Evolution a Joke | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Dec 24, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 52.

Evolution a Joke.

As such Edgar Saltus, the popular writer and critic, treats the Darwinian theory. He says in the Examiner of December 12:—

The evolution theory is very beautiful. It explains everything. But it is not very valuable. It demonstrates nothing. The transition from animal to man has never been shown. It is fair to assume that it never will be. It has another charm. Its premises are faulty. It ascribes the origin of life to spontaneous generation. Pasteur took that bubble and blew on it until it broke. It has never been mended since, in spite of which, or perhaps precisely on that account, Haeckel, not long ago, built from that broken bubble the whole structure anew. The effort was very diverting. Dr. Haeckel is a practical joker. There is reason for his jests. Industrial Germany is in the dumps. The Kaiser can not do everything. The public must be amused. Hence this entertainment. The descent of man is just the subject for hard times. When the latter get here we will have the leisure to take it up ourselves. But not now. The country is too prosperous. We all are—or we ought to be—too occupied with the possibilities of the present to care a rap for the impossibilities of the past.

And he speaks truth. Evolution is what the late Virchow declared “in the restrained speech of erudition,” rubbish.