A new generation of evolutionists has within the past twenty years arisen which holds that the changes in the organizations of plants and animals do not come by slow growth of favorable characteristics, but arise suddenly. Such is the "Mutation" theory of Hugo de Vries. But science has failed to receive this and similar theories with the same acclaim which once greeted Darwin's "Origin of Species." Naturalists have become cautious. They remember the inglorious collapse of the Darwinian regime and they are slow to hail another "Abraham of scientific thought." They are, in a general way, believers in some kind of evolution; but they prefer not to specify exactly the laws which have been operative in past "geological time." It is only in high-school texts in physical geography, zoology, and botany, that the evolutionary theory as propounded by Darwin is still treated as if it enjoyed among scientific men the same respect as the multiplication table. Speaking in the Darwinian dialect we should say that the authors of these school-texts constitute a case of "arrested development."
CHAPTER EIGHT. A Scientific Creed Outworn.
The preceding chapter concludes our investigation of that stage of evolutionistic thought which owes its origin and name to Charles Darwin. The question suggests itself, do scientists to-day believe as Darwin did? A great many do. Darwin remains to many scientists what Huxley, I think, called him, the "Abraham of scientific thought." But if we examine the roster of these, we find that they belong, with a single exception (Haeckel), to those whose departments of investigation have nothing to do with the study of life forms (biology, zoology, botany), and who consequently do not speak from first hand knowledge of the facts. Anthropologists (students of the races of man), sociologists, psychologists, and many educated persons generally, accept the Darwinian scheme of evolution as a fact and build their theories on it in turn. They accept the theory and ask no question. The vogue which Darwinism still enjoys among writers of school-texts has already been noted.
However, the specifically Darwinian phase of evolutionistic thought, as laid down in Spencer's interminable volumes, for instance, is given up by reputable biologists the world over. There is pretty much of a Babel among them, when it comes to a definition of evolution. There are dozens of theories,—mutation, orthogenesis, Weismanism, Mendelianism, etc.,— and each has its adherents,—but they agree in one thing, that "Natural Selection" does not account for the forms of life on earth to-day.
The revolt against "Natural Selection" came some forty years ago. It was announced in two famous declarations by Spencer and Huxley. This constitutes one of the most remarkable and important, as well as one of the most significant episodes, in the history of evolution. In two of the most remarkable essays which ever appeared in the "Nineteenth Century" magazine, now over thirty years ago, Herbert Spencer stepped on to the stool of repentance and read his recantation and renunciation of the doctrine of natural selection and the survival of the fittest; first doing vicarious penance (unauthorized, however) for Darwin, and then, in no uncertain terms, for himself. There was no mistaking Spencer's meaning. His language was explicit. "The phrases (natural selection and survival of the fittest) employed in discussing organic evolution," he told his readers, "though convenient and needful, are liable to mislead by veiling the actual agencies." "The words 'natural selection,' do not express a cause in the physical sense." "Kindred objections," he continues, "may be urged against the expression into which I was led when seeking to present the phenomena in literal terms rather than metaphorical terms—'the survival of the fittest.' In the working together of those many actions, internal and external, which determine the lives and deaths of organisms, we see nothing to which the words 'fitness' and 'unfitness' are applicable in the physical sense." And he continues: "Evidently, the word 'fittest' as thus used is a figure of speech." Had the sun fallen from the heavens the shock to the followers of Darwin could not have been more stunning than this open apostasy from the Darwinian faith.
Nor was this all. New surprises were still in store for the faithful who still clung to the cherished dogma. Now they find their faith itself assailed, and this, too, by these very selfsame leaders, who had been at such pains to make them proselytes. There can be little doubt that misgivings regarding the truth of their claims began to haunt the champions of the Darwinian hypothesis. They were just then masters of the whole field of scientific thought. They had brought all science to the feet of Darwin. The few benighted dissenters who still held out against the doctrine were looked upon as not worthy even of contempt. The whole world had adopted the creed of evolution. Was it wantonness then, or was it conscience, that prompted Huxley in what is now a historically famous speech, delivered at the unveiling of a statue to Darwin in the Museum at South Kensington, to openly declare that it would be wrong to suppose "that an authoritative sanction was given by the ceremony to the current ideas concerning evolution?" Well might his hearers be astonished! But they must have held their breath, when they heard him add boldly and bluntly, in no uncertain tones, that "science commits suicide when it adopts a creed." A creed, indeed! What had science been doing in the field of evolution ever since Darwin has given his doctrine to the world, but proclaiming its faith in the Darwinian creed?
There was no blinking the inevitable conclusions. Both Huxley on the platform and Spencer in the "Nineteenth Century" had acknowledged before the whole world that they had lost faith in the idol which for thirty years they had so vociferously worshipped. It is true that both Spencer and Huxley might have intended to warn biologists merely against a too implicit faith in natural selection or the survival of the fittest. But even so, the position of their followers was little to be envied. Their leaders had confidently assured them that Darwin had given to the world coveted knowledge never known until he had discovered it. This had been loudly and confidently proclaimed from the housetops of science; and now—strange reversal—those same leaders tell them that their preachments were of a faith without foundation.
The words of Professor Osborn may be adduced: "Between the appearance of 'The Origin of Species' in 1859 and the present time there have been great waves of faith in one explanation and then in another; each of these waves of confidence has ended in disappointment, until finally we have reached a stage of very general scepticism. Thus the long period of observation, experiment and reasoning which began with the French philosopher Buffon, one hundred and fifty years ago, ends in 1916 with the general feeling that our search for causes, far from being near completion, has only just begun."
Sir William Dawson, of Montreal, the eminent geologist, said that the evolution doctrine is "one of the strangest phenomena of humanity, a system destitute of any shadow of proof," ("Story of the Earth and Man," p. 317). Even Professor Tyndall in an article in the "Fortnightly Review" said: "There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in the state of hypothesis and science in the state of fact. And inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage the ban of exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of Evolution. I agree with Virchow that the proofs of it are still wanting, that the failures have been lamentable, that the doctrine is utterly discredited."
One of the ablest evolutionists today is Professor Henslow, formerly
President of the British Association. In his book, "Modern Rationalism
Critically Examined," he shows that Darwinian natural selection is
absolutely inadequate to account for existing facts.