Creation or Evolution? A Philosophical Inquiry

by George Ticknor Curtis

"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Prof. Schaafhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."[44]

I do not quite comprehend how the "more civilized state of man" in the more or less remote future is to lead to this wider break. One can understand how the whole of mankind may become more civilized, and how the savage races will disappear by extermination or otherwise. It may be, and probably will be, that the anthropomorphous apes will be exterminated at the same time. But the question here is not in regard to a more perfect and widely diffused civilization—a higher and universal elevation of the intellectual and moral condition of mankind, a more improved physical and moral well-being—but it is in regard to a change in the physical and organic structure of the human animal, so marked and pronounced as to produce a wider break between man and his nearest supposed allies than that which now exists between the negro or the Australian and the gorilla. The anthropomorphous ape existing now will have disappeared; but it will be a well-known and recorded animal of the past. But what reason is there to expect that natural and sexual selection, or the advance of civilization, or the extermination of the savage races of mankind, or all such causes combined, are going to change essentially the structure of the human body to something superior to or fundamentally different from the Caucasian individual? We have had a tolerably long recorded history of the human body as it has existed in all states of civilization or barbarism. And although in the progress from barbarism to civilization—if utter barbarism preceded civilization—the development of its parts has been varied, and the brain especially has undergone a large increase in volume and in the activity of its functions, we do not find that the plan on which the human animal was constructed, however we may suppose him to have originated, has undergone any material change.

The most splendid specimen of the Caucasian race that the civilized world can show to-day has no more organs, bones, muscles, arteries, veins, or nerves than those which are found in the lowest savage. He makes a different use of them, and that use has changed their development, and to some extent has modified stature, physical, intellectual, and moral, and many other attributes; as climate and habits of life have modified complexion, the diseases to which the human frame is liable, and many other peculiarities. But if we take historic man, we find that in all the physical features of his animal construction that constitute him a species, he has been essentially the same animal in all states of civilization or barbarism; and unless we boldly assume that the prehistoric man was an animal born with a coat of hair all over his body, and that clothing was resorted to as the hair in successive generations disappeared, we can have no very strong reason for believing that the human body has been at any time an essentially different structure from what it is now. Even in regard to longevity or power of continued life, if we set aside the exceptional cases of what is related of the patriarchs in the biblical records, we do not find that the average duration of human life has been much greater or much less than the threescore and ten or the fourscore years that are said to have been the divinely appointed term. As to what may have been the average duration of life among prehistoric men, we are altogether in the dark.

I must now revert to one of the most prominent of the admitted breaks in the Darwinian pedigree, namely, that which occurs at the supposed transition from the amphibians to the mammalia. There is a term which is used in mechanics to mark the characteristic and fundamental distinction between one complex machine and another. We speak of the "principle" on which a mechanical structure operates, meaning the essential construction and mode of operation which distinguish it from other machines of the same general class. Although we are not to forget that an animal organization, to which is given that mysterious essence that is called life, may come into being by very different processes from those which are employed by man in dealing with dead matter and the forces which reside in it, yet there is no danger of being misled into false analogies, if we borrow from mechanics a convenient term, and speak of the "principle" on which an animal is constructed and on which its animal organization operates. We find, then, that in the animal kingdom there is a perfectly clear and pronounced division between the modes in which the reproductive system is constructed and by which it operates in the continuation of the species. The principle of construction and operation of the reproductive system, by which an individual animal is produced from an egg brought forth by the female parent, and is thereafter nourished without anything derived from the parental body, is as widely different from that by which the young animal is born from a womb and nourished for a time from the milk of the mother, as any two constructions, animate or inanimate, that can be conceived of. Whatever may be the analogy or resemblance between the embryo that is in the egg of one animal and the embryo that remains in the womb of another animal, at the point at which the egg is expelled from the parental system the analogy or resemblance ceases. In certain animals a body that is called an egg is formed in the female parent, containing an embryo, or fœtus, of the same species, or the substance from which a like animal is produced. This substance is inclosed in an air-tight vessel or shell; when this has been expelled from the parent the growth of the embryo goes on to the stage of development at which the young animal is to emerge from the inclosure, and, whatever may have been the process or means of nourishment surrounding the embryo within the shell and brought in that inclosure from the body of the parent, the young animal never derives, at any subsequent stage of its existence, either before or after it has left the shell, anything more from the parental system. It may be "hatched" by parental incubation or by heat from another source, but for nourishment, after it leaves the shell, the young animal is dependent on substances that are not supplied from the parental body, although they may be gathered or put within its reach by the parental care.

The transition from this system of reproduction to that by which the fœtus is formed into a greater or less degree of development within the body of the parent, and then brought forth to be nourished into further development by the parental milk, is enormous. The principle of the organic construction and mode of perpetuating the species, in the two cases, is absolutely unlike after we pass the point at which the ovule is formed by the union of the male and the female vesicles that are supposed to constitute its substance. When we pass from the implacental to the placental mammals we arrive at the crowning distinction between the two great systems of reproduction which separates them by a line that seems to forbid the idea that the one has grown out of the other by such causes as natural selection, and without a special and intentional creation of a new and different mode of operation. On the one hand, we have a system of reproduction by which the ovule is brought forth from the body of the parent in an inclosed vessel, and thereafter derives nothing from the parental body. In the other, we have the ovule developed into the fœtus within the body of the parent, and the young animal is then brought forth in a more or less complete state of development, to be nourished by the parental secretion called milk. The intervention of the placental connection between the fœtus and the mother, whereby nourishment is kept up so that the young animal may be born in a more complete state of development, is a contrivance of marvelous skill, which natural selection, or anything that can be supposed to take place in the struggle for existence, or the result of the sexual battle, seems to be entirely inadequate to account for. If two such very diverse systems could be supposed to have been the product of human contrivance, we should not hesitate to say that the principle of the one was entirely different from that of the other, and that the change evinced the highest constructive skill and a special design.

The Darwinian hypothesis is that this great transition from the one system of reproduction to the other took place between the amphibians and the ancient marsupials, by the operation of the influences of natural and sexual selection. That is to say, the system of reproduction through an egg, which is the characteristic of the amphibians, became changed by gradations and modifications into the system of the lowest mammals, the distinction between the former and the latter being an obvious and palpable one. Then we are to suppose a further change from the marsupials, or the implacental mammals, to that wonderful contrivance, the placenta, by which the mother nourishes the fœtus into a more complete state of development before the young animal is born. This enormous change of system is supposed to have been brought about by a struggle among the individuals of one species for food, aided by a struggle between the males of that species for the possession of the females, by the growth and development of organs useful to the animal in the two battles, and by the transmission of these enhanced powers and improved weapons to offspring, and possibly by the crossing of different varieties of the new animals thus produced. But what potency there could be in such causes to bring about this great change it is extremely difficult to imagine, and we must draw largely on our imaginations to reach it. It would seem that if there is any one part of animal economy that is beyond the influence of such causes as the "survival of the fittest," it is the reproductive system, by which the great divisions of the animal kingdom continue their respective forms. Give all the play that you can to the operation of the successful battle for individual life, and to the victory of the best-appointed males over their competitors for the possession of the females, and to the transmission of acquired peculiarities to offspring—when you come to such a change as that between the two systems of reproduction and perpetuation, you have to account for something which needs far more proof of the transitional gradations of structure and habits of life than can now be found between the highest of the amphibians and the lowest of the mammalia. I know not how there could be higher or stronger evidence of design, of a specially planned and intentionally elaborated construction, than is afforded by this great interval between the one reproductive system and the other. But it is time now to pass to those points of resemblance between man and the other mammals which are asserted as the decisive proofs of his and their descent from some pre-existing form, their common progenitor. These points of resemblance may be considered in the following order:

1. The Bodily Structure of Man.—He is notoriously constructed on the same general type or model as other mammals. "All the bones in his skeleton can be compared with corresponding bones in a monkey, bat, or seal. So it is with his muscles, nerves, blood-vessels, and internal viscera. The brain, the most important of all the organs, follows the same law."[45]

2. The Liability of Man to certain Diseases to which the Lower Animals are liable.—These diseases, such as hydrophobia, variola, the glanders, syphilis, cholera, etc., man both communicates to and receives from some of the lower animals. "This fact proves the close similarity of their tissues and blood, both in minute structure and composition, far more plainly than does their comparison under the best microscope or by the aid of the best chemical analysis." Monkeys are liable to many of the same non-contagious diseases as we are, such as catarrh and consumption. They suffer from apoplexy, inflammation of the bowels, and cataract in the eye. Their young die from fever when shedding their milk-teeth. Medicines produce the same effect on them as on us, and they have a strong taste for tea, coffee, spirituous liquors, and even tobacco. Man is infested with both internal and external parasites of the same genera or families as those infesting other mammals; in the case of scabies, he is infested with the same species of parasites. He is subject to the same law of lunar periods, in the process of gestation, and in the maturation and duration of certain diseases. His wounds are repaired by the same process of healing, and, after the amputation of his limbs, the stumps occasionally possess some power of regeneration, as in the lowest animals.[46]

3. The Reproductive Process.—This is strikingly the same, it is said, in all mammals, from the first act of courtship by the male to the birth and nurturing of the young.[47] The closeness of the parallel here, however, is obviously between man and the other placental mammalia, if we regard the whole process of reproduction of the different species.