At the Deathbed of Darwinism | Page 5

record. It has been pointed out repeatedly by the foremost men of science that if the theory of genetic descent with the accumulation of small variations be the true account of the origin of species, a complete record of the ancestry of any existing species would reveal no distinction of species and genera. Between any two well-defined species, if one be derived from the other, there must be countless transition forms. But palaeontology fails to support the theory of evolution by minute variations. Darwinism has been shattered on the geologic rocks. "The complete absence of intermediate forms," says Mr. Carruthers, "and the sudden and contemporaneous appearance of highly organized and widely separated groups, deprive the hypothesis of genetic evolution of any countenance from the plant record of these ancient rocks. The whole evidence is against evolution (i.e., by minute modification) and there is none for it." (cf. History of Plant Life and its Bearing on Theory of Evolution, 1898). Similar testimony regarding the animal kingdom is borne by Mr. Mivart in the following carefully worded statement: "The mass of palaeontological evidence is indeed overwhelmingly against minute and gradual modification." "The Darwinian theory," declared Professor Fleischmann of Erlangen, recently, "has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination."
On one occasion Huxley expressed his conviction that the pedigree of the horse as revealed in the geological record furnished demonstrative evidence for the theory of evolution. The question has been entered into in detail by Professor Fleischmann in his work, Die Descendenstheorie. In this book the Erlangen professor makes great capital out of the "trot-horse" (Paradepferd) of Huxley and Haeckel; and as regards the evolutionary theory, easily claims a verdict of "not proven." In this connection the moderate statement of Professor Morgan is noteworthy: "When he (Fleischmann) says there is no absolute proof that the common plan of structure must be the result of blood relationship, he is not bringing a fatal argument against the theory of descent, for no one but an enthusiast sees anything more in the explanation than a very probable theory that appears to account for the facts. To demand an absolute proof is to ask for more than any reasonable advocate of the descent theory claims for it." (Professor Morgan, as we have already seen, rejects Darwinism, and inclines to the mutation theory of De Vries.) The vast majority of Darwinians must, therefore, be classed as "enthusiasts" who are not "reasonable advocates of the descent theory." For has not Professor Marsh told his readers that "to doubt evolution is to doubt science?" And similar assertions have been so frequently made and reiterated by Darwinians that the claim that Darwinism has become a dogma contains, as Professor Morgan notes, more truth than the adherents of that school find pleasant to hear.
More interesting, however, than Huxley's geological pedigree of the horse is Haeckel's geological pedigree of man. One who reads Haeckel's Natural History of Creation can hardly escape the impression that the author had actually seen specimens of each of the twenty-one ancestral forms of which his pedigree of man is composed. Such, however, was not the case. Quatrefages, speaking of this wonderful genealogical tree which Haeckel has drawn up with such scientific accuracy of description, observes: "The first thing to remark is that not one of the creatures exhibited in this pedigree has ever been seen, either living or in fossil. Their existence is based entirely upon theory." (Les Emules de Darwin, ii. p. 76). "Man's pedigree as drawn up by Haeckel," says the distinguished savant, Du Bois-Reymond, "is worth about as much as is that of Homer's heroes for critical historians."
In constructing his genealogies Haeckel has frequent recourse to his celebrated "Law of Biogenesis." The "Law of Biogenesis" which is the dignified title Haeckel has given to the discredited recapitulation theory, asserts that the embryological development of the individual (ontogeny), is a brief recapitulation, a summing up, of the stages through which the species passed in the course of its evolution in the geologic past, (phylogeny). Ontogeny is a brief recapitulation of phylogeny. This, says Haeckel, is what the "fundamental Law of Biogenesis" teaches us. (The reader of Haeckel and other Darwinians will frequently find laws put forward to establish facts: whereas other men of science prefer to have facts establish laws). When, therefore, as Quatrefages remarks, the transition between the types which Haeckel has incorporated into his genealogical tree, appears too abrupt, he often betakes himself to ontogeny and describes the embryo in the corresponding interval of development. This description he inserts in his genealogical mosaic, by virtue of the "Law of Biogenesis."
Many theories have been constructed to explain the phenomena of embryological development. Of these the simplest