Darwinism Reversed

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 16, 1882

Darwinism Reversed.

If the fact that there are certain points of resemblance between man and the monkey is sufficient to prove that man sprang from the monkey, then by a similiar mode of reasoning we can prove that the oak sprang from the tomato plant; and we can do it thus : the oak plants its roots in the ground, and so does the tomato; the oak clothes itself with foliage, and so does the tomato; the trunk of the oak is enveloped in bark, and so is the stalk of the tomato; both the oak and the tomato bloom and bear and propagate; both are liable to the influences of heat, and cold, and rain, and sunshine; both are subject to the action of fire, and when burned the ashes of one might readily be mistaken for the ashes of the other. Therefore, if Darwin's logic is good for anything, the oak is certainly a descendant of the tomato.

Notwithstanding Mr. Darwin's unparalleled fertility of imagination, he occasionally encounters difficulties almost too stupendous even for his resources.

One of his troubles was to account for the fact that man, being sprung from a quadruped, now walks erect on two feet, using the other two as hands. Another of his difficulties was in explaining how men and women had lost the hair from their limbs and bodies. And still another puzzle was in accounting for the disappearance of their tails, because he insists that his ancestors had tails. (Indeed, I may remark in passing that one of the latest items of news is that the title of Darwin's next forthcoming work will be "The Tails of our Ancestors.")

So far as the first-mentioned difficulty is concerned, namely, that concerning the feet, Darwin is of the opinion that by gradually ceasing to use the fore legs and feet for the purposes of locomotion, and limiting their use to the purposes of shaping utensils, preparing food, etc., they lost much of their original size and stiffness and became adapted to the uses for which we now employ them.

But to dispose of the tails and hairs that had once adorned his apish ancestors he seemingly finds a more troublesome task; so he resorts to what he calls sexual selection in order to solve the problem. He assumes that at some vastly remote period his ancient forefathers and foremothers became tired both of their hairy covering and their long tails, so that when a young monkey reached a marriageable age he or she always looked out for a spouse with as short a tail and as scant a covering of hair over the body and limbs as possible. And it is claimed that a portion of the fruits of those short-tailed and thin-haired marriages were blessed with still shorter tails and still lighter coverings of hair, and that by means of keeping a similar custom for many generations both tail and hairs finally disappeared, leaving a race of nude and tailless monkeys, henceforth to be called man, standing erect upon their hinder legs, "the wonder and glory of the universe."

All this we are asked to accept as scientific truth, not because of any well-authenticated supporting facts, but because of the supposed intrinsic reasonableness of the theory itself.

How it is possible that any man, even with a monkey's intelligence, much less any monkey with man's intelligence, can, in the name of science, be imposed upon by such sophistry, is difficult to understand. Who does not know that anything of animal nature that animals of the brute kind, instead of being ashamed of any of their natural gifts, delight in their possession and love to display them.

I know of but one instance recorded, either in history or fable, where a brute endowed by nature with a long tail ever professed an admiration for a short one. The instance that I refer to is that of a fox mentioned in an ancient fable, which, having lost its tail by being caught in a trap, called a meeting of all the other foxes and sought to prevail upon them to adopt short tails as a fashion. I do not think, however, that they followed his advice.

But Darwin has found a still greater difficulty to solve than either of those just mentioned. The most overwhelming difference between man and the monkey consists in man's moral sense and his vastly superior intelligence. Darwin himself admits this. At page 125 of his "Descent of Man" he says: "There can be no doubt that the difference between the mind of the lowest man and that of the highest animal is immense." Although Darwin does not assert it as a fact, yet his theory would seem to involve the idea that man's reasoning faculties and his moral sense, or sense of right and wrong, have gradually developed and improved in the same proportion as his tail shortened and his hair disappeared.

But in the name of all the monkeys at once, I would ask what the thickness of a monkey's hair or the length of his tail has to do with either the measure of his intelligence or the acuteness of his moral perceptions? Can Mr. Darwin tell us the degree of a monkey's intelligence by measuring his tail? Or test the question of his moral honesty by counting the hairs upon his back? If not, then how did it happen that as the tails of his ancestral apes grew shorter and shorter, and their hairs grew thinner and thinner, both their minds and their moral sense grew brighter and brighter? According to Darwin's theory we are forced to conclude that there must have been an intimate relation between these bodily changes on the one hand and these mental and moral changes on the other, or else some of those hairy and long-tailed monkeys, especially the most intelligent ones, descended as they were from the same common parentage, and belonging to the same family, would undoubtedly have outstripped the most stupid portion of their bobtailed brethren.

But how are we to account for this immense chasm which Mr. Darwin admits lies between the intelligence of the lowest human and that of the highest brute? You will remember that according to Darwin man is supposed to have started from a something resembling the larve of an ascidian, a headless, spineless insect. From that he became a very small fish called a lancelet, then in the process of evolution, he developed into another fish of a larger species; finally he became amphibious, and of course served his time either as a turtle, a toad, or a water snake. Then he became entirely a dry land animal, and after passing through the various lower grades of four-footed animalism he became, perhaps, a goat, or a dog, and finally a monkey—first a monkey of the lowest species, from which he worked his way up into a chimpanzee, the most intelligent and very highest order of monkeys.

Now, according to Darwin's own showing, there is no sudden break in the long chain of animal intelligences stretching all the way from the most stupid specimen of animated existence up to the chimpanzee. Wherein and in every stage of being through which it is claimed that the chimpanzee and his ancestors have passed they have successively left myriads and myriads of representatives exactly similar to their immediate progenitors. Thus they have left the ocean

swarming with fishes of every kind, shape, and size, from the minutest species of minnow, to the mightiest monster of the deep. They have left upon the water's edge of every sea, lake, river, and rivulet millions and millions of turtles, toads, and water snakes, to mark their supposed pathway through the regions of amphibianism; and finally they have left every continent and every island of every ocean resounding with the voices of beasts, birds, and insects of every conceivable nature, form, color, and shade of intelligence. There is no chasm there.

If you take any one species of beasts, birds, reptiles, fishes, or insects, from the keenest monkey down to the dullest snail, and compare it with a specimen of what seems to be the next highest species in the scale of intelligence, you will find it difficult, if not impossible, to decide satisfactorily, even to your own mind, which of the two is the more intelligent.

Indeed, according to Darwin's own showing, the rise in the scale of intelligence as you ascend from the minnow to the monkey is so gradual that your pathway apparently lies upon a smooth, level plain, rather than up the ascending slope of a mountain. But the moment you reach the highest point of monkey intelligence, you come to a sudden halt. A vast mental chasm lies before you, wherein no living intelligence dwells. Upon the farther side of this chasm there towers a mental mountain of prodigious height; whereon sits enthroned the human intellect, with its almost God-like powers; an intellect which has not only given man the mastery over every living creature that inhabits the earth, the air, or the sea, but which has given him dominion over the very elements of which earth, air, and sea are formed. If the time ever was when man was only a monkey in intellect, how did he ever cross this immense and unpeopled chasm, or ascend these stupendous mental heights which now lie between him and the most intelligent of the monkey race, and yet leave behind not one solitary vestige of an intermediate tribe to perpetuate the memory of this tremendous march? If there is any bridge across this chasm, or any Jacob's ladder ascending these heights, whereby an ape may travel from monkeydom to manhood, why do we not see thereon the myriads of these transition monkeys on their way to this human mountain? According to Darwin there must have been a time when man's ancestors were in the act of passing over this now dividing space. Then, why is it that they have left no successors? Why is it that between man and the monkey we do not see to-day numerous intermediate tribes, some just a little more intelligent than the chimpanzee, corresponding with what our ancestors were when, thousands of years ago, they took the first step in advance of this species of monkey? And why do we not see other tribes only a shade less intelligent than man, and myriads of other intermediate tribes rising in intelligence one above the other, and as completely filling the intellectual gap which Darwin admits to exist between the present man and the present monkey, as do the countless legions of animals of every conceivable species fill that other gap that lies between the minnow and the monkey?

Darwin sees the difficulty and vainly attempts to solve it thus: He assumes, without the least show of proof, that the various species of animal intelligences which at some vastly remote and wholly indefinable period of the past formed the numerous links of a connecting chain between the hindmost man and the foremost monkey, somehow or another dropped out of existence; leaving upon that long bridge, supposed to span the dividing space between man-land and monkey-land, not a solitary midway monkey to tell the awful tale. But this calamity Darwin tells us, happened a very long time ago. Then, why, let me ask, have not the other monkeys, who were standing just upon the intellectual heels of those lost tribes, stepped forward and filled their places? If, as is claimed by this new philosophy, the man-monkey, relying solely on his unaided intellect, has pioneered his way over the bridge which spans this chasm, and if man now stands forth—as in the person of Mr. Darwin—with outstretched arms to embrace, encourage, and assist his fellow-monkey over this bridge; why is it that Mr. monkey does not come along? Why doesn't he shed his hair, drop his tail, rear himself on his hinder legs, put on what we miners used to call a "boiled shirt," a pair of pantaloons, a swallow-tail coat, a beaver hat, stick a cigar in his mouth, and proclaim himself a candidate for office? This, I think, would be a good starting-point, for if successful—which he most probably would be—he would fill a position which, according to the times in which we live, would require but little brains, and no conscience whatever.

But while I believe it impossible for a monkey ever to ascend to man's proper mental or moral level, I am not so sure that the converse of that proposition is equally true. It is much easier to jump from the top of a tree to the ground than it is to jump from the ground to the top of a tree. A stone will roll down hill by the force of its own gravity; but its own gravity will not roll it back again. For a similar reason it is far easier for a man to descend to the monkey's level than for the monkey to ascend to the level of man.

There is no instance that I know of recorded in either profane or sacred history where a brute was ever known to have been raised to the dignity of manhood; but there is a well authenticated instance recorded in the Bible, where a man—an office-holder, too, by the by—did descend from the very pinnacle of human pride and power to take his place amongst the beasts of the field. We are told in holy writ that as the great king Nebuchadnezzar was walking in his palace he said in the pride of his heart, "Is not this great Babylon that I have built, for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honor of my majesty?" But scarcely had these words escaped his lips when a voice came down from Heaven, saying, "Thy kingdom shall pass from thee. And they shall cast thee out from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with cattle and wild beasts, thou shalt eat grass like an ox, and seven times shall pass over thee till thou know that the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men and giveth it to whomsoever he will. The same hour the word was fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar, and he was driven away from among men, and did eat grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven; till his hairs grew like the feathers of eagles, and his nails like bird's claws."

Let us here pause a moment and ask ourselves why Nebuchadnezzar thus humiliated and degraded from the very pinnacle of human power and human glory, so as to become like a beast of the field? Was it not, I ask, because of his great pride, his attempt to rob the Almighty of the honor which was his, and to appropriate it to himself? "Is not this," said he "the great Babylon and for the honor of my majesty?" and forthwith he was changed into a beast.

Now, can it be denied that the proud self-sufficient spirit of Darwinism is more impious and more derogatory to the rightful honor due to the Almighty, than was the spirit which prompted those haughty words of the great Babylonian king? Why, even more impious than Nebuchadnezzar, Darwin points to man—a far greater city than Babylon or any other city built with human hands—a city which God himself built, when he said, 'Let us make man in our own image and likeness.' A city whose very life is the breath of Divinity; a city which, as it came from the hands of the great master builder, infinitely surpassed in beauty and magnificence all the works of man, because it was fashioned after the likeness of God himself, the author and source of all that is grand and beautiful in the universe—pointing, I repeat, to this city Darwin says, "Have not we ourselves by the power of our might, built up this city?" That is to say, have not I and my ancestral monkeys, crocodiles, reptiles, toads, and tadpoles, by the process of natural selection, evolved ourselves from the lowest organism of animated matter, until we have made ourselves the wonder and glory of the universe?"

Darwinism, however, differs from Nebuchadnezzarism in this: In the case of Nebuchadnezzar's impiety, it required a miracle of God to degrade him to the level of the brute; whereas in Darwin's case the impiety brings with it its own degradation, because by means of this same blasphemy wherewith he robs God of his honor, he consigns himself to the company of the vilest of brutes, not merely making them his companions, but his blood relations. The condition of Nebuchadnezzar, during the time that he grazed with the cattle, was a happy one when compared with that of the self-constituted Darwinian brute; because for the time being he was bereft of his reason, and like the brute had instincts and desires suited to his changed condition.

My conclusion is that if all mankind were resolved to be brutes, it would be far better, were it possible, to be brute monkeys than brute men. Chiefly for two reasons, namely: First, because our necessities would then be somewhat commensurate with our means; and secondly, because there would be far more security in a community of brute monkeys than in a community of brute men. But the God of nature has so provided that man cannot sink to the level of the brute without going still lower. As a meteoric stone from the skies, falling as it does from a prodigious height, does not stop when it strikes the ground, but buries itself deep down in the earth, so man losing his moral balance, and falling from those lofty moral heights upon which the God of nature placed him, stops not at the brute's level, but borne down by the force of his momentum, he plunges far deeper into the depths of degradation than the vilest of brutes. God has given to the natural brute an instinct which for all necessary purposes serves him as a substitute for both reason and conscience; but let man lose his conscience, and, unlike the brute, he has no corresponding instinct to supply its place. For example, the law of instinct preserves the brute from the debasing self-destructive habit of intemperance; but man, bereft of his conscience, or even with a weakened conscience, and having no such saving instinct, often wallows in the filthy mire of drunkenness to a degree which would scandalize the vilest of brutes.—Family's Defender.