"Had Mendel's work come into the hands of Darwin, it is not
too much to say that the history of the development of
evolutionary philosophy would have been very different from
that which we have witnessed."[23]
I
From the latter part of the eighteenth century, attempts were
continually being made to explain the origin of all organic
forms by some system of development or evolution. Buffon had
dwelt on the modifications directly induced by the environment.
Lamarck had made much use of this idea, claiming that such
modifications were transmitted to posterity, and claiming the
same for the structural changes produced by use and disuse.
Lamarck's work did not become at all popular while he lived,
chiefly through the overpowering influence of Baron Cuvier, who
had an equally fantastic scheme of his own, which may well be
termed a burlesque on Creation and in which an extreme fixity
of "species" was a cardinal doctrine. Erasmus Darwin and Robert
Chambers in England also tried to make a theory of evolution
believable; though their efforts were but little more
successful in gaining the ear of the world.
But to all that had gone before Charles Darwin and A.R.
Wallace (1858) added the idea of "natural selection," or "the
struggle for existence," to use the respective terms coined by
each of these authors, as the chief means by which the effects
of variation are accumulated and perpetuated so as to build up
the modern complexities of the plant and animal kingdoms.
Partly because it was a psychological moment, from the fact
that the uniformitarian geology of Lyell with its graded
advance of existences from age to age seemed absolutely to
demand some evolutionary explanation; partly because artificial
selection was a familiar idea of proved value in selective
breeding, and "natural selection" seemed an exact parallel
carried on by nature in the direction of continual improvement;
but perhaps more largely because the abstract idea of "natural
selection" involved so many intricate separate concepts that
for nearly a generation scarcely two naturalists in the world
could state the whole problem of the theory exactly alike;--on
all these accounts the theory of natural selection, or of the
"survival of the fittest," to use the phrase of Herbert
Spencer, became in the latter decades of the nineteenth century
well-nigh universal.
But about 1887 a faction or school arose who criticized the
main idea of Darwin and Wallace and fell back on the Lamarckian
factor of the transmission of acquired characters as really the
essential cause of the process of evolution. Herbert Spencer,
E.D. Cope and others did much to criticize natural selection as
inadequate to do what was attributed to it, dwelling on the
importance of the transmission of acquired characters. Spencer
even went so far as to declare, "either there has been
inheritance of acquired characters, or there has been no
evolution." These Neo-Lamarckians argued that natural selection
alone can neither explain the origin of varieties, nor the
first steps in the slow advance toward "usefulness." An organ
must be already useful before natural selection can take hold
of it to improve it. Selection cannot make a thing useful to
start with, but only (possibly) make more useful what already
exists. Until the newly formed buds of developing limbs or
organs became decidedly "useful" to the individual or the
species, would they not be in the way, merely so many
hindrances, to be removed by natural selection instead of being
preserved and improved? But, in this view of the matter, they
argued, what single organ of any species would there be that
must not thus have appeared long before it was wanted?
Or to use the pungent words quoted with approval by Hugo de
Vries at the end of his "Species and Varieties" (pp. 825, 826),
"Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but
it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest."
This side of the argument is dwelt upon at some length by
Alex. Graham Bell, as reported in a recent interview. He
says:
"Natural selection does not and cannot produce new species or
varieties or cause modifications of living organisms to come
into existence. On the contrary, its sole function is to
prevent evolution. In its action it is destructive merely,--not
constructive,--causing death and extinction, not life and
progression. Death cannot produce life; and though natural
selection may produce the death of the unfit, it cannot produce
the fit, far less evolve the fittest. It may permit the fit to
survive by not killing them off, if they are already in
existence; but it does not bring them into being, or produce
improvement in them after they have once appeared."[24]
Opposing these Neo-Lamarckians were such prominent scientists
as August Weismann, A.R. Wallace, E. Ray Lankester, who
strenuously opposed the idea that "acquired characters," or
more precisely parental experience, are ever
transmissible. In the subsequent years the greatest variety of
experimental tests have been applied to secure the hereditary
transmission of any sort of such acquired characters, with
uniformly negative results. One of the most elaborate of these
experiments was conducted by a German botanist, who
transplanted 2,500 different kinds of mountain plants to the
lowlands, where he studied them for several years alongside
their relatives, natives of these lowlands. He found that their
mountain environment had made absolutely no permanent change in
their structures or habits, which soon conformed exactly with
those of their relatives which had lived in the lowland
environment for centuries. Many similar efforts have been made
to confirm this doctrine of the transmission of acquired
characters; but their universal failure is like that of
mechanics in trying to invent perpetual motion.
Thomas Hunt Morgan sums up the present situation in the
following words: "To-day the theory has few followers among
trained investigators, but it still has a popular vogue that is
wide-spread and vociferous." And we may add that the extent of
its spread is directly proportioned to the need felt for this
doctrine as a support of the theory of evolution, while the
vociferance of its advocates is inversely proportioned to the
evidence in its support.
As a result of extensive modern experiments and discussion,
biologists have grown very cautious, and are by no means so
positive as they were twenty years ago in affirming just
how species have come into existence. Echoes of this old
controversy between the two leading schools of biologists are
occasionally heard; but the enthusiasm with which they set out
a half century ago to solve the riddle of plant and animal life
has largely given way to a purpose to discard speculation and
patiently to observe and record actual facts. For with natural
selection discredited in the house of its friends, and
Lamarckianism under grave suspicion from want of a single well
authenticated example, it is hard to see what there is left of
the biological doctrine that has so dominated scientific
thought for a half century. If each of these opposed schools of
scientists are right in what they deny, the whole
theoretical foundation for the origin of new kinds of animals
and plants is swept away,--absolutely gone. For if an
individual really cannot transmit what he has acquired in his
lifetime, how can he transmit what he has not got himself, and
what none of his ancestors ever had? And if natural selection
cannot start a single organ of a single type, what is the use
of discussing its supposed ability to improve them after the
machinery is all built?
II
Such was the general condition of theoretical biology about
the beginning of the present century. In the meantime those who
were dealing with the empyrical or experimental side of these
problems were seeking for the causes of and the rules for
variation. All living things vary from one generation to
another; the question was, Why do they vary? and do these
variations really represent new characters comparable to new
species in the making? or are they, so to speak, but an elastic
reaction of the internal vital elasticity of the organism, all
the while latent and only seeking a favorable expression, to
return again under other conditions to the former type?
The effort to reduce these variations to law and system was
pursued by thousands of investigators, with varying but at all
times perplexing and disappointing results. But in the year
1900 the scientific world awoke to the surprising fact that a
patient obscure investigator had already solved most of the
puzzles of variation and heredity some thirty-five years
before. Gregor Mendel, born a peasant boy, trained as a monk,
and afterwards appointed Abbot of Brünn, had in the year
1865 published the results of his experiments in breeding,
which had been ignored or forgotten until rediscovered in 1900
by de Vries and two others simultaneously. From this point
Mendelism, as it is now called, has steadily gained ground,
until at the present time it can be said to be the dominating
conception among biologists the world over regarding the
problems of heredity.
Mendel worked chiefly with peas, crossing different varieties.
In his methods of investigation he differed from all previous
investigators in concentrating his attention upon a single pair
of alternative or contrasted characters at a time, and
observing how these alternative characters are transmitted.
Thus when he crossed a tall with a dwarf, giving attention to
this pair of contrasted characters alone, he found that all the
first hybrid generation were talls, with no dwarfs and no
intermediates. Accordingly he called the tall character
dominant, and the dwarf character recessive, and
a pair of contrasted characters which act in this way are now
called factors or sometimes called unit
characters. But on allowing these hybrids to
cross-fertilize one another in the usual way, Mendel found that
in the second generation of hybrids there were always three
talls to one dwarf out of every four. Further experiments
proved that these dwarfs of the second hybrid generation
always bred true, that is, one out of four; and that one
out of the remaining talls always bred true, making another
quarter of the total; while the remaining fifty per cent.
proved to be mixed tails, always acting as did the original
hybrids, splitting up in the next generation in the same
arithmetical proportion as before.
Accordingly, if we confine our study to the two contrasted
characters, tallness and dwarfness, we see that just three
kinds of peas exist, namely, dwarfs which breed true, talls
which breed true, and talls which always give the same definite
proportion of talls and dwarfs among their descendants.
Innumerable experiments which have since been made with other
pairs of characters have demonstrated that this same
mathematical proportion holds good throughout the whole world
of plants and animals;[25] and hence this astonishing result is
now called Mendel's Law, and is regarded as the most important
discovery in biology in several generations.
There are two distinct kinds of Andalusian fowls, one pure
bred black, the other pure bred white with slight dashes of
black here and there. When these are mated, no matter which
color is the father or the mother, the next or hybrid
generation are always a queer mixture of black and white called
by fanciers blue. When these blues are interbred, one-quarter
of their offspring will be white, which will prove to breed
true ever afterwards, one-quarter will be black that will breed
true, and fifty per cent. will be blue which will break up in
the next generation in the very same way as before. In this
case neither white nor black character is dominant, and
accordingly we have a blending of both in the first hybrid
generation.
In guinea pigs, black color has been found to be dominant over
white, rough coat over smooth coat, and short hair over long
hair. These remarkable results following from an experimental
trial of Mendelism have stimulated hosts of investigators in
all parts of the world, until now many varieties of plants and
animals have been studied for many successive generations,
already, building up a considerable literature dealing with the
subject.
Perhaps the most extensive and exact series of experiments
along this line have been carried on by Thomas Hunt Morgan and
his assistants, of Columbia University. For over five years
they have been breeding the wild fruit fly (Drosophila
ampelophila), during which time they have originated and
observed over a hundred and twenty-five new types that breed
true according to Mendel's laws. Every part of the body has
been affected by one or another of these mutations. The wings
have been shortened, or changed in shape, or made to disappear
entirely. The eyes have been changed in color or entirely
eliminated. And each of these wonderful variations was brought
about not gradually, but at a single step.
Professor Morgan grows justifiably sarcastic in contrasting
these demonstrated laboratory facts with the armchair theories
that have so long and so harmfully dominated biological
studies. A quotation from him will not be out of place at this
point.
"I may recall in this connection that wingless flies also
arose in our cultures by a single mutation. We used to be told
that wingless insects occurred on desert islands because those
insects that had the best developed wings had been blown out to
sea. Whether this is true or not, I will not pretend to say;
but at any rate wingless insects may also arise, not through a
slow process of elimination, but at a single step.... Formerly
we were taught that eyeless animals arose in caves. This case
shows that they may also arise suddenly in glass milk bottles,
by a change in a single factor."[26]
We need not be particularly concerned here with the
theoretical explanations of these facts offered in terms of the
microscopic or even the infra-microscopic components of the
germ cells. Morgan seems to make out a strong case for the
theory that the chromosomes found in the nucleus are the real
ultimate units that carry the hereditary factors. But he is
quite decided in the opinion that these hereditary factors are
fixed, and are not changed from generation to generation either
by environment or by selection.[27] The important thing for us
in this connection is to get a clear idea of the results
following from an application of Mendel's laws to the old, old
problem of the origin of species, incidentally noticing how the
theory associated with Darwin's name now looks in the light of
these new facts.
We have hitherto been considering the results worked out by
Mendel with but one pair of contrasted characters or factors.
But Mendel studied the relation of other characters of the pea,
and found among other results that smooth seeds are dominant to
wrinkled seeds, colored seeds dominant to white, yellow color
dominant to green, etc. But when a combination of two
factors in each parent are put into contrast by cross breeding,
two wholly original forms (as they seemed) were sometimes
produced, and it looked as if these new kinds were really
analogous to new species.
For example, he crossed tall yellow peas with dwarf green
peas, with the result that the first hybrid generation turned
out to be all tall yellows. However, in the second hybrid
generation they split up according to the law as already
stated, modified by the additional complication brought into
the problem by the additional pair of factors. For out of every
sixteen plants there were nine tall yellows, three dwarf
yellows, three tall greens, and one dwarf green. It
is evident that these tall greens and dwarf yellows are really
new forms; and further experiments proved that they can be
separated out or segregated and grown as pure forms which
thereafter breed true. Thus we have a very important result for
the breeder, for it enables him to work to a definite aim and
combine certain desirable characters into a single form.
The term mutation, as already intimated, has been given
to this process of producing new varieties in this way. The
kinds so produced are termed mutants, and at first they
were hailed by enthusiastic scientists as "elementary species."
De Vries in particular gave much publicity to this idea; for he
thought he had really produced a new kind comparable in every
respect to a true species as produced by nature among wild
plants. But the enthusiasm with which this applied result of
Mendel's Law was at first hailed by biologists has gradually
subsided; for it has been found that though these new forms
will breed true under certain conditions, they are nevertheless
cross-fertile with the original forms, and thus the
circle can be completed back again by a return to the
parent form, from which the new "species" can again be produced
at will with the same mathematical exactness as before.
III
Where then are we?
Clearly we have not really produced any new species in any
correct sense of the word. If we have produced new forms that
breed true and that are seemingly just as deserving of the rank
of distinct species as many now listed in scientific books, it
only shows that our lists are sadly at fault, and that they are
not all species that are called species. These experiments
merely indicate that the parent form possesses more
potential characters than it can give expression to in a single
individual form, some of them being necessarily latent or
hidden, and that when these latent ones show themselves they
must do so at the expense of others which become latent or
hidden in their turn. This vital elasticity, as it may
be termed, or the vital rebound under definite conditions, is
indeed a prime characteristic of the species just as it is of
the individual; but like that of the individual the vital
elasticity of the species is strictly bounded by comparatively
narrow limits beyond which we have never seen a single type
pass under either natural or artificial conditions. Mutations
can be made according to Mendel's Law; but when we have made
them once we can always be sure of producing the very same
mutants again in the very same way, as surely as we produce
a definite chemical compound; and when we have made it we
can always resolve it at will back into its original form,
just as we can a chemical compound. And so, where is the
evolution? or how do these facts throw any light on the problem
of the origin of species, any more than chemical compounds
throw light on the origin of the elements? Obviously in biology
as in chemistry we are only working in a circle, merely marking
time.
And the bearing of these facts on the other problem of the
transmission of acquired characters is quite obvious. Mendelism
provides no place for any such transmission. Mendel's Law is
sometimes called the law of alternative inheritance,
thus embodying in its name the thought that offspring may show
the characters possessed by one parent or by the other, but
that it cannot develop any characters whatever which were not
manifest or latent in the ancestry. Changes in the environment
during the embryonic stage, it is true, seem sometimes to be
registered in the growing form; but it has never yet been
proved that these induced changes can ever amount to a unit
character or genetic factor that will maintain itself and
segregate as a distinct factor after hybridization. Ancestry
alone furnishes the material for the factor, and no amount of
induced change can get itself registered in the organism so as
to come into this charmed circle of ancestral characters which
alone seem to be passed on to posterity.
A quotation from Bateson ought to set this point at rest:
"The essence of the Mendelian principle is very easily
expressed. It is, first, that in great measure the properties
of organisms are due to the presence of distinct, detachable
elements [factors], separately transmitted in heredity; and
secondly, that the parent cannot pass on to offspring an
element, and consequently the corresponding property, which it
does not itself possess."[28]
Heredity we now see is a method of analysis, and the facts
brought to light by Mendelism help us very much toward an
understanding of living matter. Especially does it help us to
understand the complexity underlying the facts of heredity,
which until now have seemed so strange and capricious. As
Professor Punnett of Cambridge remarks:
"Constitutional differences of a radical nature may be
concealed beneath an apparent identity of external form. Purple
sweet peas from the same pod, indistinguishable in appearance
and of identical ancestry, may yet be fundamentally different
in their constitution. From one may come purples, reds, and
whites; from another only purples and reds; from another
purples and whites alone; whilst a fourth will breed true to
purple. Any method of investigation which fails to take account
of the radical differences of constitution which may underlie
external similarity, must necessarily be doomed to failure.
Conversely, we realize to-day that individuals identical in
constitution may yet have an entirely different ancestral
history. From the cross between two fowls with rose and pea
combs, each of irreproachable pedigree for generations, come
single combs in the second generation, and these singles are
precisely similar in their behavior to singles bred from
strains of unblemished ancestry. In the ancestry of the one
is to be found no single over a long series of years; in the
ancestry of the other nothing but singles occurred. The
creature of given constitution may often be built up in many
ways, but once formed it will behave like others of the same
constitution."[29]
IV
Vanished at last are the old theories of gradual changes in
species perpetuated and accumulated by natural selection until
at last wholly new forms have in this way been produced. True
variations are now seen to be confined within well-marked and
rather narrow limits, within which ordinary variations may
occur, perhaps induced by environment. These fluctuating
variations grade off into one another on all sides, and their
differences can be plotted on a frequency curve; but the
very important thing for us to remember is that these
fluctuating variations cannot be transmitted. Beyond
these fluctuating variations come the unit characters or
factors, which are distinct from each other, or
"discontinuous," to use the technical term, and which therefore
cannot be plotted on a frequency curve. These factors
are not modified in the least by the environment, and their
peculiarities are faithfully transmitted in heredity with all
the precision of chemical law. But even these factors are all
within the bounds of the species. There is not a shred of
scientific evidence that either natural or artificial devices
have originated a single genetic factor that was not all the
time potentially latent in the ancestry, capable of being
produced at will by the proper combination.
It is a universal law of living things that all forms left to
themselves tend to degenerate. The necessity for continuous
artificial selection in the sugar beet, in Sea Island cotton,
in corn, in Jersey and Holstein cattle, in trotting horses,
proves this universal tendency to degenerate.[30] Natural
selection in a somewhat similar way tends to postpone this
degeneracy by killing off the "unfit," but selection either
artificial or natural cannot originate anything new, and its
results are here displayed merely among the small fluctuating
variations mentioned above. Even among the real genetic factors
it may show itself by allowing some to survive alone; but as no
combination of diverse factors can originate anything really
new, its field for operation among these factors is extremely
limited. Among species also it is operative, killing off some
and allowing others to survive. But neither among fluctuations,
among factors, nor yet among species can selection originate
anything new.
Nor is there any other method known to modern science by means
of which new factors can be originated which were not
potentially latent in the ancestry. The much heralded new
"species" of de Vries and others are now known to be merely new
factors cropping out;[31] for though they remain constant and
breed true, they obey Mendel's Law when crossed with their
parental forms, and hence are merely the result of some new
combination of factors which can be reproduced at will by using
the same method of combination and segregation. The real
scientific test for any form supposed to be a new "species"
would be twofold: (1) to show that some new character had been
added which no ancestor ever possessed; and (2) to show that
this new character will breed true under all circumstances of
hybridization and not merely segregate as a unit character or
mere analytic variety after hybridization. It is almost
superfluous to say that no "new species" originating in modern
times has ever justified itself under these tests.
In conclusion it may be remarked that biologists do not claim
to have solved all the problems connected with heredity and
variation. But the general results taught us by Mendelism are
now established beyond controversy. Led by the German
biologists, the leading scientists of the world had already
acknowledged that "pure" Darwinism or natural selection cannot
explain the origin of new organs or new forms. And now
Mendelism destroys the other supposed foundation for biological
evolution, by showing that small variations cannot be
accumulated into large differences equal in value to a unit
character or a new species. Thus the whole foundation of
biological evolution has been completely undermined by these
new discoveries; and were it not for the wide-spread credence
the evolutionary theory has already received, and the
intellectual momentum it has acquired tending to carry it on by
its inertia into the future, it could be only a very short time
now before the elaborate treatises attempting to orientate with
it all the facts of religion and history would have to be
consigned to the shelves labeled, "Of Historic Interest." For
as Bateson remarked in his recent address as President before
the British Association at Melbourne, Australia, the new
knowledge of heredity shows that whatever evolution there is
occurs by loss of factors and not by gain, and that in this way
the progress of science is "destroying much that till lately
passed for gospel."[32]
V
Let us sum up the situation. We began this chapter with the
question, Have new kinds of plants and animals originated in
modern times comparable in all essential respects with the idea
of true species?
The answer of modern science is reluctantly obtained, but it
is a negative. De Vries and others have indeed originated new
kinds that were loudly hailed as new species, and are doubtless
as deserving of specific rank as many already listed for years
in the treatises of specialists. Indeed there is every reason
to believe that almost countless numbers of our taxonomic
species have originated from common ancestral originals. But as
these so-called species are now known to be freely or
moderately cross fertile with other related species, their
hybrids following the ordinary laws of Mendelian inheritance,
we see that they are not true species but mere analytic
varieties.
In short, we now know that our taxonomic classifications have
been marked off on altogether too narrow lines. This has tended
greatly to confuse the question at issue. But from our enlarged
views of the laws and nature of heredity and variation, as well
as from the original intent of the term species as
defined by the great scientist who originated it, the verdict
of an impartial investigator must be that we have never seen a
new species originate by any natural or artificial method since
the dawn of scientific observation.
Here again we find the record of Creation confirmed; for the
failure of the thousands of modern investigators to originate
genuine new species proves that in this respect also Creation
is not now going on. And all the analogies from the origin of
matter, of energy, of life, and from the laws of the
reproduction of cells, indicate that we have at last found rock
bottom truth regarding the vexed question of the origin of
species. So far as science can observe and record, each living
thing on earth, in air, in water, reproduces "after its
kind."
____________________
[23]William Bateson, "Mendel's Principles of Heredity," p.
316.
[24]World's Work, December, 1913, p. 177.
[25]When dealing with only a few individual cases, we do not
always find them to come out in such exact proportion; but when
the number of examples is large, the proportion is so close to
these figures that the exceptions can be entirely neglected as
probably due to error of some kind.
[26]"A Critique of the Theory of Evolution," p. 67.
[27]In human beings it has been found that the effects of
alcoholism and of syphilis are indeed transmitted according to
Mendelian law, being the two solitary examples of diseased
conditions that are thus transmitted. But they are so plainly
pathologic phenomena that there is little temptation for the
advocates of Lamarckianism to use them as proofs of their
theory.
[28]Scientific American Sup., January 3, 1914.
[29]Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. XVIII, p. 119.
[30]The following represents the consensus of scientific
opinion regarding the lessons to be drawn from the phenomena of
our improved races of domesticated plants and animals:
"One need not be a pessimist to assert the actual evidence thus far obtained indicates that the supposed progress made in the improvement of domesticated animals and plants is nothing more than the sorting out of pure lines, and thus represents no advancement."--Prof. L.B. Walton, Science, April 3, 1914.
[31]Some of our leading biologists are now disposed to grow somewhat humorous when speaking of this mutation theory of de Vries, as may be illustrated by the following:
"The mutation theory of de Vries appears accordingly to lag useless on the biological stage, and may apparently be now relegated to the limbo of discarded hypotheses.... The present refutation has been undertaken in the interest of biological progress in this country. It is now high time, so far as the so-called mutation hypothesis, based on the conduct of the evening primrose in cultures, is concerned, that the younger generation of biologists should take heed lest the primrose path of dalliance lead them imperceptibly into the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire."--Prof. Edw. C. Jeffrey (Harvard), in Science, April 3, 1914.
[32]In commenting on these views of Bateson, Prof. S.C. Holmes, of the University of California, well speaks of them as "an illustration of the bankruptcy of present evolutionary theory."--Science, September 3, 1915.
I
In all the previous chapters I have not been giving any very
new facts or any discoveries of my own. True, my conclusions
from the facts may seem novel; but in general I have been
giving merely facts which are almost universally acknowledged
by educated men. The conservation laws of matter and of energy,
the impassable gulf between the living and the not-living, the
laws governing cell multiplication, are matters of common
knowledge and will be found in the appropriate college
text-books throughout the civilized world. Even the facts which
I have presented regarding variation and heredity are admitted
in one way or another by practically all biologists. But in
following our general subject into the field of geology, I
shall be obliged to present some comprehensive truths and
general conclusions which are not so widely acknowledged,
because only recently brought to light. However, as these facts
and conclusions may seem very new and strange to many, I shall
endeavor to build up my argument wholly on the recorded
observations of the very highest authorities rather than on my
own unsupported testimony; though for the sake of brevity I
shall be obliged to refer the reader to my "Fundamentals of
Geology" (1913) for some of the details.
One of the great outstanding ideas of geology as usually
taught is that life has been on the globe for many millions of
years, that in fact there has been a graded succession of
different types of life in a well defined invariable order,
from the lower and more generalized to the higher and more
specialized. Quite obviously this succession of life was
antagonistic to the former views of a literal Creation; and
only on this supposed fact as an outline has the modern theory
of biological evolution been built up. For if geology cannot
furnish the most unquestionable proof that life has occurred in
a very definite and invariable order, what is the use of
talking about the development of one form of life into another
by a gradual process of evolution?
One of the highest scientific authorities in America, Prof.
Thomas Hunt Morgan, of Columbia University, has recently said,
"The direct evidence furnished by fossil remains is by all odds
the strongest evidence that we have in favor of organic evolution."[33] Accordingly we purpose to examine carefully
what this by all odds "strongest evidence" is like.
II
As with some of the other facts with which we have had to deal
in previous chapters, a correct understanding of the questions
involved can best be obtained by examining the history of the
development of the science.
The first man with whom we need to concern ourselves is A.G.
Werner, a teacher of mineralogy in the University of Freiberg,
Germany. For three hundred years his ancestors had been
connected with mining work, and he, though possessing little
general education, knew about all that was then known regarding
mineralogy and petrology. He wrote no books; but by his
enthusiastic teaching he gathered as students and sent out as
evangelists hundreds of devoted young scientists who rapidly
spread his theories through all the countries of Europe.
"Unfortunately," says Zittel, "Werner's field observations
were limited to a small district, the Erz Mountains and the
neighboring parts of Saxony and Bohemia. And his chronological
scheme of formations was founded on the mode of occurrence of
the rocks within these narrow confines."[34]
Werner had found the granites, limestones, sandstones,
schists, etc., occurring in a certain relative order in his
native country; and he drew the very remarkable conclusion that
this was the normal order in which these various rocks
would invariably be found in all parts of the world, on the
theory that this was the order in which these different rocks
had been formed in the beginning, great layers of these
different rocks having originally been spread completely around
the globe one outside another like the coats of an onion. With
this as a major premise, it is not surprising that he and his
enthusiastic disciples "were as certain of the origin and
sequence of the rocks as if they had been present at the
formation of the earth's crust."[35]
The amusement with which this onion-coat theory is now
regarded is hardly appropriate in view of its universal vogue
among geologists about the beginning of the nineteenth century,
and in view of the further fact that a very similar and only
slightly modified substitute theory has been universally taught
for three-quarters of a century and still prevails. The
modern form of the theory substitutes onion-coats of
fossiliferous rocks for onion-coats of mineral and lithological
characters; and a brief consideration of this theory is now in
order.
About the time that various geologists here and there were
finding rocks in positions that could not be explained in terms
of Werner's theory, William Smith (1769-1839) in England and
the great Baron Cuvier (1769-1832) in France found
characteristic fossils occurring in various strata; and under
their teachings it was not long before the fossils were
considered the best guide in determining the relative sequence
of the rocks. The familiar idea of world-enveloping strata as
representing successive ages was not discarded; but instead of
Werner's successive ages of limestone making, sandstone making,
etc., these new investigators taught that there were successive
ages of invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, and mammals, these
creatures having registered their existence in rocky strata
which thus by hypothesis completely encircled the globe one
outside another.
It is true that early in the nineteenth century Sir Charles
Lyell and others tried to disclaim this absurd and unscientific
inheritance from Werner's onion-coats; but modern geology has
never yet got rid of its essential and its chief characteristic
idea, for all our text-books still speak of various successive
ages when only certain types of life prevailed all over the
globe. Hence it is that Herbert Spencer caustically
remarks: "Though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit
is traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the
conclusions of its antagonists."[36] Hence it is that Whewell,
in his "History of the Inductive Sciences," refuses to
acknowledge that in geology any real advance has yet been made
toward a stable science like those of astronomy, physics, and
chemistry. "We hardly know," he says, "whether the progress is
begun. The history of physical astronomy almost commences with
Newton, and few persons will venture to assert that the Newton
of geology has yet appeared."[37] Hence it is that T.H. Huxley
declares, "In the present condition of our knowledge and of
our methods, one verdict,--'not proven and not
provable'--must be recorded against all grand hypotheses of
the palæontologist respecting the general succession of
life on the globe."[38] And hence it is that Sir Henry H.
Howorth, a member of the British House of Commons and the
author of three exhaustive works on the Glacial theory,
declares, "It is a singular and notable fact, that while most
other branches of science have emancipated themselves from the
trammels of metaphysical reasoning, the science of geology
still remains imprisoned in a priori theories."[39]
And thus the matter remains even to-day, in this second decade
of the twentieth century. Geology has never yet been
regenerated, as have all the other sciences, by being
delivered from the caprice of subjective speculations and a
priori theories and being placed on the secure basis of
objective and demonstrable fact, in accordance with the
principles of that inductive method of investigation which was
instituted by Bacon and which has become so far universal in
the other sciences that it is everywhere known as the
scientific method. In accordance with this method, theories in
all the other sciences are always kept well subordinated to
facts; and whenever unequivocal facts are found manifestly
contradicting a theory no matter how venerable, the theory must
go to make way for the facts. In other words, the theoretical
parts of the various other sciences are always kept revised
from time to time, to keep them in line with the new
discoveries that have been made. There has been no lack of
astonishing discoveries of new facts in geology during the past
half century or so, while all the other sciences have been
making such astonishing progress. But for over seventy five
years geology has not made a single advance movement in its
theoretical aspects; indeed, in all its important general
principles it has scarcely changed in a hundred years. I shall
leave it to the reader to judge whether this is a case of
almost miraculous perfection from the beginning, or of arrested
development.
III
Of the three general postulates or a priori
assumptions of this curiously out-of-date mediæval
science, namely, (1) Uniformity, (2) the Cooling globe theory,
and (3) the theory of the Successive Ages, the first two have
already been examined and found wanting by other investigators,
and have been allowed to lapse into a sort of honored disuse,
though their memory is still reverently cherished in all the
text-books of the science. The "Challenger" Expedition
dissipated most of the myths that had long been taught
regarding the deep waters of the ocean; and Professor Suess has
disposed of the closely related myth about the coasts of the
continents being constantly on the seesaw up and down. These
two discoveries, with others that might be mentioned, dispose
of Lyell's theory of uniformity. Lord Kelvin and the other
physicists dissipated the idea of a molten interior of the
earth. Hence, because these other false hypotheses have already
in a measure been disposed of, as well as for the sake of
brevity, I shall here discuss only the third of the
prime postulates of the current system of geology, namely the
theory of Successive Ages. And when we have adjusted this
aspect of the science of geology to the facts of the rocks as
made known to us by modern discoveries, we shall find little in
this science out of harmony with the older view of a literal
Creation as taught in the Bible and as already confirmed by the
other branches of science which we have been examining.
There are five leading arguments against the reality of
these successive ages. Four of them must be dismissed here by a
brief summary of the facts as we know them to-day, referring
the reader to the author's larger work, where detailed evidence
is given for each. The fifth series of facts I shall
give here in more detail, though of course even this must be
but an outline of what is given elsewhere.
1. In the earlier days of the theory of successive ages it was
taught that only certain kinds of fossils were to be found
at the bottom of the series, or next to the Primitive or
Archæan. This feature of the theory was demanded by the
supposed universal spread of one type of life all around the
globe in the earliest age. But it is now known that the
so-called "oldest" fossiliferous rocks occur only in detached
patches over the globe, while other or "younger" kinds are just
as likely to be found on the Primitive or next to the
Archæan. Not only may any kind of fossiliferous rocks
occur next to the Archæan, but even the "youngest" may be
so metamorphosed and crystalline as to resemble exactly in this
respect the so-called "oldest" rocks. On the other hand some of
the very "oldest" rocks may, like the Cambrian strata around
the Baltic and in some parts of the United States, consist of
"muds scarcely indurated and sands still incoherent."[40]
All this means that many facts regarding the position
of the strata as well as regarding their consolidation
contradict the theory of successive ages.
2. Many of the rivers of the world completely ignore the
alleged varying ages of the rocks in the different parts of
their course, and treat them all as if of the same age or as if
they began sawing at them all at the same time. This is true of
the Rhine, the Meuse, and the Danube in Europe, the Sutlej of
India, and the upper part of the Colorado in America, not to
mention others. The old strand lines around all the continents
act in the very same way, ignoring the varying ages of the
rocks they happen to meet; as is also true of nearly all the
great faults or fissures which are of more than local extent.
The ore veins of the various minerals are about as likely to be
found in Tertiary or Mesozoic as in the Palæozoic. A very
similar lesson is to be learned from the fossils found lying
exposed on the deep ocean bottom; for they are about as likely
to be Palæozoic or Mesozoic as Tertiary.
From these facts we conclude that practically all the great
natural chronometers of the earth seem to treat the
fossiliferous rocks as if they are all of about the same
age, completely disregarding the distinctions in age
founded on the fossils.
3. According to the present chronological arrangement of the
rocks, very many genera, often whole tribes of animals, are
found as fossils only in the oldest rocks, and have skipped
all the others, though found in comparative abundance in
our modern world. Very many others have skipped from the
Mesozoic down, while still others skip large parts of
the series of successive ages.
These absurdities would all be avoided by acknowledging that
the current distinctions as to the ages of the fossils are
purely artificial, and that one fossil is intrinsically just as
old or as young as another.
4. It is now known that any kind of "young" beds whatsoever,
Mesozoic, Tertiary, or even Pleistocene, may be found in such
perfect conformability on some of the very oldest beds
over wide stretches of country that "the vast interval of time
intervening is unrepresented either by deposition or erosion";
while in some instances these age-separated formations so
closely resemble one another in structure and in mineralogical
make-up that, "were it not for fossil evidence, one would
naturally suppose that a single formation was being dealt with"
(McConnell); and these conditions are "not merely local, but
persistent over wide areas" (A. Geikie), so that the "numerous
examples" (Suess) of these conditions "may well be cause for
astonishment" (Suess).
A still more astonishing thing from the standpoint of the
current theories is that these conformable relations of
incongruous strata are often repeated over and over again in
the same vertical section, the same kind of bed reappearing
alternately with others of an entirely different "age," that
is, appearing "as if regularly interbedded" (A. Geikie)
with them, in a manifestly undisturbed series of strata.
Here again we have a very formidable series of facts whose
gravamen is directed wholly against the artificial distinctions
in age between the different groups of fossils; and their
argument is an eloquent plea that the fossils are neither older
nor younger but all of a similar age.
5. Our last fact demands a somewhat more extended
consideration; but it may be stated in advance briefly as
follows:
In very numerous cases and over hundreds and even thousands of
square miles, the conformable conditions specified in the
previous fact are exactly reproduced upside down; that
is, very "old" rocks occur with just as much appearance of
natural conformability on top of very "young" rocks, the area
in some instances covering many hundreds of square miles, and
in one particular instance in Montana and Alberta covering
about five or six thousand square miles of area.
The first notable example of this phenomenon was discovered at
Glarus, Switzerland, a good many years ago; since which time
this locality has become a classic in geological literature,
and has called out many ponderous monographs in German and
French by such men as Heim, Schardt, Lugeon, Rothpletz, and
Bertrand. This example, which was first (1870) called the
Glarner Double Fold by Escher and Heim, is now universally
called a nearly flat-lying "thrust fault," in accordance with
the explanations since adopted of similar phenomena elsewhere.
Without obtruding unnecessary technicalities upon my
non-professional readers, I may quote the words of Albert Heim
as to the conditions as now recognized in these parts:
"These flat-lying faults, of which those at Glarus were the
first to be discovered, are a universal phenomenon in
the Northern and Central Alps."[41]
The favorite method of explaining these conditions has
slightly changed within recent years, as already remarked. For
whereas the classic example at Glarus was at first spoken of as
a double fold-in from both sides toward the Sernf Valley, this
is now universally spoken of as a "thrust fault," with the
rocks all pushed one way. Incidentally it may be noted that
this very fact that what was long regarded as two completely
overturned folds is now spoken of as one flat-lying thrust
fault, is prima facie evidence that there is here no
physical proof of any real overturning of the strata, such
as we do find on a very small scale in true folded rocks. The
latter can usually be measured in yards, feet, or inches; while
in this example at Glarus the area involved would be measured
in many miles, and in some very similar examples to be
presently mentioned from America the measurement could best be
made in degrees of latitude and longitude or in arcs of the
earth's circumference. In these larger examples it is
manifestly impossible that there should be any physical
evidence sufficient to indicate a huge earth movement of this
character, especially when, as is usually the case, both the
upper and the lower strata are quite uninjured in
appearance. No; the fossils are here in the wrong order,
that is all. And so, to save the long established doctrines of
a very definite order of successive life-forms, this theory of
a "thrust fault" is offered as the best available explanation.
As Dr. Albert Heim himself once expressed it very naively in a
letter to the present writer, that the strata over these large
areas are in a position manifestly at direct disagreement with
the received order of the fossils, "is a fact which can be
clearly seen,--only we know not yet how to explain it in a
mechanical way."
An example in the Highlands of Scotland was about the next to
be discovered. Here, as Dana says, "a mass of the oldest
crystalline rocks, many miles in length from north to south,
was thrust at least ten miles westward over younger rocks, part
of the latter fossiliferous;" and he further declares, "the
thrust planes look like planes of bedding, and were long so
considered."[42]
Sir Archibald Geikie and others had at first described these
beds as naturally conformable; and when at length they were
convinced that the fossils would not permit this explanation,
Geikie gives us some very picturesque details as to how natural
they look.
The thrust planes, he says, are with much difficulty
distinguished "from ordinary stratification planes, like which
they have been plicated, faulted, and denuded. Here and there,
as a result of denudation, a portion of one of them appears
capping a hilltop. One almost refuses to believe that the
little outlier on the summit does not lie normally on the rocks
below it, but on a nearly horizontal fault by which it has been
moved into its place."
Of a similar example in Ross Shire he declares:
"Had these sections been planned for the purpose of deception,
they could not have been more skilfully devised, ... and no one
coming first to the ground would suspect that what appears to
be a normal stratigraphical sequence is not really so."[43]
Here again we have unequivocal testimony from the most
competent of observers that there is no physical evidence
whatever to lead any one to say that a ponderous scale of
the earth's crust was really pushed up on top of other
portions, as this makeshift theory of "thrust faults" involves.
The fossils are here in the wrong order, just as in the
case at Glarus; that is all. The facts seem to be a flat
contradiction to the theory of definite successive ages, and to
save the theory this explanation of a "thrust fault" is
invented, though there is absolutely no physical evidence of
any disturbance of the strata.
Our next stopping place is in the Southern Appalachian
Mountains of eastern Tennessee and northern Georgia. Here we
have the Carboniferous strata dipping gently to the southeast,
like an ordinary low monocline, under Cambrian or Lower
Silurian, one of these so-called faults having a reported
length of 375 miles,[44] while in another instance the upper
strata are said to have been pushed about eleven miles in the
direction of the "thrust."[45] These conditions, we are told,
"have provoked the wonder of the most experienced geologists,"[46] because of the perfectly natural appearance of
the surfaces of the strata affected; or as this same writer
puts it, "The mechanical effort is great beyond comprehension,
but the effect upon the rocks is inappreciable," and "the fault
dip is often parallel to the bedding of the one or the other
series of strata."[47] Which means, in other words, that these
"thrust planes" look just like ordinary planes of bedding
between conformable strata.
The Rocky Mountains furnish examples of many kinds of natural
phenomena on the very largest scale, and those of the sort here
under consideration are no exception to this rule. For here we
have an immense area east of the main divide, extending from
the middle of Montana up to the Yellowhead Pass in Alberta, or
over 350 miles long, where the tops of the mountains consist of
jointed limestones or argillites of Algonkian or pre-Cambrian
"age," resting on soft Cretaceous shales. Often the greater
part of the mass of a range will consist of these "older" and
harder rocks, which by the erosion of the soft underlying
shales are left standing in picturesque, rectangular,
cathedral-like masses, easily recognizable as far off as they
can be seen. And the almost entire absence of trees or other
vegetation helps one to trace out the relationship of these
formations over immense areas with little or no difficulty.
In the latitude of the Bow River, near the Canadian Pacific
main line, there is a long narrow valley of these Cretaceous
beds some sixty-five miles long, called the Cascade Trough,
with of course pre-Cambrian mountains on each side. Somewhat
further south there are two of these Cretaceous valleys
parallel to one another, and in some places three; while
just south of the fiftieth parallel of latitude, at Gould's
Dome, there are actually five parallel ranges of these
Palæozoic mountains, with four Cretaceous valleys in
between, one of these valleys, the Crow's Nest Trough,
being ninety-five miles long.
But we ought to take a nearer view of these wonderful
conditions. A convenient point of approach will be just east of
Banff, Alberta, near Kananaskis Station, where the Fairholme
Mountain has been described by R.G. McConnell of the Canadian
Survey. The latter remarks with amazement on the perfectly
natural appearance of these Algonkian limestones resting in
seeming conformability on Cretaceous shales, and says that the
line of separation between them, called in the theory the
"thrust plane," resembles in all respects an ordinary
stratification plane. I quote his language:
"The angle of inclination of its plane to the horizon is
very low, and in consequence of this its outcrop follows
a very sinuous line along the base of the mountains, and
acts exactly like the line of contact of two nearly
horizontal formations.
"The best places for examining this fault are at the gaps of
the Bow and of the south fork of Ghost River.... The fault
plane here is nearly horizontal, and the two formations, viewed
from the valley, appear to succeed one another
conformably."[48]
This author adds the further interesting detail that the
underlying Cretaceous shales are "very soft," and "have
suffered very little by the sliding of the limestone over them."[49]
About a hundred miles further south, but still in Alberta, we
have the well-known Crow's Nest Mountain, a lone peak, which
consists of these same Algonkian limestones resting on a
Cretaceous valley "in a nearly horizontal attitude," as G.M.
Dawson says, which "in its structure and general appearance
much resembles Chief Mountain,"[50] another detached peak some
fifty miles further south, just across the boundary line in
Montana.
Chief Mountain has been well described by Bailey Willis,[51]
who estimates that the Cretaceous beds underneath this mountain
must be 3,500 feet thick; while the so-called "thrust plane"
"is essentially parallel to the bedding" of the upper series.[52]
"This apparently is true not only of the segments of thrust
surface beneath eastern Flattop, Yellow, and Chief Mountain,
but also of the more deeply buried portions which appear to dip
with the Algonkian strata into the syncline. While observation
is not complete, it may be assumed on a basis of fact that
thrust surfaces and bedding are nearly parallel over extensive areas."[53]
Quite recently this region has been studied by Marius R.
Campbell of the Washington Survey Staff (Bulletin 600), while
the part in Alberta has been studied by Rollin T. Chamberlin of
Chicago. Much of the vast area involved is not yet well
explored; but over it all, so far as it has been fully
examined, the same lithological and stratigraphical structures
reappear with the persistence of a repeating decimal. And were
it not for the exigencies of the theory of Successive Ages,
this whole region of some five or six thousand square miles
would be considered as only an ordinary example, on a rather
large scale, of undisturbed horizontal stratification cut up by
erosion into mountains of denudation, with of course occasional
instances of minor local disturbances here and there, as would
be expected over an area of this extent.
Richards and Mansfield in a recent paper describe the "Bannock
Overthrust," some 270 miles long, in Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming.
The Carnegie Research recently reported a similar phenomenon
about 500 miles long in northern China.
But it would be tiresome to follow these conditions around the
world. We have plenty of examples, and we have them described
by the foremost of living geologists. What we need to do now is
to adopt a true scientific attitude of mind, a mind freed from
the hypnotizing influence of the current theories, in order
correctly to interpret the facts as we already have them.
How much of the earth's crust would we have to find in
this upside down order of the fossils, before we would be
convinced that there must be something hopelessly wrong with
this theory of Successive Ages which drives otherwise competent
observers to throw away their common sense and cling
desperately to a fantastic theory in the very teeth of such
facts?
The science of geology as commonly taught is truly in a most
astonishing condition, and doubtless presents the most peculiar
mixture of fact and nonsense to be found in the whole range of
our modern knowledge. In any minute study of a particular set
of rocks in a definite locality, geology always follows facts
and common sense; while in any general view of the world as a
whole, or in any correlation of the rocks of one region with
those of another region, it follows its absurd, unscientific
theories. But wherever it agrees with facts and common sense,
it contradicts these absurd theories; and wherever it agrees
with these theories, it contradicts facts and common sense.
That most educated people still believe its main thesis of a
definite age for each particular kind of fossil is a sad
but instructive example of the effects of mental inertia.
IV
The reader will find this matter discussed at length in the
author's "Fundamentals of Geology"; but here it will be
necessary only to draw some very obvious conclusions from the
five facts which we have set in opposition to the theory
of Successive Ages.
1. The first and absolutely incontrovertible conclusion is
that this theory of successive ages must be a gross blunder, in
its baleful effects on every branch of modern thought
deplorable beyond computation. But it is now perfectly obvious
that the geological distinctions as to age between the fossils
are fantastic and unjustifiable. No one kind of true fossil can
be proved to be older or younger than another intrinsically and
necessarily, and the methods of reasoning by which this idea
has been supported in the past are little else than a burlesque
on modern scientific methods, and are a belated survival from
the methods of the scholastics of the Middle Ages.
Not by any means that all rock deposits are of the same age.
The lower ones in any particular locality are of course "older"
than the upper ones, that is, they were deposited first. But
from this it by no means follows that the fossils contained in
these lower rocks came into being and lived and died before the
fossils in the upper ones. The latter conclusion involves
several additional assumptions which are wholly unscientific in
spirit and incredible as matters of fact, one of which
assumptions is the biological form of the onion-coat
theory. But since thousands of modern living kinds of
plants and animals are found in the fossil state, man
included, and no one of them can be proved to have lived
for a period of time alone and before others, we must by other
methods, more scientific and accurate than the slipshod methods
hitherto in vogue, attempt to decide as best we can how these
various forms of life were buried, and how the past and the
present are connected together. But the theory of definite
successive ages, with the forms of life appearing on earth in a
precise and invariable order, is dead for all coming time for
every man who has had a chance to examine the evidence and has
enough training in logic and scientific methods to know when a
thing is really proved.
And how utterly absurd for the friends of the Bible to spend
their time bandying arguments with the evolutionist over such
minor details as the question of just what geological "age"
should be assigned for the first appearance of man on the
earth, when the evolutionist's major premise is itself directly
antagonistic to the most fundamental facts regarding the first
chapters of the Bible, and above all, when this major premise
is really the weakest spot in the whole theory, the one sore
spot that evolutionists never want to have touched at all.
I fancy I hear some one object, and ask what we are to do with
the systematic arrangement of the fossils, the so-called
"geological succession," that monument to the painstaking
labors of thousands of scientists all over the world. This
geological series is still on our hands; what are we to do with
it?
It is scarcely necessary for me to say that this arrangement
of the fossils is not at all affected by my criticism of the
cause of the geological changes. The geological series is
merely an old-time taxonomic series, a classification of the
forms of life that used to live on the earth, and is of
course just as artificial as any similar arrangement of the
modern forms of life would be.
We may illustrate the matter by comparing this series with a
card index. The earlier students of geology arranged the
outline of the order of the fossils by a rather general
comparison with the series of modern life forms, which happened
to agree fairly well with the order in which they had found the
fossils occurring in England and France. But only a block out
of the middle of the complete card index could be made up from
the rocks of England and France; the rest has had to be made up
from the rocks found elsewhere. Louis Agassiz did herculean
work in rearranging and trimming this fossil card index so as
to make it conform better, not only to the companion card index
of the modern forms of life, but also to that of the embryonic
series. From time to time even now readjustments are made in
the details of all three indexes, the fossil, the modern, and
the embryonic, the method of rearrangement being charmingly
simple: just taking a card out of one place and putting it
into another place where we may think it more properly
belongs. And then if we can convince our fellow scientists over
the world that our rearrangement is justified, our adjustment
will stand,--until some one else arises to do a better job.
When a new set of rocks is found in any part of the world it is
simplicity itself for any one acquainted with the fossil index
system to assign these new beds to their proper place, though
of course the one doing this must be prepared to defend his
assignment with pertinent and sufficient taxonomic reasons.
In view of these facts, we need not be concerned as to the
fate of the geological classification of the fossils. It is a
purely artificial system, just as is the modern classification;
but both are useful, and so far as they represent true
relationships they will both stand unaffected by any change we
may make in our opinions as to how the fossils were buried. But
in view of this purely artificial character of the geological
series, what a strange sight is presented by the usual methods
employed to "prove" the exact order in which evolution has
taken place, such for instance as the use made of the graded
series of fossil "horses," to illustrate some particular theory
of just how organic development has occurred. One might
just as well arrange the modern dogs from the little spaniel to
the St. Bernard, for the geological series is just as
artificial as would be this of the dogs.
2. Another conclusion from the facts enumerated above is that
there has obviously been a great world catastrophe, and that
this must be assigned as the cause of a large part,--just
how large a part it is at present difficult to say,--of the
changes recorded in the fossiliferous rocks. This sounds very
much like a modern confirmation of the ancient record of a
universal Deluge; and I say confidently that no one who will
candidly examine the evidence now available on this point can
fail to be impressed with the force of the argument for a world
catastrophe as the general conclusion to be drawn from the
fossiliferous rocks all over the globe.
3. Finally, there is the further conclusion, the only
conclusion now possible, if there is no definite order in which
the fossils occur, namely, that life in all its varied forms
must have originated on the globe by causes not now
operative, and this Creation of all the types of life may
just as reasonably have taken place all at once, as in some
order prolonged over a long period.
As I have pointed out in my "Fundamentals," a strict
scientific method may destroy the theory of Successive Ages,
and it may show that there has been a great world catastrophe.
But here the work of strict inductive science ends. It cannot
show just how or when life or the various kinds of life did
originate, it can only show how it did not. It destroys
forever the fantastic scheme of a definite and precise order in
which the various types of life occurred on the globe, and thus
it leaves the way open to say that life must have
originated by just such a literal Creation as is recorded in
the first chapters of the Bible. But this is as far as it can
be expected to go. It is strong evidence in favor of a direct
and literal Creation; but it furnishes this evidence by
indirection, that is, by demolishing the only alternative or
rival of Creation that can command a moment's attention from a
rational mind.
But if life is not now being created from the not-living,
if new kinds of life are not now appearing by natural process,
if above all we cannot prove in any way worthy of being called
scientific that certain types of life lived before others, if
in fine man himself is found fossil and no one fossil can be
proved older than another or than that of man himself, why is
not a literal Creation demonstrated as a scientific certainty
for every mind capable of appreciating the force of logical
reasoning?
____________________
[33]"A Critique of the Theory of Evolution," p. 24.
[34]"History of Geology," p. 59.
[35]A. Geikie, "Founders of Geology," p. 112.
[36]"Illustr. of Univ. Prog.," p. 343.
[37]Vol. II, p.580.
[38]"Discourses," pp. 279-288.
[39]"The Glacial Nightmare," Preface, vii.
[40]J.A. Howe; Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. II, p. 86.
Cambridge Edition.
[41]"Der Bau der Schweizeralpen," p. 17.
[42]"Manual," pp. 111, 534.
[43]Nature, November 13, 1884, pp. 29-35.
[44]Bailey Willis, Geol. Survey, Report, Vol. 13, p. 228.
[45]C.W. Hayes, Bull. Geol. Soc., Vol. 2, pp.
141-154.
[46]Willis, op. cit., p. 228.
[47]Willis, op. cit., p. 227.
[48]Annual Report, 1886, Part D, pp. 33, 34.
[49]Report, 1886, Part D, p. 84.
[50]Report, 1885, Part B, p. 67.
[51]Bull. Geol. Soc., Vol. 13, pp. 305-352.
[52]Id., p. 336.
[53]Id., p. 336.