THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

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THE CASE AGAINST
EVOLUTION

BY

GEORGE BARRY O'TOOLE, Ph.D., S.T.D.

PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY AND PROFESSOR EMERITUS OF PHILOSOPHY,
ST. VINCEXT ARCHABBEY; PROFESSOR OF ANIMAL
BIOLOGY, SETON HILL COLLEGE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1926

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1925,
By the macmillan company.

Set up and electrotyped.

Published April, 1925.

Reprinted February, 1926.

Printed in the United States of America by

J. J. LITTLE AND IVES COMPANY, NEW YORK

TO MY MOTHER

ADDENDA

Note to page 23. —

As a result of recent investigations on the sex chromosomes and
chromosome numbers in mammals, Theophilus S. Painter reaches the
conclusions that polyploidy cannot be invoked to explain evolution
within this class. After giving a table of chromosome numbers for
7 out of the 9 eutherian orders, Painter concludes: ''The facts recorded
above are of especial interest in that they indicate a unity of chromo-
some composition above the marsupial level and effectively dispose of
the suggestion that extensive polyploidy may have occurred within this
subclass.

"In the marsupials the chromosome number is a low one and in the
opossum is 22. At first sight it might appear that the eutherian con-
dition might have arisen from this by tetraploidy. There are two ob-
jections, however. In the first place the bulk of the chromatin in
marsupials is about the same as in the eutheria, using the sex chromo-
some as our measure. In the second place, polyploidy could scarcely
occur successfully in animals with X-Y sex chromosomes, as most mam-
mals possess, because of the complication occurring in the sex
chromosome balance" (Science, April 17, 1925, p. 424). As the X-Y
type of sex chromosomes occurs widely not only among vertebrates,
but also among insects, nematodes, and echinoderms. Painter's latter
objection excludes evolution by polyploidy from a large portion of the
animal kingdom.

Note to page 90. —

Especially reprehensible, in this respect, are the reconstructions of
the Pithecanthropus, the Eoanthropus, and other alleged pitheco-human
link modeled by McGregor and others. These imaginative productions,
in which cranial fragments are arbitrarily completed and fancifully
overlayed with a veneering of human features, have no scientific value
or justification. It is consoling, therefore, to note that the great French
palaeontologist, Marcelin Boule, in his recent book "Les Hommes
Fossiles" (Paris, 1921), has entered a timely protest against the appear-
ance of such reconstructions in serious scientific works. "Dubois and
Manouvrier," he says, "have given reconstructions of the skull and
even of the head (of the Pithecanthropus). These attempts made
by medical men, are much too hypothetical, because we do not possess
a single element for the reconstruction of the basis of the brain case, or
of the jawbones. We are surprised to see that a great palaeontologist,
Osbom, publishes efforts of this kind. Dubois proceeded still farther
in the realm of imagination when he exhibited at the universal exposi-
tion of Paris a plastic and painted reproduction of the Pithecanthropus"
(op. cit., p. 105). And elsewhere he remarks: "Some true savants have
published portraits, covered with flesh and hair, not only of the
Neandertal Man, whose skeleton is known well enough today, but also
of the Man of Piltdown, whose remnants are so fragmentary; of the
Man of Heidelberg, of whom we have only the lower jawbone; of
the Pithecanthropus, of whom there exists only a piece of the cranium
and . . . two teeth. Such reproductions may have their place in works
of the lowest popularization. But they very much deface the books,
though otherwise valuable, into which they are introduced." . . .
"Men of science — and of conscience — know the difficulties of such at-
tempts too well to regard them as anything more than a pastime"
(op. cit., p. 227).

Note to page 342. —

A fourth possibility is suggested by the case of the so-called skull of
the Galley Hill Man, of whose importance as a prehistoric link Sir
Arthur Keith held a very high opinion, but which has since turned out
to be no skull at all, but merely an odd-shaped piece of stone.

CONTENTS

PAGE

Foreword xi

PART I— EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

CHAPTER

I The Present Crisis in Evolutionary Thought . 1

II Homology and Its Evolutionary Interpretation 31

III Fossil Pedigrees 66

PART II— THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS

I The Origin of Life 131

II The Origin of the Human Soul 189

III The Origin of the Human Body . . . . . 268

Afterword 349

31 5-

^^^

FOREWORD

The literature on the subject of evolution has already at-
tained such vast dimensions that any attempt to add to it has
the appearance of being both superfluous and presumptuous.
It is, however, in the fact that the generality of modern works
are frankly partisan in their treatment of this theme that
the publication of the present work finds justification.

For the philosophers and scientists of the day evolution is
evidently something which admits of no debate and which
must be maintained at all costs. These thinkers are too
intent upon making out a plausible case for the theory
to take anything more than the mildest interest in the facts
opposed to it. If they advert to them at all, it is always to
minimize, and never to accentuate, their antagonistic force.
For the moment, at any rate, the minds of scientific writers
are closed to unfavorable, and open only to favorable, evi-
dence, so that one must look elsewhere than in their pages
for adequate presentation of the case against evolution.

The present work aims at setting forth the side of the
question which it is now the fashion to suppress. It refuses
to be bound by the convention which prescribes that evolu-
tion shall be leniently criticized. It proceeds, in fact, upon
the opposite assumption, namely, that a genuinely scientific
theory ought not to stand in need of indulgence, but should
be able, on the contrary, to endure the acid test of merciless
criticism.

Evolution has been termed a "necessary hypothesis." We
have no quarrel with the phrase, provided it really means
evolution as an hypothesis, and not evolution as a dogma.
For, obviously, the problem of a gradual differentiation of

xi

xii FOREWORD

organic species cannot even be investigated upon the fixistic
assumption, inasmuch as this assumption destroys the prob-
lem at the very outset. Unless we assume the possibility, at
least, that modern species of plants and animals may have
been the product of a gradual process, there is no problem
to investigate. It is, however, a far cry from the possibility
to the actuality; and the mere fact that an hypothesis is
necessary as an incentive to investigation does not by any
means imply that the result of the investigation will be the
vindication of its inspirational hypothesis. On the contrary,
research often results in the overthrow of the very hypothesis
which led to its inception. We can, therefore, quite readily
admit the necessity of evolution as an hypothesis, while re-
jecting its necessity as a dogma.

Assent to evolution as a dogma is advocated not only by
materialists, who see in evolutionary cosmogony proof posi-
tive of their monism and the complete overthrow of the idea
of Creation, but also by certain Catholic scientists, who seem
to fear that religion may become involved in the anticipated
ruin of fixism. Thus all resistance to the theory of evolution
is deprecated by Father Wasmann and Canon Dorlodot on
the assumption that the ultimate triumph of this theory is
inevitable, and that failure to make provision for this even-
tuality will lead to just such another blunder as theologians
of the sixteenth century made in connection with the Coperni-
can theory. Recollection of the Galileo incident is, doubtless,
salutary, in so far as it suggests the wisdom of caution and
the imperative necessity of close contact with ascertained
facts, but a consideration of this sort is no warrant whatever
for an uncritical acceptance of what still remains unverified.
History testifies that verification followed close upon the
heels of the initial proposal of the heliocentric theory, but
the whole trend of scientific discovery has been to destroy,
rather than to confirm, all definite formulations of the evolu-
tional theory, in spite of the immense erudition expended
in revising them.

FOREWORD xiii

There is, in brief, no parity at all between Transformism
and the Copernican theory. Among other points of difference,
Tuccimei notes especially the following: 'The Copernican
system," he remarks, "explains that which is, whereas evolu-
tion attempts to explain that which was; it enters, in other
words, into the problem of origins, an insoluble problem in
the estimation of many illustrious evolutionists, according to
whom no experimental verification is possible, given the
processes and factors in conjunction with which the theory
was proposed. But what is of still greater significance for
those who desire to see a parallelism between the two theories
is the fact that the Copernican system became, with the dis-
coveries of Newton, a demonstrated thesis, scarcely fifty years
after the death of Galileo; the theory of evolution, on the
other hand, is at the present day no longer able to hold its own
even as an hypothesis, so numerous are its incoherencies and
the objections to it raised by its own partisans." (*'La Deca-
denza di una Teoria," 1908, p. 11.)

The prospect, then, of a renewal of the Galileo episode
is exceedingly remote. Far more imminent to the writer seems
the danger that the well-intentioned rescuers of religion may
be obliged to perform a most humiliating volte face, after hav-
ing accepted all too hastily a doctrine favored only for the
time being in scientific circles. It is, in fact, by no means
inconceivable that the scientific world will eventually discard
the now prevalent dogma of evolution. In that case those
who have seen fit to reconcile religion with evolution will have
the questionable pleasure of unreconciling it in response to
this reversal of scientific opinion.

On the whole, the safest attitude toward evolution is the
agnostic one. It commits us to no uncertain position. It does
not compromise our intellectual sincerity by requiring us to
accept the dogmatism of scientific orthodoxy as a substitute
for objective evidence. It precludes the possible embarrass-
ment of having to unsay what we formerly said. And last,
but not least, it is the attitude of simple truth ; for the truest

xiv FOREWORD

thing that Science is, or ever will be, able to say concerning
the problem of organic origins is that she knows nothing
about it.

In the present work, we shall endeavor to show that Evolu-
tion has long since degenerated into a dogma, which is believed
in spite of the facts, and not on account of them. The first
three chapters deal with the theory in general, discussing
in turn its genetical, morphological, and geological aspects.
The last three chapters are devoted to the problem of origins,
and treat of the genesis of life, of the human soul, and of
the human body, respectively.

While this book is in no sense a work of "popular science,"
I have sought to broaden its scope and interest by combining
the scientific with the philosophic viewpoint. Certain portions
of the text are unavoidably technical, but there is much, be-
sides, that the general reader will be able to follow without
difficulty. Students, especially of biology, geology, and ex-
perimental psychology, may use it to advantage as supple-
mentary reading in connection with their textbooks.

I wish to acknowledge herewith my indebtedness to the
Editor of the Catholic Educational Review, Rev. George John-
son, Ph.D., to whose suggestion and encouragement the incep-
tion of this work was largely due. I desire also to express
my sincere appreciation of the services rendered in the revision
of the manuscript by the Rev. Edward Wenstrup, O.S.B.,
Professor of Zoology, St. Vincent College, Pennsylvania.

BARRY OTOOLE.

St. Vincent Archabbey,

January 30, 1925.

PART I
EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

[Co -

L tiBRARY :

I

EVOLUTION IN GENERAL

CHAPTER I

THE PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY

THOUGHT

Three prominent men, a scientist, a publicist, and an orator,
have recently made pronouncements on the theory of Evolu-
tion. The trio, of course, to whom allusion is made, are
Bateson, Wells, and Bryan. As a result of their utter-
ances, there has been a general reawakening of interest in
the problem to which they drew attention. Again and
again, in popular as well as scientific publications,
men are raising and answering the question: "Is Darwin-
ism dead?" Manifold and various are the answers given,
but none of them appears to take the form of an unqualified
affirmation or negation. Some reply by drawing a distinction
between Darwinism, as a synonym for the theory of evolution
in general, and Darwinism, in the sense of the particular form
of that theory which had Darwin for its author. Modem
research, they assure us, has not affected the former, but has
necessitated a revision of ideas with respect to the latter.
There are other forms of evolution besides Darwinism, and,
as a matter of fact, not Darwin, but Lamarck was the orig-
inator of the scientific theory of evolution. Others, though
imitating the prudence of the first group in their avoidance of
a categorical answer, prefer to reply by means of a distinction
based upon their interpretation of the realities of the problem

rather than upon any mere terminological consideration.

1

2 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Of the second group, some, like Osborn, distinguish between
the law of evolution and the theoretical explanations of this
law proposed by individual scientists. The existence of the
law itself, they insist, is not open to question; it is only with
respect to hypotheses explanatory of the aforesaid law that
doubt and disagreement exist. The obvious objection to such
a solution is that, if evolution is really a law of nature, it
ought to be reducible to some clear-cut mathematical formula
comparable to the formulations of the laws of constant, mul-
tiple, and reciprocal proportion in chemistry, or of the laws of
segregation, assortment, and linkage in genetics. Assuming,
then, that it is a genuine law, how is it that to-day no one
ventures to formulate this evolutional law in definite and
quantitative terms?

Others, comprising, perhaps, a majority, prefer to distin-
guish between the fact and the causes of evolution. Practi-
cally all scientists, they aver, agree in accepting evolution as
an established fact; it is only with reference to the agencies
of evolution that controversy and uncertainty are permissible.
To this contention one may justly reply that, by all the
canons of linguistic usage, a fact is an observed or experienced
event, and that hitherto no one in the past or present has ever
been privileged to witness with his senses even so elemental
a phenomenon in the evolutionary process as the actual origin
of a new and genuine organic species. If, however, the admis-
sion be made that the term "fact" is here used in an untech-
nical sense to denote an inferred event postulated for the pur-
pose of interpreting certain natural phenomena, then the
statement that the majority of modem scientists agree as to
the "fact" of evolution may be allowed to stand, with no fur-
ther comment than to note that the formidable number and
prestige of the advocates fail to intimidate us. Considerations
of this sort are wholly irrelevant, for in science no less than in
philosophy authority is worth as much as its arguments and
no more.

The limited knowledge of the facts possessed by the biolo-

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 3

gists of the nineteenth century left their imaginations peril-
ously unfettered and permitted them to indulge in a veritable
orgy of theorizing. Now, however, that the trail blazed by
the great Augustinian Abbot, Mendel, has been rediscovered,
work of real value is being done with the seed pan, the incu-
bator, the microtome, etc., and the wings of irresponsible specu-
lation are clipped. Recent advances in this new field of
Mendelian genetics have made it possible to subject to critical
examination all that formerly went under the name of "ex-
perimental evidence" of evolution. Even with respect to the
inferential or circumstantial evidence from palaeontology, the
enormous deluge of fossils unearthed by the tireless zeal of
modern investigators has annihilated, by its sheer complexity,
the hasty generalizations and facile simplifications of a
generation ago, forcing the adoption of a more critical
attitude. Formerly, a graded series of fossil genera
sufiSced for the construction of a "palseontological pedi-
gree"; now, the worker in this field demands that the chain
of descent shall be constructed with species, instead of genera,
for links — "Not till we have linked species into lineages, can
we group them into genera." (F. A. Bather, Science, Sept. 17,
1920, p. 264.) This remarkable progress in scientific studies
has tended to precipitate the crisis in evolutionary thought,
which we propose to consider in the present chapter. Before
doing so, however, it will be of advantage to formulate a clear
statement of the problem at issue.

Evolution, or transformism, as it is more properly called,
may be defined as the theory which regards the present species
of plants and animals as modified descendants of earlier
forms of life. Nowadays, therefore, the principal use of the
term evolution is to denote the developmental theory of organic
species. It is, however, a word of many senses. In the
eighteenth century, for example, it was employed in a sense
at variance with the present usage, that is, to designate the
non-developmental theory of embryological encasement or
preformation as opposed to the developmental theory of epi-

4 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

genesis. According to the theory of encasement, the adult
organism did not arise by the generation of new parts (epi-
genesis), but by a mere "unfolding" {evolutio) of preexistent
parts. At present, however, evolution is used as a synonym
for transformism, though it has other meanings, besides, being
sometimes used to signify the formation of inorganic nature as
well as the transformation of organic species.

Evolution, in the sense of transformism, is opposed to
fixism, the older theory of Linne, according to whom no spe-
cific change is possible in plants and animals, all organisms
being assumed to have persisted in essential sameness of type
from the dawn of organic life down to the present day. The
latter theory admits the possibility of environmentally-
induced modifications, which are non-germinal and therefore
non-inheritable. It also admits the possibility of germinal
changes of the varietal, as opposed to the specific, order, but
it maintains that all such changes are confined within the
limits of the species, and that the boundaries of an organic
species are impassable. Transformism, on the contrary, affirms
the possibility of specific change, and assumes that the boun-
daries of organic species have actually been traversed.

What, then, is an organic species? It may be defined as a
group of organisms endowed with the hardihood necessary to
survive and propagate themselves under natural conditions
{i.e. in the wild state) , exhibiting a common inheritable type,
differing from one another by no major germinal difference,
perfectly interfertile with one another, but sexuully incom-
patible with members of an alien specific group, in such wise
that they produce hybrids wholly, or partially, sterile, when
crossed with organisms outside their own specific group.

David Starr Jordan has wisely called attention to the
requisite of viability and survival under natural conditions.
"A species," he says, "is not merely a form or group of indi-
viduals distinguished from other groups by definable features.
A complete definition involves longevity. A species is a kind
of animal or plant which has run the gauntlet of the ages and

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 5

persisted. ... A form is not a species until it has 'stood.' ''
(Science, Oct. 20, 1922, p. 448.)

Sexaal (gametic) incompatibility as a criterion of specific
distinction, presupposes the bisexual or biparental mode of
reproduction, namely, syngamy, and is therefore chiefly ap-
plicable to the metista, although, if the view tentatively pro-
posed by the protozoologist, E. A. Minchin, be correct, it
would also be applicable to the protista. According to this
view, no protist type is a true species, unless it is maintained
by syngamy (i.e. bisexual reproduction) — "Not until syngamy
was acquired," says Minchin, "could true species exist among
the Protista." ("An Introduction to the Study of the Proto-
zoa," p. 141.)

To return, however, to the metista, the horse (Equus cabal-
liLs) and the ass (Equus asinus) represent two distinct species
under a common genus. This is indicated by the fact that the
mule, which is the hybrid offspring of their cross, is entirely
sterile, producing no offspring whatever, when mated with
ass, horse, or mule. Such total sterility, however, is not essen-
tial to the proof of specific differentiation; it suffices that the
hybrid be less fertile than its parents. As early as 1686,
sterility (total or partial) of the hybrid was laid down by
John Ray as the fundamental criterion of specific distinction.
Hence Bateson complains that Darwinian philosophy fla-
grantly "ignored the chief attribute of species first pointed
out by John Ray that the product of their crosses is frequently
sterile in a greater or lesser degree." (Science, Jan. 20, 1922,
p. 58.)

Accordingly, the sameness of type required in members of
the same species refers rather to the genotype, that is, the
sum-total of internal hereditary factors latent in the germ,
than to the phenotype, that is, the expressed somatic char-
acters, viz. the color, structure, size, weight, and all other
perceptible properties, in terms of which a given plant or ani-
mal is described. Thus it sometimes happens that two dis-

6 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

tinct specieS; like the pear-tree and the apple-tree, resemble
each other more closely, as regards their external or somatic
characters, than two varieties belonging to one and the same
species. Nevertheless, the pear-tree and the apple-tree are so
unlike in their germinal (genetic) composition that they can-
not even be crossed.

According to all theories of transformism, new species arise
through the transformation of old species, and hence evolu-
tionists are at one in affirming the occurrence of specific
change. When it comes, however, to assigning the agencies
or factors, which are supposed to have brought about this
transmutation of organic species, there is a wide divergence
of opinion. The older systems of transformism, namely,
Lamarckism and Darwinism, ascribed the modification of
organic species to the operation of the external factors of
the environment, while the later school of orthogenesis at-
tributed it to the exclusive operation of factors residing within
the organism itself.

Lamarckism, for example, made the formation of organs
a response to external conditions imposed by the environ-
ment. The elephant, according to this view, being maladjusted
to its environment by reason of its clumsy bulk, developed a
trunk by using its nose to compensate for its lack of pliancy
and agility. Here the use or function precedes the organ
and molds the latter to its need. Darwinism agrees with
Lamarckism in making the environment the chief arbiter of
modification. Its explanation of the elephant's trunk, how-
ever, is negative rather than positive. This animal, it tells
us, developed a trunk, because failure to vary in that useful
direction would have been penalized by extermination.

Wilson presents, in a very graphic manner, the appalling
problem which confronts evolutionists who seek to explain
the adaptations of organisms by means of environmental fac-
tors. Referring, apparently, to Henderson's "Fitness of the
Environment," he says: 'Tt has been urged in a recent valu-
able work . . . that fitness is a reciprocal relation, involving

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 7

the environment no less than the organism. This is both a
true and suggestive thought; but does it not leave the natural-
ist floundering amid the same old quicksands? The historical
problem with which he has to deal must be grappled at closer
quarters. He is everywhere confronted with specific devices
in the organism that must have arisen long after the condi-
tions of environment to which they are adjusted. Animals
that live in water are provided with gills. Were this all, we
could probably muddle along with the notion that gills are
no more than lucky accidents. But we encounter a sticking
point in the fact that gills are so often accompanied by a va-
riety of ingenious devices, such as reservoirs, tubes, valves,
pumps, strainers, scrubbing brushes, and the like, that are
obviously tributary to the main function of breathing. Given
water, asks the naturalist, how has all this come into existence
and been perfected? The question is an inevitable product
of our common sense." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 405.)

Impressed with the difficulty of accounting for the phenom-
ena of organic adaptation by means of the far too general
and unspecific influence of the environment,, the orthogenetic
school of transformism inaugurated by Nageli, Eimer, and K61-
liker repudiated this explanation, and sought to explain or-
ganic evolution on the sole basis of internal factors, such as
"directive principles," or germinal determinants. According to
this conception, the elephant first developed his trunk under
the drive of some internal agency, and afterwards sought out
an environment in which the newly-developed trunk would be
useful. In other words, orthogenesis makes the organ precede
the function, and is therefore the exact reverse of Lamarckism.

Evolutionists in general, as we have said, regard our present
plants and animals as the modified progeny of earlier forms,
understanding by "modified" that which is the product of a
trans-specific, as distinguished from a varietal or intra-specific,
change. To substantiate the claim that changes of specific
magnitude have actually taken place, they appeal to two prin-
cipal kinds of evidence, namely: (a) empirical evidence based

8 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

on such variations as are now observed to occur among living
organisms; (b) inferential evidence, which aposterioristically
deduces the common ancestry of allied organic types from their
resemblances and their sequence in geological time. Hence,
if we omit as negligible certain subsidiary arguments, the
whole evidence for organic evolution may be summed up under
three heads: (1) the genetic evidence grounded on the facts
of variation; (2) the zoological evidence based on homology,
that is, on structural resemblance together with all further
resemblances (physiological and embryological), which such
similarity entails; (3) the palseontological evidence which
rests on the gradual approximation of fossil types to modern
types, when the former are ranged in a series corresponding
to the alleged chronological order of their occurrence in the
geological strata. It is the bearing of recent genetical re-
search upon the first of these three lines of evidence that
we propose to examine in the present chapter, an objective
to which a brief and rather eclectic historical survey of
evolutionary thought appears to offer the easiest avenue of
approach.

While many bizarre speculations on the subject of trans-
formism had been hazarded in centuries prior to the nineteenth,
the history of this conception, as a scientific hypothesis, dates
from the publication of Lamarck's "Philosophic Zoologique"
in 1809. According to Lamarck, organic species are changed
as a result of the indirect influence of the external conditions
of life. A change in environment forces a change of habit on
the part of the animal. A change in the animal's habits re-
sults in adaptation, that is, in the development or suppression
of organs through use or disuse. The adaptation, therefore,
thus acquired was not directly imposed by the environment,
but only indirectly — ^that is, through the mediation of habit.
Once acquired by the individual animal, however, the adapta-
tion was, so Lamarck thought, taken up by the process of in-
heritance and perpetuated by being transmitted to the animal's
offspring. The net result would be a progressive differentia-

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 9

tion of species due to this indirect influence of a varying en-
vironment.

Such was the theory of Lamarck, and it is sound and
plausible in all respects save one, namely, the unwarranted
assumption that acquired adaptations are inheritable, since
these, to quote the words of the Harvard zoologist, G. H.
Parker, ^'are as a matter of fact just the class of changes in
favor of the inheritance of which there is the least evidence."
("Biology and Social Problems," 1914, p. 103.)

The next contribution to the philosophy of transformism
was made by Charles Darwin, when, in the year 1859, he pub-
lished his celebrated ''Origin of Species." In this work, the
English naturalist bases the evolution of organic species upon
the assumed spontaneous tendency of organisms to vary
minutely from their normal type in every possible direction.
This spontaneous variability gives rise to slight variations,
some of which are advantageous, others disadvantageous to the
organism. The enormous fecundity of organisms multiplies
them in excess of the available food supply, and more, accord-
ingly, are born than can possibly survive. In the ensuing
competition or struggle for existence, individuals favorably
modified survive and propagate their kind, those unfavorably
modified perish without progeny. This process of elimination
Darwin termed natural selection. Only individuals favored by
it were privileged to propagate their kind, and thus it hap-
pened that these minute variations of a useful character were
seized upon and perpetuated ''by the strong principle of
inheritance.'' In this way, these ^slight but useful modifica-
tions would tend gradually to accumulate from generation to
generation in the direction favored by "natural selection,"
until, by the ensuing summation of innumerable minor dif-
ferences verging in the same direction, a major difference
would be produced. The end-result would be a progressive
divergence of posterity from the common ancestral type,
whence they originally sprang, ending in a multiplicity of new
forms or species, all differing to a greater or lesser extent from

10 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

the primitive type. The contrary hypothesis of a possible
convergence of two originally diverse types towards eventual
similarity Darwin rejected as an extremely improbable ex-
planation of the observed resemblance of organic forms, which,
not without reason, he thought it more credible to ascribe to
their assumed divergence from a common ancestral type.

Such was the scheme of evolution elaborated by Charles Dar-
win. His hypothesis leaves the origin of variations an unsolved
mystery. It assumes what has never been proved, namely, the
efficacy of "natural selection." It rests on what has been
definitely disproved by factual evidence, namely, the inherit-
ability of the slight variations, now called fluctuations, which,
not being transmitted even, by the hereditary process, cannot
possibly accumulate from generation to generation, as Darwin
imagined. Moreover, fluctuations owe their origin to vari-
ability in the external conditions of life {e.g. in temperature,
moisture, altitude, exposure, soil, food, etc.), being due to
the direct influence or pressure of the environment, and not
to any spontaneous tendency within the organism itself.
Hence Darwin erred no less with respect to the spontaneity,
than with respect to the inheritability and summation, of his
"slight variations."

The subsequent history of Lamarckian and Darwinian
Transformism is briefly told. That both should pass into the
discard was inevitable, but, thanks to repeated revisions under-
taken by loyal adherents, their demise was somewhat retarded.
In vain, however, did the Neo-Darwinians attempt to do for
Darwinism what the Neo-Lamarckians had as futilely striven
to do for Lamarckism. The revisers succeeded only in pre-
cipitating a lethal duel between these two rival systems,
which has proved disastrous to both. The controversy begun
in 1891 between Herbert Spencer and August Weismann
marked the climax of this fatal conflict.

Spencer refused to see any value whatever in Darwin's
principle of natural selection, while other Neo-Lamarckians,
less extreme, were content to relegate it to the status of a sub-

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 11

ordinate factor in evolution. Darwin had considered it "the
most important means of modification," but it is safe to say
that no modern biologist attaches very much importance to
natural selection as a means of accounting for the differences
which mark off one species from another. In fact, if natural
selection has enjoyed, or still continues to enjoy, any vogue
at all, it is not due to its value in natural science (which, for all
practical intents and purposes, is nil), but solely to its appeal
as "mechanistic solution"; for nothing further is needed to
commend it to modern thinkers infected with what Wasmann
calls Theophobia. Natural selection, in making the organism
a product of the concurrence of blind forces unguided by
Divine intelligence, a mere fortuitous result, and not the reali-
zation of purpose, has furnished the agnostic with a miserable
pretext for omitting God from his attempted explanation of
the universe. "Here is the knot," exclaims Du Bois-Reymond,
"here the great difficulty that tortures the intellect which
would understand the world. Whoever does not place all
activity wholesale under the sway of Epicurean chance, who-
ever gives only his little finger to teleology, will inevitably
arrive at Paley's discarded 'Natural Theology,' and so much
the more necessarily, the more clearly he thinks and the more
independent his judgment. . . . The possibility, ever so dis-
tant, of banishing from nature its seeming purpose, and put-
ting a blind necessity everywhere in the place of final causes,
appears, therefore, as one of the greatest advances in the world
of thought, from which a new era will be dated in the treat-
ment of these problems. To have.somewhat eased the torture
of the intellect which ponders over the world-problem will, as
long as philosophical naturalists exist, be Charles Darwin's
greatest title to glory." [Darwin versus Galiani, "Reden,"
Vol. I, p. 211.)

But however indispensable the selection principle may be to
a philosophy which proposes to banish the Creator from crea-
tion, its scientific insolvency has become so painfully apparent
that biologists have lost all confidence in its power to solve

12 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

the problem of organic origins. It is recognized, for example,
that natural selection would suppress, rather than promote,
development, seeing that organs have utility only in the state
of perfection and are destitute of selection-value while in the
imperfect state of transition. Again, the specific differences
that diversify the various types of plants and animals are
notoriously deficient in selection-value, and therefore the
present differentiation of species cannot be accounted for by
means of the principle of natural selection. Finally, unless
one is prepared to make the preposterous assumption that the
environment is a telic mechanism expressly designed for shap-
ing organisms, he is under logical necessity of admitting that
the influence of natural selection cannot be anything else than
purely destructive. There is, as Wilson points out, no aprior-
istic ground for supposing that natural selection could do
anything more than maintain the status quo, and as for
factual proofs of its effectiveness in a positive sense, they
are wholly wanting. Professor Caullery of the Sorbonne, in
his Harvard lecture of Feb. 24, 1916, assures us that, "since
the time of Darwin, natural selection has remained a purely
speculative idea and that no one has been able to show its
efficacy in concrete indisputable examples."

Considerations of this sort induced not only Neo-Lamarck-
ians, but many non-partisans as well, to take the field against
the Darwinian Selection Principle. Thus Spencer's caustic at-
tack became a forerunner of others, and eminent biologists,
like Fleischmann, Driesch, T. H. Morgan, and Bateson, have
in turn poured the vials of their satire upon the attempts of
Neo-Darwinians to rehabilitate the philosophy of natural
selection. Wm. Bateson warns those, who persist in their
credulity with reference to the Darwinian account of organic
teleology, that they "will be wise henceforth to base this faith
frankly on the impregnable rock of superstition and to abstain
from direct appeals to natural fact." This admonition forms
the conclusion of a scathing criticism of what he styles the
"fustian of Victorian philosophy." "In the face of what we

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 13

know," it runs, "of the distribution of variability in nature,
the scope claimed for natural selection must be greatly re-
duced. The doctrine of the survival of the fittest is undenia-
ble so long as it is applied to the organism as a whole, but
to attempt by this principle to find value in all definiteness
of parts and functions, and in the name of science to see fitness
everywhere, is mere eighteenth century optimism. Yet it was
in its application to the parts, to the details of specific dif-
ference, to the spots on the peacock's tail, to the coloring of an
orchid flower, and hosts of such examples, that the potency of
natural selection was urged with greatest emphasis. Shorn
of these pretensions the doctrine of the survival of favored
races is a truism, helping scarcely at all to account for the
diversity of species. Tolerance plays almost as considerable
a part. By these admissions the last shred of that teleological
fustian with which Victorian philosophy loved to clothe the
theory of evolution is destroyed." {Heredity, "Presidential
Address to Brit. Ass'n for Advanc. of Science," Aug. 14, 1914.)
Nor is this all. The Darwinian Selection Principle is re-
proached with having retarded the progress of science. It is
justly accused of having discouraged profound and painstak-
ing analysis by putting into currency its shallow and spurious
solution of biological problems. "Too often in the past," says
Edmund Wilson, "the facile formulas of natural selection have
been made use of to carry us lightly over the surface of unsus-
pected depths that would have richly repaid serious explora-
tion." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 406.)

In retaliation for the destructive criticism of natural selec-
tion, the Neo-Darwinians have proceeded to pulverize the
Lamarckian tenet concerning the inheritability of acquired
adaptations. Weismann, having laid down his classic dis-
tinction between the soma (comprising the vegetative or tissue
cells in contact with the environment) and the germ {i.e. the
sequestered reproductive cells or gametes, which are sheltered
from environmental vicissitudes) , showed that the Lamarckian
assumption that a change in the somatic cells (which con-

14 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

stitute the organism of the individual) is registered in the germ
cells (which constitute the vehicle of racial inheritance), is
supported neither by a priori probability nor by any facts
of observation. Germ cells give rise by division to somatic
or tissue cells, but the converse is not true ; for, once a cell has
become differentiated and specialized into a tissue cell, it can
never again give rise by division to germ cells, but only to
other tissue cells of its own kind. Hence the possibility of a
change in the tissue being transmitted to the germ has no
antecedent probability in its favor. Neither is it grounded
on the facts of observation. Bodily mutilations of the
parent are not transmitted to the offspring. The child of a
blacksmith is not born with a more developed right arm than
that of a tailor's child. When the ovaries from a white rabbit
are grafted into a black rabbit, whose own ovaries have been
previously removed, the latter, if mated to a white male, will
produce spotlessly white young. Hence the offspring inherit
the characters of the germ track of the white female, whence
the ovaries were derived, without being influenced in the least
by the pigmented somatic cells of the nurse-body {i.e. the
black female), into which the ovaries were grafted. Kam-
merer's experiments, in which young salamanders were found
to exhibit at birth the coloration, which their parents had
acquired through the action of sunlight, fail to convince, be-
cause, in this case, the bodies of the parents are not suflSciently
impervious to light to preclude its direct action upon the ga-
metes while in the reproductive organs of the parents. Hence
we cannot be sure but that the coloration of the offspring de-
rived from these gametes is due to the direct agency of sun-
light rather than to the intermediate influence of the modified
somatic cells upon the germ plasm.

The same objection holds true of the recent experiments,
in which the germ cells have been modified by modifying the
interior medium or internal environment by means of anti-
bodies and hormones. No one doubts the possibility of influ-
encing heredity by a direct modification of the germ cells, espe-

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 15

cially when, as is always the case in these experiments, the
modification produced is destructive rather than constructive.
The experiments, therefore, of Prof. M. F. Guyer of Wisconsin
University, in which a germinally-transmitted eye defect was
produced by injecting pregnant female rabbits with an anti-
lens serum derived from fowls immunized to the crystalline
lens of rabbits as antigen, are beside the mark. To demon-
strate the Lamarckian thesis one must furnish evidence of a
constructive addition to inheritance by means of prior somatic
acquisition. The transmission of defects artificially pro-
duced is not so much a process of inheritance (transmission of
type) as rather one of degeneracy (failure to equate the
parental type).^ Commenting on Guyer's suggestion that an
organism capable of producing antibodies that are germinally-
destructive, may also be able to produce constructive bodies,
Prof. Edwin S. Goodrich says: "The real weakness of the
theory is that it does not escape from the fundamental objec-
tions we have already put forward as fatal to Lamarckism.
If an effect has been produced, either the supposed constructive
substance was present from the first, as an ordinary internal
environmental condition necessary for the normal development
of the character, or it must have been introduced from without
by the application of a new stimulus. The same objection
does not apply to the destructive effect. No one doubts that
if a factor could be destroyed by a hot needle or picked out
with a fine forceps the effect of the operation would persist
throughout subsequent generations." {Science, Dec. 2, 1921,
p. 535.)

But in demonstrating against the Neo-Lamarckians that
somatic modifications unrepresented in the germ plasm could
have no significance in the process of racial evolution, Weis-
mann had (proved too much. His argument was no less telling

* A good definition of degeneracy is that of A. F. Tredgold, who says:
"I venture to define degeneracy as 'a retrograde condition of the indi-
vidual resulting from a pathological variation of the germ cell.' "
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 548.)

16 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

against Darwinism than it was against Lamarckism. Darwin's
"individual differences" or "slight variations," now spoken of
as fluctuations, were quite as unrepresented and unrecorded
in the germ cells as Lamarck's "acquired adaptations." There
can be no "summation of individual differences" for the simple
reason that fluctuations have no germinal basis and are there-
fore uninheritable — "We must bear in mind the fact," says
Prof. Edmund Wilson, "that Darwin often failed to dis-
tinguish between non-inheritable fluctuations and hereditary
mutations of small degree." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915,
p. 406.) Fluctuations, as we have seen, are due to variability
in the environmental conditions, e.g. in access to soil nutrients,
etc. As an instance of fluctuational variation the seeds of
the ragweed may be cited. Normally these seeds have six
spines, but around this average there is considerable fluctua-
tion in individual seeds, some having as many as nine spines
and others no more than one. Yet the plants reared from
nine-spine seeds, even when similarly mated, show no greater
tendency to produce nine-spine seeds than do plants reared
from one-spine seeds.

To meet the difiiculty presented by the non-inheritability of
the Lamarckian adaptation and the Darwinian fluctuation,
De Vries substituted for them those rare and abruptly-
appearing inheritable variations, which he called mutations ^
and regarded as elementary steps in the evolutionary process.
This new version of transformism was announced by De Vries
in 1901, and more fully explained in his "Die Mutations-
Theorie" (Leipzig, 1902-1903). Renner has shown that De
Vries' new forms of CEnothera were cases of complex hybridi-
zation rather than real mutants, as the forms produced by
mutation are now called. Nevertheless, the work of Morgan,
Bateson, and others leaves little doubt as to the actual occur-

^ The term mutation had been used long before and in a similar sense
by the German palaeontologist Waagen, who employed it to designate
the variations of a specific type that succeed one another in successive
strata, a thing which rarely occurs. (Cf. Waagen's Die Formenreihe des
AmmoTutes suhradiatus, Geognost. palaont. Beitr., Berlin, 1869.)

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 17

rence of factorial mutants, while Dr. Albert F. Blakeslee has
demonstrated the existence of chromosomal mutants. When
unqualified, the term mutant usually denotes the factorial
mutant, which arises from a change in one or more of the
concatenated genes (hereditary factors) of a single chromo-
some (nuclear thread) in the germinal {i.e. gametic) complex.
All such changes are called factorial mutations. They are
hereditarily transmissible, and affect the somatic characters
of the race permanently, although, in rare cases, such as that
of the bar-eyed Drosophila mutant, the phenomenon of rever-
sion has been observed. The chromosomal mutant, on the
contrary, is not due to changes in the single factors or genes,
but to duplication of one or more entire chromosomes (linkage-
groups) in the gametic complex. Like the factorial mutant,
it produces a permanent and heritable modification. The in-
crease in nuclear material involved in chromosomal mutation
{i.e. duplication) seems to cause a proportionate increase in
the cytoplasmic mass of the single somatic cells, which mani-
fests itself in the phenotype as giantism. De Vries' (Enothera
gigas is a chromosomal mutant illustrative of this phenome-
non. Besides the foregoing, there is the pseudomutant pro-
duced by the factorial recombination, which results from a
crossover, i.e. an exchange of genes or factors between two
germinal chromosomes of the same synaptic pair. This recip-
rocal transfer of genes from one homologous chromosome to
another happens, in a certain percentage of cases, during synap-
sis. The percentage can be artificially increased by exposing
young female hybrids to special conditions of temperature.

If these new mutant forms could be regarded as genuine new
species, then the fact that such variations are heritable and
come within the range of actual observation, would constitute
the long-sought empirical proof of the reality of evolution.
Consciously or subconsciously, however, De Vries recognized
that this was not the case; for he refers to mutants as ''ele-
mentary species," and does not venture to present them as
authentic organic species.

18 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

The factorial mutant answers neither the endurance test
nor the intersterility test of a genuine species. It would, doubt-
less, be going too far to regard all such mutant forms as ex-
amples of germinal degeneracy, but it cannot be denied that
all of them, when compared to the wild type, are in the direc-
tion of unfitness, none of them being viable and prosperous
under the severe conditions obtaining in the wild state. Bate-
son, who seems to regard all mutant characters as recessive
and due to germinal loss, declares: "Even in Drosophila,
where hundreds of genetically distinct factors have been iden-
tified, very few new dominants, that is to say positive addi-
tions, have been seen, and I am assured that none of them are
of a class which could be expected to be viable under natural
conditions. I understand even that none are certainly viable
in the homozygous state." (Toronto Address, Science, Jan. 20,
1922, p. 59.) "Garden or greenhouse products," says D. S.
Jordan, "are immensely interesting and instructive, but they
throw little light on the origin of species. To call them spe-
cies is like calling dress-parade cadets 'soldiers.' I have heard
this definition of a soldier, 'one that has stood.' It is easy to
trick out a group of boys to look like soldiers, but you can
not define them as such until they have 'stood.' " {Science,
Oct. 20, 1922.) In a word, factorial mutants, owing, as they
do, their survival exclusively to the protection of artificial
conditions, could never become the hardy pioneers of new
species.

Bateson insists that the mutational variation represents a
change of loss. "Almost all that we have seen," he says, "are
variations in which we recognize that elements have been
lost." {Science, Jan. 20, 1922, p. 59.) In his Address to the
British Association (1914), he cites numerous examples tend-
ing to show that mutant characters are but diminutions or
intensifications of characters pre-existent in the wild or normal
stock, all of which are explicable as effects of the loss (total
or partial) of either positive, or inhibitive (epistatic) heredi-
tary factors (genes). One of these instances illustrating the

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 19

subtractive nature of the factorial mutation is that of the
Primula "Coral King," a salmon-colored mutant, which was
suddenly given off by a red variety of Primula called "Crim-
son King." Such a mutation is obviously based on the loss of
a germinal factor for color. The loss, however, is sometimes
partial rather than total, as instanced in the case of the purple-
edged Picotee sweet pea, which arose from the wholly purple
wild variety by fractionation of the genetic factor for purple
pigment. Even where the mutational variation appears to be
one of gain, as happens when a positive character appears
de novo in the phenotype, or when a dilute parental character
is intensified in the offspring, it is, nevertheless, interpretable
as a result of germinal loss, the loss, namely, total or partial,
of a genetic inhibitor. Such inhibitive genes or factors are
known to exist. Bateson has shown, for example, that the
whiteness of White Leghorn chickens is due, not to the absence
of color-factors, but to the presence of a genetic inhibitor —
"The white of White Leghorns," he says, "is not, as white in.
nature often is, due to the loss of the color elements, but to
the action of something which inhibits their expression." (Ad-
dress to the Brit. Ass'n, Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 368.)
Thus the sudden appearance in the offspring of a character not
visibly represented in the parents may be due, not to germinal
acquisition, but the loss of an inhibitory gene, whose elimina-
tion allows the somatic character previously suppressed by it
to appear. Hence Bateson concludes: "In spite of seeming
perversity, therefore, we have to admit that there is no evo-
lutionary change which in the pres^ent state of our knowledge
we can positively declare to be not due to loss." {Loc. cit.,
p. 375.)

Another consideration, which disqualifies the factorial mu-
tant for the role of a new species, is its failure to pass the test
of interspecific sterility. When individuals from two distinct
species are crossed, the offspring of the cross is either completely
sterile, as instanced in the mule, or at least partially so. But
when, for example, the sepia-eyed mutant of the vinegar fly is

20 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

back-crossed with the red-eyed wild type, whence it orig-
inally sprang, the product of the cross is a red-eyed hybrid,
which is perfectly fertile with other sepia-wild hybrids, with
wild flies, and with sepia mutants. This proves that the sepia-
eyed mutant has departed, so to speak, only a varietal, and
not a specific, distance away from the parent stock. Ordinary
or factorial mutation does not, therefore, as De Vries imag-
ined, produce new species. These mutants do, indeed, meet
the requirement of permanent transmissibility, for their dis-
tinctive characters cannot be obliterated by any amount of
crossing. Nevertheless, the factorial mutation falls short of
being an empirical proof of evolution, because it is a varietal,
and not a specific, change. In other words, factorial mutants
are new varieties and not new species. Only a heritable change
based on germinal acquisition of sufficient magnitude to pro-
duce gametic incompatibility between the variant and the
parent type would constitute direct evidence of the transmu-
tation of species, provided, of course, that the variant were also
capable of survival under the natural conditions of the wild
state.

In his Toronto address of December 28, 1921, Wm. Bateson
announced the failure of De Vries' Mutation Theory, when he
said: ''But that particular and essential bit of the theory of
evolution, which is concerned with the origin and nature of
species remains utterly mysterious. We no longer feel as we
used to do, that the process of variation, now contempora-
neously occurring, is the beginning of a work which needs
merely the element of time for its completion; for even time
cannot complete that which has not yet begun. The conclusion
in which we were brought up that species are a product of a
summation of variations ignored the chief attribute of species
first pointed out by John Ray that the product of their crosses
is frequently sterile in greater or less degree. Huxley, very
early in the debate, pointed out this grave defect in the evi-
dence, but before breeding researches had been made on a
large scale no one felt the objection to be serious. Extended

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 21

work might be trusted to supply the deficiency. It has not
done so, and the significance of the negative evidence can
no longer be denied. . . .

"If species have a common origin where did they pick up
the ingredients which produce this sexual incompatibility? Al-
most certainly it is a variation in which something has been
added. We have come to see that variations can very com-
monly — I do not say always — be distinguished as positive and
negative. . . . Now we have no difficulty in finding evidence
of variation by loss, but variations by addition are rarities,
even if there are any such which must be so accounted. The
variations to which interspecific sterility is due are obviously
variations in which something is apparently added to the stock
of ingredients. It is one of the common experiences of the
breeder that when a hybrid is partially sterile, and from it any
fertile offspring can be obtained, the sterility, once lost, disap-
pears. This has been the history of many, perhaps most, of
our cultivated plants of hybrid origin.

"The production of an indubitably sterile hybrid from com-
pletely fertile parents which has arisen under critical observa-
tion is the event for which we wait. Until this event is wit-
nessed, our knowledge of evolution is incomplete in a vital
respect. From time to time such an observation is published,
but none has yet survived criticism." {Science, Jan. 20, 1922,
pp. 58, 59.)

But what of the chromosomal mutant? For our knowledge
of this type of mutation we are largely indebted to Blakeslee's
researches and experiments on the^Jimson weed {Datura stra-
monium). According to Blakeslee, chromosomal mutants re-
sult from duplication, or from reduction, of the chromosomes,
and they are classified as balanced or unbalanced types
according as all, or only some, of the chromosomal link-
age-groups are similarly doubled or reduced. If only one of
the homologous chromosomes of a synaptic pair is doubled,
the mutant is termed a triploid form. It is balanced when
one homologous chromosome is doubled in every synaptic

22 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

pair, but if one or more chromosomes be added to, or sub-
tracted from, this balanced triploid complex, the mutant is
termed an unbalanced triploid. When all the chromosomes
of the normal diploid complex are uniformly doubled, we have
a balanced tetraploid race. The subtraction or addition of one
or more chromosomes in the case of a balanced tetraploid
complex renders it an unbalanced tetraploid mutant. The
retention in somatic cells of the haploid niunber of chromo-
somes characteristic of gametes and gametophytes gives a
balanced haploid mutant, from which hitherto no unbalanced
haploids have been obtained. The normal diploid type and
the balanced tetraploid type are said to constitute an even
balance, while balanced triploids and haploids constitute an
odd balance. The odd balances and all the unbalanced mu-
tants are largely sterile. Thus, for example, more than 80%
of the pollen of the haploid mutant is bad. "The normal
Jimson Weed," says Blakeslee, "is diploid (2n) with a total
of 24 chromosomes in somatic cells. In previous papers the
finding of tetraploids(4n) with 48 chromosomes and triploids
(3n) with 36 was reported, as well as unbalanced mutants with
25 chromosomes represented by the formula (2n+l). The
finding of two haploid or In plants, which we are now able
to report, adds a new chromosomal type to the balanced series
of mutants in Datura. This series now stands: In, 2n, 3n, 4n.
Since a series of unbalanced mutants has been obtained from
each of the other balanced types by the addition or sub-
traction of one or more chromosomes, it is possible that a
similar series of unbalanced mutants may be obtainable from
our new haploid plants, despite the great unbalance which
would thereby result." (Science, June 16, 1923, p. 646.) The
haploid mutant, of which Blakeslee speaks, has, of course, 12
unpaired chromosomes in its somatic cells.

The balanced triploid is, like the haploid mutant, largely
sterile, and is only obtainable by crossing the tetraploid race
with the normal diploid plant. Since, then, the product of
the cross of the diploid and tetraploid races is sterile, the

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 23

tetraplodd race fulfills the sterility test of a distinct species.
Whether or not it fulfills the endurance test of survival under
natural condition is doubtful, inasmuch as diploid Daturas
are about three times as prolific as the tetraploid race. More-
over, as Blakeslee himself confessed in a lecture at Woods
Hole attended by the present writer in the summer of 1923,
the origin of a balanced tetraploid form from the normal
diploid type by simultaneous duplication of all the chromo-
somes in the diploid complex, is an event that has yet to be
witnessed. Nor is any gradual transition from the diploid
to the tetraploid race, by way of unbalanced types and tri-
ploids, conceivable, seeing that such forms are too sterile
to maintain themselves, and are, in fact, incapable of trans-
mitting their own type in the absence of artificial interven-
tion. There are, it is true, some instances, in which diploid
and tetraploid races and species occur together in cultivation
and in nature. In certain cases, this tetraploidy is merely
apparent, being due to fragmentation of the chromosomes; in
other cases, it is really due to chromosomal duplication, giving
rise to genuine tetraploid forms. The question is often hard
to decide, the mere number of the chromosomes being not,
in itself, a safe criterion. Of the actual origin, however, of
tetraploid from diploid races we have as yet no observational
evidence. Hence Blakeslee's researches on the chromosomal
mutant have so far failed to furnish experimental proof of
the origin of a genuine new species. Besides, waiving all other
considerations, the limits within which chromosomal duplica-
tion is possible are of necessity sd narrow, that, at best, this
phenomenon can only be invoked to explain a very small
range of variation. In fact, it is doubtful whether haploidy,
triploidy, and tetraploidy have any important bearing what-
ever upon the problem of the origin of species. (See Addenda.)
The mutation, then, in so far as we have experimental
knowledge of it, does not fulfill requirements of a specific
change. It cannot even be regarded as an elementary step
in the direction of such a change. With this admission, De-

24 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Vriesianism becomes obsolete, descending like its predecessors,
Lamarckism and Darwinism, into the charnel-house of dis-
carded systems whose value is historic, but no longer scien-
tific. When we enquire into the reason of this common
demise of all the classic systems of transformism, we find
it to reside in the progress of the new science of Mendelian
genetics, whose foundations were laid by an Augustinian
monk of the nineteenth century. Six years after the appear-
ance of Darwin's ''Origin of Species," Gregor Johann Mendel
published a short paper entitled ''Versuche iiber Pflanzen-
hybriden," which, unnoticed at the time by a scientific world
preoccupied with Darwinian fantasies, was destined, on its
coming to light at the beginning of the present century, to
administer the final coup de grace to all the elaborate schemes
of evolution that had preceded or followed its initial publica-
tion. It took half a century, however, before the dust of Dar-
winian sensationalism subsided sufliciently, to permit the "re-
discovery" of Mendel's solid and genuine contribution to bio-
logical science. But the Pralat of the abbey at Briinn never
lived to see the day of his triumph. The true genius of his
i century, he died unhonored and unsung, a pretender being
' crowned in his stead. For Coulter says of Darwin: "He died

^ / April 19, 1882, probably the most honored scientific man in

) the world." (Evoludm, 1916, p. 35.)

Within the small dimensions of the paper, of which we
have spoken, Mendel had compressed the results of years of
carefully conceived and accurately executed experimentation
reduced to precise statistical form and interpreted with a pene-
trating sagacity of the highest order. It is no exaggeration
to say that his discovery has revolutionized the science of
biology, giving it, for the first time, mathematical formulas
comparable to those of chemistry. His two laws of in-
heritance, namely, the law of segregation and the law of in-
dependent assortment of characters, have, as previously inti-
mated, become the basis of the new science of Genetics. His
analysis of biparental reproduction has interpreted for us the

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 25

cytological phenomena of synapsis, meiosis, and syngamy,
has explained for us the instability of hybrids, has placed
Weismann's speculations concerning the autonomy and con-
tinuity of the germ, plasm on a firm basis of experimental
fact, has clarified all our notions respecting the mode and
range of hereditary transmission, and has, in a word, opened
our eyes to that new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature
which Bateson calls ''the world of gametes."

Efforts have been made to construct systems of transform-
ism along Mendelian lines, but none of them has met with
notable success. Lotsy, for example, sought to explain all
variation on the basis of the rearrangement of preexistent
genetic factors brought about by crossing. But such a solution
of the problem is very unsatisfactory. In the first place, the
generality of hybrid (heterozygous) forms are ruled out on the
score of instability. The phenotype of hybrids is directly
dependent, not on the genes themselves, but on the diploid com-
bination of genes contained in the zygote. This combination,
however, is always dissolved in the process of gamete-forma-
tion, by the segregative reduction division which occurs in the
reproductive organs of the hybrid. Hybrids, therefore, do not
breec? trv£, if propagated by sexual reproduction. To maintain
constancy of type in hybrids, one must resort to somatogenic
reproduction {i.e. vegetative growth from stems, etc.). Certain
violets, in fact, as well as blackberries, are maintained in a
state of constant hybridism by means of this sort of reproduc-
tion, even in nature. In the case of balanced lethals {i.e. fac-
tors causing death in the pure Qr homozygous state), the
hybrid phenotype may be maintained even by sexual re-
production, inasmuch as all the pure (homozygous) off-
spring are non-viable. Two lethals are said to be balanced,
when they occur, the first in one and the second in the
other homologous chromosome of the same synaptic pair.
"Such a factorial situation would maintain a state of constant
heterozygosis, the fixed hybridism of an impure species . . .
the hybrid will breed true until the relative position of the

26 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

lethals are changed by a crossover, or the genetical constitu-
tion in these respects is altered by a mutation." (Davis,
Science, Feb. 3, 1922, p. 111.) As is evident, however, the
condition of balanced lethals involves a considerable reduc-
tion in fertility.

Hybridization, moreover, is successful between varieties of
the same species rather than between distinct species. Inter-
specific crosses are in some cases entirely unproductive, in
other cases productive of wholly-sterile, hybrids, and in still
other cases productive of semisterile hybrids. When semi-
sterile hybrids are obtainable from an interspecific cross, the
phenotype can be kept constant by somatogenic reproduction,
but, as we shall see in a later chapter, this kind of reproduction
does not counteract senescence, and stock thus propagated
usually plays out within a determinate period. Finally, the
mixture of incompatible germinal elements involved in an
interspecific cross tends to produce forms, which are subnormal
in their viability and vitality. The conclusions of Goodspeed
and Clausen are the following: "(1) As a consequence of
modern Mendelian developments, the Mendelian factors may
be considered as making up a reaction system, the elements
of which exhibit more or less specific relations to one another ;
(2) strictly Mendelian results are to be expected only when
the contrast is between factor differences within a common
Mendelian reaction system as is ordinarily the case in varie-
tal hybrids; (3) when distinct reaction systems are involved,
as in species crosses, the phenomena must be viewed in the
light of a contrast between systems rather than between spe-
cific factor differences, and the results will depend upon the
degree of mutual compatibility displayed between the specific
elements of the two systems." (Amer. Nat., 51 (1917), p. 99.)
To these conclusions may be added the pertinent observation
of Bradley Moore Davis: "Of particular import," he says, "is
the expectation that lethals most frequently owe their presence
to the heterozygous condition since the mixing of diverse germ
plasms seems likely to lead to the breaking down of delicate

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 27

and vital adjustments in proportion relative to the degree
of protoplasmic confusion, and this means chemical and phys-
ical disturbance." {Science, Feb. 3, 1923, p. 111.)

But crossing produces, in the second filial generation (F2),
pure (homozygous) as well as hybrid (heterozygous) forms.
In some cases these pure forms are new, the phenotype being
different from that of either pure grandparent. Such a result
is produced by random assortment of the chromosomes in
gamete and zygote formation, and occurs when the genes for
two or more pairs of contrasted characters are located in dif-
ferent chromosome pairs. The phenomenon is formulated in
Mendel's Second Law, the law of independent assortment. The
novelty, however, of the true-breeding forms thus produced
is not absolute, but relative. There is no origination of new
hereditary factors. It is simply a recombination of the old
genes of different stocks, the genes themselves undergoing
no intrinsic alteration. The combination is new, but not the
elements combined. In addition to chromosomal recombina-
tion, we have factorial recombination by means of crossovers.
This, too, can produce new and true-breeding forms of a fixed
nature, but here, likewise, it is the combination, and not the
elements combined, which is new. The "new" forms thus pro-
duced are called, as we have seen, pseudomutants. When
pseudomutations, that is, crossovers, occur in conjunction with
the condition of balanced lethals, they closely simulate gen-
uine factorial mutations. This is exemplified in the case of
De Vries' (Enothera Lamarchiana, which is the product of
a crossover supervening upon a situation of balanced lethals.
In cases of this kind, the crossover releases hitherto suppressed
recessive characters, giving the appearance of real mutation.
"The workers with Drosophila," says Davis, "seem inclined
to believe that much of the phenomena simulating mutation
in their material is in reality the appearance of characters set
free by the breaking of lethal adjustments which held the
characters latent. Well-known workers have arrived at simi-
lar conclusions for (Enothera material and are not content to

28 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

accept as evidence of mutations the behavior of Lamarckiana
and some other forms when they throw their marked vari-
ants." (Science, Feb. 3, 1922, p. 111.)

The new forms, however, resulting from random assortment
and crossovers cannot be regarded as new species. "Analysis,"
says Bateson, ''has revealed hosts of transferable characters.
Their combinations sufiice to supply in abundance series of
types which might pass for new species, and certainly would
be so classed if they were met with in nature. Yet critically
tested, we find that they are not distinct species and we
have no reason to suppose any accumulation of characters
of the same order would culminate in the production of distinct
species. Specific difference therefore must be regarded as
probably attaching to the base upon which these transfer-
ables are implanted, of which we know absolutely nothing at
all. Nothing that we have witnessed in the contemporary
world can colorably be interpreted as providing the sort of
evidence required." {Science, Jan. 20, 1922, pp. 59, 60.)

Anyone thoroughly acquainted with the results of genetical
analysis and research will find it impossible to escape the
conviction that there is no such thing as experimental evi-
dence for evolution. In spite of the enormous advances made
in the fields of genetics and cytology, the problem of the
origin of species is, scientifically speaking, as mysterious as
ever. No variation of which we have experience is interpre-
table as the transmutation of a specific type, and David Starr
Jordan voices an inevitable conclusion when he says: ''None
of the created 'new species' of plant or animal I know of
would last five years in the open, nor is there the slightest
evidence that any new species of field or forest or ocean ever
originated from mutation, discontinuous variation, or hybridi-
zation." {Science, Oct. 20, 1922, p. 448.)

"In any case," as Professor Caullery tells us in his Harvard
lecture on the "Problem of Evolution," "we do not see in the
facts emerging from Mendelism, how evolution, in the sense
that morphology suggests, can have come about. And it

PRESENT CRISIS IN EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT 29

comes to pass that some of the biologists of greatest authority
in the study of Mendelian heredity are led, with regard to
evolutiun, either to a more or less complete agnosticism, or to
the expression of ideas quite opposed to those of the preceding
generation; ideas which would almost take us back to crea-
tionism." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, p. 334.) It is, of
course, impossible within the limits of a single chapter to
convey any adequate impression of all that Mendel's epoch-
making achievement portends, but what has been said is
sufficient to give some idea of the acuteness of the crisis
through which the theory of organic evolution is passing as
a result of his discovery. In its classic forms of Lamarckism,
Darwinism and De-Vriesianism, the survival of the theory is
out of the question. Whether or not it can be rehabilitated
in any form whatever is a matter open to doubt. Transfixed
by the innumerable spears of modern objections, its extrem-
ity calls to mind the plight of the Lion of Lucerne. Possibly,
it is destined to find a rescuer in some great genius of the
future, but of one thing, at least, we may be perfectly certain,
namely, that, even if rejuvenated, it will never again resume the
lineaments traced by Charles Darwin. In the face of this
certainty, it is almost pitiful to hear the die-hards of Dar-
winism bolstering up a lost cause with the wretched quibble
that, though natural selection has been discredited as an ex-
planation of the differentiation of species, Darwinism "in its
essentials" survives intact. For, if there is any feature which,
beyond all else, deserves to be called an essential of Darwin's
system, surely it is natural selection. For Darwin it was "the
most important" agency of transformation (cf. "Origin of
Species," 6th ed., p. 5) . Apart from his hypothesis of the sum-
mation through inheritance of slight variations ("fluctua-
tions"), now completely demolished by the new science of
genetics, it represented his sole contribution to the philosophy
of transformism. It alone distinguishes Darwinism from La-
marckism, its prototype. Without it the "Origin of Species"
would be Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. With it

30 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Darwin's fame should stand or fall. Therefore, since Darwin
erred in making it "the most important means of modifica-
ion," Darwinism is dead, and no grief of mourners can re-
suscitate the corpse. "Through the last fifty years," says
Bateson, "this theme of the natural selection of favored races
has been developed and expounded in writings innumerable.
Favored races certainly can replace others. The argument
is sound, but we are doubtful of its value. For us that debate
stands adjourned. We go to Darwin for his incomparable
collection of facts. We would fain emulate his scholarship,
his width, and his power of exposition, but to us he speaks
no more with philosophical authority. We read his scheme of
evolution as we would those of Lucretius or of Lamarck, de-
lighting in their simplicity and their courage." (Heredity,
Presid. Add. to British Assoc, for Advanc. of Science, Smith.
Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 365.)

CHAPTER II

HOMOLOGY AND ITS EVOLUTIONARY
INTERPRETATION

The recent revival of interest in the problem of evolution
seems to have called forth two very opposite expressions of
opinion from those who profess to represent Catholic thought
on this subject. M. Henri de Dorlodot, in his *'Le Dar-
winisme," appears in the role of an ardent admirer of Darwin
and an enthusiastic advocate of the doctrine of Transformism.
The contrary attitude is adopted by Mr. Alfred McCann, whose
*'God — or Gorilla" is bitterly antagonistic not only to Dar-
winism but to any form whatever of the theory of Trans-
formism. Both of these works possess merits which it would be
unjust to overlook. Dorlodot deserves credit for having shown
conclusively that there is absolutely nothing in the Scriptures,
or in Patristic tradition, or in Catholic theology, or in the
philosophy of the Schools, which conflicts with our acceptance
of organic evolution as an hypothesis explanatory of certain
biological facts. In like manner, it must be acknowledged
that, even after a liberal discount has been made in penalty of
its bias and scientific inaccuracy, Mr. McCann's book still con-
tains a formidable residue of serious objections, which the
friends of evolution will probably find it more convenient to
sidestep than to answer.

Unfortunately, however, neither of these writers maintains
that balanced mental poise which one likes to see in the
defenders of Catholic truth. Dorlodot seems too profoundly
impressed with the desirability of occupying a popular posi-
tion to do impartial justice to the problem at issue, and his
anxiety to keep in step with the majority blinds him apparently

31

32 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

to the flaws of that "Darwinism" which he praises. Had he
been content with a simple demarcation of negative limits,
there would be no ground for complaint. But, when he goes
so far as to bestow unmerited praise upon the author of the
mechanistic "Origin of Species" and the materialistic "Descent
of Man"; when, by confounding Darwinism with evolution, he
consents to that historical injustice which allows Darwin to
play Jacob to Lamarck's Esau, and which leaves the original
genius of Mendel in obscurity while it accords the limelight of
fame to the unoriginal expounder of a borrowed conception;
when, by means of the sophistry of anachronism, he speciously
endeavors to bring the speculations of an Augustine or an
Aquinas into alignment with those of the ex-divinity student
of Cambridge; when he assumes that Fixism is so evi-
dently wrong that its claims are unworthy of consideration,
whereas Transformism is so evidently right that we can dis-
pense with the formality of examining its credentials; when,
in a word, he expresses himself not merely in the sense, but in
the very stereotyped cant phrases of a dead philosophy, we
realize, with regret, that his conclusions are based, not on any
reasoned analysis of the evidence, but solely upon the dogma-
tism of scientific orthodoxy, that his thought is cast in anti-
quated molds, and that for him, apparently, the sixty-five
years of discovery and disillusionment, which have intervened
since the publication of the "Origin of Species," have passed
in vain.

But, if Dorlodot represents the extreme of uncritical ap-
proval, Mr. McCann represents the opposite, and no less repre-
hensible, extreme of biased antagonism, that is neither fair in
method nor conciliatory in tone. Instead of adhering to the
time-honored practice of Catholic controversialists, which is
rather to overstate than to understate the argument of an ad-
versary, Mr. McCann tends, at times, to minimize, in his
restatement, the force of an opponent's reasoning. He fre-
quently belittles with mere flippant sneer, and is only too ready
to question the good faith of those who do not share his con-

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 33

victions. Thus, when McCann ridicules Wells and accuses him
of pure romancing, because the latter speaks of certain hairy
"wild women" of the Caves, he himself seems to be ignorant
of the fact that a palaeolithic etching has been found repre-
senting a woman so covered with hair that she had no need of
other apparel (the bas-relief from Laugerie-Basse carved on
reindeer palm — cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1909, p. 540 and
Plate 2).

Mr. McCann may object, with truth, that this is far from
being a proof that the primitive representatives of the human
race were hairy individuals, but the fact suffices, at least, to
acquit Mr. Wells of the charge of unscrupulous invention.
Hence, while we have no wish to excuse the lamentable lack
of scientific conscientiousness so manifestly apparent in the
writings of popularizers of evolution, like Wells, Osborn, and
Haeckel, nevertheless common justice, not to speak of charity,
constrains us to presume that, occasionally at least, their de-
partures from the norm of objective fact were due to ordinary
human fallibility or to the mental blindness induced by pre-
conceptions, rather than to any deliberate intent to deceive.
And we feel ourselves impelled to make this allowance for
unconscious inaccuracy all the more readily that we are con-
fronted with the necessity of extending the selfsame indulgence
to Mr. McCann himself. Thus we find that the seventh illus-
tration in ''God — or Gorilla" (opposite p. 56) bears the legend:
"Skeletons of man and chimpanzee compared," when, in point
of fact, the ape skeleton in question is not that of a chimpanzee
{Troglodytes niger) at all, but of an Orang-utan {Simla
satyms), as the reader may verify for himself by consulting
Plate VI of the English version of Wasmann's "Modern
Biology," where the identical illustration appears above its
proper title: "Skeleton of an adult Orang-utan." Since the
error is repeated in the index of illustrations and in the legend
of the third illustration of the appendix, it is impossible, in
this instance, to shift the responsibility from Mr. McCann to
the printer. In any case, it is sincerely to be hoped that this.

34 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

and several other infelicitous errors will be rectified in the
next edition of "God — or Gorilla."

In the next chapter we shall have occasion to refer again
to Dorlodot's book. For the present, however, his work need
not concern us, while in that of Mr. McCann we single out but
one point as germane to our subject, namely, the latter's inade-
quate rebuttal of the evolutionary argument from homology.
The futility of his method, which consists in matching insigni-
ficant differences against preponderant resemblances, and in
exclaiming with ironic incredulity: ''Note extraordinary resem-
blances!" becomes painfully evident, so soon as proper pre-
sentation enables us to appreciate the true force of the argu-
ment he is striving to refute. Functionally the foot of a
Troglodyte ape may be a "hand," but structurally it is the
homologue of the human foot, and not of the human hand ; nor
is this homology effectually disposed of by stressing the dis-
similarity of the hallux, whilst one remains discreetly reticent
concerning the similarity of the calcaneum. For two reasons,
therefore, the irrelevance of Mr. McCann's reply is of special
interest here: (1) because it illustrates concretely the danger
of rendering a refutation inconsequential and inept by failing
to plumb the full depth of the difficulty one is seeking to solve ;
(2) because it shows that it is vain to attempt to remove
man's body from the scope of this argument by citing the in-
considerable structural differences which distinguish him from
the ape, so that, unless the argument from homology proves
upon closer scrutiny to be inherently inconclusive, its applica-
bility to the human body is a foregone conclusion, and implies
with irresistible logic the common ancestry of men and apes.

Such are the reflections suggested by the meager measure of
justice which Mr. McCann accords to the strongest zoological
evidence in favor of evolution, and they contain in germ a
feasible program for the present chapter, which, accordingly,
will address itself: first, to the task of ascertaining the true
significance of homology in the abstract as well as the full
extent of its application in the concrete; second, to that of

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 35

determining with critical precision its intrinsic value as an
argument for the theory of transmutation.

Homology is a technical term used by the systematists of
botany, zoology and comparative anatomy to signify basic
structural similarity as distinguished from superficial func-
tional similarity, the latter being termed analogy. Organisms
are said to exemplify the phenomenon of homology when, be-
neath a certain amount of external diversity, they possess in
common a group of correlated internal resemblances of such a
nature that the organisms possessing them appear to be con-
structed upon the same fundamental plan. In cases of this
kind, the basic similarity is frequently masked by a veneer of
unlikeness, and it is only below this shallow surface of diver-
gence that we find evidences of the identical structure or com-
mon type.

Thus organs of different animals are said to be homologous
when they are composed of like parts arranged in similar rela-
tion to one another. Homologous organs correspond bone for
bone and tissue for tissue, so that each component of the one
finds its respective counterpart in the other. The organs in
question may be functionally specialized and externally differ-
entiated for quite different purposes, but the superficial diver-
sity serves only to emphasize, by contrast, the underlying
identity of structure which persists intact beneath it. Thus,
for example, the wing of a pigeon, the flipper of a whale, the
foreleg of a cat, and the arm of a man are organs differing
widely in function as well as outward appearance, but they are
called homologous, none the less, because they all exhibit the
same basic plan, being composed of similar bones similarly
disposed with respect to one another.

Organs, on the other hand, are called analogous which,
though fundamentally unlike in structure, are, nevertheless,
superficially modified and specialized for one and the same
function. The wing of a bird and the wing of an insect furnish
a trite instance of such analogy. Functionally they subserve
the same purpose, but structurally they bear no relation to

36 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

each other. In like manner, though both are devoted to the
same function, there exists between the leg of a man and the
leg of a spider a fundamental disparity in structure.

At times, specialization for the selfsame function involves
the emergence of a similar modification or uniform structural
adaptation from a substrate of basic dissimilarity. In these
instances of parallel modifications appearing on the surface
of divergent types, we have something more than mere func-
tional resemblance. Structure is likewise involved, albeit
superficially, in the modification which brings about this exter-
nal uniformity. In such cases, analogy is spoken of as con-
vergence, a phenomenon of which the mole and the mole-cricket
constitute a typical example. The burrowing legs of the insect
are, so far as outward appearance goes, the exact replica on a
smaller scale of those of the mole, though, fundamentally,
their structure is quite unlike, the mole being built on the
endoskeletal plan of the vertebrates, whereas the mole-cricket
is constructed on the exoskeletal plan characteristic of the
arthropods. Speaking of the first pair of legs of the mole-
cricket, Thomas Hunt Morgan says: "By their use the mole-
cricket makes a burrow near the surface of the ground, similar
to, but of course much smaller than, that made by the mole.
In both of these cases the adaptation is the more obvious, be-
cause, while the leg of the mole is formed on the same general
plan as that of other vertebrates, and the leg of the mole-
cricket has the same fundamental structure as that of other in-
sects, yet in both cases the details of structure and the general
proportions have been so altered that the leg is fitted for en-
tirely different purposes from those to which the legs of other
vertebrates and other insects are put." (Quoted by Dwight in
"Thoughts of a Catholic Anatomist," p. 235.) In the analogies
of convergence, therefore, we have the exact converse of the
phenomenon so often encountered in connection with homology.
The latter exhibits a contrast between basic identity and super-
ficial diversity, the former a contrast between superficial con-
vergence and fundamental divergence.

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 37

Now the extreme importance of homology is manifest from
the fact that the taxonomists of zoology and botany have found
it to bb the most satisfactory basis for a scientific classification
of animals and plants. In both of these sciences, organisms
are arranged in groups according as they possess in common
certain points of resemblance whereby they may be referred
to this, or that, general type. The resemblance is most com-
plete between members of the same species, which do not
differ from one another by any major difference, though they
may exhibit certain minor differences justifying their sub-
division into varieties or races. These morphological consid-
erations, however, must, in the case of an organic species, be
supplemented by the additional physiological criteria of perfect
sexual compatibility and normal viability, as we have already
had occasion to note in the previous chapter. When
organisms, though distinguished from one another by some
major difference, agree, notwithstanding, in the main elements
of structure, the several species to which they belong are
grouped under a common genus, and similarly genera are
grouped into families. A relative major difference, such as a
difference in the size of the teeth, suffices for the segregation
of a new species, while an absolute difference, such as a differ-
ence in the number of teeth or the possession of an additional
organ, suffices for the segregation of a new genus. In practice,
however, the classifications of systematists are often very arbi-
trary, and we find the latter divided into two factions, the
"lumpers" who wish to reduce the number of systematic groups
and the "splitters" who have a passion for breaking up larger
groups into smaller ones on the basis of tenuous differences.
Above the families are the orders, and they, in turn, are as-
sembled in still larger groups called classes, until finally we
reach the phyla or branches, which are the supreme categories
into which the plant and animal kingdoms are divided. As we
ascend the scale of classification, the points of resemblance be-
tween the organisms classified are constantly decreasing in
number, while the points of difference increase apace. Hence,

38 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

whereas members of the same species have very much in com-
mon, members of the same phylum have very little in common,
and members of different phyla show such structural disparity
that further correlation on the basis of similarities becomes
impossible (in the sense, at least, of a reliable and consistent
scheme of classification), all efforts to relate the primary
phyla to one another in a satisfactory manner having proved
abortive.

Within the confines of each phylum, however, homology is
the basic principle of classification. But the scientist is not
content to note the bare fact of its existence. He seeks an ex-
planation, he wishes to know the raison d'etre of homology.
Innumerable threads of similarity run through the woof of
divergence, and the question arises: How can we account for
the coexistence of this woof of diversity with a warp of simi-
larity? Certainly, if called upon to explain the similarity ex-
istent between members of one and the same species, even the
man in the street would resort instinctively to the principle of
inheritance and the assumption of common ancestry, exclaim-
ing: "Like sire, like son!" It is a notorious fact that children
resemble their parents, and since members of the same species
are sexually compatible and perfectly interfertile, there is no
difficulty whatever in the way of accepting the presumption of
descent from common ancestral stock as a satisfactory solution
of the problem of specific resemblance. Now, it is precisely this
selfsame principle of heredity which the Transformist invokes
to account for generic, no less than for specific, similarity. In
fact, he presses it further still, and professes to see therein the
explanation of the resemblances observed between members of
the different families, orders, and classes, which systematists
group under a common phylum. This, of course, amounts to a
bold extension of the principle of inheritance far beyond the
barriers of interspecific sterility to remote applications that
exceed all possibility of experimental verification. Transform-
ists answer this difficulty, however, by contending that the
period, during which the human race has existed, has been,

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 39

geologically speaking, all too brief, and characterized by envi-
ronmental conditions much too uniform, to afford us a favor-
able opportunity for ascertaining the extreme limits to which
the genetic process may possibly extend; and, even apart from
this consideration, they say, racial development (phylogeny)
may be, like embryological development (ontogeny) an irre-
versible process, in which case no recurrence whatever of its
past phenomena are to be expected in our times.

Be that as it may, the evolutionist interprets the resem-
blances of homology as surviving vestiges of an ancient ances-
tral type, which have managed to persist in the descendants
notwithstanding the transformations wrought in the latter by
the process of progressive divergence. Moreover, just as the
existence of a common ancestor is inferred from the fact of
resemblance, so the relative position in time of the common
ancestor is inferred from the degree of resemblance. The
common ancestor of forms closely allied is assumed to have
been proximate, that of forms but distantly resembling each
other is thought to have been remote. Thus the common an-
cestor of species grouped under the same genus is supposed to
have been less remote than the common ancestor of all the
genera grouped under one family. The same reasoning is ap-
plied, mutatis mutandis, to the ancestry of families, orders
and classes.

The logic of such inferences may be questioned, but there is
no blinking the fact that, in practice, the genetic explanation
of homology is assumed by scientists to be the only reasonable
one possible. In fact, so strong is their confidence in the neces-
sity of admitting a solution of this kind, that they do not
hesitate to make it part and parcel of the definition of homol-
ogy itself. For instance, on page 130 of Woodruff's "Founda-
tions of Biology" (1922) , we are informed that homology signi-
fies "a fundamental similarity of structure based on descent
from a common antecedent form." The Yale professor, how-
ever, has been outdone in this respect by Professor Calkins of
Columbia, who discards the anatomical definition altogether

40 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

and substitutes, in lieu thereof, its evolutionary interpretation.
''When organs have the same ancestry," he says, "that is, when
they come from some common part of an ancestral type, they
are said to be homologous." ("Biology," p. 165.) In short, F.
A. Bather is using a consecrated formula culled from the
modern biological creed when he says: "The old form of
diagnosis was yer genus et differ entiam. The new form is
per proavum et modificationemJ' {Science, Sept. 17, 1920,
p. 259.)

A moment's reflection, however, will make it clear that, in
thus confounding the definition proper with its theoretical in-
terpretation, the modern biologist is guilty of a logical atrocity.
Homology, after all, is a simple anatomical fact, which can
be quite adequately defined in terms of observation; nor is the
definition improved in the least by having its factual elements
diluted with explanatory theory. On the contrary, the defini-
tioi is decidedly weakened by such redundancy. And as for
those who insist on defining homology in terms of atavistic
assumption instead of structural affinity, their procedure is
tantamount to defining the clear by means of the obscure, an
actual effect by means of a possible cause. Moreover, this
attempt to load the dice in favor of Transformism by tamper-
ing with the definition of homology ends by defeating its own
purpose. For, if homology is to serve as a legitimate argu-
ment for evolution, then obviously evolution must not be
included in its definition; otherwise, the conclusion is antici-
pated in the premise, the question is begged, and the argument
itself rendered a vicious circle.

Having formed a sufficiently clear conception of homology
as a static fact, we are now in a position to consider the prob-
lem of its causality with reference to the solution proposed by
evolutionists. Transmutation, they tell us, results from the
interaction of a twofold process, namely, the conservative and
similifying process called inheritance, and progressive and
diversifying process known as variation. Inheritance by trans-
mitting the ancestral likeness tends to bring about uniform-

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 41

ity. Variation by diverting old currents into new channels
adjust organisms to new situations and brings about modifica-
tion. Homology, therefore, is the effect of inheritance, while
adaptedness or modification is the product of variation.

As here used, the term inheritance denotes something more
than a mere recurrence of parental characters in the off-
spring. It signifies a process of genuine transmission from
generation to generation. Strictly speaking, it is not the char-
acters, such as coloration, shape, size, chemical composition,
structural type, and functional specificity, that are ''inherited,"
but rather the hereditary factors or chromosomal genes, which
are actually transmitted, and of which the characters are but
an external expression or manifestation. Hence, it is scarcely
accurate to speak of "inherited," as distinguished from ''ac-
quired," characters. As a matter of fact, all somatic charac-
ters are joint products of the interaction of germinal
and environmental factors. Consequently, the external char-
acter would be affected no less by a change in the envi-
ronmental factors than by a change in the germinal factors.
In a word, somatic characters are not the exclusive expression
of the genetic factors, but are equally dependent upon environ-
mental influence, and hence it is only to the extent that these
characters are indicative of the specific constitution of the
germ plasm that we may speak of them as "inherited," remem-
bering that what is really transmitted to the offspring is a
complex of genes or germinal factors, and not the characters
themselves. The sense is, therefore, that "inherited" char-
acters are manifestative of what is contained in the germ
plasm, whereas "acquired" characters have no specific germ-
inal basis, but are a resultant of the interaction between
the somatic cells and the environment. In modern termin-
ology, as we have seen, the aggregate of germinal factors
transmitted in the process of reproduction is called the
genotype, while the aggregate of somatic characters which
manifest these germinal factors externally is spoken of as the
phenotype. Only the genotype is transmitted, the phenotype

42 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

being the subsequent product of the interplay of genetic fac-
tors and environmental stimuli, dependent upon, and expres-
sive of, both.

Variation, therefore, may be based upon a change in the
germ plasm, or in the environment, or in both. If it rests
exclusively upon an extraordinary change in the environ-
mental conditions, the resulting modification is non-inherit-
able, and will disappear so soon as the exceptional environ-
mental stimulus that evoked it is withdrawn. If, on the
contrary, it is based upon a germinal change, it will manifest
itself, even under ordinary, i.e. unchanged or uniform envi-
ronmental influence. In this case, the modification is inherit-
able in the sense that it is the specific effect of a transmissible
germinal factor, which has undergone alteration.

As we have seen in the foregoing chapter, there are three kinds
of germinal change which result in "inheritable" modifications.
The first is called factorial mutation, and is initiated by an
alteration occurring in one or more of the chromosomal genes.
The second is called chromosomal mutation, and is caused
by duplication (or reduction) of the chromosomes. The third
may be termed recombination, one type of which results from
the crossover or exchange of genes between pairing chromo-
somes ("pseudomutation"), the other from random assortment
in accordance with the Mendelian law of the independence of
allelomorphic pairs. This so-called 'Random assortment of
the chromosomes" is the result of the shuffling and free deals
of the chromosomal cards of heredity which take place twice in
the life-cycle of organisms: viz. first, in the process of gametic
reduction (meiosis) ; second, in the chance meeting of vari-
ously-constituted sperms and eggs in fertilization. A mis-
chance of the first of these "free deals" is bewailed in the
following snatch from a parody belonging to the Woods Hole
anthology.

"Oh chromosomes, my chromosomes,
How sad is my condition!
My grandsire's gift for writing well

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 43

Has gone to some lost polar cell
And so I write this doggerel,
I cannot do much better."

These kinds of variation, however, in so far as they fall
within the range of actual observation, are confined within
the limits of the organic species. Intra-specific variation,
however, will not suflace. To account for the adaptive modi-
fications superimposed upon underlying structural identity,
Transformism is obliged to assume the possibility of trans-
specific variation. Yet in none of the foregoing processes of
variation do we find a valid factual basis for this assumption.

Factorial mutation, for instance, waiving its failure to
produce naturally-viable forms, or to meet the physiological
sterility test of a new species, admits of interpretation as a
change of loss due to the "dropping out" of a gene from the
germinal complex. Bateson's conception of evolution as a
process consisting in the gradual loss of inhibitive genes,
whose elimination releases suppressed potentialities, seems
rather incredible. Many will be inclined to see in Castle's
facetious epigram a reductio ad absurdum of Bateson's sug-
gestion; for, according to the latter's view, as the Harvard
professor remarks, we should have to regard man as a simplified
amceba. Certainly, it seems nothing short of a contradiction
to ascribe the progressive complication of the phenotype to a
simplification of the genotype by loss.

On the other hand, not only is there no experimental evi-
dence of a germinal change by positive acquisition, that is,
by the addition of genes, but it is hard to conceive how such
a change could come about. "At first," admits Bateson,
"it may seem rank absurdity to suppose that the primordial
form or forms of protoplasm could have contained complexity
enough to produce the divers types of life." "But," he asks,
"is it easier to imagine that these powers could have been
conveyed by extrinsic addition? Of what nature could these
additions be? Additions of material can not surely be in
question. We are told that salts of iron in the soil may turn

44 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

a pink hydrangea blue. The iron cannot be passed on to the
next generation. How can iron multiply itself? The power
to assimilate iron is all that can be transmitted. A disease-
producing organism like the pebrine of silkworms can in a
very few cases be passed on through the germ cells. But it
does not become part of the invaded host, and we can not
conceive it taking part in the geometrically ordered processes
of segregation. These illustrations may seem too gross; but
what refinement will meet the requirements of the problem,
that the thing introduced must be, as the living organism
itself is, capable of multiplication and of subordinating itself
in a definite system of segregation?" (Heredity, Smithson.
Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 373.)

Nor can we agree with Prof. T. H. Morgan's contention
that the foregoing difficulty of Bateson has been solved by
the discovery of the chromosomal mutation. All unbalanced
chromosomal mutants are subnormal in their viability and
vitality, not to speak of their marked sterility. Haploidy
represents a regressive, rather than a progressive, step. The
triploid mutant is sterile. The tetraploid race of Daturas
is inferior in fertility to the normal diploid plant. The origin
of balanced tetraploidy from diploidy must be presumed, since
it has never been observed. Moreover, tetraploidy represents
only quantitative, and not qualitative, progress. The increased
mass of the nucleus produces an enlargement of the cytoplasm,
the result of which is giantism. This effect, however, is not
specific; for giant and normal races possessing each the same
number of chromosomes are known to exist in nature. Hence
giantism may be due to other causes besides chromosomal
duplication. The only effect of this doubling is a reinforcement
and intensification of the former effect of the genetic factors,
their specificity remaining unchanged. Double doses are sub-
stituted for single doses of the factors, but nothing really new
is added. Morgan himself recognizes that this mere repeti-
tion of identical genes is insufficient, and that their multipli-
cation must be qualitative as well as numerical, to answer

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 45

the specifications of a progressive step in evolution. Hence he
suggests that the chromosomal mutation is subsequently sup-
plemented by appropriate factorial mutation. Once this sup-
position is made, however, all the objections we have
mentioned in connection with factorial mutation [e.g the
subnormality of its products, its intra-specific nature, etc.)
return to plague the speculator, and, in addition to these, he
is confronted with the new difficulty of explaining how the
redundance of duplicate genes can be removed and replaced by
coordinate differentiation in their respective specificities. Now
we have no factual evidence whatever of such a solidaric re-
differentiation of the germinal factors, that would modify
harmoniously the composition and role of each and every
gene in the factorial complex. Nor is there any possibility
whatever of accounting for this telic superregulation of the
germinal regulators upon a purely mechanistic basis. How
can the ultimate chemical determinants of heredity be thus
redetermined? Consequently, although there is gametic in-
compatibility between diploid races and the tetraploid races,
which are said to have arisen from the former, we are not,
nevertheless, warranted, by what has been experimentally
verified, in regarding tetraploid races as new species, or as
progressive steps in the process of organic evolution.

To conclude, therefore, we have experimental verification
of the efficacy of the similifying process said to have been at
work in evolution, namely, inheritance. The same, however,
cannot be said of the correlative diversifying process of trans-
specific variation, which is said to have superficially modified
old structures into new species. The latter process, accord-
ingly, is but a pure postulate of science known to us only
through the effect hypothetically assigned to it, namely, the
adaptive modification.

The adaptation, however, of which there is question here is
not to be confounded with the *^ acquired adaptation" of
Lamarckian fame; for, unlike the latter, it is an inheritable
modification rooted in the germ plasm. Adaptations of this

46 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

sort do, indeed, adjust the organism to its external environ-
ment, but they are innate and not acquired. Hence they are
often spoken of as preadaptations; for they precede, in a
sense, the organism's contact with the environing element to
which they adjust it. They may possibly, it is true, have been
acquired in the distant past, but they have now a specific
germinal foundation, and no one was ever privileged to wit-
ness their initial production de novo. The whale, for example,
though fundamentally a warm-blooded mammal, is super-
ficially a fish, by reason of such a preadaptation to its marine
environment. Preadaptation is of common occurrence, espe-
cially among parasites, symbiotes, commensals, and inquilines.
Wasmann cites innumerable instances of beetles and flies so
profoundly modified, in accommodation to their mode of life
as guests in termite nests, that the systematist hesitates to
classify them under any of the accepted orders of insects.
Here the adaptive modification so disturbs the underlying
homology as to make of these creatures taxonomical ambigui-
ties. In the case of Termitomyia, he tells us, "the whole de-
velopment of the individual has been so modified that it
resembles that of a viviparous mammal rather than that of a
fly." ("The Problem of Evolution," pp. 14, 15.)

Such modifications, however, amount to major, and not
merely minor, differences. We are not dealing, therefore, with
varietal distinctions here, but with specific, generic, and even
ordinal differences. With reference to the phenomenon of adap-
tive modification,^ three things, consequently, are worthy of
note: (1) it has the semblance of being adventitious to the un-

* It may be remarked, in passing, that experimental genetics and
mutation furnish no clue to the origin of adaptive characters. The
Lamarckian idea alone gives promise in this direction. Orthogenesis
leaves unsolved the mystery of preadaptation; yet only orthogenetic
systems of evolution can be constructed on the basis of genetical facts.
"Mutations and Mendelism," says Kellogg, "may explain the origin of
new species in some measure, but they do not explain adaptation in
the slightest degree." {Atlantic Monthly, April, 1924, pp. 488, 489.)
We have seen in the previous chapter that they are impotent to ex-
plain in any measure the origin of new species.

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 47

derlying structural uniformity; (2) it is of such magnitude that
it cannot be ascribed to variation within the species; (3) it
has been appropriated by the hereditary process, in the sense
that it is now an "inherited" character based on the trans-
mission of specific germinal factors.

Now it is claimed that for the occurrence of this kind of
modification in conjunction with homology only one rational
explanation is possible, and that explanation is evolution. If
this contention be a sound one, and Dorlodot, who claims
certitude for the evolutionary solution, insists that it is such,
then, in the name of sheer logical consistency, but one course
lies open to us. We cannot stop at Wasmann's comma,^ we
must press on to the very end of the evolutionary sentence and
sing with the choristers of Woods Hole:

"It's a long way from Amphioxus,

It's a long way to us;
It's a long way from Amphioxus,

To the meanest human cuss.
Good-bye fins and gill slits;

Welcome skin and hair.
It's a long, long way from Amphioxus,

But we came from there."

In this predicament it will not do, as we shall see presently,
to adopt Mr. McCann's expedient of balancing anatomical dif-
ferences against anatomical resemblances. To do so is to
court certain and ignominious defeat. We must, therefore,
examine the argument dispassionately. If it be solid, we must
accept it and give it general application. If it be unsound,
we must detect its flaws and expose them. Intellectual hon-
esty allows us no alternative!

Moreover, in weighing the argument from organic homology
we must not lose sight of the two important considerations
previously stressed: (1) that the inference of common an-

'Rev. Erich Wasmann, S. J., accepts the evolutionary inference from
homology as regards plants and animals. When it comes to man, how-
ever, he attempts to draw the line, and argues painstakingly against the
assumption of a bestial origin of the human body.

48 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

cestry in the case of homologous forms is based, not upon this
or that particular likeness, but upon an entire group of coor-
dinated resemblances; (2) that the resemblances involved are
not exterior similarities, but deep-seated structural uniformi-
ties perfectly compatible with diversities of a superficial and
functional character. "Nothing," says Dr. W. W. Keen, "could
be more unlike externally than the flipper of a whale and the
arm of a man. Yet you find in the flipper the shoulderblade,
humerus, radius, ulna, and a hand with the bones of four
fingers masked in a mitten of skin." (Science, June 9, 1922,
p. 605.)

In fact, the resemblances may, in certain instances, be so
deeply submerged that they no longer appear in the adult
organism at all and are only in evidence during a transitory
phase of the embryological process. In such cases, the embryo
or larva exhibits, at a particular stage, traces of a uniformity
completely obliterated from the adult form. In short, though
frequently presented as a distinct argument, embryological
similarity, together with all else of value that can still be
salvaged from the wreck of the Mliller-Haeckel Law of Em-
bryonic Recapitulation, is, at bottom, identical with the gen-
eral evolutionary argument from homology. In the latter
argument we are directed to look beneath the modified surface
of the adult organism for surviving vestiges of the ancestral
type. In the former, we are bidden to go deeper still, to the
extent, that is, of descending into the very embryological
process itself, in order to discover lingering traces of the an-
cestral likeness, which, though now utterly deleted from the
transformed adult, are yet partially persistent in certain
embryonic phases.

In sectioning a larval specimen of the fly-like termite-guest
known as Termitoxenia Heimi, Father Wasmann came across
a typical exemplification of this embryological atavism. In
the adult insect, a pair of oar-like appendages replace the
wings characteristic of the Diptera (flies) . These appendages
are organs of exudation, which elaborate a secretion whereof

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 49

the termites are very fond, and thereby render their possessors
welcome guests in the nests of their hosts. The appendages,
therefore, though now undoubtedly inherited characters, are
the specific means by which these inquilines are adapted to
their peculiar environment and mode of life among the ter-
mites. Moreover, the organs in question not only differ from
wings functionally, but, in the adult, they bear no structural
resemblance whatever to the wings of flies. Nevertheless, on
examining his sections of the above-mentioned specimen, Was-
mann found a developmental stage of brief duration during
which wing veins appeared in the posterior branches of the
embryonic appendages. Now, assuming that Wasmann's
technique was faultless, his specimen normal, and his interpre-
tation correct, it is rather difficult to avoid his conclusion that
we have here, in this transitory larval phase, the last sur-
viving vestige of ancestral wings now wholly obliterated from
the adult type, that, consequently, this wingless termite guest
is genetically related to the winged Diptera, and that we must
see in the appendages aboriginal wings diverted from their
primitive function and respecialized for the quite different pur-
pose of serving as organs of exudation, (cf. "Modern Biology,"
p. 385.) Indeed, phenomena of this kind seem to admit of
no other explanation than the atavistic one. It should be
remembered, however, that Wasmann does not appear to have
verified the observation in more than one specimen, and that
a larger number of representative specimens would have to
be accurately sectioned, strained, examined and interpreted,
before any reliable conclusion could be drawn.^

Such, in its most general aspect, is the atavistic solution
of the problem presented by the homology of types. In it,

^This transitory lymphatic, or tracheal venation appearing in the
appendages at the stenogastric stage may not have the particular
significance that Father Wasmann assigns. Such venation, even if
vestigial and aborted, need not necessarily be a vestige of former
toing venation. To demonstrate the validity of the atavistic inter-
pretation, ail other possible interpretations would have to be defi-
nitively excluded.

50 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

similarity and diversity are harmoniously reconciled, in the
sense that they affect, respectively, different structural, or
different developmental, levels. It is futile, therefore, to look
for contradictions where they do not exist. In a word, the
attempt to create opposition between a group of basic and
correlated uniformities, on the one hand, and some particular
external difference, on the other, is not only abortive, but
absolutely irrelevant as well. The reason is obvious. Only
when likeness is associated with unlikeness is it an argument
for Transmutation. Likeness alone would demonstrate Immu-
tability by indicating a process of pure inheritance as dis-
tinguished from the process of variation. Hence evolutionists
do not merely concede the coexistence of diversity with simi-
larity, they gladly welcome this fact as vitally necessary to
their contention.

Now it is precisely this point which Mr. McCann, like many
other critics of evolution, fails utterly to apprehend. Con-
sequently, his efforts to extricate the human foot from the
toils of simian homology are entirely unavailing. To offset
the force of the argument in question, it is by no means
sufficient, as he apparently imagines, to point to the fact that,
unlike the hallux of the ape, the great toe in man is non-
opposable (cf. "God — or Gorilla," pp. 183, 184, and legends
under cuts opposite pp. 184 and 318). The evolutionist will
reply at once that the non-opposability of man's great toe is cor-
related with the specialization of the human foot for progres-
sion only, as distinguished from prehension; while, in the ape,
whose foot has retained both the progressive and the prehensile
function, the hallux is naturally opposable in adaptation to the
animal's arboreal habits. He will then call attention to the
undeniable fact that, despite these adaptational differences,
the bones in the foot of a Troglodyte ape are, bone for bone,
the counterparts of the bones in the human foot and not
of those in the human hand. He will readily concede, that,
so far as function and adaptedness go, this simian foot is a
"hand," but he will not fail to point out that it is, at the

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 51

same time, a heeled hand equipped with a calcaneum, a talus,
a navicular, a cuboid, and all other structural elements requi-
site to ally it to the human foot and distinguish it from the
human hand. In fact, Mr. McCann's own photographs of the
gorilla skeleton show these features quite distinctly, though he
himself, for some reason or other, fails to speak of them. It is
to be feared, however, that his adversaries may not take a
charitable view of his reticence concerning the simian heel, but
may be inclined to characterize his silence as "discreet," all the
more so, that he himself has uncomplimentarily credited them
with similar discretions in their treatment of unmanageable
facts. In short, Mr. McCann's case against homology resem-
bles the Homeric hero, Achilles, in being vulnerable at the
"heel." At all events, the homology itself is an undeniable
fact, and it is vain to tilt against this fact in the name of
adaptational adjustments like "opposability" and "nonoppos-
ability." Since, therefore, our author has failed to prove that
this feature is too radical to be classed as an adaptive modi-
fication, our only hope of exempting the human skeleton from
the application of the argument in question is to show that
argument itself is inconsequential.

Mr. McCann's predicament resembles that of the un-
lucky disputant, who having allowed a questionable major
to pass unchallenged, strives to retrieve his mistake by
picking flaws in a flawless minor. As Dwight has well
said of the human body, "it differs in degree only from that
of apes and monkeys," and "if we compare the individual
bones with those of apes we cannot fail to see the correspond-
ence." ("Thoughts of a Catholic' Anatomist," p. 149.) In
short, there exists no valid anatomical consideration whatever
to justify us in subtracting the human frame from the exten-
sion of the general conclusion deduced from homology. Who-
soever, therefore, sees in the homology of organic forms
conclusive evidence of descent from a common ancestor, can-
not, without grave inconsistency, reject the doctrine of the
bestial origin of man. He may still, it is true, exclude the

52 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

human mind or soul from the evolutionary accoimt of origins,
but, if homology is, in any sense, a sound argument for com-
mon descent, the evolutionary origin of the human body is
a foregone conclusion, and none of the anatomical "differences
in degree" will avail to spare us the humiliation of sharing with
the ape a common family-tree. It remains for us, then, to
reexamine the argument critically for the purpose of deter-
mining as precisely as possible its adequacy as a genuine
demonstration.

To begin with, it must be frankly acknowledged that here
the theory of transformism is, to all appearances, upon very
strong ground. Its first strategic advantage over the theory
of immutability consists in the fact that, unlike the latter,
its attitude towards the problem is positive and not negative.
When challenged to explain the structural uniformities ob-
served in organic Nature, the theory of immutability is mute,
because it knows of no second causes or natural agencies ade-
quate to account for the facts. It can only account for
homology by ascribing the phenomenon exclusively to the
unity of the First Cause, and, while this may, of course, be the
true and sole explanation, to assume it is tantamount to re-
moving the problem altogether from the province of natural
science. Hence it is not to be wondered at that scientists
prefer the theory of transformism, which by assigning inter-
mediate causes between the First Cause and the ultimate
effects, vindicates the problem of organic origins for nat-
ural science, in assuming the phenomena to be proximately
explicable by means of natural agencies. Asked whether he
believes that God created the now exclusively arboreal Sloth
(Bradypus) in a tree, the most uncompromising defender of
fixism will hesitate to reply in the affirmative. Yet, in
this case, what is nowadays, at least, an inherited preadapta-
tion, dedicates the animal irrevocably to tree-life, and makes
its survival upon the ground impossible.

Analogous preadaptations occur in conjunction with the
phenomena of parasitism, symbiosis and commensalism, all of

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 53

which offer instances of otherwise disparate and unrelated
organisnis that are inseparably bound together, in some appar-
ently capricious and fortuitous respect, by a preadaptation
of the one to the other. Parasites, guests, or symbiotes, as the
case may be, they are now indissolubly wedded to some de-
terminate species of host by reason of an appropriate and con-
genital adjustment. For all that, however, the association
seems to be a contingent one, and it appears incredible that
the associates were always united, as at present, by bonds of
reciprocal advantage, mutual dependence, or one-sided exploi-
tation. Yet the basis of the relationship is in each case a now
inherited adaptation, which, if it does not represent the primi-
tive condition of the race, must at some time have been
acquired. For phenomena such as these, orthogenesis, which
makes an organ the exclusive product of internal factors, con-
ceiving it as a preformed mechanism that subsequently se-
lects a suitable function, has no satisfactory explanation.
Lamarckism, which asserts the priority of function and makes
the environment mold the organ, is equally inacceptable, in
that it flouts experience and ignores the now demonstrated
existence of internal hereditary factors. But, if between these
two extremes some evolutionary via media could be found,
one must confess that it would offer the only conceivable
"natural explanation" of preadaptation.* All this, of course, is
pure speculation, but it serves to show that here, at any rate,
the theory of Transformism occupies a position from which it
cannot easily be dislodged.

But, besides the advantage of being able to offer a "natural
explanation" of the association of homology with adaptation,

* Vernon Kellogg has expressed this same view in a recent article,
though he frankly admits that it is an as yet unrealized desideratum.
"Altogether," he says, "it must be fairly confessed that evolutionists
would welcome the discovery of the actual possibility and the mechan-
ism of transferring into the heredity of organisms such adaptive
changes as can be acquired by individuals in their lifetime. It would
give them an explanation of evolution, especially of adaptation, much
more satisfactory than any other explanation at present claiming the
acceptance of biologists." (Atlantic Monthly, April, 1924, p. 488.)

54 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Transformism enjoys the additional advantage of being able
to make the imagination its partisan by means of a visual
appeal. Such an appeal is always more potent than that of
pure logic stripped of sensuous imagery. When it comes to
vividness and persuasiveness, the syllogism is no match for
the object-lesson. Retinal impressions have a hypnotic in-
fluence that is not readily exorcised by considerations of an
abstract order — "Segnius irritant demissa per aurem, Quam
quae sunt oculis subjecta fidelibus," says Horace, in the ''Ars
Poetica." Philosophers may distinguish between the magnetic
appeal of a graphic presentation and the logical cogency of the
doctrine so presented, but there is no denying that, in prac-
tice, imagination is often mistaken for reason and persuasion
for conviction. Be that as it may, the ordinary method of
bringing home to the student the evolutionary significance
of homology is certainly one that utilizes to the full all the
advantages of visual presentation. Given a class of impres-
sionable premedics and coeds; given an instructor's table with
skeletons of a man, a flamingo, an ape and a dog hierarchically
arranged thereon; given an instructor sufiiciently versed in
comparative osteology to direct attention to the points in which
the skeletons concur: and there can be no doubt whatever as to
the psychological result. The student forms spontaneously the
notion of a common vertebrate type, and the instructor assures
him that this "general type" is not, as it would be with respect
to other subject matter, a mere universal idea with no formal
existence outside the mind, but rather a venerable family
likeness, posed for originally by a single pair of ancestors (or
could it possibly have been, by one self-fertilizing hermaphro-
dite?) and recopied from generation to generation, with certain
variations on the original theme, by the hand of an artist called
Heredity. This explanation may be true, but logically con-
sequential it is not. However, if the dialectic is poor, the
pedagogy is beyond reproach, and the solution proposed has in
its favor the fact that it accords well with the student's limited
experience. He is aware of the truism that children re-

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 55

semble their parents. Why look for more recondite explana-
tions when one so obvious is at hand? The atavistic theory-
gratifies his instinct for simplification, and, if he be of a
mechanistic turn of mind, the alternative conception of crea-
tionism is quite intolerable. Nevertheless, it goes without
saying that the "inference" of common descent from the data
of homology is not a ratiocination at all, it is only a simple
apprehension, a mere abstraction of similarity from similars —
^'Unde quaecumque inveniuntur convenire in aliqua intentione
intellecta," says Aquinas, "voluerunt quod convenirent in una
re." {In lib. II sent., dist. 17, q. I, a. 1) Philosophy tells us
that the oneness of the universal is conceptual and not at all
extramental or real, but the transformist insists that the
universal types of Zoology and Botany are endowed with real
as well as logical unity, that real unity being the unity of the
common ancestor.

Certainly, from the standpoint of practical effectiveness, the
evolutionary argument leaves little to be desired. The presen-
tation is graphic and the solution simple. But for the critic,
to whom logical sequence is of more moment than psychologi-
cal appeal, this is not enough. To withstand the gnawing
tooth of Time and the remorseless probing of corrosive human
reason, theories must rest on something sounder than a mirage
of visual imagery!

Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head?
How begot, how nourished?

Reply, reply.
It is engendered in the eyes,
With gazing fed; and fancy dies
In the cradle where it lies.

But is it fair thus to characterize the "common ancestors" of
Transformism as figments which, like all other abstractions,
have no extramental existence apart from the concrete objects
whence they were conceived? To be sure, their claim to be real
entities cannot be substantiated by direct observation or ex-

^'l'

56 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

periment, and so a factual proof is out of the question. Man>
the late-comer, not having been present at the birth of organic
forms, can give no reliable testimony regarding their parent-
age. In like manner, no a priori proof from the process of
inheritance is available, because heredity, as revealed to us by
the experimental science of Genetics, can account for specific
resemblances only, and cannot be invoked, at present, as an
empirically tested explanation for generic, ordinal, or phyletic
resemblances. It has still to be demonstrated experimentally
that the hereditary process is transcendental to limits imposed
by specific differentiation. There remains, however, the a pos-
teriori argument, which interprets homology and adaptation
as univocal effects ascribable to no other agency than the dual
process of inheritance and variation. What are we to think
of this argument? Does it generate certainty in the mind,
or merely probability?

A moment's reflection will bring to light the preliminary
flaw of incomplete enumeration of possibilities. To suppose
that inheritance alone can account for structural resemblance
is an unwarranted assumption. Without a doubt, there are
other similifying influences at work in Nature besides inherit-
ance. True, inheritance is one possible explanation of the
similarity of organisms, but it is not the only one. Even
among the chemical elements of inorganic nature we find
analogous uniformities or ''family traits," which, in the absence
of any reproductive process whatever, we cannot possibly at-
tribute to inheritance. Mendeleeff's discovery of the perio-
dicity of the elements, arranged in the order of their atomic
weights, is well-known. At each interval of an octave, a suc-
cession of chemical types, similar to those of the preceding
octave, recur. Hence elements appearing in the same vertical
column of the Periodic Table have many properties in com-
mon and exhibit what may be called a family resemblance.
Now, we have in the process of atomic disintegration, as ob-
served in radioactive elements and interpreted by the electronic
theory of atomic structure, a reasonably satisfactory basis

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 57

upon which to account for the existence of these inorganic
uniformities. Here analogous chemical constitution, produced
in accordance with a general law, results in uniformity that
implies a similar, rather than an identical, cause. The hy-
pothesis of parallelistic derivation from similar independent
origins accounts quite as well for the observ^ed uniformities
as does the hypothesis of divergent derivation from a single
common origin. Why, then, should we lean so heavily on the
already overtaxed principle of inheritance, when parallelism is
as much a possibility in the organic world as it is an actuality
in the inorganic world°

As to the contrast here drawn between inheritance and other
similifying factors, it is hardly necessary to remark that we
are speaking of inheritance as defined in terms of Mendelian
experiment and cytological observation. In the so-called
chemical theory of inheritance, the distinction would be mean-
ingless and the contrast would not exist. Ehrlich's disciple,
Adami, sets aside all self-propagating germinal determinants,
like the chromomeres, in favor of a hypothetical "biophoric
molecule," which is to be conceived as a benzine-like ring
bristling with sidechains. Around this determining core the
future organism is built up in definite specificity, as an
arch is constructed about a template. Adami has merely ap-
plied Paul Ehrlich's ideas concerning metabolism and immunity
to the question of heredity, commandeering for this purpose the
latter's entire toolkit of receptors, haptophores, amboceptors,
etc., as though this grotesque paraphernalia of crude and
clumsy mechanical symbols (which look for all the world like
the wrenches of a machinist, or the lifters used by the cook
to remove hot lids from the kitchen range) could throw any
valuable light whatsoever on the exceedingly complex, and
manifestly vital, phenomenon of inheritance. It does not even
deserve to be called a chemical theory, for, as Starling cor-
rectly remarks concerning Ehrlich's conception, "though chemi-
cal in form," it is not so in reality, because "it does not explain
the phenomenon by reference tc the known laws of chemistry."

58 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

(Cf. Physiology, ed. of 1920, p. 1084,) In a word, the theory
of heredity, which seeks to strip inheritance of its uniqueness
as a vital process by identifying it with the more general phys-
icochemical processes occurring in the organism, is a ground-
less speculation, that, far from explaining, flouts the very ob-
servational data which it pretends to elucidate. Kurz und gut!
to requite the mechanist, Schafer, with his own Danielesque
phrase, here, as elsewhere, the mechanists have succeeded in
extracting from the facts, not what the facts themselves pro-
claim, but what preexisted in their own highly-cultured imag-
inations so well-stocked with cogs, cranks, ball bearings, and
other sesthetic imagery emanating from polytechnic schools
and factories.

But in arguing from the existence of parallelism in the
inorganic world to its possibility in the organic world, we
are less liable to displease the mechanists than those other
extremists, the neo-vitalists, who will be prone to deny all
parity between living, and inanimate, matter. Fortunately,
we are in a position to appease the scruples of the latter by
referring to the facts of convergence as universally accepted
evidence that the phenomenon of parallelism occurs in animate,
no less than inanimate, nature. Admitting, therefore, that the
laws of organic morphology are of a higher order than those
which regulate atomic, molecular, and multimolecular struc-
ture, these facts attest, nevertheless, that parallelisms arise
in organisms of separate ancestry which are due, not to hered-
ity, but to the uniform action of universal morphogenetic
forces. Hence general laws can be invoked to account for
organic uniformities with the same right that they are
invoked to account for resemblances existing between the
various members of a chemical "family" like the Halogens.
And why should this not be so? Organisms have much in
common that transcends any possible scheme of evolution and
that cannot be brought into alignment with the position arbi-
trarily assigned them in the evolutionary family-tree. They
all originate as single cells. Their common means of growth

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 59

and reproduction is mitotic cell division. This leads to the
production of a somatella, among the protista, and of a soma
differentiated by histogenesis into two or three primary
tissues, among the metista. All these fundamental processes
are strikingly uniform throughout the entire plant and animal
world. In these universal properties of living matter, there-
fore, we have a common basis for general structural and or-
ganizational laws, which, though irreducible to the "common
ancestors" of Transformism, is quite adequate to account for
both the homologies and analogies of living matter. Accept
this basis of general laws regulating the development of living
matter, and there is no difficulty in seeing why the problems
posed by exposure to analogous environmental conditions are
solved in parallel fashion by organisms, irrespective of whether
they are nearly, or distantly, related in the sense of morphol-
ogy. Transformism, on the other hand, can only account
for homology at the expense of convergence, and for
convergence at the expense of homology. So far as a
common ancestral basis is concerned, the two kinds of
resemblance are, from the very nature of the case, irreducible
phenomena.

It is only, in fact, by surrendering the principle that simi-
larity entails community of origin, and by falling back on the
suggested common basis of general laws, that Transformism
makes room in its system for the troublesome facts of con-
vergence. "It might be reiterated in passing," says Dwight,
"that this 'convergence' business is a very ticklish one. We
have been taught almost word for word that resemblance
implies relationship, or almost predicates it; but according
to this doctrine it has nothing to do with it whatever."
("Thoughts of a Cath. Anat.," p. 190.) And in a subsequent
chapter he says: "No very deep knowledge of comparative
anatomy is needed for us to know that very similar adapta-
tions for particular purposes are found in very diverse animals.
The curious low grade mammal, the Ornithorhynchus, with a
hairy coat and the bill of a duck, is a familiar instance. We

60 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

all know that the whales have the general form of the fish, al-
though they are mammals, and going more into details we
know that the whale's flipper is on the same general plan
as that of the ancient saurians. . . . The origin of the eye, ac-
cording to evolutionary doctrines, has been a very difficult
problem, which gets worse rather than better the more you
do for it. Even if we could persuade ourselves that certain
cells blundered along by the lucky mating of individuals in
whom they were a bit better developed than in the others
till they came to form a most complicated organ of sight, it
would be a sufficient tax on our credulity to believe that this
could come off successfully in some extraordinary lucky spe-
cies; but that it should have turned out so well with all kinds
of vertebrates is really too much to ask us to swallow. But
this is not all: eyes are very widely spread among different
classes of invertebrates. More wonderful still, the eyes of cer-
tain molluscs and Crustacea are on stalks, and this is found
also in various and very different families of fishes. How
did this happen? Was it by way of descent from the molluscs
or the Crustacea? If not, how could chance have brought
about such a similar result in diverse forms?" {Op. cit., pp.
233-236.)

It may be objected that the resemblances of convergence
are superficial analogies, not to be confounded with funda-
mental homologies. This contention may be disputed; for, as
we shall see in the next chapter, there are cases where the
convergence is admittedly radical, and not merely superficial.
The distinction, moreover, between shallow and basic char-
acters is somewhat arbitrary, and its validity is often ques-
tionable. When the skeletal homology that relates the
amphibia to the mammals, for instance, is traced to the root
of the vertebrate family tree, we find it all but disappearing
in a primitive Amphioxus-like chordate, whose so-called skele-
ton contains no trace of bone or cartilage. Hence, if we go
back far enough, the homologies of to-day become the con-
vergences of a geological yesterday, and we find the vertebrate

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 61

type of skeleton arising independently in reptiles, mammals,
amphibia, and fishes.

Again, there are times when convergent analogies appear
to be more representative of the common racial her-
itage than the underlying structure itself, tempting the
evolutionist to fly in the face of the orthodox interpretation,
which rigidly rules out analogy in favor of homology, and
refuses to accept the eloquent testimony of a remark-
able resemblance merely because of a slight technical dis-
crepancy in the structural substrate. A large pinching claw,
or chela, for example, occurs in two organisms belonging
to the phylum of the arthropods, namely, the lobster and the
African scorpion. Both chelae are practically identical in
structure, but, unfortunately, the chela of the lobster arises
from a different appendage than that from which the scor-
pion's chela emerges. If they arose from corresponding ap-
pendages, they would be pronounced "homologous organs"
and acclaimed, without hesitation, as strong evidence in favor
of the common origin of all the arthropods. In proof of this,
we call attention to the importance attached to the adapta-
tions affecting homologous bones in fossil "horses." As it is,
however, the two chelae are analogous, and not homologous,
organs. Hence, technically speaking, the two chelae are
utterly unrelated structures. To the eye of common sense,
however, the likeness appears to be far more important than
the difference, and the average person will be inclined to
view the resemblance as evidence of a communuity of type. In
fact, the tendency to discard superficial, and to retain only
fundamental, uniformities, is dangerous to the theory of Trans-
formism. When we confine our attention to what is really
basic, we find that the resemblances become so generalized
and widespread that specific conclusions as to descent become
impossible, and we lose all sense of direction in a clueless
labyrinth of innumerable, yet mutually contradictory, possi-
bilities.

Finally, it may be noted in passing that, though it is

62 . THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

customary with evolutionists to regard homologous characters
as the tenaciously persistent heritage of primeval days, and
to look upon adaptational characters as adventitious and ac-
cessory to the aforesaid primitive heritage, the supposedly
older and more fundamental characters fail to give, by the
manifestation of greater fixity, any empirical evidence what-
ever of their being more deeply or firmly rooted in the heredi-
tary process than the presumably newer adaptational char-
acters. We have, therefore, no experimental warrant for
appropriating homologous, rather than adaptational, char-
acters to the process of inheritance. "It is sometimes
asserted," says Goodrich, "that old-established charac-
ters are inherited, and that newly begotten ones are not,
or are less constant, in their reappearance. This state-
ment will not bear critical examination. For, on the one
hand, it has been conclusively shown by experimental breeding
that the newest characters may be inherited as constantly as
the most ancient. . . . While, on the other hand, few charac-
ters in plants can be older than the green color due to chloro-
phyll, yet it is sufficient to cut off the light from a germinating
seed for the greenness to fail to appear. Again, ever since
Devonian times vertebrates have inherited paired eyes; yet,
as Professor Stockard has shown, if a little magnesium chlo-
ride is added to the sea water in which the eggs of the fish
Fundulus are developing, they will give rise to embryos with
one median cyclopean eye! Nor is the suggestion any hap-
pier that the, so to speak, more deep-seated and fundamental
characters are more constantly inherited than the trivial or
superficial. A glance at the organisms around us, or the
slightest experimental trial, soon convinces us that the appar-
ently least important character may reappear as constantly
as the most fundamental. But while an organism may live
without some trivial character, it can rarely do so when a
fundamental character is absent, hence such incomplete indi-
viduals are seldom met in Nature." {Science, Dec. 2, 1921,
p. 530.)

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 63

But, whether it be upon, or beneath, the surface, similitude
of any kind suffices to establish our contention that in-
heritance is not the only similifying influence present in or-
ganisms, and that resemblance is perfectly compatible with
independence of ancestry. We have, therefore, an alternative
for inheritance in the explanation of organic uniformities, and
by the admission of this alternative, which, for the rest, is
factually attested by the universally acknowledged phenomena
of convergence, the inference of common descent from struc-
tural resemblance is shorn of the last remnant of its demon-
strative force, as an a posteriori argument.

But a still more serious objection to the evolutionary inter-
pretation of homology and preadaptation arises from its
intrinsic incoherency. Evolution, as previously stated, is as-
sumed to be the resultant of a twofold process, namely, in-
heritance and variation. The first is a conservative and
similifying process, which transmits. The second is a progres-
sive and diversifying process, which diverts. To the former
process are due the uniformities of homology, to the latter the
deviations of adaptation. Upon the admission of evolutionists
themselves, however, neither of these processes behaves in a
manner consistent with its general nature, and both of them
are flagrantly unfaithful to the principal roles assigned to
them. Nowadays the hereditary process transmits adapta-
tional, as well as homologous, characters. If, then, adapta-
tional characters are more recent than homologous characters,
there must have been a time when inheritance ceased to simi-
lify and become a diversifying process by transmitting what
it did not receive from the previous generation. There were
times when, not content with simply reiterating the past, it
began to divert former tendencies into novel channels. In
other words, inheritance becomes dualized into a paradoxical
process, which both perpetuates the old and appropriates the
new. The same inconsistency is manifest in the process of
variation, which capriciously produces convergent, no less
than divergent, adaptations. In two fundamentally identical

64 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

structures, like the wing of a bird and the foreleg of a cat,
variation is said to have produced diverse adaptations. In two
fundamentally diverse structures, like the head of an octopus
and the head of a frog, variation is said to have produced an
identical adaptation, namely, the vetebrate type of eye. It
appears, therefore, that the essentially diversifying process of
variation can become, on occasion, a simplifying process, which,
instead of solving environmental problems in an original man-
ner, prefers to employ uniform and standardized solutions, and
to cling to its old stereotyped methods. Inheritance similifies
and diversifies, variation converges and diverges. It is futile
to attempt to reduce either of these protean processes to a con-
dition that even approximates consistency. The evolutionist
blows hot and cold with the same breath. Verily, his god is
Proteus, or the double-headed Janus!

Summa summarum: The evolutionary argument from
homology is defective in three important respects: (1) in its
lack of experimental confirmation; (2) in its incomplete
enumeration of the disjunctive possibilities; (3) in its inability
to construct a scheme of transmutation that synthesizes in-
heritance and variation in a logically coherent, and factually
substantiated formula. The first two defects are not neces-
sarily fatal to the argument as such. Though they destroy
its pretensions to conclusiveness, they do not preclude the ful-
filment of the moderate claim made in its behalf by Prof. T.
H. Morgan, who says: "In this sense {i.e., as previously
stated) the argument from comparative anatomy, while not a
demonstration, carries with it, I think, a high degree of prob-
ability." ("A Critique of the Theory of Evolution," p. 14.)
The third defect is more serious. The apparently irreducible
antagonism which the evolutionary assumption introduces be-
tween inheritance and variation has been sensed even by the
adherents of transformism themselves, and they have searched
in vain for a formula, which, without sacrificing the facts,
would bring into concord the respective roles of these discord-
ant factors. "It follows," says Osborn, "as an unprejudiced

HOMOLOGY AND ITS INTERPRETATION 65

conclusion from our present evidence that upon Weismann's
principle we can explain inheritance but not evolution, while
with Lamarck's principle and Darwin's selection principle we
can explain evolution, but not, at present, inheritance. Dis-
prove Lamarck's principle and we must assume that there is
some third factor in evolution of which we are ignorant."
(Popular Science Monthly, Jan., 1905.) The point is well
taken, and unless, as Osborn suggests, there is a tertium quid
by means of which the discord can be resolved into ultimate
harmony, we see no way of liberating the theory of Transmuta-
tion from this embarrassing dilemma.

CHAPTER III
FOSSIL PEDIGREES

"By dint of such great efforts we succeeded only in piecing together
genial romances more or less historical." — B. Grassi, Prof, of Compara-
tive Anatomy, Univ. of Rome, "La vita" (1906), p. 227.

§ 1. The Argument in the Abstract

The palaeontological argument for evolution is based upon
the observed gradual approximation in type of the earlier
forms of life, as represented by the fossils still preserved in
successive geological strata, to the later forms of life, as repre-
sented by the contemporary species constituting our present
flora and fauna. Here the observed distribution in time sup-
plements and confirms the argument drawn from mere struc-
tural affinity. Here we are no longer dealing with the spatial
gradation of contemporary forms, arranged on a basis of
greater or lesser similarity (the gradation whence the zoolo-
gist derives his argument for evolution), but with a temporal
gradation, which is simultaneously a morphological series and
an historical record. The lower sedimentary rocks contain
specimens of organic life very unlike modern species, but, the
higher we ascend in the geological strata, the more closely do
the fossil forms resemble our present organisms. In fact, the
closeness of resemblance is directly proportional to the prox-
imity in time, and this seems to create a presumption that
the later forms of life are the modified descendants of the
earlier forms. Considered in the abstract, at least, such an
argument is obviously more formidable than the purely an-
atomical argument based on the degrees of structural affinity
observable in contemporary forms. It ought, therefore, to

66

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 67

be extremely persuasive, provided, of course, it proceeds in
rigorous accord with indubitably established facts and rules
out relentlessly the alloy of uncritical assumptions.

Here, likewise, we find the theory of transformism asserting
its superiority over the theory of immutability, on the ground
that evolutionism can furnish a natural explanation for the
gradational distribution of fossil types in the geological strata,
whereas the theory of permanence resorts, it is said, to a
supernaturalism of reiterated "new creations" alternating with
"catastrophic exterminations." Now, if this claim is valid, and
it can be shown conclusively that fixism is inevitably com-
mitted to a postulate of superfluously numerous "creations,"
then the latter theory is shorn of all right to consideration
by Occam's Razor: Entia non sunt multiplicanda sine ratione.
It is rather difficult to conceive of the Creator as continually
blotting out, and rewriting, the history of creation, as ruth-
lessly exterminating the organisms of one age, only to repopu-
late the earth subsequently with species differing but little
from their extinct predecessors — ad quid perditio haecf Such
procedure hardly comports with the continuity, regularity and
irrevisable perfection to be expected in the works of that
Divine Wisdom, which "reacheth . . . from end to end might-
ily and disposeth all things sweetly" {Wisdom, viii; 1), which
"ordereth all things in measure, and number and weight."
(Wis. xi; 21.)

Following the lead of other evolutionists, Wasmann has
striven to saddle fixism with the fatuity of periodic catas-
trophism and "creation on the installment plan." But even
Cuvier, who is credited with having originated the theory of
catastrophism, did not go to the absurd extreme of hypothe-
cating reiterated creations, but sought to explain the repopu-
lation of the earth after each catastrophe by means of
migrations from distant regions unaffected by the catastrophe.
Historically, too, fixism has had its uniformitarian, as well as
its catastrophic, versions. In fact, Huxley classifies both uni-
formitarianism and catastrophism as fixistic systems, when

68 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

he says: "I find three more or less contradictory systems of
geologic thought . . . standing side by side in Britain. I shall
call one of them Catastrophism, another Uniformitarianism,
the third Evolutionism." ("Lay Sermons," p. 229.) Obvi-
ously, then, fixism is separable from the hypothesis of
repeated catastrophes alternating with repeated "creations."
Stated in proper terms, it is at one with evolutionism in re-
jecting as undemonstrated and improbable the postulate of
reiterated cataclysms. It freely acknowledges that, in the ab-
sence of positive evidence of their occurrence, the presumption
is against extraordinary events, like wholesale catastrophes.
It sanctions the uniformitarian tenet that ordinary cosmic
processes are to be preferred to exceptional ones as a basis
of geological explanation, and it repudiates as unscientific any
recourse to the unusual or the miraculous in accounting for
natural phenomena. Its sole point of disagreement with evo-
lutionism is its refusal to admit organic changes of specific
magnitude. It does, however, admit germinal changes of
varietal magnitude. It also recognizes that the external char-
acters of the phenotype are the joint product of germinal fac-
tors and environmental stimuli, and admits, in consequence, the
possibility of purely somatic changes of considerable profun-
dity being induced by widespread and persistent alterations in
environmental conditions. Like Darwin, the uniformitarian
fixist ascribes the origination of organic life to a single vivi-
fying act on the part of the Creator, an act, however, that
was formative rather than creative, because the primal forms
of life, whether few or many, were all evolved through Divine
influence from preexistent inorganic matter. Unlike Darwin,
he ascribes the continuation of organic life to generative proc-
esses that were univocal {generationes univocae) , and not
gradually-equivocal {generationes paulatim aequivocae). In
the next chapter, we shall see that, in attributing the initial
formation of species to a Divine act, neither Darwin nor the
creationists exposed themselves to the charge of explaining
the "natural" by means of the "miraculous." And, as for

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 69

the process by which living forms were continued upon earth,
the univocal reproductive process upheld by fixism is more
manifestly a natural process than the gradually-equivocal
generation of variable inheritance hypothecated by the theory
of transmutation. The sole matter of dispute between the
two views is whether the life-cycles of organisms are circles
or spirals.

But all this, it will be said, is purely negative. Merely to
refrain from any recourse to the extraordinary or the super-
natural is by no means sufficient. ''Natural explanations"
must be explanatory as well as natural. Unless there be a
simplification, a reduction of plurality to unity, a resolution
of many particular problems into a common general problem,
we have no explanation worthy of the name. Granting, there-
fore, that uniformitarian fixism does not recur to the an-
omalous or the miraculous, it still lies open to the charge of
failing in its function as an explanation, because it multiplies
origins in both space and time. Transformism, on the contrary,
is said to elucidate matters, inasmuch as it unifies origins spa-
tially and temporally.

That transformism successfully plausibleizes a unification
of origins in space, is true only in a limited and relative sense.
The most that can be said for the assumption, that resem-
blances rest on the principle of common inheritance, is that
it permits of a numerical reduction of origins, but this nu-
merical reduction will, by an intrinsic necessity, always fall
short of absolute unification. The monophyletic derivation of
all organic forms from one primordial cell or protoblast is a
fantastic dream, for which, from the very nature of things,
natural science does not, and can not, furnish even the sem-
blance of an objective basis. The ground is cut from under
our feet, the moment we attempt to extend the principle of
descent outside the limits of an organic phylum. The sole
basis of inference is a group of uniformities, and, unless these
uniformities predominate over the diversities, there can be no
rational application of the principle of transformism. Hence,

70 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

the hypothesis, that organisms are consanguineous notwith-
standing their differences, loses all value as a solution at the
point where resemblances are outweighed by diversities. The
transmutation assumed to have taken place must be never
so complete as to have obliterated all recognizable vestiges
of the common ancestral type. "Whenever," says Driesch,
"the theory that, in spite of their diversities, the organisms
are related by blood, is to be really useful for explanation, it
must necessarily be assumed in every case that the steps of
change, which have led the specific form A to become the
specific form B, have been such as only to change in part that
original form A. That is to say: the similarities between A
and B must never be overshadowed by their diversities."
("Science and Philosophy of the Organism," v. I, p. 254.)
When, therefore, the reverse is true and diversities are preva-
lent over uniformities, we are left without clue or compass in
the midst of a labyrinth of innumerable possibilities. Such are
the limits imposed by the very nature of the evidence itself,
and the scientists, who transgress these limits, by attempting to
correlate the primary phyla, are on a par with those uncon-
vincible geniuses, who continually besiege the Patent Office
with schemes ever new and weird for realizing the chimera of
"perpetual motion."

Thus scientific transformism is unable to simplify the prob-
lem beyond a certain irreducible plurality of forms, lesser
only in degree than the plurality postulated by fixism. This
being the case, the attempts of Wasmann and Dorlodot to
prune the works of Creation with Occam's Razor are not only
presumptuous, but precarious as well. Qui nimis prohat, nihil
probat! If it be unworthy of God to multiply organic origins
in space, then monophyletic descent is the only possible alter-
native, and polyphyletic transformism falls under the same
condemnation as fixism. Yet the polyphyletic theory of
descent is that to which both Wasmann and Dorlodot sub-
scribe, as it is, likewise, the only kind of transformism which
science can ever hope to plausibleize. Besides, too close a

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 71

shave with Occam's Razor would eliminate creation altogether,
since all theologians cheerfully admit that it was the result
of a free and unnecessary act on the part of God. When we
apply our rationes convenientiae to the Divine operations, we
must not make the mistake of applying them to the Divine
action itself instead of the created effects of that action. We
may be competent to discern disorder and irregularity in finite
things, but we are wholly incompetent to prescribe rules for
Divine conduct. To say that God is constrained by His in-
finite Wisdom to indirect, rather than direct, production, or
that He must evolve a variety of forms out of living, rather
than non-living, matter, is to be guilty of ridiculous anthro-
pomorphism. There is no a priori reason, founded upon the
Divine attributes, which restricts God's creative action to the
production of this, or that, number of primordial organisms,
or which obliges him to endow primitive organisms with the
power of transmutation.

But the fact that these rationes convenientiae fail to estab-
lish the a priori necessity of a unification of organic origins
in space, does not imply that they are without value in sug-
gesting the unification of organic origins in time. Order and
regularity are not excluded by spatial multiplicity, but they
may easily be excluded by the incongruities of an irregular
succession of events. Indeterminism and chance are, indeed,
inseparable from the course of Nature. There is in matter an
unlimited potentiality, incommensiu-ate with the limited effi-
cacy of natural agencies. Hence it evades the absolute control
of all finite factors and forces. But the anomalies and ir-
regularities, which are contingent upon the limitation or frus-
tration of second causes unable to impose an iron necessity
upon evasive matter, are not referable to the First 'Cause, but
rather to the finite efficacy of second causes. Such anomalies
in natural processes, consequently, are not inconsistent with in-
finite wisdom and power on the part of the Creator. If, on the
contrary, the anomaly occurs, not in the form of an accidental
frustration of a natural agency, but in the form of an intrusive

72 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

"new creation," the irregularity in question would then be re-
ferable to the Creator Himself, and such derogations of order
are inadmissible, except as manifestations of the supernatural.
In fact, the abrupt and capricious insertion of a "new crea-
tion" into an order already constituted, say, for instance, the
sudden introduction of Angiosperms in the Comanchian period,
or of mammals in the Tertiary, would be out of harmony
with both reason and revelation. Unless there is a
positive reason for supposing the contrary, we must pre-
sume that, subsequent to the primordial constitution of
things, the Divine influence upon the world has been
concurrent rather than revolutionizing. Hence a theory
of origins, compatible with the simultaneous "creation" of
primal organisms, is decidedly preferable to a theory, which
involves successive "creations" at random. That transform-
ism dispenses with the need of assuming a succession of "crea-
tive" acts, is perfectly obvious, and, unless fixism can emulate
its rival system in this respect, it cannot expect to receive
serious attention.

But once fixism assumes the simultaneousness of organic
origins, it encounters, in the absence of modern organic types
from ancient geological strata, a new and formidable difficulty.
Cuvier's theory of numerous catastrophes followed by whole-
sale migrations of the forms, which had escaped extinction, is
tantamount to an appeal to the extraordinary and the im-
probable for purposes of explanation, and this, as we have seen,
is an expedient, which natural science is justified in refusing
to sanction. Nor does the appeal to the incompleteness of
the geological record offer a more satisfactory solution. It is
tax enough, as we shall see, upon our credulity, when the
transformist seeks to account thereby for the absence of inter-
mediate types, but to account in this fashion for the absence
of palaeozoic Angiosperms and mammals is asking us to be-
lieve the all-but-incredible. It would not, therefore, be ad-
visable for the fixist to appropriate the line of defense sug-
gested for him by Bateson — "It has been asked how do you

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 73

know for instance that there were no mammals in Palaeozoic
times? 'May there not have been mammals somewhere on
the earth though no vestige of them has come down to us?
We may feel confident there were no mammals then, but are
we sure? In very ancient rocks most of the great orders of
animals are represented. The absence of the others might
by no great stress of imagination be ascribed to accidental
circumstances." But the sudden rise of the Angiosperms in
the early part of the Mesozoic era is an instance of de novo
origin that is not so easily explained away. Hence Bateson
continues: ''Happily, however, there is one example of which
we can be sure. There were no Angiosperms — that is to say
'higher plants' with protected seeds — in the carboniferous
epoch. Of that age we have abundant remains of a world-
wide and rich flora. The Angiosperms are cosmopolitan. By
their means of dispersal they must immediately have become
so. Their remains are very readily preserved. If they had
been in existence on the earth in carboniferous times they
must have been present with the carboniferous plants, and
must have been preserved with them. Hence we may be sure
that they did appear on earth since those times. We are not
certain, using certain in the strict sense, that Angiosperms
are the lineal descendants of the carboniferous plants, but it is
much easier to believe that they are than that they are not.''
{Science, Jan. 20, 1922, p. 58.)

It would thus appear, that not all the organic types of
either the plant, or the animal, kingdom are of equal an-
tiquity, and that the belated rise of unprecedented forms has
the status of an approximate certainty, wherewith every theory
of origins must inevitably reckon. How, then, is the fixist
to reconcile this successive appearance of organisms with the
simultaneous "creation" advocated by St. Augustine and St.
Thomas of Aquin? Unless there be some other gradual process
besides transmutation, to bridge the interval between the crea-
tive fiat and the eventual appearance of modern types, there
seems to be no escape from the dilemma.

74 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

This brings us to St. Augustine's theory of the evolution of
organic life from inorganic matter, which Dorlodot sophisti-
cally construes as supporting the theory of descent. Accord-
ing to St. Augustine, for whose view the Angelic Doctor ex-
pressed a deliberate preference, the creation of the corporeal
world was the result of a single creative act, having an imme-
diate effect in the case of minerals, and a remote or postponed
effect in the case of plants and animals (cf. *'De Genesi ad
litteram," lib. V, c. 5). Living beings, therefore, were cre-
ated, not in actuality, but in germ. God imparted to the ele-
ments the power of producing the various plants and animals
in their proper time and place. Hence living beings were cre-
ated causally rather than formally, by the establishment of
causal mechanisms or natural agencies especially ordained to
bring about the initial formation of the ancestral forms of life.
The Divine act initiating these "natural processes" {rationes
seminales, rationes causales) in inorganic, and not in living,
matter, was instantaneous, but the processes, which terminated
in the formation of plants and animals, in their appointed time
and place, were in themselves gradual and successive. Thus
by an influx of Divine power the earth was made pregnant
with the promise of every form of life — ^'Sicut matres gravidas
sunt foetibus, sic ipse mundus est gravidus causis nascentiumJ'
(Augustine, lib. Ill, ''de Trinitate," c. 9.)

By reason of this doctrine, the Louvain professor claims
that St. Augustine was an evolutionist, and so, indeed, he was,
if by evolution is meant a gradual production of organisms
from inorganic matter. But if, on the contrary, by evolution
is meant a progressive differentiation and multiplication of
organic species by transmutation of preexistent forms of life,
or, in other words, if evolution is taken in its usual sense as
synonym for transformism, then nothing could be more ab-
surdly anachronistic than to ascribe the doctrine to St. Augus-
tine. The subject of the gradual process postulated by the
latter was, not living, but inorganic, matter, and the process
was conceived as leading to the formation, and not the trans-

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 76

formation, of species. The idea of variable inheritance did not
occur to'St. Augustine, and he conceived organisms, once they
were in existence, as being propagated exclusively by univocal
reproduction {generatio univoca). It is the fixist, therefore,
rather than the transformist, who is entitled to exploit the
Augustinian hypothesis. In fact, it is only the vicious am-
biguity and unlimited elasticity of the term evolution, which
avail to extenuate the astounding confusion of ideas and total
lack of historic sense, that can bracket together under a
common term the ideology of Darwin and the view of St.
Augustine.

§ 2. The Argument in the Concrete

But it is our task to criticize the theory of transformism,
and not to throw a life-line to fixism, by advocating gradual
formation of species as the only feasible alternative to gradual
transformation of species. Perhaps, this particular life-line
will not be appreciated any way ; for the fixist may, not with-
out reason, prefer to rest his case on the contention that the
intrinsic time-value of geological formations is far too proble-
matic for certain conclusions of any sort. In maintaining
this position, he will have the support of some present-day
geologists, and can point, as we shall see, to facts that seem
to bear out his contention. In fact, the cogency of the palse-
ontological argument appears to be at its maximum in the
abstract, and to evaporate the moment we carry it into the
concrete. The lute seems perfect, until we begin to play
thereon, and then we discover certain rifts that mar the effect.
It is to these rifts that our attention must now be turned.

The first and most obvious flaw, in the evolutionary inter-
pretation of fossil series, is the confounding of succession
with filiation. Thinkers, from time immemorial, have com-
mented on the deep chasm of distinction, which divides his-
torical from causal sequence, and philosophers have never
ceased to inveigh against the sophistical snare of: Post hoc,
ergo prompter hoc. That one form of life has been subsequent

76 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

in time to another form of life is, in itself, no proof of descent.
"Let us suppose," says Bather, "all written records to be
swept away, and an attempt made to reconstruct English
history from coins. We could set out our monarchs in true
order, and we might suspect that the throne was hereditary;
but if on that assumption we were to make James I, the son
of Elizabeth — well, but that's just what palaeontologists are
constantly doing. The famous diagram of the Evolution of
the Horse which Huxley used in his American lectures has
had to be corrected in the light of the fuller evidence recently
tabulated in a handsome volume by Prof. H. F. Osborn
and his coadjutors. Palceotherium, which Huxley regarded as
a direct ancestor of the horse, is now held to be only a col-
lateral, as the last of the Tudors were collateral ancestors of
the Stuarts. The later Ancitherium must be eliminated from
the true line as a side branch — a Young Pretender. Some-
times an apparent succession is due to immigration of a distant
relative from some other region — 'The glorious House of Han-
over and Protestant Succession.' It was, you will remember,
by such migrations that Cuvier explained the renewal of life
when a previous fauna had become extinct. He admitted suc-
cession but not descent." {Science, Sept. 17, 1920, p. 261.)
But, if succession does not imply descent, descent, at least,
implies succession, and the fact that succession is the necessary
corollary of descent, may be used as a corrective for the erro-
neous allocations made by neontologists on the basis of purely
morphological considerations. The priority of a type is the
sine qua non condition of its being accepted as ancestral. It
is always embarrassing when, as sometimes happens, a "de-
scendant" turns out to be older than, or even coeval with, his
"ancestor." If, however, the historical position of a form can
be made to coincide with its anatomical pretensions to ancestry,
then the inference of descent attains to a degree of logical
respectability that is impossible in the case of purely zoologi-
cal evidence. Recent years have witnessed a more drastic
application of the historical test to morphological speculations,

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 77

and the result has been a wholesale revision of former notions
concerning phylogeny. ''I could easily," says Bather, "occupy
the rest of this hour by discussing the profound changes
wrought by this conception on our classification. It is not
that orders and classes hitherto unknown have been discov-
ered, not that some erroneous allocations have been corrected,
but the whole basis of our system is being shifted. So long
as we were dealing with a horizontal section across the tree of
life — that is to say, with an assemblage of approximately
contemporaneous forms — or even with a number of such hori-
zontal sections, so long were we confined to simple description.
Any attempt to frame a causal connection was bound to be
speculative." {Ibidem, p. 258.) Whether zoologists will take
kindly to this ''shifting of the whole basis" of classification,
remains to be seen. Personally, we think they would be very
ill-advised to exchange the solid observational basis of homol-
ogy for the scanty facts and fanciful interpretations of
palaeontologists.

The second stumblingblock in the path of Transformism
is the occurrence of convergence. We have seen that, in the
palseontological argument, descent is inferred conjointly from
similarity and succession, and that, in the abstract, this argu-
ment is very persuasive. One of the concrete phenomena,
however, that tend to make it inconsequential, is the undoubted
occurrence of convergence. Prof. H. Woods of Cambridge, in
the Introduction to the 5th edition of his "Palaeontology"
(1919), speaks of three kinds of convergence (cf., pp. 14, 15,
16), which, as a matter of convenience, we may term the
parallelistic, the radical, and the adaptational, types of con-
vergence. A brief description of each type will serve to elu-
cidate its nature and its significance :

(1) Parallelistic convergence implies the appearance of
parallel modifications in the homologous parts of organisms
regarded as diverging from common stock in two distinct col-
lateral lines, that were independent at the time of the ap-
pearance in both of the said parallel modifications. Speaking

78 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

of the fossil ccelenterates known as Graptolites, Professor
Woods says: "In some genera the hydrothecae of dif-
ferent species show great variety of form, those of one
species being often much more like those of a species belonging
to another genus than to other species of the same genus."
("Palaeontology," 5th ed., 1919, p. 69.) As another instance of
this phenomenon, the case of the fossil ungulates of South
America, spoken of as Litoptema, may be cited, and the case
is peculiarly interesting because of its bearing on that piece de
resistance of palaeontological evidence, the Pedigree of the
Horse. "The second family of Litoptema," says Wm. B. Scott,
"the Proterotheriidae, were remarkable for their many decep-
tive resemblances to horses. Even though those who contend
that the Litoptema should be included in the Perissodactyla
should prove to be in the right, there can be no doubt that
the proterotheres were not closely related to the horses, but
formed a most striking illustration of the independent acqui-
sition of similar characters through parallel or convergent
development. The family was not represented in the Pleisto-
cene, having died out before that epoch, and the latest known
members of it lived in the upper Pliocene. . . . Not that this
remarkable character was due to grotesque proportions; on
the contrary, they looked far more like the ordinary ungulates
of the northern hemisphere than did any of their South Ameri-
can contemporaries; it is precisely this resemblance that is so
notable. . . . The feet were three-toed, except in one genus
(Thoatherium) in which they were single-toed, and nearly or
quite the whole weight was carried upon the median digit, the
laterals being mere dew-claws. The shape of the hoofs and
the whole appearance of the foot was surprisingly like those
of the three-toed horses, but there were certain structural dif-
ferences of such great importance, in my judgment, as to forbid
the reference of these animals, not merely to the horses, but
even to the perissodactyls." ("A History of Land Mammals
in the Western Hemisphere," p. 499.)
For this sort of parallelism, the Lamarckian and Darwinian

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 79

types of evolution by addition can offer no rational explana-
tion. It 'could, perhaps, be accounted for upon the Bateso-
nian hypothesis of evolution by loss of inhibition, that is to
say, the coincident appearance of convergent characters in
collateral lines might be interpreted as being due to a parallel
loss in both lines of the inhibitive genes, which had sup-
pressed the convergent feature in the primitive or common
stock. We say that the convergence might be so interpreted,
because the interpretation in question would, at best, be merely
optional and not at all necessary; for in the third, or adapta-
tional, type of convergence, we shall see instances of parallel
modifications occurring in completely independent races, whose
morphology and history alike exclude all possibility of heredi-
tary connection between them. Hence, even in the present
case, nothing constrains us to accept the genetic interpretation.
(2) Radical convergence, which Woods styles heterogenetic
homoeomorphy, is described by him as follows: "Sometimes
two groups of individuals resemble each other so closely that
they might be regarded as belonging to the same genus or
even to the same species (italics mine), but they have de-
scended from different ancestors since they are found to differ
in development (ontogeny) or in their palaeontological history;
this phenomenon, of forms belonging to different stocks ap-
proaching one another in character, is known as convergence or
heterogenetic homoeomorphy, and may occur at the same geo-
logical period or at widely separated intervals. Thus the form
of oyster known as Gryphaea has originated independently from
oysters of the ordinary type in the Lias, in the Oolites, and
again in the Chalk; these forms found at different horizons
closely resemble one another and have usually been regarded
as belonging to one genus (Gryphaea) , but they have no direct
genetic connection with one another." ("Palaeontology," 5th
ed., 1919, p. 15.) Comment is almost superfluous. If even
specific resemblance is no proof of common origin, then what
right have we to interpret any resemblance whatever in this
sense? With such an admission, the whole bottom drops out

80 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

of the evolutionary argument. When the theory of descent
is forced to account for heterogenetic resemblance at expense
of all likelihood and consistency, when it cannot save itself
except by blowing hot and cold with one breath, one is tempted
to exclaim: "Oh, why bother with it!"

(3) Adaptational convergence is the occurrence of parallel
modifications due to analogous specialization in unrelated
forms, whose phylogeny has been obviously diverse. ''Also,
animals belonging to quite distinct groups," says Woods, "may,
when living under similar conditions, come to resemble one
another owing to the development of adaptive modifications,
though they do not really approach one another in essential
characters ; thus analogous or parallel modifications may occur
in independent groups — such are the resemblances between
flying reptiles {Ornithosaurs) and birds, and between sharks,
icthyosaurs and dolphins." (Op. cit., p. 16.) As this type of
convergence has been discussed in a previous article, with
reference to the mole and mole-cricket, it need not detain us
further.

All these types of convergence, but especially the second type,
are factual evidence of the compatibility of resemblance with
independent origin, and the fact of their occurrence tends to
undermine the certainty of the phylogenetic inferences based on
fossil evidence ; all the more so, that, thanks to its bad state of
preservation, and the impossibility of dissection, even super-
ficial resemblances may give rise to false interpretations. And,
as for the cases of radical convergence, there is no denying that
they strike at the very heart of the theory of descent.

The third difiiculty for Transformism arises from the dis-
continuity of the geological record. It was one of the very
first discrepancies to be discovered between evolutionary ex-
pectation and the actual results of research. The earliest ex-
plorations revealed a state of affairs, that subsequent investi-
gations have failed to remedy: on the one hand, namely, a
notable absence of intermediate species to bridge the gaps
between the fossil genera, and on the other hand, the sudden

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 81

and simultaneous appearance of numerous new and allied types
unheralded by transitional forms. Since Darwin had stressed
the gradualness of transmutation, the investigators expected
to find the transitional means more numerous than the terminal
extremes, and were surprised to find, in the real record of the
past, the exact reverse of their anticipation. They found that
the classes and families of animals and plants had always been
as widely separated and as sharply differentiated as they are
to-day, and that they had always formed distinct systems, un-
connected by transitional links. The hypothetical "generalized
types," supposed to combine the features of two or three fam-
ilies, have never been found, and most probably never will be;
for it is all but certain that they never existed. Occasionally, it
is true, palaeontologists have discovered isolated types, which
they interpreted as annectant forms, but a single pier does
not make a bridge, and only too often it chanced that the
so-called annectant type, though satisfactory from the mor-
phological standpoint, was more recent than the two groups,
to which it was supposed to be ancestral. But it will make
matters plainer, if we illustrate what is meant by the discon-
tinuity or incompleteness of the fossil record, by reference to
some concrete series, such as the so-called Pedigree of the
Horse.

Whenever a series of fossils, arranged in the order of their
historical sequence, exhibits a gradation of increasing resem-
blance to the latest form, with which the series terminates,
such a series is called a palaeontological pedigree, and is
said to represent so many stages in the racial development
or phylogeny of the respective mx)dern type. The classical
example of this sort of "pedigree" is that of the Horse. It is,
perhaps, one of the most complete among fossil "genealogies,"
and yet, as has been frequently pointed out, it is, as it stands,
extremely incomplete. Modern representatives of the Equidaey
namely, the horse, the ass and the zebra, belong to a common
genus, and are separated from one another by differences
which are merely specific, but the differences which separate

82 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

the various forms, that compose the "pedigree of the Horse,"
are generic. We have, to borrow Gerard's simile, nothing more
than the piers of the evolutionary bridge, without the arches,
and we do not know whether there ever were any arches.
There is, indeed, a sort of progression, e.g., from the four-
toed to a one-toed type, so that the morphological gradation
does, in some degree, coincide with temporal succession. But,
on the other hand, the fossil forms, interpreted as stages in the
phylogeny of the Horse, are separated from one another by
gaps so enormous, that, in the absence of intermediate spe-
cies to bridge the intervals, it is practically impossible, par-
ticularly in the light of our experimental knowledge of Gen-
etics, to conceive of any transition between them. Nor is this
all. The difficulty is increased tenfold, when we attempt to
relate the Equidae to other mammalian groups. Fossil un-
gulates appear suddenly and contemporaneously in the Ter-
tiary of North America, South America and Europe, without
any transitional precursors, to connect them with the hypo-
thetical proto-mammalian stock, and to substantiate their
collaterality with other mammalian stocks.

To all such difficulties the evolutionist replies by alleging
the incompleteness of the geological record, and modern hand-
books on palaeontology devote many pages to the task of
explaining why incompleteness of the fossil record is just
what we should expect, especially in the case of terrestrial
animals. The reasons which they assign are convincing, but
this particular mode of solving the difficulty is a rather pre-
carious one. Evolutionists should not forget that, in sacri-
ficing the substantial completeness of the record to account for
the absence of intermediate species, they are simultaneously
destroying its value as a proof of the relative position of
organic types in time. Yet this, as we have seen, is precisely
the feature of greatest strategic value in the palaeontological
"evidence" for evolution. We must have absolute certainty
that the reputed "ancestor" was in existence prior to the ap-
pearance of the alleged "descendant," or the peculiar force of

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 83

the palseontological argument is lost. It would be prepos-
terous for the progeny to be prior to, or even coeval with, the
progenitor, and so we must be quite sure that what we call
"posterity" is really posterior in time. Now the sole argu-
ment that palaeontology can adduce for the posteriority of
one organic type as compared with another is the negative
evidence of its non-occurrence, or rather of its non-discovery,
in an earlier geological formation. The lower strata do not, so
far as is known, contain the type in question, and so it is con-
cluded that this particular form had no earlier history. Such
an inference, as is clear, is not only liable to be upset by later
discoveries, but has the additional disadvantage of implicitly
assuming the substantial completeness of the fossil record,
whereas the absence of intermediate species is only explicable
by means of the assumed incompleteness of the selfsame record.
The evolutionist is thus placed in the dilenm:ia of choosing
between a substantially complete, and a substantially incom-
plete, record. Which of the alternatives, he elects, matters
very little; but he must abide by the consequences of his de-
cision, he cannot eat his cake and have it.

When the evolutionist appeals to the facts of palaeontology,
it goes without saying that he does so in the hope of showing
that the differences, which divide modern species of plants and
animals, diminish as we go backward in time, until the stage
of identity is reached in the unity of a common ancestral
type. Hence from the very nature of the argument, which
he is engaged in constructing, he is compelled to resort to
intermediate types as evidence of ^the continuity of allied spe-
cies with the hypothetical ancestor, or common type, whence
they are said to have diverged. Now, even supposing that
his efforts in this direction were attended with a complete
measure of success, evidence of this kind would not of itself, as
we shall see, suffice to demonstrate the common origin of the
extremes, between which a perfect series of intergradent types
can be shown to mediate. Unquestionably, however, unless
such a series of intergradent fossil species can be adduced as

84 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

evidence of the assumed transition, the presumption is totally
against the hypothesis of transformism.

Now, as a matter of fact, the geological record rarely offers
any evidence of the existence in the past of intermediate
species. For those, who have implicit confidence in the time-
value of geological "formations," there are indications of a
general advance from lower to higher forms, but, even so,
there is little to show that this seeming progress is to be
interpreted as an increasing divergence from common ancestral
types. With but few exceptions, the fossil record fails to show
any trace of transitional links. Yet pedigrees made up of
diverse genera are poor evidence for filiation or genetic con-
tinuity, so long as no intermediate species can be found to
bridge the chasm of generic difference. By intermediate spe-
cies, we do not mean the fabulous "generalized type." An-
nectants of this kind are mere abstractions, which have never
existed, and never could have existed. We refer rather to
actual fossil types separated from one another by differences
not greater than specific ; for "not until we have linked species
into lineages," can fossil pedigrees lay claim to serious
attention.

But let us suppose the case for evolution to be ideally favor-
able, and assume that in every instance we possessed a perfect
gradation of forms between two extremes, such, for example,
as occurs in the Ammonite series, even then we would be far
from having a true demonstration of the point at issue. Bate-
son has called our attention to the danger of confounding
sterile and instable hybrids with intergradent species. "Ex-
amine," he says, "any two thoroughly distinct species which
meet each other in their distribution, as for instance. Lychnis
diurna and vespertina do. In areas of overlap are many inter-
mediate forms. These used to be taken to be transitional
steps, and the specific distinctness of vespertina and diurna
was on that account questioned. Once it is known that these
supposed intergrades are merely mongrels between the two
species the transition from one to the other is practically be-

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 85

yond our powers of imagination to conceive. If both these can
survive,- why has their common parent perished? Why, when
they cross, do they not reconstruct it instead of producing
partially sterile hybrids? I take this example to show how
entirely the facts were formerly misrepresented." {Heredity,
Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 369.)

Similarly, T. H. Morgan has shown, with reference to
mutants, the fallacy of inferring common descent from the
phenomenon of intergradence, and what holds true for a series
of intergradent mutants would presumably also hold true of
a series of intergradent species, could such a series be found
and critically distinguished from hybrid and mutational inter-
mediates. In short, the Darwinian deduction of common ori-
gin from the existence of intergradence must now be regarded
as a thoroughly discredited argument. "Because we can
often arrange the series of structures in a line extending from
the very simple to the more complex, we are apt to become
unduly impressed by this fact and conclude that if we found
the complete series we should find all the intermediate steps
and that they have arisen in the order of their complexity.
This conclusion is not necessarily correct." (''A Critique of
the Theory of Evolution," p. 9.) Having cited such a series
of gradational mutations ranging between the long-winged,
and completely wingless condition, in the case of the Vinegar
Fly {Drosophila melanog aster) , as well as two similar graded
series based on pigmentation and eye color, he concludes:
'^These types, with the fluctuations that occur within each type,
furnish a complete series of gradations; yet historically they
have arisen independently of each other. Many changes in
eye color have appeared. As many as thirty or more races
differing in eye color are now maintained in our cultures.
Some of them are so similar that they can scarcely be sepa-
rated from each other. It is easily possible beginning with
the darkest eye color, sepia, which is a deep brown, to pick
out a perfectly graded series ending with pure white eyes.
But such a serial arrangement would give a totally false idea

86 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

of the way the different types have arisen; and any conclu-
sion based on the existence of such a series might very well
be entirely erroneous, for the fact that such a series exists
bears no relation to the order in which its members have ap-
peared." {Op. cit., pp. 12, 13.) Such facts must give us
pause in attaching undue importance to phenomena like the
occurrence of a gradual complication of sutures in the Chalk
Ammonites, particularly as parallel series of perfectly similar
sutures occurs ''by convergence" in the fossil Ceratites, which
have no genetic connection with the Ammonites. (Cf. Woods^
'Talseontology," 5th ed., p. 16.)

But, if even mutational and specific intergradents are not
sufiicient evidence of common ancestry, what shall we say of
a discontinuous series, whose links are separate genera, orders,
or even classes, instead of species. Even the most enthusi-
astic transformist is forced to admit the justice of our insistence
that the gaps which separate the members of a series must be
reduced from differences of the generic, to differences of the
specific, order, before that series can command any respect as
hypothetical "genealogy." "You will have observed," says F.
A. Bather, "that the precise methods of the modern palaeontol-
ogist, on which this proof is based, are very different from the
slap-dash conclusions of forty years ago. The discovery of Ar-
chceopteryx, for instance, was thought to prove the evolution
of birds from reptiles. No doubt it rendered that conclusion
extremely probable, especially if the major promise — that evo-
lution was the method — were assumed. But the fact of evolu-
tion is precisely what men were then trying to prove. These
jumpings from class to class or from era to era, by aid of a
few isolated stepping-stones, were what Bacon calls anticipa-
tions "hasty and premature but very effective, because as
they are collected from a few instances, and mostly from those
which are of familiar occurrence, they immediately dazzle
the intellect and fill the imagination." {Nov. Org., I, 28.)
No secure step was taken until the modem palaeontologist
began to affiliate mutation with mutation and species with

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 87

species, working his way back, literally inch by inch, through
a single small group of strata. Only thus could he base on
the kboriously collected facts a single true interpretation;
and to those who preferred the broad path of generality his
interpretations seemed, as Bacon says they always "must
seem, harsh and discordant — almost like mysteries of faith."
. . . Thus by degrees we reject the old slippery stepping-stones
that so often toppled us into the stream, and, foot by foot, we
build a secure bridge over the waters of ignorance." {Science,
Sept. 17, 1920, pp. 263, 264.)

We cannot share Bather's confidence in the security of a
bridge composed of even linked species. Let such a series be
never so perfect, let the gradation be never so minute, as it
might conceivably be made, when not merely distinct species,
but also hybrids, mutants and fluctuants are available as stop-
gaps, the bare fact of such intergradation tells nothing what-
ever concerning the problem of genetical origin and specific
relationship. The species-by-species method does, however,
represent the very minimum of requirement imposed upon the
palaeontologist, who professes to construct a fossil pedigree.
But, when all is said and done, such a method, even at its
best, falls considerably short of the mark. However perfectly
intergradent a series of fossils may be, the fact remains that
these petrified remnants of former life cannot be subjected
to breeding tests, and that, in the consequent absence of geneti-
cal experimentation, we have no means of determining the real
bearing of these facts upon the problem of interspecific re-
lationship. Only the somatic characters of extinct floras and
faunas have been conserved in the rock record of the past, and
even these are often rendered dubious, as we shall see pres-
ently, by their imperfect state of preservation. Now, it is solely
in conjunction with breeding experiments, that somatic char-
acters can give us any insight into the nature of the germinal
constitution of an organism, which, after all, is the cardinal
consideration upon which the whole question of interspecific re-
lationship hinges. All inferences, therefore, regarding the de-

88 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

scent of fossil forms are irremediably speculative and conjec-
tural. When we are dealing with living forms, we can always
check up the inferences based on somatic characteristics by
means of genetical experiments, and in so doing we have found
that it is as unsafe to judge of an organism from the exclusive
standpoint of its external characters as it is to judge of a book
by the cover; for, apart from the check of breeding tests, it
is impossible to say just which somatic characters are geneti-
cally significant, and which are not. Forms externally alike
may be so unlike in germinal constitution as to be sexually
incompatible; forms externally unlike may be readily crossed
without any discernible diminution of fertility. ''Who could
have foreseen," exclaims Bateson, ''that the apple and the pear
— so like each other that their botanical differences are eva-
sive — could not be crossed together, though species of Antir-
rhinum (Snapdragon) so totally unlike each other as ma jus
and moUe can be hybridized, as Baur has shown, without a
sign of impaired fertility?" {Heredity, Smithson. Inst. Rpt.
for 1915, p. 370.) We cannot distinguish between alleged spe-
cific, and merely mutational (varietal), change, nor between
hybridizations and factorial, chromosomal, or pseudo-, muta-
tions, solely on the basis of such external characters as are
preserved for us in fossils. It is impossible, therefore, to
demonstrate trans-specific variation by any evidence that
Palaeontology can supply. The palaeontologist {pace Os-
born) is utterly incompetent to pass judgment on the problem
of interspecific relationship. As Bateson remarks: "In dis-
cussing the physiological problem of interspecific relationship
evidence of a more stringent character is now required; and
a naturalist acquainted with genetical discoveries would be as
reluctant to draw conclusions as to the specific relationship of
a series of fossils as a chemist would be to pronounce on the
nature of a series of unknown compounds from an inspection
of them in a row of bottles." {Science, April 17, 1922, p. 373.)
"When t"he modern student of variation and heredity," says
T. H. Morgan, "looks over the different 'continuous'

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 89

series, from which certain 'laws' and 'principles' have been
deduced, he is struck by two facts: that the gaps, in some
cases, are enormous as compared with the single changes
with which he is familiar, and (what is more important) that
they involve numerous parts in many ways. The geneticist
says to the palaeontologist, since you do not know, and from
the nature of your case can never know, whether your dif-
ferences are due to one change or to a thousand, you cannot
with certainty tell us anything about the hereditary units
which have made the process of evolution possible." {Op. cit,
pp. 26, 27.) And without accurate knowledge on this subject,
we may add, there is no possibility of demonstrating specific
change or genetic relationship in the case of any given fossil.
In our discussion of the third defect in the fossil "evidence,"
allusion was made to a fourth, namely, its imperfect state of
preservation. The stone record of bygone days has been so
defaced by the metamorphism of rocks, by the solvent action
of percolating waters, by erosion, weathering and other factors
of destruction, that, like a faded manuscript, it becomes, even
apart from its actual lacunae, exceedingly difficult to decipher.
So unsatisfactory, indeed, is the condition of the partially ob-
literated facts that human curiosity, piqued at their baffling
ambiguity, calls upon human imagination to supply what ob-
servation itself fails to reveal. Nor does the invitation remain
unheeded. Romance hastens to the rescue of uncertain Sci-
ence, with an impressive display of "reconstructed fossils,"
and the hesitation of critical caution is superseded by the
dogmatism of arbitrary assumption. Scattered fragments of
fossilized bones are integrated into skeletons and clothed by
the magic of creative fancy with an appropriate musculature
and flesh, reenacting for us the marvelous vision of Ezekiel:
"And the bones came together, each one to its joint. And I
beheld and, lo, there were sinews upon them, and the flesh
came upon them: and the skin was stretched over them."
(Chap. XXXVII, 7, 8.) "It is also true," says Osborn (who,
like Haeckel, evinces a veritable mania for "retouching" in-

90 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

complete facts) , ''that we know the mode of origin of the hu-
man species; our knowledge of human evolution has reached
a point not only where a number of links are thoroughly-
known but the characters of the missing links can be very
clearly predicated." {Science, Feb. 24, 1922.) We will not
dispute his contention; for it is perfectly true, that, in each
and every case, all the missing details can be so exactly predi-
cated that the resulting description might well put to shame
the account of a contemporary eyewitness. The only diffi-
culty is that such predication is the fruit of pure imagination.
Scientific reconstructions, whether in the literary, plastic, or
pictorial, form, are no more scientific than historical novels are
historical. Both are the outcome of a psychological weakness
in the human makeup, namely, its craving for a ''finished
picture" — a craving, however, that is never gratified save at
the expense of the fragmentary basis of objective fact.*

In calling into question, however, the scientific value of the
so-called "scientific reconstruction," so far as its pretensions
to precision and finality are concerned, it is not our intention
to discredit those tentative restorations based upon Cuvier's
Law of Correlation, provided they profess to be no more than
provisional approximations. Many of the structural features
of organisms are physiologically interdependent, and there is
frequently a close correlation among organs and organ-sys-
tems, between which no causal connection or direct physiologi-
cal dependence is demonstrable. In virtue of this principle,
one structural feature may connote another, in which case it
would be legitimate to supply by inference any missing struc-
ture implied in the actual existence of its respective correlative.
But if any one imagines that the law of correlation enables
a scientist to restore the lost integrity of fossil types with any
considerable degree of accuracy and finality, he greatly over-
estimates the scope of the principle in question. At best it
is nothing more than an empirical generalization, which must
not be pressed to an extent unwarranted by the inductive
process, that first established it. "Certain relations of struc-
'•'- See Addenda.

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 91

ture," says Bather, "as of cloven hoofs and horns with a rumi-
nant stomach, were observed, but as Cuvier himself insisted,
the laws based on such facts were purely empirical." (*Sa-
ence, Sept. 17, 1920, p. 258.) The palaeontologist, then, is
justified in making use of correlation for the purpose of re-
constructing a whole animal out of a few fragmentary remains,
but to look for anything like photographic precision in such
''restorations" of extinct forms is to manifest a more or less
complete ignorance of the nature and scope of the empirical
laws, upon which they are based.

The imprudence of taking these "reconstructions" of extinct
forms too seriously, however, is inculcated not merely by theo-
retical considerations, but by experience as well. Even in the
case of the mammoth, a comparatively recent form, whose
skeletal remains had been preserved more completely and per-
fectly than those of other fossil types, the discovery of a com-
plete carcass buried in the ice of the Siberian "taiga" on the
Beresovka river showed the existing restorations to be false in
important respects. All, without exception, stood in need of
revision, proving, once and for all, the inadequacy of fossil
remains as a basis for exact reconstruction. E. Pfizenmayer, a
member of the investigating expedition, comments on the fact
as follows: "In the light of our present knowledge of the mam-
moth, and especially of its exterior, the various existing at-
tempts at a restoration need important corrections. Apart from
the many fanciful sketches intended to portray the exterior of
the animal, all the more carefully made restorations show the
faults of the skeleton, hitherto regarded as typical, on which
they are based, especially the powerful semicircular and up-
ward-curved tusks, the long tail, etc.

"As these false conceptions of the exterior of the mammoth,
both written and in the form of pictures, are contained in all
zoological and palseontological textbooks, and even in scien-
tific monographs, it seems necessary to construct a more nearly
correct picture, based on our present knowledge. I have ven-
tured on this task, because as a member of the latest expe-

92 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

dition for mammoth remains, I was permitted not only to
become acquainted with this newest find while still in its
place of deposit and to take part in exhuming it, but also to
visit the zoological museum of St. Petersburg, which is so
rich in mammoth remains, for the purpose of studying the ani-
mal more in detail." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1906, pp. 321,
322.) The example is but one of many, which serve to empha-
size not merely the inadequacy of the generality of palseonto-
logical restorations, but also the extreme diflficulty which the
palaeontologist experiences in interpreting aright the par-
tially effaced record of a vanished past.

The fifth and most critical flaw in the fossil "evidence" for
evolution is to be found in the anomalies of the actual dis-
tribution of fossils in time. It is the boast of evolutionary
Palaeontology that it is able to enhance the cogency of the
argument from mere structural resemblance by showing, that,
of two structurally allied forms, one is more ancient than the
other, and may, therefore, be presumed to be ancestral to the
later form. Antecedence in time is the sine qua non qualifica-
tion of a credible ancestor, and, unless the relative priority of
certain organic types, as compared with others, can be estab-
lished with absolute certainty, the whole palaeontological ar-
gument collapses, and the boast of evolutionary geology be-
comes an empty vaunt.

Whenever the appearance of a so-called annectant type is
antedated by that of the two forms, which it is supposed to
connect, this fact is, naturally, a deathblow to its claim of
being the "common ancestor," even though, from a purely mor-
phological standpoint, it should possess all the requisites of
an ancestral type. Commenting upon the statement that a
certain genus "is a truly annectant form uniting the Melo-
crinidae and the Platycrinidae," Bather takes exception as
follows: "The genus in question appeared, so far as we know,
rather late in the Lower Carboniferous, whereas both Platy-
crinidae and Melocrinidae were already established in Middle
Silurian time. How is it possible that the far later form

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 93

should unite these two ancient families? Even a mesalliance
is inconceivable." {Science, Sept. 17, 1920, p. 260.)

Certainty, therefore, with respect to the comparative an-
tiquity of the fossiliferous strata is the indispensable presup-
position of any palaeontological argument attempting to show
that there is a gradual approximation of ancient, to modern,
types. Yet, of all scientific methods of reckoning, none is
less calculated to inspire confidence, none less safeguarded
from the abuses of subjectivism and arbitrary interpretation,
than that by which the relative age of the sedimentary rocks
is determined!

In order to date the strata of any given series with reference
to one another, the palaeontologist starts with the principle
that, in an undisturbed area, the deeper sediments have been
deposited at an earlier period than the overlying strata. Such
a criterion, however, is obviously restricted in its application
to local areas, and is available only at regions of outcrop,
where a vertical section of the strata is visibly ex-
posed. To trace the physical continuity, however, of the strata
(if such continuity there be) from one continent to another,
or even across a single continent, is evidently out of the
question. Hence, to correlate the sedimentary rocks of a given
region with those of another region far distant from the for-
mer, some criterion other than stratigraphy is required. To
supply this want, recourse has been had to index fossils, which
have now come into general use as age-markers and means
of stratigraphical correlation, where the criterion of super-
position is either absent or inapplicable. Certain fossil types
are assumed to be infallibly indicative of certain stratigraphi-
cal horizons. In fact, when it comes to a decision as to the
priority or posteriority of a given geological formation, index
fossils constitute the court of last appeal, and even the evi-
dences of actual stratigraphical sequence and of physical tex-
ture itself are always discounted and explained away, whenever
they chance to conflict with the presumption that certain fossil
forms are typical of certain geological periods. If, for ex-

94 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

ample, the superposed rock contains fossils alleged to be typi-
cal of an "earlier" stratigraphic horizon than that to which
the fossils of the subjacent rock belong, the former is pro-
nounced to be "older," despite the fact that the actual strati-
graphic order conveys the opposite impression. "We still
regard fossils," says J. W. Judd, "as the 'medals of creation,'
and certain types of life we take to be as truly characteristic
of definite periods as the coins which bear the image and
superscription of a Roman emperor or of a Saxon king." (Cf.
Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 356.) Thus it comes to pass,
in the last analysis, that fossils, on the one hand, are dated
according to the consecutive strata, in which they occur, and
strata, on the other hand, are dated according to the fossils
which they contain.

Such procedure, if not actually tantamount to a vicious
circle, is, to say the least, in imminent danger of becoming so.
For, even assuming the so-called empirical generalization, that
makes certain fossils typical of certain definitely-aged geolog-
ical "formations," to be based upon induction sufficiently com-
plete and analytic to insure certainty, at least, in the majority
of instances, and taking it for granted that we are dealing with
a case, where the actual evidence of stratigraphy is not in open
conflict with that of the index fossils, who does not see that
such a system of chronology lends itself only too readily to
manipulation of the most arbitrary kind, whenever the pet
preconceptions of the evolutionary chronologist are at stake?
How, then, can we be sure, in a given case, that a verdict
based exclusively on the "evidence" of index fossils will be
reliably objective? It is to be expected that the evolutionist
will refrain from the temptation to give himself the benefit
of every doubt? Will there not be an almost irresistible ten-
dency on the part of the convinced transformist to revise the
age of any deposit, which happens to contain fossils that, ac-
cording to his theory, ought not to occur at the time hitherto
assigned?

The citation of a concrete example will serve to make our

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 95

meaning clear. A series of fresh-water strata occur in India
known as the Siwahk beds. The formation in question was
originally classed as Miocene. Later on, however, as a result,
presumably, of the embarrassing discovery of the genus Equus
among the fossils of the Upper Siwalik beds, Wm. Blanford
saw fit to mend matters by distinguishing the Upper, from
the Lower, beds and assigning the former (which contain fos-
sil horses) to the Pliocene period. The title Miocene being
restricted by this ingenious step to beds destitute of equine
remains, namely the Nahun, or Lower Siwalik, deposits, all
danger of the horse proving to be older than his ancestors
was happily averted. A mere shifting of the conventional
labels, apparently, was amply sufficient to render groundless
the fear, to which Professor A. Sedgwick had given expression
in the following terms: "The genus Equus appears in the
upper Siwalik beds, which have been ascribed to the Miocene
age. ... If Equus really existed in the Upper Miocene, it
was antecedent to some of its supposed ancestors." ("Stu-
dents' Textbook of Zoology," p. 599.) Evidently, the Horse
must reconcile himself perforce to the pedi^ee assigned to
him by the American Museum of Natural History; for he is
to be given but scant opportunity of escaping it. This classic
genealogy has already entailed far too great an expenditure
of time, money and erudition to permit of any reconsidera-
tion; and should it chance, in the ironic perversity of things,
that the Horse has been so inconsiderate as to leave indubi-
table traces of himself in any formation earlier than the
Pliocene, it goes without saying that the formation in question
will at once be dated ahead, in order to secure for the "an-
cestors" that priority which is their due. An elastic criterion
like the index fossil is admirably adapted for readjustments
of this sort, and the evolutionist who uses it need never fear
defeat. The game he plays can never be a losing one, because
he gives no other terms than: Heads I win, tails you lose.

In setting forth the foregoing difficulties, we have purposely
refrained from challenging the cardinal dogma of orthodox

96 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

palaeontology concerning the unimpeachable time-value of in-
dex fossils as age-markers. The force of these considerations,
therefore, must be acknowledged even by the most fanatical
adherents of the aforesaid dogma. Our forbearance in this
instance, however, must not be construed as a confession that
the dogma in question is really unassailable. On the contrary,
not only is it not invulnerable, but there are many and weighty
reasons for rejecting it lock, stock, and barrel.

The palseontological dogma, to which we refer, is reducible
to the following tenets: (1) The earth is swathed with fossil-
iferous strata, in much the same fashion that an onion is cov-
ered with a succession of coats, and these strata are universal
over the whole globe, occurring always in the same invariable
order and characterized not by any peculiar uniformity of
external appearance, physical texture, or mineral composition,
but solely by peculiar groups of fossil types, which enable us
to distinguish between strata of different ages and to cor-
relate the strata of one continent with their counterparts in
another continent — "Even the minuter divisions," says Scott,
''the substages and zones of the European Jura, are applicable
to the classification of the South American beds." ("Intro-
duction to Geology," p. 681.) (2) In determining the relative
age of a given geological formation, its characteristic fossils
form the exclusive basis of decision, and all other considera-
tions, whether lithological or stratigraphic, are subordinated
to this — "The character of the rocks," says H. S. Williams,
"their composition or their mineral contents have nothing to
do with settling the question as to the particular system to
which the new rocks belong. The fossils alone are the means
of correlation." ("Geological Biology," pp. 37, 38.)

To those habituated to the common notion that stratigraph-
ical sequence is the foremost consideration in deciding the
comparative age of rocks, the following statement of Sir Archi-
bald Geikie will come as a distinct shock: "We may even
demonstrate," he avers, "that in some mountainous ground
the strata have been turned completely upside down, if we can

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 97

show that the fossils in what are now the uppermost layers
ought properly to lie underneath those in the beds below them."
("Textbook," ed. of 1903, p. 837.) In fact, the palaeontologist,
H. A. Nicholson, lays it down as a general principle that, wher-
ever the physical evidence (founded on stratigraphy and
lithology) is at variance with the biological evidence (founded
on the presence of typical fossil organisms), the latter must
prevail and the former must be ignored: "It may even be
said," he tells us, "that in any case where there should ap-
pear to be a clear and decisive discordance between the
physical and the palaeontological evidence as to the age of
a given series of beds, it is the former that is to be distrusted
rather than the latter." ("Ancient Life History of the Earth,"
p. 40.)

George McCready Price, Professor of Geology at a denomi-
national college in Kansas, devotes more than fifty pages of
his recent work, "The New Geology" (1923), to an intensely
destructive criticism of this dogma of the supremacy of fossil
evidence as a means of determining the relative age of strata.
To cite Price as an "authority" would, of course, be futile.
All orthodox geologists have long since anathematized him,
and outlawed him from respectable geological society. Charles
Schuchert of Yale refers to him as "a fundamentalist har-
boring a geological nightmare." {Science, May 30, 1924,
p. 487.) Arthur M. Miller of Kentucky University speaks
of him as "the man who, while a member of no scientific body
and absolutely unknown in scientific circles, has . . . had the
effrontery to style himself a 'geologist.' " {Science, June 30,
1922, pp. 702, 703.) Miller, however, is just enough to admit
that he is well-informed on his subject, and that he possesses
the gift of persuasive presentation. "He shows," says Miller,
"a wide familiarity with geological literature, quoting largely
from the most eminent authorities in this country and in
Europe. Any one reading these writings of Price, which pos-
sess a certain charm of literary style, and indicate on the
part of the author a gift of popular presentation which makes

98 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

one regret that it had not been devoted to a more laudable
purpose, must constantly marvel at the character of mind of
the man who can so go into the literature of the subject and
still continue to hold such preposterous opinions." {Loc. cit.,
p. 702.)

In the present instance, however, our interest centers, not
on the unimportant question of his official status in geological
circles, but exclusively on the objective validity of his argu-
ment against the chronometric value of the index fossil. All
citations, therefore, from his work will be supported, in the
sequel, by collateral testimony from other authors of recog-
nized standing. It is possible, of course, to inject irrelevant
issues. Price, for example, follows Sir Henry Howorth in his
endeavor to substitute an aqueous catastrophe for the glacia-
tion of the Quaternary Ice Age, and he adduces many in-
teresting facts to justify his preference for a deluge. But this
is neither here nor there; for we are not concerned with the
merits of his "new catastrophism." It is his opportune revival
in modern form of the forgotten, but extremely effective,
objection raised by Huxley and Spencer against the alleged
universality of synchronously deposited fossiliferous sediments,
that constitutes our sole preoccupation here. It is Price's
merit to have shown that, in the light of recently discovered
facts, such as "deceptive conformities" and "overthrusts," this
objection is far graver than it was when first formulated by
the authors in question.

Mere snobbery and abuse is not a sufficient answer to a diffi-
culty of this nature, and we regret that men, like Schuchert,
have replied with more anger than logic. The orthodox geol-
ogist seems unnecessarily petulant, whenever he is called upon
to verify or substantiate the foundational principles of lithic
chronology. One frequently hears him make the excuse that
"geology has its own peculiar method of proof." To claim ex-
emption, however, from the universal criterions of criticism and
logic is a subterfuge wholly unworthy of a genuine science,
and, if Price insists on discussing a subject, which the ortho-

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 99

dox geologist prefers to suppress, it is the latter, and not the
former, .who is really reactionary.

Price begins by stating the issue in the form of a twofold
question: (1) How can we be sure, with respect to a given
fauna (or flora) , say the Cambrian, that at one time it monop-
olized our globe to the complete exclusion of all other typical
faunas (or floras)., say the Devonian, or the Tertiary, of
which it is assumed that they could not, by any stretch of
imagination, have been contemporaneous, on either land or sea,
with the aforesaid "older" fauna (or flora) ? (2) Do the forma-
tions (rocks containing fossils) universally occur in such a
rigidly invariable order of sequence with respect to one an-
other, as to warrant our being sure of the starting-point in the
time-scale, or to justify us in projecting any given local order
of succession into distant localities, for purposes of chrono-
logical correlation?

His response to the first of these questions consti-
tutes what may be called an aprioristic refutation of
the orthodox view, by placing the evolutionary palaeon-
tologist in the trilemma: (a) of making the awkward con-
fession that, except within limited local areas., he has no means
whatever of distinguishing between a geographical distribution
of coeval fossil forms among various habitats and a chrono-
logical distribution of fossils among sediments deposited at
different times; (b) or of denying the possibility of geographi-
cal distribution in the past, by claiming dogmatically that
the world during Cambrian times, for example, was totally
unlike the modern world, of which alone we have experi-
mental knowledge, inasmuch as^ it was then destitute of
zoological provinces, districts, zones, and other habitats pecu-
liar to various types of fauna, so that the whole world formed
but one grand habitat, extending over land and sea, for a
limited group of organisms made up exclusively of the lower
types of life; (c) or of reviving the discredited onion-coat theory
of Abraham Werner under a revised biological form, which as-
serts that the whole globe is enveloped with fossiliferous rather

100 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

than mineral strata, whose order of succession being every-
where the same enables us to discriminate with precision and
certainty between cases of distribution in time and cases of
distribution in space.

In his response to the second question, Professor Price ad-
duces numerous factual arguments, which show that the
invariable order of sequence postulated by the theory of the
time-value of index fossils, not only finds no confirmation
in the actual or concrete sequences of fossiliferous rocks, but
is often directly contradicted thereby. ''Older" rocks may
occur above "younger" rocks, the ''youngest" may occur in
immediate succession to the "oldest," Tertiary rocks may be
crystalline, consolidated, and "old in appearance," while Cam-
brian and even pre-Cambrian rocks sometimes occur in a soft,
incoherent condition, that gives them the physical appearance
of being as young as Pleistocene formations. These exceptions
and objections to the "invariable order" of the fossiliferous
strata accumulate from day to day, and it is only by means
of Procrustean tactics of the most drastic sort that the facts
can be brought into any semblance of harmony with the cur-
rent dogmas, which base geology upon evolution rather than
evolution upon geology.

Price, then, proposes for serious consideration the possi-
bility that Cretaceous dinosaurs and even Tertiary mammals
may have been living on the land at the same time that the
Cambrian graptolites and trilobites were living in the seas.
"Who," he exclaims, "will have the hardihood, the real dog-
matism to affirm in a serious way that Cambrian animals and
seaweeds were for a long time the only forms of life existing
anywhere on earth?" Should we, nevertheless, make bold
enough to aver that for countless centuries a mere few of the
lower forms of life monopolized our globe, as one universal
habitat unpartitioned into particular biological provinces or
zones, we are thereupon confronted with two equally unwel-
come alternatives. We must either fly in the face of experience
and legitimate induction by denying the existence in the past of

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 101

anything analogous to our present-day geographical distribu-
tion of plants and animals into various biological provinces, or
be prepared to show by what infallible criterion we are enabled
to distinguish between synchronously deposited formations
indicative of a geographical distribution according to regional
diversity, and consecutively deposited formations indicative of
comparative antiquity.

The former alternative does not merit any consideration
whatever. The latter, as we shall presently see, involves us in
an assumption, for which no defense either aprioristic or factual
is available. We can, indeed, distinguish between spatial, and
temporal, distribution within the narrow limits of a single
locality by using the criterion of superposition; for in regions
of outcrop, where one sedimentary rock overlies another, the
obvious presumption is that the upper rock was deposited
at a later date than the lower rock. But the criterion of
superposition is not available for the correlation of strata in
localities so distant from each other that no physical evidence
of stratigraphic continuity is discernible. Moreover the in-
duction, which projects any local order of stratigraphical
sequence into far distant localities on the sole basis of fossil
taxonomy, is logically unsound and leads to conclusions at
variance with the actual facts. Hence the alleged time-value
of index fossils becomes essentially problematic, and affords
no basis whatever for scientific certainty.

As previously stated, the sequence of strata is visible only in
regions of outcrop, and nowhere are we able to see more than
mere parts of two or, at most, three systems associated to-
gether in a single locality. Moreover, each set of beds is of
limited areal extent, and the limits are frequently visible to
the eye of the observer. In any case, their visible extent is
necessarily limited. It is impossible, therefore, to correlate the
strata of one continent with those of another continent by
tracing stratigraphic continuity. Hence, in comparing parti-
cular horizons of various ages and in distinguishing them from
other horizons over large areas, we are obliged to sub-

102 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

stitute induction for direct observation. Scientific induction,
however, is only valid when it rests upon some universal uni-
formity or invariable sequence of nature. Hence, to be spe-
cific, the assumption that the time-scale based on the European
classification of fossiliferous strata is applicable to the entire
globe as a whole, is based on the further assumption that we
are sure of the universality of fossiliferous stratification over
the face of the earth, and that, as a matter of fact, fossils are
always and everywhere found in the same order of invariable
sequence.

But this is tantamount to reviving, under what Spencer calls
*'a transcendental form," the exploded ''onion-coat" hypothe-
sis of Werner (1749-1817). Werner conceived the terrestrial
globe as encircled with successive mineral envelopes, bas-
ing his scheme of universal stratification upon that order
of sequence among rocks, which he had observed within the
narrow confines of his native district in Germany. His hy-
pothesis, after leading many scientists astray, was ultimately
discredited and laughed out of existence. For it finally be-
came evident to all observers that Werner's scheme did not
fit the facts, and men were able to witness with their own eyes
the simultaneous deposition, in separate localities, of sedi-
ments which differed radically in their mineral contents and
texture. Thus it came to pass that this classification of strata
according to their mineral nature and physical appearance
lost all value as an absolute time-scale, while the theory it-
self was relegated to the status of a curious and amusing epi-
sode in the history of scientific fiascos.

Thanks, however, to Wm. Smith and to Cuvier, the dis-
carded onion-coat hypothesis did not perish utterly, but was
rehabilitated and bequeathed to us in a new and more subtle
form. Werner's fundamental idea of the universality of a given
kind of deposit was retained, but his mineral strata were re-
placed by fossiliferous strata, the lithological onion-coats of
Werner being superseded by the biological onion-coats of our
modem theory. The geologist of today discounts physical

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 103

appearance, and classifies strata according to their fossil,
rather than their mineral, contents, but he stands committed
to the same old postulate of universal deposits. He has no hesi-
tation in synchronizing such widely-scattered formations as
the Devonian deposits of New York State, England, Germany,
and South America. He pieces them all together as parts of
a single system of rocks. He has no misgiving as to the uni-
versal applicability of the European scheme of stratigraphic
classification, but assures us, in the words of the geologist,
Wm. B. Scott, that: ''Even the minuter divisions, the sub-
divisions and zones of the European Jura, are applicable to
the classification of the South American beds." ("Introduc-
tion to Geology," p. 681f.) The limestone and sandstone
strata of Werner are now things of the past, but, in their
stead, we have, to quote the criticism of Herbert Spencer,
"groups of formations which everywhere succeed each other
in a given order, and are severally everywhere of the same
age. Though it may not be asserted that these successive
systems are universal, yet it seems to be tacitly assumed that
they are so. . . . Though probably no competent geologist
would contend that the European classification of strata is
applicable to the globe as a whole, yet most, if not all geol-
ogists, write as though it were so. . . . Must we not say
that though the onion-coat hypothesis is dead, its spirit is
traceable, under a transcendental form, even in the conclu-
sions of its antagonists." ("Illustrations of Universal Prog-
ress," pp. 329-380, ed. of 1890.)

But overlooking, for the moment, the mechanical absurdity
involved in the notion of a regular succession of universal
layers of sediment, and conceding, for the sake of argument,
that the substitution of fossiliferous, for lithological, strata
may conceivably have remedied the defects of Werner's geol-
ogical time-scale, let us confine ourselves to the one question,
which, after all, is of prime importance, whether, namely,
without the aid of Procrustean tactics, the actual facts of
geology can be brought into alignment with the doctrine of

104 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

an invariable order of succession among fossil types, and its
sequel, the intrinsic time-value of index fossils. The question,
in other words, is whether or not a reliable time-scale can
be based on the facts of fossiliferous stratification as they are
observed to exist in the concrete. Price's answer is negative,
and he formulates several empirical laws to express the con-
crete facts, on which he bases his contention. The laws and
facts to which he appeals may be summarized as follows:

1. The concrete facts of geology do not warrant our singling
out any fossiliferous deposit as unquestionably the oldest, and
hence we have no reliable starting-point for our time-scale,
because:

(a) We may lay it down as an empirical law that ''any
kind of fossiliferous rock (even the 'youngest'), that is, strata
belonging to any of the systems or other subdivisions, may
rest directly upon the Archaean or primitive crystalline rocks,
wit'^out any other so-called 'younger' strata intervening; also
these rocks, Permian, Cretaceous, Tertiary, or whatever thus
reposing directly on the Archaean may be themselves crystal-
line or wholly metamorphic in texture. And this applies not
alone to small points of contact, but to large areas."

(h) Conversely: any kind of fossiliferous strata (even the
"oldest") may not only constitute the surface rocks over wide
areas,^ but may consist of loose, unconsolidated materials,
thus in both position and texture resembling the "late" Ter-
tiaries or the Pleistocene — "In some regions, notably in the
Baltic province and in parts of the United States," says John
Allen Howe, alluding to the Cambrian rocks around the Baltic

* "It is a common occurrence," says Charles Schuchert, ''on the Cana-
dian Shield to find the Archseozoic formations overlain by the most
recent Pleistocene glacial deposits, and even these may be absent. It
appears as if in such places no rocks had been deposited, either by
the sea or by the forces of the land, since Archseozoic time, and yet
geologists know that the shield has been variously covered by sheets of
sediments formed at sundry times in the Proterozoic, Palaeozoic, and, to
a more limited extent, in the Mesozoic." C'Text-book of Geology,"
ed. of 1920, II, p. 569.) It may be remarked that, when geologists
"know" such things, they know them in spite of the facts!

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 105

Sea and in Wisconsin, "the rocks still retain their original
horizontality of deposition, the muds are scarcely indurated,
and the sands are incoherent." (Encycl. Brit., vol. V, p. 86.)

A large number of striking instances are cited by Price to
substantiate the foregoing rule and its converse. The impres-
sion left is that not only is the starting-point of the time-
scale in doubt, but that, if we were to judge the age of the
rocks by their physical appearance and position, we could
not accept the conventional verdicts of modern geology,
which makes fossil evidence prevail over every other consider-
ation.

2. When two contiguous strata are parallel to each other,
and there is no indication of disturbance in the lower bed, nor
any evidence of erosion along the plane of contact, the two
beds are said to exhibit conformity, and this is ordinarily
interpreted by geologists as a sign that the upper bed has
been laid down in immediate sequence to the lower, and that
there has been a substantial continuity of deposition, with
no long interval during which the lower bed was exposed
as surface to the agents of erosion. When such a conformity
exists, as it frequently does, between a "recent" stratum,
above, and what is said (according to the testimony of the
fossils) to be a very "ancient" stratum, below, and though
the two are so alike lithologically as to be mistaken for one
and the same formation, nevertheless, such a conformity is
termed a "non-evident disconformity," or "deceptive conform-
ity," implying that, inasmuch as the "lost interval," repre-
senting, perhaps, a lapse of "several million years," is en-
tirely unrecorded by any intervening deposition, or any erosion,
or any disturbance of the lower bed, we should not have
suspected that so great a hiatus had intervened, were it not
for the testimony of the fossils. Price cites innumerable ex-
amples, and sums them up in the general terms of the fol-
lowing empirical law: "Any sort of fossiliferous formation
may occur on top of any other 'older' fossiliferous formation,
with all the physical evidences of perfect conformity, just

106 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

as if these alleged incongruous or mismated formations had
in reality followed one another in quick succession."

A quotation from Schuchert's "Textbook of Geology,"
(1920), may be given by way of illustration: "The imperfec-
tion," we read, "of the geologic column is greatest in the
interior of North America and more so in the north than in
the south. This imperfection is in many places very marked,
since an entire period or several periods may be absent. With
such great breaks in the local sections the natural assumption
is that these gaps are easily seen in the sequence of the strata,
but in many places the beds lie in such perfect conformity
upon one another that the breaks are not noticeable by the
eye and can be proved to exist only by the entombed fossils
on each side of a given bedding plane. . . . Stratigraphers
are, as a rule, now fully aware of the imperfections in the
geologic record, but the rocks of two unrelated formations may
rest upon each other w4th such absolute conformability as to
be completely deceptive. For instance, in the Bear Grass
quarries at Louisville, Ky., a face of limestone is exposed in
which the absolute conformability of the beds can be traced
for nearly a mile, and yet within 5 feet of vertical thickness
is found a Middle Silurian coral bed overlain by another
coral zone of Middle Devonian. The parting between these
two zones is like that between any two limestone beds, but
this insignificant line represents a stratigraphic hiatus the
equivalent of the last third of Silurian and the first of De-
vonian time. But such disconformities are by no means rare,
in fact are very common throughout the wide central basin
area of North America." {Op. cit., II, pp. 586-588.)

In such cases, the stratigraphical relations give no hint of
any enormous gap at the line of contact. On the contrary,
there is every evidence of unbroken sequence, and the phys-
ical appearances are as if these supposed "geological epochs"
had never occurred in the localities, of which there is ques-
tion. Everything points to the conclusion that the alleged long
intervals of time between such perfectly conformable, and,

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 107

often, lithologically identical, formations are a pure fiction
elaborated for the purpose of bolstering up the dogma of the
universal applicability of the European classification of fos-
siliferous rocks. Why not take the facts as we find them?
Why resort to tortuous explanations for the mere purpose of
saving an arbitrary time-scale? Why insist on a definite
time- value for fossils, when it drives us to the extremity
of discrediting the objective evidence of physical facts in
deference to the preconceptions of orthodox geology? Were
it not for theoretical considerations, these stratigraphic facts
would be taken at their face value, and the need of saving
the reputation of the fossil as an infallible time index is not
sufficiently imperative to warrant so drastic a revision of the
physical evidence.

3. The third class of facts militating against the time-value
of index fossils, are what Price describes as "deceptive con-
formities turned upside down," and what orthodox geology
tries to explain away as "thrusts," "thrust faults," "over-
thrusts," "low-angle faulting," etc.^ In instances of this
kind we find the accepted order of the fossiliferous strata
reversed in such a way that the "younger" strata are con-
formably overlain by "older" strata, and the "older" strata
are sometimes interbedded between "younger" strata. "In
many places all over the world," says Price, "fossils have
been found in a relative order which was formerly thought
to be utterly impossible. That is, the fossils have been found
in the 'wrong' order, and on such a scale that there can
be no mistake about it. For when an area 500 miles long

^ Thus, to explain away "wrong sequences" of fossils, Heim and
Rothpletz postulate the great Glaums overthrust in the Alps, Geikie
the great overthrust in Scotland, McConnell, Campbell, and Willis
a great overthrust along the eastern front of the Rockies in Montana
and Alberta, while Hayes recognizes numerous overthrusts in the
southern Appalachians. "The deciphering of such great displacements,"
says Pirrson, speaking of thrust faults, "is one of the greatest triumphs
of modem geological research." ("Textbook of Geology," 1920, I, p.
367.) Desperate measures are evidently justifiable, when it is a question
of saving the time-value of fossils 1

108 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

and from 20 to 50 miles wide is found with Palaeozoic rocks
on top, or composing the mountains, and with Cretaceous
beds underneath, or composing the valleys, and running under
these mountains all around, as in the case of the Glacier Na-
tional Park and the southern part of Alberta, the old notion
about the exact and invariable order of the fossils has to be
given up entirely."

Price formulates his third law as follows : ''Any f ossilif erous
formation, 'old' or 'young,' may occur conformably on any
other f ossilif erous formation, 'younger' or 'older.' " The corol-
lary of this empirical law is that we are no longer justified in
regarding any fossils as intrinsically older than other fossils,
and that our present classification of fossiliferous strata has
a taxonomic, rather than a historical, value.

Low-angle faulting is the phenomenon devised by geolo-
gists to meet the difficulty of "inverted sequence," when all
other explanations fail. Immense mountain masses are said
to have been detached from their roots and pushed horizon-
tally over the surface (without disturbing it in the least),
until they came finally to rest in perfect conformity upon
"younger" strata, so that the plane of slippage ended by being
indistinguishable from an ordinary horizontal bedding plane.
These gigantic "overthrusts" or "thrust faults" are a rather
unique phenomenon. Normal faulting is always at a high
angle closely approaching the vertical, but "thrust faults"
are at a low angle closely approximating the horizontal, and
there is enormous displacement along the plane of slippage.
The huge mountain masses are said to have been first
lifted up and then thrust horizontally for vast distances,
sometimes for hundreds of miles, over the face of the
land, being thus pushed over on top of "younger" rocks,
so as to repose upon the latter in a relation of per-
fectly conformable superposition. R. G. McConnell, of the
Canadian Survey, comments on the remarkable similarity
between these alleged "thrust planes" and ordinary stratifica-
tion planes, and he is at a loss to know why the surface soil

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 109

was not disturbed by the huge rock masses which slid over
it for such great distances. Speaking of the Bow River Gap,
he says: "The fault plane here is nearly horizontal, and the
two formations, viewed from the valley appear to succeed one
another conformably," and then having noted that the under-
lying Cretaceous shales are "very soft," he adds that they
"have suffered little by the sliding of the limestones over
them." (An. Rpt. 1886, part D., pp. 33, 34, 84.) Credat
ludaeus Apella, non ego!

Schuchert describes the Alpine overthrust as follows: "The
movement was both vertical and thrusting from the south
and southeast, from the southern portion of Tethys, elevat-
ing and folding the Tertiary and older strata of the northern
areas of this mediterranean into overturned, recumbent, and
nearly horizontal folds, and pushing the southern or Lepontine
Alps about 60 miles to the northward into the Helvetic region.
Erosion has since carved up these overthrust sheets, leaving
remnants lying on foundations which belong to a more north-
ern portion of the ancient sea. Most noted of these residuals
of overthrust masses is the Matterhorn, a mighty mountain
without roots, a stranger in a foreign geologic environment,"
(Pirsson & Schuchert's "Textbook of Geology," 1920, II,
p. 924.)

With such a convenient device as the "overthrust" at his
disposal, it is hard to see how any possible concrete sequence
of fossiliferous strata could contradict the preconceptions of
an evolutionary geologist. The hypotheses and assumptions
involved, however, are so tortuous and incredible, that nothing
short of fanatical devotion to the theory of transformism
can render them acceptable. "Examples," says Price, "of
strata in the 'wrong' order were first reported from the Alps
nearly half a century ago. Since that time, whole armfuls of
learned treatises in German, in French, and in English have
been written to explain the wonderful conditions there found.
The diagrams that have been drawn to account for the strange
order of the strata are worthy to rank with the similar ones

110 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

by the Ptolemaic astronomers picturing the cycles and epi-
cycles required to explain the peculiar behavior of the heavenly
bodies in accordance with the geocentric theory of the universe
then prevailing. ... In Scandinavia, a district some 1,120
miles long by 80 miles wide is alleged to have been pushed
horizontally eastward 'at least 86 miles.' (Schuchert.) In
Northern China, one of these upside down areas is reported
by the Carnegie Research Expedition to be 500 miles long."
("The New Geology," 1923, pp. 633, 634.)

Nor are the epicyclic subterfuges of the evolutionary geol-
ogist confined to "deceptive conformities" and "overthrusts."
His inventive genius has hit upon other methods of ex-
plaining away inconvenient facts. When, for example,
"younger" fossils are found interbedded with "older" fossils,
and the discrepancy in time is not too great, he rids himself
of the difficulty of their premature appearance by calling them
a "pioneer colony." Similarly, when a group of "characteris-
tic" fossils occur in one age, skip another "age," and recur
in a third, he recognizes the possibility of "recurrent faunas,"
some of these faunas having as many as five successive "re-
currences." Clearly, the assumption of gradual approxima-
tion and the dogma that the lower preceded the higher forms
of life are things to be saved at all costs, and it is a foregone
conclusion that no facts will be suffered to conflict with these
irrevisable articles of evolutionary faith. "What is the use,"
exclaims Price, "of pretending that we are investigating a
problem of natural science, if we already know beforehand that
the lower and more generalized forms of animals and plants
came into existence first, and the higher and the more special-
ized came only long afterwards, and that specimens of all
these successive types have been pigeonholed in the rocks in
order to help us illustrate this wonderful truth?" [Op. cit., pp.
667, 668.)

The predominance of extinct species in certain formations
is said to be an independent argument of their great age.
Most of the species of organisms found as fossils in Cambrian,

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 111

Ordovician, and Silurian rocks are extinct, whereas modern
types abound in Cretaceous and Tertiary rocks. Hence it is
claimed that the former must be vastly older than the latter.
But this argument gratuitously assumes the substantial per-
fection of the stone record of ancient life and unwarrantedly
excludes the possibility of a sudden impoverishment of the
world's flora and fauna as the result of a sweeping catastrophe,
of which our present species are the fortunate survivors. Now
the fact that certain floras and faunas skip entire systems of
rocks to reappear only in later formations is proof positive
that the record of ancient life is far from being complete, and
we have in the abundant fossil remains of tropical plants
and animals, found in what are now the frozen arctic regions,
unmistakable evidence of a sudden catastrophic change by
which a once genial climate "was abruptly terminated. For
carcasses of the Siberian elephants were frozen so suddenly
and so completely that the flesh has remained untainted."
(Dana.) Again, the mere jact of extinction tells us nothing
about the time of the extinction. For this we are obliged to
fall back on the index fossil whose inherent time-value is based
on the theory of evolution and not on stratigraphy. Hence
the argument from extinct species is not an independent
argument.

To sum up, therefore, the aprioristic evolutional series of
fossils is not a genuine time-scale. The only safe criterion of
comparative age is that of stratigraphic superposition, and
this is inapplicable outside of limited local areas. ^ The index
fossil is a reliable basis for the chronological correlation of beds
only in case one is already convinced on other grounds of the
actuality of evolution, but for the unbiased inquirer it is
destitute of any inherent time-value. In other words, we can
no longer be sure that a given formation is old merely be-
cause it happens to contain Cambrian fossils, nor that a rock
is young merely because it chances to contain Tertiary fos-

'"All that geology can prove," says Huxley, "is local order of suc-
cession." ("Discourses Biological and Geological," pp. 279-288.)

112 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

sils. Our present classification of rocks according to their
fossil contents is purely arbitrary and artificial, being tanta-
mount to nothing more than a mere taxonomical classifica-
tion of the forms of ancient life on our globe, irrespective of
their comparative antiquity. This scheme of classification is,
indeed, universally applicable, and places can usually be found
in it for new fossiliferous strata, whenever and wherever dis-
covered. Its universal applicability, however, is due not
to any prevalent order of invariable sequence among fossilif-
erous strata, but solely to the fact that the laws of biological
taxonomy and ecology are universal laws which transcend
spatial and temporal limitation. If a scheme of taxonomy is
truly scientific, all forms of life, whether extant or extinct,
will fit into it quite readily.

The anomalies of spatial distribution constitute a sixth diffi-
culty for transformistic palaeontology. In constructing a phy-
logeny the most diverse and widely-separated regions are put
under tribute to furnish the requisite fossils, no heed being
paid to what are now at any rate impassable geographical
barriers, not to speak of the climatic and environmental lim-
itations which restrict the migrations of non-cosmopolitan spe-
cies within the boundaries of narrow habitats. Hypothetical
lineages of a modern form of life are frequently constructed
from fossil remains found in two or more continents separated
from one another by immense distances and vast oceanic ex-
panses. When taxed with failure to plausibleize this proced-
ure, the evolutionist meets the difficulty by hypothecating
wholesale and devious migrations to and fro, and by raising up
alleged land bridges to accommodate plants and animals in
their suppositional migrations from one continent to another,
etc.

The European horse, with his so-called ancestry interred,
partly in the Tertiary deposits of Europe, but mostly in those
of North America, is a typical instance of these anomalies in
geographical distribution. It would, of course, be preposter-
ous to suppose that two independent lines of descent could

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 113

have fortuitously terminated in the production of one and the
same type, namely, the genus Equus. Moreover, to admit for
a moment that the extinct American Equus and the extant
European Equus had converged by similar stages from distinct
origins would be equivalent, as we have seen, to a surrender
of the basic postulate that structural similarity rests on the
principle of inheritance. Nothing remains, therefore, but to
hypothecate a Tertiary land bridge between Europe and North
America. '

Modern geologists, however, are beginning to resent these
arbitrary interferences with their science in the interest of
biological theories. Land bridges, they rightly insist, should
be demonstrated by means of positive geological evidence and
not by the mere exigencies of a hypothetical genealogy. Who-
soever postulates a land bridge between continents should be
able to adduce solid reasons, and to assign a mechanism
capable of accomplishing the five-mile uplift necessary to bring
a deep-sea bottom to the surface of the hydrosphere. Such
an idea is extravagant and not to be easily entertained in
our day, when geologists are beginning to understand the
principle of isostasy. To-day, the crust of the earth, that is,
the entire surface of the lithosphere, is conceived as being
constituted of earth columns, all of which rest with equal
weight upon the level of complete compensation, which exists
at a depth of some 76 miles below land surfaces. At this depth
viscous flows and undertows of the earth take place, com-
pensating all differences of gravitational stress. Hence the
materials constituting a mountain column are thought to be
less dense than those constituting the surrounding lowland
columns, and for this reason the mountains are buoyed up
above the surrounding landscape. The columns under ocean
bottoms, on the contrary, are thought to consist of heavy
materials like basalt, which tend to depress the column. To
raise a sea floor, therefore, some means of producing a dilata-
tion of these materials would have to be available. Arthur
B. Coleman called attention to this difficulty in his Presidential

114 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Address to the Geological Society of America (December 29,
1915), and we camiot do better than quote his own statement
of the matter here:

"Admitting," he says, "that in the beginning the litho-
sphere bulged up in places, so as to form continents, and
sagged in other places, so as to form ocean beds, there are
interesting problems presented as to the permanence of land
and seas. All will admit marginal changes affecting large
areas, but these encroachments of the sea on the continents
and the later retreats may be of quite a subordinate kind,
not implying an interchange of deep-sea bottoms and land sur-
faces. The essential permanence of continents and oceans has
been firmly held by many geologists, notably Dana among
the older ones, and seems reasonable; but there are geologists,
especially palaeontologists, who display great recklessness in
rearranging land and sea. The trend of a mountain range, or
the convenience of a running bird, or a marsupial afraid to
wet his feet seems sufficient warrant for hoisting up any sea
bottom to connect continent with continent. A Gondwana
Land arises in place of an Indian Ocean and sweeps across to
South America, so that a spore-bearing plant can follow up
an ice age; or an Atlantis ties New England to Old England
to help out the migrations of a shallow-water fauna; or a
'Lost Land of Agulhas' joins South Africa and India.

"It is curious to find these revolutionary suggestions made
at a time when geodesists are demonstrating that the earth's
crust over large areas, and perhaps everywhere, approaches a
state of isostatic equilibrium, and that isostatic compensation
is probably complete at a depth of only 76 miles" . . . and
(having noted the difference of density that must exist be-
tween the continental, and submarine, earth columns) Cole-
man would have us bear in mind "that to transform great
areas of sea bottom into land it would be necessary either to
expand the rock beneath by several per cent or to replace
heavy rock, such as basalt, by lighter materials, such as gran-
ite. There is no obvious way in which the rock beneath a

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 115

sea bottom can be expanded enough to lift it 20,000 feet, as
would be necessary in parts of the Indian Ocean, to form a
Gondwana land; so one must assume that light rocks re-
place heavy ones beneath a million square miles of ocean
floor. Even with unlimited time, it is hard to imagine a
mechanism that could do the work, and no convincing geologi-
cal evidence can be brought forward to show that such a thing
ever took place. . . . The distribution of plants and animals
should be arranged for by other means than by the wholesale
elevation of ocean beds to make dry land bridges for them."
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, pp. 269-271.)

A seventh anomaly of palaeontological phylogeny is what
may be described as contrariety of direction. We are asked to
believe, for example, that in mammals racial development re-
sulted in dimensional increase. The primitive ancestor of
mammoths, mastodons, and elephants is alleged to have been
the Moeritherium, "a small tapirlike form, from the Middle
Eocene Qasr-el-Sagha beds of the Fayum in Egypt. . . .
Moeritherium measured about 3V2 feet in height." (Lull:
Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1908, pp. 655, 656.) The ancestor of
the modern horse, we are told, was ''a little animal less than
a foot in height, known as Eohippios, from the rocks of the
Eocene age." (Woodruff: "Foundations of Biology," p. 361.)
In the case of insects, on the other hand, we are asked to
believe the exact reverse, namely, that racial development
brought about dimensional reduction. "In the middle of the
Upper Carboniferous periods," says Anton Handlirsch, "the
forest swamps were populated with cockroaches about as long
as a finger, dragonfly-like creatures with a wing spread of about
2y2 feet, while insects that resemble our May flies were as
big as a hand. ("Die fossilen Insekten, und die Phylogenie
der recenten Formen," 1908, L. c, p. 1150.) Contrasting one
of these giant palaeozoic dragonflies, Meganeura monyi Brongn.,
with the largest of modern dragonflies, Aeschna grandis L.,
Chetverikov exclaims with reference to the latter: "What a
pitiful pigmy it is and its specific name (grandis) sounds like

116 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

such a mockery." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1918, p. 446.)
Chetverikov, it is true, proposes a teleological reason for this
progressive diminution, but the fact remains that for dysteleo-
logical evolutionism, which dispenses with the postulate of a
Providential coordination and regulation of natural agencies,
this diminuendo of the "evolving" insects stands in irrecon-
cilable opposition to the crescendo of the ''evolving" mammals,
and constitutes a difficulty which a purely mechanistic philos-
ophy can never surmount.

Not to prolong excessively this already protracted enumera-
tion of discrepancies between fossil fact and evolutionary as-
sumption, we shall mention, as an eighth and final difficulty,
the indubitable persistence of unchanged organic types from
the earliest geological epochs down to the present time. This
phenomenon is all the more wonderful in view of the fact that
the decision as to which are to be the ''older" and which the
"younger" strata rests with the evolutionary geologist, who is
naturally disinclined to admit the antiquity of strata contain-
ing modern types, and whose position as arbiter enables him
to date formations aprioristically, according to the exigencies
of the transformistic theory. Using, as he does, the absence
of modern types as an express criterion of age, and having,
as it were, his pick among the various fossiliferous deposits,
one would expect him to be eminently successful in eliminating
from the stratigraphic groups selected for senior honors all
strata containing fossil types identical with modern forms.
Since, however, even the most ingenious sort of geological
gerrymandering fails to make this elimination complete, we
must conclude that the evidence for persistence of type is in-
escapable and valid under any assumption.

When we speak of persistent types, we mean generic and
specific, rather than phyletic, types, although it is assuredly
true that the persistence of the great phyla, from their abrupt
and contemporaneous appearance in Cambrian and pre-Cam-
brian rocks down to the present day, constitutes a grave
difficulty for progressive evolution in general and monophy-

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 117

letic evolution in particular. All the great invertebrate types,
such as the protozoa, the annelida, the brachiopoda, and large
crustaceans called eurypterids, are found in rocks of the Pro-
terozoic group, despite the damaged condition of the Archaean
record, while in the Cambrian they are represented by a great
profusion of forms. "The Lower Cambrian species," says
Dana, "have not the simplicity of structure that would natur-
ally be looked for in the earliest Palaeozoic life. They are per-
fect of their kind and highly specialized structures. No steps
from simple kinds leading up to them have been discovered;
no line from the protozoans up to corals, echinoderms, or
worms, or from either of these groups up to brachiopods, mol-
lusks, trilobites, or other crustaceans. This appearance of
abruptness in the introduction of Cambrian life is one of the
striking facts made known by geology." ("Manual," p. 487.)
Thus, as we go backward in time, we find the great organic
phyla retaining their identity and showing no tendency to
converge towards a common origin in one or a few ancestral
types. For this reason, as we shall see presently, geologists
are beginning to relegate the evolutionary process to unknown
depths below the explored portion of the "geological column."
What may lurk in these unfathomed profundities, it is, of
course, impossible to say, but, if we are to judge by that part
of the column which is actually exposed to view, there is no
indication whatever of a steady progression from lower, to
higher, degrees of organization, and it takes all the imper-
turbable idealism of a scientific doctrinaire to discern in
such random, abrupt, and unrelated "origins" any evidence of
what Blackwelder styles "a slow ^Dut steady increase in com-
plexity of structure and in function." {Science, Jan. 27, 1922,
p. 90.)

But, while the permanence of phyletic types excludes prog-
ress, that of generic and specific types excludes change, and
hence it is in the latter phenomenon, especially, that the theory
of transformism encounters a formidable difiiculty. Palaeo-
botany furnishes numerous examples of the persistence of \m-

118 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

changed plant forms. Ferns identical with the modern genus
Marattia occur in rocks of the Palaeozoic group. Cycads in-
distinguishable from the extant genera Zamia and Cycas are
found in strata belonging to the Triassic system, etc., etc.

The same is true of animal types. In all the phyla some
genera and even species have persisted unchanged from the
oldest strata down to the present day. Among the Protozoa, for
example, we have the genus Globigerina (one of the Foram-
inifera), some modern species of which are identical with those
found in the Cretaceous. To quote the words of the Protozo-
ologist, Charles A. Kofoid: 'The Protozoa are found in the
oldest fossiliferous rocks and the genera of Radiolaria therein
conform rather closely to genera living today, while the fossil
Dinoflagellata of the flints of Delitzsch are scarcely distin-
guishable from species living in the modern seas. The striking
similarities of the most ancient fossil Protozoa to recent ones
afford some ground for the inference that the Protozoa living
today differ but little from those when life was young."
{Science, April 6, 1923, p. 397.)

The Metazoa offer similar examples of persistence. Among
the Ccelenterata, we have the genus Springopora, whose rep-
resentatives from the Carboniferous limestones closely resem-
ble some of the present-day reef builders of the East Indies.
Species of the brachiopod genera Lingula and Crania occurring
in the Cambrian rocks are indistinguishable from species living
today, while two other modern genera of the Brachiopoda,
namely, Rhynchonella and Disdna, are represented among the
fossils found in Mesozoic formations. Terebratulina striata, a
fossil species of brachiopod occurring in the rocks belonging to
the Cretaceous system, is identical with our modern species
Terebratulina caput serpentis. Among the Mollusca such
genera as Area, Nucula, Lucina, Astarte, and Nautilus have
had a continuous existence since the Silurian, while the genera
Lima and Pecten can be traced to the Permian. One genus
Pleurotomaria goes back to pre-Cambrian times. As to Ter-
tiary fossils, Woods informs us that "in some of the later Cain-

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 119

ozoic formations as many as 90 per cent of the species of
mollusks are still living." ("Paleontology," 1st ed., p. 2.)
Among the Echinodermata, two genera, Cidaris (a sea urchin)
and Fentacnnus (a crinoid) may be mentioned as being per-
sistent since the Triassic ("oldest" system of the Mesozoic
group). Among the Arthropoda, the horseshoe crab Limulus
polyphemus has had a continuous existence since the Lias {i.e.
the lowest series of the Jurassic system). Even among the
Vertebrata we have instances of persistence. The extant Aus-
tralian genus Ceratodus, a Dipnoan, has been in existence since
the Triassic. Among the fossils of the Jurassic (middle system
of the Mesozoic group). Sharks, Rays, and Chimaeroids occur
in practically modern forms, while some of the so-called
"ganoids" are extremely similar to our present sturgeons and
gar pikes — "Some of the Jurassic fishes approximate the tele-
osts so closely that it seems arbitrary to call them ganoids."
(Scott.)

The instances of persistence enumerated above are those ac-
knowledged by evolutionary palaeontologists themselves. This
list could be extended somewhat by the addition of several
other examples, but even so, it would still be small and in-
suJSicient to tip the scales decisively in favor of fixism. On
the other hand, we must not forget that the paucity of this
list is due in large measure to the fact that our present method
of classifying fossiliferous strata was deliberately framed
with a view to excluding formations containing modern types
from the category of "ancient" beds. Moreover, orthodox
palaeontology has minimized the facts of persistence to an
extent unwarranted even by its own premises. As the follow-
ing considerations indicate, the actual number of persistent
types is far greater, even according to the evolutionary time-
scale, than the figure commonly assigned.

First of all, we must take into account the deplorable, if not
absolutely dishonest, practice, which is in vogue, of inventing
new names for the fossil duplicates of modem species, in
order to mask or obscure an identity which conflicts with

120 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

evolutionary preconceptions. When a given formation fails
to fit into the accepted scheme by reason of its fossil anachro-
nisms, or when, to quote the words of Price, "species are found
in kinds of rock where they are not at all expected, and where,
according to the prevailing theories, it is quite incredible that
they should be found . . . the not very honorable expedient
is resorted to of inventing a new name, specific or even generic,
to disguise and gloss over the strange similarity between them
and the others which have already been assigned to wholly
different formations." ("The New Geology," p. 291.) The
same observation is made by Heilprin. "It is practically cer-
tain," says the latter, "that numerous forms of life, exhibiting
no distinctive characters of their own, are constituted into
distinct species for no other reason than that they occur in
formations widely separated from those holding their nearest
kin." ("Geographical and Geological Distribution of Animals,"
pp. 183, 184.) An instance of this practice occurs in the fore-
going list, where a fossil brachiopod identical with a modern
species receives the new specific name ''striata.'^ Its influence
is also manifest in the previously quoted apology of Scott for
calling teleost-like fish "ganoids."

We must also take into account the imperfection of the fos-
sil record, which is proved by the fact that most of the ac-
knowledged "persistent types" listed above "skip" whole
systems and even groups of "later" rocks (which are said to
represent enormous intervals of time), only to reappear, at
last, in modem times. It is evident that their existence has
been continuous, and yet they are not represented in the inter-
vening strata. Clearly, then, the fossil record is imperfect,
and we must conclude that many of our modern types actually
did exist in the remote past, without, however, leaving behind
any vestige of their former presence.

Again, we must frankly confess our profound ignorance with
respect to the total number and kinds of species living in our
modern seas. Hence our conventional distinction between "ex-
tinct" and "extant" species has only a provisory value. Future

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 121

discoveries will unquestionably force us to admit that many
of the -species now classed as ''extinct" are in reality living
forms, which must be added to our list of "persistent types."
"It is by no means improbable," says Heilprin, "that many
of the older genera, now recognized as distinct by reason of
our imperfect knowledge concerning their true relationships,
have in reality representatives in the modern sea." {Op. cit.
pp. 203, 204.)

Finally, the whole of our present taxonomy of plants and
animals, both living and fossil, stands badly in need of revision.
Systematists, as we have seen in the second chapter, base
their classifications mainly on what they regard as basic or
homologous structures, in contradistinction to superficial or
adaptive characters. Both kinds of structure, however, are
purely somatic, and somatic characters, as previously ob-
served, are not, by themselves, a safe criterion for discrim-
inating between varieties and species. In the light of recent
genetical research, we cannot avoid recognizing that there has
been far too much "splitting" of organic groups on the basis
of differences that are purely fiuctuational, or, at most, muta-
tional. Moreover, the distinction between homologous and
adaptive structures is often arbitrary and largely a matter
of personal opinion, especially when numerous specimens are
not available. What the "Cambridge Natural History" says
in allusion to the Asteroidea is of general application. "While
there is considerable agreement," we read, "amongst author-
ities as to the number of families, or minor divisions of un-
equivocal relationship, to be found in the class Asteroidea,
there has been great uncertainty- both as to the number and
limits of the orders into which the class should be divided,
and also as to the limits of the various species. The
difficulty about the species is by no means confined to
the group Echinodermata ; in all cases where the attempt is
made to determine species by an examination of a few speci-
mens of unknown age there is bound to be uncertainty; the
more so, as it becomes increasingly evident that there is no

122 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

sharp line to be drawn between local varieties and species. In
Echinodermata, however, there is the additional difficulty that
the acquisition of ripe genital cells does not necessarily mark
the termination of growth; the animals can continue to grow
and at the same time slightly alter their characters. For this
reason many of the species described may be merely immature
forms. . . .

"The disputes, however, as to the number of orders included
in the Asteroidea proceed from a different cause. The at-
tempt to construct detailed phylogenies involves the assump-
tion that one set of structures, which we take as the mark of
the class, has remained constant, whilst the others which are
regarded as adaptive, may have developed twice or thrice.
As the two sets of structures are about of equal importance
it will be seen to what an enormous extent the personal equa-
tion enters in the determination of these questions." {Op. cit.,
vol. I, pp. 459, 460.)

In dealing with fossil forms, these difficulties of the taxono-
mist are intensified: (1) by the sparse, badly-preserved, and
fragmentary character of fossil remains; (2) by the fact that
here breeding experiments are impossible, and hence the diag-
nosis based on external characters cannot be supplemented
by a diagnosis of the germinal factors. Fossil taxonomy is, in
consequence, extremely arbitrary and unreliable. Many fossil
forms classed as distinct species, or even as distinct genera,
may be nothing more than fluctuants, mutants, hybrids, or im-
mature stages of well-known species living today. Again,
many fossils mistaken for distinct species are but different
stages in the life-history of a single species, a mistake, which is
unavoidable, when specimens are few and the age of the speci-
mens unknown. The great confusion engendered in the classi-
fication of the hydrozoa by nineteenth-century ignorance of the
alternation of hydroid and medusoid generations is a standing
example of the danger of classifying forms without a complete
knowledge of the entire life-cycle. When due allowance is
made for mutation, hybridization, metagenesis, polymorphism,

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 123

age and metamorphosis, the number of distinct fossil species
will undergo considerable shrinkage. Nor must we overlook
the possibility of environmentally-induced modifications.
Many organisms, such as mollusks, undergo profound altera-
tion as a result of some important, and, perhaps, relatively
permanent, change in their environmental conditions, though
such alterations affect only the phenotype, and do not involve
a corresponding change in the specific genotype, i.e, the
germinal constitution of the race.

In the degree that these considerations are taken into ac-
count the number of "extinct" fossil species will diminish and
the number of "persistent" species will increase. This is a con-
summation devoutly to be wished for, but it means that
hundreds of thousands of described species must needs
be reviewed for the purpose of weeding out the dupli-
cates, and who will have the knowledge, the courage, or even
the span of life, necessary to accomplish so gigantic a task?

But so far as the practical purposes of our argument are con-
cerned, the accepted list of persistent types needs no ampli-
fication. It suffices, as it stands, to establish the central fact
(which, for the rest, is admitted by everyone) that some gen-
eric and even specific types have remained unchanged through-
out the enormous lapse of time which has intervened between
the deposition of the oldest strata and the advent of the present
age. Our current theories, far from diminishing the significance
of this fact, tend to intensify it by computing the duration of
such persistence in millions, rather than in thousands, of
years. Now, whatever one's views may be on the subject of
transformism, this prolonged permanence of certain genera and
species is an indubitable fact, which is utterly irreconcilable
with a universal law of organic evolution. The theory of
transformism is impotent to explain an exception so palpable
as this ; for persistence and transmutation cannot be subsumed
under one and the same principle. That which accounts for
change cannot account for unchange. Yet unchange is an
observed fact, while the change, in this case, is an inferred

124 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

hypothesis. Hence, even if we accept the principle of trans-
formism, there will always be scope for the principle of per-
manence. The extraordinary tenacity of type manifested
by persistent genera and species is a phenomenon deserving of
far more careful study and investigation than the evolution-
ally-minded scientist of to-day deigns to bestow upon it. To
the latter it may seem of little consequence, but, to the genuine
scientist, the actual persistence of types should be of no less
interest than their possible variability.

With these reflections, our criticism of the palaeontological
argument terminates. The enumeration of its various defi-
ciencies was not intended as a refutation. To disprove the
theory of organic evolution is a feat beyond our power to
accomplish. We can only adduce negative evidence, whose
scope is to show that the various evolutionary arguments are
inconsequential or inconclusive. We cannot rob the theory of
its intrinsic possibility, and sheer justice compels us to con-
fess that certain facts, like those of symbiotic preadaptation,
lend themselves more readily to a transformistic, than to a
fixistic, interpretation. On the other hand, nothing is gained
by ignoring flaws so obvious and glaring as those which mar
the cogency of palaeontological ''evidence." The man who
would gloss them over is no true friend either of Science or
of the scientific theory of Evolution ! They represent so many
real problems to be frankly faced and fully solved, before the
palseontological argument can become a genuine demonstration.
But until such time as a demonstration of this sort is forth-
coming, the evolutionist must not presume to cram his un-
substantiated theory down our reasonably reluctant throats.
To accept as certain what remains unproved, is to compromise
our intellectual sincerity. True certainty, which rests on the
recognition of objective necessity, will never be attainable so
long as difficulties that sap the very base of evolutionary ar-
gumentation are left unanswered; and, as for those who, in
the teeth of discordant factual evidence, profess, nevertheless,
to have certainty regarding the "fact" of evolution, we can

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 125

only say that such persons cannot have a very high or exact-
ing conception of what scientific certainty really means.

For the rest, it cannot even be said that the palaeontological
record furnishes good circumstantial evidence that our globe
has been the scene of a process of organic evolution. In fact,
so utterly at variance with this view is the total impression
conveyed by the visible portion of the geological column, that
the modern geologist proposes, as we have seen, to probe
depths beneath its lowest strata for traces of that alleged
transmutation, which higher horizons do not reveal. There are
six to eight thick terranes below the Cambrian, we are told,
and igneous masses that were formerly supposed to be basal
have turned out to be intrusions into sedimentary accumula-
tions, all of which, of course, is fortunate for the theory of
organic evolution, as furnishing it with a sadly needed new
court of appeal. The bottom, so to speak, has dropped out of
the geological column, and Prof. T. C. Chamberlin announces
the fact as follows: ''The sharp division into two parts, a life-
less igneous base and a sedimentary fossiliferous superstruc-
ture, has given place to the general concept of continuity with
merely minor oscillations in times and regions of major activ-
ity. Life has been traced much below the Cambrian, but its
record is very imperfect. The recent discoveries of more ample
and varied life in the lower Palaeozoic, particularly the Cam-
brian, implies, under current evolutional philosophy, a very
great downward extension of life. In the judgment of some
biologists and geologists, this extension probably reaches below
all the pre-Cambrian terranes as yet recognized, though this
pre-Cambrian extension is great. ^ The 'Azoic' bottom has re-
tired to depths unknown. This profoundly changes the life
aspect of the 'column.' " {Science, Feb. 8, 1924, p. 128.) All this
is doubtless true, but such an appeal, from the known to the
unknown, from the actual to the possible, is not far-removed
from a confession of scientific insolvency. Life must, of course,
have had an earlier history than that recorded in the pre-
Cambrian rocks. But even supposing that some portion of an

126 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

earlier record should become accessible to us, it could not be
expected to throw much light on the problem of organic
origins. Most of the primordial sediments have long since
been sapped and engulfed by fiery magmas, while terranes
less deep have, in all probability, been so metamorphosed that
every trace of their fossil contents has perished. The sub-
Archaean beginnings of life will thus remain shrouded for-
ever in a mystery, which we have no prospect of penetrating.
Hence it is the exposed portion of the geological column which
continues and will continue to be our sole source of informa-
tion, and it is preeminently on this basis that the evolutionary
issue will have to be decided.

Yet what could be more enigmatic than the rock record as
it stands? For in nature it possesses none of that idealized
integrity and coherence, with which geology has invested it
for the purpose of making it understandable. Rather it is a
mighty chaos of scattered and fragmentary fossiliferous forma-
tions, whose baffling complexity, discontinuity, and ambiguity
tax the ingenuity of the most sagacious interpreters. Trans-
formism is the key to one possible synthesis, which might
serve to unify that intricate mass of facts, but it is idle to
pretend that this theory is the unique and necessary corollary
of the facts as we find them. The palaeontological argument
is simply a theoretical construction which presupposes evolu-
tion instead of proving it. Its classic pedigrees of the horse,
the camel, and the elephant are only credible when we have
assumed the "fact" of evolution, and even then, solely upon con-
dition that they claim to approximate, rather than assign, the
actual ancestry of the animals in question. In palaeontology,
as in the field of zoology, evolution is not a conclusion, but an
interpretation. In palaeontology, otherwise than in the field of
genetics, evolution is not amenable to the check of experi-
mental tests, because here it deals not with that which is, but
with that which was. Here the sole objective basis is the mu-
tilated and partially obliterated record of a march of events,
which no one has observed and which will never be repeated.

FOSSIL PEDIGREES 127

These obscure and fragmentary vestiges of a vanished past,
by reason of their very incompleteness, lend themselves quite
readil^^ to all sorts of theories and all sorts of speculations.
Of the ''Stone Book of the Universe" we may say with truth
that which Oliver Wendell Holmes says of the privately-in-
terpreted Bible, namely, that its readers take from it the same
views which they had previously brought to it. "I am, hew-
ever, thoroughly persuaded," say the late Yves Delage, "that
one is or is not a transformist, not so much for reasons de-
duced from natural history, as for motives based on personal
philosophic opinions. If there existed some other scientific
hypothesis besides that of descent to explain the origin of
species, many transformists would abandon their present opin-
ion as not being sufficiently demonstrated. ... If one takes
his stand upon the exclusive ground of the facts, it must be
acknowledged that the formation of one species from another
species has not been demonstrated at all." ("L'heredite et les
grands problemes de la biologic generale," Paris, 1903, pp.
204, 322.)

PART II
THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS

II

THE PROBLEM OF ORIGINS

CHAPTER I
THE ORIGIN OF LIFE

§ 1. The Theory of Spontaneous Generation

Strictly speaking, the theory of Transformism is not con-
cerned with the initial production of organic species, but rather
with the subsequent differentiation and multiplication of such
species by transmutation of the original forms. This tech-
nical sense, however, is embalmed only in the term trans-
formism and not in its synonym evolution. The signification
of the latter term is less definite. It may be used to denote
any sort of development or origination of one thing from
another. Hence the problem of the formation of organic
species is frequently merged with the problem of the transfor-
mation of species under the common title of evolution.

This extension of the evolutionary concept, in its widest
sense, to the problem of the origin of life on our globe is known
as the hypothesis of abiogenesis or spontaneous generation.
It regards inorganic matter as the source of organic life not
merely in the sense of a passive cause, out of which the pri-
mordial forms of life were produced, but in the sense of an
active cause inasmuch as it ascribes the origin of life to
the exclusive agency of dynamic principles inherent in inor-
ganic matter, namely, the physicochemical energies that are
native to mineral matter. Life, in other words, is assumed
to have arisen spontaneously, that is, by means of a syntl^esis

131

132 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

and convergence of forces resident in inorganic matter, and
not through the intervention of any exterior agency.

The protagonists of spontaneous ■ generation, therefore, as-
sert not merely a passive, but an active, evolution of living,
from lifeless matter. As to the fact of the origin of the
primal organisms from inorganic matter, there is no controversy
whatever. All agree that, at some time or other, the primordial
plants and animals emanated from inorganic matter. The sole
point of dispute is whether they arose from inorganic matter
by active evolution or simply by passive evolution. The pas-
sive evolution of mineral matter into plants and animals is an
everyday occurrence. The grass assimilates the nitrates of the
soil, and is, in turn, assimilated by the sheep, whose flesh be-
comes the food of man, and mineral substance is thus finally
transformed into human substance. In the course of met-
abolic processes, the inorganic molecule may doff its mineral
type and don, in succession, the specificities of plant, animal,
and human protoplasm; and this transition from lower to
higher degrees of perfection may be termed an evolution. It
is an ascent of matter from the lowermost grade of an inert
substance, through the intermediate grades of vegetative and
animal life, up to the culminating and ultimate term of ma-
terial perfection, in the partial constitution of a human nature
and personality, in the concurrence asi a coagent in vegetative
and sensile functions, and in the indirect participation, as in-
strument, in the higher psychic functions of rational thought
and volition.

At the present time, the inorganic world is clearly the ex-
clusive source of all the matter found in living beings. All
living beings construct their bodies out of inorganic sub-
stances in the process of nutrition, and render back to the
inorganic world, by dissimilation and death, whatever they
have taken from it. We must conclude, therefore, the matter
of the primordial organisms was likewise derived from the
inorganic world. But we are not warranted in concluding that
this process of derivation was an active evolution. On the

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 133

contrary, all evidence is against the supposition that brute
matter is able to evolve of itself into living matter. It can,
indeed, be transformed into plants, animals, and men through
the action of an appropriate external agent (i.e. solely through
the agency of the living organism), but it cannot acquire the
perfections of living matter by means of its own inherent
powers. It cannot vitalize, or sensitize, itself through the un-
aided activity of its own physicochemical energies. Only when
it comes under the superior influence of preexistent life can it
ascend to higher degrees of entitive perfection. It does not
become of itself life, sensibility, and intelligence. It must
first be drawn into communion with what is already alive,
before it can acquire life and sensibility, or share indirectly
in the honors of intelligence (as the substrate of the cerebral
imagery whence the human mind abstracts its conceptual
thought). Apart from this unique influence, inorganic mat-
ter is impotent to raise itself in the scale of existence, but,
if captured, molded, and transmuted by a living being, it may
progress to the point of forming with the human soul one
single nature, one single substance, one single person. The
evolution of matter exemplified in organic metabolism is ob-
viously passive, and such an evolution of the primal organ-
isms out of non-living matter even the opponents of the hy-
pothesis of spontaneous generation concede. But spontaneous
generation implies an active evolution of the living from the
lifeless, and this is the point around which the controversy
wages. It would, of course, be utterly irrational to deny to
the Supreme Lord and Author of Life the power of vivifying
matter previously inanimate and inert, and hence the origin
of organic life from inorganic matter by a formative (not
creative) act of the Creator is the conclusion to which the
denial of abiogenesis logically leads.

The hypothesis of spontaneous generation is far older than
the theory of transformism. It goes back to the Greek prede-
cessors of Aristotle, at least, and may be of far greater antiq-
uity. It was based, as is well known, upon an erroneous

134 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

interpretation of natural facts, which was universally accepted
up to the close of the 17th century. As we can do no more
than recount a few outstanding incidents of its long and in-
teresting history here, the reader is referred to the VII chapter
of Wasmann's "Modern Biology" and the VIII chapter of
Windle's ^'Vitalism and Scholasticism" for the details which
we are obliged to omit.

§ 2. The Law of Genetic Continuity

From time immemorial the sudden appearance of maggots
in putrescent meat had been a matter of common knowledge,
and the ancients were misled into regarding the phenomenon
as an instance of a de novo origin of life from dead matter.
The error in question persisted until the year 1698, when it was
decisively disproved by a simple experiment of the Italian
physician Francesco Redi. He protected the meat from flies
by means of gauze. Under these conditions, no maggots ap-
peared in the meat, while the flies, unable to reach the meat,
deposited their eggs on the gauze. Thus it became apparent
that the maggots were larval flies, which emerged from fer-
tilized eggs previously deposited in decaying meat by female
flies. Antonio Vallisnieri, another Italian, showed that the
fruit-fly had a similar life-history. As a result of these dis-
coveries, Redi rejected the theory of spontaneous generation
and formulated the first article of the Law of Genetic Vital
Continuity: Omne vivum ex vivo.

Meanwhile, the first researches conducted by means of the
newly invented compound microscope disclosed what appeared
to be fresh evidence in favor of the discarded hypothesis. The
unicellular organisms known as infusoria were found to ap-
pear suddenly in hay infusions, and their abrupt appearance
was ascribed to spontaneous generation. Towards the end
of the 18th century, however, a Catholic priest named Lazzaro
Spallanzani refuted this new argument by sterilizing the infu-
sions with heat and by sealing the containers as protection
against contamination by floating spores or cysts. After the

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 135

infusions had been boiled for a sufficient time and then sealed,
no organisms could be found in them, no matter how long they
were kept. We now know that protozoa and protophytes do
not originate de novo in infusions. Their sudden appearance
in cultures is due to the deposition of spores or cysts from
the air, etc.

The possibility that the non-germination of life in sterilized
infusions kept in sealed containers might be due to the absence
of oxygen, removed by boiling and excluded by sealing, left
open a single loophole, of which the 19th century defenders
of abiogenesis proceeded to avail themselves. Pasteur, how-
ever, by employing sterilized cultures, which he aerated with
filtered air exclusively, succeeded in depriving his opponents
of this final refuge, and thereby completely demolished the
last piece of evidence in favor of spontaneous generation. Prof.
Wm. Sydney Thayer, in an address delivered at the Sor-
bonne. May 22, 1923, gives the following account of Pasteur's
experiments in this field: "Then, naturally (1860-1876) came
the famous studies on spontaneous generation undertaken
against the advice of his doubting masters, Biot and Dumas.
On the basis of careful and well-conceived experiments he
demonstrated the universal presence of bacteria in air, water,
dust; he showed the variation in different regions of the
bacterial content of the air; he demonstrated the permanent
sterility of media protected from contamination, and he in-
sisted on the inevitable derivation of every living organism
from one of its kind. 'No,' he said, 'there is no circumstance
known today which justifies us in affirming that microscopic
organisms have come into the world, without parents like
themselves. Those who made this assertion have been the
playthings of illusions or ill-made experiments invalidated by
errors which they have not been able to appreciate or to
avoid.' In the course of these experiments he demonstrated
the necessity of reliable methods of sterilization for instru-
ments or culture media, of exposure for half an hour to moist
heat at 120° or to dry air at 180°. And behold! our modem

136 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

procedures of sterilization and the basis of antiseptic surgery."
{Science, Dec. 14, 1923, p. 477.) Pasteur brought to a suc-
cessful completion the work of Redi and Spallanzani. Hence-
forth spontaneous generation was deprived of all countenance
in the realm of biological fact.

Meanwhile, the cytologists and embryologists of the last
century were adding article after article to the law of genetic
cellular continuity, thus forging link by link the fatal chain of
severance that inexorably debars abiogenesis from the domain
of natural science. With the formulation of the great Cell
Theory by Schleiden and Schwann (1838-1839), it became
clear that the cell is the fundamental unit of organization in
the world of living matter. It has proved to be, at once, the
simplest organism capable of independent existence and the
basic unit of structure and function in all the more complex
forms of life. The protists (unicellular protozoans and proto-
phytes) consist each of a single cell, and no simpler type of
organism is known to science. The cell is the building brick
out of which the higher organisms or metists (i.e. the multi-
cellular and tissued metazoans and metaphytes) are con-
structed, and all multicellular organisms are, at one time or
other in their career, reduced to the simplicity of a single
cell {v.g. in the zygote and spore stages). The somatic or
tissue cells, which are associated in the metists to form one
organic whole, are of the same essential type as germ cells
and unicellular organisms, although the parallelism is more
close between the unicellular organism and the germ cell.
The germ cell, like the protist, is equipped with all the poten-
tialities of life, whereas tissue cells are specialized for one
function rather than another. The protist is a generalized and
physiologically-balanced cell, one which performs all the vital
functions, and in which the suppression of one function leads
to the destruction of all the rest; while the tissue cell is a
specialized and physiologically-unbalanced cell limited to a
single function, with the other vital functions in abeyance
(though capable of manifesting themselves under certain cir-

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 137

cumstances). Normally, therefore, the tissue cell is function-
ally incomplete, a part and not a whole, whereas the protist
is an independent individual, being, at once, the highest type
of cell and the lowest type of organism.

According to the classic definition of Franz Leydig and Max
Schultze, the cell is a mass of protoplasm containing a nucleus,
both protoplasm and nucleus arising through division of the
corresponding elements of a preexistent cell. In this form the
definition is quite general and applies to all cells, whether
tissue cells, germ cells, or unicellular organisms. Moreover, it
embodies two principles which still further determine the law
of genetic cellular continuity, namely: Omnis cellula ex cellula,
enunciated by Virchow in 1855, and Flemming's principle:
Omnis nucleus ex nucleo, proclaimed in 1882. In this way,
Cytology supplemented Redi's formula that every living being
is from a preexistent living being, by adding two more ar-
ticles, namely, that every living cell is from a preexistent cell,
and every new cellular nucleus is derived by division from a
preexistent cellular nucleus. Now neither the nucleus nor the
cell-body (the cytoplasm or extranuclear area of the cell) is
capable of an independent existence. The cytoplasm of the
severed nerve fibre, when it fails to reestablish its connection
with the neuron nucleus, degenerates. The enucleated amceba,
though capable of such vital functions as depend upon destruc-
tive metabolism, can do nothing which involves constructive
metabolism, and is, therefore, doomed to perish. The sperm
cell, which is a nucleus that has sloughed off most of its cyto-
plasm, disintegrates, unless it regains a haven in the cytoplasm
of the egg. Life, accordingly, cannot subsist in a unit more
simply organized than the cell. No organism lives which is
simpler than the cell, and the origin of all higher forms of life
is reducible, as we shall see, to the origin of the cell. Conse-
quently, new life can originate in no other way than by a
process of cell-division. All generation or reproduction of new
life is dependent upon the division of the cell-body and nucleus
of a preexistent living cell.

138 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Haeckel, it is true, has attempted to question the status
of the cell as the simplest of organisms, by alleging the exist-
ence of cytodes (non-nucleated cells) among the bacteria and
the blue-green algae. Further study, however, has shown that
bacteria and blue-green algae have a distributed nucleus, like
that of certain ciliates, such as Dileptus gigas and Trachelo-
cerca. In such forms the entire cell body is filled with scat-
tered granules of chromatin called chromioles, and this diffuse
type of nucleus seems to be the counterpart of the concentrated
nuclei found in the generality of cells. At any rate, there is
a temporary aggregation of the chromioles at critical stages in
the life-cycle (such as cell-division), and these scattered
chromatin granules undergo division, although their distribu-
tion to the daughter-cells is not as regular as that obtaining
in mitosis. All this is strongly suggestive of their nuclear na-
ture, and cells with distributed nuclei cannot, therefore, be
classified as cytodes. In fact, the polynuclear condition is by
no means uncommon. Paramoecium aurelia, for example, has
a macronucleus and a micronucleus, and the Uroleptus mohilis
has eight macronuclei and from two to four micronuclei. The
difference between the polynuclear and diffuse condition seems
to be relatively unimportant. In fact, the distributed nucleus
differs from the morphological nucleus mainly in the absence of
a confining membrane. From the functional standpoint, the two
structures are identical. Hence the possession of a nucleus or
its equivalent is, to all appearances, a universal characteristic
of cells. Haeckel's ''cytodes" have proved to be purely imag-
inary entities. The verdict of modern cytologists is that
Shultze's definition of the cell must stand, and that the status
of the cell as the simplest of organic units capable of inde-
pendent existence is established beyond the possibility of
prudent doubt.

With the progressive refinement of microscopic technique,
it has become apparent that the law of genetic continuity ap-
plies not merely to the cell as a whole and to its major parts,
the nucleus and the cell-body, but also to the minor com-

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 139

ponents or organelles, which are seen to be individually self-
perpetuating by means of growth and division. The typical cell
nucleus, as is well known, is a spherical vesicle containing
a semisolid, diphasic network of basichromatin (formerly
"chromatin") and oxychromatin (linin) suspended in more
fluid medium or ground called nuclear sap. When the cell is
about to divide, the basichromatin resolves itself into a defi-
nite number of short threads called chromosomes. Now,
Boveri found that, in the normal process of cell-division known
as mitosis, these nuclear threads or chromosomes are each
split lengthwise and divided into two exactly equivalent halves,
the resulting halves being distributed in equal number to the
two daughter-cells produced by the division of the original
cell. Hence, in the year 1903, Boveri added a fourth article
to the law of genetic vital continuity, namely: Omne chromo-
soma ex chromosomate.

But the law in question applies to cytoplasmic as well as
nuclear components. In physical appearance, the cell-body or
cytoplasm resembles an emulsion with a clear semiliquid ex-
ternal phase called hyaloplasm and an internal phase consist-
ing mainly of large spheres called macrosomes and minute
particles called microsomes, all of which, together with
numerous other formed bodies, are suspended in the clear
hyaloplasm (hyaline ground-substance). Now certain of
these cytoplasmic components have long been known to be
self-perpeticating by means of growth and division, main-
taining their continuity from cell to cell. The plas-
tids of plant cells, for example, divide at the time of cell-
division, although their distribution to the daughter-cells does
not appear to be as definite and regular as that which obtains
in the case of the chromosomes. Similarly, the centrioles or
division-foci of animal cells are self-propagating by division,
but here the distribution to the daughter-cells is exactly equiva-
lent and not at random as in the case of plastids. In the
light of recent research it looks as though two other types of
cytoplasmic organelles must be added to the list of cellular

140 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

components, which are individually self-perpetuating by
growth and division, namely, the chondriosomes and the Golgi
bodies — "both mitochondria and Golgi bodies are able to
assimilate, grow, and divide in the cytoplasm." (Gatenby.)
Wilson is of opinion that the law of genetic continuity may
have to be extended even to those minute granules and par-
ticles of the cytosome, which were formerly thought to arise
de novo in the apparently structureless hyaloplasm. Speaking
of the emulsified appearance of the starfish and sea urchin
eggs, he tells us that their protoplasm shows ''a structure some-
what like that of an emulsion, consisting of innumerable
spheroidal bodies suspended in a clear continuous basis or
hyaloplasm. These bodies are of two general orders of mag-
nitude, namely: larger spheres or macrosomes rather closely
crowded and fairly uniform in size, and much smaller micro-
somes irregularly scattered between the macrosomes, and
among these are still smaller granules that graduate in size
down to the limit of vision with any power {i.e. of micro-
scope) we may employ." {Science, March 9, 1923, p. 282.)
Now, the limit of microscopic vision by the use of the highest-
power oil-immersion objectives is one-half the length of the
shortest waves of visible light, that is, about 200 submicrons
(the submicron being one millionth of a millimeter). Par-
ticles whose diameter is less than this cannot reflect a wave
of light, and are, therefore, invisible so far as the micro-
scope is concerned. By the aid of the ultramicroscope, how-
ever, we are enabled to see the halos formed by particles not
more than four submicrons in diameter, which, however, repre-
sents the limit of the ultramicroscope, and is the diameter hy-
pothetically assigned to the protein multimolecule. Since,
therefore, we find the particles in the protoplasm of the cell
body graduating all the way down to the limit of this latter
instrument, and since on the very limit of microscopic vision
we find such minute particles as the centrioles "capable of
self-perpetuation by growth and division, and of enlargement
to form much larger bodies," we cannot ignore the possibility

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 141

that the ultramicroscopic particles may have the same powers
and may be the sources or '^ formative foci" of the larger
formed bodies, which were hitherto thought to arise de novo.

Certainly, pathology, as we shall see, tells us of ultramicro-
scopic disease-germs, which are capable of reproduction and
maintenance of a specific type, and experimental genetics
makes us aware of a linear alignment of submicroscopic
genes in the nuclear chromosomes, each gene undergoing peri-
odic division and perpetual transmission from generation to
generation. The cytologist, therefore, to quote the words of
Wilson, "cannot resist the evidence that the appearance of
a simple homogeneous colloidal substance is deceptive; that
it is in reality a complex, heterogeneous, or polyphasic sys-
tem. He finds it difficult to escape the conclusion, there-
fore, that the visible and the invisible components of the
protoplasmic system differ only in their size and degree of
dispersion; that they belong to a single continuous series,
and that the visible structure of protoplasm may give us
a rough magnified picture of the invisible." {Ibidem, p. 283.)

It would seem, therefore, that we must restore to honor, as
the fifth article of the law of cellular continuity, the formula,
which Richard Altmann enunciated on purely speculative
grounds in 1892, but which the latest research is beginning to
place on a solid factual basis, namely: Omne granulum ex
granulo. 'Tor my part," says the great cytologist, Wilson, "I
am disposed to accept the probability that many of these parti-
cles, as if they were submicroscopical plastids, may have a
persistent identity, perpetuating themselves by growth and
multiplication without loss of their specific individual type."
And he adds that the facts revealed by experimental em-
bryology {e.g., the existence of differentiated zones of spe-
cific composition in the cytoplasm of certain eggs) "drive
us to the conclusion that the submicroscopical components
of the hyaloplasm are segregated and distributed according
to an ordered system." {Ibidem, p. 283.) The structure of
the cell has often been likened to a heterogeneous solution,

142 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

that is, to a complex polyphasic colloidal system, but this
power of perpetual division and orderly assortment pos-
sessed by the cell as a whole and by its single components
is the unique property of the living protoplasmic system,
and is never found in any of the colloidal systems known
to physical chemistry, be they organic or inorganic.

Cells, then, originate solely by division of preexistent cells
and even the minor components of the cellular system origi-
nate in like fashion, namely: by division of their respective
counterparts in the preexistent living cell. Here we have
the sum and substance of the fivefold law of genetic con-
tinuity, whose promulgation has relegated the hypothesis of
spontaneous generation to the realms of empty speculation.
Waiving the possibility of an a 'priori argument, by which
abiogenesis might be positively excluded, there remains this
one consideration, which alone is scientifically significant,
that, so far as observation goes and induction can carry us,
the living cell has absolute need of a vital origin and can
never originate by the exclusive agency of the physico-
chemical forces native to inorganic matter. If organic life
exists in simpler terms than the cell, science knows nothing
of it, and no observed process, simple or complicated, of
inorganic nature, nor any artificial synthesis of the labora-
tory, however ingenious, has ever succeeded in duplicating
the wonders of the simplest living cell.

§ 3. Chemical Theories of the Ori^n of Life

In fact, the very notion of a chemical synthesis of living
matter is founded on a misconception. It would, indeed, be
rash to set limits to the chemist's power of synthesizing
organic compounds, but living protoplasm is not a single
chemical compound. Rather it is a complex system of com-
pounds, enzymes and organelles, coordinated and integrated
into an organized whole by a persistent principle of unity
and finality. Organic life, to say nothing at all of its unique
dynamics^ is a morphological as well as a chemical problem;

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 143

and, while it is conceivable that the chemist might syn-
thesize all the compounds found in dead protoplasm, to
reproduce a single detail of the ultramicroscopic structure
of a living cell lies wholly beyond his power and province.
"Long ago," says Wilson (in the already quoted address on
the "Physical Basis of Life"), "it became perfectly plain that
what we call protoplasm is not chemically a single substance.
It is a mixture of many substances, a mixture in high degree
complex, the seat of varied and incessant transformations,
yet one which somehow holds fast for countless generations
to its own specific type. The evidence from every source
demonstrates that the cell is a complex organism, a micro-
cosm, a living system." {Science, March 9, 1923, p. 278.)
With the chemist, analysis must precede synthesis, and
it is only after a structural formula has been determined
by means of quantitative analysis supplemented by analogy
and comparison, that a given compound can be successfully
synthesized. But living protoplasm and its structures elude
such analysis. Intravitous staining is inadequate even as a
means of qualitative analysis, and tests of a more drastic
nature destroy the life and organization, which they seek
to analyze. "With one span," says Ame Pictet, Professor
of Chemistry at the University of Geneva, "we will now
bridge the entire distance separating the first products of
plant assimilation from its final product, namely, living
matter. And it should be understood at the outset that I
employ this term 'living matter' only as an abbreviation,
and to avoid long circumlocution. You should not, in reality,
attribute life to matter itself; it has not, it cannot have both
living molecules and dead molecules. Life requires an or-
ganization, which is that of cellular structure, but it remains,
in contradistinction to it, outside the domain of strict chem-
istry. It is none the less true that the content of a living
cell must differ in its chemical nature from the content of
a dead cell. It is entirely from this point of view that the
phenomenon of life pertains to my subject. ... A living

144 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

cell, both in its chemical composition and in its morphologi-
cal structure, is an organism of extraordinary complexity.
The protoplasm that it incloses is a mixture of very diverse
substances. But if there be set aside on the one hand those
substances which are in the process of assimilation and on
the other those which are the by-products of nutrition, and
which are in the process of elimination, there remain the
protein or albuminous substances, and these must be con-
sidered, if not the essential factor of life, at least the theater
of its manifestations. . . . Chemistry, however, is totally
ignorant, or nearly so, of the constitution of living albumen,
for chemical methods of investigation at the very outset kill
the living cell. The slightest rise in temperature, contact
with the solvent, the very powerful effect of even the mildest
reactions cause the transformation that needs to be pre-
vented, and the chemist has nothing left but dead albumen."
(Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1916, pp. 208, 209.)

Chemical analysis associated with physical analysis by
means of the polariscope, spectroscope, x-rays, ultramicro-
scope, etc. is extremely useful in determining the structure
of inorganic units like the atom and the molecule. Both,
too, throw valuable light on the problem of the structure of
non-living multimolecules such as the crystal units of crystal-
loids and the ultramicrons of colloids, but they furnish no
clue to the submicroscopical morphology of the living cell.
Such methods do not enable us to examine anything more
than the "physical substrate" of life, and that, only after it
has been radically altered; for it is not the same after life
has flown. At all events, the integrating principle, the forma-
tive determinant, which binds the components of living pro-
toplasm into a unitary system, which makes of them a single
totality instead of a mere sum or fortuitous aggregate of
disparate and uncoordinated factors, and which gives to
them a determinate and persistent specificity that can hold
its own amid a perpetual fluxion of matter and continual flow
of energy, this is forever inaccessible to the chemist, and con-

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 146

stitutes a phenomenon of which the inorganic world affords no
parallel:

With these facts in mind, we can hardly fail to be amused
whenever certain simple chemical reactions obtained in vitro
are hailed as ''clue to the origin of life." When it was found,
for instance, that, under certain conditions, an aldehyde
(probably formaldehyde) is formed in a colloidal solution of
chlorophyll in water, if exposed to sunlight, the discovery
gave rise to Bach's formaldehyde-hypothesis; for Alexis Bach
saw in this reaction "a first step in the origin of life." As for-
maldehyde readily undergoes aldol condensation into a syrupy
fluid called formose, when a dilute aqueous solution of for-
maldehyde is saturated with calcium hydroxide and allowed
to stand for several days, there was no difficulty in conceiving
the transition from formaldehyde to the carbohydrates; for
formose is a mixture containing several hexose sugars, and
Fischer has succeeded in isolating therefrom acrose, a simple
sugar having the same formula as glucose, namely: CsHioOs.
Glyceraldehyde undergoes a similar condensation. In view
of these facts, carbohydrate-production in green plants was
interpreted as a photosynthesis of these substances from water
and carbon dioxide, with chlorophyll acting a sensitizer to
absorb the radiant energy necessary for the reaction. The
first step in the process was thought to be a reduction of
carbonic acid to formic acid and then to formaldehyde, the
latter being at once condensed into glucose, which in turn
was supposed to be dehydrated and polymerized into starch.
From the carbohydrates thus formed and the nitrates of the
soil the plant could then synthesize proteins, while oxidation
of the carbohydrates into fatty acids would lead to the forma-
tion of fats. Hence Bach regarded the formation of formal-
dehyde in the presence of water, carbon dioxide, chlorophyll,
and sunlight as the "first step in the production of life."
Bateson, however, does not find the suggestion a very
helpful one, and evaluates it at its true worth in the following
contemptuous aside: "We should be greatly helped," he says,

146 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

*'by some indication as to whether the origin of life has been
single or multiple. Modern opinion is, perhaps, inclined to
the multiple theory, but we have no real evidence. Indeed,
the problem still stands outside the range of scientific
investigation, and when we hear the spontaneous formation
of formaldehyde mentioned as a possible first step in the
origin of life, we think of Harry Lauder in the character of
a Glasgow schoolboy pulling out his treasures from his pocket
— "That's a wassher — for makkin' motor cars.'' ('Tresi-
dential Address," cf. Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1915, p. 375.)

Bach, moreover, takes it for granted that the formation
of formaldehyde is really the first step in the synthesis per-
formed by the green plant, and he claims that formaldehyde
is formed when carbon dioxide is passed through a solution
of a salt of uranium in the presence of sunlight. Fenton
makes a similar claim in the case of magnesium, asserting
that traces of formaldehyde are discernible when metallic
magnesium is immersed in water saturated with carbon di-
oxide. But at present it begins to look as though the spon-
taneous formation and condensation of formaldehyde had
nothing to do with the process that actually occurs in green
plants. Certain chemists, while admitting that an aldehyde
is formed when chlorophyll, water, and air are brought to-
gether in the presence of sunlight, deny that the aldehyde in
question is formaldehyde, and they also draw attention to
the fact that this aldehyde may be formed in an atmosphere
entirely destitute of carbon dioxide. In fact, the researches
conducted by Willstatter and Stoll, and later (in 1916) by
Jorgensen and Kidd tend to discredit the common notion that
carbohydrate-production in plants is the result of a direct
union of water and carbon dioxide. Botany textbooks still
continue to parrot the traditional view. We cannot any
longer, however, be sure but that the term photosynthesis
may be a misnomer.

Carbohydrate- formation in plants seems to be more anal-
ogous to carbohydrate- formation in animals than was for-

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 147

merly thought to be the case. In animals, as is well known,
glycogen or animal starch is formed not by direct synthesis,
but by deamination and reduction of proteins. In a similar
way, it is thought that the production of carbohydrates in
plants may be due to a breaking down of the phytyl ester
in chlorophyll, the chromogen group functioning (under the
action of light) alternately as a dissociating enzyme in the
formation of sugars and a synthesizing enzyme in the recon-
struction of chlorophyll. Phytol is an unsaturated alcohol
obtained when chlorophyll is saponified by means of caustic
alkalis. Its formula is C20H39OH, and chlorophyll consists of
a chromogen group containing magnesium (MgN4C32H3oO)
united to a diester of phytyl and methyl alcohols.

Experimental results are at variance with the theory that
chlorophyll acts as a sensitizer in bringing about a reduction
of carbonic acid, after the analogy of eosin, which in the
presence of light accelerates the decomposition of silver salts
on photographic plates. Willstatter found that, when a col-
loidal solution of the pure extract of chlorophyll in water is
exposed to sunlight and an atmosphere consisting of carbon
dioxide exclusively, no formaldehyde is formed, but the
chlorophyll is changed into yellow phseophytin owing to the
removal of the magnesium from the chromogen group by the
action of the carbonic acid. Jorgensen, on the other hand,
discovered that in an atmosphere of pure oxygen, formal-
dehyde is formed, apparently by the splitting off and re-
duction of the phytyl ester of chlorophyll. Soon, however,
the formaldehyde is oxidized to formic acid, which replaces
the chlorophyllic magnesium with hydrogen, thus causing
the green chlorophyll to degenerate into yellow phseophytin
and finally to lose its color altogether. The dissociation of
the chromogen group may be due to the fact that the reaction
takes place in vitro, and may not occur in the living plant.
At all events, it would seem that plants, like animals, manu-
facture carbohydrates by a destructive rather than a con-
structive process, and that water and carbon dioxide serve

148 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

rather as materials for the regeneration of chlorophyll than
as materials out of which sugars are directly synthesized.

A new theory has been proposed by Dr. Oskar Baudisch,
who seems to have sensed the irrelevance of the formaldehyde
hypothesis, and to have sought another solution in connection
with the chromogen group of chlorophyll. He finds a more
promising starting-point in formaldoxime, which, he claims,
readily unites with such metals as magnesium and iron and
with formaldehyde, in the presence of light containing ultra-
violet rays, to form organic compounds analogous to the
chromogen complexes in chlorophyll and haemoglobin. Oximes
are compounds formed by the condensation of one molecule
of an aldehyde with one molecule of hydroxylamine
(NH2OH) and the elimination of a molecule of water. Hence
Dr. Baudisch imagines that, given formaldoxime (HaCiN'GH),
magnesium, and ultra-violet rays, we might expect a spon-
taneous formation of chlorophyll leading eventually to the
production of organic life. "It is his theory that life may
have been caused through the direct action of sunlight upon
water, air, and carbon dioxide in the ancient geologic past
when, he believes, sunlight was more intense and contained
more ultra-violet light and the air contained more water
vapor and carbon dioxide than at the present time." {Sci-
ence, April 6, 1923, Supplement XII.)

This is the old Spencerian evasion, the fatuous appeal to
"conditions unlike those we know," the unverified and un-
verifiable assumption that an unknown past must have been
more favorable to spontaneous generation than the known
present. In archseozoic times, the temperature was higher,
the partial pressure of atmospheric carbon dioxide greater,
the percentage of ultra-violet rays in sunlight larger. Such
contentions are interesting, if true, but, for all that, they
may, "like the flowers that bloom in the spring," have noth-
ing to do with the case. Nature does not, and the laboratory
cannot, reproduce the conditions which are said to have brought
about the spontaneous generation of formaldoxime and its pro-

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 149

gressive transmutation into phycocyanin, chlorophyll and the
blue-green algae. What value, then, have these conjectures?
If it be the function of natural science to discount actualities
in favor of possibilities, to draw arguments from ignorance,
and to accept the absence of disproof as a substitute for
demonstration, then the expedient of invoking the unknown
in support of a speculation is scientifically legitimate. But,
if the methods of science are observation and induction, if
it proceeds according to the principle of the uniformity of
nature, and does not utterly belie its claim of resting upon
factual realities rather than the figments of fancy, then all
this hypothecation, which is so flagrantly at variance with
the actual data of experience and the unmistakable trend of
inductive reasoning, is not science at all, but sheer credulity
and superstition.

When we ask by what right men of science presume to
lift the veil of mystery from a remote past, which no one
has observed, we are told that the justification of this pro-
cedure is the principle of the uniformity of nature or the
invariability of natural laws. Nature's laws are the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever. Hence the scientist, who
wishes to penetrate into the unknown past, has only to "pro-
long the methods of nature from the present into the past."
(Tyndall.) If we reject the soundness of this principle, we
automatically cut ourselves off from all certainty regarding
that part of the world's history which antecedes human ob-
servation. Either nature's laws change, or they do not. If
they never change, then Spontaneous Generation is quite as
much excluded from the past as it is from the present. If,
however, as Hamann and Fechner explicitly maintain, nature's
laws do change, then, obviously, no knowledge whatever is
possible respecting the past, since it is solely upon the as-
sumption of the immutable constancy of such laws that we
can venture to reconstruct prehistory.

The puerile notion that the synthesis of organic substances
in the laboratory furnishes a clue to the origin of organic

150 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

life on earth is due to a confusion of organic, with living
and organized, substances. It is only in the production of
organic substances that the chemist can vie with the plant
or animal. These are lifeless and unorganized carbon com-
pounds, which are termed organic because they are elabo-
rated by living organisms as a metaplastic by-product of
their metabolism. Such substances, however, are not to be
confounded with animate matter, e.g. a living cell and its
organelles, or even with organized matter, e.g. dead proto-
plasm. These the chemist cannot duplicate; for vitality and
organization, as we have seen, are things that elude both
his analysis and his synthesis. Even with respect to the pro-
duction of organic substances, the parallelism between the
living cell and the chemical laboratory is far from being a
perfect one. Speaking of the metaplastic or organic products
of cells, Benjamin Moore says: "Most of these are so com-
plex that they have not yet been synthesized by the organic
chemist; nay, even of those that have been synthesized, it
may be remarked that all proof is wanting that the syntheses
have been carried out in identically the same fashion and by
the employment of the same forms of energy in the case of
the cell as in the chemist's laboratory. The conditions in
the cell are widely different, and at the temperature of the
cell and with such chemical materials as are at hand in the
cell no such organic syntheses have been artificially carried
out by the forms of energy extraneous to living tissue." ("Re-
cent Advances in Physiology and Bio-Chemistry," p. 10.) Be
that as it may, however, the prospect of a laboratory syn-
thesis of an organic substance like chlorophyll affords no
ground whatever for expecting a chemical synthesis of living
matter. The chlorophyllic tail is inadequate to the task of
wagging the dog of organic life. In this connection, Yves
Delage's sarcastic comment on Schaaffhausen's theory is
worthy of recall. The latter had suggested (in 1892) that life
was initiated by a chemical reaction, in which water, air, and
mineral salts united under the influence of light and heat

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 151

to produce a colorless Protococcus, which subsequently ac-
quired chlorophyll and became a Protococcus viridis. "If
the affair is so simple," writes Delage, "why does not the
author produce a few specimens of this protococcus in his
laboratory? We will gladly supply him with the necessary
chlorophyll." ("La structure du protoplasma et les theories
sur I'heredite," p. 402.)

Another consideration, which never appears to trouble the
visionaries who propound theories of this sort, is the fact
that the inert elements and blind forces of inorganic nature
are, if left to themselves, utterly impotent to duplicate even
so much as the feats of the chemical laboratory, to say noth-
ing at all of the more wonderful achievements possible only
to living organisms. In the laboratory, the physicochemical
forces of the mineral world are coordinated, regulated, and
directed by the guiding intelligence of the chemist. In that
heterogeneous conglomerate, which we call brute matter, no
such guiding principle exists, and the only possible automatic
results are those which the fortuitous concurrence of blind
factors avails to produce. Chance of this kind may vie with
art in the production of relatively simple combinations or
systems, but where the conditions are as complex as those,
which the synthesis of chlorophyll presupposes, chance is
impotent and regulation absolutely imperative. How much
more is this true, when there is question of the production
of an effect so complicatedly telic as the living organism I
"I venture to think," says Sir William Tilden, in a letter
to the London Times (Sept. 10, 1912), "that no chemist will
be prepared to suggest a process^ by which, from the inter-
action of such materials (viz., inorganic substances), anything
approaching a substance of the nature of a proteid could be
formed or, if by a complex series of changes a compound of
this kind were conceivably produced, that it would present
the characters of living protoplasm." In the concluding sen-
tence of his letter, the great chemist seems to deprecate even
the discussion of a chemical synthesis of living matter, whether

152 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

spontaneous or artificial. "Far be it from any man of science,"
he says, "to affirm that any given set of phenomena is not a fit
subject of inquiry and that there is any limit to what may be
revealed in answer to systematic and well-directed investiga-
tion. In the present instance, however, it appears to me that
this is not a field for the chemist nor one in which chem-
istry is likely to afford any assistance whatever." In any
case, the idea that a chaos of unassorted elements and un-
directed forces could succeed where the skill of the chemist
fails is preposterous. No known or conceivable process, or
group of processes, at work in inorganic nature, is equal to
the task. Chance is an explanation only for minds insensible
to the beauty and order of organic life.

Darwin inoculated biological science with this Epicurean
metaphysics, when, in his "Origin of Species," he ascribed
discriminating and selective powers of great delicacy and
precision to the blind factors of a heterogeneous and variable
environment. He compared natural selection to artificial se-
lection, and in so doing, he was led astray by a false impli-
cation of his own analogy — "I have called this principle,"
he says, "by which each slight variation, if useful, is pre-
served, by the term natural selection, in order to mark its
relation to man's power of selection." ("Origin of Species,"
6th ed., c. Ill, p. 58.) Having likened the unintelligent and
fortuitous selection and elimination exercised by the environ-
ment to the intelligent and purposive selection and elimination
practiced by animal breeders and horticulturists, he pressed
the analogy to the unwarranted extent of attributing to a
blind, lifeless, and impersonal aggregate of minerals, liquids,
and gases superhuman powers of discretion. To preserve
even the semblance of parity, he ought first to have expur-
gated the process of artificial selection by getting rid of the
element of human intelligence, which lurks therein, and viti-
ates its parallelism with the unconscious and purposeless
havoc wrought at random by the blind and uncoordinated
agencies of the environment. If inorganic nature were a vast

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 153

and multifarious mold, a preformed sieve with holes of differ-
ent sizes, a separator for sorting coins of various denomina-
tions, Darwin's idea would be,, in some degree, defensible,
but this would only transfer the problem of cosmic order
and intelligence from the organism to the environment. As
a matter of fact, the mechanism of the environment is far
too simple in its structure and too general in its influence
to account for the complexities and specificities of organisms,
that is, for the morphology and specific differences of plants
and animals. Hence the selective work of the environment is
negligible in the positive sense, and consists, for the most
part, in a tendency to eliminate the abnormal and the sub-
normal. On the other hand, the environment as well as the
organism is fundamentally teleological, and the environ-
mental mechanism, though simple and general, is neverthe-
less expressly preadapted for the maintenance of organic life.
Henderson, the bio-chemist of Harvard, has shown conclu-
sively, in his "Fitness of the Environment" (1913), that the
environment itself has been expressly selected with this final-
ity in view, and that the inorganic world, while not the active
cause, is, nevertheless, the preordained complement of or-
ganic life.

Simple constructions may, indeed, be due to pure accident
as well as deliberate art, inasmuch as they presuppose but few
and easy conditions. Complex constructions, on the contrary,
provided they be systematic and not chaotic, are not pro-
ducible by accident, but only by art, because they require
numerous and complicated conditions. Operating individu-
ally, the unconscious factors of inorganic nature can produce
simple and homogeneous constructions such as crystals. Op-
erating in uncoordinated concurrence with one another, these
blind and unrelated agencies produce complex chaotic for-
mations such as mountains and islands, mere heterogeneous
conglomerates, destitute of any determinate size, shape, or
symmetry, constructions in which every single item and detail
is the result of factors each of which is independent of the

154 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

other. In short, the efficacy of the unconscious and unco-
ordinated physicochemical factors of inorganic nature is lim-
ited to fortuitous results, which serve no purpose, embody
no intelligible law, convey no meaning nor idea, and afford no
sesthetic satisfaction, being mere aggregates or sums rather than
natural units and real totalities. But it does not extend to the
production of complex systematic formations such as living or-
ganisms or human artefacts. Left to itself, therefore, inor-
ganic nature might conceivably duplicate the simplest arte-
facts such as the chipped flints of the savage, and it might
also construct a complex heterogeneous chaos of driftwood,
mud, and sand like the Great Raft of the Red River, but
it would be utterly impotent to construct a complicated telic
system comparable to an animal, a clock, or even an organic
compound, like chlorophyll.

In this connection, it is curious to note how extremely
myopic the scientific materialist can be, when there is ques-
tion of recognizing a manifestation of Divine intelligence in
the stupendous teleology of the living organism, and how in-
credibly lynx-eyed he becomes, when there is question of de-
tecting evidences of human intelligence in the eoliths alleged
to have been the implements of a "Tertiary Man." In the
latter case, he is never at a loss to determine the precise
degree of chipping, at which an eolith ceases to be inter-
pretable as the fortuitous product of unconscious processes,
and points infallibly to the intelligent authorship of man, but
he grows strangely obtuse to the psychic implications of
teleology, when it comes to explaining the symmetry of a
starfish or the beauty of a Bird of Paradise.

In conclusion, it is clear that the hypothesis of a spon-
taneous origin of organic life from inorganic matter has in
its favor neither factual evidence nor aprioristic probability,
but is, on the contrary, ruled out of court by the whole force
of the scientific principle of induction. To recapitulate, there
are no sub-cellular organisms, and all cellular organisms (which
is the same as saying, all organisms), be they unicellular or

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 155

multicellular, originate exclusively by reproduction, that is,
by generation from living parents of the same organic type or
species. This is the law of genetic vital continuity, which, by
the way, Aristotle had formulated long before Harvey, when he
said: "It appears that all living beings come from a germ, and
the germ from parents." ("De Generatione Animalium," lib. I,
cap. 17.) All reproduction, however, is reducible to a process
of cell-division. That such is the case with unicellular or-
ganisms is evident from the very definition of a cell. That
it is also true of multicellular organisms can be shown by
a review of the various forms of reproduction occurring among
plants and animals.

§ 4. Reproduction and Rejuvenation

Reproduction, the sole means by which the torch of life
is relayed from generation to generation, the exclusive process
by which living individuals arise and races are perpetuated,
consists in the separation of a germ from the parent organ-
ism as a physical basis for the development of a new organ-
ism. The germ thus separated may be many-celled or one-
celled, as we shall see presently, but the separated cells, be
they one or many, have their common and exclusive source in
the process of mitotic cell-division. In a few cases, this di-
visional power or energy of the cell seems to be perennial
by virtue of an inherent inexhaustibility. In most cases,
however, it is perennial by virtue of a restorative process
involving nuclear reorganization. In the former cases, which
are exceptional, the cellular stream of life appears to flow
onward forever with steady current, but as a general rule it
ebbs and flows in cycles, which involve a periodic rise and
fall of divisional energy. The phenomena of the life-cycle
are characteristic of most, perhaps all, organisms. The com-
plete life-cycle consists of three phases or periods, namely:
an 'adolescent period of high vitality, a mature period of
balanced metabolism, and a senescent period of decline. Each
life-cycle begins with the germination of the new organism

156 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

and terminates with its death, and it is reproduction which
constitutes the connecting link between one life-cycle and
another.

Reproduction, as previously intimated, is mainly of two
kinds, namely: somatogenic reproduction, which is less gen-
eral and confined to the metists, and cytogenic reproduction,
which is common to metists and protists, and which is the
ordinary method by which new organisms originate. Repro-
duction is termed somatogenic, when the germ separated from
the body of the parent consists of a whole mass of somatic
or tissue cells not expressly set aside and specialized for
reproductive purposes. Reproduction is termed cytogenic,
when the germ separated from the parent or parents consists
of a single cell (e.g. a spore, gamete, or zygote) dedicated
especially to reproductive purposes.

Cytogenic reproduction may be either nonsexual (agamic)
or sexual, according as the cell which constitutes the germ is
an agamete or a gamete. An agamete is a germ cell not
specialized for union with another complementary cell, or,
in other words, it is a reproductive cell incapable of syngamy,
e.g. a spore. A gamete, on the other hand, is a reproductive
cell (germ cell) specialized for the production of a zygote
(a synthetic or diploid germ cell) by union with a comple-
mentary cell, e.g. an egg, or a sperm.

Nonsexual cytogenic reproduction is of three kinds, ac-
cording to the nature of the agamete. When a unicellular
organism gives rise to two new individuals by simple cell-
division, we have fissiparation or binary fission. When a
small cell or bud is formed and separated by division from
a larger parent cell, we have budding (gemmation) or un-
equal fission. When the nucleus of the parent cell divides
many times to form a number of daughter-nuclei, which
then partition the cytoplasm of the parent cell among them-
selves so as to form a large number of reproductive cells
called spores, we have what is known as sporulation or
multiple fission. The first and second kind of nonsexual

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 157

reproduction are confined to the protists, but the third kind

(sporulation) also occurs among the metists.

Seyial cytogenic reproduction is based upon gametes or
mating germ cells. Since complementary gametes are spe-
cialized for union with each other to form a single synthetic
cell, the zygote, the number of their nuclear threads or chro-
mosomes is reduced to one half (the haploid number) at the
time of maturation, so that the somatic or tissue cells of the
parent organism have double the number (the diploid num-
her) of chromosomes present in the reduced or mature gametes.
Hence, when the gametes unite to form a zygote, summation
is prevented and the diploid number of chromosomes char-
acteristic of the given species of plant or animal is simply
restored by the process of syngamy or union. The process
by which the number of chromosomes is reduced in gametes
is called meiosis, and, among the metists, it is distinct from
syngamy, which, in their case, is a separate process called
fertilization. Among the protists, we have, besides fertiliza-
tion, another type of syngamy called conjugation, which
combines meiosis with fertilization.

In sexual reproduction, we have three kinds of gametes,
namely: isogametes, anisogametes, and heterogametes. In
the type of sexual reproduction known as isogamy, the com-
plementary gametes are exactly alike both in size and shape.
There is no division of labor between them. Each of the
fusing gametes is equally fitted for the double function which
they must perform, namely, the kinetic function, which en-
ables them to reach each other and unite by means of move-
ment, and the trophic function which consists in laying up
a store of food for the sustenance of the developing embryo.
In anisogamy, the complementary gametes are alike in shape,
but unlike in size, and here we have the beginning of that
division of labor, upon which the difference of gender or sex
is based. The larger or female gamete is called a macro-
gamete. It is specialized for the trophic rather than the
kinetic function, being rendered more inert by having a large

158 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

amount of yolk or nutrient material stored up within it.
The smaller or male gamete is called a microgamete. It is
specialized for the kinetic function, since it contains less yolk
and is the more agile of the two. In anisogamy, however, the
division of labor is not complete, because both functions are
still retained by either gamete, albeit in differing measure.
In the heterogamy, the differentiation between the male and
female gametes is complete, and they differ from each other
in structure as well as size. The larger or female gamete
has no motor apparatus and retains only the trophic func-
tion. The kinetic function is sacrificed to the task of storing
up a food supply for the embryo. Such a gamete is called
a hypergamete or egg. The smaller or male gamete is known,
in this case, as a hypogamete or sperm. It has a motor
apparatus, but no stored-up nutrients, and has even sloughed
off most of its cytoplasm, in its exclusive specialization for the
motor function. In heterogamy, accordingly, the division
of labor is complete.

We may distinguish two principal kinds of sexual repro-
duction, namely: unisexual reproduction and bisexual repro-
duction. When a single gamete such as an unfertilized egg
gives rise (with, or without, chromosomal reduction) to a new
organism, we have unisexual reproduction or parthenogenesis.
Parthenogenesis from a reduced egg gives rise to an organism
having only the haploid number of chromosomes, as is the
case with the drone or male bee, but unreduced eggs give
rise to organisms having the diploid number of chromosomes.
Parthenogenesis, as we shall see presently, can, in some cases,
be induced by artificial means. When reproduction takes place
from a zygote or diploid germ cell formed by the union of two
gametes, we have what is known as bisexual reproduction or
syngamy. It is, perhaps, permissible to distinguish a third
or intermediate kind of sexual reproduction, for which we
might coin the term autosexual. What we refer to as
autosexual reproduction is usually known as autogamy,
and occurs when a diploid nucleus is formed in a germ

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 159

cell by the union (or, we might say, reunion) of two
daughter-nuclei derived from the same mother-nucleus. Au-
togamy occurs not only among the protists {e.g. Amoeba
albida), but also among the metists, as is the case with the
brine shrimp, Artemia salina, in which the diploid number
of chromosomes is restored after reduction by a reunion of
the nucleus of the second polar body with the reduced nu-
cleus of the egg. Autogamy is somewhat akin to kleistogamy,
which occurs among hermaphroditic metists of both the plant
and animal kingdoms. The violet is a well-known example.
In kleistogamy or self-fertilization, the zygote is formed
by the union of two gametes derived from the same parent
organism. Strictly speaking, however, kleistogamy is not
autogamy, but syngamy, and must, therefore, be classed as
bisexual reproduction. It is, of course, necessarily confined
to hermaphrodites.

Loeb's experiments in artificial parthenogenesis have been
sensationally misinterpreted by some as an artificial produc-
tion of life. What Jacques Loeb really did was to initiate devel-
opment in an unfertilized egg by the use of chemical and phys-
ical excitants. The writer has repeated these experiments with
the unfertilized eggs of the common sea urchin, Arbacia punc-
tulata, using very dilute butyric acid and hypertonic sea
water as stimulants. Cleavage had started within an hour
and a half after the completion of the aforesaid treatment,
and the eggs were in the gastrula stage by the following morn-
ing (9 hours later). In three days, good specimens of the
larval stage known as the pluteus could be found swimming
in the normal sea water to which the eggs had been trans-
ferred from the hypertonic solution. Since mature sea urchin
eggs undergo reduction before insemination takes place, the
larval sea urchins arising from these artificially activated
eggs had the reduced or haploid number of chromosomes in-
stead of the diploid number possessed by normal larvae arising
from eggs activated by the sperm. For, in fertilization, the
sperm not only activates the egg, but is also the means of secur-

160 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

ing biparental inheritance, by contributing its quota of chromo-
somes to the zygotic complex. Hence, it is only in the former
function, i.e. of initiating cleavage in the egg, that a chemical
excitant can replace the sperm. In any case, it is evident that
these experiments do not constitute an exception to the law of
genetic cellular continuity. The artificially activated egg comes
from the ovaries of a living female sea urchin, and in this there
is small consolation for the exponent of abiogenesis. The
terse comment of an old Irish Jesuit sizes up the situation
very aptly: "The Blue Flame Factory," he said, "has an-
nounced another discovery of the secret of life. A scientist
made an egg and hatched an egg. The only unfortunate
thing was that the egg he hatched was not the egg he made."
How an experiment of this sort could be interpreted as an
artificial production of life is a mystery. The only plausible
explanation is that given by Professor Wilson, who traces it
to the popular superstition that the egg is a lifeless substrate,
which is animated by the sperm. The idea owes its origin to
the spermists of the 17th century, who defended this doctrine
against the older school of preformationists known as ovists.
It is now, however, an embryological commonplace that egg
and sperm are both equally cellular, equally protoplasmic,
and equally vital.

The phenomena of the life-cycle in organisms find their ex-
planation in what, perhaps, is inherent in all living matter,
namely, a tendency to involution and senescence. This ten-
dency, in the absence of a remedial process of rejuvenation,
leads inevitably to death. Living matter seems to "run down"
like a clock, and to stand in similar need of a periodic "rewind-
ing." This reinvigoration of protoplasm is accomplished by
means of several different types of nuclear reorganization.
Since no nuclear reorganization occurs in somatogenic re-
production, there seem to be limits to this type of propaga-
tion. Plants, like the potato and the apple, cannot be propa-
gated indefinitely by means of tubers, shoots, stems, etc. The
stock plays out in time, and, ever and anon, recourse must

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 161

be had to seedlings. Hence a process of nuclear reorgani-
zation seems, in most cases, at least, to be essential for
the restoration of vitality and the continuance of life. Whether
this need of periodic renewal is absolutely universal, we can-
not sa5^ The banana has been propagated for over a century
by the somatogenic method, and there are a few other in-
stances in which there appears to be no limit to this type of
reproduction. Nevertheless, the tendency to decline is so
common among living beings that the rare exceptions serve
only to confirm (if they do not follow) the general rule.

In cytogenic reproduction three kinds of rejuvenation by
means of nuclear reorganization are known: (1) amphimixis
or syngamy; (2) automixis or autogamy; (3) endomixis. In
amphimixis or syngamy, two gametic (haploid) nuclei of dif-
ferent parental lineage are commingled to form the diploid
nucleus of the zygote, which is consequently of biparental ori-
gin. In automixis or autogamy, two reduced or haploid nuclei
of the same parental lineage unite to form a diploid nucleus,
the uniting nuclei being daughter-nuclei derived from a com-
mon parent nucleus. In endomixis, the nucleus of the ex-
hausted cell disintegrates and fuses with the cytoplasm, out
of which it is reformed or reconstructed as the germinal nu-
cleus of a rejuvenated cellular series. Endomixis occurs as
a periodic phenomenon among the protists, and it appears to
be homologous with parthenogenesis among metists. In cer-
tain ciliates, like the Paramoecium, endomixis and syngamy
are facultative methods of rejuvenation. This has been proved
most conclusively by Professor Calkins' work on Uroleptus
mohilis, an organism in which both endomixis and conjugation
are amenable to experimental control. Nonsexual reproduc-
tion in this protozoan (by binary fission) is attended with
a gradual weakening of metabolic activity, which increases
with each successive generation. The initial rate of di-
vision and metabolic energy can, however, be restored
either by conjugation (of two individuals), or by endomixis,
which takes place (in a single individual) during encyst-

m THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

ment. The race, however, inevitably dies out, if both
encystment and conjugation are prevented. Even in
such protists as do not exhibit the phenomenon of nuclear
reorganization through sexual reproduction, Kofoid points
to the phenomenon of alternating periods of rest and rapid
cell-division as evidence that some process of periodically-
recurrent nuclear organization must exist in the organisms,
which do not conjugate. This process of nuclear reorgani-
zation manifested by periodic spurts of renewed divisional
energy is, according to Kofoid, a more primitive mode of
rejuvenation than endomixis. "The phenomenon of endo-
mixis," he says, "appears to be somewhat more like that of
parthenogenesis than a more primitive form of nuclear re-
organization." {Science, April 6, 1923, p. 403.) At all events,
it seems safe to conclude that the tendency to senescence is
pretty general among living organisms, and that this tendency,
unless counteracted by a periodic reorganization of the nuclear
genes, results inevitably in the deterioration and final ex-
tinction of the race.

In this inexhaustible power of self-renewal inherent in all
forms of organic life, the mechanist and the upholder of
abiogenesis encounter an insuperable difficulty. In inorganic
nature, where the perpetual-motion device is a chimera, and
the law of entropy reigns in unchallenged supremacy, noth-
ing analogous to it can be found. The activity of all non-
living units of nature, from the hydrogen atom to the protein
multimolecule, is rigidly determined by the principle of the
degradation of energy. The inorganic unit cannot operate
otherwise than by externalizing and dissipating irreparably its
own energy-content. Nor is its reconstruction and replenish-
ment with energy ever again possible except through the
wasteful expenditure of energy borrowed from some more
richly endowed inorganic unit. In order to pay Paul a little,
Peter must be robbed of much. Wheresoever atoms are built
up into complex endothermic molecules, the constructive

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 163

process is rigidly dependent upon the administration thereto
of external energy, which in the process of absorption must
of necessity fall from a higher level of intensity. And when
the energy thus absorbed by the complex molecule is again
set free by combustion, it is degraded to a still lower po-
tential, from which, without external intervention, it can never
rise again to its former plane of intensity. The phenomena
of radioactivity tell the same tale. All the heavier atoms,
at least, are constantly disintegrating with a concomitant
discharge of energy. There is no compensating process, how-
ever, enabling such an atom to re-integrate and recharge itself
at stated intervals ; and, once it has broken down into its com-
ponent protons and electrons, ''not all the king's horses nor
all the king's men can ever put Humpty-Dumpty together
again." In a word, none of the inorganic units of the mineral
world exhibits that wonderful power of autonomous recupera-
tion which a unicellular ciliate manifests when it rejuvenates
itself by means of endomixis. The inorganic world knows
of no constructive process comparable to this. It is only in
living beings that we find what James Ward describes as the
"tendency to disturb existing equilibria, to reverse the dissi-
pative processes which prevail throughout the inanimate
world, to store and build up where they are ever scattering
and pulling down, the tendency to conserve individual ex-
istence against antagonistic forces, to grow and to progress,
not inertly taking the easier way but seemingly striving for
the best, retaining every vantage secured, and working for
new ones." ("On the Conservation of Energy," I, p. 285.)
Summing up, then, we have seen that the reproductive
process, whereby the metists or multicellular organism origi-
nate, resolves itself ultimately into a process of cell-division.
The same is true of the protists or unicellular organisms. For
all cells, whether they be protists, germ cells, or somatic cells,
originate in but one way, and that is, from a preexistent liv-
ing cell by means of cell-division. Neither experimentation

164 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

nor observation has succeeded in revealing so much as a single
exception to the universal law of genetic cellular continuity, and
the hypothesis of spontogenesis is outlawed, in consequence, by
the logic of scientific induction. Even the hope that future
research may bring about an amelioration of its present status
is entirely unwarranted in view of the manifest dynamic su-
periority of the living organism as compared with any of the
inert units of the inorganic world. ''Whatever position we
take on this question," says Edmund B. Wilson, in the con-
clusion of his work on the Cell, "the same difficulty is en-
countered; namely, the origin of that coordinated fitness, that
power of active adjustment between internal and external
relations, which, as so many eminent biological thinkers have
insisted, overshadows every manifestation of life. The nature
and origin of this power is the fundamental problem of biol-
ogy. When, after removing the lens of the eye in the larval
salamander, we see it restored in perfect and typical form
by regeneration from the posterior layer of the iris, we be-
hold an adaptive response to changed conditions of which
the organism can have no antecedent experience either onto-
genetic or phylogenetic, and one of so marvelous a char-
acter that we are made to realize, as by a flash how far we
still are from a solution of this problem." Then, after dis-
cussing the attempt of evolutionists to bridge the enormous
gap that separates living, from lifeless nature, he continues:
"But when all these admissions are made, and when the con-
serving action (sic) of natural selection is in the fullest de-
gree recognized, we cannot close our eyes to two facts: first,
that we are utterly ignorant of the manner in which the
idioplasm of the germ cell can so respond to the influence
of the environment as to call forth an adaptive variation;
and second, that the study of the cell has on the whole seemed
to widen rather than to narrow the enormous gap that sepa-
rates even the lowest forms of life from the inorganic world."
("The Cell," 2nd edit., pp. 433, 434.)

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 165

§ 5. A "New" Theory of Abiogenesis

Since true science is out of sympathy with baseless conjec-
tures and gratuitous assumptions, one would scarcely expect to
find scientists opposing the inductive trend of the known
facts by preferring mere possibilities (if they are even such) to
solid actualities. As a matter of fact, however, there are not
a few who obstinately refuse to abandon preconceptions for
which they can find no factual justification. The bio-chemist,
Benjamin Moore, while conceding the bankruptcy of the old
theory of spontaneous generation, which looked for a de novo
origin of living cells in sterilized cultures, has, nevertheless,
the hardihood to propose what he is pleased to term a new one.
Impressed by the credulity of Charlton Bastian and the auto-
cratic tone of Schafer, he sets out to defend as plausible the
hypothesis that the origination of life from inert matter may
be a contemporaneous, perhaps, daily, phenomenon, going
on continually, but invisible to us, because its initial stages
take place in the submicroscopic world. By the time life has
emerged into the visible world, it has already reached the
stage at which the law of genetic continuity prevails, but at
stages of organization, which lie below the limit of the micro-
scope, it is not impossible, he thinks, that abiogenesis may oc-
cur. To plausibleize this conjecture, he notes that the cell is
a natural unit composed of molecules as a molecule is a natural
unit composed of atoms. He further notes, that, in addition to
the cell, there is in nature another unit higher than the mono-
molecule, namely, the multimolecule occurring in both crystal-
loids and colloids. The monomolecule consists of atoms held
together by atomic valence, whereas the multimolecule con-
sists of molecules whose atomic valence is completely sat-
urated, and which are, consequently, held together by what
is now known as molecular or residual valence. Moore cites
the crystal units of sodium bromide and sodium iodide as in-
stances of multimolecules. The crystal unit of ordinary salt,
sodium chloride, is an ordinary monomolecule, with the for-

166 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

mula NaCl. In the case of the former salts the crystal units
consist of multimolecules of the formula NaB -(1120)2 and
Nal -(1120)2, the water of crystallization not being mechani-
cally confined in the crystals, but combined with the respec-
tive salt in the exact ratio of two molecules of water to
one of the salt. Judged by all chemical tests, such as heat
of formation, the law of combination in fixed ratios, the mani-
festation of selective affinity, etc., the multimolecule is quite
as much entitled to be considered a natural unit as is the
monomolecule.

But it is not in the crystalloidal multimolecule, but in the
larger and more complex multimolecule of colloids (viscid sub-
stances like gum arable, gelatine, agar-agar, white of egg,
etc.), that Moore professes to see a sort of intermediate be-
tween the cell and inorganic units. Such colloids form with
a dispersing medium (like water) an emulsion, in which the
dispersed particles, known as ultramicrons or "solution ag-
gregates," are larger than monomolecules. It is among these
multimolecules of colloids that Moore would have us search
for a transitional link connecting the cell with the inorganic
world. Borrowing Herbert Spencer's dogma of the compli-
cation of homogeneity into heterogeneity, he asserts that such
colloidal multimolecules would tend to become more and more
complex, and consequently more and more instable, so that
their instability would gradually approach the chronic insta-
bility or constant state of metabolic fluxion manifest in living
organisms. The end-result would be a living unit more simply
organized than the cell, and evolution seizing upon this sub-
microscopic unit would, in due time, transform it into cellular
life of every variety and kind. Ce n'est que le premier pas
qui coute!

It should be noted that this so-called law is a mere vague
formula like the *'law" of natural selection and the "law'^ of
evolution. The facts which it is alleged to express are not
cited, and its terms are far from being quantitative. It is
certainly not a law in the sense of Arrhenius, who says:

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 167

^'Quantitative formulation, that is, the establishing of a con-
nection,, expressed by a formula, between different quanti-
tatively measurable magnitudes, is the peculiar feature of a
law." ("Theories of Chemistry," Price's translation, p. 3.)
Now, chemistry, as an exact science, has no lack of laws
of this kind, but no branch of chemistry, whether physical,
organic, or inorganic, knows of any law of complexity, that
can be stated in either quantitative, or descriptive, terms.
We will, however, let Moore speak for himself:

"It may then be summed up as a general law universal in
its application to all matter, ... a law which might be
called the Law of Complexity, that matter so far as its en-
ergy environment will permit tends to assume more and more
complex forms in labile equilibrium. Atoms, molecules, col-
loids, and living organisms, arise as a result of the operations
of this law, and in the higher regions of complexity it induces
organic evolution and all the many thousands of living
forms. . . .

"In this manner we can conceive that the hiatus between
non-living and living things can be bridged over, and there
awakens in our minds the conception of a kind of spontaneous
production of life of a different order from the old. The
territory of this spontaneous generation of life lies not at
the level of bacteria, or animalculae, springing forth into life
from dead organic matter, but at a level of life lying deeper
than anything the microscope can reveal, and possessing a
lower unit than the living cell, as we form our concept of
it from the tissues of higher animals and plants.

"In the future, the stage at which colloids begin to be
able to deal with external energy forms, such as light, and
build up in chemical complexity, will yield a new unit of
life opening a vista of possibilities as magnificent as that
which the establishment of the cell as a unit gave, with the
development of the microscope, about a century ago." ("Ori-
gin and Nature of Life," pp. 188-190.)

Having heard out a rhapsody of this sort, one may be

168 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

pardoned a little impatience at such a travesty on science.
Again we have the appeal from realities to fancies, from the
seen to unseen. Moore sees no reason to doubt and is there-
fore quite sure that an unverified occurrence is taking place
"at a level of life lying deeper than anything the microscope
can reveal." The unknown is a veritable paradise for irre-
sponsible speculation and phantasy. It is well, however,
to keep one's feet on the terra firma of ascertained facts
and to make one's ignorance a motive for caution rather than
an incentive to reckless dogmatizing.

To begin with, it is not to a single dispersed particle or
ultramicron that protoplasm has been likened, but to an emul-
sion, comprising both the dispersed particles and the dispersing
medium, or, in other words, to the colloidal system as a whole.
Moreover, even there the analogy is far from being perfect, and
is confined exclusively, as Wilson has pointed out, to a rough
similarity of structure and appearance. The colloidal system
is obviously a mere aggregate and not a natural unit like the
cell, and its dispersed particles (ultramicrons) do not mul-
tiply and perpetuate themselves by growth and division as do
the living components or formed bodies of the cell. As for
the single ultramicron or multimolecule of a colloidal solu-
tion, it may, indeed, be a natural unit, but it only resembles
the cell in the sense that, like the latter, it is a complex of
constituent molecules. Here, however, all resemblance
ceases; for the ultramicron does not display the typically
vital power of self-perpetuation by growth and division, which,
as we have seen, is characteristic not only of the cell as a whole,
but of its single components or organelles. Certainly, the dis-
tinctive phenomena of colloidal systems cannot be interpreted
as processes of multiplication. There is nothing suggestive of
this vital phenomenon in the reversal of phase, which is caused
by the addition of electrolytes to oil emulsions, or in gelation,
which is caused by a change of temperature in certain hydro-
philic colloids. Thus the addition of the salt of a bivalent
cation (e.g. CaCl? or BaClg) to an oil-in-water emulsion (if

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 169

soap is used as the emulsifier) will cause the external or
continuous phase (water) to become the internal or discon-
tinuous phase. Vice versa, a water-in-oil emulsion can be
reversed into an oil-in-water emulsion, under the same con-
ditions, by the addition of the salt of a monovalent cation
{e.g. NaOH). Solutions of hydrophilic colloids, like gelatine
or agar-agar, can be made to "set" from the semifluid state
of a hydrosol into the semisolid state of a hydrogel, by low-
ering the temperature, after which the opposite effect can
be brought about by again raising the temperature. In white
of egg, however, once gelation has taken place, through the
agency of heat, it is impossible to reconvert the "gel" into a
"sol" (solution). In such phenomena, it is, perhaps, possible
to see a certain parallelism with some processes taking place
in the cell, e.g. the osmotic processes of absorption and excre-
tion, but to construe them as evidence of propagation by
growth and division would be preposterous.

Nor is the subterfuge of relegating the question to the
obscurity of the submicroscopic world of any avail; for, as
a matter of fact, submicroscopic organisms actually do exist,
and manage, precisely by virtue of this uniquely vital power
of multiplication or reproductivity, to give indirect testimony
of their invisible existence. The microorganisms, for exam-
ple, which cause the disease known as Measles are so minute
that they pass through the pores of a porcelain filter, and
are invisible to the highest powers of the microscope. Never-
theless, they can be bred in the test tube cultures of the
bacteriologist, where they propagate themselves for genera-
tions without losing the definite specificity, which make them
capable of producing distinctive pathological effects in the or-
ganisms of higher animals, including man. Each of these
invisible disease germs communicates but one disease, with
symptoms that are perfectly characteristic and definite.
Moreover, they are specific in their choice of a host, and
will not infect any and every organism promiscuously.
Finally, they never arise de novo in a healthy host, but must

170 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

always be transmitted from a diseased to a healthy indi-
vidual. The microscopist is tantalized, to quote the words
of Wilson, "with visions of disease germs which no eye has
yet seen, so minute as to pass through a fine filter, yet be-
yond a doubt self-perpetuating and of specific type." {Sci-
ence, March 9, 1923, p. 283.) Submicroscopic dimensions,
therefore, are no obstacle to the manifestation of such vital
properties as reproduction, genetic continuity, and typical
specificity; and we must conclude that, if any of the ultra-
microns of colloids possessed them, their minute size would
not debar them from manifesting the fact. As it is, they fail
to show any vital quality, whereas the submicroscopic dis-
ease germs give evidence of possessing all the characteristics
of visible cells.

In fine, the radical difference between inorganic units, like
atoms, molecules, and multimolecules, and living units, like
protozoans and metazoans, is so obvious that it is univer-
sally admitted. Not all, however, are in accord when it comes
to assigning the fundamental reason for the difference in
question. Benjamin Moore postulates a unique physical en-
ergy, peculiar to living organisms and responsible for all dis-
tinctively vital manifestations. This unique form of energy,
unlike all other forms, he calls "biotic energy," denying at
the same time that it is a vital force. (Cf. op. cit, pp. 224-
226.) Moore seems to be desirous of dressing up vitalism in
the verbal vesture of mechanism. He wants the game, with-
out the name. But, if his ''biotic energy" is unlike all other
forms of energy, it ought not to parade under the same
name, but should frankly call itself a "vital force." Somewhat
similar in nature is Osbom's suggestion that the peculiar
properties of living protoplasm may be due to the presence
of a unique chemical element called Bion. (Cf. "The Origin
and Evolution of Life," 1917, p. 6.) Now, a chemical element
unlike other chemical elements is not a chemical element at
all. Osborn's Bion, like Moore's biotic energy, ought, by all
means, to make up its mind definitely on Hamlet's question

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 171

of "to be, or not to be." The policy of "It is, and it is
not," is- not likely to win the approval of either mechanists
or vitalists.

§ 6. Hylomorphism versus Mechanism and Neo-vitalism

Mechanism and Neo-vitalism represent two extreme solu-
tions of this problem of accounting for the difference between
living and lifeless matter. Strictly speaking, it is an abuse
of language to refer to mechanism as a solution at all. Its
first pretense at solving the problem is to deny that there
is any problem. But facts are facts and cannot be disposed
of in this summary fashion. Forced, therefore, to face the
actual fact of the uniqueness of living matter, mechanists
concede the inadequacy of their physicochemical analogies,
but obstinately refuse to admit the legitimacy of any other
kind of explanation. Confronted with realities, which simply
must have some explanation, they prefer to leave them un-
explained by their own theory than have them explained by
any other. They recognize the difference between a living ani-
mal and a dead animal (small credit to them for their per-
spicacity!), but deny that there is anything present in the
former which is not present in the latter.

Neo-vitalism, on the other hand, is, at least, an attempt
at solving the problem in the positive sense. It ascribes the
unique activities of living organisms to the operation of a
superphysical and superchemical energy or force resident in
living matter. This unique dynamic principle is termed vital
force. It is not an entitive nor a static principle, but belongs
to the category of efficient or active causes, being variously de-
scribed as an agent, energy, or force. To speak precisely, the
term agent denotes an active being or substance; the term
energy denotes the proximate ground in the agent of a spe-
cific activity; while the term force denotes the activity or
free, kinetic, or activated phase of a given energy. In practice,
however, these terms are often used interchangeably. Thus
Driesch, who, like all other Neo-vitalists, makes the vital prin-

172 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

ciple a dynamic factor rather than an entitive principle,
refers to the vital principle as a "non-material," "non-spatial"
agent, though the term energy would be more precise. To
this active or dynamic vital principle Driesch gives a name,
which he borrowed from Aristotle, that is, entelechy. In
so doing, however, he perverted, as he himself confesses, the
true Aristotelian sense of the term in question: "The term,"
he says, ". . . is not here used in the proper Aristotelian
sense." ("History and Theory of Vitalism," p. 203.) His
admission is quite correct. At the critical point, Driesch, for
all his praise of Aristotle, deserts the Stagirite and goes over
to the camp of Plato, Descartes, and the Neo-vitalists !

Driesch's definition is as follows: "Entelechy is an agent
sui generis, non-material and non-spatial, but acting 'into'
space." {Op. cit., p. 204.) Aristotle's use of the term in this
connection is quite different. He uses it, for example, in a
static, rather than a dynamic, sense: "The term 'entelechy,' "
he says, "is used in two senses; in one it answers to knowl-
edge, in the other to the exercise of knowledge. Clearly in
this case it is analogous to knowledge." ("Peri Psyches,"
Bk. II, c. 1.) Knowledge, however, is only a second or static
entelechy. Hence, in order to narrow the sense still further
Aristotle refers to the send as a first entelechy, by which
he designates a purely entitive principle, that is, a constitu-
ent of being or substance (cf. op. cit. ibidem). The first, or
entitive, entelechy, therefore, is to be distinguished from all
secondary entelechies, whether of the dynamic order corre-
sponding to kinetic energy or force, or of the static order corre-
sponding to potential energy. Neither is it an agent, because
it is only a partial constituent of the total agent, that is,
of the total active being or substance. Hence, generally
speaking, that which acts (the agent) is not entelechy, but the
total composite of entelechy and matter, first entelechy being
consubstantial with matter and not a separate existent or being.
In fine, according to Aristotelian philosophy, entelechy (that
is, "first" or "prime" entelechy) is not an agent nor an energy

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 173

nor a force. In other words, it is totally removed from the
category of efficient or active causes. The second difference
between Driesch and Aristotle with respect to the use of
the term entelechy lies in the fact that Driesch uses it as a
synonym for the soul or vital principle, whereas, according
to Aristotle, entelechy is common to the non-living units of in-
organic nature as well as the living units (organisms) of the
organic world. All vital principles or souls are entelechies, but
not all entelechies are vital principles. All material beings
or substances, whether living or lifeless, are reducible,
in the last analysis, to two consubstantial principles or
complementary constituents, namely, entelechy and mat-
ter. Entelechy is the binding, type-determining principle,
the source of unification and specification, which makes
of a given natural unit (such as a molecule or a proto-
zoan) a single and determinate whole. Matter is the de-
terminable and potentially-multiplei element, the principle
of divisibility and quantification, which can enter indifferently
into the composition of this or that natural unit, and which
owes its actual unity and specificity to the entelechy which
here and now informs it. It is entelechy which makes a
chemical element distinct from its isobare, a chemical com-
pound distinct from its isomer, a paramoecium distinct from an
amoeba, a maple distinct from an oak, and a bear distinct
from a tiger.

The molecular entelechy finds expression in what the or-
ganic chemist and the stereochemist understand by valence,
that is, the static aspect of valence considered as the struc-
tural principle of a molecule. Hence it is entelechy which
makes a molecule of urea [0:C:(NH2)2] an entirely dif-
ferent substance from its isomer ammonium cyanate
[NHi'O'CiN], although the material substrate of each of these
molecular units consists of precisely the same number and
kinds of atoms. Similarly, it is the atomic entelechy which
gives to the isotopes of Strontium chemical properties differ-
ent from those of the isotopes of Rubidium, although the mass

174 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

and CM-puscular (electronic and protonic) composition of their
respective atoms are identical. It is the vital entelechy or
soul, which causes a fragment cut from a Stentor to regen-
erate its specific protoplasmic architecture instead of the type
which would be regenerated from a similar fragment cut
from another ciliate such as Dileptus.

In all the tridimensional units of nature, both living and
non-living, the hylomorphic analysis of Aristotle recognizes
an essential dualism of matter and entelechy. Hence it is not
in the presence and absence of an entelechy (as Driesch con-
tends) that living organisms differ from inorganic units. The
sole difference between these two classes of units is one of
autonomy and inertia. The inorganic unit is inert, not in the
sense that it is destitute of energy, but in the sense that it is
incapable of self-regulation and rigidly dependent upon ex-
ternal factors for the utilization of its own energy-content.
The living unit, on the other hand, is endowed with dynamic
autonomy. Though dependent, in a general way, upon en-
vironmental factors for the energy which it utilizes, neverthe-
less the determinate form and direction of its activity is not
imposed in all its specificity by the aforesaid environmental
factors. The living being possesses a certain degree of inde-
pendence with respect to these external forces. It is autono-
mous with a special law of immanent finality or reflexive
orientation, by which all the elements and energies of the
living unit are made to converge upon one and the same
central result, namely, the maintenance and development of
the organism both in its capacity as an individual and in its
capacity as the generative source of its racial type.

The entelechies of the inert units of inorganic nature turn
the forces of these units in an outward direction, so that they
are incapable of operating upon themselves, of modifying them-
selves, or of regulating themselves. They are only capable of
operating upon other units outside themselves, and in so doing
they irreparably externalize their energy-contents. All physi-
cochemical action is transitive or communicable in character,

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 175

whereas vital action is of the reflexive or immanent type.
Mechanical action, for example, is intermolar {i.e. an exchange
between large masses of inorganic matter) ; physical action is
intermolecular ; chemical action is interatomic ; while in radio-
active and electrical phenomena we have intercorpuscular ac-
tion. Hence all the forms of activity native to the inorganic
world are reducible to interaction between discontinuous and
unequally energized masses or particles. Always it is a case of
one mass or particle operating upon another mass or particle
distinct from, and spatially external to, itself. The effect or
positive change produced by the action is received into another
unit distinct from the agent or active unit, which can never be-
come the receptive subject of the effect generated by its own
activity. The living being, on the contrary, is capable of oper-
ating upon itself, so that what is modified by the action is not
outside the agent but within it. The reader does not modify the
book, but modifies himself by his reading. The blade of grass
can nourish not only a horse, but its very self, whereas a
molecule of sodium nitrate is impotent to nourish itself, and
can only nourish a subject other than itself, such as the
blade of grass. Here the active source and receptive subject
of the action is one and the same unit, namely, the living
organism, which can operate upon itself in the interest of its
own perfection. In chemical synthesis two substances interact
to produce a third, but in vital assimilation one substance is
incorporated into another without the production of a third.
Thus hydrogen unites with oxygen to produce water. But in
the case of assimilation the reaction may be expressed thus:
Living protoplasm plus external nutriment equals living pro-
toplasm increased in quantity but unchanged in specificity.
Addition or subtraction alters the nature of the inorganic
unit, but does not change the nature of the living unit. In
chemical change, entelechy is the variant and matter is the
constant, but in metabolic change, matter is the variant and
entelechy the constant. ''Living beings," says Henderson,
"preserve, or tend to preserve, an ideal form, while through

176 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

them flows a steady stream of energy and matter which is
ever changing, yet momentarily molded by life; organized,
in short." ("Fitness of the Environment," 1913, pp. 23, 24.)
The living unit maintains its own specific type amid a con-
stant flux of matter and flow of energy. It subjugates the
alien substances of the inorganic world, eliminates their min-
eral entelechies and utilizes their components and energies for
its ov/n purposes. The soul or vital entelechy, therefore, is more
powerful than the entelechies of inorganic units which it sup-
plants. It turns the forces of living matter inward, so that the
living organism becomes capable of self-regulation and of striv-
ing for the attainment of self-perfection. It is this reflexive
orientation of all energies towards self-perfection that is the
unique characteristic of the living being, and not the nature of
the energies themselves. The energies by which vital functions
are executed are the ordinary physicochemical energies, but it
is the vital entelechy or soul which elevates them to a higher
plane of efficiency and renders them capable of reflexive or vital
action. There is, in short, no such thing as a special vital
force. The radical difference between living and non-living
units does not consist in the possession or non-possession of an
entelechy, nor yet in the peculiar nature of the forces dis-
played in the execution of vital functions, but solely in the
orientation of these forces towards an inner finality.

§ 7. The Definition of Life

Life, then, may be defined as the capacity of reflexive or
self-perfective action. In any action, we may distinguish four
things: (1) the agent, or source of the action; (2) the activity
or internal determination differentiating the agent in the ac-
tive state from the selfsame agent in the inactive state; (3)
the patient or receptive subject; (4) the effect or change
produced in the patient by the agent. Let us suppose that
a boy named Tom kicks a door. Here Tom is the agent, the
muscular contraction in hiis leg is the activity, the door is the
patient or recipient, while the dent produced in the door is

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 177

the effect or change of which the action is a production. In
this action, the effect is produced not in the cause or agent,
but in a patient outside of, and distinct from, the agent, and
the otherness of cause and effect is consequently complete.
Such an action is termed transitive, which is the charac-
teristic type of physicochemical action. In another class of
actions, however, (those, namely, that are peculiar to living
beings) the otherness of cause and effect is only partial and
relative. When the agent becomes ultimately the recipient
of the effect or modification wrought by its own activity, that
is, when the positive change produced by the action remains
within the agent itself, the action is called immanent or re-
flexive action. Since, however, action and passion are opposites,
they can coexist in the same subject only upon condition that
said subject is differentiated into partial otherness, that is,
organized into a plurality of distinct and dissimilar parts or
components, one of which may act upon another. Hence only
the organized unit or organism, which combines unity or con-
tinuity of substance with multiplicity and dissimilarity of
parts is capable of immanent action. The inorganic unit is
capable only of transitive action, whose effect is produced in
an exterior subject really distinct from the agent. The living
unit or organism, however, is capable of both transitive ac-
tion and immanent (reflexive) action. In such functions as
thought and sensation, the living agent modifies itself and not
an exterior patient. In the nutritive or metabolic function
the living being perfects itself by assimilating external sub-
stances to itself. It develops, organizes, repairs, and multi-
plies itself, holding its own and. perpetuating its type from
generation to generation.

Life, accordingly, is the capacity of tending through any
form of reflexive action to an ulterior perfection of the agent
itself. This capacity of an agent to operate of, and upon,
itself for the acquisition of some perfection exceeding its
natural equilibrial state is the distinctive attribute of the
living being. Left to itself, the inorganic unit tends ex-

178 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

clusively to conservation or to loss, never to positive acqui-
sition in excess of equilibria! exigencies; what it acquires
it owes exclusively to the action of external factors. The
living unit, on the contrary, strives in its vital operations to
acquire something for itself, so that what it gets it owes to
itself and not (except in a very general sense) to the action
of external factors. All the actions of the living unit, both
upon itself and upon external matter, result sooner or later
in the acquisition on the part of the agent of a positive per-
fection exceeding and transcending the mere exigencies of
equilibration. The inorganic agent, on the contrary, when in
the state of tension, tends only to return to the equilibrial state
by alienation or expenditure of its energy; otherwise, it
tends merely to conserve, by virtue of inertia, the state of
rest or motion impressed upon it from without. In the
chemical changes of inorganic units, the tendency to loss is
even more in evidence. Such changes disrupt the integrity of
the inorganic unit and dissipate its energy-content, and the
unit cannot be reconstructed and recharged, except at the
expense of a more richly endowed inorganic unit. The living
organism, however, as we see in the case of the paramoecium
undergoing endomixis, is capable of counteracting exhaus-
tion by recharging itself.

The difference between transitive and reflexive action is
not an accidental difference of degree, but an essential dif-
ference of kind. In reflexive actions, the source of the action
and the recipient of the effect or modification produced by
it are one and the same substantial unit or being. In transi-
tive actions, the receptive subject of the positive change is
an alien unit distinct from the unit, which puts forth the
action. Hence a reflexive action is not an action which is
less transitive; it is an action which is not at all transitive,
but intransitive. The difference, therefore, between the living
organism, which is capable of both reflexive and transitive
action, and the inorganic unit, which is only capable of transi-
tive action, is radical and essential. This being the case, an

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 179

evolutionary transition from an inert multimolecule to a re-
flexively-operating cell or cytode, becomes inconceivable. Evo-
lution might, at the very most, bring about intensifications
and combinations of the transitive agencies of the physico-
chemical world, but never the volte face, which would be
necessary to reverse the centrifugal orientation of forces char-
acteristic of the inorganic unit into the centripetal orienta-
tion of forces which makes the living unit capable of self-
perfective action, self-regulation, and self-renewal. The idea,
therefore, of a spontaneous derivation of living units from life-
less colloidal multimolecules must be rejected, not merely
because it finds no support in the facts of experience, but
also because it is excluded by aprioristic considerations.

§ 8. An Inevitable Corollary

But, if inorganic matter is impotent to vitalize itself by
means of its native physicochemical forces, the inevitable
alternative is that the initial production of organisms from
inorganic matter was due to the action of some supermaterial
agency. Certain scientists, like Henderson of Harvard, while
admitting the incredibility of abiogenesis, prefer to avoid open
conflict with mechanism and materialism by declaring their
neutrality. ''But while biophysicists like Professor Schafer,"
says Henderson, "follow Spencer in assuming a gradual evolu-
tion of the organic from the inorganic, biochemists are
more than ever unable to perceive how such a process is pos-
sible, and without taking any final stand prefer to let the
riddle rest." ("Fitness of the Environment," p. 310, footnote.)
Not to take a decisive stand on this question, however, is
tantamount to making a compromise with what is illogical
and unscientific; for both logic and the inductive trend of
biological facts are arrayed against the hypothesis of spon-
taneous generation.

In the first place, it is manifest that organic life is neither
self-explanatory nor eternal. Hence it must have had its
origin in the action of some external agency. Life as it exists

180 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

to-day depends upon the precedence of numerous unbroken
chains of consecutive cells that extend backward into a re-
mote past. It is, however, a logical necessity to put an end
to this retrogradation of the antecedents upon which the
actual existence of our present organisms depends. The in-
finite cannot be spanned by finite steps; the periodic life-
process could not be relayed through an unlimited temporal
distance; and a cellular series which never started would
never arrive. Moreover, we do not account for the existence
of life by extending the cellular series interminably back-
ward. Each cell in such a series is derived from a predecessor,
and, consequently, no cell in the series is self-explanatory.
When it comes to accounting for its own existence, each cell
is a zero in the way of explanation, and adding zeros to-
gether indefinitely will never give us a positive total. Each
cell refers us to its predecessor for the explanation of why
it exists, and none contains within itself the sufficient expla-
nation of its own existence. Hence increasing even to infinity
the number of these cells (which fail to explain themselves)
will give us nothing else but a zero in the way of explanation.
If, therefore, the primordial cause from which these cellular
chains are suspended is not the agency of the physicochemical
forces of inorganic nature, it follows that the first active cause
of life must have been a supermaterial and extramundane
agency, namely, the Living God and Author of Life.

As a matter of fact, no one denies that life has had a be-
ginning on our globe. The physicist teaches that a beginning
of our entire solar system is implied in the law of the de-
gradation of energy, and various attempts have been made to
determine the time of this beginning. The older calculations
were based on the rate of solar radiation; the more recent ones,
however, are based on quantitative estimates of the disintegra-
tion products of radio-active elements. Similarly, the geol-
ogist and the astronomer propound theories of a gradual
constitution of the cosmic environment, which organic life re-
quires for its support, and all such theories imply a de novo

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 181

origin or beginning of life in the universe. Thus the old nebu-
lar hypothesis of Laplace postulated a hot origin of our solar
system incompatible with the coexistence of organic life, which,
as the experiments of Pasteur and others have shown, is
destroyed, in all cases, at a temperature just above 45° Centi-
grade (113° Fahrenheit). Even the enzymes or organic cata-
lysts, which are essential for bio-chemical processes, are de-
stroyed at a temperature between 60° and 70° Centigrade.
This excludes the possibility of the contemporaneousness of
protoplasm and inorganic matter, and points to a beginning
of life in our solar system. Moreover, independently of this
theory, the geologist sees in the primitive crystalline rocks
(granites, diorites, basalts, etc.) and in the extant magmas
of volcanoes evidences of an azoic age, during which tempera-
tures incompatible with the survival of even the blue-green
algae or the most resistent bacterial spores must have pre-
vailed over the surface of the globe. In fact, it is generally
recognized by geologists that the igneous or pyrogenic rocks,
which contain no fossils, preceded the sedimentary or fossil-
iferous rocks. The new planetesimal hypothesis, it is true,
is said to be compatible with a cold origin of the universe.
Nevertheless, this theory assumes a very gradual condensation
of our cosmos out of dispersed gases and star dust, whereas
life demands as the sine qua non condition of its existence a
differentiated environment consisting of a lithosphere, a hydro-
sphere, and an atmosphere. Hence, it is clear that life did not
originate until such an appropriate environment was an ac-
complished fact. All theories of cosmogony, therefore, point
to a beginning of life subsequent to the constitution of the
inorganic world.

Now, it is impossible for organic life to antecede itself.
If, therefore, it has had a beginning in the world, it must have
had a first active cause distinct from itself; and the active
cause, in question, must, consequently, have been either some-
thing intrinsic, or something extrinsic, to inorganic matter.
The hypothesis, however, of a spontaneous origin of life

182 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

through the agency of forces intrinsic to inorganic matter is
scientifically untenable. Hence it follows that life originated
through the action of an immaterial or spiritual agent, namely,
God, seeing that there is no other assignable agency capable
of bringing about the initial production of life from lifeless
matter.

§ 9. Futile Evasions

Many and various are the efforts made to escape this is-
sue. One group of scientists, for example, attempt to rid them-
selves of the difficulty by diverting our attention from the
problem of a beginning of organic life in the universe to the
problem of its translation to a new habitat. This legerde-
main has resulted in the theories of cosmozoa or panspermia,
according to which life originates in a favorable environment,
not by reason of spontaneous generation, but by reason of
importation from other worlds. This view has been pre-
sented in two forms: (1) the "meteorite" theory, which rep-
resents the older view held by Thomson and Helmholtz; (2)
the more recent theory of "cosmic panspermia" advocated
by Svante Arrhenius, with H. E. Richter and F. J. Cohn as
precursors. Sir Wm. Thompson suggested that life might have
been salvaged from the ruins of other worlds and carried to
our own by means of meteorites or fragments thrown off from
life-bearing planets that had been destroyed by a catastrophic
collision. These meteorites discharged from bursting planets
might carry germs to distant planets like the earth, causing
them to become covered with vegetation. Against this theory
stands the fatal objection that the transit of a meteorite
from the nearest stellar system to our own would require an
interval of 60,000,000 years. It is incredible that life could
be maintained through such an enormous lapse of time. Even
from the nearest planet to our earth the duration of the
journey would be 150 years. Besides, meteorites are heated to
incandescence while passing through the atmosphere, and
any seeds they might contain would perish by reason of the

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 183

heat thus generated, not to speak of the terrific impacts which
terminates the voyage of a meteorite.

Arrhenius suggests a method by which microorganisms
might be conveyed through intersidereal space with far greater
dispatch and without any mineral vehicle such as a meteorite.
He notes that particles of cosmic dust leave the sun as a coro-
nal atmosphere and are propelled through intervening space
by the pressure of radiation until they reach the higher at-
mosphere of the earth (viz. at a height of 100 kilometers from
the surface of the latter) , where they become the electrically
charged dust particles of polar auroras {v.g. the aurora
borealis). The motor force, in this case, is the same as that
which moves the vanes of a Crookes' radiometer. Lebedeff has
verified Clerk-Maxwell's conceptions of this force and has
demonstrated its reality by experiments. It is calculated that
in the immediate vicinity of a luminous surface like that of
the sun the pressure exerted by radiation upon an exposed
surface would be nearly two milligrams per square centimeter.
On a nontransparent particle having a diameter of 1.5 microns,
the pressure of radiation would just counterbalance the force
of universal gravitation, while on particles whose diameter was
0.16 of a micron, the pressure of radiation would be ten times
as great as the pull of gravitation. Now bacterial spores hav-
ing a diameter of 0.3 to 0.2 of a micron are known to bac-
teriologists, and the ultramicroscope reveals the presence of
germs not more than 0.1 of a micron in size.^ Hence it is con-

* Recently, by means of photography with short-length light waves,
the bacteria of "Foot-and-mouth disease," invisible to the highest
power microscope, have been revealed as rods about 100 submicrons
(i.e. 0.1 micron, or 0.0001 millimeter) in length, (c/. Science, May 30,
1924, Supplement X.)

Germs of this dimension could be as easily transported by radiation
as the alleged electrically charged Stardust in the aurora borealis. It
may be of interest, however, to note, in this connection, that the most
recent theory of the aurora borealis discards Stardust in favor of
nitrogen snow. Lars Vegard, a Norwegian professor, ascribes the
peculiar greenish tint in the Northern Lights to the action of solar
radiations on nitrogen snow, which he assumes to exist at an altitude

184 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

ceivable that germs of such dimensions might be wafted to
hmits of our atmosphere, and might then be transported by
the pressure of radiation to distant planets or stellar sys-
tems, provided, of course, they could escape to the germicidal
action of oxidation, desiccation, ultra-violet rays, etc. Ar-
rhenius calculates that their journey from the earth to Mars
would, under such circumstances, occupy a period of only
20 days. Within 80 days they could reach Jupiter, and they
might arrive at Neptune on the confines of our solar system
after an interval of 3 weeks. The transit to the constellation
of the Centaur, which contains the solar system nearest to our
own (the one, namely, whose central sun is the star Alpha),
would require 9,000 years.

Arrhenius' theory, however, that "life is an eternal rebegin-
ning" explains nothing and leaves us precisely where we were.
In the metaphysical as well as the scientific sense, it is an
evasion and not a solution. To the logical necessity of put-
ting an end to the retrogradation of the subalternate condi-
tions, upon which the realities of the present depend for their
actual existence, we have already adverted. Moreover, the
reasons which induce the scientist to postulate a beginning of
life in our world are not based on any distinctive peculiarity of
that world, but are universally applicable, it being established
by the testimony of the spectroscope that other worlds are not
differently constituted than our own. Hence Schafer voices
the general attitude of scientific men when he says: "But the
acceptance of such theories of the arrival of life on earth
does not bring us any nearer to a conception of its actual
mode of origin ; on the contrary, it merely serves to banish the

of more than 60 miles above the earth. When he condensed crystals
of solid nitrogen on a copper plate by freezing with liquid hydrogen,
he found that these crystals, after bombardment with cathode rays,
emit a light of green color, which gives the same strong green spectrum
line as the spectrum of the aurora. As the solid nitrogen evaporates,
it begins to emit the reddish light characteristic of nitrogen gas. This
phenomenon would explain the changes of color that occur in the
aurora borealis. (c/. Science, April 18, 1924, Suppl. X.)

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 185

investigation of the question to some conveniently inaccessible
corner -of the universe and leaves us in the unsatisfactory
condition of affirming not only that we have no knowledge
as to the mode of origin of life — which is unfortunately true — -
but that we never can acquire such knowledge — which it is
to be hoped is not true. Knowing what we know, and believ-
ing what we believe, ... we are, I think (without denying
the possibility of the existence of life in other parts of the
universe), justified in regarding these cosmic theories as in-
herently improbable." (Dundee Address of 1912, cf. Smith-
son. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 503.)

Dismissing, therefore, all evasions of this sort, we may
regard as scientifically established the conclusion that, so far
as our knowledge goes, inorganic nature lacks the means of
self-vivification, and that no inanimate matter can become
living matter without first coming under the influence of mat-
ter previously alive. Given, therefore, that the conditions
favorable to life did not always prevail in our cosmos, it
follows that life had a beginning, for which we are obliged
to account by some postulate other than abiogenesis. This
conclusion seems inescapable for those who concede the scien-
tific absurdity of spontaneous generation, but, by some weird
freak of logic, not only is it escaped, but the very opposite
conclusion is reached through reasoning, which the exponents
are pleased to term philosophical, as distinguished from scien-
tific, argumentation. The plight of these "hard-headed wor-
shippers of fact," who plume themselves on their contempt
for "metaphysics," is sad indeed. Worsted in the experimental
field, they appeal the case from the court of facts to that
aprioristic philosophy. "Physic of metaphysic begs defence,
and metaphysic calls for aid on sense!"

Life, they contend, either had no beginning or it must have
begun in our world as the product of spontaneous generation.
But all the scientific theories of cosmogony exclude the former
alternative. Consequently, not only is it not absurd to admit
spontaneous generation, but, on the contrary, it is absurd not

186 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

to admit it. It is in this frame of mind that August Weis-
mann is induced to confide to us ''that spontaneous generation,
in spite of all the vain attempts to demonstrate it, remains for
me a logical necessity." ("Essays," p. 34, Poulton's Transl.)
The presupposition latent in all such logic is, of course, the
assumption that nothing but matter exists ; for, if the possibil-
ity of the existence of a supermaterial agency is conceded, then
obviously we are not compelled by logical necessity to ascribe
the initial production of organic life to the exclusive agency
of the physicochemical energies inherent in inorganic matter.
Weismann should demonstrate his suppressed premise that
matter coincides with reality and that spiritual is a synonym
for nonexistent. Until such time as tliis unverified and un-
verifiable affirmation is substantiated, the philosophical proof
for abiogenesis is not an argument at all, it is dogmatism pure
and simple.

But, they protest, "To deny spontaneous generation is to
proclaim a miracle" (Nageli), and natural science cannot
have recourse to "miracles" in explaining natural phenomena.
For the "scientist," miracles are always absurd as contra-
dicting the uniformity of nature, and to recur to them
for the solution of a scientific problem is, to put it mildly,
distinctly out of the question. Hence Haeckel regards spon-
taneous generation as more than demonstrated by the bare
consideration that no alternative remains except the unspeak-
able scientific blasphemy implied in superstitious terms like
"miracle," "creation," and "supernatural." For a "thinking
man," the mere mention of these abhorrent words is, or ought
to be, argument enough. "If we do not accept the hypothesis
of spontaneous generation," Haeckel expostulates, "we must
have recourse to the miracle of a supernatural creation."
(Italics his — "History of Creation," I, p. 348, Lankester's
Transl.) It would be a difficult matter, indeed, to cram more
blunders into one short sentence! We will not, and need not,
undertake to defend the supernatural here. Suffice it to say,
that the initiation of life in inorganic matter by the Author

THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 187

of Life would not be a creation, nor a miracle, nor a phenome-
non pertaining to the supernatural order.

The principle of the minimum forbids us to postulate the
superfluous, and a creative act would be superfluous in the
production of the first organisms. Inorganic nature contains
all the material elements found in living organisms, and all
organisms, in fact, derive their matter from the inorganic
world. If, therefore, they are thus dependent in their con-
tinuance upon a supply of matter administered by the inor-
ganic world, it is to be presumed that they were likewise de-
pendent on that source of matter in their first origin. In
other words, the material substrata of the first organisms were
not produced anew, but derived from the elements of the in-
organic world. Hence they were not created, but formed out
of preexistent matter. A creative act would involve total
production, and exclude the preexistence of the constituent ma-
terial under a different form. A formative act, on the con-
trary, is a partial production, which presupposes the material
out of which a given thing is to be made. Hence the Divine
act, whereby organic life was first educed from the passive po-
tentiality of inorganic matter, was formative and not creative.
Elements preexistent in the inorganic world were combined
and intrinsically modified by impressing upon them a new
specification, which raised them in the entitive and dynamic
scale, and integrated them into units capable of self-regula-
tion and reflexive action. This modification, however, was in-
trinsic to the matter involved and nothing was injected into
matter from without. Obviously, therefore, the production
of the first organisms was not a creation, but a formation.

Still less was it a miracle; for a miracle is a visible inter-
position in the course of nature by a power superior to the
powers of nature. A given effect, therefore, is termed miracu-
lous with express reference to some existing natural agency,
whose efficacy it, in some way, exceeds. If there existed in
inorganic nature some natural process of self-vivification,
then any Divine interposition to produce life independently

188 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

of this natural agency, would be a miraculous intervention.
As a matter of fact, however, inorganic nature is destitute of
this power of self-vitalization, and consequently no natural
agency was superseded or overridden by the initial imparting
of life to lifeless matter. Life was not ordained to originate
in any other way. Given, therefore, this impotence of inor-
ganic nature, it follows that an initial vivification of matter by
Divine power was demanded by the very nature of things.
The Divine action did not come into competition, as it were,
with existing natural agencies, but was put forth in response
to the exigencies of nature itself. It cannot, therefore, be
regarded as miraculous.

Nor, finally, is there any warrant for regarding such an
initial vivification of matter as supernatural. Only that is
supernatural which transcends the nature, powers, and exigen-
cies of all things created or creatable. But, as we have seen,
if life was to exist at all, a primal animation of inanimate
matter by Divine power was demanded by the very nature of
things. Here the Divine action put forth in response to an
exigency of nature and terminated in the constitution of living
nature itself. Now, the effect of a Divine action, by which
the natures of things are initially constituted, plainly pertains
to the order of nature, and has nothing to do with the super-
natural. Hence the primordial constitution by Divine power
of living nature was not a supernatural, but a purely natural,
event.

CHAPTER II
THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL

§ 1. Matter and Spirit

We live in an age in which scientific specialization is stressed
as the most important means of advancing the interests of
human knowledge; and specialism, by reason of its many tri-
umphs, seems to have deserved, in large measure, the prestige
which it now enjoys. It has, however, the distinct disadvan-
tage of fostering provincialism and separatism. This lopsided
learning of the single track mind is a condition that verges on
paranoia, leads to naive contempt for all knowledge not
reducible to its own set of formulae, and portends, in the near
future, a Babel-like confusion of tongues. In fact, the need
of a corrective is beginning to be felt in many quarters. This
corrective can be none other than the general and synthetic
science of philosophy; it is philosophy alone that can fur-
nish a common ground and break down the barriers of ex-
clusiveness which immure the special sciences within the minds
of experts.

Scientists readily admit the advantage of philosophy in
theory, but in practice their approval is far from being un-
qualified. A subservient philosophy, which accepts without
hesitation all the current dogmas of contemporary science, is
one thing, and a critical philosophy venturing to apply the
canons of logic to so-called scientific proof is quite another.
Philosophy of the latter type is promptly informed that it
has no right to any opinion whatever, and that only the scien-
tific specialist is qualified to speak on such subjects. But
the disqualification, which is supposed to arise from lack of

special knowledge, is just as promptly forgotten, when there is

189

190 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

question of philosophy in the role of a pliant sycophant, and
the works of a Wells or a van Loon are lauded to the skies, de-
spite the glaring examples of scientific inaccuracy and igno-
rance, in which they abound.

This partiality is sometimes carried to a degree that makes
it perfectly preposterous. Thus it is by no means an infrequent
thing to find scientists dismissing, as unworthy of a hearing,
a philosopher like Hans Driesch, who spent the major por-
tion of his life in biological research, and combined the tech-
nical discipline of a scientist with the mental discipline of a
logician. The chemist, H. E. Armstrong, for instance, sees in
the mere label "philosopher" a sufficient reason for barring
his testimony. ''Philosophers," jeers the chemist, with flippant
irrelevance, ''must go to school and study in the purlieus of
experimental science, if they desire to speak with authority
on these matters." (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 528.)
Such is his comment on Driesch, yet Driesch did nothing at
all, if he did not do far more than Armstrong prescribes as
a prerequisite for authoritative speaking. In James Harvey
Robinson, on the contrary, we have an example of the tendency
of scientists to coddle philosophers who assume a docile,
deferential, and submissive attitude towards every generaliza-
tion propounded in the name of natural science. In sheer
gratitude for his uncritical acquiescence, his incapacitation as
a nonspecialist is considerately overlooked, and he can confess,
without the slightest danger of discrediting his own utterances:
"I am not ... a biologist or palaeontologist. But I have
had the privilege of consorting familiarly with some of the
very best representatives of those who have devoted their
lives to the patient study of the matters involved in this con-
troversy. I think I quite understand their attitude." {Harper's
Magazine, June, 1922, p. 68.) By his own testimony he is a
scientific amateur, but this does not, in the least, prevent
him from "speaking with authority" or from being lionized
in scientific circles as an evolutionary "defender of the faith."
Clearly, it is the nature of their respective views, and not the

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 191

possession or absence of technical knowledge, which makes
Robinsan a favorite, and Driesch a persona non grata, with
"the very best representatives" of contemporary science.
"Science," says a writer in the Atlantic Monthly (Oct., 1915),
"has turned all philosophy out of doors except that which
clings to its skirts ; it has thrown contempt on all learning that
does not depend upon it; and it has bribed the sketches by
giving us immense material comforts."

Here, however, we are concerned with the fact, rather
than the justice, of this discrimination which the scientific
world makes between philosopher and philosopher. Certain
it is that Robinson has received no end of encomiums from
scientists, who apparently lack the literary gifts to expound
their own philosophy, and that his claim to represent the
views of a large and influential section of the scientific world
is, in all probability, entirely correct. It is this manifest
approval of scientific men which lends especial interest to
the remarks of this scientific dilettante, and we shall quote
them as expressing the prevalent scientific view on the origin
of man, a view which, with but slight variations, has persisted
from the time of Darwin down to the present day.

"The recognition," says Robinson, "that mankind is a spe-
cies of animal, is, like other important discoveries, illuminat-
ing." {Science, July 28, 1922, p. 74.) To refer to the recog-
nition of man's animality as a discovery is a conceit too
stupid for mere words to castigate. Surely, there was no need
of the profound research or delicate precision of modern
science to detect the all too obvious similarity existing between
man and beast. Mankind did not have to await the advent of
an "enlightened" nineteenth, or twentieth century to be assured
of the truth of a commonplace so trite and palpable. Even
the "benighted" scholastics of medieval infamy had wit
enough to define man as a rational animal. Indeed, it would
be a libel on human intelligence to suppose that anyone, in
the whole history of human thought, was ever sufficiently
fatuous to dispute the patent fact that man is a sentient or-

192 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

ganism compounded of flesh, blood, bone, and sinew like the
brute. The "discovery" that man is a species of animal dates
from the year one of human existence, and it is now high
time for the novelty of this discovery to be worn off.

Even as a difficulty against human superiority and immor-
tality, the "recognition" is by no means recent. We find it
squarely faced in a book of the Old Testament, the entire
book being devoted to the solution of the difficulty in ques-
tion. "I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons
of men . . . that they might see they are themselves beasts.
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts;
even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth so dieth the
other; yea, they have all one breath; so that man hath no pre-
eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one
place; all are of the dust, and all return to dust. Who know-
eth the spirit of man whether it goeth upward, and the spirit
of the beast whether it goeth downward to the earth?"
{Ecclesiastes, III: 18-21.) The sacred writer insists that, so
far as the body is concerned, man and the brute stand on the
same level; but what of the human soul? Is it, he asks, re-
solvable into matter like the soul of a beast, or is it a super-
material principle destined, not for time, but for eternity?
At the close of the book, the conclusion is reached that the
latter alternative is the true solution of the riddle of human
nature — "the dust returneth to the earth whence it was, and
the spirit returneth to God who gave it." (Ch. XII, v. 7.) '

Centuries, therefore, before the Christian era, this problem
was formulated by Ecclesiastes, the Jew, and also, as we shall
presently see, by Aristotle, the coryphaeus of Greek philosophy.
Nay, from time immemorial man, contrasting his aspirations
after immortality with the spectacle of corporal death, has
appreciated to the full the significance of his own animality.
Never was there question of whether man is, or is not, just
as thoroughly an animal as any beast, but rather of whether,
his animal nature being unhesitatingly conceded, we are not,
none the less, forced to recognize in him, over and above this.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 193

the existence of a spiritual mind or soul, differentiating him
from the brute and constituting him a being unique, despite
the unmistakable homologies discernible between bestial
organisms and the human body. Everywhere and always man-
kind as a whole have manifested, by the universal and uniquely
human practice of burying the dead, their unswerving and
indomitable conviction that man is spirit as well as flesh,
an animal, indeed, yet animated by something not present
in the animal, namely, a spiritual soul, deathless and inde-
structible, capable of surviving the decay of the organism and
of persisting throughout eternity.

But, if the human mind or soul is spiritual, it is clear that
it cannot be a product of organic evolution, any more than
it can be a product of parental generation. On the contrary,
each and every human soul must be an immediate creation of
the Author of Nature, not evolved from the internal poten-
tiality of matter, but infused into matter from without. The
human soul is created in organized matter, but not from it.
Nor can the Divine action, in this case, be regarded as a
supernatural interposition; for it supplements, rather than
supersedes, the natural process of reproduction; and, since
it is not in matter to produce spirit, a creative act is demanded
by the very nature of things.

Evolution is nothing more nor less than a transmutation
of matter, and a transmutation of matter cannot terminate
in the annihilation of matter and the constitution of non-mat-
ter or spirit. If nothing of the terminus a quo persists in the
final product, we have substitution, and not transmutation.
The evolution of matter, therefore, cannot progress to a point
where all materiality is eliminated. Hence, whatever proceeds
from matter, either as an emanation or an action, will, of
necessity, be material. It should be noted, however, that by
material we do not mean corporeal; for material denotes not
merely matter itself, but everything that intrinsically depends
on matter. The term, therefore, is wider in its sense than
corporeal, because it comprises, besides matter, all the prop-

194 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

erties, energies, and activities of matter. Hence whatever is
incapable of existence and activity apart from matter (whether
ponderable or imponderable) belongs to the material, as dis-
tinguished from the spiritual, order of things. The soul of
a brute, for example, is not matter, but it is material, never-
theless, because it is totally dependent on the matter of the
organism, apart from which it has neither existence nor
activity of its own.

In the constitution of the sentient or animal soul, matter
reaches the culmination of its passive evolution. True, its
inherent physicochemical forces do not suffice to bring about
this consummation, wherewith its internal potentiality is
exhausted. Nevertheless, the emergence of an animal soul from
matter is conceivable, given an agency competent to educe
it from the intrinsic potentiality of matter; for, in the last
analysis, the animal soul is simply an internal modification
of matter itself. But, if spirit is that which exists, or is, at
least, capable of existence, apart from matter, it goes with-
out saying that spirit is neither derivable from, nor resolv-
able into, matter of any kind. Consequently, it cannot be
evolved from matter, but must be produced in matter by cre-
ation {i.e. total production). To make the human mind or
soul a product of evolution is equivalent to a denial of its
spirituality, because it implies that the human soul like that
of the brute, is inherent in the potentiality of matter, and
is therefore a purely material principle, totally dependent on
the matter, of which it is a perfection. Between such a soul
and the sentient principle present in the beast, there would
be no essential difference of kind, but only an accidental dif-
ference of degree; and this is precisely what Darwin and his
successors have spared no effort to demonstrate. James Har-
vey Robinson is refreshingly frank on this subject, and we
will therefore let him be spokesman for those who are more
reticent:

"It is the extraordinarily illuminating discovery {sic) of
man's animalhood rather than evolution in general that

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 195

troubles the routine mind. Many are willing to admit that
it looks- as if life had developed on the earth slowly, in suc-
cessive stages; this they can regard as a merely curious fact
and of no great moment if only man can be defended as an
honorable exception. The fact that we have an animal body
may also be conceded, but surely man must have a soul and
a mind altogether distinct and unique from the very begin-
ning bestowed on him by the Creator and setting him off
an immeasurable distance from any mere animal. But what-
ever may be the religious and poetic significance of this
compromise it is becoming less and less tenable as a scientific
and historic truth. The facts indicate that man's mind is
quite as clearly of animal extraction as his body." {Science^
July 28, 1922, p. 95— italics his.)

This language has, at least, the merit of being unambiguous,
and leaves us in no uncertainty as to where the writer stands.
It discloses, likewise, the animus which motivates his peculiar
interest in transformistic theories. If evolution were incapable
of being exploited in behalf of materialistic philosophy, Mr.
Robinson, we may be sure, would soon lose interest in the
theory, and would once more align himself with the company,
which he has so inappropriately deserted, namely, ''the routine
minds" that regard evolution "as a merely curious fact of no
great moment." Be that as it may, his final appeal is to the
"facts," and it is to the facts, accordingly, that we shall go;
but they will not be the irrelevant "facts" of anatomy, physi-
ology, and palaeontology. Sciences such as these confine their
attention to the external manifestations of human life, and can
tell us nothing of man's inner consciousness. It does not,
therefore, devolve upon them to pronounce final judgment
upon the origin of man. For that which is the distinguishing
characteristic of man is not his animal nature, that he shares
in common with the brute, but his rational nature, which alone
differentiates him from "a beast that wants discourse of
reason." We cannot settle the question as to whether or not
man's mind is "of animal extraction" by comparing his body

196 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

with the bodies of irrational vertebrates. To institute the
requisite comparison between the rational mentality of man
and the purely sentient consciousness of irrational animals
falls within the exclusive competence of psychology, which
studies the internal manifestations of life as they are presented
to the intuition of consciousness, rather than biology, which
studies life according to such of its manifestations as are per-
ceptible to the external senses. Hence it is within the domain
of psychology alone, that man can be studied on his distinc-
tively human, or rational, side, and it is to this science, accord-
ingly, that we must turn in our search for facts that are
germane to the problem of the origin of man and the genesis of
the human mind. How little, indeed, does he know of human
nature, whose knowledge of it is confined to man's insignificant
anatomy and biology, and who knows nothing of the triumphs
of human genius in literature, art, science, architecture, music,
and a thousand other fields! Psychology alone can evaluate
these marvels, and no other science can be of like assistance
in solving the problem of whether man is, or is not, unique
among all his fellows of the animal kingdom.

§ 2. The Science of the Soul

As a distinct science, psychology owes its origin to Aristotle,
whose ^'PeH Psyches^' is, in all probability, the first formal
treatise on the subject. Through his father, Nichomachus, who
was court physician to Philip of Macedon, he became ac-
quainted, at an early age, with biological lore in the form of
such medical botany, anatomy, and physiology as were com-
monly known in prescientific days. Subsequently, his cel-
ebrated pupil, Alexander the Great, placed at his disposal
a vast library, together with extensive opportunities for bio-
logical research. This enabled the philosopher to criticize and
summarize the observations and speculations of his predeces-
sors in the field, and to improve upon them by means of per-
sonal reflection and research. In writing his psychology, he
was naturally forced to proceed on the basis of the facts dis-

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 197

coverable by internal experience (introspection) and unaided
external: observation. Of such facts as are only accessible by
means of instrumentation and systematic experimentation, he
could, of course, know nothing, since their exploration awaited
the advent of modem mechanical and optical inventions. But
the factual foundation of his treatise, though not extensive,
was solid, so far as it went, and his selection, analysis, and
evaluation of the materials at hand was so accurate and
judicious, that the broad outlines of his system have been vin-
dicated by the test of time, and all the results of modem ex-
perimental research fit, with surprising facility, into the frame-
work of his generalizations, revision being nowhere necessary
save in nonessentials and minor details. Wilhelm Wundt, the
Father of Experimental Psychology, pays him the following
tribute: "The results of my labors do not square with the ma-
terialistic hypothesis, nor do they with the dualism of Plato
or Descartes. It is only the animism of Aristotle which, by
combining psychology with biology, results as a plausible
metaphysical conclusion from Experimental Psychology."
("Grundzuge der physiologischen Psychologie," 4t€ Auflage,
II, C. 23, S. 633.)

Literally translated, the title of Aristotle's work signifies a
treatise concerning the soul. It set a precedent for the
scholastic doctors of the thirteenth century, and de anima be-
came with them a technical designation for all works dealing
with this theme. In the sixteenth century the selfsame usage
was embalmed in the Greek term psychology, which was coined
with a view to rendering the elliptic Latin title by means of
a single word. Melanchthon is credited with having originated
the term, which, in its original use as well as its etymology,
denoted a science of the 'psyche or soul.

Towards the close of the seventeenth century, however, the
meaning of the term in question began to undergo a marvelous
evolution, of which the end is not yet. The process was ini-
tiated by Descartes, under whose auspices psychology was
changed from a science of the soul into a science of the mind.

M THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Then, under the influence of Hume and Kant, the noumenal
mind disappeared, leaving only phenomenal consciousness.
Recently, with the advent of Watson, even consciousness it-
self has been discarded and psychology has become a science
of behavior. And here, for the time being, at any rate, the
process has come to a stop, just one step short of complete
nihilism. Woodworth quotes the following waggish comment:
'Tirst psychology lost its soul, then it lost its mind, then it lost
consciousness; it still has behavior of a kind." ("Psychology,
the Science of Mental Life," p. 2, footnote.) This gradual
degeneration of psychology from animism into behaviorism
is one of the greatest ironies in the history of human thought.
All of this, however, was latent in the corrosive Cartesian
principle of "scientific doubt." Facilis descensus Avernil It
is easy to question the validity of this or that kind of human
knowledge, but difficult to arrest, or even foresee, the conse-
quences which the remorseless logic of scepticism portends.

Disintegration set in, as has been said, when Descartes
substituted his psychophysical dualism of mind and matter
for Aristotle's hylomorphic dualism of soul and body. The
French philosopher, in an appendix to his "Meditations,"
which dates from 1670, expressly rejects the Aristotelian term
of soul or psyche, and announces his preference for mind or
spirit, in the following words: "The substance in which thought
immediately resides is here called mind (mens, esprit). I here
speak, however, of mens (mind) rather than anima (soul),
for the latter is equivocal, being frequently applied to denote
what is material" ("Reply to the Second Objections," p. 86).
Henceforth psychology ceased to be a science of the soul, and
became, instead, a science of the mind.

Descartes, one must bear in mind, divided the universe into
two great realms of being, namely: the conscious and the
unconscious, the psychic world of mind and the physical
world of matter, unextended substance which thinks and ex-
tended substance which moves. In man these two substantial
principles were conceived as being united by the tenuous link

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 199

of mere contact, the spirit or mind remaining separate from,
and unmingled with, its material partner, the body. The main
trouble with this dualism is that it draws the line of de-
marcation at the wrong place. Reason and sense-conscious-
ness are bracketed together above the line as being equally
spiritual; physiological processes and processes purely physico-
chemical are coupled below the line as being equally mechani-
cal. Now, when a brain-function such as sense-perception
is introduced, like another Trojan Horse, into the citadel of
spiritualism, it is a comparatively easy task for materialism
to storm and sack that citadel by demonstrating with a thou-
sand neuro-physiological facts that all sensory functions are
rigidly correlated with neurological processes, that they are,
in short, functions of the nervous system, and therefore
purely material in nature. On the other hand, once we re-
treat from the trench of distinction between the processes of
unconscious or vegetative life and the physicochemical proc-
esses of the inorganic world, that moment we have lost the
strategic position in the conflict with mechanism, and nothing
avails to stay its triumphant onrush. Hence, from first to
last, it is perfectly clear that the treacherous psychophysical
dualism of Descartes has done far more harm to the cause
of spiritualism than all the assaults of materialism. There is
a Latin maxim which says: Extrema sese tangunt — "Extremes
come in contact with each other." The ultraspiritualism of
Descartes by confounding spiritual, with organic conscious-
ness, leads by the most direct route to the opposite extreme
of crass materialism.

Aristotle's dualism of matter and form, which is but a phys-
ical application of his transcendental dualism of potency
(dynamis) and act (entelechy), is very different from the
Cartesian dualism of the physical and the psychic. According
to the Aristotelian view, as we have seen in the last chapter,
all the physical entities or substantial units of nature (both
living and inorganic) are fundamentally dual in their essence,
each consisting of a definitive principle called entelechy and

200 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

a plastic principle called matter. Entelechy is the integrating
determinant, the source of the unit's coherence and of its dif-
ferentiation from units of another type. Matter is the de-
terminable and quantifying factor, in virtue of which the unit
is potentially-multiple and endowed with mass. In the electro-
chemical reactions of non-living substances (synthesis, analy-
sis, and transmutation), entelechy is the variant and matter
is the constant; in the metabolic activities of living substances
(assimilation and dissimilation), matter is the variant and
entelechy is the constant. This persistent entelechy of the
living unit or organism is what Aristotle terms the psyche or
soul. The latter, therefore, may be defined as the vital prin-
ciple or primary source of life in the organism.

But in using such terms as "soul" and "vital principle" we
are employing expressions against which not merely rabid
mechanists, but many conservative biologists as well, see fit
to protest. The opposition of the latter, however, is found
on closer scrutiny to be nominal rather than real. It is the
name which offends; they have no objection to the thing sig-
nified. Wilson, to cite a pertinent example, rejects as meaning-
less all such terms as "vital principle," "soul," etc. "They
are words," he avers, "that have been written into certain
spaces that are otherwise blank in our record of knowledge,
and as far as I can see no more than this." ("Biology," p. 23,
1908.) Yet he himself affirms again and again the existence
of the reality which these terms (understood in their Aris-
totelian sense) denote. In discussing the relation of the tissue
cell to the multicellular body, for instance, he speaks of "a
formative power pervading the growing mass as a whole."
("The Cell," 2nd ed., p. 59), and, in his recent lecture on
the "Physical Basis of Life," he makes allusion to "the in-
tegrating and unifying principle in the vital processes."
(Science, March 9, 1923, p. 284.) It would seem, therefore,
that Wilson's aversion to such terms as soul and vital prin-
ciple is based on the dynamic sense assigned to them by the
neo-vitalists, who, as we have seen, regard the vital principle

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 201

as a force sui generis or a unique agent, which operates in-
trusively among physicochemical factors in the role of an active
or efficient cause of vital functions. That such is really the
case, appears from his rhetorical question: "Shall we then join
hands with the neo-vitalists in referring the unifying and
regulatory principle to the operation of an imknown power, a
directive force, an archaeus, an entelechy or a soul?" {Loc. cit.,
p. 285 — italics mine.) The objection, however, does not apply
to these terms used in their Aristotelian sense. In the phi-
losophy of the Stagirite, the soul, like all other entelechies, is a
cause in the entitive, but not in the dynamic, order of things.
Its efficacy is formal, not efficient. It is not an agent, but a
specifying type. The organism must be integrated, specified,
and existent before it can operate, and hence its integration
and specification by the soul is prior to all vital activity. The
soul is a constituent of being and not an immediate principle
of action. The soul is not even an entity (in the sense of a
complete and separate being) , but rather an incomplete entity
or constituent of an entity. It takes a complete entity to be an
agent, and the soul or vital entelechy is not an independent
existent, which is somehow inserted into the organism, but an
incomplete being which has no existence of its own, but only co-
existence, in the composite that it forms with the organism. Nor
is there any such thing as a special vital force resident in the
organism. The executive factors in all vital operations of the
organic order are the physicochemical energies, which are
native to matter in general. These forces, as we have seen,
receive a reflexive orientation and are elevated to a higher
plane of efficiency by reason of their association with an en-
telechy superior to the binding and type-determining principles
present in inorganic units, but they are not supplanted or
superseded by a new executive force. Wilson's fear, therefore,
that the experimental analysis of life is discouraged by vital-
ism, inasmuch as this conception subtracts something from,
the efficiency of the physicochemical forces, is groundless in
the case of hylomorphic vitalism., but is well-founded in the

202 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

case of such systems as the neo-vitalism of Driesch and the
spiritualism of Descartes.

Summing up, therefore, we may say that the soul, like other
entelechies, is consubstantial with its material substrate, the
body. True it is more autonomous than are the inflexible
entelechies of inorganic nature, inasmuch as it is independent
of any given atom, molecule, or cell in the organic aggregate.
Such a degree of freedom, for example, is not possessed by
the most complex molecules, which show no other flexibility
than tautomerism, even this small readjustment involving a
change in their specificity. But this autonomy does not pre-
clude the essential dependence of the soul upon the body.
Generally speaking, the soul is incapable of existence apart
from its total substrate, the organism. We say, generally
speaking, because, as previously intimated, an exception must
be made in the case of the human soul, which, being, as we
shall see, a self-subsistent and spiritual entelechy, is by itself,
apart from its material substrate, a sufficient subject of
existence, and is therefore capable of surviving the dissolution
of its complementary principle, the organism. Nevertheless,
even in man, the soul forms one substance with the organism,
and the organism participates as a coefficient factor in all his
vital functions, both physiological and psychic, excluding only
the super organic or spiritual functions of rational thought and
volition, whose agent and recipient is the soul alone. In man,
then, soul and body unite to form a single substance, a single
nature, and a single person. Apart from the body, the human
soul is, indeed, a complete entity, in the sense that it is
capable of subsistence (independent existence) , but, in another
sense, it is not a complete entity, because apart from the
body it cannot constitute a complete nature or complete per-
sonality. It is this essential incompleteness of the discarnate
human soul that forms the natural basis of the Christian
doctrine of the Resurrection of the Dead.

Here, however, it is important to note the difference be-
tween the hylomorphic spiritualism of Aristotle and the psy-

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 203

chophysical spiritualism of Descartes. By the latter all con-
scious or physic functions are regarded as spiritual. The for-
mer, however, recognizes the fundamental difference which
exists between the lower or animal, and the higher or rational
functions of our conscious life. Sense-perception and sensual
emotion belong to the former class, and must be regarded as
organic functions, whose agent and subject is neither the soul
alone nor the organism alone, but the soul-informed organism
or substantial composite of body and soul. Rational thinking
and willing, on the contrary, are classified as superorganic or
spintual functions, inasmuch as they exclude the coagency
of the organism and have the soul alone for their active cause
and receptive subject.

The soul, in fine, is the formal principle or primary source
of the threefold life in man, namely, the metabolic life, which
man shares with plants, the sentient life, which he shares with
animals, and the rational life, which is uniquely human. The
human soul is often spoken of as the mind. In their dictionary
sense, both terms denote one and the same reality, namely, the
human entelechy or vital principle in man, but the connotation
of these terms is different. The term soul signifies the vital
principle in so far as it is the primary source of every kind
of life in man, that is, vegetative, sentient, and rational. The
term mind, however, connoting conscious rather than uncon-
scious life, signifies the vital principle in so far as it is the root
and ground of our conscious life (both sentient and rational).
Here, however, the distinction is of no great moment, and the
terms may be regarded as synonymous. The definitions which
we have given are, of course, blasphemous in the ears of our
modern neo-Kantian phenomenalists, whose preference is for
a functional, rather than a substantial, mind or soul; but we
will pay our respects to them later.

It is clear, however, from what has been said, that, for
evidences of the superiority and spirituality of the human soul,
we must recur, not to the external manifestations of our nu-
tritive life, but to the internal manifestations of our conscious

204 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

life. The latter are wholly inaccessible to the external senses
and perceptible only to the intuition of consciousness, intro-
spection, or internal experience, as it is variously called. All
our self-knowledge rests on the basis of introspection, and
without it the science of psychology would be impossible. In
fact, not only psychology, but the physical sciences as well,
depend for their validity on the testimony of consciousness;
for the external world is only knowable to the extent that it
enters the domain of our consciousness. Recently, as we have
seen, a tendency to discredit internal experience has arisen
among materialistic extremists. This "tendency," to quote the
words of Keyser, "most notably represented by the behaviorist
school of psychologists (like Professor Watson, for example),
is manifest in the distrust of introspections as a means of
knowledge of mental phenomena and in the growing depend-
ence of psychology upon external observation of animal and
human behavior and upon physiological experiment, as if mat-
ter were regarded 'as something much more solid and indubi-
table than mind' (Bertrand Russell)." — C. J. Keyser, Science^
Nov. 25, 1921, p. 520. Since, however, all our knowledge de-
pends on the validity of consciousness, such a tendency is
suicidal and destructive of all science, whether physical or
psychological. The attempts, therefore, of mechanists, like
Loeb, and behaviorists, like Watson, to dispense with con-
sciousness overreach themselves. For how can the mechanists
know that there are such things as tropisms, tactisms, or
reaction-systems, how can the behaviorist study such things
as "situations," "adjustments," and S-R-bonds, how can the
materialist become aware of the existence of molecules and
atoms, except through the medium of their own conscious or
psychic states? States of matter can be known only by means
of states of mind, and the former, therefore, cannot be any
more real than the latter. "What, after all," asks Cardinal
Mercier, "is a fact of nature if the mind has not seized,
examined, and assimilated it? True, the information of con-
sciousness is often precarious. For this reason we do well to

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 205

aid and control it by scientific apparatus. These apparatus,
however, can only aid, never supplant, introspection. The
telescope does not replace the eye, but extends its vision."
("Relation of Exp. Psych, to Philosophy," pp. 40, 41 — Trans.
of Wirth.)

§ 3. Tlie Nature of the Human Soul

Now our inner consciousness bears unmistakable witness
to the existence within us of an abiding subject of our thoughts,
feelings, and desires. In biology, the soul is revealed to us
as a binding-principle, that obstructs dissolution of the organ-
ism, and a persistent type that maintains its identity amid an
incessant flux of matter and flow of energy. Clearer still is
testimony of introspective psychology, which reveals all our
psychic activities and states as successive modifications of this
permanent "I," "self," "personality," or "mind," according
as we choose to express it. Human language proves this most
forcibly; for the intramental facts and data of our conscious
life simply cannot be so much as intelligibly expressed, much
less, defined, or differentiated from the extramental facts of
the physical world, without using terms that include a reference
to this selfsame persistent subject of thought, feeling, and voli-
tion. Even inveterate phenomenalists, like Wundt, James, and
Titchener, are obliged to submit to this inexorable linguistic
law, in common with their unscientific brethren, the generality
of mankind, although they do so only after futile attempts at
a "scientific revision" of grammar, and with much grumbling
over the "barbarous conceptions" of the gross-headed aborig-
ines who invented human language. Be that as it may, no
formulation of mental facts is possible except in terms that
either denote or connote this permanent source and ground
of human thought and feeling, as is apparent, for example,
from such phrases as: "/ think," "/ wish," "/ hear"; '^mental
states" (i.e. of the mind) ; psychic functions [i.e. of the
psyche) ; subjective idealism (i.e. of the subject) ; a conscious
act (from con-scire: "to know along with," because in

206 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

conscious acts the subject is known along with the object).
The phenomenalists occasionally succeed, in their "most pre-
cise" passages, in omitting to mention the person, knower, or
thinker behind thought, but they do so only at the cost of sub-
stituting personal pronouns, and of thus bringing back through
the window what they have just ejected by way of the door.
Our consciousness, therefore, makes us invincibly aware of the
existence of a superficially variable, but radically unchange-
able, subject of our mental life. It does not, however, tell us
anything concerning the nature of this primary ground of
thought, whether, for example, it is identical with the cerebral
cortex, or something distinct therefrom, whether it is phenome-
nal or substantial, dynamic or entitive, spiritual or material.
To decide these questions the unanalyzed factual data of
internal experience do not suffice, but they do suffice to estab-
lish the reality of the ego or subject of thought. Later we
shall see that the analysis of these data, when taken in con-
junction with other facts, forces us to predicate of the soul such
attributes as substantiality, simplicity, and spirituality, but
here they are cited solely for their factual force and not for
their logical implications.

The phenomenalistic schools of Interactionism and Psycho-
physical Parallelism deny the substantiality of the soul, and
seek to resolve it into sourceless and subjectless processes. A
phenomenal mind or soul, however, could not be the primary
ground of mental life, for the simple reason that phenomena
presuppose a supporting medium (otherwise they would be
self-maintaining, and therefore, substantial). Now that which
presupposes cannot be a primary principle, but only a sec-
ondary^, or tertiary principle. Consequently, a functional mind
could not be the primary and irreducible ground of mental
life, but only that of which it is a function, whether that some-
thing is a material, or a spiritual substance. For the present,
we are not interested in the nature of this ultimate substrate,
we are content with the fact that it really exists. Phenomenal-
ists (like Wundt, Paulsen, and James) are very inconsistent

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 207

when they admit material molecules as the extended substrate
of extramental or physical phenomena, while denying the ex-
istence of the mind or ego as the inextended substrate of
intramental or psychic phenomena. All substance, whether
material or spiritual, is inaccessible to the senses. Even ma-
terial substrates are manifested only by their phenomena,
being in themselves supersensible and "metaphysical." If,
then, the human understanding is inerrant in ascribing a
material substrate to extramental phenomena, then it is
equally inerrant in attributing to intramental phenomena the
intimate substrate called mind, whether this substrate be a
spiritual substance, or a material substance like the sub-
strate of physical phenomena and that of organic life. As a
matter of fact, the Psychophysical Parallelists actually do
reduce mental phenomena to a material substrate (viz. the
cerebral cortex). Their phenomenalism, which we will refute
presently, is but a disingenuous attempt to gloss over their
fundamental materialism. At all events, they are willing to
admit an ultimate substantial ground of thought and volition,
provided it is not claimed that this substrate is of a spiritual
nature. The bare existence of some substrate, however, is
all that we assert, for the present.

Before leaving this topic, we wish to call attention to the
fact that the subject of thought and desire is active as well as
passive. Mind, in other words, is not merely a persistent me-
dium wherein passive mental states are maintained, but an
active and synthetic principle as well. Mental processes, like
those of judgment, reasoning, and recognition, require a unitary
and unifying principle, which actively examines and compares
our impressions and thoughts, in order to discern their rela-
tions to one another and to itself. Materialistic psychology,
in spite of the plain testimony of consciousness, is all for ig-
noring the mind in its active role as the percipient of the iden-
tities and discrepancies of thought, and for regarding mind
as a mere complex of mental states or transient flux of fleeting
imagery. It is well, then, to bear in mind the indubitable

208 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

facts of internal experience, to which Cardinal Mercier calls
attention. "English psychology," he observes, "had attempted
a kind of anatomy of consciousness. It made all consist in
passive sensations or impressions. These impressions came to-
gether, fused, dissociated under the guidance of certain laws,
principally those of similarity and dissimilarity. The whole
process was entirely passive without the intervention of any
active subject. It was psychology without a soul. Now that
things are being examined a little more closely, psychologists
find that there are a lot of conscious states that are without
the slightest doubt active on the part of the subject. There
are a number of mental states upon which the subject brings
his attention to bear, and attention (from ad-tendere) means
activity. Ordinarily we do not know the intensity of a sensa-
tion without comparing it with another preceding one. This
work of comparison, or, as the English call it, discrimination,
is necessarily activity. The Associationists had confounded
the fact of coexistence with the perception of similarity or
dissimilarity. Supposing even that the coexistence of two
mental states were entirely passive, it still remains true that
the notion of their similarity or dissimilarity requires an act
of perception. It is absolutely impossible to conceive psychical
life without an active subject which perceives itself as living,
notes the impressions it receives, compares its acts, associates
and dissociates them; in a word, there can be no psychology
without a perceiving subject which psychologists call esprit,
or with the English, 'mind.' " {Op. cit., pp. 52-54 — italics his.)
The conflict between phenomenalism and the clear testimony
of consciousness is summed up in the following words of T.
Fontaine: "If all things are phenomena, then we ourselves can
be nothing more than events unknown to one another; in
order, then, that such events may appear to us united, so
that we may be able to declare their succession within us, it
is necessary that something else besides them should exist;
and this something else, this link that binds them together,
this principle that is conscious of their succession, can be

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 209

nothing else than a non-event or non-phenomenon, namely, a
substance, an ego substantially distinct from sensations."
("La sensation et la pensee," p. 23.)

For the phenomenalists, mind is but a collective term for the
phenomenal series of our transitory thoughts and feelings.
With Wundt, they discard the substantial or entitive soul for
a dynamic or functional one, ''die aktuelle Seele" (Cf.
Grundz. der Phys. Psych., ed. 5th, III, p. 758 et seq.)
Thought antecedes itself by becoming its own thinker; for
Titchener tells us : "The passing thought would seem to be the
thinker." ("Pr. of Psych.," I, p. 342.) We do not think, but
thought thinks ; John does not walk, but walking walks ; aero-
planes do not fly, but flight flies; air does not vibrate, but
vibration vibrates. The phenomenalist objectivates his sub-
jective abstractions, divorces processes from their agents, and
substantializes phenomena. The source of his error is a con-
fusion of the ideal, with the real, order of things. Because
it is possible for us to consider a thought apart from any
determinate thinker, by means of a mental abstraction, he
very falsely concludes that it is possible for a thought to
exist without a concrete thinker. It would be obviously absurd
to suppose that the so-called Grignard reaction could occur
without definite reactants, merely because we can think of it
without specifying any particular kind of alkyl halide; it
would be preposterous to infer, from the fact that vibration
can be considered independently of any concrete medium such
as air, water, or ether, that therefore a pure vibration can exist
without any vibrating medium; and it is equally absurd to
project an abstraction like subjectless thought into the realm
of existent reality. Abstractions are ideal entities of the mind;
they can have no real existence outside the domain of thought.
Hence to assign a real or extralogical existence to actions,
modalities, and properties, in isolation from the concrete sub-
jects, to which they belong, is a procedure that is not legiti-
mate in any other world than Alice's Wonderland, where, we
are told, the Cheshire Cat left behind his notorious grin long

210 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

after his benign countenance had faded from view. His face-
less grin is a fitting comment on the neo-Kantian folly of
those who, as L. Chiesa says, "speak of phenomena without
substance, of sensations without subject, of thoughts without
the Ego, to which they belong, imitating in this way the poets,
who personify honor, virtue, beauty, etc. Now all this pro-
ceeds exclusively from a confusion of the subjective abstrac-
tion with the reality, and from the assumption that the phe-
nomenon, for example, exists without substance, because we
are able (by means of abstraction) to consider the former
independently of the latter." ("La Base del Realismo," p. 39.)
In other words, the mind is capable of separating (represen-
tatively, of course, and not physically) its own phenomena
from itself, but this is no warrant for transferring the abstrac-
tions thus formed from the ideal, to the real, order of things.

So much for the soul's substantiality, but it is a simple, as
well as a substantial, principle, that is to say, it is inextended,
uncompounded, incorporeal, and not dispersed into quantita-
tive parts or particles. In other words, it is not a composite
of constituent elements or complex of integral parts, but
something really distinct from the body and pertaining to a
different order of reality than matter. This, as we have seen,
does not necessarily mean that it is immaterial, in the sense of
being intrinsically independent of matter. In a word, sim-
plicity does not involve spirituality (absolute immateriality).
Not only plant and animal souls, but even mineral entelechies,
are simple, in the negative sense of excluding extension, cor-
poreality and dispersal into quantitative parts, but they
are, none the less, intrinsically dependent on matter and
are therefore material principles.

That the soul or vital entelechy is really distinct from its
material substrate is apparent from the perennial process of
metabolism enacted in the living organism. In this process,
matter is the variant and entelechy or specific type is the
constant. Hence the two principles are not only distinct, but
separable. Moreover, the soul's role as a binding-principle

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 211

that obstructs dissolution is incompatible with its dispersal
into quantitative parts; for such a principle, far from being
able to bind, would require binding itself, and could not,
therefore, be the primary source of unification in the or-
ganism. Finally, the soul must be incorporeal; since, if it
were a corporeal mass, it could not be "a formative power
pervading the growing mass as a whole" (Wilson) ; for this
would involve the penetration of one body by another. Con-
sequently, the soul is a simple, inextended, incorporeal reality
undispersed into quantitative parts.

Introspective psychology bears witness to the same truth;
for consciousness reinforced by memory attests the substan-
tial permanence of our personal identity. We both think and
regulate our practical conduct in accordance with this sense
of unchanging personal identity. All recognition of the past
means simply this, that we perceive the substantial identity
of our present, with our past, selves throughout all the ex-
periences and vicissitudes of life. There is an inmost core
of our being which is unchanging and which remains always
identical with itself, in spite of the flow of thought and the
metabolic changes of the life-cycle. It is this that gives us
the sense of being always identically the same person, from
infancy to maturity, and from maturity to old age. It is
this that constitutes the thread of continuity which links our
yesterdays with to-day, and makes us morally responsible
for all the deliberate deeds of a lifetime. Courts of law do
not acquit a criminal because he is in a different frame of
mind from that which induced him. to commit murder, nor do
they excuse him on the score that metabolism has made him
a different mass of flesh from that which perpetrated the
crime. Such philosophies as phenomenalism and materialism
are purely academic. Even their advocates dare not reduce
them to consistent practice in everyday life.

Nor can the cases of alternating personalities be adduced
as counterevidence. In the first place, these cases are psycho-
pathic and not normal. In the second, they are due, not to a

212 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

modification of personality itself, but to a modification in the
perception of personality. Since this perception is, as we
shall see, extrinsically dependent on cerebral imagery, any
neuropathic affection is liable to modify the perception of per-
sonality by seriously disturbing the imagery, on which it
depends. But {pace Wundt and James) the perception of
personality is one thing, and personality itself quite another.
Perception does not produce its objects, but presupposes them,
and self-perception is no exception to this rule. Introspec-
tion, therefore, does not create our personality, but reveals and
represents it. If then to the intuition of consciousness our per-
sonality appears as an unchanging principle that remains
always substantially identical with itself, it follows that this
perception must be terminated by something more durable
than a flux of transient molecules or a stream of fleeting
thought. Unless this perceptive act has for its object some
unitary and uniformly persistent reality distinct from our com-
posite, corruptible bodies, and not identified with our tran-
sitory thoughts, this sense of permanent personal identity
would be utterly impossible. Materialism, which recognizes
nothing more in man than a decaying organism, a mere vortex
of fluent molecules, is at a loss to account for our conscious-
ness of being always the same person. Phenomenalism, which
identifies mind or self with the "thought-stream," is equally
impotent to account for this sense of our abiding sameness.

James' attempt at a phenomenalistic explanation of the
persistent continuity of self, on the assumption that each
passing thought knows its receding predecessor and be-
comes known, in turn, by its successor, is puerile.
To pass over other flaws, this absurd theory encounters an
insuperable difficulty in sleep, which interrupts, for a con-
siderable interval, the flow of conscious thought. Thought
is a transient reality, which passes, so far as its actuality is
concerned, and can only remain in the form of a permanent
effect. Unless, therefore, there were some persistent medium
in which the last waking thought could leave a permanent

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 213

vestige of itself, the process of relaying the past could never
be resumed, and we would lose our personal identity every
twentj'-four hours. The mind, or subject of thought, then,
must be an abiding and unitary principle distinct from our
composite bodies, and from our manifold and fleeting
thoughts.

Finally, to the two foregoing attributes of the human soul
(substantiality and simplicity), we must add a third and
crowning attribute, namely, spirituality. It is this, and this
alone, that differentiates the human from the bestial soul,
which latter is but an incomplete complement of matter, in-
capable of existence apart from matter, and doomed to perish
with the dissolution of the organism, as the cylindrical form
of a candle perishes with the consumption of the wax by the
flame.

All the psychic activities of the brute, such as sensation,
object-perception, imagination, associative memory, sensual
emotion, etc., are organic functions of the sensitivo-nervous
type. In all of them the agent and recipient is not the soul
alone, but the psycho-organic composite of soul and organism,
that is, the soul-informed sensory and central neurons of the
cerebrospinal system. The sensory neurons are nerve cells
that transmit centerward the excitations of physical stimuli
received by the external sense organs or receptors, in which
their axon-fibers terminate. These receptors and sensory
neurons are extended material organs proportioned and spe-
cialized for receiving physical impressions from external
bodies, either directly through surface-contact with the bodies
themselves or their derivative particles {e.g. in touch, taste
and smell), or indirectly through surface-contact with an
extended vibrant medium such as air, water, or ether (e.g. in
hearing and sight). The central neurons of the cerebral
cortex are, as it were, the tablets, upon which the excitations
transmitted thither by the sensory neurons, record the ex-
tended neurograms that constitute the physical basis of the
concrete imagery of memory and imagination. Interior senses,

214 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

then, like memory and imagination, merely continue and
combine what was preexistent in the exterior senses. Their
composite imagery is rigidly proportioned to the extended
neurograms imprinted on the cerebral neurons, and these
neurograms, in turn, are determined both qualitatively and
quantitatively by the physical impressions received by the
receptors, and these impressions, finally, are exactly propor-
tioned to the action of the material stimuli in contact with the
receptors. Thus the composite images of imagination as well
as those of direct perception are proportioned to the underlying
neurograms of the cortex and correspond exactly, as regards
quality, intensity, and extensity, to the original stimulus af-
fecting the external receptors. Hence men born blind can
never imagine color, nor can men born deaf ever imagine sound.
An inextended principle, such as the discarnate soul, cannot
receive or record impressions from extended vibrant media, or
from extended corporeal masses. For this the soul requires the
intrinsic cooperation of material receptors. Now, the highest
cognitive and appetitive functions of the brute {e.g. sense-per-
ception and emotion) are, as has been stated, of the sensitivo-
nervous or psycho-organic type, that is, they are functions in
which the material organism intimately cooperates; brute ani-
mals give no indication of having so much as a single function,
which proceeds from the soul alone and which is not communi-
cated to the organism. Hence the bestial soul is "totally im-
mersed" in matter; as regards both operation and existence, it
is "intrinsically dependent" upon its material complement, the
organism. It never operates save in conjunction with the lat-
ter, and its sole reason for existence is adequately summed up
in saying that it exists, not for its own sake, but merely to
vivify and sensitize the organism. Consequently, the brute
soul, though inextended and incorporeal, belongs, not to the
spiritual, but to the material, order of things.

Is the human soul equally material in nature, or does it
belong to the spiritual category of being? The state of the
question has long since been formulated for us by Aristotle:

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 215

"A further diflBculty," he says, "arises as to whether all at-
tributes 'of the soul are also shared by that which has the soul
or whether any of them are peculiar to the soul itself: a
problem which it is imperative, and yet by no means easy,
to solve. It would appear that in most cases it neither acts
nor is acted upon apart from the body: as, e.g., in anger,
courage, desire, and sensation in general. Thought, if any-
thing, would seem to be peculiar to the soul. Yet if thought
is a sort of imagination, or something not independent of
imagination, it will follow that not even thought is inde-
pendent of the body. If, then, there be any functions or af-
fections of the soul that are peculiar to it, it will be possible
for the soul to be separated from the body: if, on the other
hand, there is nothing peculiar to it, the soul will not be
capable of separate existence." ("Peri Psyches," Bk. I,
chap. I, 9.) We shall see that the human soul has certain
operations which it discharges independently of the intrinsic
coagency of the organism, e.g., abstract thought (not to be
confounded with the concrete imagery of the imagination)
and deliberate volition (to be distinguished from the urge
of the sensual appetite). Hence, over and above the organic
functions, which it discharges in conjunction with the material
organism, the human soul has superorganic functions, of which
it is itself, in its own right, the exclusive agent and recipient.
In other words, it exists far its own sake and not merely to
perfect the body.

The Aristotelian argument for the spirituality of the human
soul consists in the application of a self-evident principle or
axiom to certain facts of internal experience. The axiom in
question is the following: "The nature of an agent is revealed
by its action"; or, to phrase it somewhat differently: "Every
being operates after the same manner that it exists." The
factual data, to which reference is made, are man's higher
psychic functions, in which the soul alone is the active cause
and receptive subject, namely: the rational or superorganic
functions of thinking and willing. The argument may be for-

216 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

mulated thus: Every agent exists after the same manner that
it operates. But in rational cognition and volition the soul
acts without the co-agency of the material organism. There-
fore the human soul can exist without the co-existence of the
material organism. But this is tantamount to saying that it
is a spiritual reality irreducible to matter and incapable of
derivation from matter. For we define that as spiritual, which
exists, or is, at least, capable of existing, without matter. Con-
sequently, the human soul is a supermaterial and immortal
principle, which does not need the body to maintain itself in
existence, and can, on that account, survive the death and dis-
solution of its material complement, the organism. Such a
reality, as we have seen, cannot be a product of evolution, but
can only come into existence by way of creation.

The axiom, that activity is the expression or manifestation
of the entity which underlies it, needs but little elucidation.
In the genesis of human knowledge, the dynamic is prior to
both -the static and the entitive. We deduce the nature of the
cause from the changes or effects that it produces. Action,
in short, is the primary datum upon which our knowledge
of being rests. It is the spectrum of solar light emitted by
them, which enables us to determine the nature of the chemical
elements present in the distant Sun. It is the reaction of an
unknown compound with a test reagent that furnishes the
chemist with a clue to its composition and structure. It is the
special type of tissue degeneration caused by the specific toxin
engendered by an invisible disease germ that enables the
pathologists to identify the latter, etc., etc. So much for the
axiom. Regarding the psychological facts, a more lengthy ex-
position is required. To begin with, there is prima facie evi-
dence against the contention that the higher psychic functions
in man are independent of the organism. Injury and degenera-
tion of the cerebral cortex result (very often, at least) in
insanity and idiocy. Reason, therefore, is in some way de-
pendent upon the organism. Babies, too, are incapable of
rational thought until such a time as the nervous system is

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 217

fully developed. Obviously, then, rational functions cannot
be spiritual, inasmuch as they are not independent of the
organism.

This time-honored objection of materialists is based on a
misapprehension. It falsely assumes that spirituality ex-
cludes every kind of dependence upon a material organism,
and that our assertion of the soul's independence of matter
is an unqualified assertion. This, however, is far from being
the case. It is only intrinsic (subjective), and not extrinsic
(objective), independence of the organism which is here af-
firmed. An analogy from the sense of sight will serve to make
clear the meaning of this distinction. In the act of seeing a
tree, for example, our sight is dependent upon a twofold cor-
poreal element, namely, the eye and the tree. It is dependent
upon the eye as upon a corporeal element intrinsic to the visual
sense, the eye being a constituent part of the agent and sub-
ject of vision; for it is not the soul alone which sees, but
rather the soul-informed retina and neurons of the psycho-
organic composite. The eye enters as an essential ingredient
into the intimate constitution of the visual sense. It is a
constituent part of the specific cause of vision, and it can
therefore be said with perfect propriety that the eye sees.
Such dependence upon a material element is called intrinsic
or subjective dependence, and is utterly incompatible with
spirituality on the part of that which is thus dependent.
But the dependence of sight upon an external corporeal factor,
like a tree or any other visible object, is of quite a different
nature. Here the corporeal element is outside of the seeing
subject and does not enter as an ingredient into the compo-
sition of the principal and specific agent of vision. True the
tree, which is seen, is coinstrumental as a provoking stimulus
and an objective exemplar, but its concurrence is of an ex-
trinsic nature, not to be confounded with the intrinsic co-
agency of the eye in the act of vision. Hence, in no sense
whatever can the tree be said to see; for the tree is merely
m object, not the principal and specific cause, of vision.

218 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

When the dependence of an agent upon a corporeal element
is of this sort, it is termed extrinsic or objective dependence.
Such dependence upon a material element is perfectly com-
patible with spdrituality, which does, indeed, exclude all ma-
teriality from the specific agent and subject of a psychic act,
but does not necessarily exclude materiality from the object
contemplated in such an act. Hence the fact that the thinking
soul must abstract its rational concepts from the concrete
imagery of a cerebral sense, like the imagination, in no wise
detracts from its spirituality, because the dependence of ab-
stract thought upon such imagery is objective or extrinsic,
and not subjective or intrinsic.

Psychologists of the sensationalist school have striven to
obscure the fundamental distinction which exists between ra-
tional thought and the concomitant cerebral imagery. It
is, however, far too manifest to escape attention, as the healthy
reaction of the modern school of Wlirzburg indicates. "It
cost me great resolution," says Dr. F. E. Schultze, a member
of this school, "to say, that, on the basis of immediate ex-
periment, appearances and sensible apprehensions are not
the only things that can be experienced. But finally I had
to resign myself to my fate." ("Beitrag zur Psychologie des
Zeitbewusstseins," p. 277.)

But thought is not only distinct from imagery, often there
is marked contrast between the two, both as regards sub-
jective, and objective, characters. Thus our thought may be
perfectly clear, precise, and pertinent, while the accompany-
ing imagery is obscure, fragmentary, and irrelevant. "What
enters into consciousness so fragmentarily, so sporadically, so
very accidentally as our mental images," exclaims Karl
Biihler (also of Wlirzburg), "can not be looked upon as the
well-knitted, continuous content of our thinking." {Archiv.
fur die ges. Psychol, 9, 1907, p. 317.) The same contrast
exists with respect to their objective characters. Imagination
represents by means of one and the same image what reason
represents by means of two distinct concepts, e.g. an oasis

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 219

and a mirage; and, vice versa, reason represents under the
single general concept of a rose objects that imagination is
forced to represent by means of two distinct images, e.g., a
yellow, and a white rose. Imagery depicts only the super-
ficial or exterior properties of an object, whereas thought
penetrates beneath the phenomenal surface to interior prop-
erties and supersensible relationships. The sensory percept
apprehends the existence of a fact, while the rational concept
analyzes its nature. Hence sense-perception is concerned with
the reality of existence, while thought is concerned with the
reality of essence.

Certain American psychologists employ the term imageless
thought to designate abstract concepts. The expression is
liable to be misunderstood. It should not be construed as
excluding all concomitance and concurrence of sensible im-
agery, in relation to the process of thought. What is really
meant is that sensible appearances do not make up the sum-
total of our internal experiences, but that we are also aware
of mental acts and states which are not reducible to imagery.
In other words, we experience thought; and thought and im-
agery, though concomitant, are not commensurable. The clar-
ity and coherence of thought does not depend on the clarity
or germaneness of the accompanying imagery, nor is it ever
adequately translatable into terms of that imagery. Thus the
universal triangle of geometry, which is not right, nor oblique,
nor isosceles, neither scalene nor equilateral, neither large nor
small, neither here nor there, neither now nor then, is not vis-
ualizable in terms of concrete imagery, although we are clearly
conscious of its significance in geometrical demonstrations.
Imagery differs according to the person, one man being a
visualist, another an audist, another a tactualist, another a
motor-verbalist, etc. But thought is the same in all, and
consequently it is thought, and not imagery, which we convey
by means of speech. Helen Keller, whose imagery is mainly
motor and tactile, can exchange views with an audist or vis-
ualist on the subject of geometry, even though the amount

220 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

of imagery which she has in common with such persons is
negligible. ''Eine Bedeutung," says Biihler, "kann man
uberhaupt nicht vorstellen, sondem nur wissen" and Binet,
in the last sentence of his "L'Etude experimentale de I'intel-
ligence," formulates the following conclusion: "Finally — and
this is the main fact, fruitful in consequences for the phi-
losophers — ^the entire logic of thought escapes our imagery."
Nevertheless, thought does not originate in the total ab-
sence of imagery, but requires a minimal substrate of sensible
images, upon which it is objectively, if not subjectively, de-
pendent. The nature of this objective dependence is explained
by the Scholastic theory concerning the origin of concepts.
According to this theory, the genesis of our general and ab-
stract knowledge is as follows: (1) We begin with sense-
perception, say of boats differing in shape, size, color, material,
location, etc. (2) Imagination and sense-memory retain the
composite and concrete imagery synthesized or integrated from
the impressions of the separate external senses and
representing the boats in all their factual particularity,
individuality, and materiality, as existent here and
now, or there and then, as constructed of such and
such material (e.g., of wood, or steel, or iron, or con-
crete), as having determinate sizes, shapes, and tonnages,
as painted white, or gray, or green, as propelled by oar, or
sail, or turbine, etc. (3) Then the active intellect exerts
its abstractive influence upon this concrete imagery, accen-
tuating the essential features which are common to all, and
suppressing the individuating features which are peculiar to
this or that boat, so that the essence of a boat may appear
to the cognitive intellect without its concomitant individua-
tion — ^the essence of a boat being, in this way, isolated from
the peculiarities thereof and its various qualities from their
subject (representatively, of course, and not physically).
(4) The imagery thus predisposed, being no longer immersed
in matter, but dematerialized by the dispositive action of the
active intellect, becomes comstrumental with the latter in

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 221

producing a determination in the cognitive intellect. (5)
Upon receiving this determination, the cognitive intellect,
which has hitherto been, as it were, a blank tablet with noth-
ing written upon it, reacts to express the essence or nature
of a boat by means of a spiritual representation or concept
— the abstractive act of the active intellect is dispositive^
inasmuch as it presents what is common to all the boats
perceived without their differentiating peculiarities; the ab-
stractive act of the cognitive intellect, however, is cognitive,
inasmuch as it considers the essence of a boat without
considering its individuation. Such is the abstractive process
by which our general and abstract concepts are formed. From
a comparison of two concepts of this sort the process of judg-
ment arises, and from the comparison of two concepts with
a third arises the process of mediate inference or reasoning.
Volition, too, is consequent upon conception, and hence an
act of the will (our rational appetite), such as the desire of
sailing in a boat, entails the preexistence of some conceptual
knowledge of the nature of a boat. Volition, therefore, pre-
supposes thought, and thought presupposes imagination, which
supplies the sensible imagery that undergoes the aforesaid
process of analysis or abstraction. Such imagery, however,
is a function of the cerebral cortex, and, for this reason, the
normal exercise of the imagination presupposes the cerebral
cortex in a normal physiological condition; and anything
that disturbs this normal condition of the cortex will di-
rectly disturb the imagery of the imagination, and therefore
indirectly impede the normal exercise of conceptual thought,
which is abstracted from such imagery. Hence it is clear
that the activity of both the intellect and the will is ob-
jectively dependent upon the organic activity of the imagina-
tion, and, in consequence, indirectly dependent upon the
physiological condition of the cerebral cortex, which is the
organ of the imagination. Since, however, this dependence
is objective rather than subjective, it does not, as we have
seen, conflict with the spirituality of rational thought.

222 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

The nature of conceptual thought is such as to exclude the
participation of matter as a constituent of its specific agent
and receptive subject. The objects of a cerebral sense like
the imagination are endowed with extension, color, shape,
volume, mass, temperature, and other physical properties, in
virtue of which they can set up vibrations in an extended
medium or modify an extended organ by immediate physical
contact. But, while imagination makes us conscious of ob-
jects capable of stimulating extended material organs, the
objects, of which we are conscious in abstract thinking, are
divested of all the sensible properties, extension, and spe-
cific energies, which would enable them to modify a material
neuron, or produce a physical impression upon a material
receptor of any kind whatever. Between an extended ma-
terial receptor, like a sense-organ or a cerebral neuron, and
the nondimensional, dematerialized object or content of an ab-
stract thought, like science, heroism, or morality, there is no
conceivable proportion. How can a material organ be af-
fected by what is supersensible, unextended, imponderable,
invisible, intangible, and uncircumscribed by the limitations
of space and time? Extended receptors are necessary for
picking up the vibrations of a tridimensional medium (like
air or ether), and they are, likewise, essential for the recep-
tion of impressions produced by surface-contact with an ex-
terior corporeal mass. In short, sensory neurons are needed
to receive and transmit inward the quantitative and measur-
able excitations of the material stimuli of the external world,
and central neurons are required as tablets upon which these
incoming excitations may imprint extended neurograms, that
are proportionate in intensity and extensity to the external
stimulus apprehended, and that underlie and determine the
concrete imagery (of which they are the physical basis). But
when it comes to perceiving and representing the meaning
of duty, truth, error, cause, effect, psychology, means, end,
entity, logarithms, etc., our mind can derive no benefit from
the cooperation of a material organ. In such thinking we

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 223

are conscious of that which could not make an impression
nor leave a record upon material receptors like neurons. To
employ a material organ for the purpose of perceiving ab-
stract essences and qualities would be as futile and pointless
as an attempt to stop a nondimensional, unextended, intan-
gible baseball with a catcher's glove. Hence the services of
material centers and receptors may be dispensed with, so far
as rational thought is concerned. Rational thought cannot
utilize the intrinsic coagency of the organism, and it is
therefore a superorganic or spiritual function.

That conceptual thought is in no wise communicated to
the organism, but subjected in the spiritual soul alone, is
likewise apparent from the data furnished by introspection.
The conceiving mind apprehends even material objects ac-
cording to an abstract or spiritualized mode of representation.
In other words, in conceiving material objects we expurgate
them of their materiality and material conditions, endowing
them with a dematerialized mode of mental existence which
they could never have, if subjected in their own physical
matter, or in the organized matter of the cerebral cortex.
Thus, in forming our concept of a material object like a boat,
we spiritualize the boat by separating (representatively, of
course, and not physically) its nature or essence from the
determinate matter {e.g., wood, or steel) of which it is made,
and by divesting it of the material and concrete conditions
which define not only its physical existence outside of us, but
also its imaginal existence within us as a concrete image in
our imagination. In other words, we isolate the type or
form of a given object from its material substrate and lib-
erate it from the limiting material and concrete individua-
tion, which confine it to a single material subject and localize
it definitely in space and time. Now, it is axiomatic that
whatever is received is received according to the nature of
the receiver. Water, for example, assumes the form of the
receptacle into which it is poured, and a picture painted upon
canvas is necessarily extended according to the extension of

224 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

the canvas. If, therefore, our intellect endows even the ma-
terial objects, which it perceives, with a dematerialized or
spiritualized mode of representation, it follows that the in-
tellect itself is a spiritual power and not an organic sense
immersed in concretifying and individualizing matter. Cer-
tainly, this ideal or spiritualized mode of existence does not
emanate from the material object without nor yet from its
vicarious material image in our organic imagination (which, in
point of fact, is absolutely impotent to imagine anything ex-
cept concrete, singular things in all their determinate in-
dividuation and quantification). Thought, then, with its ab-
stract mode of presentation, cannot, like imagery, be sub-
jected in the animated or soul-informed cortex, but must have
the spiritual mind alone as its receptive subject. Our abstract
or dematerialized mode of conceiving material objects is a
subjective character of thought, proceeding from, and mani-
festing, the spirituality of the human mind, which represents
even material objects in a manner that accords with its own
spiritual nature.

But it is not only in the process of abstraction, but also
in that of reflection, that rational thought manifests its super-
organic or spiritual character. The human mind knows that
it knows and understands that it understands, thinks of its
own thoughts and of itself as the agent and subject of its
thinking. It is conscious of its own conscious acts, that is
to say, it reflects upon itself and its own acts, becoming an
object to itself. The thinking ego becomes an object of
observation on the part of the thinking ego, which acquires self-
knowledge by this process of reflective thought. In intro-
spection, that which observes is identical with that which is
observed. Now such a capacity of self-observation cannot
reside in matter, cannot be spatially commensurate with a
material organ nor inseparably attached thereto. It is pos-
sible only to an immaterial or spiritual principle, devoid of
mass and extension, and not subject to the law of the im-

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 225

penetrability of matter. In virtue of the law of impenetra-
bility, no two material particles, no two bodies, no two in-
tegral parts of the same body, can occupy one and the same
place. One part of a body can, indeed, act on another part
extrinsic to itself; but one and the same part or particle
cannot act upon itself. To become at once observed and
observer, a material organ would have to split itself in two,
so that the part watched could be distinct from, and spatially
external to, the part watching. The power of perfect reflection,
therefore, must reside in the spiritual soul, and cannot be
bound to, and coextensive with, a material organ. Only in
this supposition can there be a return of the subject upon
and into itself, only in this supposition can there be that
identification of observed and observer implied by the process
of reflection. H. Griinder, in his "Psychology without a Soul,"
gives a graphic reductio ad absurdum of the contrary as-
sumption: "A fairy tale," he says, "tells of a knight who was
beheaded by his victorious foe. But, strange to relate, the
vanquished knight rose to his feet, seized his severed head and
bore it off, as in triumph. The most remarkable part, how-
ever, of the story is that with a last effort of gallantry he
took his own head, and — kissed its brow. The climax of this
fairy tale is no more absurd than the assumption that a ma-
terial organ can know itself and philosophize on itself. Only if
we admit with the scholastics a simple soul intrinsically inde-
pendent of any bodily organism, can we explain the possibility
of perfect psychological reflexion." {Cf. pp. 193, 194.)

For the rest the impossibility of introspection on the part
of a material organ is so evident that the materialists them-
selves freely concede it, and being unwilling to admit the
spirituality of the human intellect, they are forced to resort to
the disingenuous expedient of denying the fact of reflection
on the part of the human mind. "It is obvious," says
Auguste Comte, "that by an invincible necessity the human
mind can observe directly all phenomena except its own. We

226 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

understand that a man can observe himself as a moral agent,
because in that case he can watch himself under the action
of the passions which animate him, precisely because the
organs that are the seat of those passions are distinct from
those that are destined for the functions of observation. . . .
But it is manifestly impossible to observe intellectual phe-
nomena whilst they are being produced. The individual think-
ing cannot divide himself in two, so that one half may think
and the other watch the process. Since the organ observing
and the one to be observed are identical, there can be no
self-observation." ("Cours de philosophie posntive," liete
leQon.) But an argument is of no avail against a fact, and, as
a matter of fact, we do reflect. It is by introspection or
reflective thought that we discriminate between our present
and our past thoughts, and become conscious of our own con-
sciousness. Our intellect even reflects upon its own act of
reflection, and so on indefinitely, so that, unless we are pre-
pared to accept the absurd alternative of an infinite series
of thinkers, we have no choice but to identify the subject know-
ing with the subject known. That our intellect is conscious
of its own operations and attentive to its own thoughts, is an
evident fact of internal experience, and it is preposterous to
tilt against facts by means of syllogisms. When Zeno con-
cocted his aprioristic "proof" of the impossibility of trans-
latory movement, his sophism was refuted by the simple
process of walking — solvitur ambulando. In like manner,
the Comtean sophism concerning the impossibility of reflec-
tion is refuted by the simple act of mental reflection — solvitur
reflectendo. For the rest, we readily concede Comte's con-
tention that an organ is incapable of reflection or self-obser-
vation, but we deny his tacit assumption that our cognitive
powers are all of the organic type. Our intellect, which
attends to its own phenomena, thinks of its own thought and
reasons upon its own reasoning, cannot be bound to, or co-
extensive with, a material organ, but must be free from any
corporeal organ and rooted in a spiritual principle. In a

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 227

word, reflective thought is a superorganic function expressing
the spiritual nature of the human mind.

Another proof of the superorganic nature of the human
intellect as compared with sentiency, both exterior and in-
terior, is one adduced by Aristotle himself: "But that the im-
passivity of the sense," he says, "is different from that of
intellect is clear if we look at the sense organs and at sense.
The sense loses its power to perceive, if the sensible object has
been too intense; thus it cannot hear sound after very loud
noises, and after too powerful colors or odors it can neither see
nor smell. But the intellect, when it has been thinking on an
object of intense thought, is not less, but even more, able to
think of inferior objects. For sense-perception is not inde-
pendent of the body, whereas the intellect is." ("Peri
Psyches," Bk. Ill, Ch. iv, 5.)

This temporary incapacitation of the senses consequent upon
powerful stimulation is a common experience embalmed in such
popular expressions as "a deafening noise," "a blinding flash,"
"a dazzling light," "a numbing pain," etc. Weber's law of the
differential threshold tells us that the intensity of sensation
does not increase in the same proportion as that of the
stimulus. On the contrary, the more intense the previous
stimulus has been, the greater must be the increment added to
the subsequent stimulus before it can produce a perceptible
increase in the intensity of sensation. In short, stimulation
of the senses temporarily decreases their sensitivity with ref-
erence to supervening stimuli. The reason for this momentary
loss of the power to react normally is evidently due to the
organic nature of the senses. Their activity entails a definite
and rigidly proportionate process of destructive metabolism in
their bodily substrate, the organism. In other words, the exer-
cise of sense-perception involves a commensurate process of
decomposition in the neural tissue, which must afterwards be
compensated by a corresponding assimilation of nutrient ma-
terial, before the sense can again react with its pristine vigor.
This process of recuperation requires time and temporarily

228 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

inhibits the reactive power of the sense in question, the dura-
tion of this repair work being determined by the amount of
neural decomposition caused by the reaction of the sense to
the previous stimulus. When, therefore, a weaker stimulus
supervenes in immediate succession to a stronger one, the sense
is incapable of perceiving it. All organic activity, in short,
such as sense-perception and imagination, is rigidly regulated
by the metabolic law of waste and repair.

With the intellect, however, the case is quite different. The
intellect is neither debilitated nor stupefied by the discovery of
truths that are exceptionally profound, or unusually abstruse,
or strikingly evident; nor is it temporarily incapacitated
thereby from understanding simpler, easier, or less evident
truths. On the contrary, the more comprehensive, the more
penetrating, the more perspicuous, the more sublime our intel-
lectual vision is, so much the more is our intellect invigorated
and enthused in its pursuit of truth, and its knowledge of the
highest truths renders it not less, but more, apt for the under-
standing of simple and ordinary truths. Obviously, then, the
intellect is not bound to a corruptible organ like the senses,
but has for its subject a spiritual principle that is intrinsically
independent of the organism.

In opposition to this contention, it may be urged that a pro-
longed exercise of intellectual activity results in the condition
commonly known as brain-fag. But this fatigue of the brain
is not, as a matter of fact, the direct effect of intellectual
activity; rather it is the direct effect of the activity of the
imagination, and only indirectly the effect of intellectual
thought. The intellect, as we have seen, requires a constant
flow of associated and aptly coordinated imagery as the sub-
strate of its contemplation. Now, the imagination, which
supplies this imagery, is a cerebral sense, whose activity is
directly proportionate to, and commensurate with, the meta-
bolic processes at work in the cortical cells. Its exercise is
directly dependent upon the energy released by the decompo-
sition of the cerebral substance. Prolonged activity of the

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 229

imagination, therefore, involves the destruction of a consider-
able amount of the cortical substance, and results in temporary
incapacitation or paralysis of the imagination, which must
then be compensated by a process of repair in the cortical
neurons, before the imagination can resume its normal mode of
functioning. Brain-fag, then, is due to the activity of the
imagination rather than that of the intellect. That such is
the case appears from the fact that after the initial exertion,
which results from the imagination being forced to assemble
an appropriate and systematized display of illustrative
imagery as subject-matter for the contemplation of the intel-
lect, the latter is henceforth enabled to proceed with ease along
the path of a given science, its further progress being smooth
and unhampered. Once the preliminary work imposed upon
the imagination is finished, the sense of effort ceases and intel-
lectual investigation and study may subsequently reach the
highest degrees of concentration and intensity, without involv-
ing corresponding degrees of fatigue or depression on the part
of the cerebral imagination, just as, conversely speaking, the
activity of the cerebral imagination may reach degrees of in-
tensity extreme enough to induce brain-fag in psychic opera-
tions wherein the concomitant intellectual activity is reduced
to a minimum, e.g., in the task of memorizing a poem, or reci-
tation. Here, in the all but complete absence of intellectual
activity, the same fatigue results as that induced by a pro-
longed period of analytic study or investigation, in which
imaginative activity and rational thinking are concomitant.
The point to be noted, in this latter case, is that the intellect
does not show the same dependence upon the physiological
vicissitudes as the imagination. The imagery of our imagina-
tion, being rigidly correlated with the metabolic processes of
waste and repair at work in the cerebral cortex, manifests
correspondingly variable degrees of intensity and integrity,
but the intensity of thought is not dependent upon this alterna-
tion of excitation and inhibition in the cortex. Hence, while
the concomitant imagery is fitful, sporadic, and fragmentary,

230 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

intellectual thought itself is steady, lucid, and continuous.
The intensity of thought does not vary with the fluctuations of
neural metabolism, and may reach a maximum without
involving corresponding fatigue in the brain. The brain-fag,
therefore, which results from study does not correspond to the
height of our intellectual vision, but is due to the intensity of
the concomitant imaginative process.

The intellect, therefore, is not subject to the metabolic laws
which rigidly regulate organic functions like sense-p€rception
and imagination. Man's capacity for logical thought is fre-
quently unaffected by the decline of the organism which sets
in after maturity. All organic functions, however, such as
sight, hearing, sense-memory, are impaired in exact proportion
to the deterioration of the organism, which is the inevitable
sequel of old age. The intellectual powers, on the contrary,
remain unimpaired, so long as the cortex is sound enough to
furnish the required minimum of imagery, upon which intel-
lectual activity is objectively dependent. There are, in fact,
many cases on record where men have remained perfectly sane
and rational, despite the fact that notable portions of the
cerebral cortex had been destroyed by accident or disease
{e.g., tumors). Intellectual thought, therefore, is a super-
organic function, having its source in a spiritual principle and
not in a corruptible organ.

Such is the spiritualism of Aristotle. That this conception
differs profoundly from the ultra-spiritualism of Descartes, it
is scarcely necessary to remark. The position assumed by the
latter was always untenable, but it is now, more than ever,
indefensible in the face of that overwhelming avalanche of
facts whereby modern physiological psychology demonstrates
the close interdependence and correlation existent between
psychic and organic states. Such facts are exploited by ma-
terialists as arguments against spiritualism, though it is evi-
dent that they have force only against Cartesian spiritualism,
and are bereft of all relevance with respect to Aristotelian
spiritualism, which they leave utterly intact and unscathed.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 231

In the latter system, sense-perception, imagination, and emo-
tion are acknowledged to be directly dependent on the organ-
ism. Again, spiritual functions like thinking and willing are
regarded as objectively or extrinsically dependent upon the
imagination, which, in turn, is directly dependent on a material
organ, namely: the brain. Hence even the rational operations
of the mind are indirectly dependent upon the cerebral cortex.
The spiritualism of Aristotle, therefore, by reason of its doc-
trine concerning the direct dependence of the lower, and the
indirect dependence of the higher, psychic functions upon the
material organism, is able to absorb into its own system all
the supposedly hostile facts amassed by Materialism, thereby
rendering them futile and inconsequential as arguments
against the spirituality of the human soul. In confronting this
philosophy, the materialistic scientist finds himself disarmed
and impotent, and it is not to be wondered at, that, after
indulging in certain abusive epithets and a few cant phrases,
such as "metaphysics" or "medieval" (invaluable words!),
he prudently retires from the lists without venturing to so
much as break a lance in defense of his favorite dogma, that
nothing is spiritual, because all is matter. In this predica-
ment, the Cartesian caricature proves a boon to the material-
ist, as furnishing him with the adversary he prefers, a man
of straw, and enabling him to demonstrate his paltry tin-
sword prowess. Of a truth, Descartes performed an inestima-
ble service for these modern "assassins of the soul," when he
relieved them of the necessity of crossing swords with the
hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle by the substitution of a
far less formidable antagonist, namely, the psychophysical
dualism of mind and matter.

The proofs advanced, in the previous pages, for the spiritu-
ality of the human soul are based upon the superorganic
function of rational thought. A parallel series of arguments
can be drawn from the superorganic function of rational
volition. The cognitive intellect has for its necessary sequel
the appetitive will, which may be defined as spiritual tendency

232 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

inclining us toward that which the intellect apprehends as
good. The objects of such volition are frequently abstract and
immaterial ideals transcendent to the sphere of concrete and
material goods, e.g., virtue, glory, religion, etc. The will of
man, moreover, is free, in the sense that it can choose among
various motives, and is not compelled to follow the line of
least resistance, as is the electric current when passing through
a shunt of steel and copper wire. Like the self-knowing intel-
lect, the self-determining will is capable of reflective action,
that is, it can will to will. Having its own actions within its
own control, it is itself the principal cause of its own decisions,
and thus becomes responsible for its conduct, wherever its
choice has been conscious and deliberate. External actions,
which escape the control of the will, and even internal actions
of the will itself, which are indeliberate, are not free and do
not entail responsibility. Our courts of law and our whole
legal system rests on the recognition of man's full responsi-
bility for his deliberate voluntary acts. The distinction
between premeditated murder, which is punished, and unpre-
meditated homicide, which is not, is purely moral, and not
physical, depending for its validity upon the fact of
human freedom. It is this exemption from physical deter-
minism, that makes man a moral agent, subject to duties,
amenable to moral suasion, and capable of merit or demerit.
Finally, the will of man is insatiable, invincible, and inex-
haustible. The aspirations of the will are boundless, whereas
our animal appetites are easily cloyed by gratification. There
is no freezing point for human courage. The animal or sensual
appetites wear out and decline with old age, but virtue and
will-power do not necessarily diminish with the gradual de-
terioration of the material organism. Willing, therefore, is a
superorganic or spiritual function. Activity which is bound
to a material organ cannot tend towards supersensible ideals,
cannot escape physical determinism, cannot achieve the reflec-
tive feat of spurring itself to action, cannot avoid exhaustion,
cannot elude rigid regulation by the laws of organic metab-

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 233

olism. For this reason, the brute, whose psychic functions are
of the organic type exclusively, is destitute of freedom, moral-
ity, and responsibility. Deliberate volition, therefore, like
conceptual thought, has its source and subject in man's spir-
itual soul, and is not a function of the material organism.^

*To develop the argument drawn from rational volition for the
spirituality of the human soul would carry us too far afield. Those who
wish to pursue the subject further may consult Chapter VIII of
Griinder's monograph entitled "Psychology without a Soul," also his
monograph on "Free Will."

G. H. Parker of Harvard, though admitting the fact of human free-
dom, tries to explain it away in terms of materialism. The following
is the description which he gives of his theory: "It is a materialist
view which, however, recognizes in certain types of organized matter a
degree of free action consistent with human behavior and the resultant
responsibility." (Science, June 13, 1924, p. 520.) Freedom, in other
words, "emerges" from matter having a peculiar "type of organization."

This view must be interpreted in the light of the philosophy of
"Emergent Evolution," which Parker holds in common with C. Lloyd
Morgan and R. W. Sellars. The philosophy in question recognizes in
nature an ascending scale of more and more complexly organized units,
starting with protons and electrons, at the bottom, and culminating in
the human organism, at the top. At each higher level of this cosmic
scale we find higher units formed by coalescence of the simpler units
of a lower level. These higher units, however, are something more
than a mere summation of the lower units; for, in addition to additive
properties that can be predicted from a knowledge of the components,
they exhibit genuinely new properties which, not being mere sums of
the properties of the component units, are unpredictable on that basis.
Given, for example, the weight of two volumes of hydrogen and one
volume of oxygen, we could predict an additive property such as
the weight of the compound, i.e. the water, formed by their combination.
Other properties, of the compound, however, such as liquidity, are not
foreshadowed by the properties of the component gases. Similarly, the
weight of carbon disulphid (CS2) is an additive function of the com-
bining weights of sulphur and carbon, but the other properties of this
mobile liquid are not predictable on the basis of the properties of sul-
phur and carbon. Hence two kinds of properties are distinguished: (1)
additive (quantitative) properties called resultants, which are predict-
able; (2) specificative (qualitative) properties called emergents, which
are unprecedented and unpredictable. Freedom and intelligence, ac-
cordingly, are pronounced to be emergents of matter organized to that
degree of complexity which we find in man.

This dualism of resultance and emergence is merely a new verbal
vesture for the hylomorphic dualism of Aristotle. The additive proper-

234 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

Two additional facts may be cited as bringing into strong
relief the basic contrast existing between the higher or rational,
and the lower or animal psychosis in man. The first is the
occurrence of irreconcilable opposition or conflict. The imag-
ination, for example, antagonizes the intellect by visualizing
as an extended speck of chalk or charcoal the mathematical
point, which the intellect conceives as destitute of extension
and every other property except position. Similarly, the
effort of our rational will to be faithful to duty and to uphold

ties (resultants) are based on matter, which is the principle of continu-
ity. The specificative (constituitive or qualitative) properties called
emergents are rooted in entelechy (form), which is the principle of
novelty. In fact, entelechy (form) itself is an emergent of matter just
as the specificative properties are emergents of matter, with the sole
difference that entelechy is the primary emergent of matter, whereas
the specificative or qualitative properties are secondary emergents. For
in Aristotelian philosophy, entelechy is not, as it is in Neo-vitalism, *'an
alien principle inserted into matter" abruptly and capriciously "at the
level of life," but a primary emergent and constituent of matter both
living and non-living. In fine, entelechy is an emergent of matter in all
the units of nature from the simplest atom to the most complex plant
or animal organism. The only entelechy, which is not an emergent,
but an insert into matter, is the spiritual human soul. Neither the
human soul nor the superorganic functions rooted in it, namely, abstrac-
tion, reflection, and election, are emergents. Here we have novelty
without continuity, and therefore not emergence (eduction), but irir-
sertion (infusion).

In his "Emergent Evolution," 1923, Lloyd Morgan lays it down as
axiomatic that emergence involves continuity — "There may often be
resultants," he says, "without emergence; but there are no emergents
that do not involve resultant effects also. Resultants give quantitative
continuity which underlies new constitutive steps in emergence." (Op.
cit., p. 5.) Now our proofs for human spirituality consist precisely in
the complete exclusion of qiiantitative continuity between organic func-
tions (e.g. sensation) and superorganic functions (e.g. conceptual
thought and free volition). Hence, by the very axiom which Morgan
himself formulates, the human soul and its superorganic functions are
excluded from the category of material emergents. If there can be no
emergence without quantitative continuity, then the human soul is not
an emergent Jrom, but an insert into, matter. Free choice, too, it is need-
less to say, is not an emergent of matter, but an expression of the super-
material nature of the human soul. So much for the new-old dualism
of emergence and resultance.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 235

ideals is antagonized by the sensual impulses of the animal
appetite, which seek immediate gratification at the expense
of remote considerations that are higher. Such antagonism
is incompatible with any identification of the warring factors,
that is, of our rational, with our sentient, functions; for, wher-
ever opposition is in evidence, there a fortiori a real distinction
must be recognized. The understanding and the will, there-
fore, differ radically from sense and sensual appetite. The
second significant fact is the domination exerted by reason
and will over the cognitive and appetitive functions of the
organic or sentient order. Our intellect criticizes, evaluates
and corrects the data of sense-perception, it discriminates be-
tween objective percepts and illusions and hallucinations, it
distinguishes dreams from realities, it associates and dissoci-
ates imagery for purposes of comparison, contrast, illustration,
or analysis. Moreover, it not only shows its superiority to
sense by supervising, revising, and appraising the data of
sentient experience, but it manifests its discontent at the inac-
curacy and limitation of sense by the invention and use of
instrumentation {e.g. ear trumpets, spectacles, microscopes,
telescopes, spectroscopes, polariscopes, periscopes, etc.) to rem-
edy the defects or increase the range of sense-perception, etc.
This phenomenon is without parallel among brute animals, and
is a patent manifestation of the superiority of human psy-
chology. In like manner, the will demonstrates its preemi-
nence over the organic or animal appetite, by exerting supreme
control over the passions and impulses of our lower nature.
In fact, it is able to bridle and repress the impulses of sensu-
ality even in the immediate presence of sensible stimuli that
would irresistibly determine the brute to a gratification of its
animal lusts ; and it can force the struggling and reluctant flesh
to undergo a crucifixion for supersensible motives that make
no appeal to the beast. The understanding and the will, there-
fore, are essentially superior to the organic psychosis that
they control, namely, the sentient consciousness and sensual
appetite, which we share in common with the brute, but which.

236 THE CASE AGAINST EVOLUTION

in the latter, give no evidence whatever of rational or moral
control.

§ 4. Darwinian Anthropomorphism

The spiritual mind of man represents an eminence to which
evolving matter can never attain. This, then, is the hill that
must needs be laid low, if the path of Darwinian materialism
is to be a smooth one. There is, therefore, nothing very sur-
prising in the fact that Darwin and his followers, from Huxley
down to Robinson, have done all in their power to obscure and
belittle the psychological differences between man and the
brute. The objective of their strategy is twofold, namely, the
brutalization of man and its converse, the humanization of the
brute. The ascent will be easier to imagine, if man can be
depressed, and the brute raised, to levels that are not far
apart. To this end, the Darwinian zealots have, on the one
hand, spared no pains to minimize the superiority and dignity
of human reason by the dissemination of sensistic association-
ism, psychophysical parallelism, and various other forms of
"psychology without a soul"; and they have striven, on the
other hand, to exalt to the utmost the psychic powers of the
brute by means of a crude and credulous anthropomorphism,
which, for all its scientific pretensions, is quite indistinguish-
able from the naivete of the author of "Black Beauty" ^ and
the sentimentality of S. P. C. A. fanatics, vegetarians, anti-
vivisectionists, etc. The first of these tendencies we have
already discussed, the second remains to be considered.

When it comes to anthropomorphizing the brute, Darwin has
not been outdistanced by the most reckless of his disciples.
Three entire chapters of the "Descent of Man" are filled with
this "vulgar psychology" (as Wundt so aptly styles it). It is
the sum and substance of the entire fabric of argumentation,
which he erects in support of his thesis that "the difference in

'Title of a horse's autobiography by Anna Sewall, the horse's alter
ego.

THE ORIGIN OF THE HUMAN SOUL 237

mind between man and the higher animals is certainly one of
degree and not of kind." (C/. op. cit., chs. III-V.) Haeckel,
Huxley, and Clifford attained to equal proficiency in the sport.
Subsequent philosophers parroted their bold metaphors and
smart aphorisms,