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.