1. Observation of facts.
2. Classification of these facts.
3. Inferences legitimately drawn therefrom.
4. Verification of these conclusions.
1. It fails in its facts. That this is true is evident from the reticence of the exact scientists to commit themselves to the theory. If the facts were all that they say, these laborious and faithful laborers in the laboratory and field would acknowledge the case. In the presentation of facts, the theoretical evolutionist culls out and magnifies those looking his way and passes in silence or minifies those antagonistic to the theory. It makes much of the change of a low salt water animal into its fresh water form, and passes over the immutability of all the great species. Evolution dwells upon the splints in the leg of the horse and passes over lightly the vast unbridged gaps between organic and inorganic matter, the origin of the vertebrates, the countless missing links between the species. It rests its argument on the "gill-slits" in the necks of embryonic fish, puppies and infants, and passes airily over the origin of matter, of life, of consciousness and of Christian experience. It presents ex-parte evidence.
2. Evolution fails in classification. We have seen the testimony of Evolution itself on this point. Nor is there any agreed definition of species. Not a single species has been traced to its origin. The species defy chronological classification. The most primitive species exist to-day and the most advanced were in existence almost at the first. Nor can the classifications which are attempted be advanced as proof of evolution. They are as evidential of manufacture or of creation or of any other process of intelligent mind.
3. Evolution rests on inferences. As its great philosopher, Spencer, has said, no inference is warranted unless it accounts for all the facts. Not only does no inference of Evolution do this, but it admits again and again that it is beset with countless difficulties. Nor are these inferences the only ones that might be drawn. It is not only necessary to draw an inference but to show that no other inference is possible. Some of these are the wildest possible deductions from the facts,—as for example, the theories as to the origins, already cited, as to whales and giraffes. Sir J. William Dawson, the eminent geologist, says of Evolution's deductions as follows: "It seems to indicate that the accumulated facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its capacity for generalization, and but for the vigor which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an indication that the human mind has fallen into a state of senility and in its dotage mistakes for science the imaginations which are the dreams of its youth." (Story of the Earth and Man, p. 317.)
The works of writers on Evolution abound in such phrases as "seems to be—I infer—it is conceivable—it might have been—it is probable—I think—apparently—must have been—no one can say—not difficult to conceive,"—and other unscientific terms, and on such deductions they project other inferences, and so leap skilfully from one supposition to another across the quagmire of Evolution.
Evolution is undertaking a philosophical impossibility—the proving of a negative, that there could be no other method than derivation. This is the philosophical basis of the whole theory.