The survival of the fittest is one of Darwin's emphasized laws of natural selection. He says: "In all cases the new and improved forms of life tend to supplant the old and unimproved forms. New varieties continually take the place of and supplant the parent form. New and improved varieties will inevitably supplant and exterminate the older."—Origin of Species, pp. 264, 266, 413.
Do the facts sustain this assumption? The little animals whose remains compose the great chalk-beds are alive and working. Inarticulate or molluscan life is seen in a sub-fossil condition in the Post Pliocene clays of Canada. They are just as they were in the beginning of their history. Species seem to be immutably fixed. The demand for millions of years, in order to get old species out and new ones in, breaks down with the mollusk of the Pliocene in the clays of Canada. The Pliocene species are the more recent; such is, in fact, the meaning of the term in geology. The mollusk of Canada Pliocene clay has undergone no change since its first appearance upon our globe.
In order to account for ancient life, that passed away, as far back as the carboniferous age, it is claimed that millions of years passed before that age began. But here are the very first species of mollusca in the more recent clays unchanged, and here are the same little animals that floored so much territory in the bygone with chalk. How does this look by the side of the last quotation from Darwin?
Crabs or lobsters, cuttle-fish, jelly-fish, star-fish, oysters, snails, and worms lived contemporary with the first vertebrates. I have recently read an article in which it is said by an advocate of the Darwinian hypothesis, that man in his original condition was a cannibal, feasting, ordinarily, upon snails and worms. Now, it is claimed that millions of years have passed, and that millions of years inevitably destroy old species and introduce new ones; and yet here are the same old pesky snails and worms. If millions of years have passed the system is false. And if millions of years have not passed the system is false; so it is certainly false.
Hybrids are wonderfully in the way of the hypothesis. They can not be saved. All artificial varieties return to their simple form. Mr. Huxley recognizes this as an objection that can not be surmounted. He says, "While it remains Darwin's doctrine, must be content to remain a mere hypothesis;" that is, a mere guess.
In the latest productions of Agassiz we have this statement: "As a palæontologist I have from the beginning stood aloof from this new theory of transmutation, now so widely admitted; its doctrines, in fact, contradict what the animal forms buried in the rocky strata of our earth tell us of their own introduction and succession upon the surface of the globe."
The first vertebrates are sharks, ganoids and garpikes, which are the highest in structure of all known fishes. Darwin's hypothesis demands this order reversed.
When you ask an evolutionist for the links connecting new and old species, as he is pleased to denominate them, you receive the satisfactory (?) answer, "They are lost." A painter presented a man with a red canvass, claiming that it represented the children of Israel crossing the Red sea. The question was asked, "Where are the Israelites?" The painter answered, "They have crossed over." "But," said the man, "where are the Egyptians?" "O, my dear sir," said the artist, "they are under the sea." This is a very fine illustration of facts, if Darwinism may boast of facts, for the connecting links between species are "under the sea" of oblivion, never to be found, and the old species "have passed over." Mr. Darwin's apology is in these words: "Every one will admit that the geological record is imperfect; but very few can believe that it is so very imperfect as my theory demands." This is a grand concession. The "wild speculation" has no support from geology. The blanket of oblivion, which Mr. Darwin and his friends spread over the difficulty, is "millions of years." In that length of time the missing species, or links, would, of course, all pass out of sight. Is this true? No. In the geological record millions of specimens are fossilized and laid away in nature's great cabinet. Why not find a few of the missing links there? Just one. "One fact, gentlemen, if you please." Science is certain knowledge. Is there certain knowledge of missing links? Gentlemen, just bridge one gulf for us; the gulf lying between any two species will do. We get impatient, standing and gazing. Look! Can you see across?
Mr. Darwin says, "Professor Haeckel, in his general Morphology and other works, has brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what he calls phylogeny or the lines of descent of all organic beings."—Origin of Species, p. 381.
This author, Mr. Haeckel, has "lines of descent" which involves the idea of a plurality of beginnings in the history of organic being; that is, Mr. Haeckel claims a vertebrate series with a vertebrate lying at the base of the series, and an articulate series with an articulate lying at its base. So there must be a special creation at last. Hear him: "There appears, indeed, to be a limit given to the adaptability of every organism by the type of its tribe or phylum. Thus, for example, no vertebrate animal can acquire the ventral nerve chord of articulate animals instead of the characteristic spinal marrow of the vertebrate animals."—History of Creation, vol. 1, p. 250. So the vertebrate must forever remain a vertebrate, and the articulate forever an articulate. Were they both evolved from the same unit? We are anxious to know, how from a pulpy mass of flesh, from a moneron, a creature of one substance, vertebrates were evolved. We would like to know, also, how a creature of more than one substance could be evolved from a creature of one substance without more being gotten out of the thing than there was in it. Here spontaneous generation passes into a wreck. Do you see? The pulpy mass of flesh, or moneron, from which so much has been "evolved" was the result of "the sun's rays falling upon the sea slime," and was and is a creature of one substance, homogeneous. "Natural selection" could not operate in the vertebrate type before it existed. It was "limited to the type or phylum." That is to say, natural selection could evolve new species without limitation from each type, but could never evolve a vertebrate from an articulate, nor an articulate from a vertebrate. Then, how are the two series from the same unit; or, if they are connected with two different units, how are those units the effect of the same unintelligent cause? How are we going to cross this chasm lying between the sun's rays and the sea slime upon the one hand, and the articulate and the vertebrate upon the other? Darwin says, "Judging from the past, we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity." Well, how is it with the past? We are told that millions of years are the demand for the changes already brought about. Millions of years would certainly be enough to constitute a "distant futurity." How is it now? Is there not one species having its likeness represented by a species in the distant past? Yes; the genus lingula, the species appearing in all the ages, was "connected by an unbroken series of generations from the lowest Silurian stratum to the present day."—Origin of Species, pp. 293, 294, 428.