Even now, in the controversy over this important ape-question, amateurs and biassed anthropologists often repeat the false statement that the gap between man and the anthropoid ape is not yet filled up and the "missing link" not yet discovered. This is a most perverse statement, and can only arise either from ignorance of the anatomical, embryological, and paleontological facts, or incompetence to interpret them aright. As a fact, the morphological chain that stretches from the lemurs to the earlier western apes, from these to the eastern tailed apes, and to the tailless anthropoid apes, and from these direct to man, is now uninterrupted and clear. It would be more plausible to speak of missing links between the earliest lemurs and their marsupial ancestors, or between the latter and their monotreme ancestors. But even these gaps are unimportant, because comparative anatomy and embryology, with the support of paleontology, have dissipated all doubt as to the unity of the mammalian stem. It is ridiculous to expect paleontology to furnish an unbroken series of positive data, when we remember how scanty and imperfect its material is.
I cannot go further here into the interesting recent research in regard to special aspects of our simian descent; nor would it greatly advance our object, because all the general conclusions as to man's primate descent remain intact, whichever way we construct hypothetically the special lines of simian evolution. On the other hand, it is interesting for us to see how the most recent form of Darwinism, so happily described by Escherich as "ecclesiastical evolution," stands in regard to these great questions. What does its astutest representative, Father Erich Wasmann, say about them? The tenth chapter of his work, in which he deals at length with "the application of the theory of evolution to man," is a masterpiece of Jesuitical science, calculated to throw the clearest truths into such confusion and so to misrepresent all discoveries as to prevent any reader from forming a clear idea of them. When we compare this tenth chapter with the ninth, in which Wasmann represents the theory of evolution as an irresistible truth on the strength of his own able studies, we can hardly believe that they both came from the same pen—or, rather, we can only understand when we recollect the rule of the Jesuit Congregation: "The end justifies the means." Untruth is permitted and meritorious in the service of God and his Church.
The Jesuitical sophistry that Wasmann employs in order to save man's unique position in Nature, and to prove that he was immediately created by God, culminates in the antithesis of his two natures. The "purely zoological conception of man," which has been established beyond question by the anatomical and embryological comparison with the ape, is said to fail because it does not take into account the chief feature, his "mental life." It is "psychology that is best fitted to deal with the nature and origin of man." All the facts of anatomy and embryology that I have gathered together in my Evolution of Man in proof of the series of his ancestors are either ignored or misconstrued and made ridiculous by Wasmann. The same is done with the instructive facts of anthropology, especially the rudimentary organs, which Robert Wiedersheim has quoted in his Man's Structure as a Witness to his Past. It is clear that the Jesuit writer lacks competence in this department; that he has only a superficial and inadequate acquaintance with comparative anatomy and embryology. If Wasmann had studied the morphology and physiology of the mammals as thoroughly as those of the ants, he would have concluded, if he were impartial, that it is just as necessary to admit a monophyletic (or single) origin for the former as for the latter. If, in Wasmann's opinion, the 4,000 species of ants form a single "natural system"—that is to say, descend from one original species—it is just as necessary to admit the same hypothesis for the 6,000 (2,400 living and 3,600 fossil) species of mammals, including the human species.
The severe strictures that I have passed on the sophisms and trickery of this "ecclesiastical evolution" are not directed against the person and the character of Father Wasmann, but the Jesuitical system which he represents. I do not doubt that this able naturalist (who is personally unknown to me) has written his book in good faith, and has an honourable ambition to reconcile the irreconcilable contradictions between natural evolution and the story of supernatural creation. But this reconciliation of reason and superstition is only possible at the price of a sacrifice of the reason itself. We find this in the case of all the other Jesuits—Fathers Cathrein, Braun, Besmer, Cornet, Linsmeier, and Muckermann—whose ambiguous "Jesuitical science" is aptly dealt with in the article of R. H. Francé that I mentioned before (No. 22 of the Freie Wort, 16th February, 1904, Frankfort).
This interesting attempt of Father Wasmann's does not stand alone. Signs are multiplying that the Church militant is about to enter on a systematic campaign. I heard from Vienna on the 17th of February, that on the previous day (which happened to be my birthday), a Jesuit, Father Giese, had, in a well-received address, admitted not only evolution in general, but even its application to man, and declared it to be reconcilable with Catholic dogmas—and this at a crowded meeting of "catechists"! It is important to note that in a new Catholic cyclopædia, Benziger's Library of Science, the first three volumes (issued at Einsiedeln and Cologne, 1904) deal very fully and ably with the chief problems of evolution: the first with the formation of the earth, the second with spontaneous generation, the third with the theory of descent. The author of them, Father M. Gander, makes most remarkable concessions to our theory, and endeavours to show that they are not inconsistent with the Bible or the dogmatic treatises of the chief fathers and schoolmen. But, though there is a profuse expenditure of sophistical logic in these Jesuitical efforts, Gander will hardly succeed in misleading thoughtful people. One of his characteristic positions is that spontaneous generation (as the development of organised living things by purely material processes) is inconceivable, but that it might be made possible "by a special Divine arrangement." In regard to the descent of man from other animals (which he grants), he makes the reserve that the soul must in any case have been produced by a special creative act.
It would be useless to go through the innumerable fallacies and untruths of these modern Jesuits in detail, and point out the rational and scientific reply. The vast power of this most dangerous religious congregation consists precisely in its device of accepting one part of science in order to destroy the other part more effectively with it. Their masterly act of sophistry, their equivocal "probabilism," their mendacious "reservatio mentalis," the principle that the higher aim sanctifies the worst means, the pernicious casuistry of Liguori and Gury, the cynicism with which they turn the holiest principles to the gratification of their ambition, have impressed on the Jesuits that black character that Carl Hoensbroech has so well exposed recently.
The great dangers that menace real science, owing to this smuggling into it of the Jesuitical spirit, must not be undervalued. They have been well pointed out by Francé, Escherich, and others. They are all the greater in Germany at the present time, as the Government and the Reichstag are working together to prepare the way for the Jesuits, and to yield a most pernicious influence on the school to these deadly enemies of the free spirit of the country. However, we will hope that this clerical reaction represents only a passing episode in modern history. We trust that one permanent result of it will be the recognition, in principle, even by the Jesuits, of the great idea of evolution. We may then rest assured that its most important consequence, the descent of man from other primate forms, will press on victoriously, and soon be recognised as a beneficent and helpful truth.