THE ARGUMENT FROM CLASSIFICATION OF SPECIES.
This is one of the strong points of Evolution. It is claimed that plants and animals can be so classified in an ascending order that it is evident the higher came out of the lower. We object as follows:
1. There is no classification agreed upon by scientists. This comes largely from want of agreement as to what a species is. Scientists differ widely and radically. Spencer presents a review of all these schemes of classification and ends by saying, "It is absurd to attempt a definite scheme of relationship." His own plan of the scheme he says is the figure of a "laurel bush squashed flat by a descending plane." (Principles of Biology, p. 389.) This agrees with his statement as to the absurdity of such schemes. Some arrange the whole in a continuous straight line from the lowest up.
Darwin thought the whole came from half a dozen germinal forms. Where these came from he did not say. Dr. J. Clark Ridpath said, "The eagle was always an eagle, the man always man. Every species of living organism has I believe come up by a like process from its own primordial germ." (Arena, June, 1879.) Haeckel insists that the theory demands but a single primeval germ as the ancestor of all living things. He presented a tree, showing twenty or more stages between primeval protoplasm and man, but this has been now rejected by evolutionists. Prof. D. Kerfoot Schults represents the classification as follows: "If all the animals that have ever existed on the earth be represented by a tree, those now existing on the earth will be represented by the topmost twigs and leaves, and the extinct forms will be represented by the main trunk and branches." (First Book on Organic Evolution, p. xiv.)
But the source of all, the primeval protoplasm, is wanting. The missing primeval germ or germs leaves the tree without a root, and Prof. Conn tells that even the sub-kingdoms are not united by fossils. Spencer admits that not a single species has been traced to its source or its family tree completed, and even the ancestors of our living species are wanting.
Prof. Dana admitted as follows, "If ever the links (upon which the doctrine of Evolution depends) had an actual existence, their disappearance without a trace left behind is altogether inexplicable." Here then is a tree without root or trunk or branches, and having only the tips of outer twigs and leaves, in other words, a phantom tree, a fit representation of the theory for which it stands.
The present orders of plants and animals give a strong argument against Evolution. It has been seen that Succession is not Evolution. The mere coming of animals in orderly succession shows only plan, but the means of executing that plan is not shown thereby. But further, while in the geologic ages there was Succession, here in our age is Simultaneousness of species, two very different and contradictory phenomena. Why has Succession ceased? Why have not the higher orders pushed the lower out, as in the geologic ages, if Evolution was the cause? Yet here they all exist quietly together as if they knew nothing of Evolution or its requirements.
Nor have any such changes occurred in thousands of years, as the mummied remains of cats and crocodiles and ibises in Egypt show. Surely 4,000 years would show some evolution if there had been such a thing; but it is not seen in all the 4,000 years, or even in the more distant period since primeval man existed, for we have the remains of animals found with man in his early history. Out of 98 species, 57 are the same as we have to-day unchanged, and still others, as the lingula, the same as in ages past. Thus Evolution's trusted argument from Classification utterly fails of demonstration.