The Other Side of Evolution: Its Effects and Fallacy

by Alexander Patterson

EVOLUTION'S ACCOUNT.

(From Darwin's Descent of Man, ii, 372.)

"Man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears, probably arborial in its habits and an inhabitant of the Old World. This creature, if its whole structure had been examined by a naturalist, would have been classed among the Quadrumana, as surely as would the common and still more ancient progenitor of the Old and New World monkeys. The Quadrumana and all the higher mammals are probably derived from an ancient marsupial animal, and this through a long line of diversified forms, either from some reptile-like, or some amphibian-like creature, and this again from some fish-like animal. In the dim obscurity of the past, we can see that the early progenitor of the Vertebrata must have been an aquatic animal, provided with branchia, with the two sexes united in the same individual."

The Bible account is circumstantial, with mention of places and rivers of undoubted historical character. It is accepted by subsequent Scripture writers and made the basis of their historical and spiritual teachings. The evolutionary account is lacking in all of this. There are no exact data nor any attempt to give any. No description save an imaginary one is ever given. As no one was there to see, the whole is fanciful.

The two accounts are utterly irreconcilable. Whatever the Scripture account means it does not mean Evolution, and literary justice demands that we do not impose upon a writer a meaning he did not intend or give.

Prof. Pfliederer writes, "There is only one choice. When we say Evolution we definitely deny Creation. When we say Creation we definitely deny Evolution." Prof. James Sully says, "The doctrine of Evolution is directly antagonistic to that of Creation." (Bible Student, July, 1901, quoted by Prof. Warfield.)

How anyone can accept both accounts passes all understanding. The late Dr. John Henry Barrows, president of Oberlin University, tells of meeting a Hindu boy in his visit to India, who had attended the mission schools and learned there the shape and situation of the earth. He had of course previously been taught the Hindu cosmogony that the earth was surrounded by salt water and that by a circle of earth and that by successive circles of buttermilk, sweet cane juice, and other "soft drinks" with intervening circles of land. Dr. Barrows asked the boy which belief he would hereafter hold. He replied that he would believe both. This might be possible to the Hindu boy, but it surpasses all previous intellectual feats that any intelligent person can accept both the Bible account and Darwin's account of the creation of man.

We will review the arguments for and against the evolutionary account of the origin of man from the following spheres and subjects:

1. The Argument from the Evolution of Species. 2. From Similarity of Structure in Animals and Man. 3. Rudimentary Organs in Man. 4. Human Characteristics in Animals. 5. History of the Evolution of Man from the Brute. 6. The "Missing Link." 7. The Brain. 8. Man's Mind and Consciousness. 9. Language. 10. Pre-historic Man. 11. Antiquity of Man. 12. Savage Races. 13. History of Mankind. 14. Religion. 15. Ethics. 16. Christian Experience. 17. Christ.

1. ARGUMENT FROM THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES.

On this argument rests the theory of man's animal origin. But for the desire to prove that such is man's origin, the argument would never have been conceived. We introduce it here again to call special attention to this fact. We have seen that there is decided difference of opinion on this theory; that many object to it; that there is not a single case of such origin of species known; that there is no law or force or cause agreed upon or known by which such origin of species could take place; that there are countless objections and facts against it; that its arguments are confessedly insufficient; and they are at best but inferences and only "the balancing of probabilities."

If therefore the proofs of the Origin of Species are wanting the whole theory of Evolution falls in ruins to the ground. There would seem no need to proceed further. Yet Evolution lightly steps over the ruins of its previous claims and proceeds to further assertions. Some of the greatest of the exact scientists stop here. Prof. Dana, the great geologist, says: "Man's origin has thus far no sufficient explanation from science. The abruptness of transition from preceding forms is most extraordinary and especially because it occurs so near the present time." (Elements of Geology.)

Prof. Virchow, the most eminent pathologist of Europe, wrote as follows: "There always exists a sharp line of demarcation between man and the ape. We cannot pronounce it proved by science that man descends from the ape, or from any other animal. Whoever calls to mind the lamentable failure of all attempts made very recently to discover a decided support for the 'generatio aequivoc' in the lower forms of transition from the inorganic to the organic world will feel it doubly serious to demand that this theory, so utterly discredited, should be in any form accepted as the basis of our views of life."

Many more such expressions might be quoted from eminent scientists to the same effect. But as we will use these under the respective heads of the foregoing order of argument, we pass on here to the arguments as stated.

2. SIMILARITY OF STRUCTURE IN ANIMALS AND MAN.

It is well known that the internal and external form of man is like that of the lower animals. This, Evolution claims, is an argument for genetic connection. The same argument would prove that a locomotive was born from a stage coach, and that from a cart, and that from a wheelbarrow. Similarity of structure proves only uniformity of design. An intelligent maker of any nature would so operate, and man himself so manufactures now. Why should not God make man on the model of the lower animals, seeing he is to live in the same world, under the same conditions, eat the same food and propagate in the same way? There is no reason for departure from a form which has proved useful and appropriate. All the parts in the human form have been thus tested in the lower forms and found right for their purpose and are now, as we would expect, applied to man. Man is the climax of all. All is for his use in the lower worlds of plants and animals; then why not use their frame and inner organs also? The mechanic uses the same appliance such as the wheel in his most complex construction as well as in the simplest engine.

But there are parts in the human frame not found in the lower orders. Wallace, one of the greatest evolutionists, says the soft human skin cannot be accounted for by natural causes, nor the valves in the human veins which are in different position from those of the brute, nor the human foot nor larynx, nor the human voice, especially the female voice, nor the absence of hair on the body, nor why man is short armed and long legged, while his ape-man ancestor is the reverse. Many more such problems vex the evolutionist. Creation accounts for all this, and does so by one simple, sweeping argument in place of Evolution's complex and bewildering maze of speculations.

Ruskin teaches us in this extract that God works by law and does not deviate therefrom even where it seems to us that He might have wrought differently: "But God shows us in Himself, strange as it may seem, not only authoritative perfection, but even the perfection of obedience, an obedience to his own laws; and in the cumbrous movement of those unwieldiest of His creatures, we are reminded, even in His divine essence, of that attribute of uprightness in the human creature, 'that sweareth to his own hurt and changeth not.'" (Seven Lamps of Architecture, II., p. 78.)

3. RUDIMENTARY ORGANS IN MAN.

Evolution points to certain features in man which it claims came from his brute ancestry, such as the long hairs in the eyebrow, which they say came from the ape-man, the tips of the ear, and the hair on the forearm, which slants from the hand to the elbow. The whole outside ear is also claimed as a relic from that brute and is unnecessary for hearing. So also of the five toes when a solid foot would have been better, although most of us think not. They also point to some evidences of a tail which they say was rubbed off when the ape-man learned to sit down. This, however, many apes do now with no signs of decreasing tails. Many internal members and organs are pointed to, which are too numerous here to mention. One instance is as good as the whole catalogue, and one reply also.

All this proves too much for the theory. Here is the loss of useful organs and the survival of others not needed. This is not evolution, at least not the kind we have been asked to build our hopes upon for progress. Further, these so-called "relics of the brute" are counted as having no use save to support Evolution. The "gill-slits" in the neck of the human embryo are the favorite instance of this kind of fact. Haeckel and, after him others, picture the forms of fish, dog and man in embryonic state, and say in triumph, There is proof of the descent of the man from the dog and of him from the fish; and this resemblance has survived to tell the tale, there being no other use for it. But this is not the only feature that "survives." Heads and mouths and eyes also "survive." Why are these not pointed to as proofs of descent? Because we can see use for them, while there appears to be no use for the "gill-slits" except to prove Evolution. If we could see some use in the "gill-slits" in the neck of the embryo, the argument of Evolution would fall to the ground. Evolution's argument from the gill-slits and all other "relics of the brute" rests therefore on ignorance, a very unsafe foundation for a scientific theory, for knowledge is constantly increasing, especially of the human frame, and there is not the slightest doubt, reasoning from analogy and past experience, that there is use for these peculiar embryonic features.

We repeat the argument of Huxley as to these rudimentary parts: "Either these rudiments are of no use, in which case they should have disappeared; or they are of use, in which case they are arguments for teleology." (Darwinism and Design, p. 151.)

Evidences of this nature are of that kind called circumstantial, and in law are least relied upon, for on such evidence some innocent men have been hung. Shall we condemn the whole race to a bestial origin on the same evidence? All arguments founded on such facts are weak, puerile and unworthy of scientists. No wonder that Prof. Paulsen said Haeckel's speculations are "a disgrace to the philosophy of Germany." Shall we suspend a philosophy of the universe upon a few long hairs? Shall we allow the guess as to the origin of the tip of the outer ear to revolutionize theology? Shall we risk our eternal destiny on the supposed uselessness of the so-called "gill-slits" in premature puppies? Yet this is the demand of Evolution reduced to plain English.

4. HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS IN ANIMALS.

The human characteristics found in animals form an argument for Evolution. We find the animals have memory, love, hatred, jealousy; that they can think and plan, use means and weapons, admire things of beauty, and some have sports. All of this, so Evolution claims, points to genetic connection with man. But all this only shows uniformity in the inner as in the outer being. There is as much reason for the one as for the other. Life is the same wherever we find it. The forces which operate in the rain drop are the same as in the universe of boundless space. The intellectual nature of man is the same as that of angels who have no genetic connection with us. Even devils are the same in the intellectual nature as God himself. Mind is the same thing wherever it exists. To say therefore that because animals have certain characteristics like those of man, they are the ancestors of man, is a leap to a conclusion entirely unwarranted by either facts or logic. Yet it is on such conclusions that Evolution rests. Creation would proceed on the same comprehensive plan, and we have seen that man does also. He applies his forces as he does his materials to the most varied uses.

Nor has any instance of the development of a brute or his faculties to any approach to man's faculties ever been known. The highest animal is still immeasurably below the lowest and most bestial man, not only in the grade of the faculties that they have in common, but in others which the animal does not possess and cannot acquire. There is a great gulf fixed which they do not pass over—as our next section will show.

5. HISTORY FROM THE BRUTE TO THE MAN.

Many have essayed the relation of the story of the change from the brute to the man. In doing so, some have covered themselves with ridicule, yet the attempts continue to be made as do others to produce perpetual motion. To bridge this chasm is necessary in order to sustain Evolution, for this is the heart of the question. It is said that a famous professor of history abandoned his chair because of the uncertainty of the facts of history. One would expect that the attempt to relate what happened before man had any history, or even existed, would be even more hazardous. Yet we are given the account with such assurance as sometimes to deceive the very elect—who abandon their Bibles. Haeckel's attempt was the most impressive, and swept all before it, for a year or two. He presented a many-branched tree, whose roots were protoplasm, its trunk protozoa, its successive branches sponges, fish, reptiles, birds, marsupials, monkeys, apes, man-apes, and the topmost branches, man. Of the twenty-one stages, half have been proved to be "wrong" by evolutionists and the rest are "doubtful."

The home of the primeval man, or ascending-ape, whichever it or he was, is one of the difficult facts to settle. Haeckel locates it at the bottom of the Indian ocean. He can thus defy disproof. Another says it was in the tropics somewhere. This is also a safe assertion. The difficulty is that the remains of the pre-historic man are found in the northern regions, while the ancestor animal was a denizen of the tropics. So another declares that the original home was in the northern regions, to which a pair of wild animals of the ancestor kind were driven by something or somebody, and their retreat cut off, and so they were forced to the life in caves and adopted the habits we find among cave dwellers.

But although our ancestor cannot be located we are told just who and what he was. Thus Prof. Edward Clodd, an authoritative evolutionist, tells us in his book, "The Making of a Man," as follows: "Whichever among the arboreal creatures possessed any favorable variation, however slight, of brain or sense organ, would secure an advantage over less favored rivals in the struggle for food and mates and elbow room. The qualities which gave them success would be transmitted to their offspring. The distance in one generation would be increased in the next; brain power conquering brute force and skill outwitting strength. While some for awhile remained arboreal in their habits, never moving easily on the ground, although making some approach to upright motion, as seen in the shambling gait of the manlike apes, others developed a way of walking on their hind legs, which entirely set free the fore limbs as organs of handling and throwing. Whatever were the conditions which permitted this, the advantage which it gives is obvious. It was the making of a man." (p. 126.)

It seems difficult, indeed unfair, to take this seriously. We must assure the reader that the author of this description shows no intention of humor either here or elsewhere in his work, or indeed any consciousness of it. All is given in perfect sobriety. We must therefore accept it as a profound scientific deliverance of the most authoritative kind and deal with it accordingly, and believe that walking on the hind legs and throwing things with the fore limbs was "the making of a man." How easily men are made!

1. This argument rests on the theory of Natural Selection now discarded by most evolutionists.

2. Apes have done all he here claims and far more. The chimpanzee has been taught to sit at a table, to drink out of cups, to eat with a knife and fork, to wipe his mouth with a napkin and use a toothpick, but has got no further in the ways of good society, and as to increase of cranial development, has obtained none save as the effects of undue potations have produced an enlarged feeling.

3. The whole account is purely imaginary as no professor of Evolution was there to observe the facts. It is in short an intrusion into the realm of fiction, which clearly belongs to Mr. Kipling in his wonderful jungle stories.

Again in his book on "Man and His Ancestor," (p. 67.) Prof. Morris gives us a full description of this unseen and purely hypothetical ancestor as follows: "It was probably much smaller than existing man, little if any more than four feet in height, and not more than half the weight of man. Its body was covered, though not profusely, with hair; the hair of the head being woolly or frizzly in texture and the face provided with a beard. The face was not jet black, like a typical African, but of a dull brown color; the hair being somewhat similar in color. The arms were long and lank, the back being much curved, the chest flat and narrow, the abdomen protruding, the legs rather short and bowed, the walk a waddling motion somewhat like that of the gibbon. It had deep set eyes, greatly protruding mouth with gaping lips, huge ears and general "ape-like aspect." Prof. John Fiske thought it was much more than a million years since man diverged from the brute. During an active geologic age before the cave-man appeared on the scene, "a being erect upon two legs and having the outward resemblance of a man wandered hither and thither upon the face of the earth." (Destiny of Man, p. 55.)

We read all this with astonishment that anyone could penetrate the dim vista of millions of years ago and transcribe such a detailed and circumstantial account of what then existed. It reads like a picture from life. Yet not only was the writer not there, but no one else was present, for this was the father of us all, according to Evolution.

We are told that, given time enough, all this series of changes from the primeval cell to the modern philosopher or scientist is possible. But time for this is limited by the age of the earth. For Lord Kelvin has stated that only a few million years are possible on any calculation and this would all be needed for the change from ape to man to say nothing of the interminable ages necessary for the change from the protozoa to the fish and then to land animals and so on to mammals and up to the ape.

The after life of the ape-man is described with the same circumstantiality as the coming to manhood's estate. Dr. Robert Patterson combines the various features of Evolution's description and this creature's history in the following extract: "It is a fearful and wonderful picture they give us of the origin of marriage from the battles of baboons, of the rights of property established by terrible fights for groves of good chestnuts, of the beginning of morals from the instincts of brutes, and of the dawnings of religion, or rather of superstition, from the dreams of these animals; the result of the whole being that civilization and society and law and order and religion are all simply the evolution of the instincts of the brutes and that there is no necessity for the invoking any supernatural interference to produce them." (Fables of Infidelity.)

It is here we meet the "theistic" account of the origin of man. It was to this creature we are told God imparted a soul or spirit supernaturally. For this strange creature was the Adam of theistic Evolution. Eve they say nothing about. Nor are we told how or when the soul was imparted, whether in a single animal, a pair, or a herd; whether awake or asleep. Nor are we told what they did next, or how the soul-ape got along with the rest of the species. Nor are we told what particular state, or act, or habit, entitled him to the new nature he received. It seems as if the ability to "stand on the hind legs and throw things with the fore limbs," which Prof. Clodd tells us was the "making of a man," scarcely entitled him to such a divine inheritance as an immortal soul.

This also was the Adam who fell according to the theistic evolutionist, though how such a creature could "fall" seems difficult to conceive. It was this thing whose sin, Paul tells us, brought death on the whole race. It was this who is a type of Christ who is "the Second Adam." Out and out Evolution has but a fraction of the difficulties, either physical or spiritual, to face that this make-shift compromise "theistic" theory has before it. It is not surprising that the thorough-going evolutionist rejects this strange compound of fiction and theology.

We appeal to the common, every-day man of fair judgment: Which takes more faith, or if preferred, credulity, the accepting of that strange, complex, unauthenticated account of man's origin or the simple and, with an omnipotent God in mind, entirely possible account of the Bible? "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul." Which is the more noble, the more satisfying to our desires for a high and divine origin as well as high and divine destiny?

6. THE MISSING LINK.

The Missing Link is the great desideratum of Evolution, for the evolutionist indignantly disclaims the present apes or monkey as ancestors. He tells us the connecting link was a creature superior to these. But of which he is unable to show any specimen. It is purely mythical. We have the remains of millions of animals reaching through all the ages and why is this particular specimen wanting?

Dr. Rudolph Virchow, the great discoverer of the germ theory, has for thirty years, according to Haeckel, "opposed the theory of man's descent from the brute." (Last Link, p. 27.) He himself says: "The intermediate form is unimaginable save in a dream.... We cannot teach or consent that it is an achievement that man has descended from the ape or other animal." (Homiletic Review, January, 1901.)

Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of natural sciences in the University of Erlangen, writes on the question as follows: "Nowhere in the older deposits is an ape that approximates more closely to man, or man that approximates more closely to an ape, or perhaps a man at all. The same gulf which is found to-day between man and the ape goes back with undiminished breadth and depth to the tertiary period. This fact alone is sufficient to make its unintelligibleness clear to every one who is not penetrated by the conviction of the infallibility of the theory of the gradual transmutation of and progressive development of all organized creatures. If, however, we now find one of the most man-like apes (gibbon) in the tertiary period, and this species is still in the same low grade, and side by side with it, at the end of the ice period, man is found in the same high grade as to-day, the ape not having approximated more nearly to man, and modern man not having become further removed from the ape than the first man, every one who is in a position to draw a right conclusion can infer, that the facts contradict a theory of constant progression, development and ceaselessly increasing variation from generation to generation, as surely as it is possible to do." (Age and Origin of Man, Am. Tr. Soc., p. 52.)

From time to time the discovery of the "missing link" is announced and telegraphed through the civilized world, only to be remanded to its place among the remains of brutes or men. We will consider the instances of such as they have been presented:

1. The Calaveras Skull now in the California State Museum. This has been shown recently to be a hoax. It was placed in a mine shaft 150 feet deep, by Mr. R. C. Scribner, a storekeeper at the mine, as a practical joke. This he lately acknowledged to the Rev. W. H. Dyer, of Los Angeles, a clergyman of the Episcopal church.

2. The Neanderthal Skull. This was found in 1856 in Prussia. It had narrow receding forehead and thick ridges over the eyes. It was claimed by the evolutionists as from two to three hundred thousand years old. Dr. Meyer of Bonn examined the evidence, and found it to be the skull of a Cossack killed in 1814. Many other scientists agreed with him. (Bible Science and Faith, p. 278.)

3. The Colorado specimen. Prof. Stephen Bowers of the Mineralogical and Geological Survey of California, gives this account of another such discovery: "A few years ago the newspapers contained an account of the discovery of a skeleton in Colorado, by a Columbia College professor, which he was pleased to call the 'missing link' between man and the apes. He gave this remarkable creature an antiquity of a million and a half of years. The friable bones were carefully wrapped in cotton and shipped east. But scarcely had the learned professor gotten away with his prize when certain cowboys came forward and claimed the bones to be that of a pet monkey which they buried but a dozen years previously."

4. The late find of skeletons at Croatia, Austria, is heralded as the discovery of a connecting link. But these are skeletons of men and not of brutes. They are degraded men and nothing is better known than the possibility of degeneracy in man. We have degenerates now with all the peculiarities of these low specimens, retreating brows and jaws and flat faces. Degeneracy does not prove evolution. While the shape of these skulls is low and long it has not been shown that their cubical capacity is much less than that of normal man.

5. The Pithecanthropus Erectus. This is the most popular relic with Evolution. It consists of a piece of a skull from the eyes upward, a leg bone and two teeth. These were found in Java by Dr. von Eugene Du Bois in 1891. The cubic measurement of the skull is 60 inches, the same as that of an idiot, that of a normal man being 90 inches, and of an ape 30. These specimens were found at separate places and times. The skull is too small for the thigh bone. The age of the strata in which they were found is uncertain. Authorities are divided as to the nature of these. Haeckel admits that the belief that this is the missing link is strongly combatted by some distinguished scientists. At the Leyden congress, it was attacked by the illustrious pathologist Rudolph Virchow.

The assumptions based upon this specimen and necessary for evidence are as follows: First, that it is as old as claimed, a hundred thousand years at least, or a million as stated by some. Second, that these bones belong to the same individual. Third, that they are the remains of a full-grown individual. Fourth, that they are the remains of a human or semi-human being. Fifth, that they are not the remains of an idiot whose capacity the brain represents.

With all these unproven assumptions, and against the opinion of many of the finest scientists in Europe, Haeckel and some evolutionists have declared this is the missing link. They place this piece of a skull of one creature upon this leg of another and insert these teeth belonging to a third, all so far separated in life that they probably did not even know each other, and rechristen the whole "Pithecanthropus Erectus," which may be freely translated "The ape that walked like a man," being thus the first that arrived at that point which Prof. Clodd tells us was "the making of a man." And this specimen is Haeckel's Last Link, and this he says demonstrates the truth of Evolution.

The evidence of bones and other remains is now generally suspected. It has been found that even in the case of recent remains, as in criminal trials, experts are often unable to decide whether they are human or brute, recent or remote, and what part of the frame they occupied. It is said that Wallace, the great cotemporary with Darwin in the promotion of the theory, now admits there is no evidence of an evolutionary link between man and the lower animals.

7. THE ARGUMENT FROM THE BRAIN.

The brain forms the principal difference between man's body and the brute's. The brain is especially used as proof by the evolutionist. It is the organ of mind. Its size corresponds with the intellectual state of the creature. It is the theory of Evolution that there was an increase in the size of the brain in some of the man-apes of that day, although none such is seen now.

Prof. Edward Clodd thus describes these supposed brain changes after the Ice Age: "The changes by which he met these new conditions were in a very small degree physical. They were almost wholly mental. The principal physical change was in the growth of the brain and the expansion of the cranium, giving rise to a less bestial physiognomy and an advanced mental power." (Man and His Ancestor, p. 181.)

How could man adapt himself by increasing the size of his brain? Why should the passing away of the ice age increase the size of the brain? However, he disposes of the whole matter, after arguing through pages of supposition and assumption, by stating, "The absence of facts forces us to confine ourselves largely to suggestions and probabilities." (Making of a Man, p. 188.) But probabilities are not science and we have a right to ask from those claiming to be scientists actual facts and not guesses, for so great an assertion as the descent of man from the brute.

The capacity of the ape brain is 30, of the human 90 cubic inches. There is no evidence of change in either the ape or the man. The prehistoric man has as good a head on his shoulders as his modern descendants. Bruner says the most ancient skulls even exceed ours. Dr. Pfaff says the stone age men are equal to the present generation. So if education does not increase the size of man's brain, why should the new tricks of Prof. Clodd's ancient "arboreal creature" enlarge that individual's brain 200 per cent? On the other hand, the ape of to-day and the ape of 3,000 years ago as mummied and preserved in Egypt are the same. The big-brained ape of Evolution has unaccountably disappeared and even his skull is missing.

8. MAN'S MIND AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

Evolution claims that all man's faculties have been derived from the brute, as was his physical frame. It is fair to say that this is met at the door by the protest of some of the greatest scientists, themselves sympathetic with Evolution.

Prof. John Fiske wrote on the origin of mind: "We can say when mind came on the scene of evolution, but we can say neither whence nor why.... It is not only inconceivable how mind should have been produced from matter, but it is inconceivable that it should have been produced from matter." (Darwinism, pp. 63, 69.) Prof. Dana has said, "The present teaching of geology is that man is not of nature's making.... Independently of such evidences, man's high reason, his unsatisfied longings, aspirations, his free will, all afford the fullest assurance that he owes his existence to the special act of the Infinite Being whose image he bears." (Geologic Story, p. 290.)

Prof. George H. Howison writes on this theme: "To make evolution the ground of the existence of mind in man, is destructive to the reality of the human person and therefore, of the entire world of moral good and of unqualified truth." (Limits of Evolution, p. 6.) Lord Kelvin, the most eminent living scientist, wrote in a letter to the London Times, "Every action of human free will is a miracle to physical and chemical and mathematical science."

9. LANGUAGE.

Evolution has long tried to create an argument for the derivation of man's speech from the cries of animals. This is met however by the philologist with positive denial. Prof. Max Mueller says: "There is one barrier which no one has yet ventured to touch,—the barrier of language. Language is our Rubicon and no brute will dare to cross it.... No process of Natural Selection will ever distill significant words out of the notes of birds and animals." (Lessons on the Science of Language, pp. 23, 340, 370.)

False claims have been made for the languages of savage people and ancient races. Darwin said that the people of Terra del Fuego were the lowest in the scale, so far as discovered, and their language correspondingly crude. But further investigation shows that they have 32,430 words; over twice as many as Shakespeare used. The language of some of the tribes of the Congo is described by a missionary as more complex than Greek. The history of languages shows the same want of evidence for an evolutionary origin. The oldest forms are the most complex. Modern Greek and Latin are simpler than the ancient forms. English is an improvement in this respect on the old Anglo Saxon, whose grammatical forms it has largely cast off and reduced the language to greater simplicity.

A scientist is now endeavoring to ascertain the speech of monkeys. He has ascertained that these animals have different sounds for different wants, a fact as to other creatures that he could have ascertained by a visit to the nearest poultry yard. The hen has as many calls as the monkey, and as many meanings too. Her call for food is one sound. Her cry of alarm at a passing hawk is another, and her brood perfectly understands all, and without previous education. All animals and birds, and many insects too, have sounds with meaning in them, but language is another matter.

10. PREHISTORIC MAN.

The remains of early races form an argument used by Evolution. These remains are found in many places in caves and are accompanied by tools of stone and vessels of pottery and the remains of animals. These degraded peoples are pointed to by Evolution as man in a state of development.

If the preceding arguments were well founded this would appear reasonable enough. But in view of the fallacious character of the prior reasoning, we must halt at this claim. There are many and conclusive reasons for rejecting this unproven claim. For it is unproven. It is only inference and assumption.

1. These men of the cave do not necessarily represent man in a course of progress, for we find to-day the same classes of people with their stone tools and pottery and living as prehistoric man lived. There to-day exist men in every stage of the supposed progress from the cave man to the highest in civilization. Such remains could be had in any burial place of these savage peoples. Prehistoric man, so-called, is still with us and we can interview him as to his state and history.

2. We have seen that modern man has not developed in brain capacity above prehistoric man. It is also true that he has not developed physically. Dana tells us that the skeleton found at Mentone compares favorably with the best modern men. Indeed we have degenerated in many respects. We have almost lost the sense of smell as compared with savage peoples or even animals. Our teeth are certainly not improving. If we are to find perfect specimens we do not look at the most advanced classes but to the reverse. Those who live to extreme old age are generally in the lowly ranks. But why has physical development ceased at all? Why are there not some superior beings by this time? But alas, there are no marks or indications of wings or halos on either the great saints or scientists of the day.

We are told that while physical evolution has ceased among men, evolution now works along mental lines of progress. This is a radical shifting of the ground of evolution, for heretofore all this has been not only omitted but discarded. If evolution is anything, it is physical. Nor does Evolution give any account of the causes of the stoppage of physical development and the change to mental evolution. We will also show later that this supposed progress has not been such as claimed.

11. ANTIQUITY OF MAN.

Evolution asserts that a vast antiquity for man has been proven by remains that have been found. It is commonly said that these remains are hundreds of thousands of years old. But the claims for these vast periods are now being greatly reduced and generally discredited. Dr. Zahm says of these speculations: "We could not give a better illustration of the extremes to which the unguided human intellect is subject than the vacillating and extravagant notions of the antiquity of man." (Bible Science and Faith, p. 315.) The age of the peat beds of Abbeville, in France, in which human remains were found, was once estimated at 20,000 years. The estimate has been reduced to a fifth of that age. The remains of the animals found with man are supposed to prove his extreme antiquity. The remains of the mammoth were once cited as such proof. But the mammoth has been found in such a state of preservation that its flesh has been fed to the dogs.

The enormous ages which have been credited to these remains are well illustrated by the discovery of a skeleton at New Orleans while digging for the gas works. From the depth of the stratum in which it was found it was estimated by scientists at the age of 57,000 years. Soon after, the gunwale of the skeleton's Kentucky flat boat was found in the same stratum, and the age therefore of the remains was reduced from 57,000 to 50 years. The evidences from peat bogs, stalagmite formations, stone, iron and bronze tools are all now considered unreliable by scientists. So many exposures of mistakes in the estimate of age from these have been made, that the whole is looked upon with suspicion. Instance after instance might be given.

It has been claimed that we can arrange these past races in an ascending order as they worked in stone, bronze, or iron, in their successive history. This is a false theory. We have all these "ages" existing to-day. On the other hand, Dr. Livingstone found no stone age in Africa. Dr. Schliemann found in the ruins of Troy the bronze age below the stone age. The early Egyptians used bronze, the later ones stone tools. In the Chaldean tombs all these are found together. Europe had the metal age while America had the stone age. (Creation and Evolution. Prof. Townsend.)

These prehistoric races to which Evolution points us as representing man in his early state, do not represent that early world. They are found at the outer limits of the world and not at the acknowledged center whence man came. They are, in short, what we find to-day at the outlying regions of earth. They therefore, are exceptional peoples and not representative of the world at that time, or now.

The dynasties of Egypt were once cited against the Bible narrative, but these have been reduced to moderate figures. A thousand years was taken off by one discoverer recently from the age of the middle kingdom. There is a question whether the Egyptian dynasties were successive or in some cases contemporary. There is also the well-known fact that the Egyptians had years of varying length. They often counted dynasties by years of three months and also of a month! Dr. Flinders Petrie lately discovered in the tombs of the kings, preceding the first dynasty of Egypt at Abydos, Grecian pottery of Mycean clay, and this in a tomb estimated to date from 5,400 B. C.! (Atlantic Monthly, October, 1900.)

The same kind of estimating is now being done from the Assyrian tablets and their records. We must remember these old kings were great boasters and liars, too. We don't know the basis of their calculations. Perhaps Assyria also had three month years. If their method was like Egypt's, and they were connected as we know by much intercourse and literature, we may expect like inaccuracy. The ancient dates given in the inscriptions found in Nuffar recently, are already suspected by scholars. The date for the temple uncovered there was 3,200 B. C. This number is the product of forty multiplied by eighty; evidently a round number for eighty generations, and not at all a careful or exact chronological statement.

However, let us compare the two accounts, the Bible and the Assyrian. The one precise in statement, accurate in ten thousand points as demonstrated, with us for thousands of years, trusted and tried. The other inexact, mythical in its legends, having all the marks of inaccuracy, just discovered, made by people we know nothing of and having no character to speak of, and full of vain boastings and absurd claims. Which is the true and which the false? Let the jury decide. We will abide the verdict.

Prof. A. H. Sayce of Oxford, writes: "The light that has come from the remnants of the past has been fatal to the pretenses of critical skepticism. The discoveries of Abydos have discredited its methods and results. They have shown that where they can be tested they prove to be absolutely worthless. It is only reasonable to conclude that methods and results, that thus break down under the test of monumental discovery, must equally break down in other departments of history where no such test can be applied. It is not the discoveries of the higher critics, but the old traditions which have been confirmed by archaeological discovery." (Homiletic Review, March, 1901.) This statement is made by one of the most able archaeologists and semitic scholars in the world.

The age of man on earth has much testimony from science agreeing with the Bible account. From many the following are cited:

Dr. J. A. Zahm, the distinguished scholar, says, "I am disposed to attribute to man an antiquity of about ten thousand years. It seems likely that the general consensus of chronologists will ultimately fix on a date which shall be below rather than above ten thousand years as the nearest approximate to the age of our race." (The Bible, Science and Faith, p. 311.) He quotes many other authorities.

Prof. Winchell tells us, "The very beginnings of our race are still almost in sight." (Sketches of Creation.) Dawson thinks man has been on earth about seven thousand years. Geology agrees that man did not exist before the ice age. The stone age is fixed at about seven thousand years ago by others.

Professor George Frederick Wright tells us, "The glacial period did not close more than ten thousand years ago. This shortening of our conception of the ice age renders glacial man a comparatively modern creature. The last stage of the excessive unstability of the earth was not so very long ago and continued down to near the introduction of man." (Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1902.)

S. R. Pattison, F. G. S., tells us, "Science shows to us a number of converging probabilities which point to man's first appearance along with great animals about 8,000 years ago." (Age and Origin of Man Geologically Considered, Am. Tr. Soc., p. 29.)

Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of natural science in Erlangen, thus sums up the evidence from geology as to man: "(1) The age of man is small, extending only to a few thousand years. (2) Man appeared suddenly: the most ancient man known to us is not essentially different from the now living man. (3) Transitions from the ape to the man, or the man to the ape, are nowhere found. The conclusion we are led to is that the Scripture account of man, which is one and self-consistent, is true.... This account of man we accept by faith, because it is revealed by God, is supported by adequate evidence, solves the otherwise insoluble problems, not only of science and history, but of inward experience, and meets our deepest need.... The more it is sifted and examined the more well founded and irrefragable does it prove to be." (Age and Origin of Man, Am. Tr. Soc., pp. 55-56.)

12. SAVAGE RACES.

Evolution delights to compare savage peoples alternately with present civilized races and with the brute. Prof. Conn says, "There is a greater difference between a Newton and a Hottentot, than between the Hottentot and the orang-outang." He fails to notice, or state, that the first is a difference of degree only, and the latter a difference of kind. It would be possible to develop a Hottentot into a philosopher, but no attempt is ever dreamed of, to change an orang-outang into a Hottentot. On the other hand, the lowest savages have under culture shown their human inheritance of faculties beyond the brute. Two pigmies taken to Italy learned to speak Italian in two years with fluency. They showed themselves superior to many European children, and one became proficient in music. The skill of this race with poisoned arrows, pits for game, and cultivation of various kinds, is well known.

The savage races show the opposite of evolution. They are races in ruins. Max Mueller says, "What do we know of savage tribes beyond the last chapter in their history? They may have passed through ever so many vicissitudes, and what we consider as primitive may be for all we know a relapse into savagery, or corruption of what was something more rational and intelligible in former ages." This estimate of this great scholar is attested by facts. Where to-day is the Hindu race that could build the Taj Mahal? What Greek race to-day could reproduce the architecture or statuary of their ancestors? The ruins of all eastern and many western lands point to fallen races as well as ruined structures. The world's history is that of the fall of great nations such as Egypt, Babylonia, Greece, Rome, in all of which are sad examples of architecture and peoples alike in decay.

13. THE ARGUMENT FROM HISTORY.

History is appealed to to show the progress of man and his continuance in the evolutionary line since his origin in the brute. Our present civilization is pointed to and compared with the past and we are told that this is the result of evolution.

Some remarks of a preliminary kind are called for here. It is to be remembered that history does not cover a very long period, that the record is often broken, and that the facts are often very uncertain. Large sections of the world we know historically nothing or little of, such as Asia and Africa. We must remember that progress is confined mostly to Europe and America and these form but a third of the population of the world. Also that European progress is a comparatively recent matter. We are now considering the entire history of the race and must take in these vast outside regions to arrive at correct conclusions. To judge the entire progress of mankind from a short-sighted view of a limited portion is as unscientific as it is unscriptural.

We must also remember that Europe owes its progress to the influence of Christianity. For to-day it is the Christian nations only that have progress and the most Christian have the most progress. No fact is better seen or proven. Lange states, "Among human tribes left to themselves, the higher man never comes out of the lower. Apparent exceptions do ever, on close examination, confirm the universality of the rule in regard to particular peoples, while the claim, as made for the world's general progress, can only be urged in opposition by ignoring the supernal aids of revelation that have ever shown themselves directly or collaterally on the human path." (Commentary on Genesis, p. 355.) We have seen that so far as present savage races are concerned they have made no progress, and semi-civilized races, such as the Egyptians, Chinese and Hindus have retrograded.

We need also to consider the vast and great civilizations which existed in remote antiquity as is now revealed by archaeology. The recent discoveries in Assyria and Babylonia and Egypt show vast empires of culture as well as national extension and power, and that their earlier culture was the greatest. So Prof. Hilprecht, of the University of Pennsylvania, testifies of Babylonia: "The flower of Babylonian art is found at the beginning of Babylonian history." (Recent Researches in Bible Lands, p. 88.) Horace Bushnell tells us, "All great ruins are but a name for greatness in ruins."

It is to Egypt we must go for the earliest records of human civilization. Here the account of Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, gives us the facts: "The earliest culture and civilization to which the monuments bear witness was in fact already perfect. It was full-grown. The organization of the country was complete. The arts were known and practiced. Egyptian culture as far as we know at present has no beginning." (Recent Researches in Bible Lands, pp. 101, 102.) "The older the culture, the more perfect it is found to be. The fact is a very remarkable one, in view of modern theories of development and of the evolution of civilization out of barbarism. Whatever may be the reason, such theories are not borne out by the discoveries of archaeology. Instead of the progress one should expect, we find retrogression and decay. Is it possible the Biblical view is right after all and that civilized man has been civilized from the outset?" (Homiletic Review, June, 1902.) Prof. Flinders Petrie tells us that the Great Pyramid bears on its stones the marks of the solid and tubular drill, edged with stone as hard as diamond, and cutting one-tenth of an inch at a revolution, and showing no sign of wear. They had also straight and circular saws. The same building reveals scientific and astronomical knowledge equal in some respects to modern science.

Not only were the past civilizations great, but, in many respects, far above the present. So that the race has even fallen from higher levels. Lecky thus writes of the Greeks: "Within the narrow limits and scant populations of the Greek states, arose men, who in almost every conceivable form of genius, in philosophy, in epic, dramatic and lyric poetry, in written and spoken eloquence, in statesmanship, in sculpture, in painting, and probably in music, attained the highest levels of human perfection." (History of European Morals, p. 408.) Galton says of the same civilization: "The millions of Europe, breeding as they have for two thousand years, have never produced the equal of Socrates and Phidias. The average ability of the Athenian race is, on the lowest possible estimate, nearly two grades higher than our own; that is, about as much as our race is above the African negro." (Hereditary Genius, p. 320.)

It does seem as if such testimony of these great scholars should make us not only chary of the theory which claims ever upward and onward progress, but also more modest in our boasted modern progress and position. Prof. Frederick Starr of the Anthropological department of Chicago University, says that the American race is reverting to the Indian state. He bases this on measurements of faces of 5,000 children. This is a dismal outlook. It is not what Evolution has promised us. The followers of Evolution have reason to be indignant at such a turn in its course. However, we may comfort them and ourselves with the hope that if Evolution fails us we have other resources.