I might as well write that Darwin “may have thought it well” to discuss (and attempt to destroy) Design. Why, the whole of this work is one long and victorious attack upon the idea which Mr. Wells took for granted! It is not a casual refutation of some nonsense about the embryo exactly reproducing every minute stage of its ancestral past; it is a fundamental, detailed, complete refutation of the idea which Mr. Wells repeats.
Out of any number of citations which might be taken from Vialleton’s hundreds of pages I then gave, and here give again, one: and it is sufficient. “Ontogenesis” (that is the development of the Embryo) “always begins with a general form and not” (my italics) “with a form recalling another simpler form passed through in an earlier phase of development.”
So much for that. It is but one out of many examples of our Author’s being behind the times. Here is another.
In describing the glacial epochs, he trots out with the most naïf confidence (on pp. 20–22) the hopelessly dead astronomical theory which did duty in the textbooks of his youth and mine—for I also have believed these things. Relying on a popular volume which, at the time, had great effect, he puts down the main cause of glaciation to the combination of varying eccentricity in the earth’s orbit with varying inclination of the axis, of which he gives a large diagram. Under the effect of the two movements (which Leverrier calculated more than a lifetime ago) the Northern and Southern Hemispheres would alternately suffer from cold and enjoy greater warmth. When the Northern Hemisphere was getting colder and colder, the Southern would be getting warmer and warmer, and vice versa.
This was called “Croll’s astronomical theory of glaciation,” and was made popular by a book of Sir Robert Ball’s in 1893.
[1893, as I have said, seems, from internal evidence, to be about the date when Mr. Wells’s stock of information crystallized.]
Now Croll’s astronomical theory broke down quite early under criticism. It was dead before the end of the nineteenth century. The eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica is not exactly recent. Its well-worn covers testify to its age in all our libraries, and I see that a thirteenth edition is due. But even the eleventh edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica could have informed Mr. Wells that Croll’s theory had broken down. Would he like something quite recent? Professor Coleman—Emeritus Professor of Geology at Toronto—has just issued a study of glacial periods, and I find on page 274 the curt sentence, “Croll’s theory at present receives little attention.” And why? Because fact, that dreadful enemy to theorizing, has killed it. If it were true, glaciation would have been alternate in north and south. As a fact, it has been proved simultaneous—the South American clay deposits alone show that.
This is not to say that astronomical factors have played no part in glaciation. That they did not do so would be incredible. But it is to say that Mr. Wells still takes for granted in this year of grace 1926, and states as facts, theories which the average educated man knows to have been exploded as long ago as the nineties of the last century.
Mr. Wells suffers, in this connection, from another fault besides that of stating the old and exploded theories of his youth as facts. He also affirms as fact what is doubtful. Thus he builds a whole series of assertions (p. 154) on the—at first sight—apparently obvious, but, in fact, much disputed idea that as the ice receded the sea-level rose. It is clear that the melting of great quantities of ice would, other things being equal, raise the sea-level. It is also presumable, on the isostatic theory, that the earth rose when and where relieved of ice pressure (the raised beaches seem proof of this). That—other things being equal—would mean a lowering of sea-level when the ice melted (thus the highest-known raised beach of glacial times in America indicates a fall of the sea-level since the ice melted by nearly 700 feet). Which of the two factors predominated? Only observation of such phenomena as raised beaches, fossils, submerged forests, etc., can decide, and the matter is still debated. Boule in 1906 affirmed a high sea under glacial conditions. The periods of high glaciation were, according to him, the periods of high sea-level, and the interglacial epochs the periods of low sea-level. Wright (in 1914) inclines to the opposite. The Scandinavian observers noted in one locality a rise of sea-level at the first receding of the ice, then a lowering of it. The latest opinion is mainly in favour of a rise in sea-level since the last Ice-age. Coleman, the last authority, tentatively suggests a rise.
But to affirm a rise as proved is bad science. In these and many other points Mr. Wells is evidently a man confusing theory with fact.