PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION.
In issuing a third edition of this book it is proper to state what changes, if any, have occurred in the discussion.
While the belief in Evolution is wide-spread, no known cause or causes have yet been discovered by which the supposed changes in species occurred, for "Evolution" is not a force or energy of any kind, but only the name of a theory by which the present order of nature is supposed to have come. The method Darwin proposed was by Natural Selection arising from the prodigality of production, the small variations that occur in living things, the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest, aided by environment and other causes all of which by slow degrees during infinite ages have produced the progressive order of species.
This has been decided to be insufficient and has been abandoned by evolutionary writers. It is now agreed that the changes must have occurred in variations originating in the embryo or in the germ, or in the very substance of which that is composed. But all this is far beyond human ken as all writers admit, as follows: "We are ignorant of the factors which are at work to produce evolution. We do not even know whether the life processes are conducted in accordance with the principles of chemistry and physics, or are in obedience to some more subtle vital principle." (Metcalf, Organic Evolution.) President David Starr Jordan and Prof. Vernon Lyman Kellogg, both of Stanford University, say: "These changes or variations, if they do occur, cannot be explained." (Evolution and Animal Life, p. 112.)
This is universally admitted by scientific writers and the search is now for some proof for Evolution along these lines. But as President Jordan makes the still greater confession that "science does not comprehend a single elemental fact of nature," and such writers as the late Lord Kelvin, president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, agree thereto, the required proof seems far off.
So the discussion is in even a less tangible state than in Darwin's time, for that had a theory supposed to be sufficient, but now there is no known cause which can be demonstrated or offers the slightest explanation, as admitted above by these leading writers.
The facts which are advanced to support the theory are dealt with in this volume and their fallacy shown, that all may be explained without reverting to such an unproven theory as Evolution.
Alexander Patterson.
Chicago, April 15, 1912.