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!