p. 8 | EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY by Geo. McCready Price

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Feb 1, 1905

EVOLUTION AND GEOLOGY

By Geo. McCready Price

IX. DARWINISM.

WHAT is a species? An answer to this somewhat perplexing question is essential to a proper understanding of this phase of the doctrine of Evolution.

"A species," says Professor Huxley, "is the smallest group to which distinctive and invariable characters can be assigned."

The Standard Dictionary says that the term is used for—

A classificatory group of animals or plants subordinate to a genus, and having members that differ among themselves only in minor details of proportion and color, and are capable of fertile interbreeding indefinitely.

It also adds:

In the kingdoms of organic nature [plants and animals] species is founded on identity of form and structure, both external and internal, and specifically characterized by the power of the individuals to produce beings like themselves, who are also in turn productive.

To make the matter a little more plain I quote from the late Prof. J. Le Conte, whose writings on the subject of Evolution have had a wide circulation.

There are two bases on which species may be founded. Species may be based on form, morphological species; or they may be based on reproductive functions, physiological species. By the one method a certain amount of difference of form, structure, and habit, constitutes species; according to the other, if the two kinds breed freely with each other and the offspring is indefinitely fertile, the kinds are called varieties, but if they do not they are called species.—"Evolution and Religious Thought," p. 233.

He also adds that this latter test, that is, whether the kinds are cross-fertile, or not, "is regarded as a most important test of true species, as contrasted with varieties or races."

The Theory of Natural Selections.

Darwinism then professes to show how the species now in existence probably originated from previous simpler species by processes now in operation around us, the chief one of which is known as "natural selection."

We will now state the theory as given by Le Conte.

According to Darwin, and all (?) biologists of the present day, species are variable without limit, if only the causes of change are constant and slow enough in their operation, and the time long enough. A species must be in harmony with its environment, for that is the condition of its existence. Now, if the environment change, the species must tend to change slowly from generation to generation, so as to readjust its relations in harmony with the changing environment. If the change of environment be slow, the readjustment may be successful, and the species will change gradually into another form, so different that it will be called a different species, especially if the intermediate gradations be destroyed. If the change in the environment be too rapid, many species, especially the more rigid, will be destroyed, while the more plastic may survive by modification. Thus, at every step in the evolution of the organic kingdom, some species have died without issue, while others have saved themselves by changing into new forms in harmony with the new environment. Comparing to a growing tree, some branches overshadowed die, while others push on for light, forming new lateral buds, and dividing as they grow. By continued divergent change, species gradually become genera, genera families, etc. Thus, varieties, species, genera, families, orders, classes, etc., are only different degrees of differences formed all in the same way. Varieties are only commencing species, species commencing genera, and so on. In a perfect classification varieties, species, genera, families, orders, classes, etc., are only different degrees of blood-kinship.—Id. pp. 72, 73.

Bible Truth and Human Theory.

In this statement of the case I wish to note three assumptions which are contrary to both the Bible and true science. I give them here in brief form, tho I can not attempt to consider them in all of their manifold bearings.

These assumptions are:

1. That species are variable without limit.

2. That "the time" at our command, that is, the time since life has been on the globe, has been "long enough" to develop in this way all the countless forms of life now in existence.

3. That the general tendency of these unlimited variations through almost unlimited time has been always in an upward direction, i.e., toward a more complex development.

Regarding the first of these assumptions I may say that there has never yet been found a single example, either among plants or animals of a real new species produced by either natural or artificial breeding since man began to experiment. When I say "new species," I mean a new physiological species as already defined.

Nature's Laws Overthrow the Theory.

No one pretends that anything more than physiological "varieties," i.e., kinds cross-fertile with their ancestral types, have ever been produced within the historic period. Hybrids can in some cases be produced between what are commonly called distinct species, but between true species they are either sterile as in the case of the mule, or speedily revert to one of the parent types as in many cases with plants; and then where is the "commencing species?" We can, by patient and very close breeding, produce types as utterly unlike as pug and greyhound among dogs, or carrier and tumbler among pigeons. But then, very close breeding of extreme types weakens the stock, especially in fertility, while judicious crossing of diverse types strengthens the stock and increases its fertility; that is, tho the above mentioned varieties of dogs or birds are so utterly unlike in appearance, they are perfectly cross-fertile, and their progeny speedily tend to become uniform or homogeneous if left wild, as in a state of nature. On the other hand, the horse and the ass, tho almost infinitely more alike to outward appearance, will not cross in a state of nature, and when induced to do so by man, produce a hybrid that is perfectly sterile. As Huxley said in his very candid letter to Charles Kingsley:

If Carrier and Tumbler were physiological species equivalent to horse and ass, their progeny ought to be sterile or semi-sterile. So far as experience has gone, on the contrary, it is perfectly fertile. . . . It has been obvious to me that this is the weak point [one of the weak points] in Darwin's doctrine. He has shown that selective breeding is a vera causa for morphological species; he has not shown it a vera causa for physiological species.—"Life and Letters," Vol. 1, p. 239.

Still Waiting for the Proof.

This is the way all through nature, among either plants or animals, so that, altho Professor Huxley has told us elsewhere, "I adopt Mr. Darwin's hypothesis, therefore, subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding," yet we know that this long-desired "proof" is still eloquent by its absence, tho for about a century the thousands of biologists have been ransacking every corner of the globe to find it. In fact, all scientists must acknowledge that, however "plastic" they may imagine them to have been in the past, species are now fixed within certain limits, beyond which we have never yet been able to carry any product of variation.

Before passing on to the second and third assumptions mentioned above, as involved in the Darwinian argument, we must trace briefly the great and

Surprising Change of Attitude

on the part of the scientific world within the last few years.

For, about 1887, Professor Weismann's writings began to show that changes in the individual brought about by environment or by use and disuse of organs are positively not transmitted to offspring. Many leading biologists, such as A. R. Wallace and E. Ray Lankester in England, and hosts of others in Germany, quickly said that Weismann was right, and that not a single example had ever been proved of acquired characters having been thus transmitted. Some other evolutionists, with Herbert Spencer at their head, still clung to the theory as already formulated, claiming that "natural selection" alone is totally inefficient to explain the development of life, and that they must be allowed to retain Lamark's less extreme ideas about the effects of environment, and of use and disuse being reproduced in offspring.

A Telling Illustration.

The "Neo-Darwinians," as the followers of Weismann and Wallace were nicknamed by the others, not only claimed that no actual example of the transmission of acquired characters had ever been proved, but they were ready with numerous examples where such an idea would be absurd. For instance, in the case of bees and some other insects it is the "neuters" which do all the work, while the real fathers do not work at all, neither does the "queen," or mother; and yet the newly-hatched offspring are perfect architects from the beginning. From which of their non-working parents do they inherit this striking instinct for industry and skill? "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.'"—"Ball's Effects of Use and Disuse," pp. 15, 16. They then argued that since these striking examples of complicated structures and marvelous instincts have been produced somehow "without the aid of use—inheritance—nay, in spite of its utmost opposition"—why should we suppose that the latter has ever played any part in the evolution of other organisms?