At the Deathbed of Darwinism | Page 5

speech, the expression of thought,
develop itself in a year or in millions of years, out of unarticulated
sounds which express feelings of pleasure, pain, and appetite? The

common-sense of mankind will always shrink from such theories."
4. The hopes and fears of Darwinians have rightly been centered on the
history of organic development as outlined in the geological 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