Theory Overthrown by Fact.
On the other hand, the "Neo-Lamarckians" argued that the influence of environment and the effects of use and disuse "must be true factors [to use Le Conte's words] because there was a time when there were no others."—"Evolution and Religious Thought," p. 94. And this insuperable difficulty occurs and recurs in the case of every separate organ of every organic type. I quote a fuller statement of this argument from this same author: 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.—Ib. pp. 270, 271. But we may ask what single organ of a single species is there that did not thus appear long before it was wanted? Untenable in Either Case.
The reader should, however, note that both sides always quietly assume that the higher forms have somehow been actually produced from the lower. The one side say that since numerous examples can be shown of complicated types having been evolved where the effects of use and disuse were not possibly of any 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 insist 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 parties, what is there left of Darwin's doctrine? If an individual positively can not transmit to his offspring what he has acquired in his lifetime, how can he transmit what he has not even got himself, and what none of his ancestors ever had? 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 Wm. Dawson could say in 1891 that "Darwinism seems to have entered on A Process of Disintegration,"
or that a German author more recently could say that "Darwinism, for scientific circles, at least, is at its last gasp." Still more recently the veteran Virchow, shortly before his death, declared before a convention of scientists at Vienna: The attempt to find the transition from animal to man has ended in a total failure. The middle link has not been found, and will not be found. Man is not descended from the ape. It has been proved beyond a doubt that during the past five thousand years there has been no noticeable change in mankind [except in the direction of degeneration]. More recently yet we have the following summary of this modern scientific civil war, as given in an article in a German magazine by Professor Hartmann, entitled, "The passing of Darwinism:" In the sixties of the past century the opposition of the older group of savants to the Darwinian hypothesis was still supreme. In the seventies, the new idea began to gain ground rapidly in all cultured countries. In the eighties, Darwin's influence was at its height, and exercised an almost absolute control over technical research. In the nineties, for the first time, a few timid expressions of doubt and opposition were heard, and these gradually swelled into a great chorus of voices, aiming at the overthrow of the Darwinian theory. In the first decade of the twentieth century it has become apparent that the days of Darwinism are numbered. I conclude this article with another statement which puts the matter just about as we have been saying these many years with our open Bibles before us. The statement was made by Professor Fleischman, at the close of a series of lectures on "The Darwinian Theory:" The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research, but purely the product of the imagination. [The title of Mr. Price's next paper is, "Geology the Mother of Darwinism."]