liberty to make unreasonable demands of time. The evidence of history and archaeology is all against it.
From the latter sciences it can be shown that at their very dawn we have, over all the continents, a group of civilizations seldom equalled since save in very modern times, and all so undeniably related to one another and of such a character that they prove a previous state of civilization in some locality together, before these scattered fragments of our race were dispersed abroad. We can track these various peoples all back to some region in Southwestern Asia, though the exact locality for this source of inherited civilization has never yet been found, and it is now almost certain that it is somehow lost in the geological changes which have intervened. For when we cross the well marked boundary line between history and geology, we have still to deal with men who apparently were not savages, men who with tremendous disadvantages could carve and draw and paint as no savages have ever done, and who had evidently domesticated the horse and other animals. But as to time, history gives no countenance to long time, i.e., what geologists would call long. Good authentic history extends back a few score centuries, archaeology may promise us a few more. As for millions of years, of even a few hundred thousands, the thing seems too absurd for discussion, unless we forsake inductive methods, and assume some form of evolution a priori.
Hence it ought to be evident that no amount of learned trifling with time will solve our problem without supposing some strange event to have happened our world and our race, long ago, and before the dawn of history. I see no possible way for scientific reasoning to avoid this conclusion. Ignoring for the present the Chaldean Deluge tablets, and what Rawlinson calls the "consentient belief" in a world-catastrophe "among members of all the great races into which ethnologists have divided mankind," which like their civilization has the earmarks of being an inheritance from some common source before their dispersion, we may note that most geologists now admit the certainty of some sort of catastrophe since man was upon the earth. I might mention Quatrefages and Dupont, Boyd Dawkins, Howorth, Prestwich, Wright and Sir William Dawson, with many others. Even Eduard Suess teaches a somewhat similar local catastrophe, though like the others only as a reluctant concession to the insistent demands of Chaldean history and archaeological tradition. But all of these affairs are mere makeshifts in view of the tremendous demands of the purely geological evidence, and all alike (save perhaps those of Wright and Howorth) labor under the strange inconsistency of supposing that such an event could occur without leaving abundant and indelible marks upon the rocks of our globe. While in view of the evidence given through the previous pages, I insist that the purely geological evidence of a world catastrophe is immeasurably stronger than that of archaeology, that in fact the whole geological phenomena constitute a cumulative argument of this nature.
But if this be granted, we must then inquire, What was its nature? and what its extent? The former is quite easily answered: the latter problem is still somewhat beyond our reach.
As to its character, the evidence is very plain. It was a veritable cataclysm of some sort: it deals with great changes of land and water surface. If the geological succession is but a hoary myth, and if we find countless modern living species of plants and animals mixed up in all the "older" rocks, we cannot ignore these in a rational and unprejudiced reconstruction of the science. But, ignoring these, we must remember that even the Tertiary and post-Tertiary deposits are absolutely world wide, and are packed with fossils of living species. Not a continent and scarcely a country on the globe but contains great stretches of these deposits, laid down by the sea where now the land is high and dry. The sea and land have practically shifted places over all the globe since Man and thousands of other living species left their fossils in the rocks. It is only the stupendous magnitude of these changes which has made our scientists reluctant to admit the possibility of such a catastrophe.
With the myth of a life succession dissipated, a broad view of the fossil world cannot fail to convince the mind of the reality of some such cosmic convulsion, and convince it with all the force of a mathematical demonstration. Great groups of animals have dropped out of sight over all the continents, and their carcasses have been buried by sea water where we now find high plateaus or mountain ranges. Ignoring completely the abundant fossils in the so-called "older" rocks, and fixing our attention entirely on the Tertiary and Pleistocene beds that are acknowledged to be closely connected with the human race and the modern world, we still have a problem in race extinction alone that appalls the mind. The mammoth, rhinoceros and mastodon, together with "not less than thirty distinct species of the horse tribe," as Marsh says, all disappear from North America at one time, and the most ingenious disciple of Hutton and Lyell has been puzzled to invent a plausible explanation. But when we consider that at this same "geological period" similar events were occurring on all the other continents—the huge ground-sloths (megatheriums) and glyptodons in South America; "wombats as large as tapirs," and "kangaroos the size of elephants" in Australia; the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros in Eurasia; together with an enormous hippopotamus, as far as England is concerned, to say nothing of those great bears, lions and hyenas, with a semi-tropical vegetation, all disappearing together at the same time, or shifting to the other side of the world—it becomes almost like a deliberate insult to our intellectual honesty to be approached with offers of "explanations" based on any so-called "natural" action of the forces of nature. But when, in addition to all this, we consider the fact that those human giants of the caves of Western Europe were contemporary with the animals mentioned above, and disappeared along with them at this same time, while mountain masses in all parts of the world crowded with marine forms of the so-called "older" types positively cannot be separated in time from the others, it becomes as certain as any other ordinary scientific fact, like sunrise or sunset, that our once magnificently stocked world met with some sudden and awful catastrophe in the long ago; and is it in any way transgressing the bounds of true inductive science to correlate this event with the Deluge of the Hebrew Scriptures and the traditions of every race on earth?
We have already seen how Dana supposes two such events, one at the close of the "Palaeozoic age," and the other at the close of the "Mesozoic," merely to account for the astonishing disappearance of species at these periods when the fossils are arranged in taxonomic order; but if we once admit such an event with Man and all the other species contemporary with one another, where shall we limit its power to disturb the land and water and churn them all up together, leaving the present simply as the ruins of that previous world? The fact is, the current Geology is wholly built up from the Cambrian to the Pleistocene on the dogmatic denial that any such catastrophe has occurred to the world in which Man lived, for one such event happening in our modern homogeneous world is enough to make the whole pretty scheme found in our text-books tumble like a house of cards. Like the patient and exact observations of the Ptolemaic astronomers, which accumulated volumes of evidence contradicting their own theories, and which in the hands of Copernicus and Galileo, Kepler and Newton, sealed the doom of astronomical speculation and laid the foundations of an exact science of the heavens; so have the indefatigable labors of thousands of geologists accumulated evidence which strikes at the very foundation of the current Uniformitarianism, and casts a pall of doubt over every conclusion as to how or when any given deposit of the "older" rocks was produced.
Here we must leave the question for the present. The possibility of such a world-wide catastrophe, which might account for the major part of the geological changes, needs no apology here. The slightest disturbance of the nice equilibrium of our elements would suffice to send the waters of the ocean careering over the land; and in the abundance of astronomical causes competent for such disturbance we cease to regard such an event as necessarily contrary to "natural law." The possibility of such a thing no competent scientist now denies; it is the problem of recovery from such a disaster which makes the perplexity. But incredible or not as the latter may be regarded, I claim to have established a perfect chain of scientific argument proving a world-wide catastrophe of some sort since Man was upon it. But this fact, if once admitted, strikes at the very foundation of the current science, and bids us readjust our theories from this view-point. The venerable scheme of a life succession becomes only the taxonomic or classification series of the world that existed before this disaster, and it becomes the business of our science to find out how many and what deposits were due to this event, and what were accumulated during the unknown period of previous existence. Those of us who wish to speculate can then let our imaginations have free play as to the uncounted ages before that event; but the "phylogenic series" as a rational scientific theory is in limbo forever. Inductive geology, therefore, deals not with the formation of a world, but with the ruins of one; it can teach us absolutely nothing about origins.
The latter problem lies across the boundary line in the domain of philosophy and theology, and to these systems of thought we may cheerfully leave the task of readjustment in view of the facts here presented. A few disconnected thoughts along these lines I have ventured to insert here, not strictly as a part of my purely scientific argument, but as an appendix.
APPENDIX
APPENDIX
REFLECTIONS
In the preceding pages I have endeavored to develop a scientific argument pure and simple. Yet I do not feel called upon to apologize in any way for attempting now to show the connection between an inductive scheme of Geology as set forth in the body of this work and the religion of Christianity; though my remarks along this line must necessarily be very brief.
The most fundamental idea of religion is the fatherhood of God as our Creator. The only true basis of morality lies in our relationship to Him as His creatures. During the latter half of the nineteenth century the Biblical idea of a creation at some definite and not very remote period in the past became much modified by reason of certain theories of evolution, which explained the origin of plants and animals as the result of slow-acting causes, now in operation around us, prolonged over immense ages of time. These theories, though built up wholly on the current Geology as a foundation, were yet supposed to be firmly established in science, and after a spirited discussion among biologists for a few years, were almost universally accepted in some form or other by the religious leaders of Christendom. And though the "Theistic Evolution" of recent years may be supposed to have modified somewhat the stern heartlessness of pure Darwinism, it still leaves the Christian world quite at variance with the old Pauline doctrines regarding good and evil, creation, redemption, the atonement, etc.
And these are not the only effects of the general acceptance of these ideas as an explanation of the origin of things. We see their moral effects in the generation now coming on the stage of action—men educated in an atmosphere of Evolution, and accustomed from youth to the idea that all progress, whether in the individual or the race, is to be reached only by a ceaseless struggle for existence and survival at the expense of others. In the words of Sir William Dawson, these doctrines have "stimulated to an intense degree that popular unrest so natural to an age discontented with its lot ... and which threatens to overthrow the whole fabric of society as at present constituted."[95]
This popular and perfectly natural application of the evolution doctrine to every-day life is certainly intensifying, as never before, the innate selfishness of human nature, and, in every pursuit of life, embittering the sad struggle for place and power. Perhaps no other one cause and result serve more plainly to differentiate the present strenuous age from those that have gone before. The hitherto undreamed-of advantages and creature comforts of the present day, instead of tending toward universal peace and happiness, are apparently only giving a wider range to the discontent and depravity of the natural human heart. So much so, that any one familiar with the history of nations cannot but feel a terrible foreboding creep over him as he faces the prospect presented to-day by civilised society the world over.
The only remedy for the many and increasing evils of our world is the old-fashioned religion of Christ and His apostles. And this applied, not to the state, but to the individual. The soul-regenerating truths of Christianity have always, wherever given a proper test by the individual, resulted in moral uplift and blessing. Ecclesiastical policies and ideas have always, wherever allowed to influence civil legislation, resulted in oppression and tyranny.
What has Geology to do with all this? It has much to do with it. Correct ideas of geology will remove a great many vain notions—I had almost said superstitions—regarding our origin, which now pass under the name of science. And in thus removing false ideas it leaves the ground cleared for more correct ideas regarding creation, and thus for truer concepts of morality, the old idea of "must" and "ought" based on our relation to God as His creatures.
Mark the words I have used. Inductive Geology can never prove creation. It may remove obstructions which have hitherto obscured this idea, but this is the utmost limit of any true science. Inductive Geology removes forever the succession-of-life idea, and thus may suggest the only seeming alternative, viz., Creation as the definite act of the Infinite God. Before this awful yet sublime fact, with all the fogs of evolution and metaphysical subtleties cleared away, the human mind stands to-day as never before within historic times.
With a fairly complete knowledge of the chemical make-up of protoplasm, with a good acquaintance with the life history and reproduction of living cells, we yet know nothing of the origin of life. With a good working knowledge of variation, hybridization, etc., we know nothing of the origin of species. While with a fairly good understanding of the present geographical distribution of species, and of where their fossils occur in the rocks, we are profoundly ignorant of any particular order in which these species originated on our globe, or whether they all took origin at approximately one and the same time. In short, having reached out along every known line of investigation, until we have apparently reached the limits of the human powers in investigation and research, twentieth century science must stand with uncovered head and bowed form in presence of that most august thought of the human mind, "In the beginning God created."
And yet, personally, I am firmly convinced that the origin of life and of our cosmos, was according to law, and the laws of nature. As has been said, How could the origin of nature be contrary to nature? How could the origin of present forms and conditions be in any way at variance with the laws by which these forms or conditions are maintained? And while I do not consider it a very promising field of research, we ought to have no more reluctance, per se, to considering the manner in which the first cell or the first species was formed, than the way in which a chicken is produced from the egg. Of course in either case we must have the materials, and some outside Cause to originate the conditions and conduct the process; they both require the immanent presence and fostering care of the great Creator.
In this connection I beg leave to quote somewhat at length from my book, "Outlines of Modern Science and Modern Christianity."
"We are getting no nearer the real mystery in the case by saying that all the tissues of the chick are built up by the protoplasm in the egg. The protoplasm in the toes is the same as that in the little creature's brain. Why does the one build up claws and the other brain cells? Does memory guide these little things in their wonderful division of labor? But they all started from one original germ cell, hence they all ought to have the same memory pictures. Or have they entered into a mutual-benefit arrangement, like the members of a community, as Haeckel would have us believe, each contributing by actual desire and effort, I suppose, an individual share to the general progress of the whole?—No; they have all the appearance of being mere automata working at the direct bidding of a Master Mind. Every step of the process needs a Creator, just as much as the first cell division. In the words of one of the highest of scientific authorities, 'We still do not know why a certain cell becomes a gland-cell, another a ganglion-cell; why one cell gives rise to a smooth muscle-fibre, while a neighbor forms voluntary muscle;' and this also 'at certain, usually predestined, times in particular places.'[96] And in the same way the idea of a Creator would not be disposed of, even if we could possibly hit upon the probable process of world-formation. We would not, by understanding the process, really get at the cause of the phenomena, any more than we do now at the real cause of life. From the scientific method the real mystery remains as much behind the veil as ever before." (pp. 111, 112.)
Again I quote from this same work:
"The origin of organic nature could not well have been otherwise than by natural process. Do we understand all natural processes? At some time life was not in existence on our globe. All agree that it had a beginning. Even if created by the great Creator, the living was at some time formed from the not-living or the not-material. It does not take even Huxley's famous 'act of philosophic faith' to believe that. So that, in spite of all the haze that has been thrown about this question, the Biblical creation of the organic from the inorganic is no more contrary to, or even outside of, natural law than is evolution....
"But see what we avoid. According to the Bible, death in even the lower animals (and consequently all misery and suffering: the less is included in the greater) is only the result of sin on the part of man, the head of animated nature, a reflex or sympathetic result, if you will. But with evolution we have countless millions of years of creature suffering, cruelty, and death before man appeared at all, cruelty and death that ... have no moral meaning at all, save as the work of a fiend creator, or a bungling or incompetent one."[97]
The author then gives a quotation from LeConte, illustrating the extremely various ways in which matter and energy act on the different planes of their existence, while "The passage from one plane upward to another is not a gradual passage by sliding scale, but at one bound. When the necessary conditions are present, a new and higher form of force at once appears, like birth into a higher sphere.... It is no gradual process, but sudden, like birth into a higher sphere."[98]
The argument then proceeds as follows:
"The living at some time originated from the not-living. We call it creation. Can any one find a better name? It is preposterous to call it a process of development or evolution due to the inherent properties of the atoms, and effected by them alone. And yet it is doubtless as much according to 'natural law' as are the invariable and exact combinations of chemistry. We do not understand the ultimate reasons for chemical affinity any more than we do for gravitation. They are only expressions of the methodical, order-loving mind of Deity. Creation was only another action of the same mind, and we are not really finding any new difficulty when we say that the processes or the reasons for creative action are beyond our comprehension. When we can really solve some of the myriad problems right before our eyes, it will be time enough to complain about creation being incomprehensible or contrary to 'natural law.'
"Well, then, remembering that, even according to Huxley's 'act of philosophic faith,' the origin of the living from the not-living must at some time have taken place according to natural law, why should we suppose that such a process was confined to one example? If, when the young planet 'was passing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy,' the 'necessary conditions' were favorable for one such creation of life, why not a few billion? Would the production of a few billion such beginnings of protoplasm be any less 'natural' than of one alone? Remember, however, that both the arrangement of these 'necessary conditions,' as well as the endowing of matter with these 'properties,' not only requires a cause, but this cause must be intelligent, for there is indisputable design in this first origin of life.... The food for a developing embryo might, for aught that we know, be conveyed to it direct from the ultimate laboratories of nature, and it thus be built up by protoplasm in the usual way, without the medium of a parent form—other than the great Father of all. Or would it be any less according to natural law to believe that a bird passed through all the usual stages of embryonic development from the not-living up to the full-fledged songster of the skies in one day—the fifth day of creation? And if one example, why not a million? For, remember that the youthful earth was then passing through strange conditions, 'which,' as Huxley says, 'it can no more see again than a man can recall his infancy.'"[99]
Omitting some remarks about embryology, I continue this quotation as follows:
"But what 'law' would be violated in this springtime of the world if, instead of twenty years or so for full development, the first man passed through all these stages in one day—the sixth of creation week? He might as well have originated from the not-living as the evolutionist's first speck of protoplasm, for he certainly now starts from a mass of this same protoplasm, identical, as we have seen, in all plants and animals.
"And by originating thus, he would escape that horrible heritage of bestial and savage propensities which he would get through evolution, a heritage that would make it not his fault, but his misfortune, that sin and evil are in the world, and which would also shift the responsibility for the evidently abnormal condition of 'this present evil world' off from the creature to the Creator, and change to us His character from that of a loving Father, fettered by no conditions in His creation, to that of either a bungling, incompetent workman or a heartless fiend; for, though I am almost ashamed to write the words, the god of the evolutionist must be either the one or the other." (p. 121.)
With an appreciation nurtured by centuries of study of God's larger book, baffled often though she has been, and disappointed many times in the words she has endeavored to spell out, Science to-day proclaims its subject, its title page, which she has now at last deciphered, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."
Having read the foregoing argument, will you now do the Publishers and the author the favor of filling out the following blank and mailing this slip, or a copy of it, to us as early as possible?
It makes no difference to us even if your opinion is adverse.
The Modern Heretic Co.
257 S. Hill St., Los Angeles, Cal.
Cut out here