Of course we have moved slowly forward in our various stages of development from whatever we were before we took on human qualities up to our present degree of attainment. It is not hard to believe that we have developed superior understanding and the other higher attributes of humanity only as our growing needs and opening opportunities have called for them.
The evolution of species and the laws governing the development of physical organs as they became necessary for the growth and preservation of the infinite variety of living things have been a favorite study for materialistic scientists for the past century. More than that, long ago the learned Jean Baptiste Lamarck formulated four propositions that are now accepted as self-evident.
First. Life, by its proper forces, tends continually to increase the volume of every body possessing it, and to enlarge its parts up to a limit which it brings about. This covers the phenomenon of growth to maturity.
Second. The production of a new organ in an animal body results from the supervention of a new want continuing to make itself felt, and a new movement which this want gives birth to and encourages.
This is shown in the long neck of the giraffe, which enables him to feed on the tender top leaves of tall tropical plants, and in the camel's hump which supplies him with vigor during long intervals without feeding, and the receptacle for water, which enables him to traverse long stretches of barren and streamless lands.
Third. The development of organs and their force of action are constantly in ratio to the employment of those organs.
The kangaroo, a large animal carrying its young for safety in a natural pouch, stands erect and never uses its fore legs in walking. It leaps forward in prodigious bounds, propelled by the muscular power of its tail, which has grown and developed beyond even the hind legs in strength; while the fore legs have dwindled to insignificant size and importance.
Fourth. All which has been laid down or changed in the organization of individuals in the course of their life, is conserved by generation and transmitted to the new individuals which proceed from those which have undergone these changes.
This is because evolution carries us constantly beyond certain needs and progress does not let us go back to those needs, neither in our own persons nor in those of our posterity. Man and beast alike have only and always such organs as they require and no others. The laws of heredity are not whimsical or recalcitrant, and the changes brought about by evolution are carried forward by them in strict obedience to its demands. Recognizing this fact, but building from a false premise, the followers of Darwin search for a link to connect humanity with the tailless apes of earlier periods, assuming that man was developed from them, and that the ape is the link between mankind and the next lower order of being. There is absolutely nothing in support of this theory beyond a resemblance in the physical conformation. And that is far more likely to result from the ape being a descendant of prehistoric man.
All these speculators stop short at any valuable foundation on which to build theories. They see in evolution only the generation and development of living organisms and the reason or cause of the infinite variety of form, color and habits.