'DARWINISM AT ITS LAST GASP.'
By George E. Price
SUCH are the remarkable words I find quoted in my last number of 'Nature' (Nov. 28, 1901, pp. 76, 77) from a recent German scientific work. Dr. Stölzle, professor of philosophy at the University of Würzburg, has written a book on von Kölliker, the noted anatomist, and this book is reviewed in a learned article in 'Nature' under the title, 'Truth and Error in von Kölliker,' and is pronounced to be 'careful and scholarly.' The reviewer, however, is in rather a jocular mood, and sarcastically thanks the author for leaving as much 'truth' as he has in the writings of von Kölliker, whom he (the reviewer) evidently greatly admires. But there is a brighter side to the picture; there is truth as well as error in the writings of Albrecht von Kölliker. Of permanent truth . . . is his critique of Darwinism [written in 1864]; it has stood the test of time, and is now admitted as justified; 'and Darwinism, for scientific circles at least, is at its last gasp. Weismann, the toughest champion of Darwinism, can now write over all his works devoted to the rescue of the selection principle: In vanum laborarimus.' 'These are brave words,' adds the reviewer, 'but the game is 'bluff.'' But my readers must not make the mistake of thinking that any of these learned gentlemen are opposed to evolution. Not at all. This is only a peep behind the scenes, a little family quarrel as to just how the settled fact (?) of organic evolution has really come about. As many of my readers are doubtless aware, this division in the camp came about some fourteen years ago, when Prof. Weismann's writings began to make it evident that changes in the individual induced by environment, or by use and disuse of organs, are positively not transmitted to offspring. Very many of the leading biologists of Europe, such as Alfred Russell Wallace, E. Ray Lankester, and others, quickly said that Weismann was right; while some of the Americans, as Cope, Hyatt, and Ryder, with others abroad, mostly geologists, stoutly maintained that natural selection alone was very inefficient, and they must be allowed to retain Lamarck's less extreme ideas about the effects of environment, and of use and disuse being reproduced in offspring. The abrupt way in which new forms of life, in great variety, constantly appear among the fossils, even when heard in single file, according to their choice, instead of in concert, as the Bible would have them, could not have been produced by natural selection alone. About 1887 there began what we may call the modern scientific civil war; and while victory is certainly inclining more and more to the 'Neo-Darwinians,' as the followers of Weismann and Wallace are nicknamed by the others, there are many still holding out, and assured peace is not yet in sight. It is very interesting to listen to the mutually destructive arguments of the two parties. The Neo-Darwinians appeal to facts of ordinary observation and experiment, and affirm that no actual example proving the undoubted transmission of acquired characters, has ever yet been produced, while in the striking examples of working bees, and other neuter insects, the most complicated structures and social instincts have been brought about— without the aid of use-inheritance—nay, in spite of its utmost opposition. Working bees, being infertile 'neuters,' can not, as a rule, transmit their own modifications and habits. They are descended from countless generations of queen bees and drones, whose habits have been widely different from those of the workers, and whose structures are dissimilar in various respects. In many species of ants there are two, and in the leaf-cutting ants of Brazil there are three kinds of neuters, which differ from each other and from their male and female ancestors to an almost incredible degree. The soldier caste is distinguished from the workers by enormously large heads, very powerful mandibles, and 'extraordinarily different' instincts. In the driver ant of West Africa, one kind of neuter is three times the size of the other, and has jaws nearly five times as long. In another case 'the workers of one caste alone carry a wonderful sort of shield on their heads.' One of the three neuter classes in the leaf-cutting ants has a single eye in the midst of its forehead. In certain Mexican and Australian ants some of the neuters have huge spherical abdomens, which serve as living reservoirs of honey for the use of the community. In the equally wonderful case of the termites, or so-called 'white ants' (which belong, however, to an5entirely different order of insect from the ants and bees), the neuters are blind and wingless, and are divided into soldiers and workers, each class possessing the requisite instincts and structures, adapting it for its tasks.—W. P. Ball's 'Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited?' pp. 15, 16. They then argue that since natural selection alone has been sufficient to evolve such marvelous structures, habits, and social instincts without any possible help from use-inheritance, what is the good of supposing that the latter has ever played any part in the production of other organisms? On the other hand, the 'Neo-Lamarckians' argue that the influence of environment, and the effects of use and disuse must be true factors (I use the words of the late Professor Le Conte), 'because there was a time when there were no others.' This insuperable difficulty occurs and recurs in the case of every separate organic type. This argument was, I believe, first set forth by no less a person than St. George Mivart, but I quote it as stated by Professor Le Conte:— But not only does not natural selection explain the origin of varieties, but neither can it explain the first steps of advance toward usefulness. An organ must be already useful before natural selection can take hold of it to improve it. It can not make it useful, but only more useful. For example, if fins commenced as buds from the trunk, it is difficult to see how they could be of any use, and therefore how they could be improved by natural selection until they were of considerable size, and especially until muscles were developed to move them. Until that time they would seem to be a hindrance, to be removed by natural selection, instead of a use to be preserved and improved.—Evolution and Religious Thought, pp. 270-1. And thus the battle goes merrily on. The reader will notice how both sides always quietly assume that the higher forms have actually been produced somehow from the lower. The one side argue that since hosts of examples can be shown of complicated types having been evolved where the effects of use and disuse could not possibly avail, therefore Darwin's private patent of natural selection is the one and only factor in the process of organic evolution. The other side as strongly argue that the 'Lamarckian factors' must be very important; for in the case of every organ of every distinct type 'there was a time when there were no others.' But between the two of them, what is there left of evolution, anyway? If an individual positively can not transmit to his posterity what he himself has acquired in his lifetime, how can he transmit what he has not even got himself? Or if natural selection can not start a single organ of a single type, what is the use of talking about its supposed ability to improve them after the machinery is all built? No wonder Sir William Dawson could say in 1891 that 'Darwinism seems to have entered on a process of disintegration' ('Modern Ideas of Evolution,' p. 12), and that now this learned German professor can say that 'Darwinism, for scientific circles at least, is at its last gasp.' And yet the majority of them will, with despairing clutch, still cling to the idea that in some unknown way the higher forms of life have been produced through the lower. But why is this? Why will intelligent, reason-loving men, many of them undoubtedly sincere Christians, thus hold to some recondite, unproved and unprovable theory of the origin of organic forms right in the teeth of the facts? Reader, there is but one answer. They all feel sure that geology has demonstrated that life has been on our globe millions of years, and that there has been at least a succession, if not a gradual development, of life upon the globe; and they think some form of gradual progress more reasonable than successive creations—on the instalment plan, if I may be allowed the expression. Darwin would never have got a respectable hearing if Lyell and the other geologists had not built him a big, tall platform to speak from. But what if this platform should be found to have no objective validity whatever? what if it is only a creature of the scientific imagination? It would take too long to show that geologists do not prove this succession of life, as most people suppose, but that they only assume it as a working hypothesis. And it is unnecessary to show that this succession-of-life idea is only the skeleton of the evolution theory, and that to quote geology in favor of evolution is only reasoning in a circle. The only way I can understand such a unique phenomenon here in the twentieth century is that the circumference of the circle in which they have been traveling for nearly fifty years has such a majestic sweep that most of them can not discern the curve. And all this because they will not believe God's record of a cosmic deluge. As Peter expresses it in his second epistle:— 'For this they willingly are ignorant of [or "wilfully ignore"] that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water; whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.' 2 Peter 3:5, 6. It is true that many of the leading geologists have of late years come in with a tardy, and as yet only partial, vindication of Moses' record of a deluge. They are now quite generally agreed that Palæocosmic man disappeared from Europe 'abruptly' at the close of the 'Pleistocene period;' and that along with him there dropped out of sight, on all the continents, those huge mammals that every one has read about,—the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros in Europe, the mammoth and mastodon in North America, the mastodon and great sloths and armadillos in South America, and the huge kangaroos and wombats in Australia. The remains of all these are found in immense quantities on all these continents, buried in strata that were undoubtedly deposited by water, in many cases by water in very violent action. This, they tell us, is the last great event of this kind, tho all through 'geological time' events just like this have been taking place, and hosts of species cut off in some strange way, and their remains buried by moving water. But surely it would be economy of energy to have all these events occur at one time, and by the same cataclysm; and I would have the reader remember that there is absolutely nothing save this succession-of-life idea, which they themselves have invented, to forbid us believing that all these geological deposits were laid down at approximately one and the same time. For some good standard works which support the idea that primitive man disappeared as above intimated, I recommend 'The Meeting-place of Geology and History,' by Sir William Dawson; 'The Mammoth and the Flood,' and 'The Glacial Nightmare and the Flood,' both by Sir Henry H. Howorth, F.G.S., F.R.S., etc. Howorth's works, the latter one in two large volumes, are rather too elaborate and technical for the ordinary reader; but Dawson's book is eminently readable. Thus with Darwinism "at its last gasp," and with its pedestal of atheistic geology already tottering to its fall, we turn with renewed courage and faith to the dear old Book that has told the one story all these years. Reader, do you wonder that at such a time as this the Lord is sending a special message to the world about his created works? 'Fear God, and give glory to Him; for the hour of His judgment is come; and worship Him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.' Rev. 14:7. Do you wonder that the Creator is now giving to the world anew His Sabbath as the souvenir or reminder of a creation brought about, not on the instalment plan, as the geologists tell us, but in six literal days?—a reminder also of His power to re-create or redeem us from sin and its consequences? 'But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of Man be.' Matt. 24:27-39.