It is now time to pause and see what conclusions these facts have led our scientist to draw. I have called attention to the striking resemblance between man and the superior animals; in the development of the embryo, in the material of which they are composed, and in the use of organs they are alike; and especially very much alike in physical structure, the skeleton of man only slightly varying from that of the higher order of animals; and that resemblance in something like gradation exists throughout the organic world. Of course there are marked structural variations even in closely allied species, and we have seen that there is a tendency in species to vary and also to preserve the variation; and where the peculiarity of the variation is favorable to the individual it is almost certain to be preserved by the process of natural selection. New varieties thus produced may be expected to produce still other variations that will remove them further than ever from the stock from which their parents came, until the variation amounts to what our naturalists denominate specific difference. By this process what we now call varieties may eventually become species, as our species, according to the evolutionists, were once nothing more than varieties; and the groups which naturalists classify as genera, families, order, classes, etc., are but the remains of still older species, which have continued their existence side by side with the new species, which have been produced from them by this process of variation; and but for the fact that so many intermediate species have become extinct, they claim that the multifarious forms of organic life could be traced, through all the minute variations that have occurred, back to a common origin; even back to the mysterious substance in which life seems to generate—protoplasm.
Such are the basic principles on which is grounded the theory of evolution, as I understand the subject from the works of its advocates, though my effort to be brief may have rendered my statement of those principles very imperfect.
One thing more should be stated in connection with this theory, and that is that very long periods of time are demanded for the slow work of variation preserved by natural selection to accomplish the wonders attributed to it. To measure the time claimed by evolutionists by the lapse of years is simply out of the question; they ask for a long series of ages, each of which, though doubtless unequal, consists of millions of years. As the Rev. George B. Cheever remarks: "The first postulate of this philosophy is that of countless millions of years to work in, with no Creator, and with no authority that can bring it to book." To prove that such long periods of time have elapsed, during which organic forms have existed on the earth, the evolutionist triumphantly points to the revelations of geology, and there gives proof which there is, perhaps, no denying, of the lapse of time he pleads for; and also proof of organic forms of life in those various ages, fossilized remains of which are found in the strata of the earth's crust.
If you say to the advocate of evolution that it is incredible that variations preserved by natural selection could result in the production of such a wonderful organ as the eye; he replies "that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case; and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life; then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."[B] But with this statement and some further observations upon it, Mr. Darwin himself seems not altogether satisfied that he has removed the difficulty which he admits is enough to stagger anyone; "I have felt the difficulty," he says, "far too keenly to be surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of natural selection to so startling a length."[C]
[Footnote B: Origin of Species p. 143, (American Edition, 1883.)]
[Footnote C: Ibid p. 146]
If you say that it is incredible that natural selection can account for the production of such a wonderful thing as the mind of man—his "reasonable soul," the reply is that instinct varies among the inferior animals no less than physical structure, and though there may be no perceivable proportion or gradation between structural variation and variation of instinct; still, if the fact is admitted that among animals instinct varies, then it is easy to conceive that some of those variations may be favorable, and if favorable then natural selection would perpetuate them and make them dominant. From this basis they make another step the difference between the mental faculties of man and animal is immense, but the high culture which belongs to man evolutionists maintain has been slowly developed, and the separation between the mental powers of lowest man and the highest ape is no greater than that which exists between the lowest ape and some of the lower forms of life, say the Zoophytes.
If you say that articulate language surely marks a wide gulf between man and the lower animals, the reply is that animals are not devoid of expedients for expressing emotions, and from those expedients may have been evolved through intermediate species, now extinct, articulate language.
If you ask why, if species have descended from other species by fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined? The answer is that the intermediate species have become extinct, that we must look upon each existing species as having descended from some unknown forms; that natural selection acts slowly by preserving profitable modifications. "Each new form will tend in a fully stocked country to take the place of, and finally exterminate, its own less-improved parent form, and other less favored forms with which it comes in competition; thus both parent and all transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of the formation and perfection of the new."[D]
[Footnote D: Origin of species, p 134.]