Quite recently (in 1913) a remarkable fossil was found in the Oldoway gulch in northern German East Africa, by an expedition of the Geological Institute of the University of Berlin. The remains consist of a complete skeleton, which was found deeply imbedded in firm soil. Unquestionably ancient as these remains are,—the bones are completely fossilized,—they contained lamentably few "primitive characteristics," and hence have not been exploited in the interest of the evolutionary theory. A fragment of skull, a tooth, a thigh-bone, offer much more inviting fields to the evolutionists, since they permit his imagination to range without the restraint of fact. The Oldoway fossil, which is in every essential respect a normal human skeleton, possesses no special attractions for those who would represent man as a descendant of brutish ancestors.
Says Prof. Virchow: "We seek in vain for the missing link; there exists a definite barrier separating man from the animal which has not yet been effaced—heredity, which transmits to children the faculties of the parents. We have never seen a monkey bring a man into the world, nor a man produce a monkey. All men having a Simian (monkey-like) appearance are simply pathological variants, (abnormal varieties, due to some diseased condition). It was generally believed a few years ago that there existed a few human races which still remained in the primitive inferior condition of their organization. But all these races have been objects of minute investigation, and we know that they have an organization like ours, often, indeed, superior to that of the supposed higher races. Thus the Eskimo head and the head of the Terra del Fuegians belong to the perfected types. All the researches undertaken with the aim of finding continuity in progressive development have been without result. There exists no proanthrope, no man-monkey, and the 'connecting link' remains a phantom."
Dr. Berndt, of Berlin, recently said in the "Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau der Chemikerseitung" (April, 1914): "Max Weber, one of the best authorities on mammals, regards the anthropoid apes of to-day as a branch parallel to the human branch. Scholars like Cope, Adloeff, Klaatsch, prefer to push the origin of man back to the earliest age of terrestrial life, whence he went his way from the very outset separate from the apes." This is a highly significant utterance. It means nothing more than this: there is not one recognizable link which unites man with the animal kingdom. All the intermediate forms between man and the original jelly-fish, which according to Haeckel and Vogt was his ancestor, have disappeared. For their existence we have nothing but the word of speculative scientists.
Concerning the Neanderthaler, the Cro-Magnon man. etc., Dr. Dawson has said: "Geological evidence resolves itself into a calculation of the rate of erosion of river valleys, of deposition of gravel and cave-earths, and of formation of stalagmite crusts, all of which are so variable and uncertain that, though it may be said that an impression of great antiquity beyond the time of received history has been left on the minds of geologists, no absolute antiquity has been proved; and while some, on such evidence, would stretch the antiquity of man to even half a million years, the oldest of these remains may, after all, not exceed our traditional six thousand. These skeletons tell us that primitive man had the same high cerebral organization which he possesses now, and we may infer the same high intellectual and moral nature, fitting him for communication with God and headship over the lower world." Similarly Figuier held that "we know of no archaeological find (stone hatchets, etc.) that could not be pronounced only five thousand years old as well as fifty thousand."
Lionel S. Beale, the famous microscopist, testifies: "In support of all naturalistic conjectures concerning man's origin, there is not at this time the shadow of scientific evidence."
William Hanna Thomson, M.D., LL.D., Physician to the Roosevelt Hospital; Consulting Physician to New York State Manhattan Hospital for the Insane, who has held a professorship in New York University Medical College; been president of the New York Academy of Medicine, etc, in his recent book. "What is Physical Life?" says concerning the doctrine of evolution: "No contradiction could be greater than that between this doctrine and the greatest truth which underlies this human world."
The Russo-French physiologist, M. Elie DeCyon, for many years professor in the Faculty of Sciences and in the Academic Medico-chirurgicale at the University of Petrograd, has lately published a book of essays in which he says that the theory of evolution, especially in its relation to the ancestry of man, is a "pure assumption." He quotes Prof. Fraas, who devoted his long life to the study of fossil animals: "The idea that mankind has descended from any Simian (ape) species whatsoever, is certainly the most foolish ever put forth by a man writing on the history of man. It should be handed down to posterity in a new edition of the Memorial of Human Follies. No proof of this baroque theory can ever be given from discovered fossils." And to quote from another address by Virchow, delivered at Vienna: "I have never found a single ape skull which approaches at all the human one. Between men and apes there exists a line of sharp demarcation."
One of the most recent authoritative publications by a German anthropologist urges that "the apes are to be regarded as degenerate branches of the pre-human stock." This means, in a word, that man is not descended from the ape, but the ape from man. This is almost what may be called reductio ad absurdum, and yet it is one of the latest pronouncements of scientific thought (Editorial in "New York Herald," December 30, 1916). To the same effect are the words of Professor Wood-Jones, Professor of Anatomy in the University of London, England, who recently pointed out that so far from man having descended from anthropoid apes, it would be more accurate to say that these have been descended from man. This was claimed not only by reason of the best anatomical research, but to be "deducible from the whole trend of geological and anthropological discovery." On this account Professor Wood-Jones appealed for "an entire reconsideration of the post-Darwinian conceptions of man's comparatively recent emergence from the brute kingdom." (Quoted by W. H. Griffith Thomas in "What about Evolution?" p. 10.)
It is refreshing to turn aside from speculation to revelation, from conjectures and theories to proven facts, and no one has stated ascertained facts, touching the origin of man, more succinctly and more clearly than Prof. Dr. Friedrich Pfaff, professor of Natural Science in the University of Erlangen. He shows conclusively that the age of man is comparatively brief, extending only to a few thousand years; that man appeared suddenly; that the most ancient man known to us is not essentially different from the now living man, and that transitions from the ape to the man, or from the man to the ape, are nowhere found. The conclusion he reaches is that the Scriptural account of man, which is one and selfconsistent, is true; that God made man in his own image, fitted for fellowship with himself and favored with it—a state from which man has fallen, but to which restoration is possible through Him who is the brightness of his Father's glory, and "the express image of his Person."
We cannot refrain from reverting, in this connection, to the essential difference between the animal instincts and the intellect of man, and would quote, on this subject, the forceful statement of the case by Paul Haffner in his "Materialismus" (Mainz, 1865). We translate: "If the hypothesis of materialism were acceptable, if we were to believe that a merely animal form of consciousness might develop into spiritual and intellectual perceptions, we ought to be able to observe such capacities of change and growth also in the animal world of to-day. Yet this is not the case. For thousands of years we have observed the domestic animals, and still we can see no trace of a dawn of intellect. We expend much training upon them; we make them our confidants and treat them with inexhaustible tenderness, and still we never see them rise out of their narrow sphere and out of the bonds of their primitive desires and instincts. We note external imitation of human activities, such as the ludicrous virtuosity of the apes, and that superficial adaptation which we call 'animal training' and which is nothing but a development of sense stimuli; the animal does not know what it is doing, it is duped by man who knows how to employ its instincts and make them serviceable to his purposes. We cannot fail to note that never, not even under the most favorable conditions, do the animals step out of their original sphere; that neither by their own efforts nor through the aid of man are they able to rise into ideas of a spiritual or suprasensual nature; that they remain forever what they were in the beginning. Hence it cannot be denied that also men would have remained what they once were according to the notions of materialists. Only if from the beginning the light of spiritual life was enkindled in them, could they become, what they are to-day." ("Materialismus," p. 59 f.)