The January issue of "Science," 1922, contains a speech delivered at Toronto last December by Prof. William Bateson of London before the American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science. He says that science has faith in evolution but doubts as to the origin of species.]

Probably nothing impresses Darwin more than the fact that at an early stage the foetus of a child cannot be distinguished from the foetus of an ape, but why should such a similarity in the beginning impress him more than the difference at birth and the immeasurable gulf between the two at forty? If science cannot detect a difference, _known to exist_, between the foetus of an ape and the foetus of a child, it should not ask us to subst.i.tute the inferences, the presumptions and the probabilities of science for the word of G.o.d.

Science has rendered invaluable service to society; her achievements are innumerable--and the hypotheses of scientists should be considered with an open mind. Their theories should be carefully examined and their arguments fairly weighed, but the scientist cannot compel acceptance of any argument he advances, except as, judged upon its merits, it is convincing. Man is infinitely more than science; science, as well as the Sabbath, was made for man. It must be remembered, also, that all sciences are not of equal importance. Tolstoy insists that the science of "How to Live" is more important than any other science, and is this not true? It is better to trust in the Rock of Ages, than to know the age of the rocks; it is better for one to know that he is close to the Heavenly Father, than to know how far the stars in the heavens are apart. And is it not just as important that the scientists who deal with matter should respect the scientists who deal with spiritual things, as that the latter should respect the former? If it be true, as Paul declares, that "the things that are seen are temporal" while "the things that are unseen are eternal," why should those who deal with temporal things think themselves superior to those who deal with the things that are eternal? Why should the Bible, which the centuries have not been able to shake, be discarded for scientific works that have to be revised and corrected every few years? The preference should be given to the Bible.

The two lines of work are parallel. There should be no conflict between the discoverers of _real_ truths, because real truths do not conflict.

Every truth harmonizes with every other truth, but why should an hypothesis, suggested by a scientist, be accepted as true until its truth is established? Science should be the last to make such a demand because science to be truly science is cla.s.sified knowledge; it is the explanation of facts. Tested by this definition, Darwinism is not science at all; it is guesses strung together. There is more science in the twenty-fourth verse of the first chapter of Genesis (And G.o.d said, let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle and creeping things, and beast of the earth after his kind; and it was so.) than in all that Darwin wrote.

It is no light matter to impeach the veracity of the Scriptures in order to accept, not a truth--not even a theory--but a mere hypothesis.

Professor Huxley says, "There is no fault to be found with Darwin's method, but it is another thing whether he has fulfilled all the conditions imposed by that method. Is it satisfactorily proved that species may be originated by selection? That none of the phenomena exhibited by the species are inconsistent with the origin of the species in this way? If these questions can be answered in the affirmative, Mr. Darwin's view steps out of the ranks of hypothesis into that of theories; but so long as the evidence adduced falls short of enforcing that affirmative, so long, to our minds, the new doctrine must be content to remain among the former--an extremely valuable, and in the highest degree probable, doctrine; indeed the only extant hypothesis which is worth anything in a scientific point of view; but still a hypothesis, and not a theory of species." "After much consideration,"

he adds, "and a.s.suredly with no bias against Darwin's views, it is our clear conviction that, as the evidence now stands, it is not absolutely proven that a group of animals, having all the characters exhibited by species in nature, has ever been originated by selection, whether artificial or natural."

But Darwin is absurd as well as groundless. He announces two laws, which, in his judgment, explain the development of man from the lowest form of animal life, viz., natural selection and s.e.xual selection. The latter has been abandoned by the modern believers in evolution, but two ill.u.s.trations, taken from Darwin's "Descent of Man," will show his unreliability as a guide to the young. On page 587 of the 1874 edition, he tries to explain man's superior mental strength (a proposition more difficult to defend to-day than in Darwin's time). His theory is that, "the struggle between the males for the possession of the females"

helped to develop the male mind and that this superior strength was transmitted by males to their male offspring.

After having shown, to his own satisfaction, how s.e.xual selection would account for the (supposed) greater strength of the male mind, he turns his attention to another question, namely, how did man become a hairless animal? This he accounts for also by s.e.xual selection--the females preferred the males with the least hair (page 624). In a footnote on page 625 he says that this view has been harshly criticized. "Hardly any view advanced in this work," he says, "has met with so much disfavour."

A comment and a question: First, Unless the brute females were very different from the females as we know them, they would not have agreed in taste. Some would "probably" have preferred males with less hair, others, "we may well suppose," would have preferred males with more hair. Those with more hair would naturally be the stronger because better able to resist the weather. But, second, how could the males have strengthened their minds by fighting for the females if, at the same time, the females were breeding the hair off by selecting the males? Or, did the males select for three years and then allow the females to do the selecting during leap year?

But, worse yet, in a later edition published by L.A. Burt Company, a "supplemental note" is added to discuss two letters which he thought supported the idea that s.e.xual selection transformed the hairy animal into the hairless man. Darwin's correspondent (page 710) reports that a mandril seemed to be proud of a bare spot. Can anything be less scientific than trying to guess what an animal is thinking about? It would seem that this also was a subject about which it was "useless to speculate."

While on this subject it may be worth while to call your attention to other fantastic imaginings of which those are guilty who reject the Bible and enter the field of speculation--fiction surpa.s.sing anything to be found in the Arabian Nights. If one accepts the Scriptural account of the creation, he can credit G.o.d with the working of miracles and with the doing of many things that man cannot understand. The evolutionist, however, having subst.i.tuted what he imagines to be a universal law for separate acts of creation must explain everything. The evolutionist, not to go back farther than life just now, begins with one or a few invisible germs of life on the planet and imagines that these invisible germs have, by the operation of what they call "resident forces,"

unaided from without, developed into all that we see to-day. They cannot in a lifetime explain the things that have to be explained, if their hypothesis is accepted--a useless waste of time even if explanation were possible.

Take the eye, for instance; believing in the Mosaic account, I believe that G.o.d made the eyes when He made man--not only made the eyes but carved out the caverns in the skull in which they hang. It is easy for the believer in the Bible to explain the eyes, because he believes in a G.o.d who can do all things and, according to the Bible, did create man as a part of a divine plan.

But how does the evolutionist explain the eye when he leaves G.o.d out?

Here is the only guess that I have seen--if you find any others I shall be glad to know of them, as I am collecting the guesses of the evolutionists. The evolutionist guesses that there was a time when eyes were unknown--that is a necessary part of the hypothesis. And since the eye is a universal possession among living things the evolutionist guesses that it came into being--not by design or by act of G.o.d--but just happened, and how did it happen? I will give you the guess--a piece of pigment, or, as some say, a freckle appeared upon the skin of an animal that had no eyes. This piece of pigment or freckle converged the rays of the sun upon that spot and when the little animal felt the heat on that spot it turned the spot to the sun to get more heat. The increased heat irritated the skin--so the evolutionists guess, and a nerve came there and out of the nerve came the eye! Can you beat it? But this only accounts for one eye; there must have been another piece of pigment or freckle soon afterward and just in the right place in order to give the animal two eyes.

And, according to the evolutionist, there was a time when animals had no legs, and so the leg came by accident. How? Well, the guess is that a little animal without legs was wiggling along on its belly one day when it discovered a wart--it just happened so--and it was in the right place to be used to aid it in locomotion; so, it came to depend upon the wart, and use finally developed it into a leg. And then another wart and another leg, at the proper time--by accident--and accidentally in the proper place. Is it not astonishing that any person intelligent enough to teach school would talk such tommyrot to students and look serious while doing so?

And yet I read only a few weeks ago, on page 124 of a little book recently issued by a prominent New York minister, the following:

"Man has grown up in this universe gradually developing his powers and functions as responses to his environment. If he has _eyes_, so the _biologists_ a.s.sure us, it is because _light waves played upon the skin_ and eyes came out in answer; if he has _ears_ it is because the _air waves_ were there first and the ears came out to hear. Man never yet, _according to the evolutionist_, has developed any power save as a reality called it into being. There would be no fins if there were no water, no wings if there were no air, no legs if there were no land."

You see I only called your attention to forty per cent. of the absurdities; he speaks of eyes, ears, fins, wings and legs--five. I only called attention to eyes and legs--two. The evolutionist guesses himself away from G.o.d, but he only makes matters worse. How long did the "light waves" have to play on the skin before the eyes came out? The evolutionist is very deliberate; he is long on time. He would certainly give the eye thousands of years, if not millions, in which to develop; but how could he be sure that the light waves played all the time in one place or played in the same place generation after generation until the development was complete? And why did the light waves quit playing when two eyes were perfected? Why did they not keep on playing until there were eyes all over the body? Why do they not play to-day, so that we may see eyes in process of development? And if the light waves created the eyes, why did they not create them strong enough to bear the light? Why did the light waves make eyes and then make eyelids to keep the light out of the eyes?

And so with the ears. They must have gone _in_ "to hear" instead of _out_, and wasn't it lucky that they happened to go in on opposite sides of the head instead of cater-cornered or at random? Is it not easier to believe in a G.o.d who can make the eye, the ear, the fin, the wing, and the leg, as well as the light, the sound, the air, the water and the land?

There is such an abundance of ludicrous material that it is hard to resist the temptation to continue ill.u.s.trations indefinitely, but a few more will be sufficient. In order that you may be prepared to ridicule these pseudo-scientists who come to you with guesses instead of facts, let me give you three recent bits of evolutionary lore.

Last November I was pa.s.sing through Philadelphia and read in an afternoon paper a report of an address delivered in that city by a college professor employed in extension work. Here is an extract from the paper's account of the speech: "Evidence that early men climbed trees with their feet lies in the way we wear the heels of our shoes--more at the outside. A baby can wiggle its big toe without wiggling its other toes--an indication that it once used its big toe in climbing trees." What a consolation it must be to mothers to know that the baby is not to be blamed for wiggling the big toe without wiggling the other toes. It cannot help it, poor little thing; it is an inheritance from "the tree man," so the evolutionists tell us.

And here is another extract: "We often dream of falling. Those who fell out of the trees some fifty thousand years ago and were killed, of course, had no descendants. So those who fell and were _not_ hurt, of course, lived, and so we are never hurt in our dreams of falling." Of course, if we were actually descended from the inhabitants of trees, it would seem quite likely that we descended from those that were _not_ killed in falling. But they must have been badly frightened if the impression made upon their feeble minds could have lasted for fifty thousand years and still be vivid enough to scare us.

If the Bible said anything so idiotic as these guessers put forth in the name of science, scientists would have a great time ridiculing the sacred pages, but men who scoff at the recorded interpretation of dreams by Joseph and Daniel seem to be able to swallow the amusing interpretations offered by the Pennsylvania professor.

A few months ago the _Sunday School Times_ quoted a professor in an Illinois University as saying that the great day in history was the day when a water puppy crawled up on the land and, deciding to be a land animal, became man's progenitor. If these scientific speculators can agree upon the day they will probably insist on our abandoning Washington's birthday, the Fourth of July, and even Christmas, in order to join with the whole world in celebrating "Water Puppy Day."

Within the last few weeks the papers published a dispatch from Paris to the effect that an "eminent scientist" announced that he had communicated with the spirit of a dog and learned from the dog that it was happy. Must we believe this, too?

But is the law of "natural selection" a sufficient explanation, or a more satisfactory explanation, than s.e.xual selection? It is based on the theory that where there is an advantage in any characteristic, animals that possess this characteristic survive and propagate their kind. This, according to Darwin's argument, leads to progress through the "survival of the fittest." This law or principle (natural selection), so carefully worked out by Darwin, is being given less and less weight by scientists.

Darwin himself admits that he "perhaps attributed too much to the action of natural selection and the survival of the fittest" (page 76). John Burroughs, the naturalist, rejects it in a recent magazine article. The followers of Darwin are trying to retain evolution while rejecting the arguments that led Darwin to accept it as an explanation of the varied life on the planet. Some evolutionists reject Darwin's line of descent and believe that man, instead of coming from the ape, branched off from a common ancestor farther back, but "cousin" ape is as objectionable as "grandpa" ape.

While "survival of the fittest" may seem plausible when applied to individuals of the same species, it affords no explanation whatever, of the almost infinite number of creatures that have come under man's observation. To believe that natural selection, s.e.xual selection or any other kind of selection can account for the countless differences we see about us requires more faith in _chance_ than a Christian is required to have in G.o.d.

Is it conceivable that the hawk and the hummingbird, the spider and the honey bee, the turkey gobbler and the mocking-bird, the b.u.t.terfly and the eagle, the ostrich and the wren, the tree toad and the elephant, the giraffe and the kangaroo, the wolf and the lamb should all be the descendants of a common ancestor? Yet these and all other creatures must be blood relatives if man is next of kin to the monkey.

If the evolutionists are correct; if it is true that all that we see is the result of development from one or a few invisible germs of life, then, in plants as well as in animals there must be a line of descent connecting all the trees and vegetables and flowers with a common ancestry. Does it not strain the imagination to the breaking point to believe that the oak, the cedar, the pine and the palm are all the progeny of one ancient seed and that this seed was also the ancestor of wheat and corn, potato and tomato, onion and sugar beet, rose and violet, orchid and daisy, mountain flower and magnolia? Is it not more rational to believe in _G.o.d_ and explain the varieties of life in terms of divine power than to waste our lives in ridiculous attempts to explain the unexplainable? There is no mortification in admitting that there are insoluble mysteries; but it is shameful to spend the time that G.o.d has given for n.o.bler use in vain attempts to exclude G.o.d from His own universe and to find in chance a subst.i.tute for G.o.d's power and wisdom and love.

While evolution in plant life and in animal life _up to the highest form of animal_ might, if there were proof of it, be admitted without raising a presumption that would compel us to give a brute origin to man, why should we admit a thing of which there is no proof? Why should we encourage the guesses of these speculators and thus weaken our power to protest when they attempt the leap from the monkey to man? Let the evolutionist furnish his proof.

Although our chief concern is in protecting man from the demoralization involved in accepting a brute ancestry, it is better to put the advocates of evolution upon the defensive and challenge them to produce proof in support of their hypothesis in plant life and in the animal world. They will be kept so busy trying to find support for their hypothesis in the kingdoms below man that they will have little time left to combat the Word of G.o.d in respect to man's origin. Evolution joins issue with the Mosaic account of creation. G.o.d's law, as stated in Genesis, is _reproduction according to kind_; evolution implies reproduction _not_ according to kind. While the process of change implied in evolution is covered up in endless eons of time it is _change_ nevertheless. The Bible does not say that reproduction shall be _nearly_ according to kind or _seemingly_ according to kind. The statement is positive that it is _according to kind_, and that does not leave any room for the _changes_ however gradual or imperceptible that are necessary to support the evolutionary hypothesis.

We see about us everywhere and always proof of the Bible law, viz., reproduction according to kind; we find nothing in the universe to support Darwin's doctrine of reproduction other than of kind.

If you question the possibility of such changes as the Darwinian doctrine supposes you are reminded that the scientific speculators have raised the time limit. "If ten million years are not sufficient, take twenty," they say: "If fifty million years are not enough take one or two hundred millions." That accuracy is not essential in such guessing may be inferred from the fact that the estimates of the time that has elapsed since life began on the earth, vary from less than twenty-five million years to more than three hundred million. Darwin estimated this period at two hundred million years while Darwin's son estimated it at fifty-seven million.

It requires more than millions of years to account for the varieties of life that inhabit the earth; it requires a Creator, unlimited in power, unlimited intelligence, and unlimited love.

But the doctrine of evolution is sometimes carried farther than that.

A short while ago Canon Barnes, of Westminster Abbey, startled his congregation by an interpretation of evolution that ran like this: "It now seems highly probable (probability again) that from some fundamental stuff in the universe the electrons arose. From them came matter.

From matter, life emerged. From life came mind. From mind, spiritual consciousness was developing. There was a time when matter, life and mind, and the soul of man were not, but now they are. Each has arisen as a part of the vast scheme planned by G.o.d." (An American professor in a Christian college has recently expressed himself along substantially the same lines.)

But what has G.o.d been doing since the "stuff" began to develop? The verbs used by Canon Barnes indicate an internal development unaided from above. "Arose, came, emerged, etc.," all exclude the idea that G.o.d is within reach or call in man's extremity.

When I was a boy in college the materialists began with matter separated into infinitely small particles and every particle separated from every other particle by distance infinitely great. But now they say that it takes 1,740 electrons to make an atom of infinite fineness. G.o.d, they insist, has not had anything to do with this universe since 1,740 electrons formed a chorus and sang, "We'll be an atom by and by."

It requires measureless credulity to enable one to believe that all that we see about us came by chance, by a series of happy-go-lucky accidents.

If only an infinite G.o.d could have formed hydrogen and oxygen and united them in just the right proportions to produce water--the daily need of every living thing--scattered among the flowers all the colours of the rainbow and every variety of perfume, adjusted the mocking-bird's throat to its musical scale, and fashioned a soul for man, why should we want to imprison such a G.o.d in an impenetrable past? This is a living world; why not a _living_ G.o.d upon the throne? Why not allow Him to work _now_?

Darwin is so sure that his theory is correct that he is ready to accuse the Creator of trying to deceive man if the theory is not sound. On page 41 he says: "To take any other view is to admit that our structure and that of all animals about us, is a mere snare to entrap our judgment;"

as if the Almighty were in duty bound to make each species so separate from every other that _no one_ could possibly be confused by resemblances. There would seem to be differences enough. To put man in a cla.s.s with the chimpanzee because of any resemblances that may be found is so unreasonable that the ma.s.ses have never accepted it.

If we see houses of different size, from one room to one hundred, we do not say that the large houses grew out of small ones, but that the architect that could plan one could plan all.

But a groundless hypothesis--even an absurd one--would be unworthy of notice if it did no harm. This hypothesis, however, does incalculable harm. It teaches that Christianity impairs the race physically. That was the first implication at which I revolted. It led me to review the doctrine and reject it entirely. If hatred is the law of man's development; that is, if man has reached his present perfection by a cruel law under which the strong kill off the weak--then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we must turn backward toward the brute if we dare to subst.i.tute the law of love for the law of hate. That is the conclusion that I reached and it is the conclusion that Darwin himself reached. On pages 149-50 he says: "With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the progress of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we inst.i.tute poor laws; our medical experts exert their utmost skill to save the lives of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who from weak const.i.tutions would have succ.u.mbed to smallpox.

Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man."

This confession deserves a.n.a.lysis. First, he commends, by implication, the savage method of eliminating the weak, while, by implication, he condemns "civilized men" for prolonging the life of the weak. He even blames vaccination because it has preserved thousands who might otherwise have succ.u.mbed (for the benefit of the race?). Can you imagine anything more brutal? And then note the low level of the argument. "No one who has attended the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man." All on a brute basis.

His hypothesis breaks down here. The minds which, according to Darwin, are developed by natural selection and s.e.xual selection, use their power to suspend the law by which they have reached their high positions.

Medicine is one of the greatest of the sciences and its chief object is to save life and strengthen the weak. That, Darwin complains, interferes with "the survival of the fittest." If he complains of vaccination, what would he say of the more recent discovery of remedies for typhoid fever, yellow fever and the black plague? And what would he think of saving weak babies by pasteurizing milk and of the efforts to find a specific for tuberculosis and cancer? Can such a barbarous doctrine be sound?

But Darwin's doctrine is even more destructive. His heart rebels against the "hard reason" upon which his heartless hypothesis is built. He says: "The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly the result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as a part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered in the manner indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the n.o.blest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself while performing an operation, for he knows he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were to intentionally neglect the weak and the helpless, it could be only for a contingent benefit, with overwhelming present evil. We must therefore bear the undoubted bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind."

The moral nature which, according to Darwin, is also developed by natural selection and s.e.xual selection, repudiates the brutal law to which, if his reasoning is correct, it owes its origin. Can that doctrine be accepted as scientific when its author admits that we cannot apply it "without deterioration in the n.o.blest part of our nature"? On the contrary, civilization is measured by the moral revolt against the cruel doctrine developed by Darwin.

Darwin rightly decided to suspend his doctrine, even at the risk of impairing the race. But some of his followers are more hardened. A few years ago I read a book in which the author defended the use of alcohol on the ground that it rendered a service to society by killing off the degenerates. And this argument was advanced by a scientist in the fall of 1920 at a congress against alcohol.